We think of education as a right at this point, but it simply is not, in a national sense. OurEd points to a Supreme Court ruling which states that “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the State, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” This case specifically addresses the gap in education caused by differences in wealth, and the Supreme Court says that there is nothing in U.S. law that can do anything about it. I don’t want to get too preachy here, but you see the point — disadvantaged children remain disadvantaged because they don’t have a right to education that is equal to rich kids (or even middle-class ones!).

It is true that every state guarantees a free education, but how many of us have looked back and cursed our terrible public school education? Or vice versa — gone to college and wondered why some people never seem to have learned any basic math, history, or how to write an essay longer than a page? The fact is that educational requirements are wildly disparate between individual schools and even entire states, and this is why Americans on average come out as such morons against other countries with better national requirements.

When the Constitution was first created, formal education was still in its infancy, but now it is widespread and essentially a requirement for many parts of life. There is simply no denying that education not only directly affects a person’s ability to maintain their life and liberty and to pursue happiness, but is also crucial to the survival and advancement of the human race as a whole.

Certainly federalizing education will cause problems, but the current system has its own problems that cannot be solved as it stands. Certainly a constitutional amendment is an incredibly dramatic and powerful answer, but education IS that important. And, I mean, it’s not as if it hasn’t been done before. With stupider things. Remember Prohibition? We’ve already created two idiotic constitutional amendments dealing with alcohol — because that’s the most harmful thing on the planet, right? — I’m sure we can manage just one that addresses education, which is surely one of the most important issues of our time.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. And I haven’t even touched arts or sex education yet…

Our main stop along the way to Flagstaff was the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert national park. Arizona really has such stunning land and vistas. Photos do it poor service, of course, but at least you can get an idea of what I was looking at. Visibility out here was about a hundred miles. They said on a good day you could see a set of peaks 120 miles away.

Dad, the consummate photographer, capturing the dramatic view.

Another gorgeous thing about Arizona is the beautiful sky. The air is dry and clear, so sun is bright, the sky is a vivid blue, and the clouds look like paintings.

A tumble of petrified logs. The petrified wood isn’t that impressive at first glance, because it looks quite like normal wood from a distance. On closer inspection, though, it’s remarkable how the giant pieces of wood have completely turned to stone. Unfortunately, a lot of the most colorful crystals were stolen in the late 19th and early 20th century by tourists and people selling gems. They even blasted apart a number of the logs in order to get at the best crystals inside.

A closer view of some petrified wood. This area is called the Crystal Forest, but much of the color that gave it its name has been stolen.

Finally, a gorgeous sunset to end the day well:

These were only one-thirtieth of the photos I took that day, incidentally.

Our first stop was the “Cadillac Ranch,” just outside of Amarillo.

It consists of 10 old graffiti-covered Cadillacs half-buried nose-first in the ground and was created by an artists’ collective in the 70′s. They are occasionally repainted and people are encouraged to add graffiti.

Next, we crossed over into New Mexico and stopped in Tucumcari for lunch (and ice cream!). This is the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, a recently restored motel on Route 66:

After lunch, we turned northwest towards Santa Fe. About 20 miles before, we stopped off at the Pecos National Historical Park, which contains the ruins of an old Pecos pueblo.

The sky was quite dramatic at this point, as there was a storm in the distance. Because there aren’t a lot of hills or trees, we could see the lightning from quite far away.

We arrived in Santa Fe and took a walk around its small but lovely downtown. Most all the buildings are done with a Pueblo-style facade.

I tried to take some artsy photos:

This is the St. Francis of Assissi Cathedral in Santa Fe. Notice the unfinished steeples.

We had dinner at a Spanish restaurant called El Messon, at which my dad criticized the paella heavily, then headed down to Albuquerque for the night. The drive south was very interesting, as there was a storm hitting Albuquerque. The lightning was frequent and extremely impressive against the night horizon; it was a terrific light show. Once in Albuquerque, it suddenly started hailing on us, which was quite a surprise to me, considering the temperature. After that, the rain got so thick that I couldn’t even see as I drove, and traffic slowed to a crawl of blinking hazard lights. We made it through those patches, though, spent the night here, and today we’re off to Arizona to see the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest!

The signs of Route 66.

The largest McDonald’s in the world by square footage (something like 29,000 I think?). It actually spans I-44 in Vinita, OK like a bridge.

Apparently the largest totem pole in the world, at 900 feet tall. This man, Ed, spent around 15 or 20 years building the thing, as well as a variety of other artwork around his house and just showing it off to passerby.

We stopped for dinner at The Big Texan steak house. Their gimmick (advertised on billboards all the way from mid-Oklahoma) is a massive 72 oz. steak which, if you can eat it in under an hour, you get free. We didn’t try it, and judging by the big empty chairs next to a table with a 60-minute timer in the middle of the room, neither did anybody else who was there. It’s a very chintzy place, as you can tell by the outside. Inside, it is decorated a bit like a saloon: everything is wooden, animal heads are mounted along the balcony, and waitresses are dressed in either hoop skirts or mini-skirts, flannel shirts, and cowboy hats. The food was good, though.

(Click for larger images:)

What a funky welcoming committee!

The Gateway Arch, just as you’ve seen it in photos a million times before. Only this time it’s my photo :)

My Dad, master of the Arch!

The Arch is reeeeallly big!

Our next stop was Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard, a semi-famous mini chain out here. Their standard is the “concrete,” a cup of frozen custard mixed with any flavor you want. As for what frozen custard actually is, the best way I can describe it is to say that it’s like soft ice cream, except smoother and thicker. When they serve you the cup, they turn it upside down to show you it doesn’t fall out. So, I went for a regular raspberry concrete and it was delish. Sitting on a bench nearby, we enjoy our concretes and marvelled at the quantity of people passing through — its quite a popular place.

Our final sight-seeing stop for the day was Meramec Caverns, a 26-mile cavern system west of St. Louis. It was pretty cool, but not as impressive as I hoped and far too cheesy. They do an “impressive light and musical display” at the end of the tour that actually consists only of an old recording and the tour guide manually flicking a few lights on and off — the finale is what can be seen in this photo. I wasn’t surprised when I later saw a photo of the cave’s owner wearing a leopard pattern smoking jacket.

All the sight-seeing made for an even longer day yesterday, as we did the same amount of mileage in addition to the stops, but from here on out we’re only doing about 300 miles a day and more sightseeing. Today: Oklahoma and Texas!

Plus he’s gotten to know one of the chaperones, an intern at the White House who may be able to get us a tour of the West Wing!

Prague was a very old-looking and pretty city, as many of its buildings are quite well preserved. We spent a lot of time walking around downtown and Monday night we went to a black light theatre show. There are several of these around town and it looked kind of gimmicky to me, but Brian and Kody thought it looked worthwhile so we checked it out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a pretty silly, tourist-trap show in a small theatre. The following night, however, we went to the fabulous State Opera and saw a good production of Anton Dvorak’s “Rusalka” (think Disney’s The Little Mermaid without the happy ending). We also decided to spring for box seats — as they were only $24!! That was definitely a worthwhile part of the experience and, although the production had a few flaws, it was still a very solid, lavish, professional show, and made for a terrific night.

Today we took the five-hour train to Berlin and arrived at our hostel this afternoon. This hostel is definitely the funkiest and biggest hostel we’ve been in. With 905 beds, it’s the largest in Germany (it’s sister hostel in London is also the largest in the UK), and it’s sci-fi theme lends a slick ambience. It’s quite clean as well, which is always nice. It sounds like there’s going to be a lot to do and see in Berlin, I only wish we had more time. We pretty much lost the whole day today due to travelling. It might just be lately, because we’re all getting tired after a non-stop month, but I wish we could have gotten an earlier train and had the better part of the day to make the most of our stay. It’s really kind of frustrating when I think that it cuts off nearly a third of our visit and that (as our trip draws to a close..) I won’t be able to afford to visit all these places again any time soon. I mean, I guess I just want to cram more in than they do and go at a more strenuous pace, but I can’t go out and start seeing things on my own because I’ll probably just wind up seeing the same things with them all over again the next day. Anyway, hopefully we’ll get to walk all through the downtown, see the Brandenburg gate, the remains of the Berlin Wall, the Jewish museum, the Reichstag, maybe the film museum, and maybe a classical music concert if it’s affordable.

I’ve also started to look into plane tickets home and I’m doing my best to try and find something really cheap. The best confirmed seat I can find is for $420, which is too much. I’m trying to find out how I can get last-minute seats, as the airline companies don’t do standby anymore. A site called air-tech.com has deals with certain airlines and offers a $219 Western Europe to Northeast U.S. ticket. They tell you availability of flights each week and when one comes up that you want, you tell them. There are also things called “bucket shops,” which receive last-minute tickets from airlines, but I don’t know where or how to find those yet. I’ll research more once I get back to Leeds. Anyway, I hope everyone’s well, and I’ll talk to you in five days!

Love,
Michael

Tuesday night, we attended an evening of Bartok (the famous Hungarian composer) at the State Opera house, an opera theatre with an incredibly lavish and ornate 19th century interior. Tickets were approximately $3.50 and the programme consisted of two ballets (The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin) followed by an operetta (Bluebeard’s Castle). The Wooden Prince was the best performance of the three and was what I’ve always imagined ballet should be; it was excellent. Speaking of ballet, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but for our last night in Bucharest we went to the opera as well, although it turned out to be a ballet performance. It was decent, but the performance wasn’t as classical as The Wooden Prince and didn’t quite work. Additionally, the theatre was entirely booked out — so they sold us tickets to sit on the stairs in the balcony! I think they cost roughly $1, but I couldn’t believe that they actually sold tickets for the stairs. Anyway, it’s been great to be able to see some high quality opera and ballet for dirt cheap. Wednesday night we tried to go see some jazz in Budapest, but the first place we went to was a boat on the Danube and was closed because of the high waters. The second place we had recommended to us we just plain couldn’t find, so that was a washout. Instead we went to a bar and relaxed for a little while, before walking a loooong ways home.

The train today was pretty interesting because we passed by a lot of remnants of the flooding. The Danube was back within its banks to our right, but to our left could be seen fields still covered in water. After finding our hostel and finding lunch this afternoon, Kody and Brian were tired from going to sleep late and getting up early, so we napped until 7 and then went out for dinner. I understand that they’re tired and that this is a vacation, so we should be able to rest, but I’m pretty annoyed that we’ve lost an entire day in Vienna — I have this one opportunity to see as much as I can and I’d rather sleep at night so I can make use of the day. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the couple Habsburg palaces in Vienna starting tomorrow, as well as the Freud museum. We’re also hoping to be able to see a classical music concert for about 5 euros and also hopefully the Vienna Boys Choir (who perform once a week on Sunday morning).

I’m currently in Bucharest at the moment, having arrived yesterday afternoon. Our day in Venice was kind of a wash-out, as it drizzled all day and downright poured the morning we left. Still, it was cool to see the canals; I’ve certainly never seen a city like it. The hostel was also by far the best of our trip — it was actually a three-star hotel on Lido that only cost us 20 euros each for a three-bed room (so 60 euros a night in total). Piazza San Marco and the Basilica di San Marco were nice to see as well, but other than that Venice didn’t impress me a great deal, perhaps because of the abysmal weather.

On a side note, I’m really pleased with how much Italian I’ve picked up and could understand. I learned the few key phrases in Kody’s guidebook and that, combined with Italian’s similarity to Spanish, allowed me to check into the hotel in Venice with a receptionist that spoke only Italian. In Romania the story is different, although Romanian is surprisingly similar to other Romance languages. It sounds Slavik when I hear it spoken, but it has strong Latin roots. Actually, I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but I’m thinking of picking up a degree in Spanish, as I’ve discovered that I only need three semesters to complete it (and I’ll be mostly done with my theatre degree by the end of the next school year). One of the components is two semesters of Portuguese — or Romanian.

Anyway, we haven’t gotten to see much of Bucharest yet, but so far it certainly lives up to the image of a post-communist Eastern European state — grey block buildings, old beat-up cars, and a 1:3 exchange rate. Today we’ll go see the infamous gigantic parliament building and some other sights and tonight possibly go see the opera, a concert, or the Ballet de Madrid, as it is in town and tickets for everything are incredibly cheap in terms of dollars. Tomorrow we may take a trip out to the countryside to Transylvania or somewhere thereabouts.

Love,
Michael

Last night we met up with my friend Renee and a couple of her friends. We all walked up to the Piazella Michelangelo together to view Florence at night. It was beautiful, and we sat, chatting, drinking wine, and enjoying the view for an hour or two before heading back to the hostel to rest our weary legs. Today we didn’t do a lot in terms of sightseeing — for some reason EVERYTHING had incredibly huge lines: the Galleria della Academia (has Michelangelo’s David), the Uffizi, and the Duomo (good thing we went inside yesterday when there was no line). Instead, we went to a big weekly outdoor market in the morning — they had food and lots of cheap clothing. Afterwards we walked along the Arno and found a nice Gelateria on the south side of the river, the side away from the main touristy area of the Duomo and such. We went and stood in line for a little while at the Galleria della Academia before deciding that we’d rather spend two hours seeing more of Florence instead of waiting to see the David, so we went and wandered through the outdoor market stalls outside the Mercato Centrale. Kody and I bought leather (buffalo skin) jackets. It was a rather expensive purchase, but the jackets are terrific, seem very high quality, and, if they live up to our assessment of them, were a great deal. I get nervous about spending a lot of money like this without shopping around a lot, but hopefully I made the right choice. Next we’re headed out to find a gelateria, then probably call it an early night so we can get up on time tomorrow to catch our train to Venice.

Love,
Michael