What is love? Baby don’t hurt me…don’t hurt me… April 23, 2008

This past week Frank, Amy and I got to tool around for a few days in my favorite city, Florence. It was a little strange being back three years after I studied abroad there. Things had changed–my favorite internet cafe BeeOnline was closed (We miss you Nadir!)…my favorite sandwich place The Oil Shoppe has gotten somewhat commercialized …the sandwich shop where the owner conspired with a thief to steal my cash has opened up a fancier shop (BOO!!)…and the cafe with the snobby Italian ladies that made me feel so horrible has closed down (YAHOO!). But overall Florence is just as extraordinary as I remembered!

The first night we were there we went to a bar called the Red Garter. It was karaoke night which sounded like a blast to all of us, so we went inside and ordered a shuttle of Heineken which is basically a mini-keg you can bring to your table. At first we were the only ones there, but then a tour group of about 30 college students came in which livened up the place a bit. Then the karaoke started. Let me tell you, this guy that ran the karaoke must have had some sort of complex because he proceeded to turn down every singer’s microphone, turn up his own backup vocal microphone, and turn up his guitar, so you couldn’t hear anyone singing but him. It was like his own little one man show.

So Frank gets up there to sing “Another One Bites the Dust” and tries to use the karaoke man’s microphone but he’s not having it. Frank is screaming this song and you can barely hear him so we keep telling the man to to turn up his mic. He turns it up for about 3 seconds and then it’s back to just karaoke man.

My friend Amy and I decide to go and sing a song, but they didn’t have Technotronic’s “Move This” so we had to look at the list. The karaoke man scrolls through the entire list in about 3 seconds so that we can’t actually read any of the songs listed. Another thing, he doesn’t even have lyrics to a lot of the songs, just the music on his iTunes. We finally spot Haddaway’s “What is Love” (From the Saturday Night Live skit) and we start joking about how it would be so funny to sing that one. All of a sudden we hear the music start playing for “What is Love” and we figure, OK he must have overheard us mention the song and this is the one we are doing. Then we hear karaoke man start belting out “WHAT IS LOVE! BABY DON’T HURT ME..” and we look at each other like what the hell is this guy doing? He then points to us, and then points off the stage, telling us to get off! He stole our song! What is this guy’s deal? So after his song, Amy and I sang “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and Frank and our new friend Julia Goolia sang “Hey Jude”. Then we said to hell with this egotistical karaoke man, and had a dance party of our own in the next room.

Doctor visit gone wrong April 22, 2008

OK so I know I’ve taken a little hiatus from writing lately, my apologies. My good friend Amy came to visit for a week so we went traveling through Italy, Germany, and Austria…and not to mention I’ve been sick for three weeks with an evil cold/cough that doesn’t seem to want to evacuate my body. So during one of my past hacking fits Frank decided that he couldn’t stand it any longer and that he’s bringing me to a doctor. I don’t have insurance here or anything, but Frank does, so we think maybe someone will sympathize and give us a break.

So we look up a doctor for general medicine online and find there is one just in town that has a consultation hour from 5-6 where you don’t need an appointment. We take the bus into town, walk up a few flights of stairs into this tiny little apartment with a private practice. We are greeted by the receptionist with a roll of the eyes and then she firmly says “no” as she peers over her glasses when she finds out I don’t have insurance; but the doctor comes out and starts asking what the problem is. Of course I have little idea of what is being said, so I just sit there trying to look like I need help. They tell us to go sit and wait and they will figure something out in a few minutes.

Cut to an hour and half later, where Frank and I are still sitting in the waiting room, seeing patient after patient walk in the door and be seen. We are just about to call it quits when the lovely secretary comes over to us and gestures to us that the doctor will see us now. So Frank and I walk into the doctor’s office and he starts feeling my lymph nodes and looking down my throat. Pretty standard I think. He doesn’t take my blood pressure, temperature, health history, or anything else which I found strange. He tells me to sit down on a chair and he comes over with what looks like a golden pen. He takes my hand and starts-no joke-STABBING the pen into my thumb, just on my cuticle…which by the way, if you’ve never experienced HURTS LIKE HELL. Then he stabs the other thumb and leaves a throbbing red indentation when he’s finished. Then he tells Frank to tell me to swallow. Uh what? Apparently it was supposed to help my throat.

Then it only gets worse. He proceeds to dig his fingers into my back, my stomach, the underside of my wrist to which I thought my vein was going to burst from the pressure…and then he moved to my ears. At first it felt like he was just doing a pressure point on my ear which wasn’t so bad, but then he started just wiggling my ears like crazy and then it felt like he was going to rip them off!! He told Frank to tell me to breathe, and asked if I could breathe easier. I thought, yeah, breathing doesn’t hurt anymore, but my f-ing cuticles and ears are throbbing with pain!!!

Then he said my sickness was not severe and that I should come back if it gets any worse. Whatever happened to listening to my lungs with a stethoscope?

Frank said it reminded him of the time his friend Jake was visiting him in Graz, Austria and needed to see a doctor. The doctor that time was very helpful, but had some weird practices. The first thing he did was put a plastic bowl over his head that was chained to the wall. The bowl had a bunch of red lights in the inside which basically made him sweat a lot. Frank peeked into the next room and there was a guy just staring at a red light with a fog machine blowing fog into his face. Let’s just say doctor visits here aren’t the same as back home.

Can’t you read the signs? April 2, 2008

One thing that led to some confusion on our last trip was the absence of signs. The metro in Budapest often didn’t have posted signs saying which direction the subway went, so we took our best guess and jumped on, hoping we were going the right way. In one instance while we were leaving the Széchenyi thermal baths we jumped on the metro and one stop later came to the end of the line, so we obviously had gone the wrong way. We ran to the other track, and as we were coming down the stairs we saw three ticket checkers standing there. We tried to explain we just made a mistake and jumped on the wrong way and had only gone one stop, but they just kept pointing to the ticket machine and shaking their heads. There was no ticket counter open to buy an additional ticket so we were screwed. Then out of nowhere, an agitated young Hungarian woman stood up for us and started to yell at the ticket checkers saying (in heavy accented English) that this is not our fault and that “the rules are stupid!” She took out her purse, shuffled through her wallet, and pulled out two new tickets that she then gave to us–while rolling her eyes at the ticket checkers. We kept telling her it wasn’t necessary but she insisted.

Zagreb had their fair share of sign issues too. Let me just start off by saying our first few hours in Zagreb were horribly frustrating because for some godforsaken reason we hadn’t written down the address of the apartment we were staying in. Obviously this is a huge mistake when you are in a foreign country without a city map and have little chance of meeting anyone who speaks English to help you. I will also add that it was raining and a lady from the train station gave us directions which led us in the exact opposite direction of where we needed to be. So I thought maybe I’d call someone at home to see if they could go online and look it up for me, but then all I heard was an error message in Hungarian. Then I stepped in a huge puddle of water which filled my shoe.

Eventually an old man must have taken pity on us because he ran over to us and handed us a pocket map of Zagreb. Things were turning around after all! The only problem with the map was that every street was spelled differently from the actual street signs by at least 3 or 4 different letters. (which we didn’t realize until we were walking in circles). How were we supposed to know that Gava ut = Gajeva ulica? Anyways, we finally found an internet cafe after a few hours of walking in the rain with water filled shoes and soaking giant backpacks…just before ripping each other’s hair out.

It was definitely Poops McGee April 2, 2008

Today Frank got chased by a gas station worker in the street after he unknowingly plugged their toilet. The angry worker ordered him to go and unplug it. When Frank returned to go unplug it he expected a plunger, but this was not the case. There stood a lonely toilet brush. I won’t go into further detail. Then when Frank was finished and was walking out, the man insisted they go look at the toilet together to make sure it passed his final inspection. When the guy went into the bathroom Frank made a break for it and heard the gas station attendant shout after him. He, quite understandably, will never be returning to that gas station again.