I am inept

I realize that in regards to blog upkeep and information sharing, I am an abysmal failure. I haven’t blogged since Budapest. Budapest! In the time since Budapest I’ve been to Vienna, Rome, Florence, Venice, Messina, Ali Terme, Acireale, Palermo, Nurnberg, Erlangen, Copenhagen, Mjolby, Stockholm, Oslo, the Fjords, Munich, Bruges, Gent, Brussels, Berlin, and Prague. Even I didn’t realize it had been THAT long until I typed all of those out.

Obviously I can’t revisit all 21 of those places…Let’s see what I can do…

Italy: Was delicious and charismatic and chock full of history. Rome was…overwhelming in its significance. For so many reasons there is so much to take in. The Colleseum, The Roman Forum, Caesar, Diocletian, Nero, Christian persecution, Christian perseverence, Christian domination… Rome was heavy. I also ran into my roommate from my sophomore year (Jenni Stanley) in Florence-at the Colleseum and at the Trevi Fountain. Florence was great, especially for me. I spent the summer researching the Medicis, which turned into researching Florence and Michaelangelo as well. I saw the David. THE DAVID. And I got an offer to stay and live and eat in Florence. Venice was beautiful, but it didn’t treat me very well until the last day. It was rainy and cold and I repeatedly got lost for the first 2, but the extra day my group of girls spent in Venice was beautiful and perfect. Sicily was magical. It was a charmed trip. I ate the best food in all of Italy in Sicily. Some natives took me up a volcano and I rode a train on a boat.

Scandanavia: It was scandalous. It was cold, but not as ridiculously piercingly freezing as I expected. The fjords were beautiful, the food was amazing (the one time we ate it), and Mjolby was a gem among metropoli. Mjolby is the undiscovered diamond of Sweden. It has been said that Stockholm is the Venice of the North. Nay. Stockholm is the Mjolby of the West. Eat your heart out, Rick Steves. Mjolby is the place to be. Oslo was really great. It oozed culture from its pores, compensating for its tundra-like situation by appealing to the senses from every angle. And its museums were free. We showered very little, slept very little, but saw much.

There is, in fact, Thanksgiving in Europe, but only when the Americans make it so. We had a rousing, bustling, delicious dinner. It wasn’t home, and could never be, but it was a fitting tribute to that which we missed. There was green bean casserole.

The most recent (and last…wow…last) trip:
~Munich for the second time: Zak and I took a walking tour, which was great. I highly recommend the NewEurope free walking tours as a great way to spend time in a city. You learn things you never would just by walking around. That was the only city I’ve visited a second time, and it was a strange, slightly vertigo-esque sensation. We ate at the Amazing Hofbrauhaus for a second time, and I bought myself a small stein. I think it was better the second time than the first time. That could be said for all of Munich.
~Bruges: I wasn’t that excited to go to Bruges (Brugge), but it was all charm. And food. Our time in Bruges (in all of Belgium, really) focused on food. In one day I ate fries with samurai sauce (wow delicious), a waffle with strawberry sauce and whipped cream, hot chocolate with baileys, and some potato/cream/ham conglomeration of amazing. As early afternoon waxed into mid afternoon, we rented bikes to ride along the canals, the back streets, and into down until the late afternoon darkness.
~Gent: We stayed with the Brazles. It was so surprisingly welcome to stay in a house. They were so comfortable, had an adorable baby, and we ended up staying an extra night. Gent was as charming as Bruges with no tourists. But also with less food stands. We had a friend, Pieter, to tell us which waffles to eat in Gent.
~With our extra Belgium day, we went to Brussels. Capital of the EU, we also got along with Brussels famously. Same charming story in a huge city setting.
~Berlin: I loved Berlin and slightly lament the day of Berlin we sacrificed to stay in Belgium (while still cherishing that extra time). With the mere six hours we had in Berlin, we took the free walking tour. It was priceless. Our guide was excellent. He had a degree from Columbia, but decided to move to Berlin to be a dancer. It was just so obvious that he loved the history and the city. He was open and honest and charismatic, and you could see him baring his thoughts and growing as he retold a history that has shaped him. However many times he’d done that tour, he was obviously still processing and  evolving through it. At first I didn’t know what to think about him, but I really really appreciated him by the end. I want to go back to Berlin. Actually, I’d love to spend a really substantial amount of time there-to learn as much as I possibly could and then figure out how to convey it to future generations in a way that brings them as close to being there as is possible. There is an understanding that delves so much deeper when you’re processing war while standing on top of the parking lot that is formerly Hitler’s bunker where he poisoned his wife and dog and then blew his brains out as the Allies invaded. 
~Prague: The city and the architecture are gorgeous. The Kafka museum was great-wonderfully informative, and presented in a creative and powerful way. We also saw the Kafka statue. You should probably look it up on wikipedia. I won’t tell you what it looks like.

I have seven days left in Vienna. Seven days left in Europe. Seven days left before I grow up and step reluctantly into the real world (until some other avoidant scheme pops up, of course). I’m pretty excited to go home, but I feel like there are a thousand things I still want to do in Vienna. This three months has felt like forever and like no time at all. There is no way I can describe the passage of time here. As the friends I’ve made here become IM friends instead of communal comrades and experiences become memories, only time will determine how I’ve grown or changed over the last three months.

An Overwhelming Task

How do you sum up 14 days of galavanting around Europe without droning on and on and boring the world with stories that only 4 people actually think are funny? The same question can and will be asked at the end of the trip-how do you sum up 3 months without making a massive understatement?

My attempt will be in the format of bullet points. I may or may not choose to elaborate on any or all of the points. Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.

Day 1: Vienna to Salzburg
~A panicked Zak knocks on my door at 6:20, which was late. Rushy rushy, we made it to the train.
~Salzburg:Really neat park with a Pan’s Labyrinth style maze and tunnel, a gnome community, and 2 excellent multi-person swings; Danelle Sound of Music tour, Amy/Lydia/Zak frollick around old town; really very delightful dinner at an Italian restaurant

Day 2: Salzburg to Munich
~A delightful time waiting for Zak’s friend Stefan (with whom we never crossed paths). We made signs.

~Hofbrauhaus
~Octoberfest-which was less like a Renaissance festival (which I expected) and more like a giant state fair.

Night Train to Paris: Train ride from Hell
~4 people and a woman with a baby in one 6 person cabin
~Woman feeding baby gummy bears and coke at 10:30pm
~Another man comes in around 1am
~Steamy sweaty cabin
~My seat breaks, Danelle who is leaning on me sleeps through it all
~Crazy man with an afro and one tennis shoe on his foot, one in his hand, asks at two different times if the train we were on was going to the North Sea
~Police search with black lights
~Creepy woman staring at me from behind the curtain in her cabin
~Lack of sleep

Paris:
~First sight of Paris-Eiffel, beautiful bridge, suddenly fall in all its glory
~Eiffel-Amazing, all of the times I went, even the one where I was feeling quite sick. It had green legs (something having to do with supporting New Zealand and their rugby), and at night it would sparkle on the hour. I have it on video.
~Arc de Triomphe-triumphant.
~Purchased the Little Prince in French
~Anger and yelling from a French woman at a cafe (only angry experience with the French-everyone else was very pleasant and helpful)
~The Left Bank: non-touristy Paris, very cool people, we shared our pizza with 2 strangers. Just like a good revolutionary would.
~Notre Dame: breathtaking outside, a little less than I expected inside
~Versailles: another palace, sharing a lot of similarities to Schonbrunn…giant skeleton sculpture outside
~Cluny Museum: a little burnt out on museums and rushing…the heads from the saints on Notre Dame are here because during the revolution the peasants mistook them for the cruel kings of France and cut them off. There’s also an apparently important tapestry of “The Lady and the Unicorn”. It makes for a great fairy tale.
~Up the Eiffel Tower at Night: Obviously, great.

~Boulangerie, Fromagerie, Vinerie, Flea market fruit, picnic in a park across the Seine from Notre Dame-one of the best experiences of the whole trip.
~The Louvre: obviously very important, but hard to digest as such… I only saw a very small portion with the hour or so I had
~Lots of shopping for others and myself
~Very near train miss: We were at the wrong train station with 15 minutes before our train left. An angel with a French accent told us exactly where to go and walked us halfway there, then we set off running across the river and to the train station. We made it with 5 minutes to spare to find the train conductor welcoming us and congratulating us on making it. Also one of my favorite things that happened…

Barcelona:
~Language barrier: We’ve got the German and French covered, but none of us know a lick of Spanish.
~Really great hostel complete with living room, balcony, our own 4-person room, our own kitchen and laundry room, and a staff that would order pizza for us 2 nights in a row
~Beach lounging: some of the ladies on the beach lost their bikini tops! We girls laid around on the beach for most of the afternoon (complete with bathing suit tops) while Zak walked the sidewalks, eyes averted.
~We got in an animated conversation with some Italian boys in our hostel and got invited to go “speak, drink, and disco” with them. The girls went. I stayed in bed and worried like a good mother hen.
~Gaudi: The Sagrada Familia church is amazing, and I’m pretty much infatuated with Gaudi.

~Caught in a storm, soaking wet, unable to see, half drank sangria, run for the nearest (far) underground

Avignon:
~Palace of the Popes-largest Gothic palace
~The Papal Schism: we found it.

Marseille:
~Flea Market
~Flea Market Track Suits for the Whole Family
~Incredible beach-I think that the coast of Marseille might be my favorite physical place on the whole trip.

Bern:
~Hostel with a great location-out of the town, but easy access…although we had to climb a big hill
~The Swiss have a great sense of humor that comes through on their post cards. Unfortunately I bought a lot of postcards, but none of the ones that I thought were hilarious.
~Home of knives, watches, cheese, chocolate, and neutrality
~Happened upon a rally asking the citizens of Bern to “Stopp Arbeitslosigkeit”. So I supported that for a while…there was a band.
~Great chocolate, lots of shopping
I really liked Switzerland

Our ride back to Vienna was beautiful-flanked by the Alps and the unnaturally blue-green water of their lakes and rivers. We ate pizza at least once in every city but Munich.