Becoming a Utahan

I'm afraid my life is coming to a close. It is odd, the circle that my life has taken since I came into this world.

Let's start from the beginning. Birth. I was born near the rolling waters of the Jordan River, in Murray, Utah. My parents, at the time were living in my grandparents' basement. This was in 1983.

I moved away from Utah at such a young age, that I can't remember anything but my life away from it. I considered myself, in almost every aspect but my physical location to be an Arizonan. But my circumstances have changed.

These are all the things that I could use as proof of my Arizona-ness:

Exhibit 1: An Arizona drivers license (mine expires in 2048)

(This is not mine.)

Exhibit 2: My parents live in Arizona

(These aren't my parents)

Exhibit 3: Most of my brothers and sisters live in Arizona

Exhibit 4: My truck is registered in Arizona

(not my truck either- looks like it though)

Exhibit 5: My truck's title is in Arizona

A couple months ago, I could have convinced you of my Arizona-ocity, but now, many of the reasons already mentioned have changed.

First of all, I got a new title for my car, a new registration, and of course new plates - all Utah. My phone number is 801 and my two of my sisters now live in Utah (thats 3/5 Lambson children). Finally, my parents, who I always thought would be moving off to some exotic country in south Asia when we all moved out, have opted to take a job in Utah.

Here is the odd thing - what keeps me up at night worrying. My life started in utah - I'm in utah now. It started when my parents lived in my grandparents' basement - that's where they live now. It started on Novemver 18 - that was 10 days ago. Am I living on borrowed time? Is the end near?

I sure hope not. What I hope is that this circle represents childhood coming to an end. I can live with that.

Strangeness at the Capital

Washington D.C

So what's the deal with these scooter things. It was bizarre to see this tour group zipping along on their scooters. (The Dems must have taken the house)
Well, I had a lot of fun going to D.C. this weekend. I saw my friends Emily and Logan.

'Bout time I started up again on my own

The last blog entry I threw up was from Paris. That was a world away from where I am now. Then, my longest term goal was finding a place to stay at nights, or getting to another city by sundown. Now, I've let responsibility back into my life, and I don't quite know what to make of it.

This isn't much of a blog entry, but it's a start.

Cathedral at Cologne

DSCN1631, originally uploaded by Sam Lambson.

We left Berlin without enough time to get to Paris, so we figured we get halfway by going to Cologne. The cathedral was spectacular there. What we didn't realize was that Cologne was about the same distance from Paris as Berlin. So worth it though.

Fin (maybe)

Well, Paris cleaned me out, but the city was beautiful. Turns out my rent check (that I paid well before we came out here) just cleared and I hope I will have enough cash to get home.

This trip has been so great. I feel like we could have come home two weeks ago and still be happy, but there is so much more to see and do here.

We'll see how many days we can go without starving.

ps - please don't think we are going to starve - we'll be okay (poor, but okay).

Paris

A home in East Berlin

Tom and I took a full day to travel up to Berlin from Interlaken. Beautiful trains in Germany, by the way. When we arrived in Berlin, we were about to look for the cheapest hostel or camping we could find, but I was approached by a woman who has an appartment in East Berlin to rent. When we agreed, she took us to the house - the only un-remodeled appartment complex in the old quarter - and gave us the key. It´s a nice appartment, and she´s only charging us €30 a night to sleep there. Not bad huh. Berlin is awsome. Zer Gut.

Nirvana, Mecca, Jerusalem, Salt Lake City... and Gimmawald

After a night of unmet expectations in Interlaken (mostly due to the weather) we ended up taking off in the morning to a city called Gimmawald. A couple girls we met in Florence, Lizzy and Chrysanthemum, were staying there and we figured anything would be better than another night in Interlaken. To get there we took a train until it was too steep for trains, a bus until it was too steep for busses and finally gandola up the side of a practically sheer mountain side. We stepped off the gandola and there it was, the Mountain Hostel.

This was no ordinary hostel. It was a quaint log cabin style tavern with beds. It is also the local bar. It sits on the edge of a deep valley and looks out on the Jungfrau, the Eigr and of course behind it was the Schilthorn (where a James Bond movie was filmed). The weather cleared up somewhat and something inside of us told us that this was the place where we could finally resolve whatever it was we came to Europe to resolve.

We happened to arrive on Swiss National Day, so it was better than any normal day. In the evening, Petra, the hostel´s owner, lit a bunch of swiss flag lanterns and all 50 or so of the residents marched the streets of the little city of Gimmawald laughing and cheering to the locals who came out to see us wearing their traditional Swiss garb.

National Day ended with a bunch of fireworks, so close to us that hot ashes would fall into our eyes (it was a good thing -- nobody was injured). After the fireworks an old Swiss guy and a younger guy (that I´m not convinced was Swiss) started playing traditional Swiss music with two accordians. Everyone -- no matter where they were from-- joined in for the yodeling parts. It was an absolute blast.

The next day Tom, Walter from Holland, Scott from Tucson and I took advantage of a somewhat sunny daz and climbed to the very top of a huge mountain. The name of the peak is the Schilterhorn. We left at about 10 and didn´t get back until about 9 pm. It was a long day, but absolutely amazing. The peak is at 9700 ft. When we got to the top, we ate soup and bread at the revolving restrant. It was pretty amazing.

Something happend to our spirits in Gimmawald as well. It was as if our trip had been accomplished. We finally felt a connection to something beyond ourselves. Maybe there is something to climbing a mountain. It did wonders for Moses. It did something to me that I´m still trying to understand.

A.S.A.G (American Study Abroad Girls)

Our stay in Zurmatt was short. A day of skiing for Tom and a day of hiking through the hills for me. We left a little late in the day (debating on staying to see if we could get in good with the locals and score a free night´s stay), but things were so good there that we would never have left if we didn´t get going. We went to the next hot Swiss town, Interlaken. A bunch of kids in Florence were all heading up there when we were heading to Venice, so we thought we´d go to see what all the hype was about. I bumped into a Singaporean who could have sworn that he´d been in a hostel with me the week before in Germany (don´t ask me), and he told me that he was in Interlaken when all the American kids showed up. He told me that when they came his whole experience went sour and he couldn´t even get a good night sleep because of all the noise that they made.

That is an interesting observation. Tom and I have noticed that the American kids, especially the study abroad kids, do nothing to take advantage of being in Europe. They hang out in their American appartments all day, chat on the internet with their significant others and go shopping, then they go out and get pissed with all of the american kids at night, make a lot of noise, and make a bad name for our country. We bumped into a girl in Florence, asked her for suggestions about seeing the city (mind you she´d been there for a couple months). She said, and I´m not exaggerating, "I really havn´t seen much of the city," followed by a dumb stare. I was dumbfounded.

Yes, I am convinced that much of what kids get out of study abroads is a month of getting wasted the same as they would if they had no parents in suburban america. Meanwhile, the parents think their kids might actually learn something by living in Europe for a couple months.

Plans are for the birds - A word from Tom

I have not contributed to the blog enough. So this is my attempt to do better. First off I want to say that skiing in Zermatt on the last day of July may have been the highlight of the trip. I dont think this was emphasized enough. I am still considering going back to switzerland before the end of August.

One thing that I have realized in the last week or so is that living out of packs with minimal planning, has really changed the way that I think about cities and distances and just living in general. Waking up in the morning not knowing where you are going to sleep that night has become our routine. And as a result I now feel comfortable in just about every situation we find ourselves in. Tonight we came into the Berlin train station and started to look at Hostel addresses etc. Out of nowhere this old lady came up to Sam and asked us if we wanted to stay in an apartment she rented out. We followed her downtown, while she explained in detail the history of every building and monument we passed. Then she told us all about life in east Germany, how she had been imprisoned for 2 years because of trying to fake a passport out of the country. But how she still sympathizes with and votes for the communist party.
Anyway what I am trying to get at here is that things work out. I think people tend to err on the side of inaction, to avoid risks(I include myself here). But the way things have been working out on this trip, I am more and more convinced that when we act, while there will be setbacks, ultimately things fall into place and we find ourselves with opportunities we would never have anticipated. So stop reading this blog and go outside. Either that or come join us in Berlin.

Another country, another world -- the swiss alps

So we finally made it to Switzerland. A couple months back when we were preparing for this trip, Tom suggested that we hit Switzerland and I told him, "Well, it would be cool, but it's really just another Italy."

I was completely wrong. This place is like no other place I've seen before. We spent our first day or so in a city called Zurmatt, which is in the shadow of the Matterhorn -- you know, the Dysneyland ride. This was a seriously extreme mountain. Tom had decided to go skiing on a glacier and I took a little hike. Pictures would be the best waz to expain. Enjoy...

A midnight train breakdown

No no... our midnight train did not break down. We broke down after taking a midnight train. We left florence at 2 am on our way to Venice. We figured we might as well see venice for the morning on our way up to Switzerland because our train pass is valid for 24 hours once we get going. The train was unexpectedl^y packed and we couldn't lay down to sleep. I ended up sitting in the hallway, and no one else could sleep. We got to venice at 5:45 and made it downtown by 6:30. Venice was silent. NOt a boat in the water (and no cars because there are no roads). We got to a little piazza and I layed down my bags and fell down. I ended up sleeping in that piazza for 6 hours. So much for getting to Swityerland.

Florence

beautiful

Pisa and Livorno

Crazy story - I didn't bring any contact info when we came to italy, so I didn't quite know what to do to get ahold of friends (or to ask for places to stay). SO when we went north, things got a little fuzzy. I had the email adress of a girl in Livorno named Irene. I was able to get ahold of her by email about a week before we got there. SHe gave me her phone number and the number to a couple other people that I couldn't really remember. So me and Tom went up to Livorno without a clue as to where we'd sleep or even if we'd stay there. So when we got off the train, we called irene. She was going to the beach so we arranged to meet. All I knew was the bus I needed to take, but she didn't tell me where they were going to be swimming. We got on the bus and after going all the way accross town, the bus driver stopped the bus, got out and took a lunch break. He just sat there eating a sandwich for 15 minutes, then got on the bus again and we continued on. We eventuall got to the beach (about an hour later).


We got off the bus when we could see the ocean and just started walking along the beach. About 20 seconds into it, I see the back of the head of a friend of mine, Giacomo. I yell, "Giacomo!" and he turns around. Certaily enough it's him, with all the kids from Livorno. We were just going to sleep on the beach, but Giacomo and his brother Willy invited us to sleep on their marble floor. We were so happy to have a place to stay.

In the morning we got up and went to Pisa. In Pisa we saw the Tower. Tom had just finishe Atlas shrugged and will have to tell you all one day about how he left it on the fountain in Piazza Dei Miracoli in the shadow of the tower of Pisa.

Our last day in Rome with Norma

Norma Calabrese came with us on our last day in Rome and showed us around churches we never would have seen without her. She also took us to eat some of the best gelato we've had.

Zingari

I told tom about the Gypsies in Italy, and we went almost a week without seeing any. I thought that that was strange, but then the Bosco family told us that now they dress like tourists. Well, that makes sense. The kid in this picture got on our train in Rome and started up a tape player then got down to some Romanian pop music. Boy could this kid sing (loud). We like the perfoming Gypsies. As the trips progressed we've seen a lot more of them in their traditional garb and such. Today I saw a Gypsey begging at the Cathedral of Florence and a couple of American girls ran up to her and gave her three sacks of food. She sure was happy.

Tom has become obsessed with the gypsies.

Lopezes

The Lopez family was awsome. They let us stay at their house and we had some great times together. Stefano (Itala's boyfriend and a friend of mine from Pescara put us up in Rome and his family let us sleep over for two nights in Pescara).

The Vatican and St. Paolo

Inside the old cathedrals and churches of rome, the light comes in throught the windows, creating great rays of light. It is heavenly to be in the Vatican and see the enormity of this spacious building made so many years ago. And though there are overtones of corruption - especially when you look at the history of the popes that created it- I revere the forgotten peasents who made actually cut the stone and placed it where it is. I am sure those poeple were excited to be part of building a building that would become the new Temple of God - a resurrection of Solomon's. I have no doubt that in the centuries of it's construction, the people that made it felt that they were making a building for God - not just the often times jaded papacy. We really enjoyed visiting the sites where Peter and Paul were burried.

Ode to the piazzas of Italy

I'm starting to understand that one of the big motivations I had to drop everything and bum my way around Europe for a while was the pace of my life. Everything spinning around at 100 miles per hour, you barely have time to breath, much less to think. Well, me and Tom have been cruizing the streets of italy for two weeks now, and it seems like these people have figured out a thing or two about not getting caught up in the velocity of modern living.


First of all, even if an italian wanted to work 24/7, they couldn't because the laws of italy force every store to close for two hours in the middle of the day for lunch. Also, they can't be open until after 8. So, with no option but to go home, everyone takes lunch in the middle of the day and rests.

The next beautiful thing about their way of life are the piazzas. In every city in italy there is a big square where people come down and chat every evening. I don't even remember the name of my next door neighbors growing up, but here neighbors see eachother every evening. Families come down to the streets together and take walks, eat gelatos and spend time together. It truely is a wonderful life.

Pompeii

This was one of the shortest visits to Pompeii in history. We literally got off the train at about sunset, ran to the entrance of the city, somehow avoided the entance fee, and then wandered around in the ruins until we were kicked out. In that same day we spent time in Atrani (woke up in a hostel here), Amalfi, Sorrento, Pompeii, Napoli, and Caserta. There has been a fairly good balance between really intense days like that, and then really relaxed days where we just swim and read and do laundry. But to recap, Pompeii is worth a visit, and a little bit haunting.

Campioni del Mondo

The big news around here is that Italy won the world cup. Our friend Norma Calabrese went to Circus Maximus to see the game and said it was crazy. A bunch of people waited through the night for the team to come back from Germany the next day. There were so many people that some were climbing on the buildings in the Roman Forum to see the spectacle. The police got on the PA system and said, "Please do not get on the ancient ruins, anywhere but there please." They really love their soccer here.

All Roads Lead to Rome, but appearently we took the longest one.

We went from Napoli to Pescara on a train. Vaguly in the back of my mind I remembered someone telling me that you can't take a train from Napoli to Pescara, but that you have to take a bus. I was happy as all get out to find a train (especially to find that it was only 10 Euro. About 2 hours into the train ride, they made us get off and hop on a bus. The bus weaved from small mountain town to small mountain town, until 6 hours after we left. It was expecially exhasting because it came after spending the morning walking a couple miles to see the Palace of Caserta.(below)



There's not much to say about Pescara except that it was nice and relaxing. We stayed with the Bosco family and chilled on the beach. We had some fun talking to cute italian girls in english and asking them for rides to the movies.

Our train to Rome, also about 10 Euro, took us all over italy, stopping at every station in between and got us into rome in the afternoon. We finaly made it back, and now we are stationed in Rome.

The Paradigm Change We've Been Looking For

We took a train to Salerno and a bus to Amalfi. We weren't quite sure what we'd do about accomadations because we are pretty much broke. I walked up to a couple old local men and asked them were I could find some cheap accomodations. They just looked at me and laughed. Eventually they told me that if we walked to the next town over we'd find something cheaper than in Amalfi.

We walked to the next city over which is called Atrani. The whole city consists of a black sand beach, a central piazza and stairs up the sides of the mountains to rural homes. We stayed in a youth hostel called A' Scalatella. It was really nice. A couple of girls we met there said that it was the best place they'd been in all of Europe - and they'd travelled all over.

We did a little bit of hiking through the city - as you can see in my imaginary photos.


We took a boat from Amalfi in the morning. It stopped at POsitano and then continued on to Sorrento. It got super hot between Positano and Sorrento and the captain got on the loud speaker and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we're going to take a 10 minute break so that everyone can jump in the water."

I looked at tom and said, "Did you hear what I heard?"

He looks at me with a huge grin on his face and said, "YES!"

The boat came to a stop and me and tom ripped off our shirts and jumped in off the top deck of the boat. Floating out there in crystal clear bue water I looked at Tom and knew he was thinking the same thing I was - that in jumping off that boat, floating in the water, looking out over ancient waterside cities, we could see what life should be. I still can't articulate what it is I learned, but my whole way of looking at life - especially the speed at which I go from point A to point B - changed. As we walked back up to the top deck, Tom went up the the captain and said, "Grazie Capitano." And the captain looked at him with the look of a benevolent patron, as if to say, "When you are on my ship, you live life like this."


But Tom, was greatful not only for the 10 minute dip in the medditeranean, but for a captain that shifted our paradigm.

Grazie Capitano


These are some cool ladies that we met on the way up the trail. These are cutest girls I've put my arms around on this whole trip.



Here are a few more pictures of our trip to the Amalfi Coast.

Down to Napoli we go.

Napoli is quite the city. We woke up early in Caserta, took a 45 minute train into Napoli, got on the finicular and went up to the downtown naples branch meeting house which is situated right above one of the most crime ridden sections of italy (don't tell mom).




We had fun meeting with the members there. The hightlight of church was that my last companion, Elder Hansen, gave a talk. It was his last sunday in italy and he pointed out the fact that I was there for his first sunday in italy as well. Man it's been a long time. He was actually in Caserta for my very last talk.

We ate lunch with a family I taught and then we stormed the streets of Napoli, watching our backs every step of the way. Below will eventually be some pictures.





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In the above picture, I asked a couple of nuns where Piazza Dante was and they decided to escort us there. They were very nice. Oh, and the skull didn't originally have glasses-- those are Tom's.