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After we finished with Venice, we hopped on a boat taxi and went to the airport. The flight from Venice to Geneva was one of the nicest short-haul flights I have been on in a while. The plane was a small bombardier prop plane and had only one flight attendant. The snacks they brought for the flight were little bit size sandwiches and Evian water, and they were a delight to eat.

Geneva is an interesting city to visit as it is such an international city. On one of the tours we went on, we learnt that about 40% of the population of Geneva is made up of foreigners. This is the result of all the Non-Government Organizations that reside in Geneva (The red cross, United Nations and so on) so as a result the variety of food was amazing. During our stay there we had food from Switzerland, Brazil, Lebanon, China, America, France, and Mexican. It reminded me of Canada where you can get a wide variety of food all within a 5 minute walk. The people of Switzerland are very multilingual, as there are 4 official languages, French, German, Italy, Romaich and everyone seems to speak English as well. This made me wonder why Canadian bilingual polices have failed so miserably.

I think Geneva is a city I would truly want to live in because it seems so involved in world affairs with all the NGOs and such. Also when we went to lunch we overheard a conversation of two young women who were working in international investment banking and it sounded like such a fun job. They were talking about deals they had worked on and that is the kind of job I want to have.

While in Geneva we wanted to check out the skiing as we heard the hills are amazing in Europe. But sadly due to global warming the hills were not filled with snow. But we thought we could make a trip to France and check out the hills for ourselves. So we rented a car and got on the autobahn called White Mountain or something, where we were able to go 200 Km legally. This was a wonderful feeling and I wish next time I am able to drive.

Though when we got to France we realized it was true and there was no snow, but that was ok as I was still able to mail off some postcards to say I was in France.

Also Geneva was a sad place for the fact that I had to say good bye to my family. My father and one brother would return to Brazil and the other one was returning to England. But I was not going home yet, next on my trip was Berlin, Germany and I did not know what to expect to experience in Germany. So look forward to my next post from my time in Germany.

Wow, I am posting like crazy today, but I thought I would share with you another piece of information on Japan.

In Japan they really like sushi and have many unique ways to eat it. Some of them include eating sushi off a naked body. But that seems to have become passe and now they have a new way to do it. It is like Operation Game, but with Sushi inside. So instead of trying to get orgins out like in the board game. In the sushi resturant you operate on a paper mache human body and pull the food out.

I don’t know if i will go, but I thought I should share it with you.

Link here: (Dont click if human body grosses you out)

I just watched the show “Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese”. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is the daughter of Ozzy Osbourne who was the lead singer of the heavy metal group Black Sabbath. The have become famous in the last few years for a reality tv show. I never watched that show as I am not a fan of the whole reality tv genre. But this show caught my attention.

The show is about her experiencing Japan and all the many quirky jobs that there are. The reason she starred in this show was that like many people who have never really been to Japan, she had a some what glamorized view of the country and was not sure if she would truly like the real Japan. So she decided to come to Japan work in many jobs that are some what unique to Japan as, working in a Maid Cafe, being an English teacher for a day, samurai acting and finally as a geisha.

When my friend told me about this show I hesitated to watch as I had a some what negative opinion of her, I thought she was a loud mouth girl who had no manners and then deciding to come to a country that is so much about rules was a recipe for disaster I thought. An at first I was correct as the first job she took was as a maid in a maid cafe and she did not really like all the rules and such that she had to follow in serving the customers. But the thing that really made her angry was the massage place that was run upstairs, she thought that was just too sexual and she left abruptly.

This lead to her complaining about her job. I thought it was amazing here was someone who has traveled the world but probably has never experienced a country as she was always with other English speaking people. So at first Japan was quite a shock for her, but she would slowly learn that the uniques of Japan was not all bad.

The next job was working at a love hotel i think, she was the people at the front desk. It was amusing to watch her, and it showed some what how gross it is to work in such a place and how funny it can be. So many people wanted Cup Noodle and beer. Then there was the people who would order sexual products and she had to deliver them to the customers. Then afterwards she had to clean him and that was tough. As love hotels are mostly used for people to have sex and so you know the place is not that clean. I could not imagine having to work there and nor could she.

I will not talk about all her jobs as that would take a while and spoil the show so i will just spend the rest of my time commenting on the show.

By the end of the show I started to really like her, she is a person that accepts who she is. She says she knows she is spoiled and she is not ashamed of that, nor that she is not thin. She has accepted who she is and I think that is important for everyone to not strive to be someone in a magazine but someone who is happy of who they are. Then the other thing i respected about her was that she tried things, she may not like them later on but at least she tried things and I respect people for that.

I really liked how she was not shy to try new things as sometimes I think i try too much to ruffle the feathers of Japanese people and try to fit in that sometimes not ask awkward questions in the realization that i might offend the Japanese people. But she does not seem to mind, but she does it in such a way that it is more pure and naive then someone who does not care.

By the end of the show she has gone from hating Japanese for how weird it is, to enjoying the uniques of it. I think this shows the many cycles people go through when they enter a new country. That when you move to some where new it is a journey and not a single experience. I think by the end she has started to really get Japan and I hope she does come back for more.

At the moment the show is on youtube, but for how long I do not know. Here is the first episode, but you can find the rest by looking in the related area and finding the next clip in the show. There is 3 episodes, so make sure to click on episode 1 part 1 and so on, so that you can see the entire series.

Then please come back and tell me what you thought of the show, I am really interested to hear.

Patrick

Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese Episode 1 Part 1

The next stop after Florence was to Venice. Venice has long been a city that I have wanted to visit as a child. It is a city that defies any normal logic to exist. How can a city live in the water? But Venice is a city that has been doing that for a long time.

The train starts to make its approach into Venice and when you look out the window you notice that there is water on both sides. Which was a fun experience as you knew this train was going to Venice.

When we arrived in Venice it was a surreal experience, as it is Venice a city of its own. I had watched Casino Royale and saw Venice, plus other movies about the fabled city. But when we got out of the train station and made our way to the “taxi” area it hit me and I finally realized I was in Venice. There was a bridge and people were going over it to get to the other side where there were buildings and buildings. Then in the “roads” or actually canal area the life of the city was taking place. You had everything that a normal city would have, but on a boat, taxi, police and garbage were all by boats. This was amusing to see.

We made our way to our hotel. We were very lucky to get the hotel we did as it was a 5 star hotel that is normally really expensive. But we visited it during the one week that for it is considered a non-busy period, so we could get discount price. The hotel is an island of its own. You must take their shuttle boat to get to the hotel. It was a nice little wooden speed boat, I felt very elegant and Europe for some reason at that moment. The location of the hotel was on some island that was at one time or another it was a factory and a mental hospital. But they had invested a lot of money into it to make it a 5 star hotel.

Our time in Venice was mostly walking around, or taking boats to walk around. The city itself is very small and so you don’t need to walk very far to get anywhere. But it is one of the narrowest cities I have been to. I included some photos of the streets and it shows how easy it is to get lost in them. On one of our evenings hunting for a restaurant we got lost and every time one of the members of my family thought we had found our way out we discovered we had not. But then we realized that on the walls there were directions some what to the major points of the town. Once we discovered that we were able to return to our hotel.

By the time we had finished Venice I had started to get restless of Italian style architecture and was happy to find we were going to Switzerland.

The next stop on my trip through Europe was Florence in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is an area known for its wines and great food and I made sure to enjoy both to the fullest while I was there.

We got to Florence on the Euro Star from Rome. The rail system in Italy is similar to Japan in that there is a fairly extensive network of trains you can take and in some cases it is quicker to take train then to fly.

Our stay in Florence was mostly an enjoyable one. We spent much time walking around the town. As the town is fairly small it is easy to get to most things on foot. Before going to Florence I did not really have any idea of what to expect, so I was not sure on what to see.

I started to experiment more with camera and learn about the settings. It is my first DSLR so I am still learning. So while in Florence I learnt about manipulating my exposure time and so I spent the night time playing with the lights and colours. Trying to get the timing right to capture the photo without exposing it for too long. I think I really enjoy night time photography as if you can keep your camera still for the length of the exposure you can get some truly amazing photos.

The next day was New Years Eve and so we wanted to see what Florence did for the New Year. We spent the time near midnight walking around and trying to see where the fireworks would be. While walking around I saw many people setup temporary stalls selling champagne and other alcoholic products to ring in the New Year. It was interesting to think whether they were able to sell it all.

The area near the water was packed and it made for difficult navigating. But we made it to the canal and looked to the stars to see the fireworks. But when it struck midnight, the sky did not awake to a scene of colour. But over the course of 20 minutes individual citizens of Florence let them off. Some of them where crazy and you would see the firework go up and then come down to the place in which it was launched, one being an apartment. It was lucky there was not a fire or anything. After that my family and I made our way back to our hotel and we saw the fireworks from around the world. I hope next year I can make it to one of those places that are covered in fireworks.

When we woke up the next day, we went on a tour, as I wanted to make sure I saw the sights of Florence and I thought a tour guide would be the best way to see it. So we got on the tour bus and then we were off. It was when the tour guide said this I knew this tour was not going to end well;

“60% of all the worlds’ art is located in Italy and 40% of that 60% is in Florence”

When he said that, little alarm bells went off in my head and I thought how that is possible. I mean maybe he meant renaissance art and then it could be possible. But the entire art world only being located in Italy. That is hard to believe.

So it was from that point that the tour got continuously worse. People would slowly peel off from the tour group and quit it because our tour guide mumbled what he said and really did not bring the place alive, but spent time talking about the trivial things. Like the locations of the offices, rather then the meaning of the art when we went to the major art gallery.

So about half way through my family also quit the tour and we went on our own. It is interesting to find out whether he is actually a good tour guide, because I don’t understand how he could be employable for such a long time if he loses his tour group so easily.

I really liked Florence and liked the small feel of it. There were many narrow streets with little shops and restaurants. While there we went to a Mexican restaurant and a bunch of Italian restaurants. I think I had the best food in Italy there.

I really hope to return to Florence one day.

The next post will be about our time in Venice.

Till then,

Patrick

Hello Everyone,

After my time in Tokyo I flew to Europe to meet my family. Europe? Why Europe, when you are Canadian? Well that is an interesting question. My family is from Canada originally, but we moved to Brazil and now my brother studies in England. So when it came to organizing a family vacation that would be easy for all of us to get to we selected Europe as it is kind of in the middle for all of us. Then we decided to start our trip of in Italy, and that is where my journal post will continue.

We landed in Rome airport and try to make our way to our hotel. I failing to write down the hotel and the cabs not really caring where they dropped us off meant that we were slightly stranded in the train terminal area of Rome. This would not have been a bad thing had any of us spoken Italian, but we hadn’t. So we went searching for our hotel, simply on the name that we had in our heads. We went from hotel to hotel asking if they knew our hotel, some would say they did and point us in one direction and we would walk there to find out it wasn’t our hotel. But after about 30 minutes to an hour we located our hotel and started our European vacation.

Over the course of 3 nights and 4 days we explored the touristy areas of Rome, from the coliseum to the forum and back. Our hotel was fairly well located so we were able to walk to all the major tourist sites in Rome.

I didn’t really like Rome, as I felt it was dirty and unfriendly town and everyone seemed to want to rip us off or did not care to help us. This could have been because I had just came from Japan where people are polite even if they don’t want to be. But when we left Rome to catch our train to Florence I was happy to leave.

But do not worry, though my trip started off on the wrong foot, everything after Rome I enjoyed greatly and look forward to sharing in further posts.