The Flying Dutchman

Fjords Galore!

neil_loewen — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:33:00 GMT

I left Copenhagen after two days there, and set my sights on Sweden. It was kind of a big deal to cross the bridge from Denmark to Sweden (longest in the world?), because I had seen it on Discovery Channel many times! We left Copenhagen, on our way to the bridge, and I was getting excited until walls came up on either side, and the train headed dooown into a tunnel. No. This isn't going to happen. The trip was almost ruined, but luckily we came back up out of the tunnel - still in Denmark - and onto the big famous bridge. We sped out over top of the sea and the bridge went by alot faster than I was expecting - maybe ten/fifteen minutes. I saw a windfarm in the North Sea - which I had also seen on Discovery Channel, and upon arriving in Sweden, the first of several Ikea's - which I had seen on... *cough* HGTV (just flipping channels of course).

We sped through Malmo and saw the twisty skyscraper - again, Discovery (Sweden, who knew you were so awesome?), and passed through the less interesting, flat countryside (no countryside is THAT interesting after being in Switzerland) of Sweden, all the way to Gothenburg.

I got out at Gothenburg and found my way through the city using the tram system, until I arrived at my hostel. I met my hostel mates - there was a large group of Brtis, Swedes, and an Austrian who were studying here, and were partying it up in the hostel before heading out for the night. I hung out with them for a while, but told them I couldn't go out, I had plans.

You see, back in Switzerland, for Bonnie's going away party (which had an attendance of two), we were unable (no, unwilling) to finish all the wine that we had bought when we were expecting a larger crowd. So, with one bottle left we made a deal: When Bonnie got home she would organize a skype chat night with people from rez with me, and I would carry the wine around in my backpack until that night, when we would all be able to finish it off together.

Tonight was that night, so I logged on to skype all set for the big chat, and so excited that I could finally get rid of this wine that I had been carrying around in my backpack through five countries. My excitement was quickly halted, however, when I noticed the lack of cork screws in this kitchen. Hmmm, this could be a problem. How to open a wine bottle without a wine bottle opener? With the help of the Swedes/Brits/Austrian, this became a team effort, and we made little progress (note that my team was a little bit trashed by this point). Finally - mere minutes before the skype date was scheduled to commence - the Austrian guy managed to open it with a spoon (the cork was now IN the wine bottle, but at least the wine was accessible).

The night was saved, and I was excited once again! What a beautiful thing this would be! I quickly noticed another problem: the wine was missing. I had put it on the table, right there, but now it was gone. Turns out, the group had left for the club - well-sauced - and on the way out someone had snatched the open bottle of wine. After all the distance that bottle had come, after all the memories, after having my dreams dashed and then my hopes renewed, it was all over. I never got a sip of that wine, but I got over it pretty quick. They had made the mistake of leaving their wine behind (which was much more expensive than mine AND it didn't have a cork in it) so I helped myself and got on to skype, where I got to see everyone from rez! Great night!

The next day I went out to explore the city of Gothenburg. It had originally not been in my plans, but due to the long distances between places in Scandinavia (relatively, of course, it is still way closer together than anything in Canada), and the extremely high price of staying in Oslo, I had been semi-forced/semi-decided Gothenburg would be a nice place to visit, and it was.

I headed out for breakfast, a little bit nervous after all of the horror stories I had heard about how CRAZY the prices were for anything in Scandinavia. I also wanted something Swedish, so I wondered if this might jack up the price even more. Five minutes out of the hostel, I came to a place on the corner with two really key words right on the sign: Buffet (check) and Swedish (check). Then I saw the price, and it worked out to like $9. This was an amazing place and I wasn't even in it yet, which made me suspicious that it would all be too good to be true. I'm tellin' ya folks, it was so good, and it was true! There were a hundred different items on the buffet, and they were all AWESOME. haha, it was delicious, and Swedish, and cheap, and all-you-can eat, so that is exactly what I did.

I could have left Gothenburg right then and been satisfied, but no, I wanted more, I wanted a vista. On the map I found a cathedral at the highest point in the city, so that is where I went. I worked my way up the hill to cathedral, stumbling onto a beautiful church on the way, but I knew there was a reason that this one was only part of the way up the hill,

I made it further up the hill and was stopped by a little Swedish girl standing behind a table on the sidewalk with her mother speaking Swedish. I apologized for not knowing Swedish and the mother took over and translated. They were running a little business, she said, and wondered if I was interested in buying something from them. I walked out of there with half a sea-shell and one of those ironed wax art thingies (I don't know what it was supposed to be, but it was the cheapest thing there), all for just 3.75 euro. That's like five dollars, spent on NOTHING. I had now found why everyone said Scandinavia was expensive, it's those mother-daughter tag-teams that rip you off. There's absolutely no way that I would be able to say no to the smiling 5 year old with blonde pigtails, and the mom knew it. Shrewd.

I continued on and finally made it to the top, where I found the cathedral, and the great view of the city, the inlet of the ocean that it was on, and the surrounding hills. I sat for a while and took in the magnificent picture before me and beautiful weather.

I compared the view before me to my map of the city, and planned out my next venture: to the Old City. I made my way down the hill towards the coast. I dodged trams, cut through a park, crossed a canal, and found myself in the beautiful heart of the city. Fancy old buildings that had been restored and looked like new lined the streets everywhere I went. Every once in a while there was a very-cold-looking canal. I meandered through the Old City, no goal in mind, just appreciating my setting. I found my way to the train station and the the mall across the street from it.

I wandered back through the city and - after getting momentarily lost - reached my hostel. I packed up my things and checked out. After Subway for supper - [Swedish] Meatball Marinara - I hopped on a tram, and returned to the train station.

I checked the board, and couldn't find my train which was leaving in an hour for Oslo, Norway. I kept checking until it finally came up on the board about 15 minutes before it was scheduled to leave. It didn't tell which platform the train would be leaving from, however. I scanned the station and found someone else who looked as puzzled as me, and asked if he was going to Oslo. He was indeed (wow I'm good), and he couldn't understand why there was no platform either. He spoke Swedish, luckily, so I let him do the talking, and he somehow discovered that we were in fact taking a bus, and not a train. I followed him through the station towards the other end where the buses parked.

We walked through the station and then someone caught my eye. I definitely stared at this woman for a good three seconds before my brain worked out what I was looking at. Arpana Nair! Arps! From Prague! and Hamburg-Copenhagen! AS IF. I just started laughing, and it hardly even surprised me even more, and she thought it was crazy too. Seriously, the odds of crossing paths with the same person not twice but THREE TIMES, in EUROPE! It kind of blows my mind. It was already five minutes past when my bus was supposed to leave, and translator/guide was getting pretty far ahead, so Arps walked with us to the buses, and told me all about how Stockholm and Oslo had been, and I gave her the inside scoop on Copenhagen. Then we actually traded maps from the places we had been and the places we were going to, which I thought was ingenious and really cool.

We made it to the buses, and miraculously, our bus hadn't left yet, so I said goodbye to Arps (more of a seeya later, we were pretty sure we would bump into each other a few more times yet) and boarded my bus.

The bus carried us over the frozen Swedish landscape for 5 hours until we crossed over the border into Norway and reached Oslo, stopping only for passport checks (first time yet, because Norway isn't in the European Union). We all got out at Oslo, and I followed the stream of passengers out of the bus terminal, hoping everyone was going to the train station, like me. Upon leaving the bus terminal and finding our selves in downtown Oslo at midnight, everyone scattered. I couldn't choose who to follow because everyone split up - zigzag formation. Thankfully I found some signs to follow, and had soon made my way to the train station and found the ticket desk.

I inquired about the next train to Bergen, Norway (the city of the fjords) - knowing that there was one leaving in an hour - and she informed me that, sorry, it wasn't possible. Crap, this Scandinavia venture was short on time and long on distance, so there was no room for setbacks like having to wait in Oslo - without a hostel booked and knowing that all hostels in Oslo were way overpriced and booked solid three days in advance - for two days before the next train went to Bergen. She must have noticed my not-okayness with this, because she sympathetically suggested I talk to the conductor as soon as the train arrived in the station, and ask if I could get on the train.

I did this, as it was essentially my only option. My Canadian flags came in handy (once again), as I walked up to the conductor and he noticed them right away.

"Canada, eh? hahaha" He greeted me, and I knew I was off to a good start. We talked about the Olympics and he told me about his sister who lived in Canada, and then I asked if there was any possible way that I could get on this train. "Oh yeah, I'm sure we can fit you in there somewhere." He told me, and the trip to Bergen was saved. I was told to go to the very back of the train, and hope that someone would not show up. More luck came my way, and the spot that I had chosen to sit in and hope for the best turned out to be the one spot in the carriage that wasn't taken. Thank you to whoever out there missed that train! I would not have enjoyed having to stand the entire way to Bergen.

The whole ride there I was quite tired, but wouldn't let myself go to sleep because every time the train stopped I was in danger of losing my spot. So, I took several little naps, but never really slept that well for the entire six hour journey.

Finally we arrived at Bergen. The snorers awoke - surprised at how peaceful that train ride had been - the rest of us glared at them, and we all spilled out of the train together. Silly me had forgotten to write down the directions to the hostel, so I talked to the lady at the ticket booth. I also couldn't remember the name of the hostel I was staying at, so I had very little to go on. She told me that there was one just down the street outside the station, and sent me on my way. I think she was crazy, because I could not find this hostel anywhere. I walked around town, which was amazingly tranquil - 630am in the cold Norwegian air, and Scandinavians love to sleep in, I had the town to myself. I walked EVERYWHERE, and my backpack was starting to wear me down (never mind my lack of sleep). I was no longer trying to find my hostel, but ANY hostel, thinking that each hostel would know all of the other hostels. I found none. No, I found one, but it was closed.

I DID find one thing that helped me out, something that Scandinavia is full of: Seven Eleven's. There I asked directions - the guy knew nothing - got some breaky , and asked where I could find an internet connection. All of a sudden there was no internet anywhere, but he told me that there was an internet cafe in the mall - which would be opening at 9. Of course, it was Saturday, and that is why everything in town was closed. I wandered some more, not interested in taking pictures and just wanting to find my bed, just to lay down on it, for like a minute, that's all I was asking for. I wandered (backpack and all) for the next two hours (stopping intermittently at bus shelters to enjoy a bench) with no luck, no internet connection, until finally the mall opened at 9. I got inside, found the internet cafe, used my internet, and got the address of my hostel. The directions sent me back to the area that I had been scouring all morning, and wouldn't you know it had been just around the corner of a street I had walked down several times.

I got inside and checked-in. Finally I found my bed and collapsed on it. Not for too long though, there was no time for sleeping! I introduced myself to the guy staying in the same room as me.

"Hi, I'm Neil, I'm from Canada" I started.

"I don't care where you are from" He replied, not making any attempt to mask how rude that was. After a short pause, I tried again to converse,

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Slovenia" He said

"Cool." I said before being cut off.

"I don't care if it's cool. I don't care what anyone thinks. I don't need to change to have other people think I'm cool." was his response. I was quite shocked by this, and decided that this conversation didn't have much potential, so I locked my stuff in my locker (because obviously this guy would steal it if I didn't, right?) and left.

I headed out into the city forgot how tired I was. I now took pictures of everything I had walked past that morning . Bergen was a very Norwegian looking city, straight out of a postcard. The Old Town was situated on a peninsula sticking out into a fjord with views of the mountains all around. Leaning wooden fishing buildings painted different colours lined one side of the harbour. Grander stone ones (much like the ones in Gothenburg) lined the other side. The furthest inland point of the bay was met by the fishmarket, where the days catch was bought and sold. Live lobsters and crabs, North Atlantic Salmon, and lots of others were on display. I explored the city and took in the natural and man-made beauty. I went back to the hostel to ask my friendly hostelier what to see since I only had one day in this city. She told me that I just had to go up the furnicular, and get the spectacular view of the fjord from up above.

While at the hostel I met another guy staying in my room, Nicolas, from Paris. I asked him if he knew the other guy in the room, and he said yes, but that he wasn't much of a people person. I strongly agreed. Nicolas said that he usually couch-surfed (staying at people's houses, for free), and that if I was ever in Paris, I could stay at his place. I later gave Nicolas' information to anyone I met who was going to Paris.

TO BE CONTINUED...

North to the Vikings! Aaarrr! (or whatever vikings say)

neil_loewen — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:38:00 GMT

Inside Berlin's beautiful new train station, I boarded a train to Hamburg, where I would change to another train headed to Copenhagen, Denmark. I checked the board and found the platform my train would arrive at. I was sitting on the platform waiting for my train to arrive, when a woman came walking down the platform. I took me a second to register, but then I realized who it was: Arpana! Remember Arps? From Prague? Here she was! What are the odds! Seriously, what ARE the odds of running into the same person TWICE in Europe? ALL of Europe? I can see meeting the same person twice in hostels, because there is only a certain amount of people traveling and staying in hostels in Europe at any one time, and everyone goes to the same places, but in a train station?? I couldn't believe, and neither could she! Even better, she was catching the same train as me, so we shared travel stories of my time in Berlin and her time in Poland. Our running into each other wasn't AS exciting for her, because she just happened to have coincidentally stayed in the same hostel as Calvin and Jude (the Welsh boys, also from Prague) in Poland.

We arrived in Copenhagen and got some Asian noodles (typical Danish food), before Arps got on another train (she was continuing on to Stockholm), and I walked out of the station to find my hostel. The Sleep-in Heaven Hostel (there needs to be a book about all the great names hostels have) was located a little bit out of the cnetrum, so I took a bus, followed the directions I had written out, walked around, asked directions from passersby, and finally found it through a back alley.

I found my room and had my first ever experience with triple bunks. What I discovered was that triple bunks are no different than regular bunk beds - unless you are on the top bunk. I was, of course, on the top bunk, so I was able to make a fair assessment of the triple bunk system. My conclusion: they're not so great. Access is the biggest problem. There was a ladder, thankfully, but it was such that hurt your feet to climb. This left me with a choice between wearing shoes up to my bed, and getting creative. Naturally, I got creative, and employed a series of spiderman-esque maneuvers to reach my destination (including pulling my body up to the second bunk and then kicking off the wall parallel to the bed to propel myself up to the top). Either way, there was no practical method of getting up there safely. Getting down, there was another dilemma. I could endure the pain of the route down the ladder, or I could jump from the top aaaall the way down to the ground, as I had learnt from Alice's mad skillz in Amsterdam ("I went to camp, so...). I only attempted the leap of faith once, as I nearly ended my trip prematurely with two broken ankles.

Other than the sleeping situation for every third, unlucky, person, the hostel was great! Cool vibe, cool people, cool setup, cool (they could have cranked the thermostat a couple notches). Trips up and down from my bed were major ordeals, so I had to plan everything well in advance. I went to sleep that night surrounded by my clothes, computer, and day-pack, too lazy to put everything away in the safe, which was all the way back down there at sea-level. I'd like to see a thief get into this bed and steal everything without me and everyone else in the room waking up.

The next morning, I took the longish walk to the centre of the city, and enjoyed the clear blue skies and mild weather. I intended to visit the National Museum, but the directions I had gotten at the hostel got me lost in the downtown. I asked an elderly couple which way it was (because I was in the land of universal English as a second language!) and the husband gave me directions, and then said "Or you could go this way" and gave me some other ones, before his wife cut him off with "No, no, go this way, and then down there and to the left". The funny, bickering, old couple finally agreed on what was the best route to get there, and I followed the directions right to it.

The museum was, for a change, not an art museum. It chronicled Denmark's history and had lots of stuff about the vikings: interesting museum!

Afterward, I continued on until I reached the water's edge. The large inlet that Copenhagen sits on was lined with shiny new buildings contrasted with beautiful old ones.

I walked along the water until I came to a shopping mall and stepped inside for a bite to eat. There was a cinema in the mall, and I seriously considered catching a showing of Avatar, because I knew I was probably the only person left on Earth who hadn't seen it. I talked myself out of it by reminding myself I that was in Copenhagen. I was only in Europe for three months, so there was no time to waste watching movies that I could watch when I got home.

I left the mall and started to head back in the direction of the hostel, because I was now quite a walk away. I walked up to Tivoli Gardens, which are famous for something, but I still don't know why they are famous because they were closed until April 12th. This is the day after I leave Europe, so I would not be seeing the gardens on this trip.

I continued on my way home, but wasn't familiar with the neighbourhood. Luckily, I had my GPS thingy with me, and had marked the hostel on it that morning, so I turned it on and it pointed in the direction of the hostel, and told me how far away it was. I found my hostel with ease. (take that Alice for making fun of me for being over-prepared. I also use my alarm clock QUITE OFTEN, thank you very much)

I got to bed early that night and got up early the next day. I had a train to catch, but still had to see the most photographed thing in Copenhagen: The Little Mermaid. The statue of a mermaid sat on a rock sticking out of the water on the shores of the inlet. Any local I had talked to about it had cautioned me, "It's really small you know, don't get your hopes up", but this was THE touristy thing to do in Copenhagen, so I had to do it in the little time that I had. I walked briskly there and found her, life size, maybe a little smaller, but just as I had expected, except for one little detail: she had legs. I checked the sign, and, yes, I was looking at THE Little Mermaid. I was confused. I really did not understand, but there was no time!

I got out of there and got on a bus to the train station. I asked if this bus went to the station, and the driver assured me it did. He went a short distance ahead, stopped, and told me that this was it. We most certainly were not at the train station, so I said, "No, main train station". The other people on the bus helped me out too, and told the driver. He went fifty feet ahead, stopped again, and told me that this was the place. I was, again, confused, but I got out (they knew this city better than me, so maybe this was, in fact, the train station). I walked a short ways and found that I was at A train station, it just wasn't THE train station. I went inside, found that there were trains that would stop at the main station leaving soon, hopped on one, and made it there in time. I found my train, boarded, and headed to Gothenburg, Sweden.

Berlin is Beautiful.

neil_loewen — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:56:00 GMT

I only had three months here in Europe, and I wanted to see it all, so there was no time to dilly-dally in every city. I had spent three nights in Prague, so I took the first train out of there and headed to Berlin. I had high expectations after hearing stories from fellow traveler's and cousins about the architecture and the nightlife of the german capital.

The train wound through the Czech countryside, following a scenic river lined with little villages squished up against the steep valley wall. I sat in a cabin with a man, who talked on his phone in Spanish, and a woman, but they spoke German to each other the whole time, so I assumed they didn't know English. However, when we arrived at Berlin, I asked the man (with hand motions) "This...hauptbahnhof?" hoping he would understand and could signal that this was in fact the main train station. He answered in full English - not even a hint of an accent - letting me know that this was indeed, and wished me a pleasant journey. I felt stupid having talked to him like a baby even though he was fluent in English, but it was his fault for being so good at so many languages and not informing me.

The Berlin train station was a brand new glass building, eight or so floors tall, and a suitable introduction to the buildings that awaited in the city. After enjoying the station and lunch, I came to my next mission: finding the hostel. There had been no directions online, only an address, which I found a bit odd. I took one step out of the station and realized why there had been no directions, my hostel was right there! Easiest location for a hostel yet, RIGHT next to the train station.

I found my room marveled at the great view I had of the Reichstag (the German capitol building) just outside my window.

The next day I headed out into the city with my camera and took pictures of everything. Everything. Maybe I was bored of all the old buildings that Prague had had to offer, but the new style buildings in Berlin immediately took to my liking. I took multiple pictures of everything.

I stepped out of the hostel and walked past the shiny new train station, and along the river to the Reichstag. I went through the Brandenburg Gate, visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, walked up to Potsdamer Platz (Fact: once the largest construction site in Europe), where skyscrapers clustered together and contemporary architecture shone. I walked through the Sony Centre (a giant glass enclosed plaza that is supposed to look like Mount Fuji), and into the Tier Garten. There I got a little lost in the beautiful park, but found my way out by stumbling upon the Victory Column and following the train tracks home.

Berlin had been more than I had expected, and I was a little exhausted from ogling all those beautiful buildings all day (plus I walked like 4000 miles). I met my one roommate, a guy from China who didn't really speak English. We couldn't really carry on a conversation because of that language barrier, so we never did become great friends.

The next day I did some more walking (public transit is for wussies), and went to the Fernsehturm, the communist era telecommunications tower meant to display communism's superiority over democracy. That didn't turn out so well for them did it? Nowadays it serves as a great viewpoint of the city for all the tourists!

It is a really tall tower, so it looked alot closer from my hostel, but turned out to be a decently far ways away. Along the way I found a hair salon, so I went inside for a much-needed haircut. It wasn't until I was seated in the chair that I deciphered some German signs and realized that the Men's salon was across, and this was the Women's salon. "Whatevs" I thought, "I'm sure the hairdresser has cut a dude's hair before." She may have cut a dude's hair before, but she didn't speak English, which made the situation a little more iffy. She also strictly used the metric system when measuring hair length, and who really knows what 17 millimetres looks like? I did, after she was done with me, and I can tell you, it is short. It was cool though, because then I wouldn't need another haircut for the rest of the trip. Also, in the hairwashing station I got to watch Planet Earth (in HD!) from a projector on the wall while having my hair washed!

I got out of there and continued on the journey to the Fernsehturm. It was still a ways to go, and I was getting hungry. I passed a wurst stand just before I got to the tower, but made a promise to myself that I would get wurst from there as soon as I got down from the tower.

I went up the tower (luckily, they didn't offer a discount for taking the stairs) and took in the great view of Berlin. I took pictures of all 360 degrees, and could see the wurst stand. After leaving, I went back the same way that I had come, but that's when Fate reared its ugly, ugly head. The wurst stand was gone. There was just an empty stretch of sidewalk where it had been. Devastated, I walked back to the hostel but ended up getting stuck in a gated community (with really high gates. Not even the Cinque Terre could prepare me for this), and had trouble finding the way out. I finally made it home, with sooooore feet (my insoles, which were fresh at the start of the trip, had now been worn out and were flat as pancakes), and got a delish Currywurst from a restaurant in the train station.

The next day, I bid farewell to Berlin and boarded a train to get me to Copenhagen, where I would begin my foray into Scandinavia.

Czechin' Out Prague!

neil_loewen — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:13:00 GMT

When I wrote last, I was in Munich, but after having a great time in the Bavarian capital I had begun my journey (don't worry, it wasn't epic) to Prague, Czech Republic.

I took the train from Munich Hauptbahnhof to Nuremberg (still in Germany). From there I had to ride the bus to Prague, but didn't know the way to the bus station. The first person I asked spoke good English, and was very helpful (check and check)! She had been going in the other direction, but turned around to lead me to the bus station. I found my seat on the bus and it headed East out of Germany, and through the hills of the Czech Republic.

We arrived in Prague, and I got out at the main train station. I had not been looking forward to finding my hostel, because the directions that I had been given online were longer and more complicated than anywhere else I had stayed. They read: subway, walk, tram, walk, hostel! (it was alot more complicated in real life, but you get the picture)

I walked around the station, and eventually found the metro entrance. I needed a ticket, and the machine didn't take Euros (yippee I get to do more conversions), so I went to the bank in the station and exchanged some money. So far, doing anything in the Czech Republic was difficult. There was a knew currency to deal with, and very few people that I had met spoke English. I didn't actually even know WHAT language they spoke (German? Czech? Republican? The answer is indeed Czech, now we know!), but I did know that it was alot harder to guess at what the signs meant. The bank didn't give me any coins, and the ticket machines didn't take bills, so I went to Burger King to make some change (and I GUESS I will eat the burger) and enjoyed not carrying a hundred pounds around on my back for a while.

I finally got my ticket (after educating my self on the different coins in the Czech Crown currency), and went down to the subway. Good thing I hadn't "gone all Munich" (meaning not paying for the subway), because there were multiple police officers checking everyone's tickets at every entrance to the subway.

I took the metro (or subway, or underground, or tube, or whatever you want to call it, I never know which to use), to station I. P. Pavlova (isn't pavlova a type of cake? If so, I totally encourage other cities to name their subway stations after delicious foods. "Next station: Three Cheese Cheese Toast"). From I.P. Pavlova I got on the tram with the help of some locals, and got off at what I thought was the right stop. It was indeed, and I walked up the hill and found my beautiful hostel.

Once inside, I met my roommates: two CANADIAN girls (from Vancouver, like almost all the other Canadians I have met backpacking). I get excited meeting other Canadians after long stretches without them so we chatted for a while, and they told me all about how awesome Prague was, and this crazy pub crawl they went on, and this six storey club they went to, and how they were so crazy about the olympics, and how they were going to a Canadian bar that they had been told about, and were gong to watch the women's hockey final against the U.S. that night. I had plans to do the free tour of Prague (which they had recommended) early the next day, and the hockey game wouldn't be on until late (or early in the morning, actually) so I stayed in the hostel that night, did a little bloggin', and greeted a new roommate into the hostel, Arps (Arpana for long) from Australia! haha she said all the same words funny like Alice did! it never gets old!

The next day, Arps and I did the Free English Tour of Prague, which was awesome because it was free, it was in English, it was of Prague, and it was free. We thought the tour started at our hostel, but quickly discovered that, on the contrary, we had to join the tour group in the main square. (Funfact about the main square: it is called Wenceslas Square, after Good King Wenceslas. THE Good King Wenceslas. Like the Christmas carol. He was King of the Czechs like a thousand years ago, and a good one at that, so he became the patron saint of the Czechs, and gets to have a whole bunch of places named after him).

We got to the main square fifteen minutes late, and couldn't find the starbucks that we were supposed to meet outside, but did find like 10 different tour groups in the square, so we joined onto one, and pretended it was the right one.

The tour was really good. Our guide (with a definite Irish accent, but he knew his Czech nonetheless) told us all there was to know about everything we passed (without boring us, because how can you get bored listening to an Irish lilt?). The main square was surrounded by lavish, grand, old buildings, and the extent of the well-preserved Old Town was impressive. I was unaware that there were so many in-tact historic buildings in Prague. We saw the Old Town and another picturesque square, as well as Josephov, the biggest, or oldest, or best Jewish Ghetto in Europe. Everywhere we went was punctuated by gorgeous architecture and views of the river.

After the tour Arps and I explored across the river around Prague Castle (largest castle around? I can vouch for it's size), and I caught the tram back to the hostel to continued catching up on this blog.

Back at the hostel I met the new people in the room. The Canadians had moved out that morning, but we now had an American (the nice kind) named Anna, a Brazilian named Gil, and two Welshmen named Calvin and Jude.

That night, our newly-formed group of 5 took the advice of our Canadian predecessors, as well as our tour guide, and went on the pub crawl. A great time was had by all. (Small world story: At one point I ran into a Canadian girl who had tried out for the olympic hockey team but missed the cut. We had a mutual friend that came up in conversation. AS IF.)

The next day I took a break from all the tours and sights and people - just like Rick Steve's had told me, wouldn't want to get over-saturated and burnt out now would we - and let myself sleep in. Arps and I found a Mexican Restaurant next door to the hostel, and it was some of the best Mexican food I have ever had. That meal single-handedly changed everything I had ever thought about Mexican food in the Czech Republic.

I found a laundromat in the neighbourhood and did some much-needed laundry for cheap. I also searched for a barber shop so I could get my ears lowered, but nothing was open (it was after 5pm on a Sunday, my hopes weren't that high), so I went back to the hostel and prepared for the game that night. THE GAME: Canada vs. USA. International Hockey Supremacy. Intense. Or so I expected.

I donned my Canada shirt like a good little Canadian boy, and prepared to live stream the game to my laptop, but, miraculously (no, that word is not too strong for this situation), the TV in the bar in the hostel was showing English-language European coverage of the game! Live! I couldn't believe my luck!

Since the two Canadians from my first night at the hostel had taken off to Poland, I was apparently the only Canadian left in the hostel. There were a few Americans, but none of them cared about hockey, so I was the only person interested in the game. A British guy and a South African guy tried to make sense of the game of hockey, and I explained the game to them. They asked questions at THE MOST inopportune times , but that wasn't their fault, they didn't understand what was happening. They drank their beers and laughed at my living and dying with every moment of the game.

Gil, Arps, and Anna were going out to a bar, and invited me along, but I politely slammed the door on any hopes they may have had for me leaving my spot in front of the TV for the next three hours.

The game, as you all know, was incredible. This was the first event of the entire Olympics that I had been able to watch, but there was nothing that I would rather have chosen. I put a little effort into containing my spontaneous yelps and cheers, but eventually gave up on that and forgot that anybody else was in the bar. At the end of the third period another Canadian came down, and, though he didn't follow hockey all the religiously, I had myself a cheermate.

Overtime. Seriously? Insane.

Sid scores the winning goal, I jump up and yell as loud as I could. The other Canadian cheers and goes for some sort of double high five slash possible hug and/or chest bump, and I slap one of his hands out of the air (painfully). As soon as I see everyone else in the bar staring at the two Canadians, I stop screaming, but cannot stop loudly celebrating this amazing moment in my life, and so many others'.

I go to sleep with a smile on my face, and it is still there when I wake up and hop on a train to Berlin.

To the Land of Schnitzel and Lederhosen

neil_loewen — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:47:00 GMT

After sending Bonnie back to Canada from Zurich, I stood in the airport all alone with nowhere to be. I could get on any train I wanted, go in any direction, to any country (with my rail pass), and I still didn't know where this freedom would take me for the next month and a half. My wallet had informed me that it was time to leave Switzerland, so that much was certain. I still hadn't been to Germany so I decided that I would sleep in Munich that night.

I had a couple hours before my train, so I went into Zurich and walked around the city. It was clear, as opposed to how cloudy it had been the first time I was there, so I got some better views of the lake and mountains. I sat on a bench overlooking the lake and marveled at how different it was to be alone. I was entirely independent in that moment, and it was the strangest feeling in the world.

I went to the Apple store in hopes of fixing my computer, but the Genius Bar was booked solid for the day. I made an appointment for the store in Munich the next day though. I also booked my hostel in Munich from a computer in the store.

I caught the train to Munich and found my hostel. It was right next to the main train station and walking distance from the city centre as well. ALSO, it had a Nintendo Wii!!!

I met all the people in my room, which was filled with South Africans, Canadians, Americans, and Argentines. I had a conversation with an Argentine woman, but when she heard that I could speak "kinda-Spanish", she wouldn't talk to me unless I talked to her in Spanish. This was really good for me, as I had never been forced to have a complete conversation in Spanish before. It was the best Spanish practice that I had had, and I was in Germany.

The next day I went straight to the Apple store, downtown. They told me that the hard-drive was messed, and it was an expensive fix, but the guy recommended an Apple premium reseller out in the 'burbs of Munich, and said that they did this sort of thing for cheap, and sometimes even free (big plus).

I got on the subway and went to the shop. It was a bit of a walk from the subway station, and I hadn't been given very good directions, so it took me a couple tries and asking people before I found it. They had a look at the computer and said that we had three options. The first was the easiest and cheapest, but might not work. It didn't. They tried the second option and said that if it didn't work, I would not be able to salvage my files before they put in the brand-new hard-drive, which was option three. They tried option two, and I waited outside the operating room, pacing back and forth (actually I played the Wheel of Fortune App on one of the iphones, and won! BIG MONEY!).

After a long time the guy came out with news. "Calm down, carrot." he said (apologies to those who don't get the reference), "We tried option two, we did our very best, but it was unsuccessful" The iphone fell from my hands and I screamed out between sobs, tears pouring down my face. "There was nothing more we could do", he pleaded, "I am so sorry... this leaves us with option three".

(Parts of the preceding paragraph may be embellished for dramatic effect, or untrue altogether.)

So ya, they had to put in a new hard drive, and wouldn't be able to retrieve any of my files. Also, Past Neil hadn't paid for the extended warranty, so the warranty had expired half a year ago. Past Neil also hadn't backed up any of the files, meaning I (that's Future Neil to you, Past Neil) would lose all my music (o ya, THAT's how I justify never paying for music), but - thank the heavens - Alice had all of my pictures on USB. So I didn't really lose all that much. I kept hoping this would be one of those times when they would do the job for free, but no. The bill came to 200 euro, which is like 50 Canadian Dollars right? Well, probably closer to $300.

I left the computer and would go pick it up the next day. I went into downtown Munich and saw the huge cathedral and the old buildings and walked around, all things that were free, which I greatly appreciated.

The next day I got on the S-bahn train (which is covered by my eurail pass, WOOT) and went to Dachau. I toured the Nazi-era work camp, with the audio-guide filling me in on all the horrible details. I spent about two hours there, and cannot say that I would want to go back, but am glad that I did it. I wanted to leave the whole time, but couldn't. The story was well represented and I would recommend the visit.

When I got back to Munich, I hopped on the metro and went out to the suburbs again. I had noticed the day before that nowhere had I had to show my ticket or use it to get on the subway, so I took my chances today, made sure I had my ticket for the day before (just in case it might help if there was someone checking tickets), and rode the metro without buying a ticket. (Rebel, right? No, I just didn't feel like it was fair to pay money so that I could go and pay 200 euro)

I got to the store and they told me that the computer wasn't ready yet, and to come back in three hours. Thank goodness I hadn't paid for the ride out there, because I took it right home again, and went to the hostel. I played Wii with my roommates for a while and had a shower before jumping back on the metro and getting to the Apple reseller, again. They told me it was ALMOST ready, so I waited in the store, and set a new high score on Wheel of Fortune.

Finally, they brought it out and showed to me that it now did, in fact, turn on, and then handed me the bill and I [begrudgingly] paid it - in cash (no paper trail, obvs.)

I took the metro home and got to the hostel where I enjoyed the wonders of a working computer for the rest of the night. I was surprised at myself for how happy I was at the end of that day. I had kicked it all off with a tour of a Concentration camp, and then finished the day by dropping $300 on a computer they had no idea why had stopped working. O ya, there was Nintendo Wii in there though!

The next day I hung out with everybody at the hostel before getting on a train headed to Fussen, Germany, for a day trip. Fussen (which means feet in German) sits at the foot of the Alps and is filled with beautiful Medieval buildings and has a wall around it. From there I took a bus to the nearby village of Hohenschwangau, which sits right up against the Alps between two castles.

The first castle is the childhood home of "Mad" King Ludwig II. He was overthrown in the 19th century because it was thought that he had gone crazy. They thought that he had gone crazy because he had been building castles all over Germany - long after castles had become obsolete - merely because he thought they were beautiful and romantic. One of the castles that he built, Neuschwanstein Castle (or the "Cinderella Castle"), was the inspiration for the castle at Disney World, and on the Disney logo. This is the second castle of Hohenschwangau, and the main reason most tourists are here.

I couldn't find a map of the town, and didn't know which way to go to get to either of the castles. I looked around for a bit, but after no luck, I used the old fail-safe method of getting to the tourist attraction when lost in Europe: follow the Chinese tourists. Works like a charm!

Neuschwanstein Castle sits partway up the first Alp at the southern tip of Germany, and I think it might technically be in Austria. It has a commanding view of the entire region, and on a clear day visitors can see for miles out over Bavaria. I did the 35 minute climb uphill to the castle (did it in 22 minutes, just sayin'), because I would have felt dumb sitting in a horse and carriage by myself, and didn't want to have to pay for it. At the top, the view was as described, and the castle was amazing. There was a surprising amount of people up there, but the castle was closed to the public as it was after hours. I didn't really care, it's not the inside of the castle that is famous.

After taking way too many pictures of everything (seriously, I look back through my pictures and I have like five of every view of the castle, and the mountains, and Germany) I went back to Fussen and had half an hour before the train went back to Munich, so I explored the old town a bit. I went down by the river, and ended up getting a little bit lost, but made it back to the train with three minutes to spare, after being in great danger of missing it. Thank goodness the locals spoke English.

I got back to Munich and went on my working computer to plan my trains for the next day. The American on the top bunk was starving for social interaction though, so we had a conversation, and then he started monologuing (at me) about the differences between certain places in Austria. I really had to figure out my trains the next day, so I tried to end the conversation (politely) with a string of ok's, ya's, and cool's as responses whenever it seemed like my turn to talk. This didn't slow him down at all though, and he didn't take the hint that I really had stuff to do and didn't feel like talking to him at the moment. The guy could talk for hours about anything, or nothing. Nice enough guy, but fit the stereotype of the "super-talkative American who has to comment on everything" to a tee.

The next day, I checked out of the hostel and headed to Prague, which promised to be an unforgettable destination.

Florence and the Swiss Alps!

neil_loewen — Fri, 9 Apr 2010 05:46:00 GMT

We had now arrived at Ancona, Italy, and had to catch a train to Florence. We walked off the ferry and onto the vast expanse of concrete that was the port. We did our best to dodge the semi's that were barreling out of the port, and managed to survive despite our very poor agility. We didn't really know which way to go, but knew that the train station was North of the port, and not too far, so we planned to walk there. We came onto the highway that ran along the port and walked down the little sidewalk. The highway ran parallel to a set of train tracks, so we knew we were in the right spot. Eventually, our sidewalk narrowed and narrowed and then ceased to exist altogether. FAIL sidewalk. We were now left with a choice. One life-changing choice. We could try to "run" (read: waddle/scamper) across the busy highway on our left and get to the median, OR we could jump down onto the train tracks on our right and get to the path on the other side. As we pondered our options, a local came up behind us made our choice easier by telling us to run across the road. I wasn't looking and Bonnie panicked and went and I followed and by some miracle we made it safely to the other side with all of our limbs, though my heart may have stopped for a brief moment. (sidenote from Bonnie: I had full confidence that we would survive that whole ordeal…. I am the jaywalking queen)

We eventually made it to the train station after what was a longer than expected walk (it is ALWAYS a longer than expected walk when loaded down with big backpacks) and caught the next train to Faenza, where we would catch another train to Florence. We arrived at Faenza, and had an hour to wait for our connecting train. It was here in Faenza that we discovered something new to both of us: the unisex washroom. This wasn't weird because girls and boys used the same washroom, the weird part was the toilets that were employed. I walked into a stall, and was a little confused by the lack of toilet. I looked down and found it: two foot pads for standing on, a hole in the floor between them. I didn't need an instruction manual to figure out how this toilet worked. I think the situation may have been more exciting for Bonnie.

We grabbed some lunch from Chef Express (which is in every train station in Italy. They sell sandwiches named after famous travelers. I enjoyed a Vasco de Gama, Bonnie had a Magellan) (sidenote from Bonnie: How Neil remembers these kinds of details baffle me) and waited for 4:20 for our train to arrive. We sat around, and I kept checking my watch to see how long we had. 3:45, 3:50, 4:00. We passed the time through conversation, until I looked at my watch (which I hadn't done since 4:00 for some reason) and it was exactly 4:20! Within seconds and without a word I had thrown my bags on and turned to run to our platform. Bonnie, who had stopped mid-sentence, understood and followed. We ran onto the platform and our train was sitting there. We dove through a door and it closed behind us and the train pulled out of the station, with us on it. Had we missed that train it would have been hours until the next one arrived, if not until the next morning.

We arrived in Florence that evening and checked into Plus Florence, the same hostel Alice and I had stayed at when we were here. Where Alice and I had taken a cab to the hostel from the train station, I was able to get us there on foot! (Alice's puke-fit may have had something to do with this, but STILL) I felt kind of worldly in this moment. In our room we met a Brazilian guy, and an American girl (names Bonnie, help me out here). (sidenote from Bonnie: I am no help here….you are the one that remembers what we eat at Chief Express…remembering is your part of the job)The American girl just happened to grow up in Grand Forks, and knew all about Winnipeg. She was pretty impressed by this, but for us, after meeting Amanda in Greece, it takes an awful lot to get us excited about how small this world is. She said that her friends and her had partied in Winnipeg all the time before they were 21, and she remember the Tijuana Yacht Club in Winnipeg. She was pretty sweet as far as Americans go, and didn't fit any of the stereotypes. We suspect this is because of her close proximity to the Canadian border from an early age, and intermittent immersions into Canadian culture.

The next day we set off into Florence to see everything that I had missed the first time around, and show Bonnie what the Renaissance city had to offer. Our hostel had a path through the city mapped out titled "Florence in a day", and that was all that we had, so we took a picture and followed the route all day.

Our first stop was the Duomo, which we climbed to the top of, and it was just as spectacular for me the second time. We next went to the Uffizi Gallery, which is known as the most crowded art museum in Italy. It was full of Renaissance works and other really old paintings and sculptures, and had some famous pieces, like the Birth of Venus (sidenote from Bonnie: As Neil and I are walking around looking at pictures we realize that the women are more on the plump side then nowadays. We stopped at one painting and Neil says “Hey that girls got some abs going on there”…..it was a painting of Jesus….fail Neil…fail).

We continued on and, though I was a little nervous about it, we walked past the living statue who had chased me down the street when I tried to take a picture of him the first time I had been here. Luckily, he was on the job and in true statue form, unable to move from his pose. I looked him in the eye and stuck out my tongue as I sauntered past. I win.

We walked across the Ponte Vecchio, and around the neighbourhood on the other side of the river. (sidenote from Bonnie: Here I had my very first legit gelato….it was amazing) We returned to the main side of the river and walked through the city until we came to the Accademia Museum. We went inside and saw David which is really the only reason to go in the museum, and quickly skimmed through everything else before exiting. (sidenote from Bonnie: I was really excited to meet Derek…I mean David…I kept forgetting his name….I wanted to shake his hand, once getting there I realized how big Derek, I mean David actually was. We also were told that we weren’t allowed to take pictures..but we of course were extremely stealthy and got some anyways), We enjoyed the restaurant in the hostel for supper, and relaxed, after hitting up all of Florence in one day.

The next day we took the train to Milan, again, and just like every other time, we didn't see the city, just stayed at the train station. (sidenote: Here we had some time to kill so we decided to take pictures of us dressed in our travelling attire next to these big advertising posters that showcased exactly what Milan is known for…high fashion…. I think the Aggie jacket, curling pants, and running shoes were awesome the first time I went to Milan, but I did class it up a bit more this time as I threw in some hot aviator sunglasses that I bought in Florence) We caught a train headed for Geneva, and sat back as it wound through the hills up into the Alps, past the little villages on scenic lakes, around castles and into the city. Though all we had done was ride the train, it was one of our favorite days yet. (sidenote from Bonnie: Life is like a train ride.....there are some beautiful moments, some ugly, some bright and some dark, but rest assured there will always be light at the end of the tunnel J)

We had a couple hours in Geneva before we had to leave, so we walked around the city and took pictures of the lake and the mountains and the buildings. We needed an internet connection so that we could find some details about the trains we had to catch, and how to get to our hostel that night, so we searched for a Starbucks. We passed a group enjoying their fresh Starbucks coffees, so we asked them and they gave us directions. We took the roundabout way and walked through the Old Town, and found a chocolate shop. We bought some very expensive but very delicious Swiss chocolate, and found our Starbucks. We essentially spent 18 Swiss Franks on internet ($18), because that is what our two drinks cost. Oh Switzerland.

We returned to the train station and got on our train headed for Bern, where we would switch to another headed to Interlaken. The train was so crowded that we couldn't find a seat, and had to sit on the floor next to the door. At one point, the train came to a stop in the middle of the field, and nobody knew what was going on. A man came on the intercom and informed us that the train had pretty much broken down, and we would be here for a little bit. They eventually fixed the problem and we started to roll forward. We were now a little worried, because we only had a few minutes in Bern to catch our connecting train. We came into Bern and jumped off the train and ran down the stairs towards our connecting train. We had arrived at the exact time that our train was scheduled to leave, so we had reason to hurry. We found the right platform and ran up the ramp to our train. We got the top of the ramp and were only a few feet from our train as the doors closed and it left the station, right in front of us (sidenote from Bonnie: This was as epically close as Neil writes it…..a made for movie moment).

Luckily, there was another train to Interlaken in an hour, so we were given some time to see a little bit of Bern. We took the elevator to the rooftop of the train station, where we had a good view of the city. This was also a local hangout for the teens of Bern, so some intoxicated teens took the elevator down with us. They started talking to us in German, and I answered them with "No sprechen sie Deutsch". Big fail on my part, as I had intended to say "I don't speak German", but actually said "No (in English), do you speak german". They looked confused so we bailed out of the elevator and made sure to keep the English-German dictionary closer at hand(sidenote from Bonnie: You have to imagine this situation with Neil trying his best to have a German accent as well…..it as hilarious….if the situation had a like button, I would have clicked it).

We came down to the main floor, and were greeted by a marching band, all dressed up in golden costumes, playing their music in front of a crowd of apparent trick-or-treaters. Children and adults alike were dressed in costumes, and Bonnie and I were a little confused. We eventually learned that this was because it was Carnaval, but at the time we wondered if this was some sort of belated Hallowe'en.

We caught our train to Interlaken (yes, the only reason we initially planned to go to Interlaken was because we are from the Interlake) (sidenote from Bonnie: This was the greatest reasoning ever to go to a certain place) and arrived after the last bus or ferry to take us to our hostel, which was in the town of Iseltwald, across the lake (sidenote from Bonnie: It clearly was called Istanbul Neil….geeze!). We had no other option but to hop in a taxi, and 30 Franks later we arrived in Iseltwald at our hostel. There we met a group of, Swedish, Finnish, Polish and Norwegians who were playing a drinking game while watching the biathlon at the Olympics. Every time that a shooter from their respective countries missed a shot, they drank a shot. We were invited to join in, and since there were no Canadians in the event, Bonnie got to be Austria, and I got to be the Czech Republic. These two countries aren't very good at the biathlon, end of story.

The next day we met some Alaskans over breakfast (one of them knew Sarah Palin! but he couldn't see Russia from his house) and they suggested that we go rent a sled and take it down the mountain. It was much cheaper than skiing, so we went for it, and a couple hours later we were on the mountain, with our sleds. To get to our sledding trail, we had to hike up the mountain a ways. The trails weren't very well marked, but we asked directions and headed in what we thought was the right way.

We hiked quite a ways up the mountain (it was about 45 minutes to the start of our trail) and didn't see anyone. We got up so high we were above the tree line, and the clouds were caught up around us, so we couldn't see very far. We thought about turning back several times, but trekked on. I really felt like we were going the wrong way, but didn't want to turn back and lose precious time. We were already running pretty late. We finally came to a point where the trail headed down the mountain, so we hopped in our sleds and took off. The kid at the rentals store hadn't given much instruction ("Just lay back and steer with your feet"), so we figured out most it on our own. We had rented ski-pants but only had our sneakers for our feet, so as we sped down the hill, and the only thing we had to slow us down and keep us from flying off the edge of the mountain was our feet, we quickly got booters as all the snow pushed up the ski pants and filled up our shoes.

The fog was now thick and we couldn't really see much at all now. We would launch ourselves down the mountain and go about a hundred metres before having to stop because I would fly out of control or the sleds would get too fast to be anything near safe. We had to keep stopping also because it was now such a white-out that we couldn't see the trail (sidenote from Bonnie: For the people who watched the Olympics this year, remember when they had to cancel the downhill skiing because of the white out….it was like that if not worse.). There were orange posts that marked where it was, but we could only see two posts ahead of us. At one point, Bonnie came to a stop, and I was unable to stop my sled, and I ploughed into her from behind, but luckily, I was fine (sidenote from Bonnie: Luckily he was fine but I just got a sled rammed into the middle of my back, initially I wasn’t too concerned about it probably because of the adrenaline of not knowing where we were or where we were going or the fact that Neil running into me had prevented him from sledding off the side of a cliff….at the time it was a great distraction from the pain)

I kept cleaning the snow out of my shoes every time I stopped, but eventually my feet just became numb and I didn't have to get rid of the snow anymore. We made our way down the mountain and didn't see another human being for a good two hours. We didn't see a single tree for at least an hour either. Finally, we came down below the tree line and were able to see where the trail was. We came upon a group of cabins and hoped to find the people that lived in them who could tell us where we were, but the place was a ghost town, and the snow stood halfway up the sides of the buildings. We carried on and came to a cabin all on its own on the side of the trail and stopped. We looked in the window and could see people so we knocked, hoping they could tell us where we were. They were kinda DB's, and didn't answer the door, but Bonnie noticed that the sign on the house matched a name on the map, so we knew where we were! Contrary to my belief, we actually were on the right trail, so we continued on happily down the mountain.

Over time, we got pretty good at this sledding business, and perfected a technique in which we linked arms and made the two sleds one cohesive unit. I was the left leg - for left turns - and Bonnie was the right leg. We made our way merrily down the mountain, but had to keep up good speed because it was getting late in the day, and the last thing we wanted was to be stuck on an Alp after dark. (sidenote from Bonnie: We also spent this time alone to perfect our singing skills which helped ease the stress and enhance our vocal skills which helped us have lovely random outbursts of singing that occurred for the rest of the trip) We finally made it back down near the bottom, and met a father and daughter who knew what they were doing, so we followed them down into the village, where we returned our rentals and caught the train back to Interlaken.

On the train back to Interlaken, the conductor came along and asked us for our tickets. We showed him our Eurail passes, but he said that Eurail passes were not valid on this train, as it was a private railway. He made us pay the full fare for a ticket back to Interlaken.

In Interlaken we grabbed a kebab (which are everywhere in Europe. This was the first time for both of us. The Verdict: Delicious, but a tad messy) and rented our skis for the next day before getting a ride from the rental company back to our hostel.

The next day, after breakfast (which consisted of cheeses and meats on WARM home-made Swiss bread with butter melting on it......) (sidenote from Bonnie: this is making me hungry) our friendly hostel manager with a cool Swiss accent drove us into town, where we caught the train back to the mountain. We were going to ski on a different mountain than we had sledded down yesterday, so we took the train to Lauterbrunnen, rather than Grindelwald, which is in the other valley.

We really didn't want to have to pay the ten something euro to take the train, so we decided to cross that bridge when we came to it. We hadn't been checked the previous morning anyway, and we were going a different route now, so we wouldn't have the same conductor as yesterday evening. Funny story, we had the same conductor as yesterday evening. He came walking down the train checking tickets, and we didn't know how we would be getting out of this one without a fine. I took off all of my bright red clothing and Bonnie changed her appearance as well. I decided to do the talking, whereas Bonnie had done the talking yesterday, and maybe he wouldn't remember us. He came to us, "Tickets?" We showed our Eurail passes and gave our best innocent faces but he immediately recognized the dumb Canadians who couldn't figure out how to buy real tickets, and got quite frustrated at us. Luckily, we came off just really dumb ("Oh, we need to buy tickets EVERY time? We didn't know. We're so sorry") and he never suspected us of being smart enough to have been trying to beat the system. He made us pay for our ticket to Lauterbrunnen and back to Interlaken, and stormed off down the train.

We made it to Lauterbrunnen, immediately able to laugh at what just happened, and now took a little train-car UP the mountain, to the town of Wegan. It was packed, so we were unable to sit down, and had to stand at the front unable to lean against anything, in our ski boots. I thought my legs were going to fall off, because my ski boots were pretty stiff, so my knees were constantly bent, and this train went up the mountain at a great angle and was stuck facing down it, so I pretty much half-squatted the whole journey, which felt like an hour, but was probably like twenty minutes (sidenote from Bonnie: Sadly Neil was unable to experience the view that I had, it was breath taking. We pretty much scaled the side of a mountain. When you looked to one side all you could see was rock and the other side was a steep drop that overlooked the valley….BEAUTIFUL!).

Finally we made it to the Wegan and everybody piled onto the platform. We grabbed our ski's from the rack in front of the train and headed into the town to find the gondola. We got on the gondola and got up the mountain, where we finally could step into our skis and my shins could take a break. I had been wearing my ski-boots the whole time because my shoes were still soaked from sledding the day before. It was such a relief to be able to glide effortlessly down the mountain, and they had way more snow than I had been expecting. There was powder all over the place. We did a few runs and worked our way up to the top of the mountain. It was still quite cloudy today, though not quite a white-out like the day before had been. When we got up to the top it cleared up though, and we had an awesome view of the nearby peaks, and the skiing was much easier as well, since it was sunny(sidenote from Bonnie: I need to give a lot of credit to Neil for putting up with me on the ski trip, he was a champ. Whilst he was “gliding effortlessly down the mountain” I was tumbling, stumbling and falling all over the place (with kids on the ski lift even yelling out “WHIPEOUT”-thanks kids I didn’t realize)…..intermediate hills in Manitoba are not intermediate hills in Switzerland, they are harder then black diamond hills here. To get to the top of the mountain you had to do a lot of intermediate hills but I didn’t want to let Neil down and stop us from getting to the top of the hill so I carried on. Neil was amazingly patient putting up with me and waiting…on the plus side he was able to get some spectacular pictures…..on the downside that sled in the middle of the back from the day before really made its presence known! )

We stopped in at the restaurant at the top and it was full of people so we got a tiny little table in the broom closet (not literally, but close). The prices were exorbitant, the water was carbonated, and the food was delicious, but all of that was expected of Switzerland (sidnote from Bonnie: The view from here was amazing, any picture we took, we look photo shopped in, all around us all you could see was mountain peaks and pure blue sky…LOVE).

Bonnie had been skiing in a great deal of pain in her back (probably had something to do with being hit by a sled at some point, but I'm not a doctor), so she decided to take the train down, and I would meet her at the bottom. We left the restaurant and she changed her mind, and we skied down, with the best runs of the day. (sidenote from Bonnie: I actually had begun to improve! But we did end up taking the easier hills to get down most of the time.)We made it to the bottom and had skied over the top of the mountain and were now on the other side of the mountain, in the Grindlewald Valley. We got on the train back to Interlaken, and saw that we had a different conductor than the last two times, thank goodness. I think our train ticket had been destroyed somewhere on the mountain, so we now we were going to take the train illegally once again. We decided to try our best and see if there was anything that could get us a free trip, so Bonnie held in her hands our Eurail pass, bus ticket, ski pass, and gondola ticket, and showed them to the conductor and said "What would you like?" The conductor informed us that our ski passes would have gotten us a free ride on this train the whole time, and that we shouldn't have bought tickets that morning, or the day before. Nobody had told us this. Not when we bought our ski pass, and not when we had been sitting on the train TO THE MOUNTAIN with OUR SKIS but without tickets. Fail, guys.

After dropping off our skis, we had to get on the bus back to our hostel in Iseltwald across the lake, but didn't know where to get on this bus. We did know that it stopped at the train station, so we decided to catch it there. We didn't have a map, however, and had no idea which way to go. We decided someone at a hotel would be able to tell us where to go, so we went into the nearby Hotel Sonne. There was nobody at the front desk, but we saw a map used that. We couldn't find ourselves on the map, so Bonnie ran outside to read a street sign so we could locate ourselves. This wasn't an awesome map, so we still couldn't find ourselves, but the curve in the road looked a lot like a curve in a certain road on the map, so we guessed we were about there. This whole event was really awkward for us, because we definitely weren't staying at this fancy hotel, and there was a group of people sitting in the lobby, not helping us. I went back outside to see if there was some sign to tell us anything. While I was out there, someone finally came out and talked to Bonnie and we got directions to the train station.

It was quite a walk, and we weren't sure if we were going the right direction the whole time. Also, and this was the real disaster, I didn't have my arch supports in my shoes (I hadn't put them in, because my shoes had been drying out, because they had been soaked sledding the day before - it was fate) so I was limping like a wounded dog (is that the term?), but I soldiered on. After a little bit I rolled up a ball of kleenex and molded it to my foot, and it worked wonders! I thought it was pretty ingenious. Bonnie's back was really paining her, but I couldn't make anything out of kleenex to fix that. At least not in the time I was given (sidenote from Bonnie: But he thought jumping on my back for a piggy back was a good idea…).

We eventually came to the train station, and had a little bit of a break before the bus arrived, so we headed into the little city to see what was there. It was scenic place with big old fancy buildings and the mountains as a backdrop. Bonnie bought a phonecard and got to call her mom too! (sidenote from Bonnie: OH HI MOM!!!)

We bought some cheap wine and took the bus to the hostel to celebrate (or mourn) Bonnie's imminent return to Canada, but as we got off the bus, the whole group of Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns got on the bus to leave. There went half the party, now we only had the less fun Americans. When we got to the hostel they didn't want to join anyway, but Bonnie and I went ahead with the night as planned, and it was an awesome time.

The next day we enjoyed that amazing warm bread for breakfast and packed up our things and checked out. After busing into town, we hopped on a train aimed for Lucerne. It wound through the mountains and along the lakes and down into the emerald valleys and past little villages until we got to Lucerne, which was very beautiful itself. We spent the night at a hostel in Lucerne because we hadn't been able to book a hostel in Zurich, where Bonnie was flying out of. Everywhere in Switzerland was really packed because of skiing at that time of year.

The next morning we trained to Zurich Flughafen (airport). (sidenote from Bonnie: While taking the train back we were reminiscing about my time spent in Europe and kept saying how we couldn’t believe how smoothly it went....everything had worked like clockwork with hardly anything screwing up along the way….as we were saying this we ended up getting off at the wrong station and had to wait 20 minutes to get on the next train….great way to end it!) Once we arrived at the airport, we ate and each had an orange juice from the cool machine like they had in Barcelona! It was a 6 euro cup of orange juice. I was so ready to leave Switzerland and so ready to leave airports. Apparently Bonnie was too, because after we ate she checked her luggage and boarded the plane home. It was an awesome 12 days eh Bonnie? (sidenote from Bonnie: I was leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again….oh Europe, I hated to goo ooo oo) hehe. I had the time of my life for those 12 days, it was an adventure I will never forget! If anyone is even thinking of travelling…DO IT….be it 12 days or 12 weeks or even 12 months, its time well spent. I couldn’t have asked for a better chauffeur and travelling partner to guide me through this whirlwind adventure THANKS NEIL J)

Small Island, Small World, BIG Adventures!

neil_loewen — Wed, 7 Apr 2010 23:24:00 GMT

I'm back! So right now, you guys think we have just arrived in Greece, but we have some catching up to do. Last time I wrote, we had just arrived on the island of Corfu! Resume...

The hostel that we are staying at (The Pink Palace) is in a village on the other side of the island, so we walk up to the first bus that we see and ask if he is going there. He isn't and he waves us over to some other buses across the parking lot. All of the vehicles from the ferry are exiting now, so it is a treacherous place to be for two slow-moving backpackers. We dodge traffic on our way to the buses, but are intercepted by a taxi, who tells us to "Get in." When we hesitate, he says "I am not trying to rip you off, now get in the car" (side note from Bonnie: First he asks, where are you from? We point to our flag. “OH you are Canadian…I like Canadians….then he tells us he is not going to rip us off) We weren't looking for a fight, and just wanted to get to our hostel (where I could SHOWER) (side note from Bonnie : you have no idea how much this was needed!) (hey Bonnie, how was your shower? that's what I thought.) so we oblige. (Checklist in my head: Is he a stranger? Check. Does he try to get you to get in his vehicle? Check. Does he offer you candy? No check! We're good to go.) He was an old man, so I think we could have taken him anyway.

He was a talkative guy, so we ended up learning quite a bit about this old Greek taxi driver. His wife is Canadian (sidenote from Bonnie: HE LOVED CANADIANS), his son is Kristopher (Greek Name) Robert (Scottish name), and is a barber, and his daughter's name is Anastasia Ursula, and is an architect in London. We didn't ask, but thats good to know. Corfu is mountainous, so the roads are winding and steep, and he told us all of this while going way to fast up and down and around and avoiding rockslides. He told us all about the island and how it has the largest olive trees in the world, and how some are like a thousand years old, and he even stopped and made us get out when we came to a scenic vista! (sidenote from Bonnie: He also told us that before you marry a boy from Corfu, check how many olive trees he had….cause you would be picking them for life) Best taxi driver so far, I'd say, but for some reason, Bonnie didn't tip him 100% (sidenote from Bonnie: I was short on cash….SOMEONE ELSE had my tip money).

We made it to the Pink Palace and were greeted by Emma, who is from England, with some good news and some bad news. The bad news was that there was a power outage, so there was no electricity in the hostel, and therefore no hot water (NO SHOWERS). That would happen. And then she told us more bad news: that we were the only guests checked-in to this hostel. This, the largest hostel I had ever been at (it has capacity for 1200 people!) had 0 guests that weren't named Neil or Bonnie. And then.... o ya there was no good news. (sidenote from Bonnie: Mr. Pessimistic over here saw no good news….I saw a bed and also the fact that I WAS IN GREECE….I think at this time Neil was too spoilt of enjoying the little things :P)So we were kind of like "Okay, oh well, we are in Greece!" And then she was like "It's definitely gonna rain the next few days the entire time..." Enough with the bad news Emma! We were just happy to have stopped moving. We had taken pretty much every type of transportation possible in the last two days: planes, trains, and automobiles, buses ferries, and taxis. Now we could enjoy the mild weather and relax.

Though there wasn't anyone staying at the hostel, Emma did tell us that the employees (of which there were many, especially for an empty hostel) were like a family, and we were now a part of the family, so we wouldn't be bored.

We went down to the beautiful sandy beach and there we saw what had drawn us to Greece in the first place. Fine sand, azure waters (i THINK that is a colour), and sun! There was also a huge rock out in the water which was more like a piece of the mountain that had been separated from it over time by the water and wind, and I ended up taking about three dozen pictures of it. (sidenote from Bonnie: Here I had a valiant battle with Poseidon, the waves were so big that they would go all the way to the wall making it almost impossible to not get your shoes wet…but once I taught him a lesson he backed off a bit)

As we were walking down to another part of the village to see the sunset over the Adriatic, we came upon two people (the first two people we had seen in the whole village), a guy and a girl. The girl greeted us with "Hey, are you the Peggers?" I hadn't met anyone who would know what this term meant in months, so I didn't even understand what she was asking (no one outside of Winnipeg knows that term), until she clarified "Are you from Winnipeg?". As you know, we were! But what you don't know, is that SO WAS SHE! Amanda was her name and she was from North Kildonan! We couldn't believe what a small world this was, running into someone from our hometown, halfway around the world. There were like 15 people in this village and three of them were from Winnipeg. Representin'! The guy was Pete Pierce, with the coolest British accent ever, and they were both working at the hostel.

So, the hostel cost 25 euro per night, which, at the time, was one of the more expensive hostels I had stayed at (and it didn't even have electricity, which is usually on my list of must-haves). However, that 25 euro included three full meals a day. That night, we got the first of those meals, and it was so much more than I expected. We got Greek salad of course (although in Greece i think they call it "Our Salad"...), and we got Greek style spaghetti, which was amazing, and we got endless (FREE) bread, and we got mashed potatoes and wine and other stuff that I can't remember because it was gone as soon as the plate touched the table.

That night we hung out with all the employees (I'll try my best: Erik from Minnesota, Chris from the UK, Nick from California, George from Greece, Chef from Greece, Emma from the UK, Pete from the UK, and Amanda from Winnipeg) (sidenote from Bonnie: and Susie and her boyfriend from Hungry!) at the bar in the hostel, and truly were a part of the family. At about 8pm, the lights came on! I waited another ten minutes just to make sure I had adequate hot water, and then showered and it was absolutely amazing (sidenote from Bonnie: We were both finally clean!).

We stayed up pretty late, so the next day we let ourselves sleep in, and savoured the happiness that came in bed form for as long as possible. You take beds for granted until you attempt to do three countries in 12 days and proper sleeping patterns take a backseat.

In the afternoon, we set out on a walk, to find a little cove that Bonnie had been told about the night before. It drizzled on and off, but lucky for us, I still had my trusty 3euro umbrella from Rome! It had barely survived Tarifa, but there was thankfully no wind today. We climbed the steep slopes of the mountain and did our best to make our way down to the waters edge. (sidenote from Bonnie: And since it was Valentines of course Neil picked me a flower….that I did not accidentally squish and put dirty socks on at a later time) We got a few more pictures of the rock and a good look at the homes that dotted the coast. We never did find the cove that we were looking for, but it was a great hike all the same. We went back to the hostel and Bonnie got to study for the exams that she had to write as soon as she got home.

We had not just become real-life friends with the Pink Palace Team, we had become something so much more: Facebook friends. I looked at Amanda's profile and saw that we had a mutual friend! This wasn't just any mutual friend either, it was my cousin! I asked her how in the world she knew my cousin and she was like, "Ya, we dated in Gr. 8". And they were still friends too! NOW, it was a small world! Just went to a Greek island with like nobody on it and happened to bump into my cousin's ex-girlfriend. haha.

We chilled out for the rest of the day. This was a vacation from school for Bonnie - a pre-examination rejuvenation situation (in the Greek nation), you might say- and a vacation from my vacation for me. A chance to relax, and not do anything, as often as possible.

That night, as we were enjoying our 5 star supper (sidenote from Bonnie: topped off with free wine and candle light) - just like any other day - the unthinkable happened. Someone else checked into the hostel. Meet Kasper. Kasper is from Denmark and used to work at this hostel years ago, and now comes back every single year for a week at a time. Kasper was an interesting dude to talk to. He is in the Danish military. He has been to BRANDON, MB for top secret training operations or something, and he has also fought in Afghanistan, so we heard some really interesting stories. I don't think Bonnie or I have ever met anyone who has been to Afghanistan. We talked to Kasper for a while, he let us use his computer for the interwebs, and he helped us plan the next day of our adventures!

The next day we said farewell to our Big Fat Greek Hostel (we would have said it in Greek, but all we had learned how to say was the word for cheers [Yamas!]), and all of the new friends that we had made, and headed into Corfu Town to see what there was to see, before catching our ferry back to the mainland. Corfu Town was a beautiful old city, with an old town plunked in between two large castle fortresses. We toured one castle, walked through the old town, and watched all the people flying kites, because it was Clean Monday, and that is the natural thing to do on Clean Monday, fly a kite.

We walked onto our ferry, and took pictures of the beautiful island as we sailed away from it. We sat on the top deck, and it was so nice and sunny, I think I may have tanned a little bit (sidenote from Bonnie: he also may have gotten a bruise from falling down the stairs and we also made an excellent rendition of I’m on a boat!) A group of teenagers came up to the top and talked in Greek for a little while near us. After a while, a couple brave girls came over and asked us, in English where we were from. We talked to the group of Greek teens the whole way back to Igoumenitsa. They wanted to know what Canada was like, they were impressed by how good our English was, (I was more impressed by their English and Greek and other languages), and they said we had beautiful eyes. I liked these Greeks. One of their dad's drew us a map showing us how to get to the ferry terminal that would take us to Italy.

We arrived back on the mainland and (using our map!) walked to the ferry terminal that would take us to Italy. We bought our tickets and boarded yet another ferry (sidenote from Bonnie: At this time I broke up with Neil using songs….I let him down easy), this one taking us to Ancona, Italy, which is about at where the top of the calf would be, if there was a leg in the boot that is Italy.

This ferry was immediately much nicer than the other one that we took from Italy, I suppose because this is a longer journey. This ferry had a restaurant, lounge, and casino, like the other ferry, but it also had a gift shop, computers and internet (which didn't work!), and was much bigger and newer looking. However, on this ferry, the airline seats had armrests - which were locked in place, so there would be no laying across three chairs to make a bed for us. We are stubborn and weren't going to let a boat stop us from getting a nice, horizontal sleep, so we slept on the floor underneath the seats.

We asked the front desk if they would let us switch the channel on the TV to the Olympics (they had lost their channel choosing privileges after the trip over), but they declined, and we were forced to sit through two hours of some B (maybe C) movie that ended up with the main character dying and accidentally blowing up the Pentagon, and the bad guy living happily ever after. Not a happy ending to a movie that didn't have much going for it from the start. (sidenote from Bonnie: Keep in mind this movie was played in Italian….so we had a lot of fun making up our own story line to the movie……I think our story line was better).I promptly fell asleep and slept on and off for the rest of the journey.

We arrived at the port of Ancona and were officially in Italy again! We were ready to explore some of Italy and then see something totally different than where we had just been, the mountains of Switzerland.

Journey to a Greek Isle...

neil_loewen — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:50:00 GMT

We told ourselves we would just have to come back to Pompeii some day, and see it in depth, as we hopped on the train, and headed to Cilantro, I mean Salerno, where we looked for our bus that would take us to Taranto (Italians pronounce it much like Toronto) (side note from Bonnie: actually they say in like a Chicagoan saying Toronto), which was partway of the way to Bari. We looked around for the right bus, but had a little trouble (there was no signage [huge pet peeve of mine = lack of signage], and the people that we asked knew little English). There were several buses waiting outside the station, and one bus in particular could possibly have been our bus, but I thought it was too early to be ours. As we stood outside looking confused and lost, a man stuck his head out of the back window of the bus and said "Taranto?". We nodded yes and he motioned that this was the bus, so we asked the driver and, sure enough, this was our bus. We got on the bus and it promptly left, so if it wasn't for the guy at the back, we would have missed it. Also, the guy looked an awful lot like the guy who had shared our couchette with us, and had made sure we were awake when we got off the train, so there is no other possible explanation other than that he is our guardian angel and is making this trip go smoothly. Shout out to our GA (side note from Bonnie: And another shout out to the sandwich guy….they are friends, we have to give shout outs to them equally)!
The bus took us through the countryside of the extreme south of Italy. We really didn't know much about the extreme south of Italy, so we had no idea what to expect. Turns out, there are snowcapped mountains, which we found more scenic than the Alps (though we hadn't really seen the Alps as it had been kind of cloudy). (side note from Bonnie: Neil claims that Southern Italy is beautiful, I know it is beautiful, he was asleep for a good amount of the time, I on the other hand can’t sleep in a moving vehicle….I am jealous of Neil’s ability to fall asleep in 2 minutes flat) A huge advantage of buses is that you really get to see the area which you are traveling through, since you aren't speeding through on the shortest route possible like a train.
We made it to Taranto (which still sounds funny every time I say it) and then boarded a train bound for Bari, where the ferry port was. This leg was less scenic but I didn't really care (side note from Bonnie: he didn’t care again cause he was able to sleep…..or was being amused by my “I have to go to the bathroom dance), I was a little more worried about the ferry we would have a few short hours to find, get tickets for (if they had any), and catch. I was DECENTLY sure that I knew what time the boat left the dock, but not 100%, so there was room to worry. I didn't tell Bonnie that I wasn't positive we would catch that night's ferry, because I am courageous like that. (side note from Bonnie: this ability to pretend to not be worried around me comes in handy even more as the trip goes on…..stay tuned!)
We got to Bari and didn't know where the port was. We assumed the ferry port would be at the ocean, but we didn't know where the ocean was either. We weren't really expecting Bari to be as big as it was. We spun around in circles for a bit and pieced together all of the snippets of information that we collected from Italians with little bits of English. We soon knew that we had to take the #20 city bus to get there. We got on the #20 and asked the bus driver "porto?" (when in doubt, add an o), and he said no and said "twenty (and then made a slashing motion with his hand)". We looked at him a little confused, and he did it again. This was the extent of his English/American Sign Language, so we got off that bus, and were now more confused and worried than before. We asked somebody else and they were like "Twenty slash" and we were starting to think that the #20 had been cancelled. We eventually found the ticket booth, which was hiding behind another building, and that guy gave us tickets that told us to get on "bus #20/". Ooooooh. The bus was CALLED twenty slash. Why they would even think to come up with such a dumb name for a bus I don't know.
We finally found the #20/ bus and were on our way, though we didn't know where to stop. We thought it would be pretty obvious what was the port and what wasn't (probably the thing with the massive ferry in front of it) but it turns out this port-o was kind of massive-o. Our bus driver was nice, but couldn't speak English, but there was an Albanian woman on the bus who knew just enough English and translated for us. We got dropped off at one terminal and she led us to a ticket booth (where they spoke English!) inside.
It turned out that we had been dropped off at the wrong terminal, and we were directed to the big blue building down there. LOTS of walking with our big backpacks later and we hadn't made much progress (side note from Bonnie: I believe with the amount of walking we did, we could of got to Corfu by foot). We could see a big ferry which was probably ours sitting in the port, but couldn't find the big blue building to buy our tickets! It was now dark, and we were walking around a port in Italy, not knowing where to go. Someone eventually led us in the right direction (side note from Bonnie: someone yelled at us to the right direction……or maybe he was just trying to talk above the very loud, very large semis that were going to kill us), and we found the building, bought our tickets it was leaving right when I thought it was supposed to) and made our way to the ship. I don't think Italian has a word for signage, because they really don't know what it is or how to use it, so we had to ask more directions, several times. One group of port workers told us to go one way, and then started laughing and told us to go the other way. We were extremely grateful when we finally boarded our ship.
We had paid for airline-style seats, which was one step up from the cheapest option, sitting on patio furniture, freezing outside on the windy deck aaaall night. Our tickets gave us access to a large room filled with airline seats, with a T.V. at the front that played super cheesy Greek soap operas, and then switched to I Know What You Did Last Summer. I don't know which was worse. There weren't many people on the ferry, luckily, so there was enough room that everyone could lay down over three seats and sleep properly.
We were starving, so we took advantage of the on-board restaurant buffet. Complimentary?? Not so much. Whoever owned this boat knew that they had hundreds of people trapped on a boat for 9 hours, so they would have to eat something, and they could charge as much as they wanted. We learned the hard way that every single slice of bread that you eat is 60 euro cents. The food wasn't even very good, but it was edible (side note from Bonnie: it was edible when you put copious amounts of ketchup on it…..thank goodness they didn’t charge us for that too!), which is about as high as our standards are able to go.
There was a surprisingly cheap and large bottle of "Avra" water, so Bonnie bought (side note: this was lovingly named Avra I for future reference). We did some exploring around the ship trying to make our way to the top deck (haha or the poop deck if they have one, i don't even know what that would be). We opened a door onto the helipad at one point, and we were pretty sure we weren't supposed to be there, so we bailed (side note from Bonnie: After this we sat down in our airplane seats to “sea” (hahah-I spelt this wrong when typing and now I have decided to keep it this way) a presentation on what to do in case of an emergency on the boat, we were the only ones on the plane….I mean boat…to watch it…..I am know trained in surviving the Titanic.)
Now, the gross part of this story is that, if you have been paying close attention, you will have noticed that tonight we sleep on a ferry, the night before we slept on a train, and the night before that Bonnie slept on a plane and I illegally slept on a couch. So, you do the math and you realize that: we haven't showered in several days. (side note from Bonnie: We smelt like a mixture of airplanes, trains, buses, and sweat……yummy) Miracle: the ferry has showers. YES. You do not know how much we both need this.
Bonnie goes for a shower and I decide to defer until the morning, so I can be clean for Greece. She comes back a couple times because the shower is always taken when she gets there, but finally goes and decides just to wait outside. In the meantime, I am REALLY into I Know What You Did Last Summer (don't think I am serious) so I'm not paying attention to the time. I eventually notice that it has been nearly an hour, and Bonnie is still not back. I know her mom would probably be mad at me if I let her get kidnapped on a ferry to Greece, so I go have a look-see about the ferry. I can't find her around, so I get to the showers, and find Bonnie, who has finally just finished her shower. I can let her explain the extremely awkward situation which caused her to be so late. (side note from Bonnie: So apparently, in Europe, the sign that says Women’s Washroom, it merely there for show……first time I walked into the bathroom there was a 12 year boy changing his clothes with what I believe was every other woman in his family (aunts, grandma, and mom) [Sidenote from Neil: It was probably more embarrassing for him than for you.]….second time around 20 year old man walked in to talk to a girl…..and then I found why the shower was constantly in use….after the third time of walking in and out of the bathroom, I decided that I was just going to wait it out. After waiting for 40 minutes listening to the shower be turned on, then off, then on, then off, out walks a woman…..and then a MAN. There is no better way to explain the situation other then….AWKWARD. Since I was in such distress about needing to shower, I did use the shower, but I believe I came out of there feeling even dirtier then I was before. And then walks in a fourth guy who was wondering where the heck I had been for the last hour.

We get some hours of shuteye in (side note from Bonnie: I finally slept!!!! I am never going 48 hours without sleeping again!) but then we are rudely awoken in the morning by being told over the intercom to prepare to exit (side note Bonnie: BEEP, BEEP, BEEP), because we will be in Greece in half and hour. AS IF I forgot to factor in the time change! No shower for me, but at least Bonnie doesn't stink any more...(side note from Bonnie: doesn’t stink anymore but is nowhere near being cleaner)
We dock in Igoumenitsa, Greece, and step onto land. It is so early that the sun doesn't show any signs of rising any time soon. We are now at a large port in Greece, at night, and once again have no idea where to go. We are told that the terminal for ferries heading to Corfu (that's us!) is a kilometre away, so we decide to go the easy route this time, and take a cab. Our cabbie takes us right up to where we buy tickets for our next ferry. Bonnie LOVED that one kilomtre cab ride, so she pays him double what he asked for (side note from Bonnie: okay so in my defense I was still really tired, and it was dark, but its okay, with the extra money I gave the driver he probably bought a nice bottle of wine for his wife for Valentine’s day….I may have brought a baby into this world)
We buy our tickets and stand between all the semis and cars waiting to board and walk onto the ferry. It is about an hour and a half ride and the sun is up as we arrive, and walk onto the island of Corfu (side note from Bonnie: The boat ride there was gorgeous, we got to watch the sun rise with the sea and mountains as our scenery, also Neil bought probably the best looking sandwich in the world and I am still wanting to go back to get myself one. Note to all: if you are ordering food, first see what Neil gets…he can find things that you never knew existed).

Moral of the story: we made it to Corfu! I cannot believe how smoothly everything went, or that we actually made it from Switzerland to Greece in such a short amount of time. Now that we have arrived, the real vacation can start. Bonnie kept saying how amazing Europe was, and I was like "You ain't seen nothin' yet!".....

So Much Distance to Cover, So Little Time

neil_loewen — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:21:00 GMT

After Alice went to the home, and I assumed just hopped on her plane and flew home with no problems (never assume), I immediately jumped into the second phase of my adventure. I was to fly to Basel, Switzerland that night (from Barcelona, I was currently in Madrid) so that I could meet my buddy Bonnie the next morning! Before checking out of the hostel to begin this journey across Europe, I went online to check my facebook. Luckily I had checked, because in my inbox I found a message from Bonnie saying that her flight had been cancelled, and in a last ditch attempt to salvage a large portion of her vacation, she had booked another one, still arriving in Zurich, but at a different time. If I had not checked my facebook, I probably would still have been sitting at the wrong gate at the airport, waiting for a plane to arrive that wasn't going to, and Bonnie would have been spinning around in circles worried because I hadn't been there when she landed. So glad this situation was avoided.

This new information didn't change my immediate plans though, so I went to the train station and casually stepped onto a high speed train going from Madrid to Barcelona (I love the eurail pass), and had arrived in a few short hours.

Once there, I did a little bit of wandering around the beautiful city and eventually took the train to the airport, where I had a few hours to sit around. I got thirsty, so I went to a restaurant in the terminal and got an orange juice, and what happened next changed my life. Probably not, but it's still too early to tell. I ordered the juice, and guy at the counter turned around and put oranges into the top of this machine, and then pressed a button, and the gears started to turn, and one by one oranges would drop down into the inner workings of the machine (which was glassed in so I could see it!) and get the juice squeezed out of them and then get discarded out the side. It was SO cool. That is what I call fresh. The orange juice was amazing, and the viewing experience was equally awesome. The glass of juice may have cost 6 euro (like $9) but who is keeping track (maybe I should be...) OK, so maybe it didn't change my life, but it was the highlight of my day!

I checked my bag and went into the waiting area. I am apparently a really organized person (little did you know) and was there a good hour before ANYONE else showed up. I had two hours to wait for the plane, which ended up being an hour and a half delayed, so I was there about three and a half hours early. Upon boarding the plane, the pilot informed us that this flight was actually supposed to be cancelled, but they had brought this plane over specially from Hamburg, just to get these lucky passengers to Basel. He also told us about how bad the weather was where we were going, and how this plane had just gotten back from being fixed, and how it was probably missing a wing or something else to make us all feel really relaxed as we took off over the Mediterranean. We successfully got up in the air though, and we were off to a good start.

Once at cruising altitude, I took advantage of the decently sized menu that was offered to me - I thought I would celebrate me successfully boarding a plane all by myself! The sandwich I ordered was absolutely delicious, and probably the best airline food I have ever had. Fresh tomatoes and cheese and meat and lettuce and it was just made that day and it was awesome.

On the plane, I was a little worried about the eleven hours that I had between the time that I landed in Basel and when I had to be in Zurich to catch Bonnie at the airport. I had tried to book a hostel in either Basel or Zurich, but both cities were surprisingly filled to the max, so all I could do was hope that there was a vacancy when I got there, or maybe a cheap hotel. I also was worried since the receptions of all the hostels in Basel closed at eleven pm, and, if my plane had been on time, I would have just made it in time. Of course, my plane wasn't on time, so I would be getting into a city I had never been to before, in the middle of the night, without a room booked, and after all of the receptions had closed. Que sera, sera!

When I landed in Basel, I was promptly kicked outside the terminal, as it closes at midnight, and it was past that. Outside by the taxis that take you into the city, I met a French couple with the exact same predicament as me, so we shared a cab (which was extremely expensive, still). Upon arriving in town, we went to a hostel that I had researched before arriving, and rang the bell. Eventually, an innkeeper poked his head out of a window on the second floor, and we told him that it was cold out and that we just needed a room for the night. He apologized and told us that there was no room for us to stay there. I had a feeling that if we had looked on the outskirts of town, we would have found a manger that we could have spent the night in.

We tried a couple more hostels, and all were full. We stopped in at some hotels as well, and all were WAY too expensive for our tastes so we were left stranded outside. It was kind of difficult talking to people as well, because everybody spoke German. Between us, we knew French, English, and mediocre Spanish, and that is how we greeted people. Parlez-vous Francais? no. Do you speak English? no. Hablas Espanol?? no. Surprisingly, more people spoke English as a second language than spoke French, and Basel is right next to France. The airport was actually on the French side of the border, where everyone spoke French, but as soon as you crossed the invisible line into Switerland, the was little French.

One hotelier had told us about a hotel twenty minutes away by cab that was decently priced (for Switzerland). I declined, because it was still out of my budget, and I really was only going to get 6 hours of sleep at the most anyway, and the taxi would have cost nearly as much as the hotel. The French couple thought about it and expressed their need for a bed, in broken English. They WERE French, after all, so I could see why they wouldn't be ok with sleeping on a bench. It wasn't their fault. They spent the extra money, and left me in Basel, alone, and bedless. I headed back in the direction of a really nice hostel we had tried, and as I stood outside the locked door, someone came out for a smoke and I snuck inside before the door closed (I have never been so grateful for smoking). Once inside, I made my way down to the chill room, and found a nice comfy couch. I had been up since 6 am that morning (which felt like days ago) so I was barely able to tie my bags around my arms (so no one could steal them) before I conked out.

I arose four solid hours later, and left the hostel as if I hadn't been there in the first place. I went to the train station, which had been empty just hours prior, but was now bustling with loads of people. I hopped on my train and was at Zurich Flughafen (thats a funny German word for airport) within the hour.

Now that I was at the airport, I needed to find Bonnie's arrival gate. Easy enough, I would just find her flight number which I had written down on the arrivals board. Problem: I hadn't down her flight number. My bad. I did remember her saying that she would now be arriving from Chicago, instead of Washington, and I found a flight that was arriving from Chicago, at around the right time. I also checked all other flights coming from the U.S. and luckily, they were all arriving at the same gate. Crisis averted.

I waited at the gate, and watched many beautiful emotional reunions in the meantime. Then, Bonnie came out! Yay! (side note from Bonnie: little did he know, I was scandalously smuggling in some very tasty trail mix-well actually I was so excited to see Neil that I didn’t think about the trail mix that was in my bag (apparently you are to claim things like nuts and fruit) I had still had doubts about my own logic in choosing this gate, but now I had found her and the trip was saved! We shared stories of both of our adventures in the last 24 hours - hers involved getting pick-pocketed before even making it out of Chicago (sidenote from Bonnie: first strike against Chicago) - and then took the train into downtown Zurich to explore the city (sidenote from Bonnie: first official train ride ever!).

We arrived at Zurich Hauptbahnhof (main train station) (sidenote Bonnie: I am at this point still not really aware of the fact that I am actually in Europe), and made to leave the building. As we were walking in the large main area of the station, people suddenly started running at us. They yelled too, and we froze in our tracks. People from all over ran past us, yelling at the tops of their lungs (we were very confused at this point. No, we hadn't had time to experience confusion yet, we were frozen like deer in the headlights) and we turned to see what they were running at. They all joined in the middle of the station and made a tight group of flag-waving, swatch-toting, Swissness; jumping up and down with their hands in the air like some sort of spontaneous pep rally (sidenote Bonnie: it will forever be known as “The Running of the Switzerlands”……I am beginning to realize that I am not in Canada anymore). We noticed that this was all being filmed, so I thought it might have something to do with the Olympics? Like "Look how excited everyone in Zurich is about the Swiss bobsled team". Unfortunately, their inspirational Swiss footage had two stunned Canadians in it - and we are quite obviously Canadian (sidenote from Bonnie: we looked like the Canadian flag had thrown up on us, multiple times) - who kind of got in the way and spoiled (no, improved) the event (sidenote from Bonnie: I believe that we completely added to the event and made it even better than it was before). We shrugged it off, and continued on our merry way into the city.

Zurich is beautiful, just like every other city I've been in in Europe, and is situated on the edge of a pristine lake - with swans abound - and bordered by mountains. We stopped at a Starbuck's (yes Alice, I am really really sorry), but only so that we could get the wireless internet on my iPod and Bonnie could email her mom and let her know that she had landed, found me, and was safe. We also got a massive (I always forget what the sizes mean at Starbuck's, even after being in Italy so much) hot drink each, before seeing some more of Zurich (sidenote from Bonnie: this was the first introduction to how expensive Switzerland was).

We didn't have much time however, as we had a plan to fit three countries (Switzerland, Italy, and Greece) into 12 crazy (sidenote from Bonnie: wonderfully fantastically awesome) days, so we caught a train heading due south, and our journey began. After a few hours of train through the Alps (poor us) we arrived in Milan and YAY Bonnie was in Italy! We had a connecting night train to catch quite soon, so we only had time to get some McDonald's from just outside the gorgeous old train station (sidenote from Bonnie: pet peeve: beautiful buildings having Americanized stuff in it, on the plus side though, they know how to make a classy looking Mcdonalds), and take funny pictures with the large Giorgio Armani advertisements that filled the station of course (sidenote from Bonnie: that day a new fashion statement swept the nation- curling pants, an Aggie jacket and running shoes).

We boarded our train, and I kind of hoped that we had been mistaken and were actually supposed to be on a much nicer/newer train (sidenote from Bonnie: I knew nothing different but was disappointed in the very unlike Harry Potter kind of train it was). As soon as we got on the train, the hallway that led to our sleeper room formed a bottleneck as it was about the same width as my backpack. Of course there was about 15 other people trying to fit into the same hallway and get into their rooms so we had to wait for quite some time. I also think that there was a little old lady with a walker at the head of the line, because it moved deathly slow. Another problem was that once inside the couchette, which contained two sets of triple bunks in an area the size of a single king-sized bed, there was even less room, so people would come in and out of their rooms often. After about ten minutes of back-strained agony (I may be making this sound worse than it was, but at the time, this is how I felt) (sidenote from Bonnie: no he isn’t) we got inside our couchette, and lay flat on our beds, because there was no other position that would have worked.

I went to use the washroom (which was also appalling, but we won't get into it) and when I returned Bonnie said that the conductor had stopped by (sidenote from Bonnie: and as in stopped by he means angrily yelled (using non English words) at my non-Italian language speaking skills- I was officially not in Canada anymore), and needed me for something. Eventually, the conductor came back, and, unfortunately, did not speak any English. He may have known the word for "ticket", but with his accent, I wouldn't give him credit for it. He took our eurail passes (the lifeblood of the trip) and wouldn't give them back (or didn't understand) when we asked for them back. He got another guy in our couchette (who also didn't know English) to keep trying to explain to us what was happening. Eventually, after many hand signals and head shakes and nods (sidenote from Bonnie: and attempts by him to load is laptop to use a translator), we came to understand that we needed to wake this guy up at 5:30 am. Ok, that makes sense. No it doesn't. We were still worried about our passes and didn't know why he had left with them. Bonnie hadn't yet written in the date of travel on hers (which you are technically supposed to do before getting on the train) so I imagined him on the phone with interpol talking about getting us deported. We eventually got up to go talk to him ourselves, because he was taking an awfully long time. We came into his office at the front of the train and he was standing there joking with a bunch of other train workers in Italian, and munching on a sandwich. He laughed at us and finally got the point across that he would give us our passes back AT FIVE THIRTY. We felt kinda dumb but were relieved and got some sleep (side note from Bonnie: somewhere here I came to the realization that I really went through no customs once arriving to Europe and had begun to question if I had properly went through all the security measures I should of-this was followed by a very horrible dream involving me being deported because I smuggled in trail mix).

We did get our passes back (and we didn't wake the guy up at 5:30) and we got off the train in Salerno, before the sun was up. Salerno, not, as Bonnie was unable to remember, Cilantro (side note from Bonnie: it was a very hard name to remember and I am investigating a way to get them to change the town’s name to Cilantro). One is a city, the other is a spice. While we had been sleeping/fretting about our eurail passes, the train had taken us all the way down through Italy to south of Naples, Salerno, and from here we hopped on a little train that took us right to Pompeii. We arrived at Pompeii just as the sun was coming up, so we had a few hours before anything even opened (side note from Bonnie: and by nothing being opened he means pretty much nothing other than the small station cafe….the bathrooms weren’t even opened), and we got a cappuccino in the station and watched as the rain that had welcomed us to Southern Italy ceased, and the sun came out. We walked into the (new) town of Pompeii, and got breakfast. Our waitress spoke English (YES!) and told us which way to go to get to the ruins.

While at the train station, we had learned that the only way to get to Bari, a port on the other side of Italy, by tonight, would see us leaving Pompeii in two and a half hours. We had precious time, so we speed-walked to the ruins, thanked God that they had mandatory baggage storage (it was a relief to get rid of the backpacks), picked up our maps and dove right into the Ancient Roman Empire.

We were so excited we ended up getting lost. We had our map, but nothing was labelled very well, and we were all confused and in a rush, so we just walked down one road until we came to a sign that told us where we were, and it turned out to be very far from where we thought we had been. Now that we had found ourselves, we resumed our torrid pace. We saw a huge amphitheatre, lots of old houses, streets, and everything still intact (sidenote from Bonnie: this is where we met the third member of our wolf pack, a stray dog who followed us around). It was amazing how well preserved it all was, and how expansive it was. It was an entire city, frozen in time. We came upon some American tourists and they asked us "Do you know where the people covered in lava are?" (American Accent) (sidenote from Bonnie- this is was probably the first people I had talked to since landing that used English as their first language). We saw lots of the great sights of Pompeii, and in record time, but then had to high tale it out of their or risk missing our train, and then our bus, and then our ferry, and it just would have been a disaster.

Did we make it to Greece? Did we get lost again and are still stuck in Pompeii? You will have to wait until next week (probably more like tomorrow) on The Blog.

A Spanish Farewell

neil_loewen — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 09:04:00 GMT

The morning after Morocco, we said goodbye to all of our new friends, and took a bus to the next city, and then caught a train to Granada. The countryside on this train ride was beautiful - we found the mountains! We arrived at the train station in Granada, and the directions to our hostel told us to take a bus there, so we tried to find the buses for a little while. By the time we found the bus stop, and our bus showed up, it was rush hour. Alice and I, when fully loaded up, take up the space of about 6 people, so when the bus pulled up and everybody was already uncomfortable crammed inside, we just knew we would be walking. It turned out to be a nice walk down one of Granada's main roads though, with a view of the snow-capped mountains above the city, and it wasn't even that far.

We arrived at our hostel, which was in Granada's Arabic Quarter (it reminded me of good old Morocco, which felt like just yesterday) and found our room. For supper that night an Italian guy who works in the hostel MADE legit pasta (from scratch) and gnocchi and that's what we ate and it was probably better than any of the pasta that we had had when we actually were in Italy. (sidenote from Alice: this man was amazing – he fed an entire hostel full of hungry people with HOMEMADE delights and shared the recipes with all of us!)

After supper, we were heading up to our room when someone yelled and ran up to us. It was Chris and Yao from our last hostel! (sidenote from Alice: I don’t think these two were ever introduced by name in our last blog, but these two were some people we had met in the hostel in Tarifa. Tarifa was a lot like a big family) They had decided to come to Granada for a day, and just happened to be staying at the same hostel as us, and just happened to run into them. In celebration of what was obviously fate, we got some of the FREE tapas that Granada is famous for, and then: a night on the town!

The next day we headed up to see the crowning glory of Granada, the Alhambra. We had read a quote somewhere, that if you die without seeing the Alhambra, you haven't lived, so we thought we would make our lives worthwhile. We had been told a couple horror stories about people who book their entrance time, and then show up a minute after they are supposed to, and are denied entry, so we made sure that this would not be happening to us. We made our way up to the top of the hefty hill that supports the Alhambra, and entered the gates of the park 15 minutes before we had to. We strolled through the luscious gardens peacefully, until Alice remembered that her sister had told her that we had to be at the entrance of the castle complex, not just the gardens, before our set time. Our peaceful stroll soon became a gallop, and then a full-on sprint, as we had precious minutes to get to the entrance. The difficulty was in that the signage was not up to par, and there were two main hills that the gardens straddled, and the castle was on one of them, we just didn't know which one. At one point in our mad rush to get to the castle we tried to take a short-cut through a hedge garden, which we soon discovered was actually a labyrinth. We quickly found ourselves lost in this labyrinth, but still running in circles trying to get out. Soon enough, we had freed ourselves from the maze and decided that we were on the wrong hill, so we hightailed it over to the other one, making it to our destination with mere seconds to spare, and we entered the Alhambra as planned.

The Alhambra reminded us much of the Alcazar in Sevilla (we are getting to be old-Spanish-castle snobs), with its mix of architectural styles, changed rulers throughout its history, moorish stronghold era, and was everything we expected it to be. It however, had an awesome view of the entire region, which we tend to love. As Alice was still recovering from her Spanish Influenza and at this stage sounded like a man who had been smoking for far too many years, we wandered to the train station to reserve our spots on the train the next day and then returned back to the hostel. Alice happily undertook the Spanish tradition of a siesta once again.

That night was the night of the superbowl, and we happily sent our American friends off to a pub to watch it, but we had a train to catch early in the morning (sidenote from Alice: and I was still dying), so we called it a night, and got some much-appreciated rest.

The next day we hopped on another of those wonderful Spanish high-speed trains, and moseyed on into Madrid, a city of 5 million people. I found it interesting that as we were entering the city there were fields, and then there were high-rise apartment buildings on the edge of the fields. It was country, and then you blinked, and it was Madrid.

We've been lucky with hostels, and this one was no exception: great location, great people, great price. Come to think of it, that should be their slogan. That night Alice went out for dinner with her cousin, who happened to be in the neighbourhood, while I had to stay at the hostel and hold down the fort. I found my way to the chill-out room where I met a bunch of people from all over the world, and we just happened to know all the same drinking games, so we took advantage of the hostel's free sangria and got to know each other that way. Alice eventually showed up and joined in as well. That night we all went out together and had a grand old time!

The next day Alice and I went to see the sights of Madrid, which we could cry over because Alice was leaving the next day. First stop: El Palacio Real de Madrid. It is a giant palace with a courtyard and stuff. We took a tour of the inside. I have never seen so much gold in my life. (I still say that now, and I just watched Canada in the Olympics, BOOYA! btw) But ya, golden EVERYTHING. Chandeliers and gold and gems and thrones and halls and paintings and anything else expensive you could think of, it was all in there. It was truly spectacular. I don't really know why it was there, whose it was, or how they were so flippin' rich, but it was insane.

We then walked down Gran Via, the main street in Madrid, and saw some beautiful architecture, as well as picked up a few souvenirs. We finally came to a serene park, a sanctuary from the hustle bustle of the city, with a lake and some statues and paddle-boats and pretty old buildings. We sat and thought about the amazing month we had shared in Europe, and how quickly it had flown by (and haha I get two more of those!). We indulged in our final traditional cuisine, Churros with chocolate. Churros are a doughy type of donutish type stick thing that traditionally in Spain you dip in a cup of delicious melted chocolate. Yes, it is as good as it sounds.

We had an early night that night as we both had to rise early in the morning. The next morning we got up at what felt like 3 am but I'm sure was really more like 6, and we yawned and hugged goodbye, and Alice went to the airport and flew hoooooome. (sidenote from Alice: Neil makes this sound so casual – it was more like 62 hours of no leg-room and the fear of snow storms ruining my trip, but we wont get into that.)Tear.

Thanks for an awesome month of traveling Alice, same time next year?? (sidenote from Alice: Traveling in Europe is almost impossible to say no to. I may just need to sell an arm or a leg to get there. Until then, farewell lovely blog readers!).

Three Countries, Two Continents, One Epic Adventure

neil_loewen — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 01:38:00 GMT

Hi friends. Long time no blog, I know. It has been a difficult last month for me (traveling is hard on a person...) because after the shocking death of my computer, I was left without any access to the world wide web. I now know how the Inuit feel. Stranded, alone; out on the icy tundra just trying to stay alive. I think the Inuit now have internet though, so really I was worse off than them. Through it all, I persevered. For 40 days and 40 nights I wandered Europe, beaten down and cut off from the world (with company of course) (sidenote from Alice: Neil wasn’t even cutoff from the world. When I was there he was constantly on MY computer and then once I left he went into a STARBUCKS (in Europe, the home of amazing coffee) to use internet. Cutoff indeed), until finally I got a brand new hard-drive on the final day of Carnival! (For those of you who appreciate the irony (fittingness?) of this tale ending on the first day of Lent, I'm glad) So long story short (you know it is still going to be a long story), I have now regained the capabilities to blog once more, and will get you all caught up on the adventures, starting NOW!

Where I (actually, where Alice) left you last, we had just arrived in Tarifa on the southernmost tip of Spain, in the middle of a near-hurricane, and you (and Alice) were all laughing at my expense as I was trying desperately to keep my umbrella from turning inside-out and/or catching the wind and hoisting me into the sky Mary Poppins Style. We did make it to our hostel alive and there made friends with a Canadian couple before drying out and going to sleep.

By morning the weather had cleared up nicely and we checked out the big sandy beach and (carefully) touched the Atlantic Ocean. Alice was still suffering from the effects of that cold she had captured upon arrival into the country (for this reason I will call it the Spanish Flu), and her symptoms now included total sinus congestion, so we popped into a pharmacy to get some nasal (ew) spray (ew) (sidenote from Alice: I apologise that Neil found it necessary to talk about my sinuses). If there is one reason why Alice converses better in Spanish than I do (you think it's because she lived in Venezuela, but really that's not why at all) it is because of the amount of times we have had to go to spanish-speaking-only pharmacies for one of Alice's ailments. This pharmacy was no different. Alice did well, "Yo tengo dolor aqui..." yada yada yada and then froze when saying what she needed, before making the hand motion of spraying something up her nose, and saying "chhh, chhh". Whatever gets the point across. The pharmacist understood entirely, and we got the goods and took off.

We hopped on a bus to Gibraltar, and it took us almost all the way there, dropping us off at the town on the immediate Spanish side of the border (Gibraltar is technically Great Britain), La Linea. We got out and walked in the direction of the Rock of Gibraltar, which loomed over everything else. After showing our passports, we walked right across the border (a first for both of us, and now we were able to say that we walked to Great Britain). Land is precious in the tiny peninsula of Gibraltar, so the airstrip is bisected by the only road in and out, so as we walked signs instructed us never to stop moving and to stay within the lines (sidenote from Alice: Neil didn’t manage to do either of these things. He’s lucky to be alive.). Once we were out of harms way and off the landing strip, we were greeted by a red telephone booth and all other things British. There was no longer any trace that we had been in Spain mere minutes ago, other than the beautiful, very un-British weather. Suddenly all of the people spoke English (with british accents) and we stopped for some delicious fish 'n' chips and watched all the Coronation Street characters coming in and out and chatting with each other. They didn't even know we were watchin'...

We hopped on the gondola which forged a path up the mountain (aka. The rock) and then disappeared into the clouds which were trapped on the top. We, too, soon disappeared into these clouds, and the spectacular view that had been so hoping for only existed with a good imagination. We got off at the top and took the audio tour of the viewpoint, so we could at least hear about the amazing view if we couldn't actually see it. The receptionist told us not even to bother going outside with all the clouds trapped up here, but to our surprise when we did go out to the viewing platform it had started to clear off! Those powerful Atlantic winds blew the clouds right overtop of the rock and we were afforded an amazing view of the city below, the monkeys (Gibraltar has a bunch of wild monkeys for some reason), the rock, and Spain. We squinted and said that we could also see Africa, but I don't think it was clear enough to the south to actually see Africa. We snapped some awesome shots and headed back to Tarifa, where we made some more friends in the American group that was staying at the hostel, as well as an Austrian guy named Tobias.

The next day we, along with all of our new friends from the night before, hopped on a ferry and went to the next continent (sidenote from Alice: YES, it was JUST as casual as this sentence seems). We had found a really good deal with a local tour company where we would get a ferry to and from the city of Tangier, Morocco, a tour guide would show us around the city, and we would get lunch, all for about $100. This was less than the cost of a ferry ticket alone, so we jumped on the opportunity. We had not idea how they could make any money doing this. We got out into the Strait of Gibraltar and could see the mountains of Morocco on the other side. Just seeing Africa was exciting. We got to Tangier and officially stepped on African soil (I'm pretty sure I took a picture of our feet), as well as entered an Islamic nation for the first time. We wore our stickers dutifully on our chests and our tour guide picked us out of the crowd and led us to his van in the parking lot (this went against everything they ever taught me in elementary school). He spoke several languages, so we got the tour of the city in English as well as Spanish. He drove us around the main parts and explained all of the history and stuff and things. We noticed a rather extraordinary police presence, and he informed us that, it was our lucky day, the King of Morocco was in town! This also explained the countless large flags with the Kings face on them. There was at least one or two police or army officials on every single block of the city that we passed, so we felt quite safe in Tangier's hands.

We made our way up the mountain, past some beautiful vistas overlooking the city and the Strait of Gibraltar, and came to a stop next to, wait for it... camels! Ya, we got to ride them. I may or may not have worn a fez while doing so (pics on FB). I must say, riding a camel is a cool experience, I would definitely do it again. (sidenote from Alice: as touristy as this whole tour was becoming – I am a firm believer that it was an amazing way for us to see so much of Tangier in such a short time. Fez, dusty camel riding areas and all) Afterward, we carried on back down to the Medina (old city), got out of the van, and walked through it. Surprisingly to me, there were actually more people in casual dress than in traditional robes and scarves. Our tour guide also noted that today was the holiest day of the week for Muslims (Friday) so there was more traditional wear than usual. There didn't seem to be a certain demographic that dressed more traditionally than the others either.

Probably the highlight of the day for me was seeing an Arabic guy about my age, dressed in the long robes and such - but sporting a faux-hawk. The fohawk is my thing, but I can let him claim ownership of it for the Arab World, I'll represent in North America.

The differences we had were obvious, we were from two different cultures - two different worlds. Two different worlds which so often had such difficulty finding common ground, yet we had done so already. Two worlds, oh so far apart, yet we were united by something so simple, yet so powerful: a faux hawk.

...So that was me waxing poetic about mah hair-do. (sidenote from Alice: that actually just happened.) Moving right along, we were led through some of the markets of the Medina, where we found quite-recently-offed chickens, rabbits, and other creatures hanging up for sale, fully intact. We didn't stop for much browsing. (Try getting that across the border. "Do you have anything to declare?" "Ummmm, ya, a dead rabbit?") Our fearless leader told us about the many little neighbourhoods that make up the 1.4 million strong city of Tangier, and how they each have certain characteristics. They all have a school, a central water-source (as most of the places don't have running water) and some other facilities which I cannot remember right now (this was a month ago)(sidenote from Alice: one of the COOLEST things (personal opinion) that they have is a communal bread baking fire pit place. There is a man who sits in a dugout room with a wood fire who cooks the bread. Everyone brings their dough to the man and he cooks it. Apparently neighbours pick up each other’s dough on the way and it’s all very communal and friendly and lovely!), and I also noticed that they all seemed to have one room that opened up onto the street with a TV and video games which the neighbourhood children shared. We also walked through the centre square of the city which housed a famous mosque. The king was due to arrive for second prayer so there was a exceptionally large crowd waiting for him. If only we hadn’t been running on strict tour-time we could have met (or at least seen) the king! I guess we’ll just have to go back again!

We next were taken into a traditional Moroccan restaurant for lunch, which consisted of a delicious cinnamon soup, lots of bread, couscous, shishkebabs, dessert of sugar bread (which is like bread that is made out of ONLY sugar), and coke with Arabic writing on the bottle!!! As we ate we were serenaded with Arabic music by a band of skinny old men. (sidenote from Alice: the one that kept grinning at me was a few helpings of sugar bread too many away from skinny) It was so sweet.

After lunch we discovered how this tour makes money. We were "given the opportunity to go to a traditional Herbal Pharmacy and see all of the traditional Moroccon health products!" This meant that we were all paraded into the "pharmacy" (I do not use those quotation marks lightly, this place was not legit) and sat in a circle around the ""pharmacist"" (check that out, DOUBLE quotes). He would tell us about some mysterious powder which, after one sniff, would stop your snoring forever, or another which would combat seasickness, or some garamasala or whatever, and then his trusty assistant would bring the item on display to each person and force you to smell. Literally, he would squeeze your nose and close one of your nostrils and then hold the strong smelling powder up to the other one, and you would smell and go "mmmmm, smells gooood". There were like 26 different miracle products, and I'm pretty sure what he said would cure acne for good, he also presented as fine saffron. He even had "Moroccan Viagra". After he had gone through all of the products, he went through them again asking each of us how much we would like to be. There was about ten of us in the group, and it was the most awkward time in the world because nobody bought anything. Not even the Moroccan Viagra, amazingly. He would go down the line individually and at first we were like "Ummm, no I don't think I'll get any of that, Thanks!", but after the first ten minutes we were like "No", "No", "No", "No". He stayed cool for the most part but near the end he started to show signs of exasperation with these cheap North American backpackers. I really wished there could have been just one money-bags with us who was willing to buy one of everything, just so it wasn't so awkward. SO awkward haha.

We FINALLY got out of there (interesting experience, but dragged on a tad long) and our traitor, I mean leader, took us to the next place, a rug store. Here it was less awkward and drawn out, and we got a presentation on how they make the finest rugs in the world and stuff, and then they attempted to sell us the thousand dollar, 12 foot long rugs. Where am I supposed to fit that? Well I guess there would be lots of room in my wallet for it! O ha, I made a funny. But ya at least these guys were nicer about it and didn't pressure us too much. (sidenote from Alice: I am disgusted to see how LITTLE Neil has talked about these rugs. This store was AMAAAZING! Packed from ceiling to floor with beautiful, elegant, amazing, to die for rugs! We saw a woman making the carpets using a traditional loom, we sat while they rolled countless beautiful rugs of every shape and size out in front of me, and the entire time I sat there mentally trying to work out logistics of fitting a rug into my backpack and how on earth I would pay for it. Unfortunately, the money to rug space and sensibleness ratio didn’t quite add up and I left empty handed. The owner of the shop did offer numerous hundred camels for me though (how flattering!). Luckily that deal never came about and we successfully continued on our way.)

As we exited the building there were several men hovering around the door ready to sell us stuff, like watches, rugs, miniature camel figurines, jewellery, etc. I think they make all of their money off of these daily tours, and I wouldn't be surprised if the tour company got some of the cut. One guy picked me out of the crowd and offered me a watch, "10 euro" he said. I, after zero hemming and hawing, declined. "Good price" he replied, as if I would only now realize what a steal his authentic Rolex's were. "I already know the time, thanks" I said as I showed him the watch on my wrist. "Five euro," He bargained, "Good price". I must be quite the bargainer, I thought, I just made the price of that Rolex cut in half. After his smooth, professional start, the Moroccan street-hawker soon became pathetic. "Please," he continued, "Three euro, please" and he used his Puss in Boots face to perfection, his eyes nearly making me want to cry. I offered him one euro for the watch and he acted as if I had hurt him in some way, but I could tell he was thinking about it. I really had zero need for a watch, so I just kept declining, but he walked with me for five minutes all the way to the next store, which he couldn't go inside. I wanted to stand on the invisible line that he couldn't cross at the very edge of the open storefront and stick out my tongue, but I thought better of it.

This store was a little nic-nac shop with dewdads and trinkets and gewgaws and other funny words. Alice turned out to be the big spender of the day and bought a coin-purse. After leaving the store we were told that that was all that was planned for the tour, so we would have some time to wait for our ferry. As we stood outside the store, all of the street hawkers took advantage once again, and made their rounds through us. As you know, I like to be creative with street hawkers, so I answered one "I don't speak English", then he spoke Spanish and I said "No hablo Espanol". "What language do you speak then?" I tried to think of something obscure, that he wouldn't know, but the best I could come up with was, "Dutch" (why I would say the name of the language that I speak in English, I don't know). To my surprise, he started speaking Dutch, and I gave up on trying to outsmart him. (Why the best job this guy could get was selling toy camels on the street escapes me. He knows like 12 languages. I try to buy a ticket for a train in Italy and they know only Italian)

We got back on the ferry and returned to Europe, knowing that, despite the money-grabbing attempts, we would not be forgetting our side-trip to Africa for a very long time.

Super Sunny Sevilla!

neil_loewen — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Special Guest Writer: Alice Berents!

We had heard that the train system in Spain was not very good, however our first Spanish train experience was the best yet. We were checked onto the train a lot like at an airport, found our luxurious seats and sat back and relaxed as we began our (super) high-speed journey to Sevilla. When I say super high speed, I mean SUPER high speed. There was an electronic panel in the carriage that told you information about where you were, the temperature and how fast you are going amongst other things. At one point the speed reached 300km/h. THREE HUNDRED! (sidenote Neil: I got excited and thought I would take a picture, which was awkward when the whole train was illuminated by the flash which hadn’t been turned off.) Luckily we weren’t going so fast that we couldn’t enjoy the scenery and the beauty of Spain did not disappoint.

We have learnt that the less major the city, the further out the main train station is from the city centre. Seville is no exception. We trekked through the streets of Spain’s hottest city wishing that it could be less awkward to remove layers of clothing with ginormous backpacks on as we had officially arrived in our hottest city yet. Unfortunately, somewhere between Italy and Spain I caught a cold. No big deal, but my immune system is not very friendly and I did not want to get any worse. So we had a highly successful conversation with a pharmacist in Spanish, and I returned home with tablets before jumping into bed for my first Spanish siesta. What is there not to love about a country that has a culture of naps? After a siesta we found the supermarket and bought food for dinner. We also found the kitchen of the hostel, which was on the top floor of our hostel and had a stunning outdoors terrace. We watched the (delightfully warm) sun set over Seville before making some dinner and retiring for the night.

The next morning we tossed up the idea of wearing shorts, but decided that it might be a little bit cold. Plus, all the locals were still wearing parkas – we would DEFINITELY not have looked like locals in shorts. So we settled on t-shirts and headed out to explore. It seemed a lot of people we knew had been to, and loved, Sevilla so we had been given suggestions all over the place. After stopping at the supermarket for some meat, cheese and bread (sidenote Neil: pretty much all we have eaten this trip - other than pasta - but what more could you want?) we headed towards Seville’s biggest park; Maria Luisa. We walked through and past numerous cute little fountains and under hundreds of orange trees with oranges just shouting out to be picked. We picked a couple of oranges and made our way up to a pagoda overlooking the park. We enjoyed most of our picnic lunch, except a couple of painful bites into definitely-not-ripe oranges (sidenote Neil: I wisely tasted a drop of the juice, but I guess Alice was hungrier because she unfortunately just dove right in). We decided maybe we had chosen a bad orange and we would have another go later.

We made our way out of the park to the Plaza de Espana. Like a lot of places in Europe at this time of year, the plaza, and its associated buildings, were under construction. Luckily, they had gone about the construction in such a way that we were still able to walk through and see the beautiful buildings. It was on our next stretch of walk that we saw a temperature sign telling us it was 21degrees! Definitely the hottest weather I have experienced since October.

Our time in Sevilla was short so we continued on our whirlwind tour through the city and made our way to the cathedral. Sevilla’s cathedral is the third largest in Europe after Notre Dame in Paris (which we unfortunately didn’t have time for) and St Peter’s in Vatican city (check!) – I think we are doing the cathedral tour of Europe. This cathedral did not disappoint. I particularly loved the amazing, large stained glass. We ran away from the numerous noisy school groups in the cathedral and made our way up the bell tower to get, you guessed it, our regular vista of the city. Sevilla looked amazing, and the beautiful, warm, sunlight just made it that much better. From the bell tower we could see the Alcazar; something that we were informed we had to see. So we made our way down and headed towards it.

Sevilla was the first place we encountered where they truly appreciated how poor students from all around the world actually are (in a lot of instances they will only give discounts to EU students). The cathedral was super cheap and the Alcazar was FREE! So we splashed out and paid for the audio guide; definitely the best decision we ever made. The Alcazar is the palace that the royal family still resides in when in Sevilla. It is interesting because it is a combination of (go neil, go!) (sidenote Neil: thanks for the lead-in Alice. It’s a unique combination of Islamic style architecture from the middle ages, Renaissance-age Catholic style, and later baroque additions. Very few places in the world have this kind of mixture of styles, and it was interesting because it told the story a time in Spain where the Christians, Muslims, and Jews, all lived in harmony with one another, and collaborated on massive projects like this. That’s all I got) The gardens of the Alcazar were also beautiful. We went to the very end of them where we found a maze of orange and lemon trees. Our friends from Belgium that we met on the Cinque Terre had told us that homegrown lemons smell phenomenal and Neil would stop at no lengths to acquire one to appreciate. One lemon for Neil and one orange for me later we begun to consider if the king would cut off our heads for stealing his fruit (sidenote Neil: There was way too much religious symbolism for me not to worry about the consequences of picking the forbidden fruit from the garden. From this I concluded that we would merely be kicked out of the garden). Luckily we exited the Alcazar with heads still intact. Unluckily, we hadn’t just chosen a bad orange earlier, all the oranges in Seville were apparently just bad.

We returned to the hostel to rest before going out for our first tapas. Tapas are a Spanish invention that begun when bartenders used to cover drinks with little dishes to make sure the flies didn’t get in. They then began to fill the dishes with little snacks like olives and the tradition of tapas began. All this started in Sevilla so we felt obligated. We checked with the front desk for where to go and headed out on a tapas adventure. Some real patatas bravas, croquettas and paella later, we decided that we were big fans of the tapas tradition. We headed back home, hoping that more rest would do my cold, which still had not left, some good.

We had the morning to kill before we had to get on our train to our next exotic location. We spent it drinking delicious coffee and walking by the beautiful river. While a definite tourist location, Sevilla never really gave off a touristy vibe. We could simply walk by the river as rowers went by on the water and their coaches sped by on bicycles barking orders into megaphones. It was somehow very peaceful.

We discovered what people had meant by the train system not being very effective as we embarked on our next train journey. We were going from Sevilla to Tarifa, the southern-most town in Spain. Two trains, two buses, six hours and a measly 200km (the road signs coming into Tarifa told us that was how far away Sevilla was) later we arrived into Tarifa in the pouring rain. Tarifa is known for being the furthest south point in Spain, but also for it’s insane wind. Luckily, my pack has it’s own raincoat so the rain and wind was not a big issue for me and I decided that I would rather be a little damp than fight an umbrella in the rain. Unluckily for Neil, his pack does not have it’s own raincoat. The ten(ish) minute walk to the hostel was nothing but hilarious for me. Neil’s 3euro umbrella was NOT doing him well, especially as the rain was basically coming vertically into our faces. Neil was walking along holding both edges of the umbrella over his face and pack desperately hoping that the thing did not turn inside out. At one stage he informed me that he could only see where he was going by following my feet, so some quick sidestepping was added to the equation. We made it to our cute little hostel in the chilled town of Tarifa and relaxed while drying out and decided which day trips to another country we should do the next day (don't hate us!).

FINALLY we can understand the locals!!!

neil_loewen — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Ladies and Gentlemen, we were having trouble keeping up with the blogging and photos, so today I have a big surprise for you, this edition of the blog is by special guest travel blogger: Alice Berents. Take it away Alice.

After overstaying our welcome in a coffee shop, realising our overnight train tickets were for first class instead of second, forming a plan B, finding out that we could use the tickets after all, spending far too long in a smelly train station waiting room, and even longer on an uncomfortable overnight train; we finally made it to Barcelona. (sidenote from Neil: wow, she’s got mad summarizing skillz. And this sidenoting business is awesome. Anyway..)

We arrived into the station and we were greeted by absolutely beautiful Barcelonian skies. We made our way to the metro and after a short trip we collapsed in the lounge of our hostel. We unfortunately couldn’t check into our room yet, and neither of us was going anywhere without a shower so we waited it out. Once we got into our room, we met one of our bed neighbours, Selin. She was from the states, but had been studying in Madrid for the past semester. She suggested we make a combined dinner (something we are rather fond of) and promptly went for a nap. We desperately wanted to follow suit and embrace the tradition of Spanish siestas, but we had a beautiful city to explore and a limited amount of time.

At this stage it had been (without exaggeration) 24hours since we had eaten. Twenty four hours is a REALLY long time. I informed Neil that I was tired and hungry and was not going to be in any mood for conversation or touristy stops until we found food as I was far too grumpy (Sidenote Neil: I CONCUR). Food was found quickly (Sidenote from Neil: we found the McDonald’s quickly, but then it turned out to be the world’s busiest McDonald’s, and we stood crammed in line, STARVING hunger, for 15 minutes) and we used our Spanish, quite successfully, for the first time. After devouring our food ravenously, we set on our way down one of the main streets of Barcelona heading towards the beach.

Barcelona is famous for the architectural wonders of a fella named Gaudi. He had crazy concepts for buildings and he had a couple of super sweet houses along the street. We didn’t go inside, but we heard that the insides of his buildings are even crazier than the outsides. We ambled through the old, gothic quarter, of the city. Neil marvelled at the architecture and promptly decided that he loved the city (Sidenote Neil: It was SO SWEET). I love the old parts of cities where the streets get skinny and there are little shops in obscure corners. Barcelona’s gothic quarter was no disappointment.

After some more goggling (sidenote Neil: in English we say ogling) at buildings, we found ourselves at Barcelona’s port. We actually felt like we could have been in Miami (or at least our movie version of Miami – we’re not positive it is always like this). Anyway, there were palm trees a plenty (Neil’s second love after the buildings), lots of open space (a rare sight for us in Europe), buskers and people rollerblading past. We wandered along the edge of the port and cut through some more old streets to be reunited with our old pal the Mediterranean. (sidenote Neil: ACTUALLY, Alice was still sleep deprived, and possibly suffering some residual side-effects of near-starvation, so she went a little crazy, like literally, and thought it was the funniest thing in the world to take pictures of palm trees on my camera and then show me and laugh like a crazy person, so I steered us toward the beach where I thought some sand and waves might make her sane again) Our walking by, and touching, of the ocean was remarkably more successful than in Monterosso and neither of us got wet shoes. We enjoyed the almost sun-set over Barcelona and then set off back to the hostel to meet Selin and organise dinner.

Selin had been staying with a local in Madrid during her exchange and had experienced Spanish food. She said it was pretty easy and suggested we make some Spanish dishes to try. We of course agreed and we set off to the supermarket. We attempted to make Patatas Bravas (fried potatoes with a special sauce), some other potato dish with eggs that I did not store the name of, and little fried sticks of deliciousness called Croquetas. This was quite an epic undertaking in a hostel kitchen. The dishes were somewhat successful, we were all sufficiently full and Neil and I were educated in what we should eat during our travels through Spain. We once again enjoyed some wine and conversation and headed to bed.

Neil and I were still recovering from post-overnight-train-sleep-deprivation so we enjoyed a relaxing morning before setting off with Selin to continue exploring the city. Before Gaudi unfortunately was [KILLED] he began building an epic church, the Segrada Familia. This was definitely a spectacle to see. What is interesting about the building is that it has been under construction for a ridiculously long time and is not due to be completed for a good 20 years or so. Isaac (from the Cinque Terre) had recently visited Barcelona and gone inside the church, only to find that he could only see scaffolding and later find out that in essence the entrance fee was a contribution to the construction. So we enjoyed it from the outside before beginning a climb through the suburbs to a park with the highest view of the city. Interesting fact about Barcelona: 10% of it is parks, which is not something we have seen in other European cities.

We reached the park just as rain hit, which conveniently cleared the park of a decent amount of people. We were enjoying walking through the park when suddenly the rain turned to hail. This became more exciting as the pieces of hail got bigger and we collected them in my umbrella to snack on (ice makes for a great snack) and at the same time worrying about the size of the hail as there was nowhere in this park that would offer sufficient shelter. Luckily as we kept walking the hail subsided and we made it up to the highest point in the park. As usual, the vista did not disappoint and we enjoyed some time sitting looking over the entire city and the beautiful sea.

There was more city to be seen though, so we made our way back down the hill to the metro which took us to the top of the famous street, Las Ramblas. It is a super wide street, which has pedestrian access all down the middle. Buskers of every description, flower sellers and all sorts of beautiful handicraft stores line the street and it was a lovely, relaxing walk. It was so nice that Selin was with us as the ratio was now two girls to one boy and Neil had no choice but to be patient as we went from store to store admiring all the beautiful nick-nacks. (sidenote Neil: Oh My God it was horrible. Alice has an unquenchable thirst for scarves of any type, and Selin liked every little place that didn’t sell scarves, so – if you do the math – we stopped at every single place. It took like hours. But ya, I was really patient about it, and am over it.) We finally made it to the end of the street where we found a striking, tall statue of Christopher Columbus. We appreciated the statue by returning to our childhoods and clambering onto and sitting on the giant lion statues that surround him. Some of us aren’t as good at climbing as we used to, but we aren’t going to mention any names. (sidenote Neil: Alice. Oops I mentioned a name. haha there is video evidence that will definitely be on fb for all to see)

We were now at the opposite end of the port to yesterday and we joined the masses walking out over the water to what we found to be a shopping centre. We went inside as the sun had set and we needed to warm up. Selin found one of her favourite Spanish clothes shops, we promptly lost her and decided we would make our way back to the hostel and meet her back there.

One metro ride later and we were back at the hostel. Neil claimed exhaustion and lack of hunger (yeah right) so I set off to the supermarket on my own. One big bowl of pasta in Neil’s tummy later I soon decided that I would never listen to him when he said he wasn’t hungry ever again (sidenote Neil: she whips up this pasta, and then dangles it in my face and then “whoopsie, I made way too much, WHAT are we going to do with all of this extra, delicious pasta???” I don’t feel bad for eating it at all). We packed our bags and readied ourselves for a ridiculously early departure from Barcelona the next morning.

An Epic Train Adventure

neil_loewen — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 22:30:00 GMT

No pants were stolen in the making of this blog.

So we saw Charlene, Alex, and Isaac off at 6am, immediately fell back asleep, and then got up and checked out ourselves for 10am. We had two hours until our train would arrive, and there isn’t really much to do in the Cinque Terre in winter if you aren’t hiking, so we sat in a little café and bought just enough coffees and croissants (one by one every 15 minutes or so) to take up about an hour and a half. We then went down to the station and it was there that we realized that our tickets said first class on them, even though we were only allowed in second class because of our rail passes. Worried that we wouldn’t be allowed on our night train to Barcelona that night (which only comes every three days) Alice got on the computer to formulate a Plan B. The train would be full, so we couldn’t buy second class tickets if we had to, so we would be forced to take a plane from Turin to Barcelona, but Alice didn’t have any money in her first bank account so she needed her parents to transfer funds so she emailed them and texted so that they would be awoken because it is night time there and we couldn’t call so she skyped her mom to sort things out and all this was happening as she was sitting on the ground at a platform of a train station on the Mediterranean. Plan B was fully set into place in less than half an hours time, and I realized right there just how amazing the internet is (or Alice. Either way. (by Alice)).

We hopped on our train to Turin, where we would have a layover for 5 hours before taking the train to Barcelona (hopefully). My shoes were still soaked from the beach fiasco the night before, so I was sporting some sandals. I was also aware that I was gonna be on trains all day, so I didn’t have to dress classy, and that my tootsies might get cold if it was snowy in Turin, so these sandals were accompanied by some nice white socks. We made it to Turin and it was like I was the first human being everyone in Turin had ever seen. Turin is a super high fashion place, so I guess socks n’ sandals, and a backpack on the back and front (with soggy shoes dangling off the front) is kinda looked down upon. People would look down at my feet, look up at me, and then smirk (or scowl) and talk to each other about it. Some looked confused, others worried, but none of them cared that they were being really obvious about it.

We stood in the ticket line, looking to find out if we would be allowed on the train, or if we would be forced to use Plan B, and endured much awkward staring. We made it the front and the guy working didn’t speak English. This was not ideal. With much sign language and a few common words between Italian and English, he informed us that all the seats were first class, and we would be OK! We breathed a huge sigh of relief, and took the metro to our next train station.

This train station was not as nice as some of the others we have stayed in. It was really small, didn’t have working bathrooms for girls, and the only place we could sit was in a waiting room. The waiting room itself wasn’t so bad, but after finding spots in the very middle of the room, we took a little look around the room, and realized that we were the only people in the room who were actually waiting for a train. We were surrounded by homeless people. There was no question about it either, they were very homeless (Italian bums look much the same as Canadian bums). Many were sleeping (snoring), they all seemed to know each other (I guess this was the daily hangout), and they all stared. They must have been extremely bored, because the ones in our view stared right at us for literally an hour. This was also a little awkward. We were sitting in the middle of a room, surrounded by 15 sets of homeless eyes directed straight at us. There was nowhere else to go though so we just pretended that they were other travellers, who never got up to get on their train. We sat in the room for a couple hours, and at one point of them came up asking for change, but the language barrier came in handy and he left empty-handed.

We all got kicked out as they closed the room at 8pm so we (luckily no bums) sat outside the room on the floor. I amused myself by putting a few euro cents in and using the scale, which is different from most scales we have in Canada, because instead of measuring my weight, it told me I am “strong”. Is that just a nice way of saying fat? At least it didn’t tell me I’m “big-boned”.

After we got bored of sitting in the dark, dirty terminal, we thought we would go down and wait by our platform. I guess the platforms down below the station had been redone, or were newly built, because they were luxurious compared to the rest of the place. Clean, new, working washrooms, and (best of all) no bums! It unfortunately was the same temperature as outside, so my toes froze a little bit (before getting into the waiting room upstairs I had cracked and taken off my socks, little did I know I would be dressing to impress some homeless folk). We had a little bit of déjà vu from Paris here, as our train was delayed at first 15 minutes, then half an hour, and longer and longer, but it finally did arrive and we boarded and went right to sleep on the reclining chairs.

The Cinque Terre!

neil_loewen — Fri, 5 Feb 2010 23:47:00 GMT

The Cinque Terre!

Australia Day in Rome, celebrated by two Aussies, a Canuck, a Brazilian, and an Argentinian, was a smashing success, bringing people together across cultural divides, but much more importantly, informing us (thanks to Fernanda the Brazilian) that there was a train strike in all of Italy (sidenote from Alice: Australia day will ALWAYS be more important than train strikes). This was the day before a train was supposed to take us from Rome to Cinque Terre. Apparently, in Italy, strikes are kind of flaky things, they weren’t sure if they would work tomorrow or not, and we had no way of knowing until the train actually started moving out of the station – or didn’t. So we realized there was nothing we could do about it and celebrated the occasion as planned.

The next day we went to the train station, got on our train, and luckily, they decided that they would take us to Cinque Terre, so we breathed a sigh of relief and watched out the window as Rome rushed past one last time and evolved into rolling hills in the countryside.

The train pulled into the first stop somewhere outside of Rome, and a team of six (desperate?) Italian housewives boarded and took up the six previously empty seats surrounding Alice and I. We smiled and said “ciao” (that’s ‘hi’ for all of you not fluent in Italian, its also ‘bye’ – which can sometimes be awkward) and then one of them dove right into a quick Italian sentence directed at us until Alice told her that we don’t speak Italian. “buono” (good) she said, and made hand signals to let us know that we are lucky because otherwise she would have chatted our ears off.

Sitting next to these soccer moms was interesting, because they were just like Canadian soccer moms, only they spoke Italian. They were just a bunch of gals off for a weekend at the spa (I really have no idea what they were doing), except for one difference. After settling themselves in their seats, they each pulled out a paper bag with a cheesy, delicious-smelling ball of something good, and munched on them. Once they had finished, they each, in unison, pulled out another bag and had a foot-long Italian sandwich. They all polished these off efficiently, and then pulled out dessert. Note that these were not especially large women either. I remember feeling a bit puckish myself, and sitting next to the women enjoying a seven-course meal didn’t help. I have no idea where all the food was coming from (or more importantly, where it was going) but they still had room for intermittent snacks for the rest of the trip.

As we drew close to La Spezia, where we had to change trains, Alice kept asking me the time (she doesn’t have a watch), so she would know when we should get up to put on all our bags. We usually do this what feels like half an hour too early and become exhausted just standing there with all of our stuff on our backs (sidenote from Alice: this is normally due to the other Italians, not me. Just saying!). This time, (I guess I was having a bit of a power trip/messing with Alice) I said that we didn’t need to get up so early because its not like we are going to miss the station completely. I wouldn’t tell her what time it was. She played it cool, and acted like this wasn’t bothering her at all, but I could see the anxiety in her eyes as she tapped her fingers nervously on the table. She suddenly lurched forward and grabbed at my wrist, but my cat-like reflexes meant that my arm evaded her grasp and I threw my hands under the table. “TELL MEEEEEE!” She whined forcefully. “You don’t need to know” I smirked, my voice conveying all the enjoyment I was having with this situation. I would be deciding when to get ready. I guess I am too nice of a guy, too benevolent a soul, or maybe I finally fully realized how much it pained her not to be completely prepared for everything, but eventually I gave in and showed her the watch (sidenote from Alice: one day Neil is going to tell a story about missing a train and we will all think back on this story and about the lesson that he SHOULD have learnt rather than being a smart ass). We got up and put our packs on, and only stood waiting to arrive at the station for ten minutes. The Italian Housewives had watched (stared) in awe as we rose from our seats and soon tripled in size. They stared quite a bit (not discretely) and talked about us in Italian. I even caught one of them making a hand motion to portray the bags on our fronts that made us look pregnant (either that or she was talking about how fat she was going to be after everything that she had consumed on that train). I said “Ciao” and they all reciprocated warmly and watched us as we waddled off the train, quite amused by us tourists.

So we had arrived at La Spezia, the small city near the Cinque Terre and headed straight to find out if we would be able to get to Riomaggiore, our home base for the Cinque Terre and site of our hostel, or if the train strike would be in effect. The nice lady at the desk told us that they still had no idea if they would be striking at that time or not, so we would just have to get on the train and wait, and if it didn’t go, we would be able to go in another hour and a half. She also told us that the hike along the coast, which connects the five towns of the Cinque Terre and is the reason that everybody goes there, was closed, and we would not be able to do it. Our dreams were shattered. We would still be able to hike through the mountains and take the smaller, less scenic trails, but it wouldn’t be as magnificent as planned.

We decided still to go ahead with it and do the lesser trails, and maybe take the train between the towns, since we weren’t allowed to walk. So we got on the train, waited, and luckily, the strike was apparently not in effect and the train pulled out of the station and into a tunnel under a mountain. After ten minutes tunneling through the mountain, we suddenly emerged from the darkness and were greeted by a view of the Mediterranean Sea. It was, surprisingly, nearly as exciting as when I first saw the Eiffel Tower, the water stretching on forever just left me awestruck. The train slowed to a stop and we tumbled out and onto the platform of Riomaggiore.

What we now saw as we looked out over the ocean, only a few steps out of the train, was one of the most amazing sights, it was a perfect sunset. I have a feeling that Alice is going to have a large and descriptive sidenote right about here, so I will leave it at that. (hi! from Alice: So I don’t even think that words can begin to describe the phenomenalness (definitely a word) of the sunset that we saw as soon as we stepped off the train. The sunset in Venice does not even BEGIN to compare to this sunset. Think about what you might have imagined when you read about that sunset; multiply the beauty of that picture by at least ten and you have this sunset over the beautiful sea! Even the pictures do not do it justice. I IMMEDIATELY knew I was going to love whatever the Cinque Terre had in store for us)

After the sun had dropped down off the edge of the Earth, we grabbed our key from the office and made our way up the steep hill that is Main Street Riomaggiore to our hostel. It was probably about a hundred feet higher than the train station, and was a little apartment with five beds, a kitchen, and a washroom. We had some supper and waited to discover who we would be sharing the place with, as three beds were already spoken for, but no one was home. In the door came our answer in the form of two Canadians and an American: Alex, Charlene, and Isaac, respectively. For the sake of speedy reading, we will call these three Charlexaac (I just came up with that). Anyway, these three turned out to be the coolest hostelmates we’ve yet had, and the next couple days were to be a really fun time.

Charlexaac had invited two people they had met on the trail that day over for dinner and wine, Americans Matthew and Katherine (affectionately dubbed MatKat), so we partook in the eating and drinking and soon became good friends with everyone. MatKat were really great, interesting people. For instance, Matt was the American military’s version of James Bond, so he couldn’t really tell us anything specific about his job.

We all slept well that night and the next morning we prepared for some hiking. Luckily for us, Charlexaac had told us that they had hiked the entire coastal trail the day before, despite it being closed. They merely had to scale a few fences and jump over a couple rockslides. (sidenote from Alice: as dangerous and illegal as Neil made this sound, Charlexaac (if that is what I must call them) reassured us in a much more reassuring way that it was a perfectly safe trail). Alice and I were pretty pumped about this, our dreams had been restored, and there was hope yet.

While going through my bag, I noticed that I had three pairs of jeans, though I had only brought two to Europe. We concluded that I had accidentally STOLEN someone’s jeans from a hostel somewhere along the way. I tried them on and they were too small, so I let Charlene try them on and they fit perfectly. They also fit Alex, and he really wanted them, so I thought, “I don’t need them” and said that he could keep them. Look at me, a modern-day Robin Hood. I did kind of feel bad though for whomever’s pants I had stolen, if someone took one of my two pairs I would be distraught! Fast-forward a few days and I get a wallpost on Facebook from Karl (remember Karl, from in Rome, he made the risotto and traveled with us?). Ya, they were his jeans. My bad… Sorry for stealing your jeans and then gifting them to someone else Karl… we can laugh about it now though right?? Apparently there were also 8euro in the pockets so Alex is a lucky guy.

Any way, we headed out to trek the trail through all five scenic little villages (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso, in that order). The first stretch was the easy part, it was actually paved and had railings and was flat and only took twenty minutes and got us to the second town, Manarola. That part had not been closed, so now came our true test. We looked around the sleepy little village and looked out over the beautiful expanse of water. Alice then said to me in a hushed voiced, “That guy has been following us…” and motioned to the man also looking out over the beautiful expanse of water, only a few metres away from us. I recognized him too, we had seen him in one of the tunnels, in another part of the town, and he had even been in Riomaggiore with us at the start of the day. As we talked quietly and discreetly, he stepped back and walked behind us and then stopped again on the other side of us. We were a little creeped out, so we pretended to keep looking out over the ocean, and decided to wait him out. Eventually, he went into a café and we took this chance to lose him and made for the closed portion of the trail.

We left the town and came around a corner on the trail and were confronted by a ten foot high steel gate blocking off the entire trail. We hemmed and hawed about whether or not we could get over the gate, or even if we should, and then someone came around the corner behind us. It was not the follower, but I thought it was at first. Instead, it was a girl named Ashtyn from Minnesota whom we agreed to hike with. We talked about the trail and turns out Ashtyn had started from the very far town Monterosso, a couple of days earlier. She had asked the national parks people if she could walk it despite it being closed and they told her that she could. Alice was suddenly inspired, and within seconds had scaled the fence like a champ. Ashtyn and I followed, and we set out happily on the beautiful/forbidden trail along the coast.

We didn’t make it very far, just around another corner, before we met two officials who were locking all the gates or surveying or something. Our lack of Italian came in handy here, as we were able to play dumb and act confused and as though we didn’t know that we weren’t allowed on this trail. The massive gate had been no indication. We didn’t want the embarrassing event to happen in which they would walk us back, and then watch us climb back over the gate, so we ran all they way back and scaled the fence in record time. We went to the train station in town to see if we could take the train to the next town. Of course, the dude who had been following us also came out of nowhere at the train station, but we just ignored it. We never did see him again after that, which was fine by us. We learned that we would be unable to take the train for another hour, so we had no choice but to attempt the route through the mountains. On the way up to the trail we met some Belgians, Simon, Candice, and Peter. So, the Canadian, Australian, American, and three Belgians all set out together to conquer the Cinque Terre!

For the next hour, we climbed stairs.

Then we reached the top of the mountain. Seriously. The strenuous trail heading straight up the mountain tired us out quite effectively, and we were forced to stop several times to catch our breaths and let our muscles relax. (Sidenote from Alice: in future tourist guides they should literally call this trail “the stairs of death” ALMOST DIED) Once at the little hamlet on top of the mountain though, we realized that our efforts had been more than worth it. The views of the ocean, of the mountains, of the little villages so far below, were absolutely breathtaking. We took way too many pictures, and yet none of them were able to capture just how spectacular the view was.

Next we continued on the trail which now descended just as quickly as it had risen, as we head back down to sea level. This trail took us through vineyards and terraces and past mountainside houses and olive farms. The trail headed into the forested parts of the mountain, and got quite skinny and steep, and you had to watch your feet to make sure you didn’t drop off the side of the mountain. Peter (of Belgium) at one point was focusing more on the view than on the trail, and his foot slipped off the side. He fell off entirely and was lucky the drop was not as steep as in other places and there was brush and branches to stop him from falling. This was a bit of a scary experience, but Peter was okay, and we got him back on the trail and continued onward. Eventually we made it into the third village, Corniglia, and unsuccessfully searched for a Gelato Shop that was open in winter. Alice and I realized that our detour through the mountains, though scenic, had taken up a much larger portion of the day than we had allotted for that span of the trek. Ashtyn, Candice, Simon, and Peter, wanted to sit down by the waves for a little bit, but we had dreams of catching the sunset in Monterosso that evening, so we said goodbye to our new friends and carried on the trail.

Alice and I now rejoined the closed portion of the trail, and luckily there were no patrolmen, or even gates to clamber over. We took the trail up onto the mountainside overlooking Corniglia and had some beautiful views. We stopped for Nutella and banana sandwiches for lunch at one such vista, and then carried on along the forbidden trail. Apparently this portion of the trail was more accessible and the rules less enforced, as we met several groups of people hiking it.

At one point, we came upon an open flat part of the trail, with a clearing in the forest, and were surprised to find a little village of cats. There were no people, just cats, lots of cats, and there was food set aside for them and little cat shelters. It was really weird so we continued on without even taking a picture.

Around 4pm, we made it Vernazza, the prettiest of the five villages, and marveled at its position jutting out on a peninsula into the sea. We decided that, because of our foray away from the coast, we would not be able to make it to Monterosso in time for the sunset, and if we attempted to, we may die of exhaustion on the way.

We walked down to the harbour of Vernazza and met Alex and Charlene reading there. Before we were able to tell them we had decided to take the train to Monterosso, they told us how good of time we had made. We are not ones to refuse compliments, so we agreed that we had covered a lot of trail in a decent amount of time. We were kind of a big deal, ya, we know. Alex was super-impressed by us (high fives all around) and Charlene said that we probably could make it there by sunset. They told us that if we left now, we could do it. With one big boost of confidence we walked past the train station and onto the final leg of the trail: to Monterosso.

We made our way out of the scenic little village, and on the outskirts, we came upon two elderly women speaking Italian to each. We “ciao”-ed and walked past, but one of them started speaking to us in Italian. We had a sunset to catch, so we continued walking but she yelled after us. I let her know that I didn’t speak Italian, but I could see by her hand gestures that she was telling us that the trail was closed and that we shouldn’t walk there. I hurried and caught up to Alice, who told me that it didn’t really matter because the old ladies were not going to be able to catch us up all of these stairs anyway. Hopefully.

We pushed ourselves as much as we could, and soldiered on through the toughest stretch along the entire coast. The trail through the mountains had probably been tougher, but this felt harder because we were so tired. We came near Monterosso, and got a wonderful view of the setting sun, and took some pictures. We then began our long and painful descent (going down thousands of stairs when you are tired is hard on the knees, and pretty much everything else) and now realized that we would not be able to see the sunset at Monterosso anyway, as it was in a bit of a bay, and the sun would be behind a mountain.

We got into town just as it started to get dark, and made our way down to the beautiful beach. There we noticed the huge one-day-away-from-a full moon rising over the village, and it was a good enough substitute for a sunset for us. We each took a picture of the other touching the Mediterranean, to symbolize our finishing the trek, but Alice took a really fricken long time to snap the photo of me so a wave came in and soaked my recently dried shoes. (Sidenote from Alice: the photo was taken a good five seconds before the wave hit Neil; he is just looking for an excuse for his apparent lack of reflexes). I walked to the train station in bare feet and we caught the train back to Riomaggiore, hobbled up the hill to our hostel, and crashed on our beds, nearly unable to move.

Isaac came home from his hike, Charlene and Alex came back from their adventures, and we had pasta and wine (that’s the third night in a row, for those of you keeping score at home) and chatted and went to bed and all slept soundly.

In the morning Charlexaac got up at 6am to leave, and we wished them well on their travels and went back to sleep for a few more hours. After said hours we packed up and fondly said goodbye to the Cinque Terre, the most beautiful place we have yet been on our trip!

When in Rome...

neil_loewen — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 17:48:00 GMT

When in Rome…

Hi friends, long time no blog, and I know you all have been checking back every single day to see if it has been updated because you all are interested in my life (our lives?) that much, BUT I had a few days of no internet, and have been really busy travelling and stuff so I am now going to try to catch up.

When we left you last, we had arrived in Rome, and it was a beautiful, sunny day. We thought we would take advantage of the weather by seeing as much as we could with what we had left of the day. We headed down the street to the Trevi Fountain (just casually), not knowing what to expect. We followed our map down little side streets turning this way and that, just enjoying the sunshine and the city. I soon noticed that all the trees lining the streets were orange trees and were filled with big orange oranges! I really wanted to take one for a snack but Alice said they might be doused in pesticides or something and I was a little worried that I would be charged with stealing from the city. So we carried on and turned around a corner and were confronted abruptly by the large and imposing Trevi Fountain. It was just taking up part of a city block with buildings close up around it like any other building in the city, no plaza or gardens surrounding it so that you could see it from far away. This beautiful Roman masterpiece was just chillin’ on a side street, not receiving any special treatment from the city. We actually noticed this with most of the major landmarks in Rome, they aren’t set aside from the rest of the city and made a huge deal out of, they are just there, and are just as spectacular. It’s like Rome is spoiled with beautiful old buildings, whereas the Eiffel Tower sits on acres upon acres of open green-space because Paris doesn’t have as many marvels.

The fountain itself was a beautiful ancient structure with statues and water and beauty and LOTS of tourists, which is how we knew we had found it. There were also men walking around selling these little stretchy shapeable toys, or at least trying – nobody was buying. All of the tourists (I cannot imagine how busy it would be in summer) were posing and taking pictures with the fountain but our favourite was these two guys having a photo-shoot on the brink of the fountain. One would sit on the edge and pretend to read a book, while the other would go down on one knee to get a great, artsy, angle and take pictures of him with a very expensive camera. I have no idea what this was for, maybe for the cover of his portfolio or something? We decided every time we were at a fountain we were going to pretend to read a book and take intelligent looking photos.

We next headed to the Spanish Steps. We walked for a little while and, after the best gelato yet, we found it. I don’t know much about them, not why they are there, or what makes them Spanish, but they were also very crowded. We assume that these were all tourists as well because I don’t know many locals who climb a large set of stairs for fun. The Spanish Steps were really just that, a really wide staircase leading up to a really old, unidentifiable building, but they did offer a great view of of the city. We could see Ancient Roman ruins and the Vatican, so we took plenty of pictures.

That night we decided to save ourselves some money, inject some much needed protein into our system (meat in restaurants is expensive so we don’t eat much of it, we eat gelati instead), and hone our skillz in the kitchen – all in one shot! So we headed to the supermarket down the street to pick up some meat and potatoes. We obviously don’t speak Italian, as we have proved several times on this trip, so we didn’t really know what any of the meats were. We just went on what was cheap. We were also really hungry so I don’t think we looked that closely at what we were actually buying, but we picked up some red meat and a enough potatoes to feed a small village. Or enough to choke a horse, or shake a stick at, it was a lot anyway. So we cooked it all up, and Alice soon noted that much of the meat actually looked like brains. This was not ideal, because being in a foreign country, there was a high risk that what we were about to consume actually was brains. PLUS, we didn’t even know what kind of brains they were. I’m not saying that I would enjoy cow brains, per say, but I might feel more comfortable than munching horse brains. So, we tried it and, though Alice couldn’t eat much of it because she thought it was brains the whole time, I found it edible. Like I said, I was really hungry, so I finished off a decent portion of it, and it was nothing special, I wouldn’t make it again, but I didn’t gag. After supper we went to get the Italian guy working the hostel to translate it for us. We had made sure not to ask him before we ate it, just in case it was something disgusting, and we would just pretend it was steak. He translated it, and it was something about a shoulder and a cow, which was definitely reassuring, but definitely a first for both of us. I guess the problem with it was that we hadn’t thought to put anything on it, it was just cooked meat with no flavour, so it was sub-par at best. Better luck next time.

That night when we were going to bed, it was kind of quiet, and then about 20 Portuguese-speaking people came out of the woodwork and decided to have a loud party. There were literally more people than I think the hostel had room for. I went to the washroom before bed, and while I was in there I could hear in the next stall (it was a unisex washroom) a girl reading her pregnancy test and finding that she was pregnant and getting really excited about it with her friend. How romantic, in the bathroom stall of a hostel far away from home. At least she was happy about it. I guess she decided to celebrate (hopefully not too hard) because suddenly the Portuguese party had made there way INTO the bathroom and were carrying on the festivities even more loudly. There was no escaping them.

The next day, we took off to see Vatican City. We took the subway there, and as we came out of the station and were greeted by people asking us if we spoke English and then offering us amazing tours of the Vatican/Sistine Chapel/anywhere so long as we paid them. Pretending not to speak English is much harder than I thought it would be. They would ask if I spoke English, and I would stop my English conversation with Alice to reply “nope”. Now they knew I spoke English so they would offer me all of these awesome tours, and all I could do was ignore them, and still pretend not to speak English. These guys were every ten feet or so, and worked as a single unit, figuring out the best way to sell unsuspecting tourists expensive, possibly nonexistent, tours. They would talk to each other behind our backs and I think they even developed a system of hand singles and sign language. One woman was very aggressive and walked with us all the way up the street offering us a tour of the cathedral. “Why don’t you want a tour?” she asked innocently, but I could see the evil in her eyes. “We saw it yesterday” I replied. “You can’t have, it was closed yesterday” she countered, “where the hell were we??” I wondered aloud, knowing I had been caught in a lie, but she apparently believed me and said I was probably at some other cathedral and that I really should get a guided tour today – there’s no better way to see it. She followed us all the way to a street we had to cross, and continued to heckle us as we prayed for the light to change and allow us to escape. With some of them I pretended that we didn’t want to see the Vatican, even though we were standing right outside of it, and I actually started to enjoy getting creative and messing with them.

Once inside the little country that is the Vatican, we saw the Sistine Chapel (which was amazing and went on forever), St. Peter’s Square, and went inside the cathedral, which we were a little embarrassed not to know the name of (it was either St. Peter’s Cathedral/Basilica or St. Paul’s, we now know it is St. Peter’s). St. Peter had some pretty sweet digs. The place was by far the largest cathedral I had ever been in and just the columns to hold it up were massive. It was an amazing experience just walking around in it with such a massive open expanse above.

We then paid the 5euro to take the stairs up to the top of the dome of the cathedral (rather than the 7 to take the elevator, we are poor travellers). Same old story, LOTS of stairs, amazing view. We could see all of Rome from here. We could pick out the Colosseum and some other monuments. These views constantly are favourite parts of the cities we visit, and this was no exception.

We headed back down and made for home. It had been drizzling lightly on and off all day, and we had been ignoring it for the most part, but now it had picked up a little bit, and we were getting a little wet. Sometime while we were on top of the dome and the weather was turning for the wetter, all the tour offerers had tag teamed out and had now been replaced by umbrella salesmen. Everywhere. If you are looking for an umbrella, Rome in the rain is the place to be. Unfortunately for them, we were much more stubborn than they were expecting, and refused to spend 4euro on a little umbrella that would probably break within days. We walked home and denied every single one of them our business, but by the time we had made it back to the hostel, we had gained an appreciation for the fact that really, they want us to “help them help us”. They want our money, we want to be dry. It was too late, we were already soaked nicely.

On our journey home though, we stopped at a little restaurant, in view of the Pantheon, that we had read about in a travel book. It served us the best, most authentic Italian food yet, and it was on a red-checkered tablecloth, so we got spaghetti and red wine, and it was awesome. After the massive servings of spaghetti we carried on and found the best gelati place in world – so far – and indulged. Karma seemed to making it up to us for all the rain.

I guess I haven’t yet mentioned that today was January 25^th, which is, duh, Australia Day Eve. Alice had been formulating plans in her head all day/week/probably since last Australia Day, about how she would celebrate tomorrow, because it is kind of a big deal. One of the things that needed to happen in order to celebrate Aussie Day was that we needed to find another Aussie, so it could be a real party. Apparently Canadians don’t cut the mustard. We got back to the hostel, and we overheard someone talking with an Australian accent, so Alice pounced and started making conversation. Soon enough, we had made a new Australian friend, Karl. The stars had aligned for dingoriffic Australia Day the next day.

The next day, Alice and Karl eagerly awoke at dawn and raced down the stairs to open all the kangaroo pouches under the Old Gum Tree, which is what all the good little Aussies do on Australia Day.

First thing in the morning, we went to see some Old Roman Stuff: The Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum. Again, Mother Nature was like, “No, I don’t really feel like showing the sun at all today, how about some nice rain?” and we were like, “We are tourists on a schedule and a budget, we are going to see everything in this city, whether we are soaked or not!” so we walked all the way to the Colosseum in the rain, NOT buying any umbrellas. Karl had bought one earlier in his trip, and had been ripped off colossally. Any little gust of wind and his umbrella was turned inside out. Alice and I found this rather amusing and didn’t refrain from showing this. We all agreed what a rip off these umbrellas were, until we got thoroughly soaked, and Alice cracked, and bought an umbrella for 3euro.

We headed into the park on Palatine Hill and enjoyed all of the ancient ruins. I tried to ignore the rain, and we carried onto the Forum. This was also a very cool experience, and there were lots of pictures taken (on Alice’s camera as it is waterproof) and we got a little more drenched, especially me. So on the way to the entrance of the Colosseum, I too cracked, and bartered with the salesman and got it for 3euro as well. We toured the Colosseum and were a little drier and a little more in awe. It was an awesome feat of engineering! And I’m sure it looks great in sunlight…

We then headed home to dry out a little bit, but didn’t have much time to sit around, as we had to walk down the street to do the laundry. Alice’s and my shoes were too soaked to be used, so we let them dry as we walked down the wet streets in our sandals. It was a 15 minute walk, the whole time trying not to slip and break a hip. We made it, had our laundry done for us by the staff, had a cappuccino while we waited, and picked up ingredients for supper on the way home. We kind of looked like bums walking into the supermarket soaking wet, in sandals, carrying bags of clothes, but this was no time for dignity.

That night, we let Karl cook for us (we are nice that way) and he cooked up some risotto that was absolutely delicious. Marco, the Italian guy working the hostel, said that it was the best risotto he had ever had. Karl is Australian. That night we befriended a Brazilian named Fernanda and celebrated Australia Day in the hostel and had a grand ol’ time.

That night our shoes continued to dry, but come morning time they were still not ready, so we rocked sandals a little more as we took the trains to the amazing Cinque Terre.

Until next time,

Ciao!

Neil and Alice

Almost Falling in Canals, and other short stories from Venice

neil_loewen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:29:00 GMT

Almost Falling in Canals

and other short stories from Venice

SO, we arrived in Venice, the city of canals, and were like, “So? Amsterdam had canals too.” This city had something it had to prove to us.

We arrived in the evening, so we did not see much of Venice that night. We just walked down one street near our hostel and got some pizza of course (Easier said than done: Alice was worried she was suddenly going to over compensate for her lopsided backpack and fall into a canal and then be completely unable to swim while being weighed down by all her life’s possessions on her back, and I was too busy looking at the buildings along the canals to notice where the canal itself was, which nearly sent me to a watery grave once or twice as well). When we found our hostel, the old man running the place showed us to our room. He led us outside and into a locked courtyard, and into another building, where we found our room, which was like a hotel room, but with a communal washroom. This was cool if you liked to get a good nights sleep, which I hear some people like to get, but we didn’t meet a single person our entire stay in Venice. It seems like all the hostels in Venice are like this, more like hotels than like hostels. I guess its more of a honeymooners paradise than a backpackers. It also had zero nightlife. In spite of all these early pitfalls, we had a great time on those 180 little islands in a lagoon.

The first morning there, we decided to check out what the real Venice was all about. We hadn’t yet seen it yet, as our hostel was off in the far corner of the island, situated just across a canal from “the ghetto”. Oh, but this was not just any ghetto, not your standard, run of the mill ghetto that we have all stayed in hostels in. This is the oldest ghetto in the world! FACT: ghetto is an old Italian word for foundary. All the Jews in Venice were forced to live in the foundary district of the city, so then whenever a city in Europe forced all the Jews to live in one part, they called it a ghetto. So ya, not just any ghetto, a Jewish ghetto! Any previous ideas I had about “livin in the ghetto” were completely changed.

Anyway, we were on our way to St. Mark’s Square, the main piazza in Venice. We took the vaporetti, which is a fancy Italian word for boat, down the Grand Canal and all the way there. We got out off the boat a little bit before the correct stop, but thought we could find it just fine on our own. Easier said than done. Venice is a really old city, apparently older than city planning itself. The streets go in no particular order, and even trying to follow one’s progress on a map is confusing. The travel guides say to put the map away, and get lost. You are on an island, there is no way of accidentally getting off the island without getting wet, and eventually you will stumble upon whatever it is you wish to see. Even the locals get lost. So, like good little backpackers, we did as we were told, and put away the map. With the aid of a few signs directing us down the correct streets, we found St. Mark’s Square.

The square was surrounded by huge Renaissance buildings, a nearly thousand year old, ornate basilica, and a tall bell tower. We headed into the basilica, after dodging past pushy rose salesmen who try to put a rose in your hand while saying “Happy New Year, this is for you, Happy New Year” and then try to make you pay them for the rose if you accept it. The basilica had a pre-Renaissance gold-everywhere interior with super-complex mosaics covering all the walls. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures, so that memory is for our minds only. HA. The basilica had been turned into a bit of a museum, and on display were all the other old stuff that filled it. Most of it predated Venice, and was the stuff that was stolen when the Venetians raped and pillaged other places during the Crusades, like Jerusalem and Turkey. There were some horse statues that were from ancient Rome, and some more awesome mosaics, and old tapestries and the like. You get the idea. After the basilica, we left the square, and did some more wandering through the city streets. At times I thought I recognized where we were, but soon learned that another reason Venice is so easy to get lost in is because all of the buildings kind of look the same - all of them beautiful - but all the same style, Venetian Style I guess.

We next hopped on another vaporetti and headed out to another island, Murano. Time for another fun fact! In 1292 all of the glass makers were kicked off Venice because their kilns were starting lots of fires, so they all set up shop on the nearby island of Murano, which today is still filled with glass-blowers and glass figurine shops. On Murano we arrived just in time to snap some sweet shots of the sun setting on Venice (sidenote from Alice: Neil did not even BEGIN to do this sunset justice. We got off the Vaporetti turned around and the sky was a brilliant shade of orange. More specifically, the sky over the main island was a beautiful shade of orange (so the reflection in the water was as well) and all the buildings had just turned into silhouettes. AND THEN we actually watched the sun SET. We were standing there taking pictures and it was just going down and it was amazing. It went quickly though, within a minute (literally) the sun was gone and it was only the lovely, lovely, sky. Moral of the story: I love sunsets and this one was DEFINITELY one to be remembered), and then headed home, so we could write the last blog about Florence.

The next day, we stopped for stopped for the mandatory-before-Alice-can-do-anything and I’m-starting-to-enjoy-it-too-but-only-with-lots-of-sugar cappuccino. For only 1.20 euro, its a bit of a steal, not to mention the magic that it performs on Alice’s energy levels. I believe we also got a slice of pizza each, because, when you are in Italy, you’re going to eat fresh pizza for about 83% percent of your breakfasts. Why? Because you can, and it is delicious (you also eat pizza for most of your lunches and for all of your suppers where you don’t eat pasta).

We then hopped on the vaporetti, and headed back to Murano to see some authentic glass blowing. It was a much nicer day then the day before, the sun had come out, and I didn’t need a jacket so I was happy. We got to Murano and browsed through the many glass-making shops until we found one that was free (we are poor travelers - not glass blowing connoisseurs). We were told that we would have to wait fifteen minutes before we could see the show becuase “The Master is eating lunch”. This glass-blowing place was a cult. Well, we don’t know for sure, but we got a really creepy vibe from it, and everyone who worked there referred to the glass-blower only as “The Master”. “The Master is ready to show you now”, we were told, and we went inside the little shop to see it happen. The dude never spoke a word, he just had one of his employees, or followers, narrate what he was doing. After the show was done, creepy or not, we were impressed. The Master had turned an orange glowing ball of something that was really hot into a clear, glass horse, in about 2 minutes. We took pictures of it all, but didn’t stick around after to tell The Master how good at glass blowing he was, like we had been told. We didn’t really want much to do with this place.

So, we continued to stroll around Murano in the sunshine, stopping to look at EVERY SINGLE window with little glass thingies in them because Alice suddenly REALLY likes little glass thingies. At one point, we had stopped to admire a large glass sculpture in the middle of a plaza. I soon realized that Alice was nowhere to be found. This is scarier than usual since neither of us has a cell phone. I waited in the plaza, which had like six roads leading in every direction, so she could have been anywhere, until she poked her head out of a little shop selling little glass thingies just long enough to tell me she was just browsing in there.

We hopped back on the vaporetti and went to another little island in the lagoon, Burano. Burano is famous for all of its buildings being painted different, bright colours. We strolled around this little island town for a while, taking pictures of the canals and the houses, but really just looking for some gelati, because the hot sun had reawakened (it had never really been asleep) our hunger for the stuff. The island was small, and, though densely populated, there was NO gelati to be found. This was a disaster! We then found a sign on a shop selling gelato! We went inside and they told us that they didn’t sell gelati. We wanted to sue them. We promptly left the picturesque little island and went back to Murano, where we finally found a gelato for each of us, and we were happy.

We hopped back on a vaporetti and made it back to Venice. That night we thought we would try our hardest to walk all the way to St. Mark’s Square so we could see it all lit up at night. Never really knowing exactly where in the city we were, we ended up following the streams of tourists all the way there! Well, almost all the way there. Near the end we got kinda cocky and decided to take a backstreet to get away from all the slow moving tourists, and ended up on REAL backstreets. We were quite unsure where we were, which direction we were facing, which direction to go, and ended up following signs that were spray painted onto the backs of buildings like graffiti. I wasn’t sure if they were taking us to St. Mark’s or to buy drugs. In this little adventure though, we ended up finding some beautiful secluded canals, and eventually, St. Mark’s!

St. Mark’s was all lit up with lights, so we sat and marveled a bit, and then walked along the grand old buildings on the waterfront and hopped on a vaporetti, one last time, to take us home along the Grand Canal. Not all went according to plan though, as we had hopped on the right boat, but going in the wrong direction, so we got to take the scenic route home by going around Venice. We got to see some amazing sights, and were sad to leave after such a short time. Turns out Venice is more than just canals.

The next day we got up bright and early and took the train to Rome. I finally wrote all my postcards which I had been carrying around since my second day in Amsterdam. We made it to Rome and it was WARMish. So excited for this city. Stay tuned.

STAY CLASSY

loveneil&alice

Ciao-ing Down in Florence: Alice Not So Much

neil_loewen — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Ciao-ing Down in Florence:

Alice Not So Much

Welcome to Florence! Or Firenze, as the locals say (This whole having different names for places in different languages needs to change. It makes trying to find your train while rushing through the station that much more difficult). Tuscany: home of gelati, Michaelangelo, and us, for three short days.

So we had just been racing through the Alps on our bullet train, while Alice repeatedly “spewed” in the train’s toilet. 13 hours after we had left for the train station that morning, we FINALLY made it to Florence, we stumbled onto the platform and attempted to translate the Italian signs so that we could leave, but not before one last spew break. So there we were: in a foreign country, Alice was dying, it was dark, we had no idea where we were, and were being weighed down by our entire lives on our backs. We set off to find our hostel which we knew was within 900 metres of the train station. Maybe we should fan out? We made it ten steps out of the station before Alice made an executive decision, and we hailed one of the 12 taxi cabs idling right next to us. 12 taxis, right next to us, not knowing AT ALL where to go, it was obviously fate. Best decision ever. In retrospect, we (Alice) never would have made it to our hostel alive.

We knew the address of the hostel, so when he asked us (in beautiful but useless to us Italian) where to go, I couldn’t even think of a single word to say, and shoved the back of my hand in his face, where I had previously written the address to remember it. He chuckled, nodded, grabbed our bags, we breathed a sigh of relief (I did, Alice actually held back some more spew), and we were on our way. The next two minutes, which probably should legally have taken ten, were quite exciting! He knew exactly where to go, and the absolutely most efficient way to get there. Darting in and out of traffic, screeching around busy roundabouts, and squeezing between buses, nearly hitting several vehicles. We got there in record time, and alive, and it only cost five bucks, score! We got into our hostel, and at the time, being drained as we were(me of energy and Alice of several things), did not appreciate how nice our hostel was, except for how nice the beds were.

That night I explored the hostel a bit, as I couldn’t sleep, having slept all day on the train (Sidenote from Alice: some people get all the luck), and I bought a calling card from the front desk and called my Opa to wish him a happy 82 birthday. The first attempt to do this didn’t work, and neither did the second, so after walking up and down the stairs to the front desk several times, we got it working, but they asked me to do them a favour as well. They got me to check that a poster they had translated into English made sense, so I did, and in return, they gave me a free calling card, and a voucher for a free glass of wine. Only in Italy. I then finally got my call through to Canada, but the phones were situated RIGHT NEXT TO the dance club, which was going hard for a Monday night, so I couldn’t really hear much on the phone, but could hear plenty of techno.

We slept in the next morning, so as to appease the beasts of Alice’s tummy. Nothing interesting happened, except for the fact that, O YA, I make my bed in hostels and Alice doesn’t! Recovering from train flu or not, Alice Berents doesn’t make her bed, and Neil Loewen does. Be proud mom. I didn’t make a big deal out of it though, you know, not wanting to hurt her feelings and all, so, after taking pictures with our respective beds of course, we went off into the city. We soon realized that, where Amsterdam had been swarming with bicycles, Florence had traded up to motorcycles and scooters. Fast ones. Ones less worried about road rules and/or the lives of oblivious tourists trying to cross roads. We survived, and continued on our way, fully appreciating the warm Tuscan Sun beating down on us. The Locals, apparently, were used to milder temps, and were bundled up in parkas and scarves that only allowed the skin around the eyes to be exposed to the outside world. We were busy removing layers, and taking pictures of the locals, of course, and they were rushing past trying to get to the nearest heat lamp. We came upon a large piazza, or square (one of several in Florence), and stopped for lunch. I got the buffet (duh) and Alice tried some ravioli out on her fragile stomach. The buffet was AUTHENTIC Florentine food, so I had no clue what anything in it was, other than the buns. I piled my plate high in exotic foods, and finished half of everything, except for what I think was the fourth stomach of a cow, I only finished a quarter of that. (sidenote from Alice: Neil couldn’t quite “stomach” that! hahaha) (sidenote from Neil: You wanna make stomach jokes Alice? OK) I had to have a bite of unkown buffet food, and then a bite of the bun, because the bun was the only thing my mouth had tasted before, and everything else was a little new. I did finish everything on Alice’s plate though (except for the three raviolis she finished off [must have a hollow leg]).

We then took off to Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence, which is like a street over the river, as there are permanent shops on either side selling diamonds and expensive jewellery. It offered wonderful views of the city and the River Arno, where we looked for otters frolicking about, as we had been told to, but to no avail. Next we headed across the river to the old Medici Residence, the Pitti Palace, and the Boboli Gardens, on the hill behind it. Upon paying entrance into the gardens, we were confronted with the hill part. Now, though we may be experts at stairs, we haven’t quite yet conquered hills, and Alice was still ailing from some residual side effects. We trekked our way on up, and, luckily, we had an excuse to stop so that we could take pictures of the beautiful scene down the hill. We did this about every ten feet. It was a pretty steep hill. At one point, a woman stopped us to ask us for directions (in Italian), and we had a map so we sent her on her way down the hill, proud of ourselves for communicating with a foreigner, or as foreigners, i guess. We soon discovered that we made a wee mistake in reading the map, as she was now following us back up the hill, so we picked up our pace, so as to avoid an awkward confrontation with a loud, tired, Italian woman. We made it up the hill and were greeted by a glorious vista overlooking the Medieval city as it unfolded before our awestruck eyes. We snapped a hundy (sidenote from Alice: I do not condone the use of that word) or two photos, and continued onto the next set of gardens, which were topped by a magnificent fort. We were aiming for the fort, as we heard it had amazing views, but learned that entering the fort is, still not possible(get it? just like old times? that was Alice’s joke by the way, I offer no support). In our effort to gain access inside the walls of the fort, we soon found ourselves lost. This garden map obviously sucked, but it was too late to worry about that, so we decided to follow the cobblestone streets downhill, and eventually we would end up in the river.

Our plan worked perfectly, and we took several more photos of the river, this time from another angle, before casually stumbling on the Duomo. This is one of the most amazing cathedrals we have ever seen, with Brunelleschi’s massive dome crowning its top. We were easily distracted from this, by our first gelati shop, and were soon happily enjoying our frozen Italian delightfulness-in-a-cone.

On the way back to the hostel, in a long alleyway with no one else around, I spotted a living statue (one of those guys painted all gold who doesn’t move) who was on his break, standing around casually having a cigarette, and thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen! I, of course, already had my camera ready, and snapped a shot of him, but couldn’t get a good one so tried again. The flash was on, so he noticed, and, luckily I was already past him, but he started yelling at me - in English (I guess it was that obvious) - and started to come after me. I pretended like I either couldn’t hear him or didn’t speak English, and walked away as quickly as I could, gauging by the sound of his voice if he was running after me or not. I made it out of the alley alive, but a little embarrassed, and caught up with Alice. I stuck with her for a little while.

We made it back to the hostel, and caught some Italian supper downstairs. My ravioli was delicious, as was Alice’s pizza, which I know for a fact, as I ate the majority of that as well. Poor girl was still unable to eat. What a shame.

The next day, we took the train to Pisa, but did not see much of the beautiful Tuscan countryside as it was cloudy and raining. Upon arriving in Pisa we found the map just outside of the train station and located the tower, which was on the other side of town. After a trek through lots of beautiful Pisian (?) architecture, we learned that Pisa is, in fact, a city. It was quite the walk, but quite beautiful. We turned a corner upon reaching the opposite wall of the city, and there it was. There was the leaning tower of Pisa, just chilling among the buildings. We took funny pictures with the tower (poked, pushed, leaned on it), as we are rather skilled photographers, and know a few tricks of the trade, and quickly made our presence known as ridiculous tourists. If I lived in Pisa, I wouldn’t have liked us, all stopping in the middle of roads for pictures, and all. We returned to the station after a delicious (says Alice) one euro coffee, and some equally delicious two euro gelati. Have I mentioned how much I love this place?

Upon returning to Florence, we took in a museum, which housed our old mate: David. This museum was actually quite interesting, with works by Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, as well as some other Renaissance artists. The crowning glory of this museum was certainly David though. I had always thought the David was life-sized, maybe a little smaller even, being the diminutive David, and not Goliath, right? You know? So I had always wondered what the big deal was. I could sculpt a person, call it Mike, and be world famous too. But nope. Dave’s about three times the size of a person, and I think Michaelangelo did a pretty good job. We give him an A+, because we sat in the room for about ten minutes, staring at a statue of a naked man, which isn’t everyday, at least not for me. As we left the museum there was a man sitting near the street, drawing caricatures of people. He asked us in broken English if we wanted one of us. We declined and made to carry on. “O, divorce?” He asked us. We laughed, our “engagement” on top of the Eiffel Tower obviously had not lasted that long! haha

We next weaved our way through the city, all the way up to the Piazzale Michaelangelo, where we saw a majorly oxidized bronze, half-size replica of David, in a parking lot, on top of a hill overlooking the city, just in time for the sunset. It was cloudy, and we were actually a bit early for sunset, and we were hungry, and kinda tired, and could see our hostel off in the distance, so we headed back towards home. 45 minutes and one gelato later, we made it, and crashed on our beds, after a long, but awesome, day of walking.

For supper, Alice again attempted food, and I wisely didn’t order anything. She managed more than a couple bites this time (for the first time in three days) but I was definitely satisfied with my supper. Alice being sick (and the mandatory two day recovery period) is actually probably worse for ME because I am forced to finish every meal, eat half of every gelato, and other similar tasks. I am the real victim here. (No, Alice, you may not side note at this time)

On our final day in Florence, we went to the Duomo, to climb to the top for some magnificent views of the city. This seems like all we do: climb things (tall things) to get good views. We are gonna be ripped. Climbing this Duomo shouldn’t be too tough we thought, I mean we had already done the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, etcetera. Turns out, this one is much older than anything we had climbed, so the architects hadn’t worried about fire codes or giving people heart attacks, and I hear people were alot shorter back then. End of story, the stairwell only got more and more cramped as we climbed, and the stairs were steep and uneven. We made it to the top though, and the view was unbeatable. We could see for forever into the distance, as well as the mountains of Tuscany. The church bells started ringing while we were up there, and it was, “One of those moments where you are standing there and you think to yourself ‘Wow, my life is awesome’” -Alice.

We now, unfortunately, had to leave Florence behind for Venice, but not before one more gelato, and at the train station I continued my streak of foreign McDonald’s items and got a Pollo Piccolo or something like that which was really just like the P’tit wrap in France, and a snack wrap in Canada, but they all have a different sauce. Alice would never have known this, always asking for no sauce, so she thanked me lots for being so wise and enlightening her and being such a good friend through thick and thin. (sidenote from Alice: this never happened.)

So, we have now arrived in Venice, but haven’t seen any of it yet, so we have nothing to report, but are poised to upload the Florence album at about the same time that this will be uploaded, so I will stop talking in the future tense, because the album is online RIGHT NOW!! Check it out! Or don’t, whatevs. Ok. So, I have trouble with goodbyes slash conclusions, soooooo, I’m gonna go to bed now. mmmmk. This is awkwaaaaard. Night!

Love Neil! and Alice!

How Come Everyone Knows We Speak English?

neil_loewen — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:59:00 GMT

How Come Everyone Knows We Speak English?

In Loving Memory of Kendra Ann (no idea what your real middle name is) Eyolfson

Dear Diary (you better be reading this Brynn - I think you owe me something now)

On Monday, the 18th of January (HAPPY BIRTHDAY OPA) we lost someone very special to all of us. This special someone touched us in places that we had never been touched before: our hearts and souls (get your mind out of the gutter). Kendra went back to England :( She’s still alive though, so don’t worry! Alice, on the other hand... it’s still too early to tell, but we’ll get back to that. Now if that isn’t a sweet introduction (cliffhangers, foreshadowing. A+ i think), I don’t know what is.

SO, when we left you last, we were in Paris. That first night, we took off in the pouring rain, braved the metro system (mastered it!), and found the Eiffel Tower. We came around the corner of a building and saw the tower and I literally gasped loudly at the sight of it. Kendra started crying (we are still not sure why, we assume they were tears of joy), and Alice couldn’t stop smiling (and i think her accent got a bit more noticeable, a sure sign of an excited aussie). We ended up taking ABOUT 75 of the exact same photo that night, all not very good quality as it was pouring rain, but it was just such an AMAZING (all caps entirely necessary) sight. At 7pm one light flickered on the tower. I saw it and said. “Hey, someone is taking a picture.” Several more started blinking, “Lot’s of pictures”, the entire Tower suddenly became ablaze in blinking lights “Take a picture!!” and we (I, they were two steps ahead of me) soon realized that it was a planned light show. We took several more pictures. Eventually, we were drenched from head to toe (thank goodness Alice’s camera is waterproof [we proved that by taking a pic of the tower from in one of the fountains]) and decided to head home, not before stopping for the first of many baguettes and some delicious (sidenote from Alice: but NOT) quiche.

So we returned to our not so humble abode, our hostel. It was an awesome hostel, with a club and a bar downstairs, and our room had great people (a kiwi [greatest accent (sidenote from alice: except for australians)], three australians, two Canadians, and three AWESOME MEXICANS (seriously, hilarious bunch). We all went downstairs to the lounge area, and had a few wobbly-pops between us. We were soon great friends, and much more knowledgeable in Spanish. At one point, we were playing cards, and Alberto (Mexican #1) was explaining the rules to Abraham (Mexican #2), QUICKLY in Spanish, and Alice cut into their conversation with some skilled Spanish of her own to answer their question. I kinda sat there in awe as I had not understood at all what they were saying. I guess she remembers those 3 years in Venezuela when she was a young child. I think we are going to be ok in Spain. So we had a great time that night, and slept soundly all night.

The next morning, we hit Paris, hardcore. We found out at the train station that our train for Florence would be leaving 12 hours earlier than we had planned for, so we had to cram two days into one. We headed to the catacombs, but, of course, not before the mandatory baguette (which we took with us on the subway - those things are like three feet long - plus, i was worried about a pickpocket stealing my breakfast.) and croissants. I freaking love France. We eventually found the catacombs (just inside a little green door in an ordinary-looking building, very little in the way of signage) and descended 80+ steps into the never-ending abyss below. What we found was a dimly lit labyrinth of skulls and femurs, winding unpredictably below seemingly unaware Paris. It was definitely a creepy place to be, but Alice was (i think a little too) excited about the prospect of walking among “dead people”. It was one of the weirdest places I’ve ever been. Probably number one on the list. The place went on forever, and there are some 6 million bodies down there. The weirdest part was where there was water dripping from the ceiling and it was like dead people water dripping on you! The second weirdest was one I accidentally touched one of the skulls and was worried I would have some ancient curse placed upon me (I’ll keep you posted). After taking the slightly claustrophobia-inducing spiral staircase to the top - which seems as though it also dates back to the 1700’s - we stopped at a crepe stand just down the road. Nothing works up an appetite quite like 6 million dead people do. Crepes - by the way - are the coolest, at least this kind. We got to see the guy make them and then he put nutella on them and wrapped them like a cone, filled said cone with heavenly (insert delicious thing here), and topped it with whipped creme. I downed mine in like 2 seconds flat. And then I tasted it, and it was delicious.

We continued on to the Eiffel Tower, as we had to keep a tight schedule having only a day to see the whole city. We got there and, once again, it was SO SWEET. It is so much better in the daytime. No, the night time. No the day time. (see what I did there? It’s so sweet all the time that I can’t decide when it’s the best, anyway!) Fun Fact: half of all people in Paris who aren’t on the Eiffel Tower are taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower. No, half of the people not on the Eiffel tower are below the Eiffel Tower trying to sell you mini Eiffel towers. Other than those 2 demographics there isn’t really anybody else around. We stood in line (UNDER the Eiffel Tower - so sweet), and though it was incredibly long line, we amused ourselves by people-watching. Souvenir-sellers would walk around offering everyone their goods, and they were ALWAYS turned down (I didn’t see any one of them make a single sale, and there were literally like hundreds of them), but they continued to offer to people. These cops on bicycles (which we laughed at) would then ride along (aggressively, and MAD, haha) and the sellers would all run away to some invisible boundary where they were allowed to sell. The cops would go somewhere else (there were only two of them, and the place is huge) and slowly and sneakily, the sellers would creep back in and attempt a sale to the same people who had rejected them five minutes before.

We decided to take the stairs up the tower, because it was like 5 euro more for the elevator, but, conveniently (sarcasm), just as we were poised to head up the tower we discovered that we were all asthmatic. All three of us. O dear. And of course not one of us asthmatics had thought to bring a puffer. No matter, we made a go of it anyway. Several intermittent breaks later, we made it to the first floor. I’m sure we took 360 pictures, one for every degree of Paris that we could see. Next we headed up to the second floor, where the view was that much better. We took another 360 pictures, and stood in awe of the amazing view of the city as it the sun began to dip in the horizon. We eventually headed back down (this was MUCH easier - Thank You gravity) the 500+ stairs, because there was still so much more to see, in so little time.

We strolled along some beautiful Parisian boulevard and stumbled upon (with the help of a map) the Arc de Triomphe. (Alice: “OOO it was BEAUTIFUL, I’m just reliving that moment”) It was, of course, like every other monument in the city, amazing/huge/had WAY too many stairs and no known elevator (seriously Paris, this is 2010, and we are trying to cut down on heart attacks). Me and Alice paid (“I’m Kendra, I have British citizenship, so I get everything free, and I’m a big loser) (sidenote from Alice: awesome Neil, sweet maturity) and we all went up the 284 stairs to the beautiful view up top. The sun was beginning to set and it we could see the entire city, plus the Eiffel Tower. We also watched the traffic down below, as the Arc de Triomphe is situated in the middle of the largest and most lawless roundabout in the whole world. Probably. There are like 12 or so lanes but that is only a rough guess as there are no markings on the road. Cars zigzag, stop, bump into each other, and frighten brave bicyclists (who are really just suicidal, and not brave). Fun Fact time again: Insurance companies split the cost of all accidents that happen in the roundabout - no questions asked. Pedestrians, thank God, get to take a tunnel under the roundabout to get to the Arc. After some quick math we realized that Alice had averaged one and a half pictures - PER MINUTE - for the last two hours. Seriously. Thank God again for memory cards. And a delete function. After some more quick math we found that we had climbed over 2000 stairs that day. Our legs will never be the same. Thank Dr. Scholl’s for gellin’ insoles. We sat on top of the Arc and took in the atmosphere slash couldn’t move due to the pain. Eventually, we gathered the strength and threw ourselves down the stairs, and continued on our whirlwind tour.

We sauntered (read: limped) (sidenote from Neil: I can’t stop laughing while I’m writing this, because Alice says it is bed time and is getting rather impatient. Apparently, I write in too much detail.) (sidenote from Alice: It’s not so much that Neil writes in too much detail (I’m all about the detail), but we have been sitting at the same table for like TWO hours while Neil thinks about how to best convey the funniness of our stories. TWO HOURS). ANYWAY, we went down the Champs Elysees. This street, which shoots off from the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe, is crowded 24/7, though its sidewalks on either side of the road are each as wide as the 8 lane road. There are thousands of people and hundreds of people watching cafes. We stopped at McDonald’s. Don’t be disappointed. McDonald’s in France has “Le P’tit Wrap” and other cool French things, and I just had to get one (I also have made it my mission to go to McDonald’s in every country I am in and try the national delicacy). We ordered in French - quite well I might add - but then the server started asking us questions and we tried our best but really had no clue what she could even be asking us. She then stopped us and said “I speak full English” and we breathed a massive sigh of relief, as our orders would now for sure be flawless. How she could tell we spoke English I have no idea. Maybe it was the Canadian symbols all over me, maybe it was the horrible accent, I think it’s because she was a guardian angel sent to us to ensure we got just what we had ordered (sidenote from Alice: It’s sentences like this last one that explain why we have been sitting at this table for SO long). We enjoyed our wonderful wraps and continued on down the Champs Elysees, where we found a French-cuisine-making people-watching-cafe. (Oh no, the lights just got turned down in this place and it turned into a club. We are writing a blog, in a CLUB. Definitely time to wrap this up or move.) So, we enjoyed some more French cuisine and coffee here and watched all the people in fur coats and high heels walk past (I was told this is who walked past - I was quite focused on my baguette). We went home, said goodbye to Kendra, and went to bed.

In the morning, we got up at 6 am, went to the train station, and sat there - extremely cold and tired (and being heckled by beggars who didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand that we didn’t speak French) - while our train to Florence, Italy was delayed by an hour and a half. When the train finally did arrive, we boarded it and went straight to bed. My plans of seeing the beautiful French countryside will have to be postponed for another time, because I slept until the foothills of the Alps. We went past some beautiful Alpine Lakes and little villages, but Alice missed much of it, because, just as we arrived at the Alps, she fell gravely ill. Just kidding, it wasn’t grave. There were no graves involved. But she did throw up 9 times over the next 7 hours. Not so fun on a crowded train, or so I assume. She didn’t have anything good to say about it, so that’s the impression I got. (Sidenote from Alice: while all this was going on - through two train station stops, I might add, I was attempting to decide which was worse: vomiting numerous times ON the train, or having to pay NUMEROUS euros to vomit in train station toilets (NOT COOL). I think the trains came out on top as the most uninviting).

Well, we have just been informed that we must leave this club, I guess we just aren’t cool enough, so we will wrap this one up here. I can end the speculation and rumours right now and tell you that Alice survived and is MUCH better and enjoying life today. Does she have any side effects? Find out next time on, The Coolest Blog in the World. A sweet song just came on so maybe we won’t get kicked out if we show off some cool Canadian/Aussie dance moves in the middle of a circle of people. Here goes......

LOVE Neil and Alice!

(ps- We miss you Kendra!)

Amsterbeen’s Dam Awesome

neil_loewen — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Our travel blog - originally intended as a one-time only, epic adventure - has surpassed expectations and we’re gonna give the crowds exactly what they’ve been begging for: a sequel! DA DA DA...

From the masterminds who brought you “Too Jetlagged to Come up With a Witty Title” and other lesser known hits, comes the travel blogging event of the season! Get ready to experience something so groundbreaking, so life-changing, it has already been likened to an improved version of the bible.

“Amsterbeen’s Dam Awesome”

By Neil Loewen, Kendra Eyolfson, & Alice Berents

Alternate Title: Phlegmsterdam

So After the awesome time that was our first day in Amsterdam, we had no idea how we could follow it up with anything near as fun. But we had to give it a try so we thought we would set out early Thursday morning for Anne Frank house. Don’t expect many laughs here - holocaust-related museum’s tend to lack much levity. On the way to Anne Frank’s we decided we needed some brekky to tide us over. After taking pictures of every single canal we encountered, we came upon a nice little restaurant called letting. Google translate tells me it means the same thing in Dutch as it does in English, so I have no idea why it was called such a boring name. The food was anything but boring. As per yoozh (i have no idea how you would shorten “usual”) when we eat in Amsterdam, we can’t find any actual Dutch food so we eat Mexican! or Italian! or McDonald’s! So Alice got some Italian pesto thing and Kendra got “American Pancakes” (woot) and I got a croissant but Kendra’s pancakes stole the show because apparently Dutch people hold the belief that to make something American you just gotta add bacon. I think that this is fairly accurate. (sidebar: Beer Can in a British accent sounds like Bacon in Jamaican. Try it, it will blow your mind. Anywaaaay). Ya. They had bacon cooked into the pancakes. With waay too much syrup to be legal. I love Amsterdam. So we ate that up and drank down the mini, super strong coffee, and then waddled over to Annie’s for a tour. The museum is the house the Frank family hid in for years, and has been completely restored for authenticity. This museum was really well done. I recommend it as mandatory Amsterdam for any future travelers. Afterwards we walked back to the hostel down some random amazing street and Kendra wrote in her diary, I hung out on facebook, and alice had a minor freakout about us having to book the next days train tickets or something. I wasn’t really listening. (sidenote: Alice is an amazing organiser, love alice) But we eventually did get up and go get the tickets, before once again returning to the hostel and, I have absolutely no idea - and at the time did not care - what Kendra and Alice did but - I slept hardcore like a baby/log for like 2 hours. Jet lag was not yet quite out of my system.

Immediately upon awakening, I was offered a shot of flugel, still no idea what it is, but its fluorescent and gets you out of bed quite effectively. The Trynamic Trio next went to the bar in our hostel (yes our hostel had a bar) and did the 4 jagerbombs for 10 bucks, only because we can’t pass up or turn down a decent sale. We then headed down the alley to a (way too) classy (for us) establishment where we had Magner’s cider, only because I had never had it, and the nice bar-lady taught us how to properly speak Dutch. We then ditched that place for the first place we saw that served Amstel, only because we had to have authentic Amstel in Amsterdam. There we sat at the bar with a couple other people who I assumed were Dutch. I was impressed when they knew where Manitoba was and I told them all about how dumb Americans are cuz they know nothing about Canada. One of the gentlemen, named Jules, then informed me that he was from Boston, which, I BELIEVE, makes him American. This was awkward, but I handled it like a pro and made conversation with him for a while, rebuilding our, and Canada’s, recently shattered reputation as nice folk. I guess I thought if I talked to him enough he would forget I called his people dumb? Anyway, we ended up befriending him, along with everyone else within a 20 metre radius of the bar, and he offered to give us a tour of the famed Red Light District. He also took us to the skinniest alley in Amsterdam, which was random but made for a good photo-op. Eventually we ended up at a Heineken bar, to complete our tour of Dutch beers and pubs. Here we became even better friends with the bartender and she spent a great deal of time teaching, or at least trying to teach us, to say Dutch tongue twisters. Plenty of phlegming necessary for pronouncing almost every Dutch word ensued. We didn’t really learn a whole lot but my throat is still kinda sore. Alice got started talking about lamb at some point in the night, and never really stopped, so Jules showed us to a Dutch-ish food place that served lamb and other stuff. Jules (American), and the Dutch guy serving us, who had never met each other, interestingly talked to each other entirely in Arabic. We were kind of thrown off but were too hungry to ask about it. When it came my time to order I thought I’d get something easy, but was still obsessed with being AS DUTCH AS POSSIBLE, so the conversation went something like this:

Server: “Vat vould you like?”

Me: Can I have a hamburhghg(intense phlegming)hghghair?

Server: a what?

Me: (timidly) hamburger?

I pretty much decided to stop phlegming everything right there. So apparently in Holland a hamburger is just a patty with no bun, but whatevs, it was delish. I thought I’d spruce up my fries with some ketchup so I smothered them in it but found out much too late that it was hot sauce and not ketchup, which really destroyed my taste buds after finishing half of the fiery fries. Meanwhile, Kendra was busy chasing the not-wanting-any-crazy-canadian-company cat that lived at the restaurant, and taking plenty of pictures of it. I ended up eating nearly all her food. After our late late lunch we decided to go home, arranging to meet Jules the next day at some now-long-forgotten corner at 9 am. Luckily we told him to leave if we weren’t there by 9:30 because we didn’t even attempt to meet him there, and we never saw him again.

So today we woke up groggily from the crazy night before and trekked off to the Van Gogh Museum. We didn’t really use a map so we ended up take the scenic 12 mile long round about route, which culminated in Alice slipping on some snow and creating an epic, slow motion, seeming as though she had 6 legs shooting out in all directions, fall to the ground, where she sat in embarrassment. We picked her up while laughing hysterically with/at her, and finally made it to the museum. For a building full of paintings it was pretty sweet, and we enjoyed it SO much more than the Rijksmuseum of two days prior. We then caught a canal boat tour back to our hostel and saw some more awesome Amsterdam architecture. Interesting Fact: all of the buildings in Amsterdam lean forward. So much so that it is easily noticeable. At the top of each building there is a hook that hangs above the street. Jules taught us that this is because Amsterdam is so cramped and the buildings are so tight that much furniture (say, a piano) cannot be fit into the building through the door, so it has to be hoisted up the side of the building and brought in through the window. Coolio. Anyway, the canal tour was pretty sweet, and then while booking it to the train station to meet our train, we stopped at a McDonald’s, and it was sweet. I got a “McKrocker” and it was some delicious dutch sauce/meat/patty thing in a bun and I want more. Also, the fries come with some mayo-y mustardy thing that I want to call Hollandaise but maybe only because it was in Holland. We will never know.

We then hopped on the train and happily enjoyed the beautiful ride through the Dutch countryside, until the conductor came along and informed us that we were sitting in First Class, illegally, having only paid for second class. We rather shamefully carried our luggage through all of the first class (while on a moving train, huge backpacks make you top heavy and easily tipped over - it took a while) while everyone stared at us with searing eyes, or so it felt. We made it to the very end of the train and found our seats. After a few minutes, the cutest little kid in the world came over, obviously sent by his mother, and asked us where we were from. We began to talk to him and soon discovered that he was like the smartest kid we had ever met. He was about seven years old, but smarter than all of us combined. He also loved to act, and was quite flamboyant, and we sat and watched him for like 10 minutes as he gave us the news while acting like he was a news anchor. on television. (real news stories: we learned all about the earthquakes in Haiti, etc.) He kept sending it over to his little sister for sports or something but she would say that it wasn’t time yet and he would resume his spiel. This newscast included full commercials for things like “leg-laps (your lap)” which included such benefits as “you can take them anywhere” and “you can hold anything on them”. He was a super witty kid. He even held the door for us when we got to Antwerp, and told us how beautiful the Antwerp train station was, and could have told us about just about anywhere in the world.

So we got to Antwerp and had one whole hour to spend in Belgium, before catching our train to Paris. So we marveled at the massive old building that is Antwerp Central Station, and then strolled (albeit hastily and efficiently) down the first main street we found. I had my first cup of coffee ever and it was apparently amazing (i found it aight) and then we dashed off to Leonidus, the best chocolate shop in Antwerp, for some authentic Belgian chocolate, which is fortunately not that expensive. It was some of the best chocolate I have ever had it was SO good. So then we had ten minutes before our train left and we made a beeline for the station but were distracted by some Belgian waffles that had ice cream and whipped cream and chocolate sauce and just everything that is good in the world on top. So now we had about three minutes to the train and those three minutes included alot of running with heavy backpacks, which is a hilarious sight. We made the train, but not before burning all the calories we had just consumed. We found Antwerp awesome, even if we only spent an hour there.

So we continued on to Paris and had to switch trains every couple hours, cuz we had decided to take the cheaper, but WAY longer way there. At one point we came to a station we weren’t scheduled to stop at, but the train came to a stop and shut off. EVERYONE exited the train. If it weren’t for Alice’s inherent need to know exactly what is going on at all times, we would probably still be sitting on that train, alone, wondering when we were going to start moving. Turns out the car we were in disconnected from the rest of the train so that it could be picked up by another train and go somewhere else, and we had to move up to another car in the train. This was a bit of a panicky moment but we made it and made it all the way to Paris. In Paris, our hotel was right across the street from the train station, which was in a dirtier part of the outer parts of Paris, but we got a HOTEL instead of a hostel, so we really didn’t care. The hotel seemed as though it hadn’t really been used much in the last 200 years, and if you are going to see a ghost somewhere, this is the place to be. The elevator could literally fit no more that two of us, and im surprised it could lift us with all the luggage. It had a manual door, and was a bit of an antique. The room was in less than good condition but there was a balcony and we were on the sixth floor so we had a pretty awesome view of the grand old train station across the street and a castle-like building in the distance. The one outlet in the room meant we needed to periodically switch the chargers between the two near-dead laptops and three cameras. Also the only way it would work out for Alice’s camera was if it was plugged into a australia-canada adapter, then a canada-europe adapter, then a european converter (sidenote from Alice: CLEARLY this europe trip was slightly spontaneous.) We stayed up until 4:30 in the morning, half because we were kinda jetlagged (can we still say that?) and half cuz we were writing part of this blog (YOU'RE WELCOME).

In the morning we took took the train and found the hostel we are staying in right now, and its a huge brand new building that is way too nice to be a hostel. Its raining today and so far we have walked down the street and gotten a french style pita or something from a little deli. Tonight we are going to see the Eiffel tower and find the 26 beers for 10 euro (which is like 14 dollars) deal that a hosteler just told us about. Let me know if these are too long or too boring or what you want to hear cuz I really never know. I’ll keep ya posted,

Neil, Alice, Kendra (the Trynamic Trio)