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Hello once again.

This time, I am writing to you all from my room in the basement back at my house. I was thinking about posting yesterday, but truth be told, while thinking about what I would write I fell into a deep peaceful sleep. The only bad part was that this took place at about 7 at night (which would be 2 am in Europe. So, I woke up, totally refreshed here in Wisconsin at approximately 2:30 in the morning, and have I ever been bored!

Our trip home began in Imperia, Italy at around 9:30 in the morning. Our German escorts, Armin and Danella, who should be thanked very much for coming with us and being our drivers, got us up and moving for one last farewell at Laterna Blu, Massimo's restaurant. It was good to see him one last time, bid him a final farewell, and wish him the best in his endeavors. We made it to Nice, France with about a half an hour to get on our plane. The only problem is that we went to the wrong concourse, and so had to quick load everything back into the vans and drive across the airport, and try ot get on our plane. It felt like I was carrying out a drill in boot camp, honestly.

Unfortunately, only 8 of our 11people made it to the plane in Nice. Somehow, tickets got confused with Delta; so Haley, Amanda and Alyssa, along with James, were stuck in France for the first portion of my time in Amsterdam. We were able to find internet upon landing in Amsterdam, and found out that they would find us later on in the night, as they got onto a later flight from Nice.

And so for the first five or six hours in Amsterdam, we met up with a friend that Lee had that lives in Holland. She took us to the city, which was very beautiful. The architecture is very old and really awesome to behold. She took us out to lunch, where I found out that a hamburger in Holland is actually a bratwurst patty. Strange things all over the world, I tell you.

After lunch we went to the Anne Frank Museum. If you ask just about any person in the world if they know about Anne Frank, and they will say yes. She is the voice of so many people that lived during the horrific times preceding world war two. It was an amazing tour, as it has a modern museum section, where you see the diary itself, pages, notebooks, and other personal effects of the Frank family. Then they would show you a video, where you would find out things that were going on outside of the safe house. Then you would actually get to go inside. See the exact places where Anne and her family walked, and lived for nearly three years. It was harrowing, to say the least.

We then returned to the airport, where we met up with Haley, James, Alyssa, and Amanda. They were all in good spirits, for the most part. We returned to the city, while James held down the fort in the airport, and tried to deal with the Delta people, who apparently were trying not to claim any fault for overbooking the flights. I felt like that was very foolish of them, because we clearly had receipts for each and every ticket purchased, there and back again. I don't know what they were trying to do, but James figured it out.

After having some fun in the touristy (and expensive!) areas of Amsterdam, we met back at the airport at around 2 in the morning. At this point, I hadn't showered in 24 hours. I was tired and gross. So I took a nap. Thankfully, we stayed up so late in Amsterdam and the airport that I slept for six straight hours on the plane from there to Detroit. I was happy, because that pretty much eliminated my jet lag.

After Detroit's landing, there isn't much else to say. I am back home. I had an absolutely amazing experience all throughout Germany, Italy, and Amsterdam. Honestly, I am glad we didn't spend too much time in France. I know I am basing this on only the few airport members that I met in France, but they were pretty snobbish. I don't know why. Yes, we were late, but the inside scoop is that they are in the customer service industry, if you can't deal with problematic customers, find a new job, okay?

I may post more on this blog, maybe if I remember stories that might need to be shared, but overall I feel happy that I was able to keep the rest of you that maybe couldn't make this particular trip informed as to what we had done, were doing, etc. Honestly, I had fun with this project, and I hope that by my words you also had some entertainment. I hope that everyone reading this gets the chance to travel. It is the only way to really understand some of what I have and may talk about in the future.

Four days in Italy.

Hello all once again, this time from the city of Imperia, Italy.

Just a fun fact, it is about 75 degrees, probably the most beautiful sun-shiny day in all of the history of the world, and soon I will be sitting on the white sandy beaches of the Mediterranian Sea.
Be jealous, I would be. :)

It has been a very great time in Italy thus far. We as a culinary group have had a tour of Imperia, which has a beautiful domed chapel that was built in the 1940's. It is absolutely beautiful. My favorite piece of art is the faceless crucifiers of Christ, I hope to be able to get a picture up on this blog, and I will label it to show you all as well. Internet is hard to come by here, we were lucky to find a nice lady, who basically let us run internet off her phone from her cafe. We also attended the city market, where I got some of the fresh fruits and vegatbles that are grown by local farmers. I don't know if it is the climate or what, but they have an amazingly fresh taste. I so far have had fresh cherries, olives, apricots, tangerines, and green beans. Just amazing.

One of the coolest things in Italy has been getting some cooking demonstrations/lessons from an Italian Chef named Massimo. He has been working in his family's restaurant most of his life, I think 45 years, and has taught us much about Italian cokery. His mantra is one that would rather use few, fresh and simple ingredients to make a dish that can be identified by the customer. James said that he so hertily believes the same thing about food, and was so pleased to have someone else say it, and he said it like it was poetry.The difference between French and Italian cooking, he said is that no French chef could ever send out a dish like the one he made for us, a raw spagetti sauce. French cooking is all about complicated procedures and about dazzling presentation. While this is very necessary, as the French set many standards in the culinary world, his pasta dish had 5 main ingredients, and it was absolutely the best thing I have ever eaten. He has been most hospitable, and I really do not think I could thank him enough for all of his time that he has given us. I will soon be able to post some pictures on this and some other blogs, once I am back home with my computer that I am able to utilize to do such things.

I have another meeting with Massimo, we all do rather, soon; and so I must say farwell for now. Having an absolutely wonderful time, I hope to be able to post from Holland before my flight leaves.

Ciao!
Ben

P.S. this computer has no spellchecking mechanism, so please forgive and misspellings and failures at grammar in general.