We're in London, which is the last stop on our little jaunt across Europe. We just came from Germany, and at the start of that country, in Berlin, we learned something that changed the shape of the rest of our trip....free tours. I went into Berlin with no expectations at all. I knew that a lot of people had said that it was a "great time" or "lots of fun" or even a, "you're gonna love it!" but I didn't really believe it. As far as I was concerned, it was a city that was completely destroyed in WW2 so all it'd just be generic newish European city. I suppose if we were just walking around the city by ourselves, it would have appeared that way. As luck would have it, we found in the hostel an ad for the New Berlin free walking tour which would pick us up at our hostel. We figure why not.

It ended up being one of the best things we've done on the trip. James, our tour guide, took our group around for about 4 hours just telling us stories about the Nazis and Commies. How could that be bad? We saw a lot and I later took the liberty of doing two things that I heard about on the tour: I went to the Opera (La Clemenza du Tito), and to the German History Museum (I actually had to do this in two spurts to make sure that I made it all the way up to world war 1, something I know pitifully little about).

The tour was so good and entertaining that we joined James for a paid tour that he did the next day on Red Berlin, and it covered the city under communist rule. So we checked out this Stazi (east germany's secret police, where 1 in every 6th east german was working for the organization in some way, usually spying on their friends, spouse, kids, or parents) museum that was only in German so it was cool having James translate for us, the berlin wall, and other things while he told us more stories.

So yeah, Berlin ended up being one of the best cities we went to and due in no small part, to the tour. They offer tours in Berlin, Munich, London, Paris and Amsterdam. Since the Berlin tour we have done the ones in Munich and London. It turns out that regardless of how good your tourguide is (and while all 3 were good, Berlin and London were both really good), the quality of the tour is entirely dependent on how interesting the city is to start with. Berlin was the best, London was still very very good (hearing about the great fire and all the rest was real neat), and Munich was a good way to spend a day, but it just isn't a city with as rich a history as the other two, so it was shorter and less exciting.

Munich was less about the tours and more about the drinking. They serve beers there in Liters. Liters! The Dunkel is quite good. They have 6 major brewering in the city, and like Canadian breweries, even though they all profess to be different, there is really only minor differences between their takes on the Helles (lager), Dunkel (dark lager) and Weissbeir (white beer). Also like in Canada, people seem to be passionte about which brewery they support when they are all fairly similar. But still, the beer drinking is a real experience. These beer gardens/halls are ridiculously huge, and people sgining songs and wearing lederhosen or however you spell it and it's pretty awesome. Lots of fun... expensive though.

London on the other hand has a nice variety of legitimately different tasting ales, but for some reason we haven't been drinking that much of it. We've been busy. After the tour we saw Othello at the globe which was super cool. Other than the planes flying overhead, I really appreciated the open air, and it was only 5 pounds for a standing ticket in the yard, and it was well acted, and minimalist stage and pretty true to everything I've learned about the old Globe, and how Shakespeare would have been performed there. Really neat. The next day we saw Westminster Abbey and the British Museum. Next day (today) we went to Stonehenge and Bath, which, greatly exceeded my expectations. I was really worried about going on a bus for 5 hours return or so for 5 minutes of viewing, since it would be relatively boring. As it turns out it only took 4 hours to get there, to bath, then back. And Stonehenge came with an audioguide that provided about 45 minutes of cool info and stories. Bath had some well preserved roman baths with hot springs and cool things -- apparently the romans knew the earth was round about a century and a half before it was rediscovered. Then yaron and I got some tea and scones and cream and jam! How could that be bad!

Tomorrow we are heading to Cambridge to see where Newton was hit in the head with an apple, and visit my cousin Ethan. The day after that I am going to try and see the Winston Churchill war museum and then we fly home that day!

OH! After westminster abbey we went out for dinner and on our way back we had to switch tube lines at King's Cross Station. That station should have signifigance for some of you....yeah, I got a picture taken at platform 9 and 3/4! It made my day. I'll post it when I get home.

I'm in Prague now and it's really starting to hit home that the trip is winding up. Of course, we still have 2 weeks or so left, and that will probably be the size of my longest vacations for years to come, but compared to the size of our 7-week+ marathon, it is starting to seem like we're on the home stretch. Then we think that we still have 2 countries and 4 cities to do (not including day trips) and realize that we've still got a lot of travelling to do! The trip has worn us down a little bit though. We're a little more appreciative of sitting around at a cafe or in a park or whatever for a while after a museum, or walking, or anything that makes us tired. In fact, we've given a name for the sleepiness that has started to overtake us after a little while in a museum (no matter how good, bad, exciting, or boring it is) -- "museum eyes". The only museum that we didn't seem to get museum eyes for was the jewish ghetto museum in Terezin that we went to today. But I don't wanna write about that since it was all sad and what not, still good, but not fodder for a happy toned blog post.

Instead, I'm going to write about Switzerland.

Originally when we were planning, we were going to go from Italy to Vienna. Then I said to Yaron, "hey, it'd be kinda cool to go hiking in the swiss alps", he agreed and so we penciled it in between Italy and Vienna. The trouble came when we did Cinque Terre. I think I posted about how that was a pretty tiring day onthe old muscles, and I had lost group support that another hike was something we really needed. So the plan was ammended so that I would go to Geneva to meet my cousin Steven and Craig and Yaron would go to Interlaken to have fun with (presumably) non-hiking adventures.

So we took the train to Geneva and I arrived at aroun 2:30, Craig and Yaron continued on with something like 5 more travel hours ahead of them. Steven took me to the top of the WHO building and saw a nice view of France (which was only a 20 minute walk from there -- side story: Once in Waterloo Spaghetti, Waffles and I (maybe mark too?) walked to the McDonald's drive thru and ordered. When we got to the front of the window to pick up our food, I arranged us all like we were in car, then when the lady handed me our food, I rolled down the imaginary window, took it and rolled the window back up. The lady was visibly annoyed, and for that matter, so was everybody in the "car". Regardless, I was pretty happy with my little joke and that was all that mattered. I wonder if I could've pulled the same joke with the French customs officials at the "drive thru" border.) and Geneva. Steven was great and playing tour guide as we walked around the city, saying things like, "when they donated the land that is used for the united nations, it was on the condition that there always be 4 peacocks roaming the grounds at all time. Even today those peacocks are there." and "A great part about geneva is that the trains always go exactly according to schedule". We also stopped for yummy chocolate which was...yummy. And in the park we went to they had giant chess boards and giant pieces (think harry potter 1 without the dying thing) and so we played. I had a slight advantage since Steven made a mistake early on, and then he almost had me but made the wrong move, and then I went in for the kill. I guess it's because I'm older :) Or more likely because I'm lucky.

I had ordered new books to read (2 more books in the Ender series that I've been reading on this trip) to Steven's work and as of the day before my books hadn't arrived, so taht could've sucked. But luckily, they got there around the same time as me, so when we stopped by the WHO, my books were there and now I had something to keep my going on trains the rest of the way. Steven didn't understand why I needed the books since when he was travelling for 2.5 weeks in Italy with a friend, he either slept or talked on the trains. I recalled that for the first 2.5 weeks I didn't do any reading either, but spend enough time with the same people and you can't fill all the time with conversation.

Speaking of spending time with the same people, I don't know if either Yaron or I have mentioned it, but Tait went back to Ottawa to watch the Senators compete for the Stanley Cup. On one hand I think, "how could you leave EUROPE to watch hockey?" on the other hand I think, "In 20 years, Europe will still be there, but there is no guarantee that the Senators will make it back to the Stanley Cup in that time", so it's not as crazy as it might've seemed. Though now that they are down 2-0....

I can't believe I just had a paragraph dedicated to hockey.

Anyway, speaking of spending time with the same people, before elaving yaron and craig, I gave them a mission to make 5 new friends in Interlaken. We'll get back to this later.

First I just wanted to cover the food that I tried in Switzerland. On day 1 I had the traditional Fondu. As with the rest of Geneva it was pricey, but really really really good. The cheese was all melty and delicious and then there was the part that got burned on the bottom and the waiter scraped it off for us and we split it. Apparently it is osmething that people fight over but Steven suggested we be more civil than that, so we were. I also had some Geneva wine, which is good but they only let 10% of it be exported, the other 90% stays in Geneva, so it isn't too common to find it outside of the country. The place we got fondu in was really touristy, but htat's why we went -- for the experience. THey had one of those riiiicolllaaaaa horns, and people were all dressed up. It was like a "real" swiss chalet...but without the delicious sauce. I love that sauce.

The second night we had roclette, which is when they give you a whole bunch of boiled potatos, and bring you an unlimited number of plates of melted cheese (shaped like really thick kraft singles, but soooo delicious) and you scoop up the chessew ith your potatos, and when your plate is empty, ask for another one. It was all you can eat. It was faaantastic and I think I like it better than fondu. Apparently they use a special machine to cut the cheese that ends up on your plate, and people buy mini machines to use at home and it is an easy meal that they make locally, so that's kinda neat!

In order to get to Interlaken at an early enough time that we could still do something during the day before heading out at night, I had to take the 6:45 train from Geneva. I was supposed to take it to Bern, then switch trains and head to Interlaken. I got to the platform nice and early at 6:30. To my surprise, the train was already there, so I get on and take a seat and pulled out my notebook and started writing about my Geneva adventures. At 6:36 the train starts rolling, and I look up and I hear Steven's voice in my head, "A great part about geneva is that the trains always go exactly according to schedule."....Uh oh. I peer out the window and confirmt hat I was on the correct platform, but unfortunately, the train I boarded was the one there before my train arrived and I didn't recognize the destination station of this train, and I couldn't find it on my map or in my Eurail book. I was going around the train looking for someone to talk to (it was fairly empty) and eventually find someone who doesn't speak English. I use my incredibly broken French and the universal language of pointing to figure out that this train passes through Laussene, which is a town I had visited the day before and that I knew I could transfer to a train to Bern. In fact, I ended up transferring to the precise train that I wanted to board in Geneva in the first place! I made the rest of my transfers without a hitch and all was well.

Get this! When I got to Interlaken, I waited a bit for Yaron and Craig, and then found out that they had made 5 new friends at the hostel and had plans to go on a hike! It was all coming together! We originally wanted to go ice climbing, but apparently it was teh wrong time of season to do that. So we ended up taking a train to I Forget the Town Name to start the hike up to I Forget the Other Town Name. It was a long hike and it was foggy at the bottom and kinda spitting rain the whole time -- not the best conditions at all, but we hoped by the time we got to the top that it would be ok. About an hour in, 2 of the poeple we brought along from the hostel dropped out and so we were down to 6 -- the three of us, 1 from ottawa, and 2 from australia. I've done a bunch of hiking in Seattle, but this trail was so much more vertical than what I was used to. It just goes up and up and up and up. As we got higher, the clouds started making way for us, and we ended up getting really nice views from the top and then we had fondu and it was delightful.

It's really late and this post took me a really long time to write, so I will abruptly end it and say toodaloo.

We have free Internet here in Prague which is always nice. I posted a ton of pictures in various albums from our stay in Italy, the south of France and Monte Carlo.

We're in Prague right now. The city is beautiful and it was fun to walk around this afternoon even though we didn't really see any specific sights aside from a Salvador Dali exhibition that Jon and I went to which was neat. I prefer his style of distoring an image over Picasso's.

We did Vienna for the past 2 days but I think that we didn't get the best feel for the city. The weather was the worst weather we've had all trip and I think that made me a little unhappy to start with and it made us less eager to just walk around. It also didn't help that I think we could've skipped some of the museums that we went to. There was a really neat house which was a piece of art in and of itself (e.g. it didn't have many straight lines - the ground was intentionally curved in many places, it had lots of random tiles of varous colours) and that was fun but we went to this Music and Technology Museum where many of the displays were either broken or just not very interesting. I think Vienna could use a re-visit though some day because I think the city probably has a lot more to offer then what we saw. My favourite part of Vienna was last night when we went to a Mozart concert. The musicians dressed up in classical clothing and the music was amazing. They even had some pieces that Mozart had written for Operas that I enjoyed for the most part (I didn't really like the woman's voice but to my surprise I enjoyed the man's singing).

We've started to firm up the details for the rest of the trip. We're in Prague tomorrow and the next day, then off to Berlin, the Rhine Valley, Munich and finally London.

I posted pictures from both Madrid and Barcelona.

We're in Vienna, Austria and we spent the day in Bratislava, the capitol of Slovakia. It was a nice change from most of the cities we've been too. It was very quiet, not very touristy and it just seemed like people were relaxed. We had a fun day just walking through the city and taking in the sights.

Craig has posted some pictures he took from his camera and you can check them out here: http://picasaweb.google.com/craig.wilkinson/Europe.

So we're motoring right along in our trip and we've knocked off quite a lot of major attractions. It's gotten to the point where we're tired of museums for the most part and we seem to be more interested in just walking around cities. Well that's mostly true. Rewind a few days back (Jon's post below took place yesterday) to when we went to Florence with the sole intention of seeing David. We arrived in Florence around 4pm and we figured that since it was late in the afternoon and the musuem would be closing soon there wouldn't be much of a line. We got there and the line went down the block. It started slow at first but picked up and within an hour we were inside, our jaws on the floor, just marvelling at David. While we were in line we were joking how ridiculous it is to wait in line for a single sculpture but once we saw it, we knew it was worth it. The amount of detail is remarkable - you can see his veings, muscles and ribs! If you look at Craig's pictures you'll see one of me in front of David but you probably won't be able to make out any meaningful details since we had to be far away cause picture-taking was forbidden. In any event, David was definitely worth the wait.

I was hoping to write a longer post but I'm out of time. I'm posting right after Jon so enjoy his post below.

Back in grade 10, I was in a one act play (my first real performance ever, really), where I was a construction worker, it was called Mere Mortals...I think, David Ives? Anyway, as I was walking onstage I sang the lines "I'm the man, I'm the man, I'm the man, I'm the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!" I had no idea what the tune was supposed to be so I made it up. Luckily, the tune has stuck in my head all these years since I was able to sing it last night. Let me elaborate...

We had planned on going to Venice after Florence. This plan was all well and good until we realized how much extra travelling we were going to have to do for what would amount to about 6 or 7 hours of times to see the city. So we decided not worth it. Instead we went to Nice to see the south of France. Yesterday we woke up kinda late (we were all still zonked from our intense day of hiking at Cinque Terre), hung out a bit and at around 16:00, took the train to Monte Carlo, Monaco. We walked all the way around, saw the yachts that could have doubled as cruise ships, the ridiculously fancy cars (Ferraris, Lambourghinis, and the like (excuse the mispellings if they are there)) and the like, we ate a very nice dinner. We got a set meal where the appetizer was a collection of local food, then I had a piece of sea bream fish, then some dessert that was ice cream and caraemlly stuff and whipped cream and good.

We were kinda concerned about when the last train headed back to Nice but I was pretty sure I insisted we were ok since people would tend to stay at the casino late before they headed back. However, by the time we finished dinner it was kinda late (10:00 or so?) so we asked the waiter, and he reassured us that the last train didn't leave till 00:45 or so. So we walked to the casino, and first we went to the "american casino", Cafe de Paris, which was full of casually dressed people, slot machines, video poker, loud ringing noises and the like. That was boring, so we went into the famous casino. We were kinda nervous about a dress code so that day we all wore pants and golf shirts (pants were tough in 30 degree weather! Poor us, eh!) We got in, paid the 10 euro cover charge and walked our way in.

I can't post pictures since like all casinos, cameras are banned. But it was amazing. The ceiling was decorated kinda like the ceiling was in Versailles, with sculptures and gold and painted and real nice. The whole room was pretty quiet, and all the dealers and such were ewaring tuxedos. At each roullette table there were 3 "dealers" -- one guy to spin the wheel, and the others to help you place bets.

Yaron sits down first and trades in 50 euros for chips. He methodically gives the dealer 2 chips each spin and tells him in french where he would like the chips to go. The dealers make a game of it, they throw your chip across the table and are surprisingly good at making it land where you asked. If they miss, they seem a bit sad, and then fix it with their dealer stick things. Yaron won once, and after a few more spins, I joined the party.

I only sat down once I decided what numbers I was going to play. I was pretty bad at stats in school, so I decided to succumb fully and completely to superstition. I chose the digits of mine and my sister's birthday my birthday is on the 29th, and my sister's is on the 8th (of different months). So I put one 5 euro chip between 0 and 2, and another between 8 and 9 so I have all the digits covered. If any of those numbers hit, then I get 18:1 payout.

First spin...2

Woohoo! 90 euros!

I get a bunch of 5 euro chips back, and a shiny green 50 euro chip. I pocket the 50 euro chip, and then keep playing with my 5 euro chips. I replace the chip that was on 8/9 and it spins again.

8

Woohoo! 90 euros!

Again, I pocket the green chip and keep playing with my oranges (minus 10 of them since they made an even 50 so I pocketed that too). I play for a while and I see a few high numbers where all of mine are low, so I don't play a spin. Yaron question me and I say, I don't have a good feeling about this spin, and sure enough, it is a high number. Goooo supersition! I had just bought myself another chance to win. That chance came when I was down to my last 2 chips...

I was always going to stop once I ran out of orange 5 euro chips and when I was down to my last 2 chips, I made my bets, turned to craig and said, "what number do you think is next?" Craig said 13. I turned to Yaron and asked the same question and he said 17, which is what he had been playing the whole time so I said, "I know that's what you would have bet, but what do you THINK it's going to be?" He said, "9", and then 1 or 2 seconds later the dealer says, "neuf" -- I was so surprised that Yaron had got it right on (even though he didn't place a bet) that I jokingly congratulated him and started to get up -- then Yaron reminds me that I won too, since I had, as always, a chip on 8/9.

Woohoo! 90 more euros!

I pocket the green, replace the chip, spin, and....

2

Woohoo! 90 more euros!

I pocket the green and start to keep playing, then yaron reminds me that I could just get up and leave, so I did, with an even 300 euros in chips. Minus the 50 euros I invested and its a 250 euro profit! I would've been excited like that time I won bingo (http://jgordner.livejournal.com/2003/12/29/) but it was all too easy, and also the mood of the room isn't really one where you get all excited, but more very suavly accept your win like you knew it was coming. And I did -- why else would I have sat out that spin where I knew I was going to lose just so I could win on my last two chips? Yeah, I so knew it was coming.

I almost felt like a high roller when the guy gave me three crisp 100 euro bills. Then I remembered when I saw a guy walk up to a roullette table, take out three 500 euro bills, place them on individual numbers, lose and then walk away like he didn't care.

Anyway, we head back to the train station and run since we are pretty late. We get there and find out that the last train actually left at midnight (and it was now 00:20)...stupid waiter who gave us bad info. So after searching for alternative options home we took a cab. I didn't mind paying the 70 euros, since the taxi cab was a mercedes (only in monte carlo!), and I had just won gobs of money.

And that is how I broke the bank, in my own little way, at Monte Carlo.

On an unrelated topic, Yaron has managed to upload some more pictures. Take a look at: http://picasaweb.google.com/yaron.friedman/

Our Paris ones kinda suck since his memory card broke at some point and we lost a whole bunch of good parisian shots :( I hope you enjoy!

Tomorrow we split up. I head to Geneva to visit my cousin steven who is doing an internship at the WHO, while Craig and Yaron head to Interlaken for some adventurous outdoor fun. Tait went home since his beloved Ottawa Senators are now in the Stanley Cup, and I think he would die if he wasn't there for that series. I will meet up with the rest of the gang on Sunday after my time with Steven is through.

Also, at the beach a few days ago we randomly ran into Mike Jutan, a friend of Yaron and Craig's for their co-op terms in California. I had never met him before, but he was in CS at waterloo like me, and I had seen him around, and in 2nd year Sergig and I had met him in the tutorial centre, we asked him a question and he responded, "No worries", so from that point on we called him No Worries. So Mike Jutan, who's name I've heard from Yaron and Spaghetti, and No Worries are actually the same person! Crazy! Today No Worries went to Cannes and he met Jeremy Piven, and saw got a picture with him, and with Turtle from Entourage -- sooooo jealous.

Anyway, Gotta go. 5:55am train tomorrow.

Jon

This started out as a plain old comment reply, but it is long enough that I figured I'd make it a post. Not particularly good, but whatever.

Randi's (my sister) original comment:
Too bad about your allergies, can't you find some stronger medicine? Just go to an Italian pharmacy, point to your itchy eyes and runny noise, they'll get the hinteroo! Where is your next stop? Florence? How's the gelato been? Have you had pizza and pasta? My Italian students always tell me that those foods are AMAZING. So you'll have to report if this is indeed the case. Why did you guys choose to stay at a campsite such a far commute from Rome? Just wondering. We miss you at home!!!!!!!!!!!! Blog more often as Mumsie harasses me daily to see if you have a new post up and I have to continually disappoint her. Tootaloo for now!

My reply:
I tried to find some good medicine, oh lord I tried! but even it didn't seem to last the whole day at the campsite. We're staying in the campsite because it was only 11 euros and looked ok from the website. But then we wanted to spend a night in rome so the last night we spent in the city. that was fun, we met a nice older couple and they bought us all grappa after our meal (they were sitting next to us in the restaurant).

After Naples we head to Florence (tomorrow at 11:30) and I'm gonna get some more gelato. it has been stupendous overall! I had pistachio gelato that actually tasted like pistachio. Normally pistachio ice cream tastes not like pistachios, but pistachio ice cream, so that was neato. And all the flavours have been yuummy.

We have this place near us that makes the best pizza. You go in and order your pizza and you see them make it in front of you, then they put in it in the stone over behind them and you see them kinda spinning it and doing acrobatics with it and what not and cook the pizza in like 3 minutes.

The pasta has been good too, but I could just as easily make tortellini from Sobeys and be happy with that. The sauces have all been really good, so that makes it better, and it is cooked really well. In one meal I had my first course which was tortelinni in meat sauce, then the second course which was rabbit in white sauce, then the third course which was local sheep's milk cheese, then the grappa that the old couple bought us. It was pricey, but delicious.

So with all the time in between posts there is so much that has happened and I will skip the summary of everything we've done and instead post a single story. I'll try to make this short since I'm on a shared computer and other people likely want to use it.

In Rome we have been staying at a campground. Camping in Europe doesn't seem to mean a tent, but a weird hybrid of a hostel and what you would expect from camping. There are dorm beds, but they are in a building that is somewhat outdoors, just with some walls and a roof. There are bathrooms, but you are expected to bring your own soap for the sink, and walk outside to the showers. This is all fine and dandy, except that I have some pretty lousy allergies and being outside from the time we get back from the being out is not a good thing, since we tended to grab dinner, then drink a bit, and then go to bed. There was no escape from the outdoors and it was moderately gross.

Oh, it's also important to note that the campsite was about a 20 minute ocmmuter train ride outside of Rome.

We spent our second full day in Rome seeing the vatican, then the pantheon, then a big great fountain, then eating gelato, and when I heard that people wanted to go back early to relax, swim, get a dinner that sounded good until I realized that would mean an entire evening of allergy torture (and the allergy medicing I had been taking only seemed to really work for a few hours), so I stuck around by myself. I ate a sandwich and read by the spanish steps then I wandered around for a bit. I wasn't paying too much attention to where I was going and was just taking random turns if it looked interesting down some street. On this walk I stumbled across some neato things, that were all really old from different eras in Rome's history. Rome is cool like that. Something can be 2000 years old, or only 1200 years old, or a modern 400 years old, or built last year, and all of it can be cool.

Anyway, after a lot of wandering I realize I hadn't seen a metro stop in a while and that I didnàt recognize any of the streets or any of the landmarks and my map was pretty lousy. My internal monologue went something like this:
"uh oh, i'm lost. So this is what it's like to be lost." I look around for stuff and kinda rush down some streets, but I don't find anything familiar. "Wait a minute. I don't really need to be anywhere. If I don't have a destination, then how can I be lost? I'm not lost, I'm just wandering!"

Then I felt much better.

Eventually through my wanderings I came across the exact station I needed to get to in order to catch the commuter train back to the station. I took that as a sign to go home. I get on the trian and continue reading Ender's Shadow, another book in a series of books I started reading at the start of the trip. I look up from my book and see that I have 3 more stops to go, so i wait three stops, see what stop we are at now and realize we are off the map. Literally off the map... the map in the subway says it has stops A - G and we are at stop H. Apparently it only makes some stops all the time, and others only when the button is pushed. I didn't know this. I get off the train and look around. This has got to be the sketchiest train station I've ever been to. I step onto this small landing, aobut 3 train cars worth long and maybe as wide as two people. Then I had to cross a set of two train tracks on foot to get to the tracks going the other way. There was a single shack, with just a ticket machine for buying tickets and a schedule. I look up the train I think i want, and it is 9:30 now, and the train comes at 9:48...not too bad. I go outside by a street lamp and continue reading. A guy on his moped pulls up and starts waiting for the train, looking all creepy like. I wait some more. 9:48...no train. Another creepy guy pulls up....uh oh! I go inside and notice that the train I was looking at was actually 10:48! but there is one at 10:08...so 20 minutes more to wait with sketchy people at this sketchy train station. I wait nervously for about 10 more imuntes then a girl joins the two guys and they start joking and laughing and such and realize they aren't so bad afterall! The train eventually comes, I find my way to the campsite and meet up with Yaron, Craig and Tait at the campsite bar.

This was really the first night where we met a bunch of other hostelers. It was a lot of fun and I think we should do that more often. We were out drinking till the wee hours, then slept in a bit the next day.

I met this guy named....Drew from Melbourne....

Drew: Hey Jon, what comes before Part B?
Jon: Part-A!
*then we do a chest bump thingy*
Drew: You watch scrubs?
Jon: I do! My buddy Waffles and I actually learned this handshake from the first season. It was great.
Drew: I know it!
*We do the handshake*

It was amazing!

And that is all I have to say about that.

Today we went to Pompei and we went to the great theatre there and I tested all that stuff I learned about how greek style ampitheatres had amazing acoustics. I sent craig and tait down there to talk at normal volumes and I heard them loud and clear from the top. Then I went to the bottom and pretended to do my oedipus rex monologue from grade 11 drama. Then Yaron took a picture of me. It was awesome.

That isn't all I have to say about that, but that is all I will say for now.

As always, so much for a short entry.

I must've said those words over a dozen times in the past 2 days. Conversing with people in Madrid has been really hard and somewhat frustrating. Even though we're staying in the centre of the city, there's clearly a lot less tourists visiting Madrid because most locals don't speak any English. Couple that with the fact that the only Spanish we know is the very little I learned in a 1st year Spanish course in University and we ended up having some rather awkward conversations. It's all worth it in the end though because I feel great when I actually manage to communicate with someone!

Along the same lines though, I think this is the first time on the trip where we feel a bit out of place. Since there's very little English spoken, and we can't have meaningful conversations with locals it definitly feels like we're outsiders. Things might get worse in some of our later stops because we'll have zero knowledge of the local language but most of our destinations are pretty touristy so hopefully there will be enough people who can speak English.

Ok, so enough about language. From the little we've seen of Madrid society, it's pretty different from home. For example, for the most part, you can only buy food from restaurants between 12-4 and 8-12. Also, we were walking around last night (a Tuesday night) and there were guys handing out flyers for free drinks at various nightclubs. We went to one place for a free rum and coke (which was 1/2 rum - not bad for a free drink) and the place was pretty full. It was amazing to see so many people out on a Tuesday night. Also the decor was different from what you'd expect back home in that it was relatively well lit and there was actually art on the walls.

Back on to the topic of food, we went last night to the "World's Earliest Restaurant" according to the Guiness Book of Records! We had a set menu with house specialties - I had lamb and the others had "Suckling Pig". The food was all amazing and towards the end of the evening, four guys came out and started playing a bunch of songs in Spanish. We got some photos and a movie which I'll hopefully be able to get uploaded soon enough. On that note, I've managed to upload 2 more albums so take a look. One is pictures and movies from the soccer game we went to in Manchester and the other is pictures from the three cities we visited in Scotland. Unfortunately today I was looking through the pictures on my camera and I noticed that the pictures weren't showing up for some of them. It looks like I lost about 25 pictures or so. I'm pissed off because I even paid a little extra to get the brand name SD card. I'm hoping I can find similar pictures from some of the other guys' cameras.

I didn't want to risk losing any more pictures so I bought a new card today when we were at a new mega-mall that they built here. For the most part the mall is the same as any other mall but instead of just having stores it also has a movie theatre, miniature golf and an indoor ski hill!! Adam decided to go skiing and he said that the snow was pretty mediocore but it's all man-made snow so what can you expect?

Barcelona tomorrow!

Some quick things Jon forgot to mention about his post on Paris:
- While we were in Paris an amazing event occured. We were sitting in a cafe and the clock struck 12:34 PM. The date was May 6, 2007. What does that add up to? The date was 12:34 05/06/07! We took pictures of the clock and where we were at so we could remember that moment and yes, we are giant nerds!
- When that wondeful time was passing we were actually eating lunch in a Kosher restaurant/cafe and drinking Macabee Beer or "The Beer that the the chosen people choose" as Jon likes to say and claims is the slogan. In our walking the streets of Paris we actually stumbled across three different Jewish areas.

Sorry folks for leaving this so long... Paris has been absolutely packed, and we've only had downtime now so we finally got on the internet. Actually, we got on the internet about 3.5 hours ago, but I'm only getting to blogging now. This would be the downside of having a relatively unplanned trip -- needing to periodically sit down and actually plan stuff. We were theorizing that we would go to Madrid tomorrow, then Barcelona, then the south of France, then Italy. As it turns out, there is nothing at all available in Barcelona on this upcoming Saturday. The upside of having a relatively unplanned trip is that we called an audible and now have a flight booked from Barcelona to Rome (leaving on the Saturday afternoon), and are now going to do Italy, and then head back to the south of France after that. Anyway, doing all the bookings took a lot of time, and so I get to type this now.

Notre Dame - This was the first thing we did in Paris. As Yaron mentioned there was a chance encounter with friends froms school, that was cool (that reminds me of the song that Zack wrote when there was the competition to pick Bayside's new school song, "Bayside is a school that's cool and you know that it's true (know that it's true, know that it's true). The girls are the hottest and the guys are the hippest too (oooh ooh ooh)"), but the neatest part of Notre Dame, I thought, were the gargoyles on top. I expected them to be all scary and serious, but actually they were just animals being goofy with funny faces on...what's not to like about looking at that while also having a look at all of Paris?

Speaking of "a look at all of Paris", last night Craig and I went to the top of the...
Eifel Tower - The funny thing about looking out at a city from its most famous monument is that the actual view that you get doesn't look too much like the city in question at all because said monument is missing. How do you know you are looking at Paris unless you can see the Eifel Tower! Regardless, the view still was good, we went all the way to the top and the whole thing (getting in line, going up, then going down) took about 3.5 hours and was well worth the money. Paris has so many straight lines, it's neat. Certain streets don't seem to curve at all, and the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, and the Louvre all form a straight line. Really neat. When you get down, you are bombarded with people trying to sell you Eifel Tower keychains and blinky models for 1 and 5 Euros respectively. I wanted to see if I could get something for 20 cents.

me: "I have 20 cents"
shady salesman: "1 euro"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman: "80 cents"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman puts out his hand, I put 20 cents in it, then says, "you can look at this *points to blinky thing* for 5 seconds"
me: "give me my money back"
shady salesman: "fine, here."
then he gives me a keychain for 20 cents! woohoo! now they only made 19 cents off of me!

We went to the Eifel Tower to cap off a pretty amazing day. While Yaron was writing the blog about the delicious food (and he wasn't understating it... I've had escargot, scallops, french onion soup, pastries, crepes, STINGRAY!, and more!), Craig and I went to Versailles. On the way to the RER station (commuter rail) a french dude stops me and points to my sweatshirt and says,
"my great grandfather.... he was there!", I looked down and realized he was talking about a different Waterloo. We go to RER station and meet a couple of guys from Vancouver on the train. They're nice people that we end up seeing later on. We walked around Louise XIV, and Marie Antoinette's gardens, which were pretty crazy with lots of statues and green and niceness. Then we went into the palace itself. First we saw the residences of Louis's daughters and his son (the Dauphine) and were thouroughly unimpressed. Then we went into the main palace and boy does it suck to be his kids. It was so grand and lavish and amazing. I was thinking that because of all this democracy garbage that we believe in these days, we won't ever be leaving this kind of legacy because nobody could ever justify that much expense on a palace or anything, while still being accountable to lots of people...oh the days of meaningful monarchies. Speaking of unnecessary luxury, after the palace, we stopped at a local boulangerie and picked up some delicious mousse pastry thingies.

After the Eifel Tower we hopped the Metro home and on the way up the exit escalator, there was a drunk guy peeing on the escalator about 20 steps ahead of us. He was disgruntled because the following day's election (today) were going to likely result in a right wing guy going in office. Apparently he's been compared to Bush, and so naturally there are lots of people not happy with his leading the polls. So the guy starts yelling at us in french for no reason, then he sees the flags on our packs and immediately starts talking in english, explains about the election (in his drunken sort of way) and goes on his merry way. Nice that a Canadian flag still gets ya somewhere.

Sidenote: Did either of us mention that there were a couple of Tim Hortons in Dublin? Anyway...

Oh, so apparently if the election goes in the way of the right winged guys there will be riots in the streets, complete with car flippings and what not! neat! We've been hiding out in this internet cafe to stay safe though.

In the Louvre, in the French Sculpture room there was a bunch of statues with strawberry plants running thorugh (real ones, with wonderful smelling strawberries growing). Now THAT's art.

OH, and I wanted to mention a quick thing about Queen's Day in Amsterdam... The city is a semi circle, essentially. The party that was Queen's Day was where the streets were jam packed for about a 30 minute walk out of the city centre in almost all directions of the semi circle. That's easily millions of people, with artists and food (mmm, haring) and music and all other good stuff.

Anyway, there's obviously more to post, but it'll have to wait.

Wow! The food in Paris is out of this world!! The first day here we all had crepes and I got a Nutella and Banana one and it amazing. We went out that night for a nice meal with a set menu and it included a Cheese course! Craig had warned me that cheese was different here but I was still caught off guard by it. Some of the cheeses are almost milky; even at room temperature the cheese oozes a little but it's still somewhat solid. The only bad part about food here is that coffee is super expensive (3-5.50 euros!)

One thing that has made Paris extra fun is chance encounters with friends from back home. On the first day we went to Notre-Dame Cathedral and while hanging out outside, a bunch of Software Engineering friends showed up. Then last night after I was done at the Louvre and waiting to meet up with the rest of the gang, Sterling showed up out of nowhere. He spent the night with us and he took us to a restaraunt that was cheaper than the first night and in my mind better, but it didn't have a cheese course. :( Nonetheless, it was really fun hanging out with him after randomly bumping into each other half way around the world! We also exchanged stories from our trips and he gave us some tips for Paris and London.

For lunch today we went to a market and bought Brie, Saint-Marcellin, 2 baguettes and of course, a bottle of Red Wine. We then walked over to a nearby park and had a picnic with the Eiffel Tower overhead. It was amazing and we took a whole bunch of pictures but I probably won't manage to get them up for a while. In the meantime though, I've managed to post our pictures from Dublin so check the link I posted before.

I finally was able to upload some pictures from our trip. Don't get too excited now, because they're only a few that we took from our day in London. Hopefully we'll have more pictures up soon enough. All the pictures are getting posted to my PicasaWeb space here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/yaron.friedman/

We've been spending the past few days in The Netherlands with my sister. I've had a lot of fun seeing and hanging out with her. Also, her place is nice and cozy and seeing what she's done with it got me excited about finding a place to live in San Francisco! On the downside, I'm not looking forward to staying in hostels again. :( Tomorrow we're in Paris!

I just wrote a really long blog about everything until now, but as I was about to post, it all got erased. So I'm too frustrated to write about it again and we have to go see Amsterdam.

In short, we saw some stuff in Dublin (it's my favourite city so far, methinks), then I played golf in Scotland and saw some more stuff (ate some Hagis that was actually good, and went to an ale festival which was awesome), saw a futbol game in Manchester, celebrated Queen's Day in the Hague and Amsterdam (that's what the post was mainly about -- basically lots of people...like, over a million in the city centre).

But I can't write about all that again, since we have to go. It was a lot of fun though.

There's a feature in Livejournal, that if you click on the "Location" that I list in the post, it'll find it on Google Maps. Normally, I'll enter something stupid like, "In my room" or "I'm in the zone" -- google maps won't necessarily help you find that proverbial zone, but you can certainly use it on this post's location!

Some might describe places they really like as magical -- I would definitely say that about Dublin, but only, not in the metaphorical sense... there are leprechauns running around the streets here! I haven't seen any, per se, but I've seen other things -- like people with red hair and freckles here in Ireland, and people with pointy noses and long faces and dry wit in London! So if the stereotypes are true, then it is only a matter of time before I strike it rich after finding their pot of gold.

So far, I've found Dublin to be far superior to London. Granted, we haven't spent much time in London yet (we'll be going back there at the end of our trip) -- but I sort of see it as a lot like New York. There's lots of hustle and bustle, lots of people, kinda cramped (the morning tube ride to Victoria station (side note -- a cool part of seeing stuff is that I get references a little more in Tommy -- "From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played 'em all") wasn't fun) and overall it doesn't really have a whole lot of personality, and isn't too personable either. Dublin, on the other hand, has a real homely feel to it... There's lots of space, there isn't really a building taller than 5 stories, there's lots of colour, there seems to be a lot of green space -- don't get me wrong, London has its share of parks, but it is like New York, there is city and then there is designated nature area (central park, hyde park, whatever) -- in Dublin it's all worked in. It seems it's a bit of a combination of urban and suburban in some areas. Also, there are a whole bunch of streets that don't allow cars. That makes it real nice to walk in.

Our MO on this trip so far has been get to a city, drop off our stuff at the hostel and then walk until we're pooped, and then go to sleep with some eating slipped in there. It's been a good way to get around as opposed to hopping on public transportation going from site to site...especially since we haven't really had any strong preference for where we actually end up. In our random travels today we saw Trinity College ( the theatre department was holding auditions for admission to next year's program ) which, like Columbia, made me wish that Waterloo put even a hint of thought into making itself look nice. We ate at this pubbery called Davy Byrnes, which apparentlyis the setting for the chapter with the Cyclops in Ulysses. Despite its literary mention, it's surprisingly not a tourist hostpot. Instead, it is a place for old people to go and drink, that was fun. We ate Traditional Irish Stew, Yaron drank a Guiness and we watched the Champions League Semi between Man U and AC Milan -- it was thrilling!

Despite my love for quality beer, and being in two cities with an unusually high number of pubs, I haven't sat down for a pint. That's been due to a cold I had until today, and a headache I've had since then. Hopefully that goes away for tomorrow so I can go to a real irish pub with fiddle music and good beer and all the rest.

Up for tommorow: Dublin Castle, natural history/archaeology museum, Irish literary museum, the Hot Press Irish Music Hall of Fame, and more and then a night at the pub.

Bedtime!

Jon

So in the midst of all the excitement of planning and preparing for this trip I forgot about my least favourite part of any trip across the Atlantic -- I never get a good night's sleep on the first night.

The flight was pretty good and they had those personal entertainment things in each seat. I should've taken advantage of it and just watched stuff all night instead of trying to get to sleep (I managed about 2 hours) so I would be more tired for tonight. After arriving in London we took the tube to our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and then headed out. We walked from about 3 until 7:30. It was pretty fun. We didn't have any specific landmarks in mind so we just walked and walked and tried to get a bit of a feel for London. I had no idea how much the reversed lanes would screw with my head. It was tough getting used to it and I was always confused about which way to look. Thankfully we noticed that the ground by the sidewalk says 'Look Left' or 'Look Right' which I thought was pretty funny and also really helpful.

In the course of our random walking we did find our way to Buckingham Palace. We also went inside to an exhibit about the Royal Family's collection of Italian paintings or something like that. Unfortunately I couldn't really appreciate it because I was pretty tired at the time. And that being tired thing brings me back to the not sleeping thing. We came back to the hostel early cause we both felt pretty exhausted and thought we would get a good night sleep. I forgot about the timezone thing though and how I always had a hard time sleeping in Israel on the first night. I did manage to sleep about 3 hours but I woke up and felt fully awake so I started reading and I've given up on it for now. Maybe I'll try again later.

So that's enough ranting for now. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up for the next post because we did take a bunch already.

Good night!
Yaron

Hey everyone,

Jon and I will be co-blogging here about our adventures in Europe over the next 50ish days so you can follow us around in our journeys. Hopefully we'll manage to throw up a few pictures every now and again too.

We leave tomorrow night at 11pm and I couldn't be more excited! I've spent the last few days spending entirely too much money getting everything I need for the trip but hopefully I've got everything covered and I've set everything aside that I need to pack.

The general outline for our trip is as follows:

1. UK excluding London
2. A counterclockwise loop through Western Europe and a touch of Eastern Europe
3. Stonehenge
4. London

We have a more detailed list of countries/cities that we plan to visit but I'd prefer to keep you in suspense until we get there. Also, you might be wondering why Stonehenge gets its own line, right? I dunno what it is, but there's something about that rock formation that fascinates me and I just can't wait to see it in person! If we don't manage to see it then our trip's legacy will forever be tarnished so we better not miss it.

That's all from me for now. Maybe Jon will add something more fun and clever for you to read. I always love his creative posts.

Yaron