Top of the World

Published on Sept. 7, 2003 in France

Since it has been a week since I last wrote in the journal, you can imagine that I have not had that much time to write.  So, let me take a few m moments to write about all the things that I have been doing in the last week.  I don't know the days, so don't ask, but I will write about the events that I remember.  Lets start by leaving Prague.  It was a great and beautiful city.  After spending a great few days with ana we left for Berlin on a train in the afternoon.  A few hours later we arrived in Berlin, somewhat late at night.  We found our hostel, after being somewhat lost on the Sbahn, the Generator hostel.  It was huge, but after checking in things seemed to go alright, our room was pretty cool, and we fell asleep.  We woke up the next morning and just spent the day wandering around, and found a cool place to do tours.  Our roommate people came, another couple from Seattle.  The second day we woke up rather late again, although we went to bed earlier.  Ana kicked me out of her bed because she was having a bad dream, but at about 2:30 we went on a tour called Insider, it was freaking greeeeaaaatttt!  One of the best tours I have ever, ever been on.  We arrived back at the hostel at about 8:00 and went out to get a few drinks, well, just one and a half each, but they were big.  We got our drinks from a little place around the corner, and talked about all kinds of things.  We really are falling in love!  We fell asleep this night with the roommate people in the room, , again.  The next day we just spent wandering around everywhere, and we found Ana a new bag to mail her stuff and then mailed her stuff home. Super unfortunately one of these days we were on the train and accidently, " un " bought some short term tickets, with the local discount.  We didn't actually know that either of these were what has happening, since everything was in German.  We got caught though, and each fined 40 euros.  I had 65, and ana had none.  DAMN!  That was not so much fun at all, but oh well.  We mailed everything and jumped on a long night train to Brussels, and didn't really sleep at all the entire e way.  We arrived at six in the morning, and shortly jumped on another train for Bruges, another place just north of Brussels.  After arriving we checked into some hostel, it was soooo gross!  We slept for the afternoon, and then wandered around the town for like five or six hours.  Got lost a few times, visited a lot of the sights, everything was pretty cool.  This town is where the Holy Blood is kept, and is sort of an ancient town filled with tourists.  Cute though.  My parents should go there.  We woke up the next morning and eventually made our way to the train station, caught a train to Brussels and then Paris, and arrived in Paris.  We  wandered over to the metro and onto the train, to our hostel, and set all our bags down.  This first night we went out to the Eiffel tower, and cuddled underneath it.  I had seen it before, but never actually went up to it.  It rained, we got soaked and cuddled home.  Fell asleep.  The next day we woke up and wandered around some more... saw the Louve,We walked the Champs Esees, or however it is pronounced, and that took most of the day.  Went to the Arc de Triumph.  Eventually we went home and made dinner again, went to our room and cuddled and fell asleep.  The next day we woke up and wandered around a whole bunch more.  We went to l'Opera, Notre Dame, and actually went up the Eiffel tower this time.  Now we are sitting, the clouds are surreal, it is getting dusk, and ana is drawing the tower. Good times.
Sep 9 2003 8:30

Best Three Days of my Life

Published on Aug. 28, 2003 in France

This has been the longest three days of my entire life, and do I have a few stories to tell!  Starting on the 25th I guess:
July 25th:
During this day I decided to basically do two things, one, go to see the Tour de France.  Second, go to Greece a few days later.
At 7:00 pm I was in the train station n making reservations for a train to Paris and ran into a girl named Nicole, who I had met on the pub crawl,  She just graduated from Stanford, lucky duck!  Got her email address.  I also met Ash and Sibyl here.

  Sometime in the afternoon I flirted quite a lot with the two girls from Mexico, finding out that one was named Wendy -- from Peter Pan, and the other remained nameless.  They were going to take off to Greece that evening, or something along those lines.  Eventually one of the girls, the nameless one, and I got to know each other better. I made dinner with all of them, and just enjoyed myself in general.  Finally Bj introduced himself to them, and she said Ana.  I laughed, stormed out of the room, and she got all excited (because she didn't tell me her name but told Bj).  We laughed in the end.  Eventually we got a little cuddly, but nothing happened with it.  That evening after taking it pretty easy and deciding not to go to a pub crawl with Sibyl and Ash, I walked her to her train, and kissed her on her cheek.  She turned, and we just kinda kissed on the lips.  The most interesting part was it was a real light kiss, and also that they invited me to go to Greece with them.  They were going to get an apartment down there.  I went back to the hotel, wrote a few emails, read a little, and found the girl to get their email addresses.  I was just finishing writing them down when I stepped outside and they were all there!  Apparently a bunch of scary guys were harassing them on the train so they got off, the policia said it was a good decision.  We kissed later that night, but I went to bed at about 1:00 while they stayed up later.

Everybody in my room woke up early on the 26th, I woke up at 9:55, with just enough time to check out.  I checked out, got some breakfast, and headed over around town just kinda wandering.  At about 4:00  I found out that my parents were getting married, and shortly after this i was on a couchette to Paris.  It was kinda expensive. I got int he train and fell immediately asleep.  Over the entire night I was in a four person couchette being the only one who spoke English, but we all got along fine.  I slept the entire way, and arrived at Paris-Percy, and jumped on the metro.  I went downtown to where the finish line was going to be, but realized that I had a big huge bag on me.  I was walking along some street looking for a hostel or some place with lockers and heard some guy say Mr. Williams!  It was a little odd most certainly, and when I looked over, out of 6 billion people, there was Robin Williams!  The actor!  I could not believe it.  So I said, "it must really suck having everybody know who you are" and he replied "it must really suck having to carry around that big bag around" and then "it looks like we both have burdens."  I chatted a little while about my journey and he chatted back.  Not wanting to intrude on his walk I said goodbye, and took a left up some street.  Good time in Paris so far!  I found my way to a train st station, then to a second train station, then to a third where there were lockers.  I locked up my bag, and ran into this guy named Robert who just graduated from college.  He had been traveling for quite a while as well and decided to come to see the Tour de France.  We set off on a mission: finish line.  In short, a lot of walking and pushing through a lot of people ended us up by a couple from New York on their honeymoon, except they were supposed to be in Edwards islands, but they bored them.  So, here are the two of us, meeting up with them, and they break out a HUGE bottle of champagne.  We all get glasses and are drinking champagne with good company (and all arrived early enough to get some chairs form the park) with perfect seats about 1/2 a block from the finish line.  AMAZING!  We were on this little leveled area, and the camera flashed over us whenever the riders went by.  So, we got to see all the riders and lance Armstrong doing their thing.  Which to the four of us, all outdoor people, was just amazing.  I have never been so excited in my entire life.  Eventually, after many hours, the entire th thing ended, and we all set off downtown.  We went to the Champs Elysees, were the finish line was, and bought a few Boutique's,and Aaron, the groom of the marriage, bought us all crepes and we saw the parade go buy.  Got to see Merck, Armstrong, Induran, Ullrich, it was just insane.  Eventually the parade ended and they went back to the hotel.  Robert and I looked up on timetables the places we were each going to go, and headed off to the trains station.  I picked up my bag, which is where the troubles started, and we walked over to the Nord station (from l'Est).  We parted as I took a confusing metro to the Lyon station, and after about an hour of wandering around and asking people I learned that the train now left from the l'Est station, right where I was.  Jumped on the metro again and went back there.  I eventually caught a pretty late train to Zurich, arriving at 6:30 in the morning.  I walked around for a while, and jumped on another train to Milano which will then take me to Florence.  The ride so far has been simply amazing, there are hills and lakes surrounding me.  Reminding me somewhat of where I am from, just REAL hilly and all the hills that aren't covered by rock or trees are covered by this great green crass stuff.  I almost feel enchanted riding on this train, where I am now, looking back at all the mazing houses nestled into the hills.  So old, people are wandering around outside there houses every now and then.  I wish i could stay at one of them.  Well, I am going to eat a little food I think.

The Friend Portuguese Movie

Published on July 21, 2003 in France

I'm in Nice at the moment, yesterday was quite grand.  We arrived rather early in the morning yesterday, like 8;0am or something like that.  We found our hotel pretty quickly, and I ended up sleeping for the most part of the day.  Much needed!  At about 5:00 we set off on our cross town adventure where we wandered over to the Russian Cathedral, that Nicholas II (On Nicholas Avenue) gave to Nice sometime a while ago, and then wandered down to the beach.  We walked along the beach for quite a while, crossed over to Old Nice an wandered through the little narrow streets.  We got a little turned around in the streets and ended up seeing some pretty awesome memorial plaque's from the world wars, I think.  Eventually we ended up at Garibaldi Place, where I bought an ice cream cone from a not-so-nice old lady.  It was one of my first experiences with a French lady, and she did indeed fulfill the stereotypes.  I don't think that most of France will be like this however, many of the other people are much nicer.  We wandered over to a movie theater and watched a movie, La Cida of Diau, or something like that.  The City of Somethings (knives or guns).  It was actually a Spanish movie with French subtitles, so we were all totally lost.  Indeed I wills say that it was one of the better movies I have seen, although it was extremely violent.  The theater was small, cute, and looked like it would be from the 70's.  The walls were orange fuzz, and the seats were covered d in red felt.  The screen was about three of my arm lengths across.  Quant.  That movie was sooo violent!  We all left with an interesting fling of seeing a movie that we only partially understood, although I had fun trying to make out what the subtitles actually meant.  We all wandered home then,and crashed at like two or so in the morning.  It is now nine, I just woke up and I[m going to get a pastry of some sorts I think!  Hmmmm;

Nice is Nice

Published on July 20, 2003 in France

We are in Nice now, and have been for quite some time.  We arrived this morning and quickly located our hotel -- we are getting good at reading maps and finding our way around new towns.  The hotel is alright, actually it is pretty scummy, but it is a place to sleep so I can't complain.  Basically I have been sleeping all afternoon long -- just about recuperating from the days of having very little sleep. Shortly I am going to walk around with Sibyl and Ash, visit a Russian cathedral and get some Pastry stuff.  Oh, speaking of Pastries.  I met a female named Anna on the Train, she was quite attractive.  A Hungarian.  She invited me to stay in Paris with her at her flat, although I already had a place to stay.  Silly me, it was early and I wasn't quite thinking.  Hopefully I will meet more people like her on my travels whom will let me hang out at their places.  Good luck!!  But off to walk around now!