When we last met our hero...

When I last updated, I was in the artsy world of Madrid. Nowadays I'm in Athens, but I shall retrace my journey a bit, with pictures.

I'll start with Barcelona, even though I've talked about that a bit, because I need to post some pictures from there. It's a beautiful city, very lively with art and what not. The most interesting part is probably La Rambla, which is the main shopping/cultural street. You can find anything there that you'd find in Barcelona, including live animals.

I've already gone into detail about the art I've seen lately, but the most unique work of art in Barcelona was Gaudi's Parc Guell. It was full of really random things.

Anyways, as I said I took the AVE train to Madrid after a few days of Barcelona beauty, and I got to see the beautiful Spanish countryside.

Madrid is a different kind of city from Barcelona. It's more like London. There are lots of things to do in Madrid, but it's less about the character and more about the power of the place. I had a great time there, but it's less unique. However, unlike in Barcelona, they actually speak Spanish (Barcelona speaks Catalan, which is quite different) and I was able to manage a lot more there.

The first places I went to were the Botanical Gardens and El Prado. Since I've already discussed El Prado, I'll describe the Botanical Gardens a bit. In spite of the cold, and in spite of the fact that it was a day away from snow, most of the garden was green. I know they were mostly evergreens, but it was kind of beautiful.

I know the picture's crooked, but you get the idea.

The other main photogenic area of Madrid that I got pictures from was Parque de Buen Retiro, a beautiful and gigantic park near the museums. Everything in Madrid is rather close together; it's nice. But yeah, the first time I went to this park (I went twice, it was too pretty), it was snowing. And it snowed a lot. The entire park was covered in a layer of snow/ice/sleet that was extremely slippery. And I went twice.

Like I said, the park was lovely. Madrid was a very nice place. Spain in general was awesome. The food, the culture, everything.

After Spain, I took a flight from Madrid to Mallorca, and then a flight from Mallorca to Copenhagen, where my friend Eirik lives. I've always wanted to go to Scandinavia, and Denmark was a fantastic start.

Most of the places I've been to like to overwhelm you, but Copenhagen's not that kind of a city. It's large, it's beautiful, and it's cold, but it's got a great charm. The town within a town, Christiania, is still the most unique place I've ever been. It's a society independent of society. Unfortunately, this counter-counter-counter-culture area doesn't allow photography. Instead, I'll show you what everyone goes to Copenhagen to see:

Yes, she's there. Although she's not easy to find. Eirik gave me some directions to it and I found the general area, but it took me about 40 minutes to find that tiny statue. Still, it's a very peaceful place.

After seeing Eirik in Copenhagen, I flew to Istanbul to meet up with my former roommate, Vefik. Vefik lives in Ankara, but he encouraged me to meet him in Istanbul. Turkey is another world for me. It's easily the furthest from home I've ever been. Hell, most of it's in Asia, which is completely foreign (relatively speaking, I'm the true foreigner wherever I am) to me. But yeah, Istanbul is awesome.

We stayed near Taksim Square, one of the major hubs of the gigantic city. It's huge, and usually quite crowded. Istanbul in general can be described by that sentence. Take, for instance, the Blue Mosque.

It's from the 1500s, and it's so different from the rest of Europe in that it's a MOSQUE. But yeah, the architecture in Istanbul comes from all over. It's one of the oldest cities of all time (used to be Constantinople), and a lot of its architecture predates that of Europe. For instance, the Hagia Sophia:

This building was originally a church, before churches were supposed to look like cathedrals. It's older than most West Virginians (I said MOST). When the Ottomans took over, they painted over all the Christian images and turned it into a mosque, and most Turkish mosques are modeled after this one. When Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, secularized the country, he turned it into a museum. They recovered some of the ancient Christian art (the paint preserved it quite well), so half of it's a mosque and half of it's a church. It's insane.

We also did the Basilica Cistern, which was a beautiful underground water reservoir. It had an old statue of Medusa. The place in general was creepy as hell. Vefik was really creeped out by it. We also had a lot of really good Turkish food, and for an hour or so we went to the Asian side of the city. Oh, and the Grand Bazaar was ridiculous.

(not in Asia)

But yeah, with Copenhagen and Istanbul I had great people with me. Vefik and Eirik are incredible awesome for all the help they gave me. It's been so weird travelling by myself, and they made it awesome while they were with me.

And so after getting used to having a travel companion, I set off to do Greece on my own. Given all that's been going on here lately, I was a little bit nervous about being in Athens alone. But as long as you stay in the tourism areas, it's fairly safe. I'm still being very careful.

After the awesomeness of Turkey, I wondered what their Greek rivals would have for me. The answer: more awesomeness (I'm a great wordsmith, I know).

Yesterday, I attempted to go to the Acropolis (and the Parthenon and all that), but they recommended that I come back today because it was free. So I walked up the Hill of the Muses instead.

Today I went to the Acropolis, the Parthenon, Ancient Agora, the Temple of Zeus (and other ancient things in the vicinity) and then the old Olympic Stadium used in the 1896 Olympics.

The Parthenon is being reconstructed again, so there was a lot of scaffolding around. The museum was also not reopened yet. Still, it was amazing.

This was in Ancient Agora. It was built sometime around 400 BC, and it's one of the best preserved temples of its kind. It's for Hephaistos.

This is the Hadrian Arch, which was built as a border for Athens. Now it's in the middle of a modern looking street.

I'm a big mythology buff, so this place brought a lot of that back. When I was in Junior High, I loved reading the Iliad and the Odyssey. Seeing where those gods were actually celebrated is unbelievably freaking cool.

The highlight for some reason was the Temple of Zeus. I was able to get this picture by asking some German tourists. That's the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, with the Parthenon on the hill behind it and the Hadrian Arch slightly hidden.

After all the mythology, I headed over to another side of town taking the train to the site of the first modern olympics. It's a still functioning stadium, and although I'm not a sports fan, I can appreciate it. The only thing that's weird about it is that there's nothing there. No museum that I could find, just a few statues.

So yeah, this has obviously been an amazing trip so far. One more full day in Greece, and then I move on.

Art!

So far on my trip, I've seen a lot (let me emphasize, a LOT) of art. In Amsterdam, I went to the Van Gogh Museum. In Barcelona, I went to the Picasso Museum. Here in Madrid, I went to El Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and the Reina Sofia Museum. I've seen works by Van Gogh (duh), Picasso (duh), El Greco, Goya, Dali, Liechtenstein, Man Ray, and all kinds of others. I've unintenionally started teaching myself about art. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying it.

I've been to tons of art museums before. I went to two in Vienna, I've done the Metropolitan Museum of Art twice in New York City, and I've been to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC as well. MOMA in NYC is probably my favorite. But that's because I was able to take this picture:

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved Van Gogh. However, these last few weeks have given me a better appreciation for art in general.

Both the Picasso and the Van Gogh museums focused on their particular artist, showcased a huge amount of their work, and showed how they developed and grew as artists. The Van Gogh museum especially showed how the area he was in and the situation in his life could manipulate how he perceived things. In his last few years, he was really going insane and his art reflected it.

I'm not an expert. I've never really studied art, but I have a newfound appreciation for it, as I've already mentioned. However, as my girlfriend and I have discussed many times, I definitely feel that just because something is artistic doesn't make it good. Cinema especially bothers me in this field. There is such a thing as bad art. If there's no point and nothing is said and it's not entertaining, people will feel that it's bad. For me, cubism drives me insane most of the time. I feel that it's a step backwards from greatness a lot of the time. On the other hand, there are some great cubist paintings.

Today I saw Guernica, which is easily my favorite Picasso painting that I know (and I'm not a huge fan of his other stuff), and I got chills. The Reina Sofia Museum does a great job of building it up for you. It has several sketches and plans that he drew before actually attempting the thing, and it shows photos of it as a work in progress. It's a masterpiece in every way, because he actually organized the chaos.

Another painting I was familiar with was Goya's Third of May 1808. It's a famous picture of inhuman brutality (kind of like Guernica, only it's a bit more realistic). It's another HUGE painting, and it goes better with the painting it was supposed to go next to, like in the museum. I dunno, when I saw this in a textbook it meant nothing, but now it means a lot after seeing it.

Speaking of Goya, I saw this in a textbook as a child, and it scared the hell out of me. It's Saturn, or Cronus, depending on how you want to look at it, eating his children because he's afraid that one of them will overthrow him. Of course, one of them ends up being hidden from him and ends up becoming Zeus the Almighty, but that's just how the story goes. But yeah, I had never thought of it in a political context, and it's as fascinating and disturbing as ever. When a government is destroying its own, it's acting out of fear of retribution. I know it seems kind of obvious, but I'm a slow thinker sometimes.

El Greco is one I never really cared much for until seeing his works in person. They almost leap out at you, it's great. My only problem with Rennaissance paintings is that they all seem to be about the same thing (that Jesus guy). And other than the occasional genius, they all seem to be painted the same way. I dunno, this guy just feels kind of like William Blake. It's great.

Finally, there's Dali. I fell in love with Dali a while back, and he's still as great as ever to me. I could have used more Dali, but oh well. This one made me laugh. It's called "El Enigma de Hitler", and for some reason, it cracks me up.

Yeah, I know I'm not an art critic, but it's a newfound fascination for me.

The journey so far...

First, I met up with my father in London at the airport. It was wonderful to see him. It's been over 3 months since I saw anyone I knew, and seeing him was a breath of fresh air. We went on the Rock n Roll Tour, which showed us all sorts of places that have changed music over the years. It was really cool. Afterwards, we headed to the West End and saw The Mousetrap, the longest running play ever. It was really good, and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

The next day, our main tour began and we headed to France. We saw the white cliffs of Dover from our ferry, and got to Paris around 6ish in the evening. It's a very enchanting city. We ate at Montmarte, which was wonderful. The service and the food was excellent. We saw the Sacred Heart and the Moulin Rouge. The next day we saw the Louvre (just the outside), Notre Dame (beautiful and really cool to be there on Christmas), the Eiffel Tower, and various other parts of Paris. It's a wonderful place.


After that, we set off for Switzerland, where we stayed in the town of Grindelwald. We headed up to the top of some of the Swiss Alps, including the "Top of Europe". I nearly froze to death, but the area was surprisingly awesome. I got a really bad cold and ended up feeling kind of miserable on our way out of there, though.

We stopped in Boppard on the Rhine River, but I was asleep for the entire night we were there.

Then we went to Amsterdam. We did the Anne Frank House, the Heineken Brewery, and the Van Gogh Museum. It was kind of awesome, but it's the most indulgent city in the world. Absolute chaos. Especially for New Years.

Afterwards, our tour ended and Dad and I went to London. We saw the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and we rode the Eye. The Eye of London was a surprisingly good highlight of the trip. I was terrified going up it, but I really kind of loved it once we got on.

On Sunday, we said our goodbyes and Dad flew back to the US. I went to Dublin, for the first part of my "alone" section of my journey. It was a really nice little town. I ended up touring the Guinness Brewery, the Jameson's Distillery, and Old Kilmainham Jail. I got lost at one point, eventually making my way back but exhausting myself in the process. I went to a comedy show, where they made fun of me for being American. Good times.


After Dublin, I flew to Barcelona. That city was amazing. It was like an art museum as a city. I saw the Picasso Museum, the Parc Guell, La Rambla, and Port Vell. I'd go back in a heartbeat; it was wonderful. I had hoped to practice some of my Spanish there, but they mostly speak Catalan in that area.

I took the AVE train to Madrid, which was essentially a flight on the ground. It's one of the fastest trains in the world, and it was kind of awesome. Madrid so far seems cool; I've done El Prado (lots of Goya and El Greco), the Botanical Gardens, and I've been to the Plaza Mayor. We'll see what I do here in the next few days.

Until then, Ciao!

So I'm sitting in Prague, wrapping up an insanely busy last few weeks of a semester, preparing to embark on more than a month of heavy travel. I'm going everywhere, and I really can't wait. I'm going to see my father, I'm going to see some of my friends from school, and I'm going to be in a zillion places. Should be spectacular.

The last few weeks have been intense. We shot several projects, barely having time to do anything else. After classes were officially finished, we still had shooting to do. Eirik left on Thursday, and Riccardo and Vefik left on Friday. Pisek was surreal as hell without them.

So I went to Prague. I took the GRE on Saturday (I did a lot better this time) and was able to relax on Sunday. Today, I went downtown and did a bit of shopping, among several other things.

But yeah, I'll try to update this as much as humanly possible over the next few weeks to give details about where the hell I am.

No hay nada aquí hoy

First I said I'd update this once a week, then once every few weeks, and now it's been almost a month. Wow, I'm awesome.

We've shot a music video, which you can expect to see online probably next week. We also shot a report, and we may shoot one more thing before Christmas. We've had some new classes, and school's generally been all right.

But let's be fair, I'm overdue on a blog about my grandfather.

My grandfather, Cecil H. Underwood, passed away over a week ago. His health had been on the decline for a long time. In a lot of ways, it's a relief.

I knew my grandfather well in a lot of ways, but at times he seemed like a mystery. Before I left, I kind of knew I'd be missing his funeral, so I said my goodbye to him in private. Part of me felt like I was running away a little bit, but I know he'd be okay with where I was at his service. Chris, my brother (pictured above) was able to read a statement from me at the memorial service (thanks Chris), so I did what I could to express my feelings.

Granddad was a public figure in West Virginia. He was a political figure, and while he didn't always win, a lot of people knew who he was. And it definitely looks like people liked him. Every time his health failed, it somehow got to the news media, which always bothered me. Granddad was a very private, quiet man. Unfortunately, being abroad, I had to deal with the public figure part of him first. I knew that something was going on, but couldn't get ahold of anybody, so I ended up checking the Charleston newspaper, which already had a story on it. Four hours after his passing, and they had interviews and statements. It was a bit surreal.

And while I'm not sure it's necessarily a good thing that they had as many cameras at a memorial service as they did, I was able to stream it live online and see how it went, for the most part. It was a lovely service, and everybody that I could see did a wonderful job. Granddad would be a little embarrassed at all the love, but he would appreciate it.

Also, my brother and my uncle Craig look too alike. When Chris got up to talk, I wasn't sure who he was until he spoke. I realized that it looks a little bit like a family of Lex Luthors... I'm not saying we are though.

But yeah, Granddad's passing is sad, but things happen for a reason.

My apologies

Yeah, in that last post where I said I'd try to keep things a bit more regular... I lied.

Vefik, my trusty roommate, and I went off to Vienna a few weekends back. We stayed at the Wombat Hostel, which was excellent. In a lot of ways, it surpassed some hotels. There's just that whole "I'm sleeping next to a complete stranger" aspect that holds it back from that.

Our lovely hostel.

Vienna was quite lovely. We went to the St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Schonbrunn Palace, the Museum Quarter, the Bermuda Triangle (notorious bar area where people mysteriously get lost, which was insanely crowded) and the State Opera House (where we saw La Traviata in standing seats for 3 Euro).

St. Stephen's Cathedral

My gleeful "wish you were me" look from the Vienna State Opera

The food was excellent (wiener schnitzel is without parallel), and the wine was good.

After a month of Czech beer, Austrian wine was a refreshing change. The only real problem with Vienna was how expensive it is. They spend euros at the same amount that we spend dollars (like something that costs $3 would be priced at €3), but the euro's worth $1.3, which adds up after a while. That said, at least we knew what we were getting into. Also, sachertorte is the most delicious thing in the universe.



The other thing about Vienna that s
truck me as beautiful was just how friendly they were to tourists. While everything was written in German, even at the less touristy areas they would greet you in English, and usually only speak to you in English. While in Plzen and Prague we've seen this, Vefik and I hadn't seen it on this level. The service oriented environment was refreshing. The train trip was only about 5 hours, which seemed like a lot at the time, but then we went to Budapest.



Yes, after another week of classes, we ventured off to Budapest. Vefik and I went, joined by two of the other International Film students, Riccardo (born in Italy, spending most of his life in Germany), and Eirik (Norweigian by birth, but has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark for forever). We booked a hostel in Budapest (that's right, Hungary) for Friday and Saturday night. We spent Thursday in Prague for a cultural education kind of lesson, and with no class on Friday, we just took the midnight train to Prague. Having gotten up quite early to go to Prague in the morning, I was afraid that I wouldn't stay awake in time to catch the train. Somehow I managed, but I barely ate any dinner (I hate the actual transit part of travelling). We found decent seats on the train (all things considered), and made our way to Budapest, crossing through Slovakia for a short amount of time in the middle of the night.

We arrived early in the morning on Friday, around 8:30ish, and eventually navigated the transit system and found our way to the hostel. European cities seem to have excellent public transportation. Prague, Vienna, and Budapest all are simplified enough that you can buy a ticket for metros (subways) and trams and local buses all for one price. Vienna especially was so well put together that you didn't have to walk very far to get anywhere from a metro stop. Budapest was no different, and it has one of the oldest subway tracks in Europe (second only to the London Underground). But I digress.



Budapest is a beautiful city, but after spending a day in Prague, it's hard to really compare.
The city's divided into two sections (actually three, but they only call it two names), Buda and Pest (no joke, those were the names of two of the three cities that they combined to form Budapest). They're separated by the Danube River, which is lovely.

We spent most of first day and evening wandering around. The food was good, and the architecture was quite spectacular, but we were insanely tired.



On Saturday, we went to an opera during the day (Elektra, which was mediocre), and then wandered around the city again. We witnessed a political demonstration by a right-wing radical group that involved a lot of marching and flag waving. It was quite intimidating. We found a nice little park which for some reason had a statue of George Washington. We spent all of our time on the first two days in Pest, which was where our hostel was. On Sunday, we finally went to Buda, which was wonderful.














We had some Hungarian pancakes (interesting and affordable) at a restaurant where we met a few Americans who were just as confused as we were. We made our way to the castle, finding some adorable kittens on the way. The architecture was quite spectacular. We all came to the conclusion that we should have come to this part of Budapest first. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in a mall, which was quite a fascinating place.

By the time we caught our train (which ran a little bit late), we had all decided that Budapest was all right, but not nearly as cool as Prague. It was a lot more expensive than we had imagined, and the government seemed a bit unstable. On our way back, we found out that because we were going a different route, we had to pay extra. This ended up with me feeling even more embittered and broke by the end of the trip, and left me deciding that I'm never going to Budapest again. While I had good times, it wasn't worth it for the hassle.

When we got back to Prague at 6 AM, we caught a bus back to Pisek (lucking out... we ended up getting back very early), but about an hour later we found out that we had a class, even though it was a national holiday and we had been repeatedly reassured that we wouldn't be having class. So we were about an hour late for Production, and we were all exhausted, and we didn't get much sleep.

The rest of the week seemed to be a bit disappointing anyways, as we only had two actual classes, plus a screening of a film. Granted, it was a national holiday week (celebrating the first Czechoslovak nation, which was in 1928 and doesn't exist at all anymore), but it felt like a waste of a week.

So after our screening of Birth of a Nation, Vefik headed to Prague on Friday to see Queen + Paul Rodgers. I caught up with him on Saturday in Prague, and we headed to Vyšehrad, one of the oldest parts of Prague. We also caught sight of the Dancing House, and went to the Eiffel Tower of Prague (not actually its name, but they call it that). I can't explain to you my anxiety over climbing that tower, and my confidence of having overcome that fear for a little while. At night, we did a pub crawl, which was insanely fun. Eirik joined us halfway through that. The next morning, we headed back to Pisek.



This week's been intense, but one of the better weeks of classes here. Monday, we had Film Laboratories, which explained a lot about film processing and how careful you have to be with legitimate film stock, which we'll use next semester. Tuesday, we had a camera instruction exercise, and then film grammar (intense as ever). Wednesday, we had Film Theory/Directing, which was the same as it usually is. Thursday was Czech Culture and History, which is a fascinating thing. Then on Friday we had Production again, which was extremely intense. Monday, we're studying cinematography. I'm looking forward to it.

We've all decided to spend the weekend in Pisek to recover and to do some research. We're getting ready to shoot a project of Vefik's, hopefully. I'm working on something that we might attempt to shoot before Christmas, but who knows.

Also, a little thing happened on Tuesday night that might be worth mentioning. I don't know if anybody heard about this, but apparently the U.S. decided to hold a little election, and Barack Obama freaking won!!!!!! The reaction over here has been quite positive. I've been congratulated by several. I've had several people tell me that I've changed their perception of the US and of Americans in general, which I'm flattered by. Everyone seems to see this as a step in the right direction, and I feel optimistic about it. I don't think many Americans realize how badly we're perceived, and how many bridges we've unnecessarily burned. And this Obama guy seems to have a positive attitude towards progress. I don't want to get too political here, but it's refreshing to see a political campaign that's not designed to scare people into voting for a candidate. We had a little election night party here late on Tuesday, and it opened my eyes to how much it matters to others beyond ourselves.

Another side note, while I'm uploading images onto this blog: Music's been a pretty big thing to me on this trip. I had to put as much on my ipod as I could before I left, and I've rediscovered my love of certain things: Nirvana, Beatles, Elton John, and James Taylor. While I listen to them pretty regularly before, they make travel more interesting. Also, I found that the Raconteurs are excellent to travel to (especially on flights across the ocean), and Jack Johnson makes bus rides slightly more comfortable. I don't know what I'll do when I get overly sick of these things, but I'm a very patient person.