Unhappy
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Sunday, December 4, 2011
"Lore of the Sea"
The abundance of random snow storms, the reappearance of the terrazzo tundra, and the inescapable lore of the holiday season mean the end of the Fall semester at the Air Force and Coast Guard Academy alike. As such it seems an appropriate time to recount my unprecedented semester through the latest edition of my blog. As an introduction I had the opportunity to spend the better half of my semester at the Coast Guard Academy and returned early back to the Air Force Academy which has been one of the best and most difficult times in my life.
After an amazing summer traveling through Greece, Bulgaria, and eventually Turkey I didn't return to the Air Force Academy as I do after most summers. I returned to my home in Annapolis for a brief five day week since the Coast Guard started a few weeks after the Air Force Academy.After a seven hour drive from Annapolis to the Coast Guard Academy I arrived only to get on a bus to the New York City Harbour. Waiting for me at Pier 6 was the Barq Eagle an iron clad sailboat that the US stole from the Nazi's at the end of World War II. Originally the Horst Weischel. the Eagle is the flag ship of the US Coast Guard and the primary training vessel for cadets at the Coast Guard Academy. At first I was reluctant to enjoy the experience since I was giving up a week of my leave, but as soon as I walked on the ship the exchangers were given two days to roam around New York City. Unknown to me I was unleashed into New York City with some pretty awesome people. After a mile walk from the ship into the notoriously filthy NYC subway system we began our journey to New York City and as exchange cadets at the Air Force Academy.
I think we had all been to New York City a couple times before so we all kind of had an idea of what we wanted to do. On the first day we figured we would check out Wall Street on the day the US's credit rating went from AAA to AA+ :-o. This was a few months before everyone else had the same idea. After our trip to Wall Street and to the Freedom Tower, in the place of the Twin Towers, we headed up town to see Broadway and fifth Avenue. There we visited all of the typical shops, The M&M factory, the giant Toys R US, and some other random places. My favorite part is always the visit to Little Italy, especially the trip to Carmello's Bakery. After some pizza and cannolies we headed back to Broadway to see a 17 dollar movie. It was Cowboys and Aliens so it wasn't even a good 17 dollar movie, it was absolutely terrible.
The next day I spent with my family since Maryland is only a few hours away. We walked around and went to the Hard Rock Cafe and eventually we went back to the boat to go on our journey.
As I mentioned the Eagle is meant to train 1st and 2nd year cadets so most of the time the freshmen were shining brass cleaning bathrooms and learning how to stand watch, sail, and other applicable Coast Guard things. Each exchange cadet involved themselves in different ways. A few times a day we had to tie up or unfurl the sails of this massive ship which involved climbing about 30 feet on a vertical mesh net and crawl down the arm of the sail so that we could either tie the massive sail or untie it letting it loose. Once you get to the top you can really feel the mast that you are standing on moving around. Paul from the Air Force Academy really felt it and threw up all the way down the sail on the people below us.
Once we debarked the Eagle in New London Connecticut our remarkable semester began.The Coast Guard Academy was really interesting. There were tons of little rules, strictly enforced, that the exchange cadets began to trip over. The first is that the rooms had to be absolutely spotless, even while we were unpacking we had several officers chastise us for the unsatisfactory conditions of our rooms. One of the officers even said that we shouldn't act like we come from the chill academies. This was a problem for me the entire semester, not that my room was dirty, but I'm just not anal like that, but apparently it was pretty important since I was restricted for it. A few of us also ran into some trouble with the strictness of returning from leave on-time. The cadets at Coast Guard mock the rule since underlying circumstances like traffic, delayed flights, and weather are completely disregarded. A few cadets have gotten in accidents since they were rushing back, but the delay caused by the accident caused them to arrive late so they got restricted. In my case my plane arrived late so I couldn't catch the right train from Providence, RI to New London, CT, I was restricted upon my return. Besides a few oddities the academies were pretty similar with the exception of referring to all of their buildings as cutters, a large boat. As an example they call the walls bulkheads, and they have 360 degree portraits that are as if you are looking off the side of the ship.
The food at the Coast Guard Academy was great compared to the Air Force Academy, especially during breakfast and dinner, lunch is about the same. Every day they had a buffet with some sort of pizza and an ice cream bar. The entree would differ everyday which was usually pretty good, but I favored the action station where they made Gyros, any type of wrap, and occasionally some sort of smoothie which went really well with their loafs of bread that were actually still warm on the inside. Dinner was one of my favorite parts of the day which is really telling about my priorities, but breakfast is a close second with the omelet station and Belgium waffle bar, and of course any type of cereal you choose. Eating out isn't exclusive to the Coast Guard Academy, but I ate out a lot more there than I did at the Air Force Academy. The trips weren't too special a-lot of the times we ate at Panera Bread, which I really like, but it is too expensive.
One of my favorite places to go for lunch was the Muddy Waters Cafe in New London. It was no cheaper than Panera but it was really cool. The inside was decked out with furniture from someones home instead of the typuical booths you would find in a restaurant. The back porch which actually ahd tables overlooked the Amtrak tracks just before they reached the ghetto New London Station. It also overlooked the Thames River, actually pronounced how it sounds weird, on the other side you could see Electric Boat, the largest submarine producer in the world, watch out China. Besides the ecentric ambiance the food was extremely good and healthy at the same time. My favorite thing to order was the BLT, they made it was basil; and put it on a Croissant. After I finished my semester at the Air Force Academy, I flew into Boston took a train to the Coast Guard Academy where we had to pick up my trunk I had left there. Besides stopping at some obscure Apple Cider store in Mystic we went to Muddy Waters for lunch.
My favorite Restaurants were in Mystic most of all was the Captain Packer Restaurant on Water Street. Since it was so expensive we waited until parents weekend so that we didn't need to foot the bill. It was really fun to meet all of our parents especially Peter's dad. Peter's dad was in the Army and made fun of his son the entire night for ordering duck, he called it the "gourmet Army". Peters dad made fun of Peter as much as Jess's mom made fun of Tommy and I for making Jess carry the flag for the march on that day as well as for blaming the girls for everything else that night.
The one restaurant I never ate at, perhaps because I was always restricted, was S&P Oyster. I'm not too disappointed I couldn't go because my parents made sure I had more Oysters than I could handle over Thanksgiving Break. We went to Calypso Bay which was interesting. When my friend Alex and his girlfriend Steph arrived there was a police car bliocking Charlie's car, Alex's dad. We thought that something must have gone terribly wrong since the keys were still in the igniton of the police car with the door wide open. We walked in just in time to see some guy get body slammed by a police officer. Apparently the guy didn't pay his bill at the other restaurant they went too, note to self pay your bill.
Most of the other exchangers spent their weekends in New York City or Boston checking out the Head of the Charlas, crew race, or a multitude of things going on in the area. I spent most of my time staying on top of debate and helping some of the younger students. One weekend for example I flew to the breathtaking Kansas City with the team, as well as the Air Force Academy, which eventually got me sent back. Most of the time I stayed in the Connecticut area or I took the train back home. The Amtrak is a fantastic way to travel up and down the East Coast, but it is a little expensive. It takes about six hours to travel from CT to Washington which is about the same as a car, but the seats are really spacious and you can finish all of your homework for the weekend, or sleep. I also really enjoyed traveling through Manhatten, which you would never want to do if you were driving a car.
The first time I went home I got to go surfing for the first time in a while. We were able to stay in Ocean City with my Aunt Linda and I surfed as muchas I could given the conditions. I know I caught a couple of waves unfortunately the pictures were only taken outside of the water so you will just have to trust me ;-). Also of note was that we went to Lombardi's Italian Restaurant, my Aunt Linda knew that I like mussels so she suggested that I try the Mussels there. they were beautiful when they came out completely green and shiny, they were a New Zealand variety so they weren't all black like usual. They really were the best mussles I have ever had so I am now constantly on a search to find a better Mussel.
The second time I came home I went to the Annapolis boat show with my friend Alex. The show was amazing because they were serving crab cakes on the dock, my favorite food, as well as painkillers. Having learned mytlesson about underage drinking I did not partake in any of the alcoholic festivities. The boat show is always really cool because you can walk across ego alley from Middleton's directly to Pussers. The annoying part was that it cost like twenty dollars with no military discount unless you were from the Naval Academy which was some bs. I guess they were mad that the Air Force Academy keeps beating them in football. Besides the annoying ticket counter person there were some amazing boats there some costing obviously millions of dollars as well as vendors selling some interesting but really expensive clothes. There were a lot of people from South America that had either sailed or flown to the Boat show, I enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversations to practice my Spanish haha. We didn't stay liong since we had to hurry back to play some soccer with old friends.
My absolute favorite thing about the USCGA was the Club Soccer Football Club of America. Although the school only has a thousand students, there was a large footbal/soccer following. We tried to play at least once a week, sometimes we were forced indoors and other times we played on the football football field, like the Super Bowl kind. No matter how much studying I needed to do there was nothing keeping me from a CFSC game, I remember one night not studying for a Prob Theory Test on behalf of CFSC, I got an 89:-) my friend Paul would tell you that this was a point less than him, I guess that's what I get for not studying. On my last night at the academy CFSC had a large game so that they could send me off, we played on the football football field and there were a full 22 people playing, thanks for the sendoff guys it was great! My friend Ryan Flanagan helped plan the game. Ryan was a cool dude the first time I met him I was looking for a ride to the airport for a debate trip. Ryan just dropped everything he was doing and took me up to Providence, thanks again Ryan!
I had an in interesting relationship with each of the exchange cadets. Peter and I always played Saits Row. It's a really violent video game like Grand Theft Auto. we would play for several hours to see who could do the mnost ridiculous things and stay living. My favorite thing was to crash an airplane into the ocean at full speed swim to shore and do it again. I guess we had a pretty violent relationship. Jess and I had Ko, the kid sitting next to us in busnizzz class, weird pinky thing. Ko would eventually sit next to Jess for the rest of the semester after I left. Paul and I had a-lot. Dr. Krystinik, who was capable of writing math at a million miles a second on the board without even looking at it, was our very excited math teacher. Dr Wingrove Haughland was our philosophy teacher :-), I guess just Paul and I will understand this one. Paul was also an avid member of Club Football Soccer Club. Cameron and I had the Air Force Navy football game which almost went the wrong way as well as all of the books and cell phone which Cameron saved my life with. Tommy and I had the extremely inappropriate joke he told us as soon as we met him and the awesome cross country trail he showed me for the first time. I'll end with an exchange cadet joke, "Why did the orange stop in the middle of the road".
Because he ran out of juice :-)
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey
Every year the Air Force Academy offers something called the Olmsted program; its aim is to provide cadets an opportunity for cultural immersion through community service or academics in another country. Our debate team submitted a lenghty Olmsted proposal for a trip to Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The goals were to discuss debate, work at a Roma camp, and coach/judge high school debate respectively. During the last three weeks I had the pleasure of living out this proposal. While traveling through part of Europe and peeking into Asia I met some awesome people, and made some lasting memories. Some of these memories aren't appropriate for this blog, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks if you were there.
Our first stop was Athens best known as the home of theater, the Olympics, the Aegean, and Chris Papadopoulos. Our first day in Athens was pretty slow, but remarkable. It was slow since we were all tired from hours of international travel, the time change, and the heat so we just went out to eat and walked around. It was a remarkable day because we were in Greece. Wes, another cadet on the trip, continued to remind us of this. I think he said it was crazy that we were in Athens at fifteen minute intervals for the entire first day until we embraced this fact to his satisfaction. He was right though you could see the Acropolis rising high above the city, old baths, and ruins that made it easy to pretend you were in Ancient Greece. The breeze coming from the Aegean made the heat pleasant which was a sensation quite different from the desert heat in Colorado.
After our initial self tour of Athens, we met with a few students from the American University in Greece. They showed us through a few roads that were walled with tons of little shops selling different Greek trinkets, fake sunglasses, food, and American military uniforms. Exhausted we stopped for Frappes which I can't really explain because I don't like coffee, but apparently it is something you should drink if you go to Greece. This gave us plenty of time to bs and get to know some of the Greek university students. We also got some Gyros which we decided to pronounce like Gyroscope otherwise we couldn't understand each other. After lounging on the cafe sofas we capped the night off with some Ouzo and a guided tour of Greek nightlife. Unfortunately our night was cut short when one of us, I won't say his name, decided to salsa dance with our guide from the university. I was in the bathroom when it happened, but apparently they basically knocked a table over with glasses on it. Our guide told us that it was normal to break glasses in Greece which was weird since she asked us to run out of the club. I'm not sure what would have happened if we stayed, but Wes cleared himself with Gina by blaming the guide for knocking over the glass. Fortunately for some of us, the next day didn't start until 1 pm. We met the University students and traveled through the wonderful Greek transportation system to AUG. After some amazing triangle sandwiches we toured the campus where Ryan and I became aware of the universities secret for attracting new students. Ryan Wes, and Alexis debated amazingly for their first time against some of the Greek university students. Ryan and I kicked some a$$, but I'm sure other versions of the debate might be construed differently. The next day Chris took us to do all things touristy. He helped us haggle with people so that we could get discounts. Below I've included some pictures of the first half of the day; the Parthenon, and its museum. It was surreal to walk where Socrates walked with his students sparking modern western philosophy. Chris and Sophia took us to an awesome beach to swim for the second half of the day. Chris said it was an eight minute trip so I figured I would just stand. I kept asking Chris but he kept telling me eight minutes so he'd convince me to continue standing since the trolley was so crowded. All together I stood on a very windy trolley for just over an hour. The beach was awesome once we got there; it was extremely blue and salty. Ryan is on the open water swim club at USAFA so he showed off how well he could swim in the open water in Greece. Basically he looked like a red blob swimming around. Later that night we found some awesome nightlife. That was mostly our trip in Athens I'll let the pictures speak for the rest.
Parthenon and Ryan's finger
The last thing we did in Athens was to say our good byes to Chris. I kept this in my mind during our very interesting trip to Varna Bulgaria. The interesting part really started once we arrived thirty minutes late to our connection in Sophia. They rushed us through the airport to an employee's gate entrance where we were greeted by an extremely thorough security checkpoint. I know the girls complained about it, but I remember a very long thorough body search. I kept reminding the man conducting the search that the metal detector didn't go off, but he spoke Bulgarian and continued his search. My guess is that he was just angry that he wasn't American like me, too bad. Once he finished he gave me an attaboy pat on the ass which was a bit concerning. I convinced myself that they just took their jobs too seriously until I met my neighbor on the plane. He greeted me by asking,"Why did you come to my f***ing miserable country. It is riddled with poverty, mafia, and corruption". A little embarrassed, I lied and said that I was just passing through on my way to Turkey, popp-off. My neighbor approved of this and told me that he needed to get out to blow up the bathroom. At that point I remember being pissed at Chris for allowing us to go to Bulgaria I also was hoping that the man sitting next to me got stuck in the bathroom so I didn't have to sit next to him.
Either my new friend was unsuccessful at blowing up the plane or it was confused in translation since he came back. Fortunately Alexis was sitting to my right so she heard the whole thing and was able to worry with me. After meeting this apparent terrorist the trip went off without a hitch.
The next morning we gave a speech in a hotel conference room about AA Civil Rights in the United States with Roma youth. It was extremely intimidating to give a speech to an ethnic group I've only read about. Everything we said needed to be translated into Bulgarian which felt a little impersonal. Besides giving speeches our part in Bulgaria was to work with the Roma as camp counselors. We helped answer questions, and encouraged the students to participate. The language barrier was difficult, but it was still super fun to work with these high school kids.
We were in Bulgaria for quite a while and it is taking me forever to finish this post so I'm going to sum up our trip into a few short anecdotes.
Many times in Europe Ryan and I would get the munchies at night. After the fashion show put on by the Roma Youth Ryan and I tried to go to the convenience shop next to our hotel. It was supposed to be 24/7 but we weren't allowed inside and had to ask the store clerk to get our food for us. Of course he only spoke Bulgarian which made it impossible to get food so we decided to go to the city to find a McDonald's or something. We hailed a Taxi to take us the 2 km's it takes to get to the city center. Ryan and I were pretty skeptical of this taxi driver so we made sure the rate was the typical .99 lev/ km, about .80 dollars/km. I sat in the front next to the sketchy driver and Ryan sat in the back seat which turned out to be a bad idea since I didn't pay much attention to the meter. Once we were around half way there, 1 kilometer, the taxi got a flat tire. The taxi driver pulled over in the ghetto of Bulgaria and demanded 30 lev. We told him we weren't going to pay him anything since he didn't take us to our destination. Then he showed us the receipt which said that we had gone 27 km which was 26 km more than we actually traveled. This is when I saw Ryan turning bright red; I had to hold him back from attacking the taxi driver. When we left the driver threatened to call the police. We figured that two Americans would stick out in Bulgaria so we haggled the driver down to 20 lev which was still outrageous. As Ryan and I walked towards the city in search of food we saw some casinos. Ryan is from Reno so he thought we could win our money back gambling. I assumed he knew how to beat the casino and which games we should play. This was a really bad idea since we lost more than the taxi driver ripped us off. Now we were in the middle of the city and Ryan spent all of his money. Since we had very little money we just decided to buy some delicious gelato and take a cab to our hotel.
Ryan and Karen are avid Quidditch players and huge Harry Potter fans. They each own one of those sky mall Harry Potter wands and have seen each Harry Potter at least three times. For those of you who aren't good at math that adds to nearly three full days of watching Harry Potter. They really wanted to see Harry Potter a few days before it came out in the U.S. so I decided to tag along so that they didn't feel nerdy watching a movie in Bulgaria. Besides a little turbulence between Ryan and Karen trying to find the right movie theater this excursion was great. However, Ryan and I made a terrible assumption on the way from the ticket booth to the HP theater. We assumed that no one spoke English like most of the people we had encountered in Bulgaria. In retrospect I should have assumed everyone in the theater spoke English since that was the language the movie was being played in. You'll have to ask me what I said because I'm not going to repeat it. But I'll tell you we were used to saying pretty much whatever we wanted, and the couple in front of us nearly fell to their knees laughing as soon as I finished speaking. Ryan and I looked at each other suspiciously and assumed they didn't speak English. I asked Ryan if we were in the Harry Potter theater, and the couple answered in perfect English. We blushed and Karen looked confused.
The very blunt man on the airplane that welcomed us to his wonderful country warned me of the mafia in Bulgaria. He said that Bulgaria doesn't have a mafia, but is run by the mafia. I didn't really notice their presence until the last day of our trip on our departure to Istanbul. When we arrived at the train station, I noticed a mob of bruisers reading the paper and staring us down at the entrance to the Varna train station. Once we passed them the women working in the station completely ignored us. They sent us in a very circular path until I used my Droid to translate so we could get a domestic ticket from Varna to Stara Zagora where we would take the Orient Express to Istanbul. The women at the desk wouldn't look at us she just continued doing other work. Finally we got the right tickets, but it took us two days and we weren't certain if we could make it on to the train. Below are the fruits of our labor at the train station minus the 100 lev Ryan won at the casino the train stopped at.
Gelato
Bulgarian Countryside
Stara Zagora
Cafe on the Black Sea
One of the other things that Wes noticed on this trip was that our group did not travel well together. He was completely right. It wasn't that we didn't get along, but we were traveling across Europe and Asia with all of our stuff using sub par transportation. The Orient Express sleeper cars were no exception. After being woken up for various border crossings, surprise ticket checks, and a wake up call we arrived in Istanbul still very tired and agitated. There were very clear moments when each of us separated from the group to relax a bit. Istanbul was a culture shock. I had never seen a minaret or heard a call to prayer before coming to Turkey. We checked out the enormous Hagia Sophia which has an interesting history. It used to be the church Saint Sophia where Byzantium emperors were coronated. Once the Ottomans took over it was converted into a mosque. Unlike the Hagia Sophia the Blue Mosque, next to the Hagia Sophia, is more than just a tourist attraction. Everyone that enters the mosque has to cover their shoes and most of their bodies. Ryan had to wear a skirt since he was wearing booty shorts that didn't cover his knees. Worse than Ryan, the women passing out cloth nearly had a heart attack when she saw Karen; they weren't going to have enough cloth to cover Karen. Doc like a pro already had her own cloth on ready to go. After touring the mosques we visited the cistern which is a giant water storage under the ground. It was built by the Roman Empire. The Grand Bazaar was touristy but awesome the first few times. Even thought it was built in 1461 it is the largest indoor market in the world. It is filled with awesome souvenirs. The big things to buy there were Water Pipes, rugs, and lamps, but they had pretty much anything you would want to buy. The European side of Istanbul was definitely more of a touristy area because it has the remnants of the Ottoman empire and Constantinople so we did all of the touristy stuff the first few days.
We spent all of our time on the Asian side at the debate camp. We stayed at a five star hotel which was awesome for night time activities that included but weren't limited to Turkish Ice Cream, Baklava, Cheese, Chocolates, Water Pipe, and some friends. Late at night we frequented the 24/7 Pide restaurant up the street which was nice since we weren't owned by a taxi driver. When we weren't lounging in the beautiful Turkish garden of the hotel we were visiting Baghdad street which is a Turkish watered down version of NYC's Fifth Avenue; Louis Vutton, Tiffanies, BK, Ahkmed's rugs, Starbucks etc.
The debate side of things were awesome. During the first session we judged the KPDC which is a competition amongst three person debate teams from around the world. Almost a high school version of World Universities Debate Championship. After judging at different Doga schools around Asia Turkey, the training portion of the Youth Forum began. The debaters were separated into random rooms and on random teams composed of multiple nationalities. In the labs the students worked on building both positive and negative cases for the tournament at the end of the forum. I lucked out in my lab, I worked for two awesome trainers Adriaan, and Norah. Adriaan works in politics in the Netherlands. The only catch with Adriaan is that he will spontaneously begin dancing, like the dancing cadet for those from the academy. Norah is also super cool she is a Palestinian living within Israel. She works for an NGO that encourages debating among youth from her country. My favorite part of the Youth Forum was to watch the debaters transform from high school debaters in the first tournament to debaters ready for university debate after the labs. I hope I am able to go to the Youth Forum again next year in Mexico.
During our last day in Istanbul, and the last day of our trip we went out with a bang. We went on an excursion on the European side in Taxiam square. It was a more modern version of the grand bazaar except it was outside and much more open. We spent most of the day there shopping for souveniors, it is also the place I fell in love with fried mussels. My favorite meal was four minutes long we sat outside, the waiter grabbed us two Pepsi's and served us 4 skewers of fried mussels in the time it took to fry them. They were delicious even rivaling Chesapeake Bay fried Oysters. As we were about to leave we noticed that the local Turkish team Galastaray was playing a game that night. Once we realized they were playing Liverpool it was mandatory that we go. We went back at around eight that night to catch the game. Once we got there the Taxi driver pointed to a giant dirt hill that we had to climb down to get to the stadium. It was much like crossing the border into Mexico. We had to climb gates, run so that we weren't run over, and dodge bullets from hua citizens in Arizona. Except for the last part it really was a giant mob. When we arrived at the ticket counter they only took cash so we had to come up with 137 TL a piece in a mob of people. Despite attempts by pick pocketers we were able to purchase the tickets and be herded into the stadium. Our seats were amazing we were in the fourth row on the sidelines which made it easy to watch Liverpool have their butts handed to them in a 3-0 match. The real excitement ensued after the game ended. We were herded to a gate which had sharp excess metal at the top. Ryan and I were able to make it over, but others were not. Let us take a moment of silence to remember the fallen soccer fans. On the other side of the fence we followed a trail of blood from someone that had obviously been severely cut by the fence. We followed an endless staircase to a parking garage that looked like it was an extension of hell itself. It looked like it was made of dirt which made it hard to breath, and there was also the threat that it could collapse. I asked Adriaan about this, and he informed me that this is how a futbol game should be, hardcore. I think I agree except once we finally escaped the hell garage we managed to flag down a taxi driver that must be from Bulgaria. Besides driving around the stadium three times, the taxi driver was speaking into a voice recorder in Turkish. While in the cab, I assumed he was saying that he has the Americans, and he was transporting us to the organ donation center. Fortunately 60TL later we made it back in time to pack for our journey home and to say goodbye to all of the friends we met during the youth forum.
The Basillica Cistern
"Authentic" Ottoman Cuisine
Inside the Grand Bazaar
Inside of Hagia Sophia
The Blue Mosque
Shop in the Grand Bazaar
Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque from the Bosphorous ferry
The lighthouse made famous by James Bond
Galastaray Stadium
Inside the stadium
Our first stop was Athens best known as the home of theater, the Olympics, the Aegean, and Chris Papadopoulos. Our first day in Athens was pretty slow, but remarkable. It was slow since we were all tired from hours of international travel, the time change, and the heat so we just went out to eat and walked around. It was a remarkable day because we were in Greece. Wes, another cadet on the trip, continued to remind us of this. I think he said it was crazy that we were in Athens at fifteen minute intervals for the entire first day until we embraced this fact to his satisfaction. He was right though you could see the Acropolis rising high above the city, old baths, and ruins that made it easy to pretend you were in Ancient Greece. The breeze coming from the Aegean made the heat pleasant which was a sensation quite different from the desert heat in Colorado.
After our initial self tour of Athens, we met with a few students from the American University in Greece. They showed us through a few roads that were walled with tons of little shops selling different Greek trinkets, fake sunglasses, food, and American military uniforms. Exhausted we stopped for Frappes which I can't really explain because I don't like coffee, but apparently it is something you should drink if you go to Greece. This gave us plenty of time to bs and get to know some of the Greek university students. We also got some Gyros which we decided to pronounce like Gyroscope otherwise we couldn't understand each other. After lounging on the cafe sofas we capped the night off with some Ouzo and a guided tour of Greek nightlife. Unfortunately our night was cut short when one of us, I won't say his name, decided to salsa dance with our guide from the university. I was in the bathroom when it happened, but apparently they basically knocked a table over with glasses on it. Our guide told us that it was normal to break glasses in Greece which was weird since she asked us to run out of the club. I'm not sure what would have happened if we stayed, but Wes cleared himself with Gina by blaming the guide for knocking over the glass. Fortunately for some of us, the next day didn't start until 1 pm. We met the University students and traveled through the wonderful Greek transportation system to AUG. After some amazing triangle sandwiches we toured the campus where Ryan and I became aware of the universities secret for attracting new students. Ryan Wes, and Alexis debated amazingly for their first time against some of the Greek university students. Ryan and I kicked some a$$, but I'm sure other versions of the debate might be construed differently. The next day Chris took us to do all things touristy. He helped us haggle with people so that we could get discounts. Below I've included some pictures of the first half of the day; the Parthenon, and its museum. It was surreal to walk where Socrates walked with his students sparking modern western philosophy. Chris and Sophia took us to an awesome beach to swim for the second half of the day. Chris said it was an eight minute trip so I figured I would just stand. I kept asking Chris but he kept telling me eight minutes so he'd convince me to continue standing since the trolley was so crowded. All together I stood on a very windy trolley for just over an hour. The beach was awesome once we got there; it was extremely blue and salty. Ryan is on the open water swim club at USAFA so he showed off how well he could swim in the open water in Greece. Basically he looked like a red blob swimming around. Later that night we found some awesome nightlife. That was mostly our trip in Athens I'll let the pictures speak for the rest.
The Acropolis at night
Greek place of protest
Sweet outdoor Cafe
Parthenon and Ryan's finger
The last thing we did in Athens was to say our good byes to Chris. I kept this in my mind during our very interesting trip to Varna Bulgaria. The interesting part really started once we arrived thirty minutes late to our connection in Sophia. They rushed us through the airport to an employee's gate entrance where we were greeted by an extremely thorough security checkpoint. I know the girls complained about it, but I remember a very long thorough body search. I kept reminding the man conducting the search that the metal detector didn't go off, but he spoke Bulgarian and continued his search. My guess is that he was just angry that he wasn't American like me, too bad. Once he finished he gave me an attaboy pat on the ass which was a bit concerning. I convinced myself that they just took their jobs too seriously until I met my neighbor on the plane. He greeted me by asking,"Why did you come to my f***ing miserable country. It is riddled with poverty, mafia, and corruption". A little embarrassed, I lied and said that I was just passing through on my way to Turkey, popp-off. My neighbor approved of this and told me that he needed to get out to blow up the bathroom. At that point I remember being pissed at Chris for allowing us to go to Bulgaria I also was hoping that the man sitting next to me got stuck in the bathroom so I didn't have to sit next to him.
Either my new friend was unsuccessful at blowing up the plane or it was confused in translation since he came back. Fortunately Alexis was sitting to my right so she heard the whole thing and was able to worry with me. After meeting this apparent terrorist the trip went off without a hitch.
The next morning we gave a speech in a hotel conference room about AA Civil Rights in the United States with Roma youth. It was extremely intimidating to give a speech to an ethnic group I've only read about. Everything we said needed to be translated into Bulgarian which felt a little impersonal. Besides giving speeches our part in Bulgaria was to work with the Roma as camp counselors. We helped answer questions, and encouraged the students to participate. The language barrier was difficult, but it was still super fun to work with these high school kids.
We were in Bulgaria for quite a while and it is taking me forever to finish this post so I'm going to sum up our trip into a few short anecdotes.
Many times in Europe Ryan and I would get the munchies at night. After the fashion show put on by the Roma Youth Ryan and I tried to go to the convenience shop next to our hotel. It was supposed to be 24/7 but we weren't allowed inside and had to ask the store clerk to get our food for us. Of course he only spoke Bulgarian which made it impossible to get food so we decided to go to the city to find a McDonald's or something. We hailed a Taxi to take us the 2 km's it takes to get to the city center. Ryan and I were pretty skeptical of this taxi driver so we made sure the rate was the typical .99 lev/ km, about .80 dollars/km. I sat in the front next to the sketchy driver and Ryan sat in the back seat which turned out to be a bad idea since I didn't pay much attention to the meter. Once we were around half way there, 1 kilometer, the taxi got a flat tire. The taxi driver pulled over in the ghetto of Bulgaria and demanded 30 lev. We told him we weren't going to pay him anything since he didn't take us to our destination. Then he showed us the receipt which said that we had gone 27 km which was 26 km more than we actually traveled. This is when I saw Ryan turning bright red; I had to hold him back from attacking the taxi driver. When we left the driver threatened to call the police. We figured that two Americans would stick out in Bulgaria so we haggled the driver down to 20 lev which was still outrageous. As Ryan and I walked towards the city in search of food we saw some casinos. Ryan is from Reno so he thought we could win our money back gambling. I assumed he knew how to beat the casino and which games we should play. This was a really bad idea since we lost more than the taxi driver ripped us off. Now we were in the middle of the city and Ryan spent all of his money. Since we had very little money we just decided to buy some delicious gelato and take a cab to our hotel.
Ryan and Karen are avid Quidditch players and huge Harry Potter fans. They each own one of those sky mall Harry Potter wands and have seen each Harry Potter at least three times. For those of you who aren't good at math that adds to nearly three full days of watching Harry Potter. They really wanted to see Harry Potter a few days before it came out in the U.S. so I decided to tag along so that they didn't feel nerdy watching a movie in Bulgaria. Besides a little turbulence between Ryan and Karen trying to find the right movie theater this excursion was great. However, Ryan and I made a terrible assumption on the way from the ticket booth to the HP theater. We assumed that no one spoke English like most of the people we had encountered in Bulgaria. In retrospect I should have assumed everyone in the theater spoke English since that was the language the movie was being played in. You'll have to ask me what I said because I'm not going to repeat it. But I'll tell you we were used to saying pretty much whatever we wanted, and the couple in front of us nearly fell to their knees laughing as soon as I finished speaking. Ryan and I looked at each other suspiciously and assumed they didn't speak English. I asked Ryan if we were in the Harry Potter theater, and the couple answered in perfect English. We blushed and Karen looked confused.
The very blunt man on the airplane that welcomed us to his wonderful country warned me of the mafia in Bulgaria. He said that Bulgaria doesn't have a mafia, but is run by the mafia. I didn't really notice their presence until the last day of our trip on our departure to Istanbul. When we arrived at the train station, I noticed a mob of bruisers reading the paper and staring us down at the entrance to the Varna train station. Once we passed them the women working in the station completely ignored us. They sent us in a very circular path until I used my Droid to translate so we could get a domestic ticket from Varna to Stara Zagora where we would take the Orient Express to Istanbul. The women at the desk wouldn't look at us she just continued doing other work. Finally we got the right tickets, but it took us two days and we weren't certain if we could make it on to the train. Below are the fruits of our labor at the train station minus the 100 lev Ryan won at the casino the train stopped at.
Black Sea
Sleeper Car
One of the other things that Wes noticed on this trip was that our group did not travel well together. He was completely right. It wasn't that we didn't get along, but we were traveling across Europe and Asia with all of our stuff using sub par transportation. The Orient Express sleeper cars were no exception. After being woken up for various border crossings, surprise ticket checks, and a wake up call we arrived in Istanbul still very tired and agitated. There were very clear moments when each of us separated from the group to relax a bit. Istanbul was a culture shock. I had never seen a minaret or heard a call to prayer before coming to Turkey. We checked out the enormous Hagia Sophia which has an interesting history. It used to be the church Saint Sophia where Byzantium emperors were coronated. Once the Ottomans took over it was converted into a mosque. Unlike the Hagia Sophia the Blue Mosque, next to the Hagia Sophia, is more than just a tourist attraction. Everyone that enters the mosque has to cover their shoes and most of their bodies. Ryan had to wear a skirt since he was wearing booty shorts that didn't cover his knees. Worse than Ryan, the women passing out cloth nearly had a heart attack when she saw Karen; they weren't going to have enough cloth to cover Karen. Doc like a pro already had her own cloth on ready to go. After touring the mosques we visited the cistern which is a giant water storage under the ground. It was built by the Roman Empire. The Grand Bazaar was touristy but awesome the first few times. Even thought it was built in 1461 it is the largest indoor market in the world. It is filled with awesome souvenirs. The big things to buy there were Water Pipes, rugs, and lamps, but they had pretty much anything you would want to buy. The European side of Istanbul was definitely more of a touristy area because it has the remnants of the Ottoman empire and Constantinople so we did all of the touristy stuff the first few days.
We spent all of our time on the Asian side at the debate camp. We stayed at a five star hotel which was awesome for night time activities that included but weren't limited to Turkish Ice Cream, Baklava, Cheese, Chocolates, Water Pipe, and some friends. Late at night we frequented the 24/7 Pide restaurant up the street which was nice since we weren't owned by a taxi driver. When we weren't lounging in the beautiful Turkish garden of the hotel we were visiting Baghdad street which is a Turkish watered down version of NYC's Fifth Avenue; Louis Vutton, Tiffanies, BK, Ahkmed's rugs, Starbucks etc.
The debate side of things were awesome. During the first session we judged the KPDC which is a competition amongst three person debate teams from around the world. Almost a high school version of World Universities Debate Championship. After judging at different Doga schools around Asia Turkey, the training portion of the Youth Forum began. The debaters were separated into random rooms and on random teams composed of multiple nationalities. In the labs the students worked on building both positive and negative cases for the tournament at the end of the forum. I lucked out in my lab, I worked for two awesome trainers Adriaan, and Norah. Adriaan works in politics in the Netherlands. The only catch with Adriaan is that he will spontaneously begin dancing, like the dancing cadet for those from the academy. Norah is also super cool she is a Palestinian living within Israel. She works for an NGO that encourages debating among youth from her country. My favorite part of the Youth Forum was to watch the debaters transform from high school debaters in the first tournament to debaters ready for university debate after the labs. I hope I am able to go to the Youth Forum again next year in Mexico.
During our last day in Istanbul, and the last day of our trip we went out with a bang. We went on an excursion on the European side in Taxiam square. It was a more modern version of the grand bazaar except it was outside and much more open. We spent most of the day there shopping for souveniors, it is also the place I fell in love with fried mussels. My favorite meal was four minutes long we sat outside, the waiter grabbed us two Pepsi's and served us 4 skewers of fried mussels in the time it took to fry them. They were delicious even rivaling Chesapeake Bay fried Oysters. As we were about to leave we noticed that the local Turkish team Galastaray was playing a game that night. Once we realized they were playing Liverpool it was mandatory that we go. We went back at around eight that night to catch the game. Once we got there the Taxi driver pointed to a giant dirt hill that we had to climb down to get to the stadium. It was much like crossing the border into Mexico. We had to climb gates, run so that we weren't run over, and dodge bullets from hua citizens in Arizona. Except for the last part it really was a giant mob. When we arrived at the ticket counter they only took cash so we had to come up with 137 TL a piece in a mob of people. Despite attempts by pick pocketers we were able to purchase the tickets and be herded into the stadium. Our seats were amazing we were in the fourth row on the sidelines which made it easy to watch Liverpool have their butts handed to them in a 3-0 match. The real excitement ensued after the game ended. We were herded to a gate which had sharp excess metal at the top. Ryan and I were able to make it over, but others were not. Let us take a moment of silence to remember the fallen soccer fans. On the other side of the fence we followed a trail of blood from someone that had obviously been severely cut by the fence. We followed an endless staircase to a parking garage that looked like it was an extension of hell itself. It looked like it was made of dirt which made it hard to breath, and there was also the threat that it could collapse. I asked Adriaan about this, and he informed me that this is how a futbol game should be, hardcore. I think I agree except once we finally escaped the hell garage we managed to flag down a taxi driver that must be from Bulgaria. Besides driving around the stadium three times, the taxi driver was speaking into a voice recorder in Turkish. While in the cab, I assumed he was saying that he has the Americans, and he was transporting us to the organ donation center. Fortunately 60TL later we made it back in time to pack for our journey home and to say goodbye to all of the friends we met during the youth forum.
Cool Cafe in Turkey
The "Fence"
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Pike Climb
A few weeks ago my friend Dave suggested that we climbed Pike's Peak before he graduated from the academy. I quickly agreed with him, but the real question was when we should do it. As a Sophomore/ Junior I still had two long years at the academy to climb 14ers, but Dave's time at the country club was waning to days. We decided that we would climb Pike's Peak the next day since it was the weekend after finals, and there is nothing like frozen mountainous tundra to put a 26 credit semester behind you. Apparently the sun rise from the top of Pike's Peak is pretty amazing so we decided that whatever time we left we would climb to the top before the 5:15 sunrise. Not wanting to wake up early we decided to leave the day before around 11:30.
It's tradition to go to REI before any big hike to pick up unnecessary hiking supplies. Keeping with tradition Dave and I went to the local REI in Colorado Springs.
The reports we got from some friends that had been up recently noted between three and seven inches of snow so I went to the REI looking for some gaiters. Apparently the gaiters would help keep snow out of my shoes up to a few inches above your shoe/boot which didn't really matter since there was actually a foot of snow up there. I walked out of the store with the Black Diamond Storm head lamp which I needed since we hiked up in the dark. The light worked great it illuminated up to 100 feet in front of us so we didn't take a wrong step. It also has a red light setting, but there was too much moonlight for it to be helpful. I want to try out the red-light setting as an evasion instructor.
We started our hike from the Crags trail head near Divide, Colorado. It's about a hour away from the Academy. Dave and I argued most of the time about entering the way points into the GPS. I think we were both too exhausted to deal with the GPS at 12 am. Instead we just entered the way point for the summit, courtesy of 14ers.com, and the parking-lot coordinates. It worked out pretty well, but we winged a-lot of the hike so we ended up on some questionable terrain. Visibility was limited as we hiked from The Crags to the tree line, but the path winded through pine trees at a pretty steep grade. We stopped a few times for food breaks so that we weren't completely depleted of energy once we reached the top. After about an hour of hiking and breaking we emerged through the treeline to stare at an unending ski-slope. It was steep enough that we slid down on our butts in a fraction of the time it took to climb up. Butt sledding turned out to be a bad idea for Dave since it tore his pants. On the way up we stopped for a break to look at Woodland Park below which we seemed to be towering over. The pitch-black sky was illuminated with billions of bright stars which is not a typical site in the DC area. At the top of the "ski slope" our elevation was about 12000 feet which was a 2000 ft climb from the parking lot according to my GPS.
This is a photo of the "ski slope", it goes on forever. Dave took it from the tree line on the way down.
After the ski slope we hiked through frozen tundra to reach the road that leads to the peak. It was filled with boulders and shin deep snow. We noted that there were bear tracks in the snow next to our own when we came back down. We were hoping the bear wasn't around on the way down. Past the bear prints the footing was questionable, one misstep could leave you tumbling into a valley.
The road was relatively boring, but we were enthusiastic since the grade wasn't too bad, and there were no "boulder fields". After a mile or so on the road the grade became pretty steep, and it winded around
an infinite number of peaks. To cope I began intervals of sprawling out on the road face down, eating Pringles, and hiking 100 yards. As I abandoned the road to climb the slightly easier cog rail road I continued to wonder how David's family climbed this in their mamoth 15 passenger van.
The Road The Cog railroad, notice the precipice to it's right.
After only a few minutes of following the cog railroad we reached the top at 14115 ft. The Cog railroad takes up thousands of people every summer to the top. Many climbers on 14ers.com complain about it as a tourist trap, but if they climb at below zero temps like Dave and I they won't have to worry about tourists being at the top since everything is closed. I tried to cook an MRE at the top, but the heat source wouldn't work since it was so cold. On the way down Dave and I saw two hikers and a few at the Crags, but that was it for the entire hike. We took a total of 9 hrs to hike the 12.5 mile climb. Below are some photos Dave took at the top. The first is the sunrise from the top.
GPS info: My GPS is in storage, but I'll update with the way oints when I acess it.
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