Ben Baroncini

fallas is a festival from the 15th to the 19th of march. the festival is apparently semi-religious, dedicated to joseph, the father of Jesus, both carpenters. this tradition dates back to a time when carpenters around valencia would periodically collect all the of the scrap materials from their work, pile it up, and burn it. now they build huge effigies out of wood, styrofoam, and paper machet. the most expensive falla was in excess of 600,000 euros. the themes represented are local and international politicians and celebrities, incredibly un-politically correct and frankly racist themes, and everything inbetween. they all tended to be painted with pastel colors, and often looked like some sort of freakish disneyland characters. every day in the main plaza ajuntamiento, there was a fireworks display at two p.m. called the mascleta. it was ... read more

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Hola, First of all, HAPPY HOLIDAYS to everyone, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Please be sure to check out the first photo in this series, it´s just for you, all of my peeps back home. Hope you´re all enjoying the warm so-cal weather. Here it´s pretty friggin cold, but I have no complaints. Anywho, I´m in Valencia now, but for about a month I was teaching English in a town called (ironically) Alquerias del Niño Perdido. It´s ironic because this translates as Collection of Houses of the Lost Boy. At the time I was feeling pretty lost, so it was appropriate. So I was there, teaching English with several others. In a tiny house, with zero insulation, in the middle of orange groves for as far as the eye could see. We taught mostly in the neighboring ... read more

After Slovenia we headed to Croatia; Zabreb, Split and then Dubrovnik. Only stayed in Zagreb one day, took the night train there, and then another night train to Split. Zagreb was nothing to write home about. Split was beautiful and on the ocean, which was nice to see after being in a landlocked country for so long. Lots of history, ancient ruins and stuff like that. People seemed to be over it, not too happy to see foreigners there, which is strange because Split is a pretty major tourist spot, and they were more than happy to take my money. But the scowl to smile ratio was still much better than prague. Took a ferry from Split to Dubrovnik, Mike got off the ferry at the first stop to get back to Split where he was ... read more

okay, so i just returned for a little sojourn around the general vicinity. it was a lot of fun and stuff. kristin, mike and myself started in vienna. kristen left soon after, mike and i continued on to salzburg, then slovenia, then zagreb and split, mike split to prague from split, i continued on to dubrovnik (croatia), then to sarajevo (bosnia), belgrade (serbia and montenegro), budapest hungary, and back to good ol' prague. it was a lot of fun, lots of beautiful sights and people along the way. i think i'll do three separate installments of pics. starting here with vienna and salzburg. vienna was amazing, very clean, lots of big parks and monuments, everyone was very friendly and happy to talk to us. a huge contrast to prague, which was a nice way to start ... read more