Sex and Road Kill!

We landed in London a few hours ago, not the most pleasant flight.

But for my blog I'm going to talk about a couple things, first I wanted to let everyone know that on this journey Muk, Luk, and I have discovered the meaning of life!

As we sat in a restaurant a couple blocks from our hostel in Rome the topic of dogs being able to get std's came up (just go with it...this is normal for us). Anyways, I asked if they could still get them if they were spaded...Luk then pointed out that they would lose the interest in having sex, she then thought what would be the point to life if you didn't want to have sex. I then stated that I learned in ecology that the whole point in an organisms life is to reproduce, therefore we stumbled across the idea that the true meaning of life is to have sex! We as intelligent animals think that there is more to it... I'm not going to get into religion and all but basically the meaning of life it to have sex/reproduce.

Anyways, for me to get credit from Hollins I must talk about something other than sex...so I'm going to talk about road kill!

As you all know we rented a Fiat 500 while we were in Italy, I was the Italian driver for the week while Luk was the navigator and Muk was pleasantly riding in the back seat. Well on the 5 hour drive from Venice to Rome (take the tolls!) I noticed the landscape was very similar to Virginia's but I saw very little road kill, Luk and I then discussed how Italy has a low population of deer, squirrels and opossums. As much as they would all fit into the environment, they mostly wouldn't fit well into the food chain.

Tuk

The Joys of Public Transportation

Throughout our travels we have been using massive amounts of public transportation- bus, train, metro, and airplane. Public transportation offers decreased airborne pollution compared to automobile carbon emissions. One of the airlines we have been flying on, Ryanair, claims to be the greenest and cleanest airline in Europe. They achieve this by operating the youngest and most fuel efficient fleet. Thereby, reducing its CO2 emissions of each passenger per kilometer traveled by 52%. The Ryanair planes are all smaller air-crafts which also assists in reducing the amount of fuel burned.

Using public transportation such as bus, train, and metro has resulted in economic gains for the areas as well. For instance, every dollar taxpayers invest in public transportation generates $6 or more in economic returns. This is especially important as urbanization becomes more popular and as areas may be facing economic difficulties. additionally, public transportation fees equate to much less than all of the expenses associated with private transportation. We have experienced a great majority of the people in Athens and the various cities we visited in Italy using the bus and metro systems since they have easy access to it. The metro systems in Athens and Florence seemed to have better maintenance and we figured this was due to the heavy tourist traffic.

Radio in Italy.

Driving around, we've noticed that the radio stations aren't really what they are in America. I mean.... we go a few kilometers and the station totally switches. The first couple of times, it's entertaining when Lady Gaga gets mixed with some Italian religious music... But after about the 100th time, it gets pretty aggravating. However, what these change ups in FM settings means is that Italy probably doesn't have as strict of regulations on bandwidth as America. If this was taken to an extreme, then it's likely that any person who could get the technology to send out an FM wavelength could technically have their own radio station (MY DREAM COME TRUE!!).

What made me start thinking about this particular thing was actually a discussion in my Mass Communications and Media class last semester. My professor, Vladimir Bratic, hails from a country that has been torn up by war- media regulation isn't really high on their list of priorities (as to whether it should be, that's definitely a whole other story!!). Anyway, he said that he would be going through a city and that every block, a different radio station would come on... without even changing the frequency. While Italy wasn't that extreme, I found it surprising that a nation that seems to pride itself on advancement and attempts to be on top of most things hasn't really regulated its radio so that their stations don't overlap every few kilometers.

This being said, it begs to wonder whether or not Italy should be focusing on media as a means to pull itself from its current instability. Could media regulation mean more economic stability? While this might seem like a far stretch, consider that media has the power to sway the masses and contort public opinion into a certain view point. Because of this power, if the government (or whoever...) wished to convince their people that they needed to do or be something, it could easily be done. While I'm not saying that Italy can pull totally away from the steep crevice that has become the European debt crisis only by using media, I think that a little regulation could definitely help.

And it would definitely help us be able to to listen to the radio a whole lot easier!! =p

The Beautiful Tuscany Valley

I hope everyone is doing well, we are now in Florence, enjoying pizza and ice cream that you can only find here in Italy. Anyways, Muk's post did a great job giving y'all a recap on our trip out of Rome. But I am here posting about what we saw on our drive to Florence, the Tuscany Valley. I've never seen something so beautiful, you could see stretches of long green fields and the mountains looked like pieces of art.

I did some research and I gathered the following:

The Tuscany Valley is just about all natural, at the beginning (a few decades ago) small family farms would grow grape-vines, olives, and cereals. The vineyards would produce high quality wines, and as well as olive oils. Also many breeding activities with cattle, sheep, and swine, but not to the extent of the meat industries found in the states. 

But what I am getting at is I believe that the resources that the valley has to offer are being used in a respectful manner-for example, we saw vineyards but they were all a respectful size. I think its great that Italy is able to use this land and not over milk it. It is quite expensive to buy quality wine from the valley but that's the point, its the real deal.

Also we saw that there would be random hills and they would have fields around them but piled on top were apartment typed buildings, all about the same color (olive yellow ish) but we thought about it. I don't know if this is true but we concluded that back when they were building houses, it was better to have them not on the flat land, maybe due to farming, but also because it is a better defense tactic. But I thought that as people become more careless and such it may effect the environment around them, as in runoff.

Well that is all I have for this post, tomorrow we head to Venice!!

Tuk   

Escapades of Firenze....

Today we left Rome for Florence. Our trip there was a comedic adventure that Sir Monty Python would appreciate. First we had to trek our way from our hostel to the train station to pick up our rental car, which was fine until we waited in the wrong line for a good 15 minutes. Then once we got all of our paper work figured out and signed the Europcar employee handed Tuk the keys and instructed her that our car was right outside the door. First, lets just note how the door we were actually allowed to use was 20 meters from the Europcar kiosk. Once we were finally outside we had to hunt around for our car, repeatedly clicking the lock button on the key ring to see if any lights would go off to indicate which car was ours. Finally after about 10 minutes of being thrust out into the world with no luck of finding our car a different Europcar employee came out and we were able to ask him to find it. Thaaanks Europcar!

Once inside our snazzy Fiat 500 we proceed to attempt to get out of our exceedingly tight parking space (video will follow later). Buuut lo and behold! some lovely Italian driver appears in their car and tries to double park and block us in. Silly driver. Finally Tuk gets out of the car and taps lovely Italian driver's window and asks to move so we can get out. Which then takes us a good couple of minutes in which we are stared at by our now captive audience. So anyways we make it onto the highway after some particularly stressful roundabouts and one ridiculous traffic jam (also see video later).

Now the highway- that was a blast. While quite picturesque, it was filled with more craycray Italian drivers jetting about, intensely tailgating, and often driving in the middle of two lanes around curves. Definitely made for some steeeeamy situations and hateful stares at the Americans. We finally arrive in Florence and our plugging along to our GPS directions in search of our hostel, when we find ourselves on these teeny, tiny narrow roads packed with strolling people. We finally get to a place where it appears we can parallel park so someone can get out and find where the heck we are supposed to stay for the next two nights. As you can imagine, parking was quite the ordeal. Luckily we were able to find it but of course that was not a place we could legally continue to park. Sooo back into our little Fiat friend we hopped and off we went according to our GPS directions.

We were bumping along many little one way, cobble-stoned streets greatly confused as to where our GPS was directing us. Especially once we began to become surrounded by people as they walked around shopping. Somehow we had stumbled into a pedestrian area only...which apparently none of the pedestrians could manage to inform us of. Instead they did what we have discovered people love to do to us... STARE. Meanwhile myself and Luk are hiding behind our hands in embarrassment while poor Tuk has to try to navigate around un-moving shoppers. We eventually reach a square that we semi-zoom across in the hopes of reaching a safe place for cars. However, about halfway across the square we are flagged by a police officer who taps on our window. As we roll it down he looks at us in contempt and says "This is a pedestrian area only" while simultaneously motioning with his fingers a little person walking about. Thanks you officer we had NOOO IDEA. Of course out loud we simply said that we were extremely sorry, and we were lost, and we had no idea how to get out of here. Eventually it came out that we were trying to reach the Piazza della Michaelangilio; he proceed to tell us "oh yes, extremely easy" to get there and gave us directions, mainly consisting of look for the signs.

Finally able to exit the pedestrian area only we amble along up a mountain to Michaelangilio's Plaza, are able to park for free, and can now trek back down the mountain for our 20 minute walk to the hostel.

As you can see we are having a blast and a half in Florence so far.. more to come!

Vatican City

Vatican City is the smallest independent state, in both population and area, in the world. While it's been an official city state for less than 100 years, the Vatican enclave has been the seat of the Pope and the Catholic Church since the 1300's. Its government is basically a theocracy- the Pope is the elected supreme leader and then there are cardinals, etc. (I'm gonna level with you guys right now- a lot of what I know about the Catholic Church is coming from the Da Vinci Code).

The Vatican is pretty freaking rich though, especially considering that most of its income is from tourism and the sales from goods stamped with the Vatican seal. However, even the Vatican is feeling the wrath of the economic recession. While a few years ago, the state had a rather large budget surplus, in 2008 they listed a budget deficit of over 15 million euros. It is expected that this trend would only worsen in the years following due to the tightening of fund world round which would restrict tourism, and in that take away a large part of the Vatican's funding.

The well connected city state is far from bankruptcy though. While St. Peter's Basilica is a free cite to go into, the Cupola and the Vatican Museum, which houses the Sistine Chapel, is not. From looking at the lines we were privy to today, I'd say that the Vatican easily pulled in 1 million euros on admission. And we didn't even go into the souvenir shops or the numerous food places.

Comparing our adventures today to our experiences in Athens, one starts to wonder why the heck Greece isn't capitalizing on their ancient cites and tourism. While the Vatican has religion and pilgrimage to stand on when the tourism industry fails, Greece still has much older and, in my opinion, sometimes more interesting stuff. Sure, the Sistine Chapel was epic; but when you consider that the marble that composes most of the buildings on the Acropolis is found 7 kilometers away and was transported with technology not much more advanced than pushing and pulling...

Basically what I'm trying to say with this blog is that maybe it's not that Vatican City has more history or culture or cooler stuff to see. They just know better how to market themselves- that is what has helped them stay a float all these years (besides Catholicism...) and possibly what Athens and the rest of Greece lacks.

Athens, Greece: Natural Sustainability

Hello fellow blog followers!

We just left Athens and are now safely in our hostel in Rome. But I am here to reflect on my say in Athens, Greece.

I wanted to first talk about how its best to talk to locals when you want to gather the most interesting information. We took a free walking tour given by a nice chap named George, as we were walking he pointed out that Athens built over the waterways. They had no real reasoning behind it so it completely turned me off. Smog there is already off the charts so acid rain comes along. I thought of all the acid rain that drains through the city and has no plant life to filter it, the rain falls right into the main waterways.

Most of the main plant life I saw were in parks such as the National Gardens and potted plants on porches of apartment buildings.

Also I wanted to talk about Greece's way of sustaining their natural history. I understand that Greece isn't in the best economy state, but historical ruins sustainability is a big part in any countries/cities tourist income.  What I observed while touring is that most of the popular ruins were not properly taken care of, many pieces of marble were sorted and stored off to the side and people were free to roam about as they pleased. It was nice not having to stand in line to take turns for pictures but I thought it would be more beneficial if they had more control.

Also plant life in Athens was poor, and the area inside and outside of the city was not well kept, and the soil looked depleted and the highly urbanized areas seems to take over everything. Also many stray dogs and cats were found all over, as well as their feces (adds to rain water run off). Pigeons as well seemed to be over populating the city, Pigeons carry many diseases which can have an effect on water pollution and air pollution.

Athens was not the best place to travel to, but many of the locals said it is better to tour in the summer time. But I am glad we got to experience part of the real Athens life without heavy tourism going on.
I conclude that Greece isn't able to sustain a healthy environment for its natural plants and animals and as well as their inspiring history, due to their economic state. But I hope that in the future when they are able to bounce back they will not only focus of reshaping their economy but they will also realize how much they need to take care of their natural resources.