made it to europe!

Okay, so I officially made it to London! And I am not missing any limbs!

So although we were exhausted, we made the most of hour first half day in London. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and I don't know what else. We ate at a pub and I ordered my first legal drink outside of Canada. Tomorrow we go to Stonehenge, Bath and Windsor. We leave early so I have to get to sleep, but I will update you more in depth on my adventures and post pictures when I get to Spain.

Cheers!

august 19. 2010. post double down.

So it's 8:51 and I just got back from my Double Down Expedition in Cortland. As much as I looked forward to biting into two crispy chicken breasts with bacon, cheese and colonel sauce in between, I was a little let down. Don't get me wrong, it was good in the worst kinds of ways, but I wasn't wowed. It wasn't the trashiest, fattiest, grossest thing that I have had, although maybe when taken as a combo of all three categories it would place first in Most Artery Clogging Food Zach's Eaten. So overall, it didn't live up to my hype and I probably wouldn't get it again, but I am glad I experienced America's most recent atrocity in fast food.

In other news, we went mini golfing at the Pirate Mini Golf Course in Cortland too! Of course, I won, because I am just so great. I beat Erica by one stroke, suck it.

Oh, and Pete and I realized we are twins who like to dress alike, but not too alike, so we reverse the coloring of our shorts and shirts. Classy, I know.

august 19. 2010. pre double down

So today is a big day. No, I haven't arrived in London yet, that is still a week away. Today I am going to accomplish something that I have been looking forward to ever since I knew that it was something I could look forward to. It was a magical day when I found out that something called a Double Down existed. I was reading an article in Wired that described the delicacy as something "clearly concocted in a laboratory manned by maniacs." And these maniacs obviously know the way into my heart: two boneless pieces of fried chicken acting as a bread to colonel's sauce, bacon, and cheese. In a word, heaven.

Now, I read this article back on April 15. It has been over 4 months that I have had to wait until the fateful day that I would get to devour a Double Down, but it has finally arrived. You may wonder why it has taken me so long to get a Double Down. Now, I have been in Ithaca, NY up until now, and here we basically despise fast food restaurants. Especially in College Town. Therefore, the nearest KFC (and consequentially, the nearest Double Down) is in Cortland, NY. This is only about half an hour's drive, but the majority of my friends have no car and neither do I, so the trip was never made.

But that changes today and I feel like I have to document my life as it is now, as after I consume the Double Down, my life will irreversibly change.

Today I woke up like any normal day (any normal day that follows a night of black out debauchery) at 11:15. The sun was shining in through the window, warming my already hot room. I wandered into the main room of my apartment in a daze. I showered, shaved, ate and lazed around all day. Nothing too exciting, you know, like usual. Rebs sent me a text asking me if 5 was okay to get Double Downs. Of course I responded positively. I lazed around more, waiting anxiously for the hour to arrive. Rebs suggests to me that I write a blog entry about this, she tells me she just likes the word blog and uses it at every opportunity she has. I know she just likes to read about things that happened to me while she was present. So I write this entry which leads me up to this moment in time.

I guess you need details for the Double Down Expedition:

Location: KFC in Cortland, NY

Co Conspirators: Erica, Pete, Dan & Rebs (of course)

Weather: Sunny, 82, no wind

Time of Departure: 5:15

Estimated Time of Arrival: 5:40

Estimated Time of Pure Bliss: 5:43

I will describe later how this day has changed my life.

august 16. 2010.

So it has been obvious to me that this blog is painfully dull and boring. Up until now, the most interesting thing that happened and was documented in the blog was the discovery that I am Jewish, and I pretty much glazed over that story. As I know it has been boring, I do not need my friends (Naj) to point out how boring it actually is by accurately mimicking my writing style on my Facebook wall. Yet, I will try to spice it up with this blog, probably unsuccessfully.

Up until now, I thought I had 2 choices for my blog: write about nothing or write nothing at all. I chose to write about something, so my blog would actually have some kind of life, no matter how excruciatingly dull it may be, but I realized I, in fact, have a few more choices. One being, I could include pictures and videos of cats, because everyone who looks at blogs, also likes to look at funny pictures of cats in boxes or wearing pots and pans with poor English written beside it. So, without further ado, I present to you (thanks to Huffington Post) fancy cat with top hat.

If fancy hatted cats don't impress you, I am not sure what will. Maybe I could attempt to write fiction. Alas, I am an engineer, and although I have overcome some engineering stereotypes by being somewhat sociable and able to talk about things other than video games (it took me months to figure out what WOW meant), I am not a writer. I have no mastery over the English language, and will not be able to rival J. K. Rowling or Hawthorne.

Besides cats and fiction, I am not sure what you guys could want. So I will try to make my own life more interesting in the next year, but until then, I will leave you with your first and last post about cats. Enjoy this while it lasts.

Oh, and I have 9 days until I leave for Europe!

(Some things won't change)

august 12. 2010.

I think tomorrow is my last day of my internship. I am not sure. I know that it is supposed to last until the 20th, but both of the other interns will have stopped by tomorrow. I'll find out I guess, but the suspense is kind of killing me. One good thing, though, is that there is a pizza party for the interns tomorrow because it's the Parks Intern and the Planning Intern's last day, too. I'm guessing this means I'm done.

Besides my internship winding down, I got together with Jamie and Kim and we booked a tour of Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Castle. My goal is to get into a bath at one of these places, preferably Bath (but I would accept a bath in Windsor some type of achievement by itself). We also looked up the best night clubs in London. There are some pretty gigantic places or interesting places which struck me:

1. Fabric - 25,000 sq ft (over half an acre) with 5 sound systems and 3 bars

2. Club Aquarium - 5 rooms including a pool and jacuzzi

3. Pacha - a stained glass ceiling with a balcony

4. Egg - Outdoor balconies with fake grass and, again, a swimming pool

So those are just a few that I found and thought would be fun. I'm guessing I will only go to one, so maybe vote or suggest another?

Besides my London plans, there really hasn't been too much to talk about. I'm not making it to Montreal after all, which is probably for the best because the French are awful. The French Canadians are probably worse.

I'm not sure there really is anything else to write about.

Oh wait, I promised Jamie I would link to her blog, so take this suggestion, and follow her blog on Cornell's website: Copenhagen Without a Helmet (it might be With a helmet but her title is in Danish, which I haven't mastered yet) and find the link somewhere on this page, or below her profile picture on Facebook!

Two weeks and I am in London! Cheers!

august 9. 2010.

So I have been a little confused as to when I am leaving Ithaca. I talked to my Mom today, and she let me know that I am actually leaving for NYC the morning of the 23rd (that's a Monday). That means I have an extra day at Cornell to complete my last Hurrah. That also means I now have exactly 2 weeks here at Cornell, and 16 days until I leave for London!

As always, my life, in my opinion, has been pretty uneventful. I haven't been in any shoot outs or high speed chases. I haven't met a mermaid or found a dragon egg in my closet. But I did get rid of the bat, or at least it left of its own volition. I had Dinosaur BBQ at my company picnic, too! I even won a gift certificate to Boat Yard Grill (who wants to go?)! To compound the awesomeness, Ben and Eve visited again. This time it was to go camping. Although our original number of campers had dwindled, camping was great. Anna brought us to this great lean-to in Shendagin and we had so much good food. Never had I eaten cow & goat cheese off a toasted baguette in the woods. I ate better from a campfire than back in my apartment (aside from the hot dogs that is).

This weekend was the first of my good byes though, which is now alerting me to how close Europe, the actual topic of this blog, actually is, and I couldn't be more excited. After stalking the other Cornellians already in Santander, I learned that they are already partaking in a drink that should have already made it to the states, Calimocho. My friend Liz, who just returned from Spain has told me about Calimocho (1/2 Coke, 1/2 wine) and I can't wait to get in on this drink. Jamie and I agreed that we want to have a small going away shindig that is Denmark and Spain themed. I was thinking Sangria would be the drink of choice, but I guess it will have to be Calimocho.

We lost our last intramural softball game today, too. Although we haven't won an actual game all season, we played our first playoff game and sent it into OT, just to lose it in the first inning of overtime. Oh well, I don't think softball is very big in northern Spain.

So, as they say in Denmark, Skaal; and in Spain, SALUD!

Let's make these last two weeks really count!

august 5. 2010.

Like always, I will update you all with a countdown: 3 weeks until I am in London, 16 days until I leave Ithaca, NY.

Now with that over, I have no real news.

I did find a bat flying around my apartment yesterday morning! It freaked me out, but once I gathered my nerves I trapped it in another room with the window open. I called my dad to see what I should do, and he told me it should probably just leave on its own. Thanks for the help, Dad! Just hope it takes care of itself, great life lesson. One of my friends told me to let it bite me so that I might become a vampire and a werewolf. Yes, for those of you who don't know, the night of my bar mitzvah was also a full moon in which I turned into a werewolf. I don't feel like I can handle the responsibility of being as hot as Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner so I will remain just a werewolf.

Other than that, everything is winding down. I'm hanging out with friends, finishing up the last few weeks of work, and losing miserably in intramural softball, you know, the usual.

august 1. 2010.

So it's officially August, and I leave Cornell in 3 weeks! I'll be in Spain in less than a month, starting my language classes. But until then, I am still in Ithaca, and Ithaca has been good.

Ben and Eve visited again. We made banana pancakes and went to a park and blueberry picking. I would say it was pretty romantic. Well, maybe not the blueberry picking, because we drove about half an hour to Dryden and ended up at a little house with a garden in front saying fresh blueberries. We were like, WTF? Do we just pick in this tiny garden? We are the only ones here and will get raped. But it turns out the owner was an awesome old lady and the fields for picking were out in the back. We didn't get raped, and picked a ton of blueberries.

Also, I talked to Josh, who I will be in Spain with for the next year. He, Caitlyn and Hillary are already in Spain for the first language class, lucky bastards. I'm ready to be done with my internship and head to Europe. But anyways, it seems like apart from a few problems, things are going well for them. I will see them soon!

So yea, the countdown has really started now. Next week I will be camping around Ithaca with Ben and Eve, then the following I should be in Montreal, pending a car ride, and then it's my last week in Ithaca. It's going quick now!

july 28. 2010.

I tried promising myself I would only post once a week while I was still in the States, as this is a blog mainly to tell about my adventures in Europe. But alas, I am always bored and have nothing to do but to write nonsense.

Blog title fails:

Spain Themed

It Spain't Me, Babe

No Spain, No Gain

If I were in Basque Country Themed

Basqueing in Spain's Glory

Bilbao Baggins: The Lord of the Spain

Spanish Puns

Livin' Like a Playa: A year on the beach

Leave a Junior, Come Back a Senor

Even in Spain You Can't Get madRID of Me

Europe Themed

e(UR)o Hipster

US Leading Off, Europe Next

Music Themed

Never Been to Spain

Barcelona Loves You (But So Does Santander)

So if you didn't think I was lame before, this should give you all the proof.

Oh hey! I did figure out most of my winter break though! I know, it's like 5 months away, but since a GREAT friend from Cornell is visiting, we wanted to hash out a plan, or at least some bones of one. So, as it stands now, my winter break will be

12/22-12/23 Andorra La Vella, Andorra

12/23-12/27 Barcelona, Spain

12/27-12/29 Geneva, Switzerland

12/29-12/30 Lyon, France

12/30-1/2 Paris, France

1/2-1/5 Nice & Cannes, France & Monaco

1/5-1/9 Rome, Italy or Brussels, Belgium

This means that I will be in Barcelona for Christmas and Paris for New Years. Let the drunken debauchery in high class cities begin!

july 25. 2010.

Okay, quick update.

I went to see Flaming Lips on Friday and a roadie recognized some people's shirts. He came up to us and asked us if we wanted to dance on stage. That makes two Flaming Lips concerts and two times dancing on stage.

Wayne Coyne didn't remember me, but he talked to Beth on the phone and told me he would be a dog if he had to be any animal. A small dog with a really hot woman for an owner so he could cuddle with her at night.

Saturday I became a man in the Jewish culture.

Sunday nothing happened of importance. But it is only one month until Europe.

That's all for now. I'll keep you updated.