jewish american princesses for sale. only 50 francs.

     

Bottom line: Hearts should never be taken to a cheese grater.

"My Blueberry Nights"- directed by Wong Kar Wai, starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and a surprise casting of Norah Jones. (killer cast) Even though 90% of the time Natalie Portman's voice makes me want to gouge my eyes out, she did make quite an impressive and perfect southern gambling fool. I am not going to tell you anything about the film, other than to go see it because I didn't know anything about it before and it made it that much more enjoyable. Oh wait. I can't hold myself back, and all I have to say is keep all keys you have, whether they were lost and you found them, someone gave them to you or whatever the case maybe because rather than locking or closing a door forever, you may want to revisit that place, or the person again. At first I thought I was going to be having an ultra romantic, post-valentines day, evening with the Gorilla because we were the only people in the theatre but thank goodness three other people showed up or else a. I didn't know if they would still show the film for only two. b. my career as a world traveling art-directing writer photographer designer would be shot and all hopes of ever finding my one true husband would have gone out the window. The paparazzi might get a hold of this story and head lines would scream "Allison Isenberg goes to the movies with A GORILLA" and the rest would history. (random stream of thought...its getting late...give me a little credit) Anyhoo. I have never been more terrified in my entire life by a preview but before the film started a short clip of a human hand taking a human heart to a cheese grater appeared on the screen. For a minute this madness went on, I almost died and threw up all in one sitting. The punch line for the commercial was obviously in German and clearly I had no clue what it said. I just can't even imagine what they would say. I am not sure there is any analogy you could come up with that would be like taking your heart to a cheese grater. The Swiss are sure messed up. This morning we woke up around 9:30 a.m. to catch our free morning breakfast. I didn't think it was possible but the couple sitting in front of me brewed up the worlds most nauseating breakfast concoction that almost made me not want to eat anymore and that is really hard to do. Bread dipped in yogurt with cheese and bologna is not what I call a delicious breakfast. After the couple scarfed down their own prepared barf, the man, with his two hands did a magic trick and split an apple in half. It was incredible. I tried to repeat the same task and really hurt myself. Maybe I have to start eating yogurt-cheese-bologna toast to do that type of trick but it is really not worth killing my insides to do such a thing. We decided to make jelly sandwiches for lunch after looking into the huge holes in our wallets. We were going to go shnuggle back up in our warm beds after breakfast but we decided we didn't want to miss the Saturday morning market. Completely different from the one in Barcelona, and more similar to the farmers market back home, tents lined the river on the new and old side with little stands selling fruits and veggies, cheese and flowers. We taste tested real dried bananas without any added sugars. After being threatened to have my baby hands chopped off at the market back in Florence, I am a little terrified to sample anything. We went window shopping and found the Gorilla a new pari of glasses. She is now officially European. When then made our way to the Picasso museum but of course there was an adventure in trying to go. The first attempt, I was 2 francs short, so we had to go to an ATM but the first ATM would only let you with drawl 50 francs and not that I was worried I wouldn't be able to spend it all, I thought that I should really try to save my money when in less than 24 hours my dream world of 1 to 1.2 vanishes and my bank account has to start thinking in euros again. We went to another ATM and then back to the Picasso museum. Luckily the city is really small so it wasn't as big of a shlep as it sounds. The Picasso museum was not what I expected it to be like at all but rather than rooms filled with his work, it was more focused on the documentation of Piscasso's life in his studio with this wife, sitting around the time kitchen table with his children, and intimate shots with his dog, through the photographic lens of Picasso's good friend, David Douglas Duncan. The pictures truly made Picasso's life come to life. It was incredible. See photogs above. Both Pablo and his wife look like human paintings. They were just born such interesting and uniquely beautiful people. In every photo Duncan was able to capture the small details of their lives. I bought a poster. Inspired and in an artsy, self-reflecting mood, we bought a bag of chestnuts and sat along the water to watch the swans and geese make war with each other. This city is so magical. We headed back home for our jelly sandwiches and apples for lunch in the room and then made our way back to our new found hot spot (aka we came here yesterday) for coffee at a place called Sjug, or Hug located right on the lake. For dinner, we headed over to the new side of town for a delicious Asian delight and then came back to the hostel to soak up a little television. Not that I even want a television in my apartment and am actually pleased that we don't have one but tonight I was craving just a little trashy television. The Gorilla and I sat in front of the lobby television watching 101 hottest celebs in German for almost an hour. One thing I have yet to understand is how the German language has so many consonants in one word. In our hot chocolate yesterday, chocolate was spelled with an X. Pretending like we understood every word the dub-over voice was saying, we sat there until we decided that we should probably allow the man who was waiting in the lobby for us to finally leave so he could watch the show he wanted to. Early bed time because early bedtimes are just the greatest. Why not?

if yodelers and gnomes built a city, it would be called luzern.

We set our alarms for 8:30 a.m. because our hostel offered an included breakfast and regardless of how I felt, I wasn't going to miss out on an opportunity to eat free food. Yogurt, corn flakes, toast with jam, coffee, OJ and an after breakfast tea was just what I needed to go into a good food como and right after breakfast we headed back upstairs to sleep in. Luzern is a very small city and is divided in half by a lake. The "newside" of the city is on one side of the river and the "oldside" on the other. We were staying on the old. It was very cold today but luckily I bundled up in my long underwear, gloves and wrapped my scarf around my entire face like gas mask. We found out that the exchange rate was 1 to 1.2 which almost means that the U.S. dollar has value but not really but hey it is better than the euro. The Gorilla and I were so excited about actually having our money worth almost something that we decided to go window shopping and actually go into stores, where as back in Italy we just lust over the shoes but never dream of walking in. Here we didn't feel so bad. After walking the streets and hiking the ancient wall that lined a portion of the old city with nine towers, we stopped to grab a bite to eat a resturant called Jazz "some german world I can't remember". We later found out that it was actually a hoppin' place to go in the evenings. We ventured out to the newside of town for a bit, aimlessly walking, just to get a feel for the city. We were going to head to a museum but decided to wait until tomorrow when were a little more perky. We stopped in a cafe right on the water to sip real hot coco and draw pretty pictures and write about our lives. Because we have been on the go so much, we were both in a little funk today. Pretty much sick and the Gorilla pretty much fried, we decided that this weekend was going to be a "do nothing but be happy" kind of a deal. For dinner we went to a fabulous Indian resturant recommeneded to us by a tourist hand book. Ironically, we had walked past the restuarant earlier in the day I go "Ugh, that looks disgusting". They had these pictures of the food in the window that looked like they had taken with a baby tykes camera...all blurry and narsty colored. The picture did not do them any justice. With a little nudge from the Gorilla (she eats Gorilla food so she is used to all sorts of concoctions) I ordered a fabulous chicken curry and it was one of the best meals I have had so far. Tonight we are going to a bar called Bouraboki where you go and watch films and then discuss the film with others at a bar inside the theatre. I think we are going to see "My Blueberry Nights" but I will let you know!

post from the friz-day of fridayness in the month of feb-u on the diz-ay

black coats of death, and swiss train rides.

Pretty much dead, I forced myself out of bed this morning to book arts. It was a true sign that I wasn't feeling good because I didn't even want to go to book arts and that never happens. The Gorilla and I skipped photog this afternoon so we could make the 12:15 train to Milan that would then take us to Luzern, Switzerland. You might be asking why Luzern? Well I can't really tell you why exactly. I just found it, it looked beautiful, we wanted to go to Switzerland, so why not? The minute I sat on the train, I didn't do a simple narco narco, no, I completely crashed. I put my jacket over my head so the sun wouldn't burn my eye balls out. The Gorilla did a reenactment of it tonight and I looked like a black ghost wobbling drunk from side to side. We changed trains in Milan and then for four more hours I fell right asleep, however this time I could sprawl my body across two seats. A lady thought I was dead but I felt more like I was already dead in a coffin 10 feet under chilling there for years. I sounded like an old woman with a 100 year smokers cough, and looked like I had a faucet for a nose. The entire train ride (that part that I was consciously awake for) I thought how wonderful it would be to sleep in my parents bed and sip on my momma's delicious chicken noodle soup that cures all sicknesses. But then reality hit, and the thought that I was going to be in Switzerland cheered me up. We got to Luzern around 7:30 p.m. After two rather adventurous traveling extravaganzas, we had learned our lessons and decided to print out correct detailed instructions on how to get to our hostel. 2 bridges down and across the lake was our little "tourist hotel" (that was the name of it). We checked in with Mr. Eye Patch (the friendliest eye patched man I have ever met) and dropped our stuff off in our room. He gave us a four person room, not on accident, it was all they had available, but this time we were not expecting any other guests to stay with us, we just had a big room to ourselves (by big, don't go crazy with your imagination, it was just bigger than a trailer park, and spacious). We walked down the street to find something to eat at this grocery store/department/mini inferno, recommended to us by Mr. Patch at the front desk. We checked out the restaurant on the third floor but decided that a roll and salad that I had been sitting out all day long was not what we were really in the mood more. Luckily, this place literally had everything from furniture to diapers to crystal to canned tuna to scarves. You name it, they had it. We decided that the first floor grocery store might be more appealing. We scavenged the entire store trying to think of some kind of concoction we could throw together without a kitchen. We ended up buying tortillas and microwave ramen noodle bowls, a banana, a grapefruit with a side of peanut m and m's. Mr. Patch let us use the microwave. After our quite scrumptious and oh so nutritious dinner we dragged our bodies back up stairs and went straight to bed. Ira Glass sang me a sweet tune goodnight, and This American Life cradled into a deep slumber

Soaps and Sickness.

Sad day in Mudville. Monica had to leave extremely early this morning. After not seeing each other for 5 and a half months, 3 nights was just not enough. Luckily, I get to see her again in two weeks for spring break in Malaga. I had another Italian quiz and I think I did pretty good. We are studying the definite and indefinite articles and it is insane how everything is either masculine or feminine. Even table is feminine. Does a table have a vagina? In Italian lab today, we watched an Italian film translated as "The Ignorant Fairy" aka an Italian Soap Opera Film. It was about a woman whose husband died by getting hit by a car in an action packed triple side-swipe-accident. I know it isn't funny, but I couldn't help but laugh when it happened because it was so over dramatized that it was impossible to show any sympathy. After the funeral, the wife goes through their house to get rid of his belongings, and she comes across a painting that is signed on the back "Ignorant Fairy". The wife spends a portion of the film, on a mission to find this "Ignorant Fairy" only to discover that her husband was not only having an affair with another but rather an affair with another man. We haven't finished the rest but I will let you know how it all plays out. To be honest I fell I sleep in parts of it because my body is finally getting back at me for using and abusing it. I am definitely sick. At the end of class, I felt like I was going to faint. Unfortunate Emily made chicken and egg plant parmesan for dinner. It was actually delicious and it even more wonderful that I didn't have to cook. Despite the chills running up and down my spine and despite my runny nose and hacking cough, gelato still sounded amazing. Without shame or regret the Gorilla and I walked in the freezing cold in our sweatpants and no bras in search of gelato and lets just say we didn't return empty handed. Early bed time but not so early sleep time. Too much to do, too many people to talk to. Tomorrow I am off to Lucern Switzerland to spend a romantic Valentines day weekend with none other....the Gorilla.

post from the wednesday of wednesday-ness in the month of feb on the date of 13th in the year of the 2 and thousand of 8-ness.