Venice!

Hello!

So, on our way back from Croatia, we spent a day in Venice!

The winged lion, the symbol of Venice

Venice is often recognized as one of the must-visit cities in Europe, and I couldn't agree more with this. Built on a swamp, the city flourished during the renaissance, building a Mediterranean trade empire that stretched from Great Britain to China and even the far east. Using the wealth gained from this trades, powerful merchant families (especially the Medici's) built incredible churches, palaces, and bridges which now cover the city.

Many of the buildings in Venice that I saw

When you walk through the piazza San Marco (where all of the main churches are) the sense of the city is that it is drowning. Rising sea levels, combined with the fact that the city is built on a sinking marsh, means that the water is rising up between the plaza flagstones, creating massive puddles of seawater in the centre of piazza. While this doesn't happen every day (yet) I arrived on a high water day, and was greeted to churches with sights such as these. 

there is very much a sense that the city is living on borrowed time, and I encourage you all to visit it before the beautiful churches and buildings are completely submerged.

Another of the basilica's that can found almost anywhere in the city

Standing in front of the San Marco Basilica. Below are photos of the interior of the church

One of the famous Gondolas. All of the gondolas in the 

city either look exactly the same or very similar.

Michi and I standing on a bridge in front of a typical Venetian canal.

I don't think I need to promote Venice any more than it has already been promoted: If and when you can, go there. Preferably soon, because the one thing that the city represents is how the march of time threatens everything, regardless of what it looks like or how long it has lasted.

A cruise ship coming up the Grand Canal, a fairly common 

occurrence (although the locals aren't happy about it).

The interior of the church tower from which I took the cruise ship photo

All right, this is it for the first week of my exchange. Sorry I'm so far behind, but after this we should catch up very quickly I'd hope. Thanks again for reading all of these, and if you have a comment or an article suggestion, post it in the comments space. I'll leave you with a picture of what I'm guessing is one of the oldest casinos in the world.

See you later,

Meanwhile, Back in Germany (German folk festivals)

So, with all of the events of the past week, this got left out. Now that everything from the week in Croatia has calmed down, i have a good chance to finally write about this. My first night in Germany, My host brother Michael took me to a German Volkfestern, of folk festival. Now, I know that image you guys in Canada and America conjure up when you think of a folk festival, and I want you to delete that image right now. German folk festivals are not even close to that. If you are from Revelstoke, I want you to picture about 4 or 5 kokanee festivals all together, combined with that carnival that used to come through town, and fireworks. For those of you not from Revelstoke, think of a really big party with amusement park rides and massive firework shows.

The big difference is all of the music being played is for the most part traditional bavarian music, and traditionally all of the men wear lederhosen while the women wear dirndl (bavarian dresses). When we went there we visited a German beer tent. Again, don't think of it as a tent so much as a longhouse, filled with people, picnic tables, music and giant glasses of beer. It is fairly common to stand on top of the benches and dance along the music, so of course, I hadn't been there long before one of these benches tipped over, sending six fairly intoxicated people sprawling, to the ironic cheers of everyone in the tent. Outside the beer tents, vendors selling pretzels, sausage, and just about every kind of traditional bavarian food can be found. Walk a little farther and you will find amusement park rides. Ferris wheels, tilt-a-whirls, those chairs attached to chains that go up really high (no idea what they are called), and all manner of carnival games line the streets of the festival. I am told that Oktoberfest is much bigger, but I can only speak from experience. Oktoberfest will come later.

Sorry about the lack of photos, but this is from the first night I arrived, at which point I had no camera.

Finally, a quick note about comments: the reason I ask for them was originally to get feedback and so that you guys could kinda shape what this blog was going to be, since I wasn't sure what you guys wanted. Now, I would like comments to suggest what topics I will write about in the future. If there is anything you wanted to know about life in Germany, please suggest it in the comments. German music, food, sports, anything you wanted to know. Post it in the comments.

Talk to you guys later

Pula

Hello everyone

I'm sorry its taking so long to get my blog posts from this Mediterranean week finished and uploaded for you guys to read about. Here in Allershausen, school has begun, I have met the other exchange students and I have begun training for TSV Allershausen, the local soccer club, and I will have entries on all of those, but first I have to finish all of the posts about this first week. I think there are 2 more to go after this one, and I will try to get them out to you, but with all of the events that are still happening here I don't always know when I'll have a free evening to write these entries, but just know I'm trying my best. The entries will get there when we get there.

Ok, now to Pula.

A fountain model of the city of Pula

Pula has been a gathering of humans since prehistory, when early Homo Sapiens gathered in caves nearby the city. Later, the romans used it as a colonial city, during which time they built the Pula amphitheater, which I toured.

A picture of me outside the amphitheater, along with two pictures of 

the interior of the amphitheater. The amphitheater is the fourth largest left in the 

world and can also be found on the ten kuna (the croatian currency) note.

Pula is still a very roman city, with old roman gates and even a temple to the roman emperor Caesar Augustus (the first emperor) still standing in the forum of the town. In terms of architecture, the city is much like Porec, but with more roman architecture and bigger. the Venetian architecture and narrow steers are still present however, as the city eventually became a Venetian colony after the collapse of the Roman empire. The city also contains the Archeological museum of Istria, which I didn't get a chance to look at, but would recommend for anyone going there. In addition, there are numerous churches, basilicas, and other relics from Mediterranean history that make the city a must visit if you are passing through the area (haha, maybe I should start writing tourist brochures. Sorry if it sounds too cheesy guys, but it really is an impressive city). 

Two pictures of myself and my host parents outside the temple of Caesar Augustus

I'll leave you guys with a photo of myself and my host father Marco underneath one of the gates in Pula. Again, if you have comments, suggestions, recommendations, or declarations of love for the sport of sand surfing, post them in the comments below. :)

On the coast of the Mediterranean (Mittelmeer)

OK,

I've put this entry off as long as I can, since I wasn't quite sure how to approach it without coming across as one of those people that posts endless photos of their mexican vacation in the middle of winter. There's nothing wrong with that, its just something that I was going to try and avoid with this blog. However, given the location that I am in right now, the best I can do is limit it, not outright prevent it. So here we go... I don't know how successful I will be, but at least know that I have these thoughts in mind as we go.

Is there anything as beautiful, or as terrifying, as the ocean? Yesterday I went snorkelling for the first time ever with my host family, and it seemed that when I drifted there in the ocean, there were two things that happened, very close to each other. The first is that you notice the profound silence underwater. You sit there, and nothing is happening, and you stare off into the ocean, and you see, and feel, nothing. and then about 5 seconds later, you decide that it is far too quiet down there, and every horror movie you have ever seen kicks in, and you start waiting for the giant squid to come and get you. I'm sure that most of you have already gone snorkelling before, so this is not a new experience for you, but it was for me. I have to say that the Mediterranean has to be one of my favourite places on earth. It seems like no matter where you go, there is always something that totally changes something about you. From the snorkelling to the tennis training, to just relaxing in a restaurant with my host family, you feel very alive here, no matter where you are.

Me shortly before I went snorkelling 

(in the background is a red boat which you could hire from the resort)

To be fair, I am sitting in a sort of bubble. we are staying in the Valamar Lanterna Resort, and although some of you may have been to resorts like this before, take this with a grain of salt since I have never been to anything like this place before. Here, there is always something to do. Whether its Tennis training on one of the 16 (!!!) tennis courts, a game of soccer or beach volleyball at the sport complex, or simply going to the beach or one of the two swimming pools, you should never be bored here. Having said that, this tennis camp is running me into ground. I have never done a camp as intensive as this one on both body and mind, and it is taking me to new levels of fatigue that I'm not used to. I noticed the other day that I couldn't breathe in all the way without coughing, so I asked my host family about it. Apparently I had torn my lung from so much activity, and it simply had to recover from the exercise and then it would be fine. I was good to go the next day, but that is still a very scary sounding injury. Don't worry guys, it is very very minor, and fairly easy to fix.

A film of me playing tennis on the final day.

So, here's what I'm thinking for this blog: for every city that I visit, I will post a brief profile of each city along with a description f what I did there and some pictures. The first one should be out over the next couple of days about Poreč. Again, please let me know what you think of this idea.

if you would like more information on the resort, you only need to visit this website here .

More photos of rock statues on the resort grounds

As always, if you have a question, suggestion, or request, post it in the comments below.

And hey, here's another note for you guys: apparently you can follow this blog: this is a feature which I believe will notify you when I've posted a new entry, although I'm making no guarantees (I don't know how blogger works). It seems to be the easiest way to follow this blog, and if you can find the way to follow this blog, please post it in the comments so that other people (me) know how to as well. I'll be back with more city posts over the next couple of days.

Poreč

Hello everyone;

So, as I said, here is my first entry about the first place i got to visit on my travels in Croatia: Poreč.

Poreč (the purple pin, was initially founded as a town and later a colonial city by the romans in in the second century BC (about 2200 years ago, became a city 1800 years ago). After the Roman empire collapsed, the city changed hands several times before electing to joint the republic of Venice. The city is a popular tourist destination both because of its seaside location and because of the Venetian architecture that has been preserved, most notably the Euphrasian Basilica.

My host brother Florian and I in front of the Euphrasian basilica

The basilica was built on top of old roman ruins, and if you look through the floor of the church in specific places, you an old roman mosaics. The church is an absolutely incredible place to visit.

The interior of the Euphrasian Basilica, 

Like many old European towns, the old downtown has narrow cobblestoned streets that are crowded with people. Cafe's, souvenir shops, and outlet stores are the most common stores to be found, however some old traditional stores can still be seen if you look in the right places. A very common object that can be bought in souvenir shops here that you wouldn't think of being sold in gift shops in Canada are soccer jerseys. With the recent signing of Ivan Rakitic (sorry non-soccer fans) by Barcelona, Barcelona and Croatia jerseys are now sold in almost all of the souvenir shops here.

One of the main streets in Poreč

A side street of Poreč

A different church lying in the downtown plaza of Poreč.

Any ways, that is all for Poreč. In conclusion, I would say it is certainly a must visit if you are in the Croatian region, especially the Euphrasian Basilica. However, don't plan to spend a couple of days here, as it is a comparatively small town compared to other towns and regions in the area, such as Pula (more on that city later) and the nearby Plitwitzer Seen National Park (which I didn't go to, but it looks fantastic).

Once again, if you have any questions, recommendations, suggestions, post these in the comments below. If you like this, maybe click the follow button so that you don't have to keep checking back. I'll leave you with this photo of the old downtown core, taken just as we were leaving Poreč.

Adventures in Tennis

Well this has taken off

Thank you to all the people who have read this over the past couple, it has been far more than I ever expected it to be, and I am blown away by the number of people who have actually visited the blog. So thanks guys.

So, the reason I am in Croatia at the moment is for a tennis camp, and it has been an interesting experience so far. The pull quote I think should come from one of the Croatian coaches at the end of my first session, translated: "you have a really good eye for the ball, but for almost all of your shots, you are just making up how to make the shots". My tennis experience before this week is very little to absolutely none.. However, helping my cause are around 4-5 years of squash experience (shoutout to Kevin Dorrius for the ridiculous amount of work he did running and maintaining the Revelstoke Racquet Den during my years there) and an inexplicable talent for badminton. However, tennis is very different from those two sports, chiefly because everything is so much bigger and heavier. This means that the swing is a completely different technique, and you get tired much more quickly. I am improving though. It has been 4 days so far and all but one of my lessons have been 1 on 1 in an effort to catch me up to everybody else. So far I look kind of like this:

Here is a video of my host brother Michael playing (so that you know what it's supposed to look like)

If there is a theme for this opening week, it would probably be things that I knew were going to be different, but still surprised me. Clay courts: I knew they were going to be a totally different surface to play sports on, but still got surprised when I tried to run to find my foot skidding 2 feet as I pushed off of it to start running. Carbonated water: I knew that when you ask for water in Europe, you get sparkling water, but I was still shocked that you drink it while you are playing sports. It took a couple days to get used to, but now I'm ok with it, and possibly like it better than flat water, I haven't decided yet.

Anyways, that is all for this week. Again, if you have questions, recommendations, or suggestions for future articles, post it below in the comments. I already have a huge pile of Drafts on the go, so if there is a request, it may take a couple of weeks but I promise I will take care of all your suggestions eventually.

Apologies and Excuses

Hi everyone,

Sorry about the long gap there. Unfortunately, this entry is not a new post, but it will explain why I've gone dark for so long. I have 3 posts all lined up just for the first half of my Mediterranean vacation, however, obviously, I haven't posted them yet. This is because while I have no phone, all of my pictures are on the camera of my host family. I just got these pictures yesterday, and I am still waiting on a couple to complete some entries, but I can promise that more entries will be up very shortly, possibly by tomorrow German time (in which case, you reading this is probably irrelevant, but I wanna post it anyways). I was tired of seeing my blog full of just blocks of text, so I decided to wait to post my entries until I had pictures. So, yeah, that's why I'm not writing, sorry, hope you understand. As a sneak peek, heres a couple photos:

Beach Volleyball at the resort

The Aegean Sea

A Venetian Church in the city of Porec

A rock family

Again, thanks for your patience, speak to you soon

Driving in Germany

What's up?

Ok, so today my host family and I went for a drive from Allershausen to Lanterna, Croatia, for the tennis camp, and I was blown away by the highways there, compared to the highways in Canada. So for today, I figured I would just write down interesting stuff I noticed on the highway, and tell you guys about it. It should actually be more interesting than it sounds.

First, the lack of speed limits on the Autobahn is kinda a myth. While the speed limits here are much higher than in Canada (most of the time we're going 140 km/h) there are usually posted speed limits. To keep the autobahn tradition alive there are some areas where there are speed limits, but these are few and far between, depending on weather conditions. This brings me to my second point; the autobahn is a very smart highway. each speed limit is posted on an electronic board. These boards occur roughly every 2-3km and post speed limits as well as warnings that match the current state of the highway. for example, earlier in the day, the speed limit was 100 km/h along with a sight warning because in the morning it was very foggy on the highway. Later, the sign warned us to slow down to 80 because we were approaching a construction zone. Construction zones are so much more efficient here. Only one lane at a time is ever closed, and despite the fact that there are more cars here than you would normally find on a Canadian highway (think long weekend traffic if you're from Revelstoke), there is very rarely any holdup.

I think most of you knew this already, but just in case, an agreement was signed a while ago between many countries in the European Union that allows all traffic to pass freely without border control. This meant that my host family and I were able to travel from Germany to Austria to Slovenia to Croatia without having to stop once at a border. Very useful, especially in Eastern Europe. Of course, going through Austria meant travelling through the alps. The alps are an incredibly spectacular mountain range. Its kind of like what we have in Canada, but instead of forests and trees everywhere,  you have quite a few grassy meadows, with large wooden houses predominating the landscape. Sometimes, these wooden houses condense into villages, but you can hardly ever see them because the Autobahn manages noise very well. When you are in more urban areas, the Autobahn is completely walled off. There is always a large wooden barrier put on the outside of the highway between the highway and the rest of the world, so that the noise from the highway doesn't keep people awake, allowing people to build houses very near to the highway without too much of a noise problem. However, the main feature of driving in the alps is the tunnels. In Canada, we hop, skip and jump around mountains, placing tunnels only in very avalanche prone areas that last for about 600 meters at the most. In the Alps, they prefer tunnelling directly through mountain passes as opposed to going around them in any way. this leads to 5-6 kilometre tunnels, with an occasional massive 15-18 kilometre tunnel. As far as I know, this is a european thing that occurs all over the continent, so it is not just in the Alps, it is also in the mountain ranges in Spain and Scandinavia.

Finally, their cars are smarter than ours. WAY smarter. Although it has been a while since I've been in a car with the full GPS setup, I'm pretty sure that the cars here are far more advanced than the ones here. If not, feel free to correct and call me stupid and backwards in the comments. So, essentially what this GPS has is a display of the up-to-date speed limit in the top right hand corner (reminder that the speed limits in areas are constantly changing), a map (obviously), a little screen pops up welcoming you into a country every time you cross a border. Finally, and most impressively, a driver alert system. How this works is that when you cross a sideline, change lanes without indicating, or drive unsteadily, a beeping alert goes off. If enough of these go off, the car determines that you need a rest, and a coffee cup icon lights up on the dash. I'm sorry if we do have this in Canada, but I had never seen anything like this before and I think it should be required to be installed in all new cars by law. Very helpful device.

Ok, I'm sorry if I bored you all to tears with this, but I felt it was something I should cover at some stage. As always, if you have a question or a recommendation for a new article or how to improve future articles, post it in the comments below. Sorry for the lack of photos (again!) but don't worry, I'll have plenty of pictures of the alps for you later (you can call that a preview, if you like).

See you all later

The Flight

Hi Guys,


So, I have just completed a 31 hour day, where I flew from Kelowna to Seattle to Detroit to Amsterdam to Munich, and then met my host family for the first time face to face. Let's say that I am a little tired today, so I am sure that there will be more than a few massive typos in this entry. First off, big shout out to Ed Piekarczyk for organizing all of my travel arrangements for me and for answering all of my questions, even though there were quite a few of them. Also shout out to the Seattle airport, which remains a fantastic airport for Canadians and Americans to travel through because it is so easy to clear customs (they do much of it electronically, which shortens the time quite a bit) and Delta international air, for making almost all of the inflight entertainment free. keep that up.

There is something a little scary about that moment when the plane's wheels left the ground in Kelowna, and I realized that I was not going to see my one country again for 11 months. That's a new feeling, and definitely a realization moment that this is really happening, that I am not going home any time soon. Lots of new snow on the mountains as I flew by, so get ready Canada, winter is not that far away. It had totally slipped my mind, but landing in Seattle it was impossible not to notice that the NFL season kicked off that day. very rarely do you see a city that provides so much support to their sports teams as Seattle, possibly because it only has three major sports teams, none of which are as successful or as likeable in my opinion as the Seattle Seahawks. As a somewhat amateurish follower of american football, I enjoy the emphasis placed on defence by that team, especially in the Super Bowl.

I won't go into too much detail about the flights, since they are mostly comprised of me watching movies, so nothing to report there, but once again, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for a new title (I'm not very happy with the current one) please feel free to message me on my Google Plus, Facebook (if you have added me), or just in the comments (since I think that you can do that). Sorry about the lack of pictures, this may go on until next week since I don't have my phone up and running yet, and won't until next week at the earliest.

talk to you later,

Gordon

Packing...

So, I have to fit 11 months worth of life into these three bags- certainly not the easiest thing to do. On top of this, I have to fit a few unusual items into these bags- for one, a tennis racket. A few days ago, I was invited by my host family to travel with them to Croatia for a week and participate in a fairly intense tennis camp. I will have more on my host family in a later entry, but for now all I can say is that I am extremely grateful to them and very excited for this opportunity. This means that my first entry from Germany will have to wait a week, and instead I will be sending you one from Croatia. Should be fun.

Anyways, back to packing. If there are any tips I can give to someone packing for a long time abroad, keep in mind that anything you don't pack you will have to buy when you get there. So if you find yourself fence sitting on a specific item, you should probably pack it. However, having said that, it is also important to research weight and size restrictions on the website of the airline that you are flying. Without the help of a very helpful Samsonite suitcase salesman in the store in an outlet mall in Portland (no idea how you would read this, but if you are, thank you) I would have made a 500 dollar mistake by purchasing an oversize suitcase. So, to summarize, pack as much as you can into the limited space and weight that airlines give you. If necessary, pay the oversize fees, and just make sure you can balance the costs out correctly.

So, by the time this post is online, I will be in the middle of a 35 hour travel day. However, before I leave, some more thank-you's have to be given out. Dennis Jacobsen, my overall Germany exchange coordinator, thank you for all of your work, as well as thank you's to Cathie Mullen, an exchange coordinator for me over in Germany, and also to Richard DeRock, head of the District 5060 Rotary Youth Exchange Committee.

Alright, this'll be my last Canadian post for around 11 months, see all you guys later.

In the beginning....

Hello Internet,

How are you? OK, so I've never been very good at saying hello, but I really have no idea who is going to read this. I have quite honestly been shocked so far by the number of people who have expressed an interest in following this trip, so if you are reading this, you know who you are, and I think you're awesome. However, there are many other people reading this who may not have told me that you were planning on reading this, or you might be a complete stranger who doesn't even know who I am. I would like to declare right off of the top that this blog is for all of you. Friends, family, complete strangers, anyone is welcome to read this, and I would hope you enjoy reading this as much as I am going to enjoy writing it. This is supposed to be a fun blog, but hopefully we'll all learn something somewhere. For those of you who know me well, my humour is sort of hit-and-miss. SO if you can put with the hopefully not too bad jokes, we'll have a good time.

This is the first entry, so I'm going to try and get as many disclaimers out of the way as possible, and then later, I might include a basic introduction of myself for those complete strangers reading this, or for the people that just don't know me very well.

First off, I'm going to say it right now, I have no idea what I am doing. This blog thing is completely new to me, and I don't really know at this stage what an average entry is going to look like. I have a general structure for the first couple of entries that will be coming out over the next couple of days, but after that I really have no idea what kind of shape or form this will take. I certainly will try and add more pictures, but I have not yet figured out how to do that quite yet. Having said that, I have not yet tried to figure out how to do that yet, so that's where I'm at with the whole blogging process. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm kind of disorganized.

OK, one general disclaimer; obviously I am not trying to offend anyone or anything while writing this blog, and if it does happen, it is completely accidental. I am trying to be fairly honest with this blog, but I don't like hurting people, so I will err on the side of caution when I feel it is necessary.

I am going to try and make this blog helpful to as many types of people as I can, so my content will contain both recommendations for traveller's, other exchange students, and, if I feel like it, some of my general reflections on life (not too many though, because that's not a place I want to go). However, I am also informing my friends and family back home on what I am doing this week, and how the year is going for me. This puts me in a bit of a bind, because I am creating a blog about MY trip, but really don't feel like just going on about all of the things I did and people I met and things I have seen. So, when I talk about what I did, I think I am going to try and get something out of it that will benefit everyone. It took me a solid five paragraphs to get to what I really wanted to say. This will get better, I promise.

So, as promised, here is a (fairly) brief description of myself. I am an 18 year old Canadian from Revelstoke, BC, in the middle of the selkirk mountains. I would say that my greatest passion in life is athletics. This does not mean any particular sport, I enjoy playing almost all sports in general, and so I am pretty sure a lot of the stuff I write on this blog will have to do with my athletic pursuits. Obviously, I will write about lots of other activities as well, since my general plan is to do as many different activities over the course of eleven months as humanly possible, but as my passion is sports, I will probably constantly be involved with one event or another on a week to week basis.

Ok, so that is more than enough for this ridiculously long disjointed and probably very boring introduction. Again, I would ask that you stay with me, I am trying to get a lot of stuff out of the way today so that it doesn't come up for some reason during the year and then I have to devote a paragraph from my other blog entires and lose your interest and yeah, that would be a disaster. Therefore, I am going to try and get 1 or 2 sort of standard entries out before I jump on a plane and leave, so that you and I both get a better idea of what this thing looks like before the big leave. I'll include pictures as well, so that you guys aren't just reading blocks of writing. Thought you might appreciate that.

Before I leave I have to give a MASSIVE shoutout to Rotary International, the Rotary Student Exchange program and all of the people who make this program possible. As individual rotarians appear, I will thank them individually and I will try to work all of you in there at some point and give thanks through this blog as well as in person. For now, a huge thank you to all of you everywhere who run this program. If you know someone eligible for this program, or are even thinking about joining the program yourself, I cannot recommend it more highly. I have not even stepped onto a plane yet and I have met many many incredible individuals who give insane amounts of time to make the lives of people around them so much better. Many if not all of you will find your names somewhere in this blog. Not only do you meet incredible volunteers, but you also meet incredible peers. I will take this time to shout out Lucas Parreiras, the fantastic Brazilian who I had the pleasure of meeting during his yearlong exchange to my hometown of Revelstoke, Blake Ledger, my exchange role model (and soccer rival) and Jimmy Lin, simply because he is Jimmy Lin.

Stay tuned, more posts to follow very soon, and I can almost guarantee they will be better than this one. Please feel free to comment on what you like, what you don't like, and that will go a long way into shaping this blog. As I said, I have no idea what I am doing, and this blog is not just for myself, it is for all of you out there who feel like reading this. It should be a really good time, talk to you soon.