Venice was the next stop after Rome. The original plan had been to leave Rome and stop by Florence for one day before moving on to Venice. However, once we got to Georgina and Francesco’s place in Nemi, we wanted to spend as much time as we could in that nice little town. They were also glad to spend another day with us so all was well. We took a fast train from Rome, literally traversing the entire length of Italy from the south to the north in about 3 hours. We were not going to have much time in [...]
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All posts by Kopi Majara
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
Village on the Hill
The houses are stacked one upon another like a delicate balancing act of yellow, pink, and orange matchboxes. Strawberry plants and red flowers inhabit wire flowerpots hanging from little balcony railings. Puzzles of granite furnish the streets below from the doorsteps of little pasta shops, gelaterias, and pizzerias, to the waist-high wall and railings that mark a beginning of an almost unending shrubby descent into an austere, yet calm volcanic lake down below. Italian chatter, bedecked with occasional mirth of laughter and Italian gestures, constantly drifts on the morning ambiance. The little town of Nemi was definitely my highlight [...]
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Paris
Paris was my next stop after Barcelona. The closest I had been to Paris was about 4 years ago when I used to transit through Charles de Gaulle, on my bi-annual visit home during high school breaks. This time around I was going to spend 5 days in Paris – awesome! My travel partner – Sithanda – had left me in Barcelona to visit some of her friends in London, which I couldn’t do because of visa requirements. But still, given a choice between London and Paris, I would choose Paris any time; of course with the benefit of having [...]
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
When in Roma
Sithanda and I arrived in Roma from Milan on Wednesday evening at Fiumicino airport. As we found out, that evening was going to be a string of unfortunate events. All the time during this journey, we had checked in our luggage separately and at different times because Sithanda had printed all her boarding passes and I hadn’t. Naturally, she would go onto the shorter ‘web check-in’ line at the airport to check in her bag before me. Even though this was the case for all the flights we took, surprisingly enough at the luggage collection point our luggage would always [...]
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Roma
The morning after we arrived in Rome, Sithanda and I wanted to see as much of Rome as we could that day because we were going to have to go to Nemi, a little hill town on the outskirts of Rome, to visit our friend Georgina, and her boyfriend, Francesco. We started with the Coliseum and it was funny when we got out of the metro to find this huge roundish structure right in front of us! I guess I was expecting to see it from a distance first and slowly close the distance, taking in the aura of its antiquity. I [...]
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
Europe is my classroom
One of the things that attracted me to the DIS program is that about mid-way into the semester, the classroom is extended beyond the borders of Denmark as all core classes branch out in study tours to different European countries. My core class – European Business Strategy – went to Hamburg and Berlin for a week. Going to Germany, I didn’t really have any set expectations; all I knew was that they (the Germans) have a notorious history regarding the holocaust during the Second World War. Well, I also knew that they were home to some of the greatest automobiles that [...]
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Darkness can be beautiful
Our last dinner in Hamburg is one for which I need to borrow Alan Poe’s words from the prose poem called Eureka: “What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity — sufficiently sublime in their simplicity — for the mere enunciation of my [experience]?” I apologize for not having pictures for this experience, but you will understand why as you read on. We had dinner at a restaurant where all waiters either had a certain degree of vision impairment or were completely blind. All we knew going in was that we were all going to have a vegetarian [...]