Europe - 2005
The daily experiences and ramblings of an international traveller
Tuesday, June 2
8 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
10:00 Local
We just got back from reserving tickets for our train ride to Paris. The fast tr
ain was full, so we’re taking a slow train to Brussels where we will switch to a fast train for the remainder of the trip.
Last night we went out to 
a few bars, including an impressive Jazz club called
Alto
. We went with Holly and Jess, two girls from Seattle who are our roommates, and Dave from Detroit who is a music student studying abroad. He’s been here a few times, and is in his second week on this trip, so it was like having a tour guide show us around. We hung out at the Flying Pig Palace’s hostel bar before, for happy hour, and after.
Lesson for the day: Beware of Bikes! Justin almost got hit half a dozen times, and I nearly got nailed a
few myself. There are specific bike lanes that look suspiciously like sidewalks, and everyone drives all crazy. There are bike lanes, car lanes, tram lanes and bus lanes (which sometimes are on the tram lanes). You have to look both ways about 20 times to safely cross the road. It is all very complicated.
I miss my Nikki already. I hope to get to make some phone calls later.
16:00 Local
We just got back from wandering around and visiting the Anne Frank House, which was surprisingly interesting since I haven’t read her diary. I was able to get a few amazing pictures around town, including one for the “opticien,” which Dad will like. I didn’t know Apple had a store in Amsterdam, but we happened to stumble upon it and some 5 story high iPod advertisements.
I think we’re going on a tour of the Heineken brewery shortly. It’s supposed to be pretty interesting. We’ll probably try to make it to the Red Light District tonight with our “guide” Dave, who we’re meeting at the hostel’s bar later tonight.
My feet hurt. Bad. I don’t have any blisters, just lots of pain. The shower stuff Nikki and I devised works great, and my micro-fiber towel dried in about 45 minutes today. There are too
many bags for all the liquidy stuff though, it takes about 15 minutes just to get everything ready for shower-time.
20:00 Local
Just got back from getting semi-lost on the way to the Heineken brewery. We found out they stopped letting people in at 17:00 when it was about 16:45. Without proper preparation, we ended up off the edge of our free, hostel-supplied “map.” We made it there in about an hour and a half later. My feet now have swollen to what seems like twice their normal size, and are quite hurty. I think I managed to avoid blisters, though.
A word of advice to those around us: we don’t know anything! We’re lucky we know what time it is (24 hour clocks here), let alone how to get to “liedersplatcherstan” or whatever it was you just said. I don’t know if people just ask for direction more often here, or if we look friendly, or what. In any case, you should seriously consider asking someone else.
I got to talk to my Nikki earlier. She was happy to hear from me.
More good pictures today. I’ve got about 4 or 5 real good ones so far. Very exciting.
We’re probably going to head out to the Red Light District tonight. We hear it’s pretty interesting. Holly went to a “sex show” last night that was apparently pretty tame. There are prostitutes in the windows like mannequins, though. It’s a long way from our hostel, so I hope my feet can hold out.
We’re going to try to hit the brewery tomorrow morning, but it’s going to be tight as our train leaves at 12:30 and the museum opens at 10:00. The tram is on strike tomorrow, so we’re going to have to take a taxi (very expensive) or something to 
the train station. In fact, everything is expensive. Justin’s almost out of Euros. We hope other places are cheaper, as this trip will get expensive fast otherwise. Especially since I have to find an American Express service center to get more money. Good thing I brought those checks! I still have about 70 Euros left, so somehow I’m doing better.
Oh well, time for a little nap!
Wednesday, June 29 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
to Brussels, Belgium, to Paris, France
12:23 Local
After some confusion at the train station, we’re finally on the way. Due to the train strike around Amsterdam, we had to take a Mercedes cab to Centraal Station. We found this train is a regular train (not a high-speed), and we meet the high-speed in Brussels. We have reservations on that train, but not this one, so it confused the people trying to help us. We should be good now.
We went to the Red Light District last night. It was definitely... interesting. It is a series of streets in the area around Centraal Station. You walk around a bunch of windows with neon or otherwise red lights, and can “choose” one of the prostitutes sitting in them. They would just pull the curtain closed when someone 
went in. Sex shops line the streets. You’d never see anything like this in America. Unfortunately, it was all very creepy. Not very comfortable there. We got approached be Coke dealers about 30 times during the 45 or so minutes we were in the area. I’m glad we went, but it’s not somewhere I’d want to see again.
Justin wants to cut Paris short so we can spend more time in Cinque Terre, which we’ve heard is amazing. That involves moving our Nice hostel up a night, but we have been unable to get a hold of them. Cinque Terre to Rome is 7 hours, so it can’t possibly be done in a day as we had originally planned. We’re trying to figure something out, but it doesn’t look too good. None of the options are optimal. We’ll see...
... Just got stopped by the conductor and had to show our tickets. We don’t have to show our Passports on the first day of our EurRail Pass’s validity. Strange.
I’m a little worried about the train switch in Brussels. There are assigned seats and such and I have no idea what the ticket says because it is all in Dutch. Maybe I’ll check my little translation book a little later. Hopefully it’ll help a bit.
17:00 Local
We managed to make it to the train OK. I don’t know what language they speak here, but I had no idea what anyone was saying. Our tickets were in “Nederlands,” which is either what they call Dutch in the Netherlands, or is a specific dialect of it [Note: “Het Nederlands” is another name for the Dutch language]. Anyway, no one else knew what it said either. Once we found the train, we couldn’t figure out where our seats were. We knew we were in seats 93 and 94, but not what car. We guessed 5 because there was a 5 in some random location on the ticket. I suppose the guess was correct because the conductor came by and didn’t kick us out of our seats.
This train is really moving. We paced a highway awhile back and the cars were practically sitting still Probably 120 MPH I’d guess [Note: The Thayls TG
V train we rode had a top speed of 180 MPH]. We’re coming into the Paris North Station, so we need to figure out how to get to the hostel from there. Supposedly it’s off the Metro line 12. That should be interesting. Hopefully we can track it down somehow.
The train is slowing, we must be getting close.
Thursday, June 30th - Paris, France
18:00 Local
It’s been pretty eventful sine the last writing. We found our way to the hostel/hotel from Paris Nord, which I recognized from tons of movies. We decided to walk to the hostel since it looked so close on the map. It hadn’t yet come to my mind that Paris is a huge city. It took us an hour to make the trek. We walked through a cool part of town, though, it was some sort of shopping district. The hostel is on a cute little street on Mont Martre, the home of Moulin Rouge. I’ll have to take some pictures.
We learned to ride the Metro today, which was surprisingly easy and fast. We got a 2 day pass, which was a great idea. We also got a 1 day Museum Pass that let us skip the lines at the Louvre and Museé d’Orsay. The Louvre was cool, but I wasn’t all that impressed except
for the “Large Format Works” room that housed multi-story paintings. I found a painting by Vuillard from 1932 that looks a lot like Mom sitting on a bed with a Shih-Tzu. They didn’t have a print. Maybe I can find one online... which has been broken in the hostel all day.
We got our reservations for the night train to Nice today. Pretty decent price, although we’ve heard stories of robbers gassing passengers and stealing their stuff. Sounds a little far-fetched, but you never know.
I ordered my first full meal in a foreign language today. I was excited. I got some chicken dish with fries and a Sprite at one of the food places in the mall attached to the Louvre. I know, it sounds like what I had for dinner yesterday, but it was different. I’m sure the pronunciation was off, but they knew what I meant... and it appeared that he gave me a better piece of chicken that the one he would have otherwise. Cool!
I took some awesome pictures today. I can’t wait to have them developed. I think we’re going to visit the Arc de Triumphe and the Tour Eiffel tonight. Tomorrow is the Cathédral de Notre Dame and something else... the Panthéon, perhaps. I hope to get back to see the cathedral on Mont Martre tonight as well. We’re going to hit a McDonald’s tomorrow to see if a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is really called a Royale with Cheese like they claimed in the movie Pulp Fiction.
I was able to talk to everyone yesterday, which was fun. I was going to answer some emails now, but I’m so tired. I need a nap as the room was about 100 degrees last night and I couldn’t sleep. G’Night.
Friday , July 1st - Paris, France to Nice, France
21:20 Local
Today we hit the remaining site on our list, the Cathédral de Notre Dame. I liked the Flying Buttresses. They’re my favorite architectural element. Yesterday we finished up the night with the Arc and the Eiffel tower, but unfortunately it rained when we were on top of the Arc and couldn’t really take any pictures. I tried, but the camera started getting wet so I h
ad to stop. It stopped raining by the time we got to the tower, so we got to take some great shots of it all lit up. It twinkles on the hour. I took a movie of it with the camera. We ate at a little créperie off the main drag near the Arc. Justin ordered for me for some reason, and the crépe I got was full of some yucky cheese that I didn’t want.
We’re now sleeping in our couchette on the night train to Nice. It’s pretty crazy. 6 beds in a little closet-like thing. I hope I can sleep on a train.
I got Nikki the cutest shirt today. I saw it on the way in when we were carrying our huge packs. The lady was very cute and asked what size she was. She said it should fit fine [Note: And also tried to steal $120 from me by swiping my card, saying it didn’t work, and then asking me to pay in cash. Charge dispute with MasterCard in progress]. It took us an hour to find the place again, but I had to have this shirt because it made me think of her. I haven’t even given it to her yet but it makes me feel better to hold it since it is hers. I miss her. I wish she was here.
I tried calling Nikki and Dad today but I didn’t have any luck. I hope Nikki’s thing went well. I sat down hard in the train station earlier and saw a bunch of white sparkles in my vision for about 5 seconds. I’m worried I hurt them. I don’t know what I’d do. I think that’s the first sign of a detached retina. I guess I’ll have to see if my vision changes. It looks fine for now.
I got money from the AmEx place today, but they wouldn’t take a check like the website said they would. They did a “sideways withdrawal” or something like that. She said it wasn’t a cash advance. I wrote an email to Dat to have him check on it for me anyway.
It’s hard to believe its only been a few days since we flew in. It seems like so much longer. I wish we could have stayed the original amount of time in Paris. Amsterdam was a waste of time in comparison. Amsterdam was great, but it was basically a typical US city. Paris seemed different. Special. I’ll definitely have to work on my French for next time. I know enough to know what is going on, but not enough to understand people very well. It is frustrating.
I had a baguette sandwich with ham for dinner. It was amazing. Almost ordered a second one.
P.S. A Quarter Pounder really is a Royale with Cheese. And the combo meals are “Best of” meals. It was more crowded in there than I figured it’d be. Who knew?
Saturday, July 2nd - Nice, France
18:00 Local
Today we wandered around Nice for hours. There is major construction underway and we couldn’t find the bus we needed to get on, so we had to take a 
taxi, which sucked. Then Justin wanted to visit sandy beaches instead of the rocky ones found in the region, so we had to hop a 40 minute train ride west to Cannes (of Film Festival fame). We sat on the beach for a little while and came back. Nothing much exciting going on. We again couldn’t find the bus, so we took about a 2 hour walk in our sandals because, even after we found the correct bus stop, he didn’t want to get on it since we had been walking so long. Then, we found that our train to Cinque Terre requires a reservation, which involves another trip back into this crappy city. It’s been a wonderful day.. I had some baguette for lunch/dinner, which was pretty much the highlight of the day.
Dad wrote to say the stupid AmEx people did do a cash advance despite what they had told me at the time. Nikki missed my call because she was taking a CPR class. I hope I didn’t mess her up [Note: I didn’t]. She passed, so that’s good.
It’s really hot here. I don’t know an exact temp, but I’m very hot. And I just got out of the cold shower!
I found a bad cut on my foot where it much have been rubbing my shoe, so I used all the stuff Nikki sent for me on it. It was all red, so I hope it’s not infected.
Our place is pretty neat, but far away from the city. It has a bar and computers. Drinks are pretty cheap, about 1 Euro, but the water I got earlier was warm. It came with me on the hike to/from the beach. We’ll probably stick around here tonight. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about our reservations. I hope we can get one, because we have an expensive hotel room to make it to!
23:30 Local
This place sucks big time. We finally figure out how the bus system works. We had such a bad day, we decided to eat at McDonald’s again. We got on the right bus, which unfortunately shut down for the night while we were on it, forcing everyone to get off and stranding us in the middle of nowhere. It was getting dark, and was not the greatest part of town. We used my compass to walk in the general direction of a landmark the hostel told us to try to get to after we called them. After about 90 minutes, we were able to find a taxi who would take us back to the hostel. I did trick him into thinking I knew French, which was sorta cool. We made it back eventually. Stupid construction.
I got a blister between my two pinky toes on my right foot today from my sandals. I fixed the same thing once before with a bunch of Neosporin, so I used some on it this time as well. I should buy Neosporin stock. Hopefully it is healed by morning like it was the last time it happened.
I just found out Mom has a serious kidney infection she didn’t tell me about because she didn’t want me worrying about her. Jess said she refused to go to the hospital even though she was bleeding. I hope she’s OK.
I found out that this hostel used to be a monastery, so that’s pretty neat. 
It’s not every day that you get to sleep in an old monastery.
I came back today to find a 7th person in our 6 person room. She was pretty nice. I guess she was traveling by herself and the office was switching her around among a bunch of rooms almost daily. Supposedly a party of 20 for 10 days cancelled and screwed their reservation system all up.. I kinda feel bad for her having to move around so much, because you have to check out of your room every morning when they do that. That wouldn’t be fun.
I’m all dirty again after my nice shower because of the bus incident. Stupid Nice.
Sunday, July 3rd - Nice, France to Genova, Italy
14:00 Local
We just hopped on our train to Genova, where we will grab a local train to take us to Cinque Terre. We met a group of 4 guys from New York (Denison University) who were taking the same train out of Nice, so we stuck together all morning. They’re in the next car down, but are staying in the farthest south city while we’re in Montarossa, the farthest north. We’re in a car similar to that in Eurotrip, only there are seat dividers. 6 people fit in each compartment but we only have a girl reading “The DaVinci Code” with us in here at the moment. I wonder how many American novels get translated like that. I wouldn’t guess too many.
I think we have finalized the remainder of the trip. We’re going to spend the extra day around Germany in Munich so we can take a day trip to Neuschwanstein. It is the castle that inspired the Disney Sleeping Beauty castle. It looks pretty interesting from the pictures.
Nikki says Mom is doing alright, so that’s good. I haven’t heard anything from Jess yet, but I assume she’ll stay the same. I’m thinking she might like a shirt from Italy, so I’ll look for something her style when I’m finding that skirt Nikki really wanted. I don’t know what to get Mom. Grandma and Grandpa Nemeth would like something from Prague, I would imagine. I should have gotten the Johnsons something in Amsterdam. Crap. Maybe I could frame one of the pictures I took if they come out OK. I wish I had gotten one of the Eiffel tower during the day. Oh well.
The website has been practically impossible to update since the computers we have access to suck and can’t read the site’s format. And none have USB ports, so I can’t put my photos on my flash drive. I might ask someone with a laptop along the way to do it for me. I’m almost through the first card, and I imagine I’ll be taking a ton tomorrow if it is as cool as everyone says.
We’re already in Italy. The water is really blue, and there are to
ns of little cities build into the sides of cliffs. It’s pretty neat.
I don’t think our hotel in Cinque Terre is going to have internet, so I’ll probably try to call everyone tonight since we’re just planning on sitting around. Hopefully it’s at least a little relaxing. I think it even has satellite TV, so it’s fairly high-tech.
The Black Eyed Peas are really big over here right now. We hear the “Let’s get Retarded” song constantly. Surprisingly, very little music we hear playing in the stores and around town is in the area’s native language. It seems like they’d have their own music and such. And even when it is in their language, a lot of it is simply translated English songs.
Monday, July 4th - Cinque Terra to La Spezia, Italy to Rome, Italy
19:00 Local
We’ve been pretty busy the past day. Our hotel in Cinque Terra was very nice. It had a sweet balcony, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and internet for 1 Euro per 10 minutes. I got a bunch of pictures from the balcony.
This morning we took the 5km hike between the 5 cit
ies. We started in Monterossa, where our hotel was, and continued through Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. It says everywhere that the trip takes 5 hours, but only a super-person could make it that fast. We had to skip 1 of the four passes because it was steep and closed, and we barely looked at the last 2 towns. It took us 5 and a half hours for that. I had an amazing rosemary pizza bread thing with no cheese or sauce that was really good. The views were amazing. I easily took 2 dozen frame-quality shots. I’m going to have to find some sort of cool
collage frame. I’m going to have an expensive film-development bill. Last night went pretty well. We found our train to Montarrosa after some difficulty. We learned our lesson in Nice that 3 does not equal 3N, so we didn’t think terminal 1 was actually 1S. The trains in Italy are far dirtier and less efficient than those in France. Our train bound for Rome was 40 minutes late, and super-dirty. Maybe the whole country is submerged in a big dust-ball, I don’t know. Every city so far has made me long for the reliability and consistency of the Paris Metro. It didn’t seem all that great at the time, but comparatively speaking, it is quite excellent.
We probably drank 4 quarts of water each on our hike, and still haven’t gone to the bathroom we were sweating so much. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been had it actually been hot out today.
Anyway, back to last night. We went to a little sidewalk café that was very very good. We got a bottle of wine that the non-Enlish-speaking waiter recommended. For dinner, I had the “spaghetti with garlic, oil, and hot peppers.” It was probably the best pasta dish I had ever had. It was very hot though, and burned my mouth a bit. The wind didn’t help a whole lot. Apparently, there was a “cover charge” to sit down, and I noticed several “service free” type signs at other restaurants. It must be fairly common here. After dinner we went over the the geleteria (Ice cream parlor), but they didn’t have strawberry (well they did, but it was all gone), so I didn’t get any. I’ll get some in Rome. After that I got to talk to Nikki for a few minutes, but the connection was bad since she was on the lake with her Dad. I was going to call Dad, but I forgot. It was nice sleeping in a room for just two people. I slept pretty well, especially since I was right under the (very poor) air conditioner. There were towels and everything for us to use, which was a nice change.
When we got back from our hike we were covered in dirt. Since we had already checked out of the room we didn’t have anywhere to shower or anything. Surprisingly, the hotel had a shower in the lobby bathroom that they said we could use. So we took quick showers and used the internet computers to transfer pictures from my nearly full 2nd memory card, and my completely full 1st card. I’ve taken about 240 pictures so far, and Justin a little less. We’ll have plenty of photos.
We ran into the 4 guys we met in Nice on the trail in Cinque Terre, and again on the train from Monterrosa to La Spezia. They’ll be in Rome in a few days, so we may see them again yet. They didn’t have a place to stay yet, so we told them the name of our hostel so they may try to stay there as well.
We also met a teacher from North Canton Hoover while on the trail. We talked a bit about Canton, and my poor (HA!) decision to go to Jackson instead of, presumably, one of the city sc
hools. They took a pretty good photo of us overlooking Monterrosa by about 800 ft. Anyway, she said she’s good friends with Woodsie, our old Physics teacher. I told her he was pretty much the reason I chose Engineering, so she was going to see if he remembers me. Pretty cool.
I guess Woodsie is out in California for the summer because he won a Teacher of the Year award from Disney. He definitely deserves it.
Her husband asked us to take a picture of them, so I got to use his nice Canon EOS Rebel. He said he was ready for a beer and that him and the man in the green suit were beginning to be good friends. That didn’t make any sense until we hit the next town and saw someone holding a beer with a picture of a man in a green suit on the label.
We won’t be back in Rome until late. We had hope to do something for the 4th of July. Maybe the hostel has a bar.
Thursday, July 7th - Rome to Venice, Italy
11:00 Local
We’ve been really busy and tired the past few days so I haven’t gotten to say anything since we’ve either been out in the heat or napping.
Our first night in Rome we got into Roma Termini really late, about 24:00. We had missed most of the 4th of July celebration due to the stupid train, so we just went down and had a few “Green Suit” men in the hostel’s bar. We met our roommate when we went back to the room, who wanted to drink a bunch of this lemon liquor stuff. It was awful. She had just gotten back from the hospital with someone she met in the hostel who they said had a blood clot from the flight over and had her foot swell up real big. Rosalie’s an engineer as well, working at CAT in Peoria, Illinois.
The next day we went on a tour of the ancient city that was organized by the hostel. Apparently it was an “illegal” tour, since tour guides have to be licensed to take people through the forum. She said she couldn’t point or anything or
risk being arrested. We learned about floating green doors and the burial place of Caesar. It was pretty neat.
When we got back to the room we found a note from Rosalie wondering if we wanted to go to dinner. Right after that, our other roommate showed up. He was from Colorado, and was supposed to be on his way to Venice, but he had gone on a pub crawl the night before and lost his camera. He was going to go around that night and try to find it, but he didn’t have any luck. He had been traveling for about 3 weeks, and lost everything. We offered to send him our pictures since we went to a lot of the same spots. We exchanged emails so we can get in touch with him once we get back. Once Rosalie got back we went to dinner at this place she had gone a few nights before. It was a little sidewalk place with a hilarious waiter who was teaching us Italian. I had a different kind of spaghetti as the “first dish”, and a quarter chicken and potatoes as the “second dish.” Each one was the size of a normal meal, it was crazy. We got a liter of wine as well, and ended up sitting there for about 3 hours. Rosalie spoke some Italian, so we did OK.
There was a group of 3 American girls at the table behind us that were approached by some Italian business-type guy in a suit, who left shortly after and returned with 2 friends. They were all much older than the girls, which was funny. Supposedly American girls have a reputation for being easy because of all of our college-type movies that make it over here.
After dinner we walked around the area a bit and headed back to the hostel bar where Rosalie met a guy whose Dad works at her plant in Peoria. She went to check on the hospital friend and we went back to the room after Justin attempted conversation with some English girls.
Rosalie left for Sonoma, Kurt for Venice, so we didn’t see them again. We had to switch rooms, so we put our bags in the hostel’s bag room while we went to Vatican City. We couldn’t go to the Sistine Chapel because it was closed, which was disappointing. We got to see everything else, though. I got Grandma and Grandpa Nemeth a rosary from the Vatican that is pretty neat. I hope they like it. I also got Jess a Ciao Ciao Coca-Cola shirt I think she’ll like. I also found an optometrist shop to take a picture of. Hopefully I can find opticals in Munich and Prague also. That would be cool. I haven’t found anything for Mom yet.
That afternoon we met our new roommates, Jack and Cass, who were from the South coast of England. His accent was very much like Australian, which he even mentioned. Hers was the typical “posh”
(their term) London accent. We went down to the hostel bar for the free pizza at 19:30, which was the craziest thing I have ever seen. They just dumped a pile of it onto the table for everyone to dive at. They also had 2 Euro Amstel pints, which were obviously very good. We stayed there and talked for awhile, finding that Jack was paying for his trip by selling Viagra, which was interesting. Cass said he was a friend of a friend, and that they didn’t really know each other. We left the hostel in search of a British pub, but we never did find one. We ended up sitting at a little sidewalk café/bar somewhere in Rome, not really sure where. There was a concert going on down the street so we went to check it out. It was a Dave Matthews-like band playing stuff in Italian. We stuck around for awhile, then went back to our little bar. After talking about Religion (we were in Rome, after all), TV, and fast food, we made ourselves hungry so we tried to find something to eat. Unfortunately, everything in Rome closes early, so we couldn’t fin anything. We just took a taxi back to the hostel and went to bed.
This morning we said goodbye to Cass and Jack and headed over to Termini to catch our train. The train itself is a little nicer this time, perhaps because it is high-speed part of the way. The Italian countryside here is very pretty. Farms and mountains, dotted with unique little houses.
My bag is getting pretty full with the few extra gifts and such I’ve picked up. It is pretty hard to get closed. Hopefully I don’t see too much more stuff to buy. I may have to get a third bag and check my big bag and my day-pack together.
Friday, July 8th - Venice, Italy to Munich, Germany
13:20 Local
We found our stay for the night yesterday. We had to walk over the canals in Venice to find the shuttle bus to take us to the “camping village.” We definately had to sleep in a tent. It was pretty interesting. The place itself was pretty neat. It had a surprisingly active bar and dance floor, a room full of internet computers, a market, and a little restaurant. It was about 20 minutes outside of Venice, so we had to take th
e shuttle again to get back into town, which cost 3.50 Euros. What a scam. We found a bunch of cool shops selling Venetian glass, so I rounded out my shopping list by picking up matching blue crystal heart pendant necklaces for Nikki and Roxanne, and a clear crystal pearl-type necklace for Mom. I think they’ll like them.
We ate at a little sidewalk café along a canal where I got 4 formaggio (cheese) pizza. You can get away with that in the States, but not in Italy. It was pretty bad. We hadn’t heard, but there had been a bombing in 4 London subway stations and a double-decker bus earlier that morning. We picked up a USA Today for the train ride to see what happened. We called home as soon as we found out to let everyone know we were OK, which we obviously were since we’re nowhere near London. I wonder how Jack and Cass took the news.
We’re now on a train from Venice to Munich with two girls from New York and San Diego. The train ride is about 7 hours long, so we have plenty of time to sit here and do nothing.
Travel back into the States should be interesting because of this bombing. The paper said the US is locking down the mass transit systems, and we have to go through customs at JFK in New York. With all the countries we’ve visited, it is unlikely they will let us go unsearched. I just hope they can get it all back in there when they are done.
Our hostel in Munich is supposedly about a 10 minute walk from the train station, so we don’t have to worry about any public transportation besides this train. The same can’t be said for our place in Prague, which requires us to take 2 separate metros. And we have to change our money into whatever they use [Note: The Czech Koruny, or “Crown”]. We’re only staying one night in Berlin, so it is basically just a rest stop before our flight home.
We just pulled into Verona, which is the setting for Romeo & Juliet. It doesn’t look like much, though I supposed that is to be expected from a medieval village.
I just read in the paper that the people who bombed London threatened an attack on Italy as well. Hopefully we make it to Germany soon. Nobody hates Germany.
I’ve never seen a transition between two countries to distinct and abrupt. We’ve been traversing mountains for the past few hours, but as soon as we crossed into Austria the architecture quickly changed. Everything is much greener, and they have these cool-looking evergreen-like trees where the needles on the branches hang straight down. It is sort of like the “weeping willow” of evergreens. Everything looks newer and cleaner. Italy was so dirty it just makes the transition that much more apparent. It’s too dark to take pictures, which kind of stinks because the countryside is gorgeous. Blue streams, small cottages, thick forests, all set against tall rocky (and sometimes snowy) mountains. Some great pictures could have been had.
Saturday, July 9th - Munich to Füssen, Germany
11:00 Local
Right now we are on a train bound for Füssen to see the Ludwig castle near the German border. We found the train ride was a lot longer than we thought, about 2 hours, but we decided to go anyway. We didn’t really have much else we wanted to do, and it is supposed to rain for the rest of our time here. I really wanted pictures, so hopefully the rain can hold off.
Last night we met back up with Becca and Christen from the train. We went to a fairly close recommended beer house where we spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how/where to get a table. Very little English. After we sat down, the whole menu was in German, and we had no idea what anything was. We saw two guys request an English menu and move to a bigger table, talking to themselves as they went. They said something funny, and the four of us laughed. After realized that we understood what had just been said, they invited us over.
Their names were Dustin and Mark (who we nicknamed 
“Iceman” for his career choice and resemblance to Val Kilmer). They had just graduated from the Air Force Academy, and were moving on to flight school. We talked about planes, the Yamaha sport-bikes we wanted, and how disgusting the food looked in Germany. Just and I just had a liter of the house beer. Our waitress spoke little English, so Dustin resorted to sounding out “Pig or Duck” to try to get a recommendation out of her. The place closed at 24:00, so we walked a ways down the road until we came to a “Mexican” bar called Sausalitos that was about as Mexican as a Friday’s. Dustin wanted ice cream despite it being about 40 degrees (oops, no long sleeve shirts), so Christen and I waited on him while the others went in. The place was absolutely packed, with very little room to get around. Somehow the others had managed to secure a table at the back, so we got to sit down. The waitress came and asked for my drink order. This is what it sounded like:
“Bier? Unghstingstat, Oooblinsteron, Schoopranafoosenblach, Corona, Beetenflussen..”
Obviously, I had to get the Corona. Christen ordered this mixed drink that was 6.80 Euro, but only got 1 Euro back from a 10 for some reason we couldn’t figure out. Dustin proceeded to ask out several girls with little success, mainly due to them not understanding what the hell he was saying. We eventually lost him and found out later he had left with a group of girls, but decided to come back when they hopped on the underground.
He was still lost when we decided to leave, so we just left the bar figuring he’d find his own way home. On the way back I saw an optometrist to take pictures of sometime in the next few days. That should complete the set, though I may try to find one in Prague as well.
We sent Becca and Christen an email to see if they wanted to head out to the H0fbraühaus tonight before they catch their night train out of the country. I doubt they’ll go for it, but Justin seems optimistic.
Christen’s Dad went to Walsh University back in Ohio, which is a surprising coincidence being that she’s from New York. It’s funny how you can find little pieces of home, even thousands of miles away.
Sunday, July 10th - München to Dresden
23:00 Local
We walked up to the Sleeping Beauty castle in a small town about 5 minutes outside Füssen by bus, today. Supposedly it was a 40 minute walk, practically straight uphill, but we did it
in about 20 minutes since we wanted to make the 15:05 train back to München. I took some great pictures of the castle from a bridge on the was to Marienbruecke that I had read about on the Internet. It had the castle situated against the Bavarian countryside. Great pictures. The train ride back proved pretty uneventful.
Becca and Christen hadn’t emailed by the time we got back, so we went to their hostel to see what they were up to on a long shot. Amazingly, they happened to be in the lobby. They were going to stay in the area since their night train left at 22:00, so we headed back over to the Hofbraühaus.
We found the Hofbräu was about 2 blocks from Sausalitos, so we messed up good by not looking for it longer. We found a table in the bier hall and sat down. Shortly after a nicer older English-speaking couple asked to sit at the end of our table. We started talking and found that they were also originally from Canton, making that the second couple we met from there. Amazing. Typical hometown/beer talk followed until he mentioned he was working 30 minutes south of Paris on “the 330”. I asked if he was talking about the Airbus 330, and if he worked for Snecma (the French partner of GE Aircraft Engines) and, sort of stunned, said yes. They had just come from Prague so they gave us a list of places to visit. They had just had all their stuff stolen from a café in Mont Martre, which obviously sucked. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel having drank about 3 and a half liters of beer.
We woke up this morning to quite a bit of rain. Our r
oommate, Bryna, and us decided to try to hit the BMW Museum. Big mistake. We walked about 1 hour in the rain in the wrong direction. We were soaked. It was miserable. We eventually found the museum, but it was closed/relocated for renovations and was utterly disappointing even when warned ahead of time that is was disappointing. Then we tried to find the Museum of Unusual Things, only to discover it had either closed or moved. We went back to the hostel to dry off.
Tomorrow is Bryna’s birthday, so we decided to go grab a few beers before our train out. We went to a local place across the street from our hostel,, then to the Hofbräuhaus again. I bought her a litre of 
beer for her birthday, but she couldn’t finish it all, so Justin did. We talked about all sorts of stuff, but kept coming back to politics... probably because there was a big gay pride rally in progress just outside the door. Justin, as usual, didn’t mind discussing his anti-homosexual opinions at great length.
We had a great time with Bryna. I think we might have felt bad that she was traveling alone. I could never have done that. She seemed like she had a good time too, but it is always hard to tell. Her trip is a lot longer than ours, so while we’re almost done, she has quite a bit more to go.
We just got on our night train to Dresden since the one directly to Prague was completely booked. We’re in a car with all Asians, so we’ll see how that goes.
I had to cut off early because it was sleepy-time in our train compartment. There was also this Russian guy who was a dead-on match for the Armageddon "Russian Components, American Components, all made in Taiwan!" guy.
A report for the Guardian (UK) started talking to us outside the Hofbräuhaus last night. Apparently Dustin Hoffman is in Germany and was there the night before (and so were we), and she was looking to get an interview. As she distracted Justin and Bryna, drool began pouring out of my mouth as I had just noticed the black Porsche GT3 parked at the curb... the first I've ever seen in the "wild." I took a picture, obviously, and so did Bryna after I explained what it was. It does look suspiciously like a plain old Porsche, after all.
I hope Bryna finds someone to do something with for her birthday. She said she rarely got English-speaking roommates, but hopefully someone's around. After our -Lost-in-the-rain, shoes, pants, socks, and shirts soaking wet- fiasco, hopefully tomorrow goes better for all of us.
Monday, July 11th - Dresden, Germany to Prague, Czech Republic
10:30 Local
We made it onto our train to Prague OK, it seems. We forgot to fill out our stupid special Czech railways pass. Good thing I remembered, and just in time too! Supposedly the fines are pretty large if you forget. We met an older couple from Michigan who is sitting across from us. They warned us about pickpockets again, like practically every city we've been to thus far. They also said the money is a pain because they all want small bills and coins, so you have to find somewhere to get change. We'll see how that goes, and it should be interesting.
The border patrol just came around checking Passports. That was only the second time any sort of government official has even wanted to look at it. Our hotels and hostels have been more interested in them than the governments! I got a little stamp and everything. Here I thought I was going to get a bunch of neat stamps, but it doesn't appear to be a big deal over here.
All of the stores close on Sundays in Germany, which presented a problem. Justin wanted to get Birkenstocks for himself and a friend, but we put it off. Then Sunday, our travel day rolled around, and nothing was open. Oops. We tried to find them in Dresden, but it was too early and the stores weren't open yet. Maybe we can track them down tomorrow in Berlin. That sounds so weird. We're on the way to Prague today, and we'll be back in Germany tomorrow afternoon.
Only two nights left until I get to see my Nikki!
Tuesday, July 12th - Prague, Czech Republic to Berlin, Germany
12:00 Local
We made it to the train station at Praha Holesövoice without too much difficulty yesterday. And that's where it got interesting. First of all, it was a little satellite station off the underground (which was the most modern of the trip, at least it had that). We had to change our money, so Justin took out 2000 crowns from the ATM, which is about $80-90 US. Unfortunately, it spit out a 2000 crown bill, which we had to shop around to every store in the station to find someone who could give us change since the underground only took 1-100 crown coins. It was a pain in the butt, but we eventually figured it out.
Once we got outside the station at our stop, we found it was pouring down rain... again. Inclined to not repeat the previous day's wet trek, we bought umbrellas at the high price of about $2.50 US. Unfortunately they did little besides keep our heads dry as the drainage on their roads was terrible. Our hostel was about a 10 minute walk from the station and my shoes, socks, and pants were once again completely soaked by the time we go there.
The hostel was pretty nice, but the location was poor. Nothing nearby. We had a double bed in a single room, so we were by ourselves... not that there were many people around anyway. The bathrooms were shared by floor, and the shower was funny because it was a curtain-less bathtub with one of those handheld shower-head doohickies.
After a short nap, we went on over to the "old town" portion of the city, where there were tons of crystal shops. I found a cool Budweiser bottle opener (the first, real, Budweiser. We discovered 
our Bud is a sham), and tried to find a crystal snowflake for Lauren but had no luck. I'm about crystal-ed out.
We just happened to run into the restaurant that the people from Canton we met at the Hofbräuhaus recommended, so we stopped in for a John Collins and a Rib-eye steak, which was pretty good considering I had eaten anything yet that day. It was weird seeing an 800 K dinner bill.
When we were sick of shopping we headed home. We had planned to go out to a club later that night, but we decided we didn't want to deal with the transit system again. We messed around on the Internet for a bit and went to bed.
This morning has been pretty boring. We made it to the train station and caught our Berlin-bound train. We found out earlier that our next hostel is in the middle of nowhere, two bus changes from the main station. The only reason we chose it was because it had a shuttle service to the airport, but they neglected to mention that the shuttle will only take you to the hostel FROM the airport, no TO it. Now we're probably stuck with 2 taxi rides because we hate buses after the Nice incident.
We're going to find the big Birkenstock store before we go to the hostel today. I haven't bought anything for myself, so I might get a pair since I don't have any and they're much cheaper here at about $70 US.
Wednesday, July 13th - Berlin, Germany to New York
No idea what time it is
We just finished up watching the movie "Robots" and eating "dinner" on the big flight back to the states. It'll be nice to touch down at home.
We were able to find the Birkenstock store yesterday, following the mostly correct directions from our neighbors on the train a few days ago. Justin got two pairs, one for a friend, but I couldn't get any because they didn't have any in my size that weren't hideous. That means I didn't get anything for myself during the whole trip. I did end up with a bag full of presents, though. I didn't realize how much I had spent until I filled out that customs declaration form that requires monetary values in US dollars.
We took a taxi to the hostel last night because we didn't feel like messing with switching between the 2 busses required to get there. Good thing too, because we never would have found it. It was literally IN the woods. The main street ends and you have to keep walking down this path for a few minutes to get to it. It was basically a big converted barn. The woman running the reception was very helpful, and very pregnant. The first thing we did when we got in was take showers, since we didn't take one in the curtain-less tub the day before.
We decided to go to a local beer garden that the hostess said was about a 20 minute walk away if you cut through the forest. On our way through, we decided we’d have to take the main road back since it’d be so dark. The beer garden was nice, but there wasn’t anyone around to talk to so we left after having a beer. We decided to pick up a few beers at the corner gas station, along with some chips to snack on once we got back to our “barn.” The station lady wouldn’t take a credit card, and couldn’t even make 1.30 Euro in change from a 10 Euro bill. Big help there.
So we took those back to the hostel, which was now a 35 minute walk since we took the main road. When we got there the door was locked and the code we were told to use to get in was accepted, but still wouldn’t open the door. It must have been broken. They were watching Along Came Polly on a huge projection screen, so we watched about the second half of that and went to bed.
I skipped the 3 Euro breakfast, although Justin didn’t, of course, and we had the hotel call us another taxi to take us to the airport. The airport was surprisingly small for an international terminal. They asked us tons of questions about everything imaginable, then put some “Delta Security” sticker on our passports. It probably means “give these guys a nice thorough search later.” We found out we do have to take all of our bags through customs at JFK before they’re put back on our connection to CVG. We only have a 2 hour layover at JFK. I hope that is enough time to get through everything.
We got upgraded to emergency exit seats, which is nice because now we have a lot of legroom. We have about 5 hours until we land, so there’s a big portion of the flight ahead. Hitch is on again, but I can’t bring myself to watch it for a 3rd time in 3 weeks. Maybe I can get some sleep.
7:30 p.m. Local
Well, we finally made it into the air. Once we landed in JFK we discovered that 2 of the 3 flights from JFK to CVG were cancelled, and ours was the only one still flying. Since that was the case, they wanted to put as many people as possible on our flight, so they delayed its departure by 30 minutes to 6:30. By the time we got on the plane, it was already 6:30, so we knew we were in trouble. Once everyone was boarded and we pulled away from the terminal, the captain came on to tell us that there were a dozen planes in line to take off and it would likely be another 20 to 25 minutes before we could get off the ground. 25 minutes later he came back on and said the same thing.
Once we got in the air, Justin and the lady next to me (I was in the middle seat) both pretty much slept on my shoulder. Then the person in front of me has now reclined all the way. There is barely enough room to breathe.
We touch down soon, which signals the end of our journey. We’ve met some interesting people and had a great time. It may just be time to start counting the days until I can return...