Charlie

This semester has certainly not been without a its fair share of excitement, but the most noteworthy event so far is without a doubt my surgery at the beginning of the month.

Let me preface this by saying, quite simply, I have a deep, paralyzing fear of three things in this world: vomit, needles and germs. I have vivid childhood memories of having to be physically restrained in order to get shots. I steer clear of people who catch stomach bugs for weeks after they recover and wash my hands until they crack and bleed. As a result, I am as fond of hospitals as I am of airports or gas station bathrooms or E. coli. I had done a successful job of avoiding them, too, until the end of this September.

I was sick. I was viciously sick. I was so sick I could barely sit up. At first, I chalked it up to a nasty stomach bug or food poisoning. It’ll go away, right? I spent my waking moments in a hypochondria-fueled haze, alternating between WebMD’s symptom checker (which declared “appendicitis” or “cancer” no matter how I typed in my symptoms) and e-mailing the school nurse. It’s going to just go away, right?  I sat in a terrified fever-dream. Hours and hours later, when I couldn’t even muster the energy to play Fallout, I could ignore the signs no more. It was with great anguish that I made my way to the Ospedale Civico’s pronto soccorso (emergency room).

Wendy, my dear friend and the on-duty RA, helped me catch a cab to the hospital. With our combined Italian skills (read: Wendy did the talking), we explained my symptoms and they told me to sit in the waiting room. After about an hour, a nurse came and took my temperature and gave me some pain medicine. I was bored and my stomach was in blazing agony, but the room was almost empty and Wendy and I just sat and chatted. Two more hours later, however, and our patience (and the pain medicine) was wearing thin. Wendy had responsibilities on campus and had to take off.

I sat alone in the ER and tried not to think about the woman next to me who was periodically running out of the room to vomit. The waiting room was slowly filling up with people and there was no end in sight. I had almost reached my limit after another two hours of waiting, at which point the pain medicine was completely gone and I was completely stir-crazy. I debated just leaving. I’m probably overreacting. This is a waste of time, I thought to myself. I went up to the desk and asked the nurse for more medicine. She seemed startled so see that I was still there. Never a good sign. She just nodded and told me it would be another half an hour.

I arrived at the hospital at 14:30. I was admitted at 20:45. By that point, I was physically and mentally exhausted. The nurse hooked me up to an IV (I was so worn out at this point that I didn’t even flinch at the needle) and some glorious pain medication. I sat in a trance brought on by resignation, medication and exhaustion. Doctors and nurses came in and poked and prodded; they took a blood test, a CT scan, and an ultrasound. My doctor spoke English fluently, but many of the nurses and technicians did not. Quite a few instructions were lost in translation to some degree or another, the most notable occasion being the contrast CT scan. Before the radiologist injected the contrast dye, he pointed at me and said simply, “two minutes, very hot.” The contrast dye produces a strange hot-flash, as if someone is lighting your veins on fire or replacing your blood with boiling water. As the eery feeling spread from my stomach out through my fingers, I thought numbly, “Oh, that’s what he meant.”

The final verdict was appendicitis. By 2:30 in the morning, they had called in an anesthesiologist and a surgeon who introduced themselves to me and handed me paperwork. I still have no idea what I signed; when I asked about it, I got a noncommittal response about needing permission to do some things. They had me document the amount of money I had in my wallet so that none of it went walkabout. They let me call my family to tell them the news. Then, it was time for surgery.

“Wait,” I stopped the anesthesiologist. “I’m terrified. Absolutely terrified.”

“I can fix that,” he said. “You Americans are always so scared.”

He whipped out a syringe, shot something into my IV, and in an instant I was so content that I barely remember being wheeled into the OR.

•

I awoke, quite literally, in a blur. The nurses had misplaced my glasses, and so I looked aimlessly about the fuzzy orange room in despair. I tried shifting around and, to my great dismay, found I was connected to numerous tubes and instruments. I vaguely remember my surgeon coming in, and I remember a couple of frenzied conversations with the nurses about 1) my glasses and 2) the plastic tubing protruding from my gut. The nurses in the surgical recovery ward spoke much less English than even the ER nurses had. I spent much of the day in a silent, blurry, post-anesthesia, glassesless fog.

Later, both my uncle’s brother, Raz, and the school nurse, Chris, showed up. Chris found my glasses and Raz sat and kept me company for the rest of the afternoon. My vision restored, I was able to see that my room had 4 beds and an awesome view of the lake. I chatted with Chris and Raz as well as with the girl in the bed across from me.

Hospitals are boring. My bedrest was so uneventful that it was a thrill to be able to walk across the hall to the bathroom. In the mornings, I endured the awkward silence and then the doctors’ morning rounds. In the afternoons, Raz sat and kept me company as long as he was allowed to, and I had visits from my awesome roommates. My mama was incredible and flew on the first flight she could out Switzerland to see me. She got in the day after my surgery, and sat with me for the rest of my recovery. I chatted with the lady in the bed to my right about her job as an acupuncturist and her studies in Santa Fe. People cycled through my room fairly quickly, and I tried to ignore the sounds of pain and the smells of the bedpans of my less fortunate sisters-in-medicine.

The nurses who were on shift by my second night spoke no English at all, and so we communicated through an array of facial expressions, shrugs and single-word questions (“dolori?”). My day-shift nurse was harsh and somewhat mean. My night-shift nurse was peppy and sweet. I made the mistake of asking my night-shift nurse for some anti-nausea medicine on one occasion. She nodded cheerfully and ran off, and then in a flash returned and jabbed a needle into my thigh. I didn’t ask for any more medicine after that.

Finally, the day came when I was allowed to remove the tubing from my gut and leave my wretched plastic bed. I clutched my mama’s hand so tightly my knuckles were white as harsh day-shift nurse began to pull on the surgical tubing. She tugged and tugged and, 8 inches of agony and flared plastic later, I was free of my medical shackles. I met with my doctors one last time, got my discharge papers, and was officially allowed to leave. We gathered my things and took off (well, crept out the hall and down the stairs and then had to take a break at the benches. I had the stamina and movement capabilities of a 90-year-old).

My mama and I stayed in a local hotel until I was strong enough to walk again. She nursed me back to health and kept me in far better spirits than I was in in the hospital. Unfortunately, she had to depart for home, and I had to get back to classes. C’est la vie. I’ll be leaving my appendix in Switzerland, and all I’ve got to show for it are a couple of scars and a sheet of paper that says “Diagnosi: Appendicite acuta gangrenosa.”

That’s right, bitches. Gangrene.

I got back from my second academic travel last weekend. This time I journeyed south into Italy, the land of Renaissance art and culture. My class this semester was an examination of the history of Italian art through the ages, looking at everything from Michelangelo to Caulder.

We left Lugano bright and early and hopped on a train to Milan. After about an hour, we changed trains in Milan, jumping onto one of the gorgeous Frecciarossa trains into Florence. The trip from Milan to Florence only took about an hour and a half, and we arrived in Florence early enough to do some sightseeing before dinner. We dumped our bags off at the Hotel Diplomat (our original hotel, the Hotel Club was “under renovations,” so we got bumped to a different–better– hotel) and took off in search of the Galleria dell’Academia.

On the way to see the David at the Academy, we stopped at the The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (shorthand: The Duomo) and climbed up the belltower.

After the belltower, we headed to the Academy where we saw the David, a whole collection of Michelangelo’s statues, and a gallery exhibit of the history of musical instruments (my favorite of which was the awesomely titled hurdy gurdy.)

We wandered around Florence on our own for a while, picked up some gelato and waffles, and then just kicked it until evening. We headed to dinner that night, and ate dinner at an awesome osteria across the river.

The next morning, we got on a local train to Perugia. We arrived at Perugia station mid-morning, and waited in front of the station for about half an hour before our bus arrived to take us to the hotel.

We got to the Hotel Ilgo late in the morning, then met up with the group again to walk up to Perugia proper. Mira and I wandered around downtown Perugia for a while, ate lunch at an underground pizzeria, and met up with the group to head up to the Fuseum, the home and gallery of Brajo Fuso.

We wandered around the Fuseum for a while and had a really awesome tour guide, but our tour went a couple of minutes over and we missed our bus back down the hill. We waited for about an hour and a half for the next bus to arrive, then got off at the bottom of the MiniMetro line and took a miniature train car back up to Perugia.

Maya and I decided to break away from the rest of the group. We headed back to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant.

I spent the next two days stuck in the hotel room coughing up both of my lungs.

The next day, we left for La Fratta, taking a pit stop at a shopping mall and then the small ceramics town of Deruta, where we learned about the history of Italian ceramic techniques.

That afternoon, we arrived at La Fratta, the art house run by artists Luca and Elisabetta. The house was surrounded on all sides by farmland, and it was a peaceful retreat in the Italian countryside.

The next morning we had our first ceramics class with Luca, where we talked about the art of Raku pottery, the aesthetic ideals it represents, and the idea of creation as a journey, not a means to an end product. We each made a bowl and a large form. I spent the afternoon, again, sick in bed, but Elisabetta called me a doctor and so I got some antibiotics. The next day, Sunday, was again a sick day, but I was feeling well enough by the day after to be able to fully participate in class activities.

On Sunday we did glaze color trials and did our first batch of raku firing.

The rest of the time spent at La Fratta was filled with awesome food, good company, and lots and lots of ceramics. We spent 5 nights in the art house, kicking it and generally having a good time.

We took a side trip to Todi while we were staying at La Fratta. It was an evening trip; we mostly headed up to Todi for dinner at the Trattoria Umbria, but it was a cute little medieval town and we had a good time exploring.

We left La Fratta on Wednesday and took a bus down to Rome. We got to Rome, dumped our bags at the Hotel Center 1-2-3, and walked to Termini station to catch a metro train to the Vatican City.

We dined in the Vatican Museum cafeteria, then wandered through the Vatican Museums for the rest of the afternoon. After three high-speed laps of the main museum circuit, we headed back to the hotel and rested until dinner. We had our last group dinner at a cute little restaurant nearby to our hotel.

The next day, the rest of the group took off for Lugano and Cam and I were left on our own at the Hotel Center. We checked out of the hotel and transferred to the Hotel Lodi. We were a little too early for check-in, so we left our bags, grabbed a map, and took off exploring the area. Cam and I got caught in a rainstorm, took shelter in a cafe, and ran back to the hotel to dry off and rest before Johanna’s train got in. Once Johanna joined us, we walked out to the Rei di Roma station and got some pizza in preparation for a night of route planning and TV watching.

Friday morning, we walked down to the Colosseum, through the Forums, and around the southern part of the city. We ate at a cute little cafe and just sat around for a while before heading back to our hotel in the evening, watching a little “I Dream of Jeannie” on the English TV channel, and eating an awesome dinner at a restaurant near our hotel.

Saturday morning, we took the metro up to the Piazza del Popolo, then walked past all the monuments we could. We walked down via Margutta, up and down the Spanish Steps, past the Trevi Fountain, through the Pantheon, into a rally at the Piazza Navona, and down past the Mouth of Truth. Thoroughly exhausted, we bought some food at a grocery store near our hotel and crashed for the night, ready to wake up to catch a train the next morning.

Sunday marked the end of our trip, and we jumped on a Frecciarossa train back to Milan. Have I mentioned how much I love Frecciarossa trains? I really, really love Frecciarossa trains. Our train was delayed, though, so we missed our connection in Milan and got stuck wandering around the Milan Station with all our luggage for about two and a half hours. It was awesome to finally get back home to Lugano.

Photos from the rest of the trip are available on my flickr account, here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30861805@N05/collections/72157626185072203/

Last weekend, I went to Zurich with a couple of friends for the afternoon. The train from Lugano to Zurich Central takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes, and we spent the time playing card games (hearts and Egyptian ratscrew, for the most part) and chatting. We got to Zurich at around 3 PM and set off in search of food.

We met up with more friends and then we all made a beeline for a kebab stand nearby to the station which, apparently, had the best döner kebab in the universe. Much to everyone’s dismay, the stand was no more (in its place stood the less appealing “Momo Sushi Express”). We despondently made our way to a different stand and munched on some döner kebabs which, I was assured, were “just alright” in comparison.

We wandered around Zurich for the rest of the afternoon, stopping to look at storefronts and to admire the public transportation. From what I saw, Zurich is a very pedestrian-friendly city, with streetcars aplenty and a lot of streets with no cars whatsoever.

After our stroll around town started to lose its steam, we stopped along General-Guisan-Quai and sat on a wall overlooking the lake. We chatted and watched the sun set as the lights of Zurich began to reflect off the lake in the darkness. Our group decided to finish the night off with a trip to Paddy Reilly’s, an Irish-Swiss pub chain. We left our perch by the lake and ran (almost literally) through downtown to the pub.

We left in time to catch the 8 o’clock train back to Lugano, and the train ride home was fairly uneventful. We found an old news magazine from Zug under one of the seats and spent the ride home attempting to translate it and laughing at the silly advertisements. The train pulled in to Lugano station at around 11, and we all walked home in a companionable (read: sleepy) silence.

The rest of the photos from my trip can be found here @ flickr.

I’m back in Lugano for my second semester! The return trip was mighty hectic.

I took off on a 12-hour flight to Zurich after a seven hour layover in LAX, then had another four hour layover upon arrival. I got to the gate in Zurich only to hear that my flight to Lugano was cancelled. The SWISS desk gave me a train ticket to get home, so I grabbed my (wheelless, 49 pound) duffel bag and dragged it across the street to the station.

At the station, I met some other dudes headed to Franklin and we all piled into an elevator to get down to the train platform. The elevator had glass doors and we saw our train pulling up to the station as we descended, descended and then — CLANG — the elevator got stuck. The three of us were shoved in this tiny elevator with two luggage carts; the lights were completely out and we could see our train, sitting there about to depart. There was a platform attendant staring at us and laughing while we motioned wildly “That’s our train! That’s our train!” He made a hand signal saying “I’ll go make a call,” and walked away, chuckling.

Despondent, the three of us prepared to wait for another train when the elevator started moving again! We grabbed our stuff and ran to the train; the doors were closing but one of the guys managed to hit the open button in time and we jumped in, collapsing on the floor of one of the cars with literally seconds to spare. A nice Swiss lady, sensing our plight, listened to the German announcements and told us which station to change at for our train to Lugano. We got in at around midnight and took a cab back to campus.

Since then, however, not much of interest has happened. Classes started last week, and Franklin is finally getting back into the academic swing. My days once again consist of class, cross-stitching, and NPR with a healthy scoop of the internet thrown in, just for kicks. Apart from the pollution levels in Lugano at the moment, life is pretty normal. I’ll keep you posted if anything momentous happens.

Ciao!

First Lugano snowfall this morning. It’s all melted now, but it was gorgeous (if not somewhat paradoxical) to see all the palm trees covered in snow.

Three more weeks.

(New title format because I am a turbonerd.)

It is now time for me to regale you with colorful stories of my first academic travel with Franklin College. This semester I chose the trip titled “Paris: The Visual Culture of Modernity,” which specialized in, as you might have guessed, art (more specifically, photography). Man, I thought, this is going to be right up my alley! A class about photography where you get to go to Paris for the sole purpose of taking photographs? A class with no papers and no tests because it’s all about experiencing art? I signed right up.

We began the semester with bimonthly meetings with our travel leader, Professor Fassl. She talked to us about the merits of street photography and gave us readings from Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson by Clive Scott (a ridiculously wordy book. Only recommended to those who are fascinated by verbose examinations of early French photography). We took photos around Lugano as a warm-up and presented them to the class before we left.

On Monday the 11th we departed, leaving from the Lugano train station to Basel, where we waited to get a train through the French countryside to Paris. The trains took about 3 and a half hours a piece, so we didn’t arrive in Paris until evening. We took a heard of taxis from Gare de l’Est to our hotel, the Hotel Tryp de Saxe near the Eiffel Tower. Our hotel was reasonable, if not a little run-down, and Morgan and I collapsed asleep pretty quickly.

We met the next morning in the hotel lobby and headed out for a walking tour of Île de la Cité and the Quartier Latin, after which we were abandoned. Morgan and I took a leisurely walk back through the Latin Quarter to our hotel, stopping to shop, look at an oddly gigantic French grocery store, and observe a gaggle of strikers as they proceeded down the street. Our assignment was to take photos from the point of view of a hobo. (I don’t even–)

The next day we rocketed through the Musée du Louvre and then made our way up and down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, taking pictures “as if we were in love, and as if we were heartbroken.” Morgan, Johanna and I stopped at a small cafe that, I was assured, has the best macaroon cookies in the universe. They do.

On Thursday, we headed out to the Musée d’Orsay. I liked the atmosphere and the art of the Orsay much better than (what we saw of) the Louvre. We stayed and looked at the paintings for around 3 hours before the rest of the group split. Morgan and I looked through a few more areas before we, too, took off to find food. After lunch, we hit up the Galleries Lafayette, where we wandered around until we found the kids’ section. I bought a video game and Morgan bought a novelty plate.

Friday we met at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and saw some really fantastic exhibits. We stayed in the museum most of the morning, then we headed for lunch at Dans Le Noir, a restaurant where the dining room is in the pitch black and the wait staff is entirely comprised of blind people. After our rather adventurous lunch, Amy, Julia, Morgan and I headed up the street to the Centre Georges Pompidou. We looked at modern art until early evening, and then Morgan and I headed to a grocery store in the École Militaire district. We bought dinner there and headed back to the hotel to watch ridiculous Marky Mark movies dubbed in German.

Saturday was a free-for-all day, so Morgan and I took the RER out to Disneyland Paris. I cannot convey the sheer magic in words. Suffice it to say that I regret nothing. I’ve dedicated an entire Flickr set to photos of Disneyland, you can see it here.

On Sunday, we trekked out to the Cinema Museum, where we saw some really cool exhibits, including a special exhibition called “Blondes vs. Brunes” focusing on the history of hair in film. It was fantastic. That afternoon, we went for a boat ride up the Seine. Monday morning, a small group of us headed with the professor out to a Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. We saw some fabulous paintings, then headed out for coffee before our afternoon walking tour of Montmartre. We trudged through the streets of Montmartre, ending up at the top of the hill, and were eventually left to our own devices. Morgan, Johanna, Julia and I stopped to watch a street performer do a hip-hop dance routine and then walked through some shops in Montmartre. (As an aside, the Metro station that we came through in Montmartre had the single largest elevator I’ve ever been in. It’s literally the size of my entire dorm room. And you need it, too, because walking up all those stairs was nothing short of hellish.)

Tuesday, Morgan and I walked over to the Eiffel Tower, then had lunch at a cafe in the École Militaire district. We met up with our group that afternoon for a walking tour of Le Marais, then a few of us headed to the most phenomenal tea parlor before we marched off to dinner at a Moroccan restaurant in the Latin Quarter.

Because of the strikers (no petrol), the Metro lines were insanely crowded, so we took a bus to the train station on Wednesday. About 8 hours later, we arrived in Lugano safe and sound (and exhausted), and it’s been back to “business as usual” ever since.

I’ve got all of the photos from the trip uploaded here on Flickr. I’ll be happy to elaborate on the circumstances of (or any funny stories tied to) any of the pictures; just leave me a note!

On Wednesday, I went downtown with a group of other Frankliners on the fabulous “Sweets Galore Tour,” so named because it was a tour of Lugano’s best sweet shops. I only managed to get a photo of our first sweet treat, chocolata densa (Italian hot chocolate), but rest assured the other delicacies were just as fantastic.

First we stopped at a little coffee house off of Piazza Dante for hot chocolate. The sheer number of flavors available was astounding (I settled on mint, but other people got chili, pear, and even lemon flavored chocolates), and they all came with an assortment of cookies and fruit for dipping. Next, we stopped at a cute little pastry shop in front of Manor for some delectable baked goods. I had a napoleon. Finally, we went into a gelateria called -9° for some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Man, it was so, so good.

Outside of -9°, some guy got into a fight with a couple of other guys over something (nobody from our group is really quite sure of the details), and ran up and down the street in his dark pink corduroy suit, yelling and screaming and causing a ruckus while we 15 Americans (and plenty of other onlookers, too) just stood in awe while eating our ice cream cones. It was a really intense fight, and the people who tried to step in to calm it down were inevitably drawn into it, too. At one point, someone whipped out a bottle of vodka and almost smashed it over pink suit’s head, but he wrestled his way out of the hold and managed to avoid it. Once the cops showed up, the scene died down and we all headed home. 

On Saturday I headed downtown to pick up some groceries and stumbled upon a huge Autumn Festival, where people were selling everything from fresh salami to… dreamcatchers? It was an eclectic assortment of booths, to be sure. For the most part I just wandered around, but I did pick up a lovely crêpe formaggio as I walked through the booths.

The streets were jam-packed with people all wandering around the festival. There were some areas that were so congested with enthusiastic festival-goers that it was easier just to take pretty wild detours.

I passed one tent that had 7 or 8 of these massive soup cauldrons. There was a guy on almost every cauldron, stirring the soup with huge, oar-like paddles. The soup chef in the red hat was a total ham, and he pulled some dramatic soup stirring poses when I came by with my camera.

(As always, more photos can be found here at flickr.)

News from the shores of Lake Lugano is scarce, I’m afraid. Most of my peers have abandoned Switzerland and are currently en route to the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest this weekend.

It’s rained twice since I’ve been here. Rain here is strong; it’s rarely a drizzle but a downpour that lasts for hours on end. It’s refreshing and disheartening at once.

We took a trip with one of my professors up to Rigi Kulm and then down through Luzerne a few weeks ago. The mountain views were breathtaking and it was great to get to explore a new city. The rest of my photos from the trip are all up here.

On the way downtown, I have to pass a house on a hill. I adore this house, fitted with a long, grandiose set of stairs and what I image to be one of the best views of the lake in all of Lugano. The building is completely surrounded by trees and has a multi-leveled garden in front of it. The narrow streets of downtown Lugano are always jam-packed with people, a veritable menagerie of different cultures. Walking down the streets you can pass by conversations in dozens of languages. The rest of my photos of downtown Lugano can be found here.

Finally, I bought a new tea cup today at a store downtown. The woman who owned the store was very nice and told me that people come in and buy her tea cups one at a time, usually not in sets, because that way every pattern on every cup you own is unique and gorgeous at once.

Here it is, in all its floral patterned glory:

Maybe someday I can get a collection as fantastic as jljjld’s!

(Polarioid image template from Poladroid.)

I am no longer exploring the Orient. I have (temporarily) left behind the Land of the Rising Sun and am living in the equally exotic Confederazione Svizzera, or, more specifically, sunny Lugano in the Italian canton of Ticino, Switzerland.

This time I’m studying at Franklin College Switzerland, and as such, what posts I have time to write will be mostly about the experience of attending an American school overseas. This is less about my day-to-day routine and more about my noteworthy encounters as I attempt to learn the ins and outs of Lugano’s cultural quirks and convoluted streets. At the very least, it will serve as a quick and succinct record of a few notable excursions as I begin my studies.

Ciao!