Pictures uploaded!
It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve returned from Europe. I found it very difficult to process my experience during the trip since we had little downtime in between destinations. Immediately after I returned home on June 4, I headed straight to Campus Gathering, an IV staff conference for 5 days and so having finally processed that, I’ve spent the last few hours sorting out pictures, reflecting on my journal and recreating the story of Eurotrip’08. Hopefully now if I’m asked ‘how was Europe?’ I can answer with more clarity and depth rather than my vague remarks and attempts to come up with the highlight reel on the spot. I’ve written a lot so pace yourself…
the food…
This trip was really all about the food =) We spent an unprecendented time research about food, hunting for food, eating the food, talking about the food… at least that’s how I remember it. My travelmates reflected back to me that when I start getting hungry, I zone out, my pace quickens, and I start scanning for the next meal. My sentences trail off and aren’t always coherent and my jaw stays in a dropped position. While I’m eating, I tend to be entranced in my meal and since there’s very little time until I get hungry again, I seem to be spaced out most of the time. Perhaps that’s true but I think there’s a little of bit of that in every one of us. For example, our quest for the best gelato. We began having gelato everyday since day 10 in Seville, Spain. It started as an innocent delight of one scoop after dinner, but soon doubled, no tripled to 3 scoops. It wasn’t long until we were doing two-a-days totaling 4 to 6 scoops. It wasn’t until Italy however, that we decided that we need to take our health more seriously and should only eat the best gelato everyday. And so begins the quest for the best gelato in each city we visited. Our rough guide disappointed us in Venice where the gelato store that was deemed an ‘institution’ didn’t live up to expectations. Luckily, we found another store by surprise and had the best lemon and pink grapefruit flavours from the trip. Our day to Pisa, frutti di bosco was the flavour in town. That same afternoon in Lucca, after a long bike ride and searching for the recommended gelato store, it wasn’t where it was supposed to be but we found it on the way back to the train station and got 6 scoops, totalling 9 scoops for the day! Fresh flavours such as peach and pear were new to us and that day was a milestone in our journey. In Florence, two places stood out. One place that only served in cups (which we would later find out the reasoning for) had blood orange and pear/caramel. The second place we walked an hour to while waiting for our train, and loaded up on green apple and kiwi. Our quest comes to a magnificent end in Rome where the shop was hidden away with no fancy signs and apparently needs no advertising. Word of mouth is enough to get this place its recognition. Gelato is served in cups only since the taste of cone taints the true flavour of gelato. Liquor flavoured gelato is the speciality of this gelato master. Fruit gelatos are made only with those that are in season. And none of the gelato tubs are visible on display because flavour is kept in individually sealed stainless steel tubs that are temperature controlled to maintain the true consistency and texture of gelato. If I could apprentice as a gelato maker, it would be here. And so with 3 scoops, we delighted in the best gelato in the world and left happy. In total, we consumed 50 scoops of gelato each (minus Sameer), and probably spent the equivalent in hours, researching, hunting, eating, thinking about, and talking about gelato.
Maybe we are food crazy. Ask me about the quest for the best pizza. Either way, I’ve decided to take up gelato making.
the architecture…
To think that fortresses, palaces, cathedrals, etc. of massive stature and detailed design was possible upto 2000 years ago is mind-blowing. The Sistine chapel and St.Peter’s basilica in Rome, La Alhambra in Granada, and the twisted looking Sagrada Familia that’s still under construction in Barcelona are just some of the highlight European structures we saw. I began to reflect on how these cathedrals were once the centre of religion and state and how much of the world has been shaped by it. Much of these places of worship were and are used by the Catholic church and it leads me to wonder how Protestant Christianty has come up from that and what we are to make of it now. These churches seem more like tourist attractions than places of worship in today’s age and it brings up the question of how these churches are engaging post-modernism. I don’t know a whole lot about Christian history or the Catholic church and perhaps it something that would be intriguing to read about especially as I found myself asking a lot of questions that my travelmates were asking.
the company…
Our group of 4 came about in an unpredictable way. It began with Andrew and myself, then Kuo-Bao joined with no hesitation along with Sameer with a lot of persuasion. Although I knew Andrew and Sameer well from my classes, Kuo-Bao I knew the least. And although I thought I knew Sameer well, we found that we knew him even less. All the quirks, pet peeves, strange mannerisms, our breaking point, how we react when we’re tired… it all came out and we had moments of both tension and laughter. We also picked out those quirks and tendancies among the people we encountered during the trip and had a good laugh about that as well. In fact, those were the things that kept coming up in our conversations and provided endless comical relief at any stage of the trip. When we were tired, it kept us walking aimlessly trying to find our hotel in the labyrinth of Venice… when we were hungry, it kept us from settling for that fatal restaurant… and the once in a blue moon times our group was getting too serious, we broke out in laughter again and again. People observing us from the outside must’ve thought we were weird and bizarre but that’s exactly what we are. The pictures in Pisa show it all. At first our strange pictures involved the leaning tower in some way. And then, they had nothing to do with the leaning tower, but why not do crazy stunts. Why not eat 9 scoops of gelato in one day? Or drink 2L of Fanta in search of the next better deal on Fanta? Or parkour up historic sites… It’s amazing how much you learn about someone through spending 31 days together without a break. And in all that time of joking around and having fun, you’re bound to have some personal and deep conversations. We did. More so than I’ve had in the past 5 years with them. And it was very good!
the photos…
The 4 of us combined to take 15 gigs of photos/videos. It would’ve been more it Sameer’s camera hadn’t malfunctioned in Morocco but sorting through them now has been a headache. It’s surprising how many of our photos are of landscape that simply don’t do justice and aren’t nearly as exciting to look back at as I thought it would be at the time. Filtering out all the repeats, blurrs and landscapes, I’m left with a much more manageable number of pictures that tell stories of some of the encounters we had. They’ve been uploaded with captions on my picasa. Looking through the process of how I’ve filtered pictures, I beginning to see themes to the type of photos that pique my interest and am developing my own photography style. For example, there’s something about capturing perspective that I find inspiring… smallness amongst grandoise like St.Peter’s basilica. Or capturing a unique feature that stands out as the focal point… like the lone tree in a field, or the windy roads in Morocco. And of course, culinary photography has a vice on me. It’ll take some more experimentation to figure out what my personal style is, perhaps something I’ll do this summer and during the year.
something Jesus-esque…
When planning the trip, I had booked my flights without knowing the schedule for my internship. It just so happened that I would have to be in two places at the same time around day 22 of my trip: Florence or Waterloo, for fundraising training. Upon having some thoughts about catching an early flight back to honour my commitment to my internship, I decided it was more valuable at this time to honour my commitment to my friends and finish well, not only wrapping up our trip together but our celebration of 5 years together. So the night that might have been my early return was the night I planned to meet with Rosaria, a friend from last summer’s IFES World Assembly. I must’ve misread the email because what I thought was going to be a dinner among the 6 of us turned out to be an invitation to her campus fellowship end-of-term potluck gathering. We walked in to a quaint courtyard only to be welcomed by 30 or so Italian and international students and a plethora of homemade Tuscan food including probably the best Tiramisu I’ve ever had. The vibe resembled the gatherings we would have back at Waterloo and upon hearing the wrap-up talk from the staff worker, their purpose and vision was also very much the same. It was totally unexpected encounter and for my travelmates to have been a part of it can only lead me to believe that God was showing a visual picture of what his Kingdom might look like. Not only did this encounter help bring to life some of the conversations about life and faith that we’ve had throughout the trip, but also gave a pretty good picture of what my work with InterVarsity might look like for the next year. I look forward to more conversations about our jobs throughout the year and can be certain that as I share more about my journey with IV that they remember that day in Florence when a bunch of Italian-speaking students destroyed us in foosball yet we were very much filled.
next…
On June 4, we checked out of our hostel in Rome and said goodbye to Europe as we went to the airport. 31 days went by. Our last night we stayed up reflecting back on the trip and how much we’ve learned from each other, about each other, and about ourselves. Despite butting heads at times, winsome losesome experiences, we came to a point where all that doesn’t matter and the only thing that really matters is the friendship that’s been deeper rooted together. Although staying connected to each other in the past during co-op terms has been rarely existent, there’s a greater sense of urgency now to do so now especially as we bring closure to our 5 years in university. Convocation just passed this weekend and that sense of staying connected resonates throughout our class but perhaps even more so within my travelmates. I’m confident that what was built on our trip will open more doors for conversations in the next year and have faith that the Lord will continue to do the good work that He has started.
