University Building | Place to Escape To |… University Building | Place to Escape To | Place to Study | Place to Hook Up | Place to Break Up | Place to Take a Walk | Place to Take a Nap | Place to Smoke | Residence Hall | Place to Get Arrested | Street to Live On | Hotel for Parents to Stay In | Nationality Room | Museum | Place to Hear Live Music |

Spring Break | Place to Study Abroad

Best University building: Cathedral of Learning

Runner-up: Sennott Square

The only schoolhouse taller than Pitt’s Cathedral is the main building of Moscow State University in the capital of Russia. And they can keep it.

You know what the problem with the Moscow building is? It’s so … vertical. It’s completely practical, and no fun at all.

In the Cathedral, we have dead-end staircases, churchlike learning environments, and at least 30 different national cultures on the first floor alone. The elevators make no sense, sometimes opening on a floor just because it feels like it. Its “collegiate gothic” structure makes it the ideal studying location for either monks or Tim Burton.

Either way, it gets confusing, and that’s why we love it. Silly sensible Russians.

-Michael Mastroianni, Chief Photographer

Best place to escape: Schenley Park

Runner-up: Hillman Library

I can see it from the windows of the Pitt News office, and today it feels impossible to resist.

That seductive, green slope of Flagstaff Hill, tiny figures tumbling down it as they chase their discs and soccer balls. Some are lying still, napping in the broad bands of sunlight. Lucky.

My eyes move to the bristling treetops — some fiery orange, others dark, bare, and serene. Beneath them, the serpentine paths wind through the woods, underneath great stone bridges, to Panther Hollow Lake, where I’ve watched the ducks paddle contentedly across the water and reveled in the fact that I can barely hear the traffic rumbling across the bridge above.

I’m getting fidgety now, knowing I could be wandering down those rustic steps, along the leaf-dusted paths, instead of sitting in front of this computer. I could head off to the thickets where the only signs of civilization are the distant, ochre porch lights shining from the hills, where there’s no homework or cluttered dorm rooms or deadlines or…

I’ve got to get out. I’ll finish this later, if I feel like coming back.

-Michelle Scott, Senior Staff Writer

Best place to study: Hillman Library

Runner Up: Cathedral of Learning

Would you go to a gym full of faulty equipment, insufficient floor mats and free weights, and hope to get a decent workout?

Then why would you study in your dorm room, with your television, your Xbox and your all-too-comfy mattress?

I don’t care how studious you feel when you plunk down on your bed to do your textbook reading; throwing pillows into the mix means you’ll be face down and drooling into the book by page 5.

It’s time to stop kidding yourself and get down to Hillman Library.

I’m talking five floors holding approximately 1.5 million books and 122 computers — PCs and Macs. There are comfy couches if you need to get cozy and spacious wood tables and straight-backed chairs if you believe in “no pain, no gain.” It’s got humming fluorescent lights and the chatter of other hard-working students to keep you motivated. There’s even a Starbucks in the Cup and Chaucer on the ground floor to hook you up with the caffeine you need to write and cram like there’s no tomorrow.

Hillman Library — helping Pitt students get their QPAs in shape since 1968.

-Michelle Scott, Senior Staff Writer

Best place to hook up: Hillman Library

Runner-up: Cathedral of Learning

Somewhere, some Pitt student is looking for affection. Chances are that the student also takes classes and, from time to time, might venture into Hillman Library.

Or, as most people know it, the Library of Love.

The facts are simple. Many college students like to hook up. Many college students also require books. Thanks to the library, students can both hook up and get books, all in one easy trip. Only a fool would go somewhere else to hook up, only to realize the next day that — egads! — she has no books.

Don’t be a fool. Go to the library. Come home happy — and well-read.

-J. Elizabeth Strohm, News Editor

Best place to break up: Towers Lobby

Runner-up: Over the phone

1. Whatever your style is — “it’s not you, it’s me” or “let’s just be friends” — you can escape without your new ex chasing you. That is, unless you dated someone you met in the dorm.

2. If you’re silly enough to go back to him/her, signing him/her in gives you a moment of pause. The stark bureaucracy of putting the name on the security log makes you think “What am I doing?” and gives you a chance to come to your senses. That is, unless you dated someone you met in the dorm.

What have we learned? Be practical, not romantic, and meet people outside of your tower. You’ll thank yourself when it’s over.

-Michael Mastroianni, Chief Photographer

Best place to take a walk: Schenley Park

Ever feel like you need a vacation from the city? Can’t seem to get the sounds of helicopters and traffic jams out of your head? Thankfully, as most Pitt students know, “vacation” is only a five-minute walk away, in Schenley Park.

The 465-acre park offers almost everything imaginable for a non-city trip. You can go swimming, play some tennis, putt around on the mini-golf courses, catch a movie on Flagstaff Hill, visit the exotic plants at Phipps Conservatory, take your mountain bike out for a romp, or go ice skating in the winter.

This park has what college students need to get active, enjoy the outdoors, and just plain unwind. In warmer months, you’ll find Schenley full of

Runners, walkers, sunbathers, Frisbee-throwers, etc.

It’s like a little country getaway in the middle of a concrete paradise.

-Erin Lawley, Assistant A’E Editor

Best place to nap: Your bedroom

Runner-up: Cathedral Lawn

It’s 2 p.m., and your morning class is still hanging on your sleepy shoulders. You’re dragging your feet, searching for a safe spot to curl up and catch an afternoon sleep. While any reasonably level, not-trod-upon surface will do, nothing can compare to your bedroom.

Any bed can offer a haven for the naptime-craving student, but truly enterprising nappers know how to transform their beds into caves of blissful, daytime sleep. Bottom-bunkers have a decided advantage, needing only to hang sheets from their top-bunk-mates’ beds to form impenetrable walls of snooze silence. Top-bunkers may require thumbtacks or super glue, while single-bedders will need more creative solutions.

But whatever your level of commitment to napping, the college bedroom is the place to do it.

-J. Elizabeth Strohm, News Editor

Best place to smoke: The Ashtray

Runner-up: Outside

The paved patio between Litchfield Towers and the Quad isn’t named the Ashtray for nothing. This 24-hour smoke-athon, strewn with matches, butts and empty packs, features a few college staples: students strumming guitars, eating lunch or just standing around, looking disaffected, taking drags off their cancer sticks. All in all, a good time, even if the only cigarettes you smoke are the candy kind.

-Sydney Bergman, Opinions Editor

Best residence hall: Pennsylvania Hall

Runner-up: Sutherland

Out with the old, in with the new. Pennsylvania Hall, Pitt’s youngest residence hall, completed a swift rise to power in its inaugural year, knocking off last year’s winner, McCormick Hall, and wowing residents with comfort and convenience. Pennsylvania Hall’s 420 residences are privy to a fitness center, basic cable and air-conditioning, not to mention the bragging rights that come with being the first students ever to live in this residence hall.

Sutherland’s little sister on the hill also houses an Honors College Living Learning Community for upperclassmen. Rooms are divided into four-person suites and doubles with private baths. If you don’t mind the hike to the upper campus, Pennsylvania Hall can open up a world of possibilities to you, or at least a residence hall of possibilities.

-Adam Fleming, Managing Editor

Best place to get arrested: Towers Lobby

It’s been a long voyage, filled with challenges and adversity, but you’ve finally done it. You’ve gotten home.

Back to the safe haven of Litchfield; back to the place where there are warm blankets and community bathrooms — and, speaking of it, wouldn’t one of those be really helpful right now? Because the eight gallons of whatever was coming out of that keg just aren’t sitting well in your underage stomach, and the gleaming expanse of the lobby is lilting horribly, like you might fall off.

But onward! To the desk, where you remember, with horror, that you need to swipe your ID to get back to home — and back to the much-needed porcelain idol. And your ID is elusive, oh so elusive and slippery. Still, you persist and, at long last, you’ve got it, brandishing it triumphantly to the security guard, who’s just shaking her head and looking sad.

You go up to claim your victory, to force the hated card through the slot, but then you realize it’s too late. The eight gallons of something-ice aren’t staying put, aren’t cooperating. There is unrest, and up and out the riot comes, and you are powerless to stop it.

Oh, no, now what can you do? Who will clean that up? It can’t be your job, can it? Surely Pitt pays someone to clean that up.

And here comes a nice man in blue to tell you that, while it may be someone else’s job to clean up the eight gallons of ugly, it is your job not to put them there, and, by the way, do you have any identification?

Your last image before looking sheepishly up at the nice, towering police officer, is that of the security guard, still shaking her head and looking sad.

-Greg Heller-LaBelle, Editor in Chief

Best street to live on: Atwood

Runner-up: Meyran

Atwood Street is a mix of the best parts of college life. Who wouldn’t want to have an address near two Mexican restaurants, Indian food, the cheapest pizza in Oakland and ice cream that is nationally renowned? The bars at Spice Cafe, Mad Mex and the Oakland Cafe are within stumbling distance of your bed. Also voted the best street to party on, you never have to wander far to find weekend debauchery and the wildest house parties in the city.

-Laura Thomas, Photo Editor

Best hotel for parents to stay in: Holiday Inn Express

Runner-up: Wyndham Garden

It’s close to campus. In fact, it’s even less than walking distance, less than a block away from the Cathedral of Learning.

It’s opulent, yet understated, as it’s the size of a roadside hotel somehow shoved in the middle of Oakland.

If you’re worried about getting some sort of disease from the pool at Trees Hall, Holiday Inn’s pool is always clean and inviting.

And, of course, if your roommate is bothering you, and you’re out of toiletries, you can always ask the folks to come by. Nothing improves your semester like a quick break nearby, resulting in free stolen soap.

-Michael Mastroianni, Chief Photographer

Best Nationality classroom: Italian

Runner-up: German

With the understated dignity of early Renaissance, the dark wood benches and the frosted windows gazing onto the patio of the Stephen Foster Memorial, the Italian classroom is the best place for a Cathedral class, until you get kicked out for bringing drinks in.

The wall painting, reminiscent of those Venetian painters you can’t pronounce, makes your spirit drift from the reality of a boring lecture. The view is suitable for people-watching, despite the warped glass. Although not the most comfortable seats, they are still nice enough to let your cares float away, until everyone leaving the class wakes you up.

-Michael Mastroianni, Chief Photographer

Best museum: Carnegie

Runner-up: Warhol

The Carnegie Museum complex, practically on Pitt’s campus and free with a Pitt ID, makes for a great, super-cheap dating destination or just a good place just to chill and contemplate the ebb and flow of history. Between the rocking modern art collection — and sometimes a blue square on canvas is art — and the crawl-through-a-tomb Egyptian exhibit, the Carnegie gives the spoils of venture capitalism a good name.

-Sydney Bergman, Opinions Editor

Best places to see music: Bigelow Boulevard

Runner-up: Club Laga/The Attic

What do Queens of the Stone Age, the Wailers and Pittsburgh favorites the Clarks have in common? They’ve all played on Bigelow Boulevard for enthusiastic crowds of Pitt students. Though these concerts, organized by Pitt Program Council as part of Fall Fest or Bigelow Bash, are sometimes cursed by foul weather, the true fans come anyway. Bringing in big-name bands for students who, being on ramen-and-Pabst budgets, couldn’t afford to see them otherwise, PPC lets Pitt rock out, if only for a little while. Plus, what’s better than hearing the Cathedral’s windows rattle as Queens plays “Feel Good Hit of the Summer?” Nothing? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

-Sydney Bergman, Opinions Editor

Best spring break: Cancun, Mexico

Runner-up: Florida

Cancun, Mexico, has some of the most beautiful white, sandy beaches and crystal waters in the world. There you can enjoy a relaxing vacation in the sun, sipping daquiris, with the occasional venture into parasailing, diving, snorkeling, waterskiing or deep-sea fishing to break up the rhythm of perfecting an even tan.

Or you can enjoy the tequila shots, jampacked clubs, celebrity sightings and all-around nonstop party atmosphere that take over the city during spring break, when hundreds of college students flock to the area to forget their studies and just go wild. Fat Tuesdays, Margaritaville, Senor Frogs and the “Booze Cruise” are just a few of the Cancun party favorites.

Remember, don’t drink the water. But do take advantage of the competing vacation packages being offered by various travel agencies — many include water sports, free meals and, more importantly, free drinks.

-Erin Lawley, Assistant A’E Editor

Best place to study abroad: Australia

Runners-up: Italy and London

G’day, mate. Here’s a grocery list of Australian stereotypes to get you riled up for studying there. They’ve got big crocs, big enough to bite your hand whole off at the watch. Blimey! And, crikey, look at those kangaroos. They can hop as fast as that bloke that stole my didgeridoo last Boxing Day. When you head down under, make sure to catch a cricket match over a pint of Foster’s.

Aussies love to party. They love good times, good mates and good times. Try surfing the Great Barrier Reef while you’re there. Or partake in a spirited bout of koala wrestling. But be careful — those critters are fierce little buggers. Keep your head, be ever mindful of your checkbook while traversing the Queen’s lost colony, and, above all else, learn the lingo. Australians can spot an outsider at the drop of a hat. If you’re cornered, remember these words: “The dingo ate your baby.” It’s a continental cure-all for any trouble you might find yourself in.

For actual information on studying abroad in Australia, visit www.AustraLearn.org, a non-profit organization that coordinates programs in Australia and New Zealand with 22 major universities.

-Adam Fleming, Managing Editor