12,000 miles, 18 pounds of cheese, 37 pounds of ham and over 100 hours of nonsensical staring at foreign television -- so begins the summer of 2005.
It all started when I packed up my 1989 Toyota Camry with everything I could expect it to carry without falling apart. The first 1,000 miles of my journey were from Charlottesville to my dear hometown of Davie, Florida. Throughout my two-day-long Atlantic Coast tour of classic rock stations, I discovered a strange truth -- at least one Fleetwood Mac song will be playing on the radio every 15 minutes, without exception. Can't get enough of that "Landslide."
Although I decided not to drive through Atlanta on my trip, I did last Spring Break, and I feel the need to discuss a couple of the city's many attractions. First of all, never under any circumstances should you go to the Coca-Cola bottling plant. I left that place with a heroin-addict-like urge to consume anything and everything Coca-Cola -- not to mention seven cavities and enough sugar in my bloodstream to kill a horse. Going to that place is like paying somebody eight dollars to show you all of their old boring crap, tell you how great they are and then introduce you to their weird, mango flavored cousin from Guatemala. Anybody that's been there knows what I'm talking about, and if you have not, I hope you never find out.
On the other hand, do whatever you can to see the UniverSOUL circus, the only minority-owned-and-operated circus in the world. Even though I am completely without 'soul,' I can appreciate the fact that everything is cooler with an infusion of it. A normal circus is not very cool if you're over 10, but a soul circus -- that's cooler by far. A normal train has small cabins, shaky rides and conductors with funny hats. Meanwhile, soul train features sweet dance moves, music and also people with funny hats on occasion. Finally, a normal plane has nothing but bad food and small seats, but a soul plane? Okay, that's a bad example.
Fortunately I got home safely, and after a couple of days back it was off to Rome, Italy, by way of Frankfurt, Germany. There's nothing quite like a nine-hour, cross-Atlantic flight that includes an emergency landing and a missed connection to kick off a vacation. After eight hours in Frankfurt, I did learn a valuable piece of information though -- German is one crazy language. Waiting at the gate I noticed a warning sign outside an electrical closet featuring the word "rolltreppenbetriebsraum." That's not a word, that's an alphabet. All I could think of was the fact that it's obviously a potentially dangerous situation (or at least that's what I gathered from the small diagram of the stick figure getting fried) and instead of a brief "Stop! Death!"-type message, they go with "rolltreppenbetriebsraum." If I wanted to enter that closet I'd get tired about halfway into that word, walk in and die. That's no good, especially for me. I'm pretty sure the primary goal of the language is to screw with people by combining as many words as is possible. Good thing they added that diagram.
Eventually my brother, my parents and I made our way to Rome. I love Rome because it's the only place I've been where you can find a 2,000-year-old ancient pagan temple across from a McDonalds. Why not grab a Quarter Pounder with cheese and make your way to the Pantheon? Makes sense to me.
Ironically, I never ate at a McDonalds in the three weeks I was in Italy. I'm pretty sure the only thing Italians eat is pizza, pasta, ham and cheese. Sometimes they decide to go crazy and put the ham and cheese on the pizza. I'm not talking about Oscar Mayer processed ham, but extra salty, thin, fatty, delicious Italian prosciutto. I also find it necessary to mention that the only suggestion Microsoft Word had for me on the spelling of prosciutto was "prostitute."
Finally, I couldn't sum up my tour of Italy without mentioning the television in that country, home to some of the weirdest commercials on Earth. It's amazing what you find yourself watching when the only channel you can find in English is CNN. Luckily one night I stumbled upon a showing of "Dumb and Dumberer" in Italian and it was the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.
Italy was great but its sweet being home to enjoy the dog days of summer in 90 degree heat and 400 percent humidity. My only regret is not being on a train with a pants-less Italian man a la "Euro Trip." Mi Scusi!
Eric Ast can be reached at ast@cavalierdaily.com.
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