Nice is nice.

I met up with Abbi and Tiffany, two friends from Seattle, in Nice on Wednesday night (or rather Thursday morning, since I got there late and they had already gone to sleep). The first excursion we went on was to Eve village, a small medieval town in the Maritime Alps, and then the city-country of Monaco. Two Russian girls (Anastasia and Sasha) decided to join us as well, and we ended up spending our whole stay with them and learning a lot about Russia.

We took a bus up to the village and it was quite the experience since it went really fast along the winding mountain roads. It was something like what I would expect in South America but not Europe! The view from the top of the village, where there were castle ruins and a large garden, was spectacular. Apparently royalty from England, France, and Monaco had spent time there as well as Frederich Nietzche (I bet he would have thought it was the perfect place for an uber mench to live).

The next stop was Monaco, famous for five things:

1. The casino Monte Carlo

2. Cars. Extremely wealthy people live here since it is a tax-haven and they all drive really nice cars, expecially Ferraris. Formula 1 racing also goes on here.

3. The royal palace and princess Grace Kelly

4. Oceanography. It is the center for everything having to do with oceanography and has a great museum. Anastasia was studying to be a hydrographer and was really excited.

5. Being one of the smallest countries in the world.

That night, tired from our adventure, we relaxed on the beach in Nice and sipped wine.

The excitement continued the next day. In the morning we went on a walking tour of Nice and saw one of the biggest flower markets in Europe, some cool churches, and nice artwork (or I guess you can say Nice artwork). It ended in a museum with some nice Roman pieces like this one.

Later that day Abbi, Tiffany, and I went to Antibes to try to go swimming but it was too cold and windy so we just walked around. At the end of the night, we went out to old town and got some gelato. We also ran into a street band and did some swing dancing in the street before going to a crazy bar called Wayne's where people were dancing on tables.

The next day Abbi left in the afternoon so I went with the Russians to Cannes, where we saw the site of the Cannes international film festival and handprints of stars like Woopi Goldberg, Mel Gibson, and Nicolas Cage who had been there too. The weather was really sunny and hot so we went to the beach and waded in the water. Even though I didn't have anything to swim in with me, I ended up stripping down to my underwear and jumping in, since the Europeans sometimes have even less on.

I finished my time in the French Riviera by watching a sunset from a hill in Cannes and then saying goodbye to Anastasia, Sasha, and Tiffany.

Next destination: Italy

España parte dos: Barcelona y Tarragona

The first full day I had in Barcelona was quite uneventful and relaxing, but that all changed in the evening.

I met a girl from Mexico and a guy from Sweden in the hostel, and I convinced them to come swing dancing with me that evening even though they had never been before. The girl from Mexico, Vane, was meeting up with a local Couchsurfer named Danny, so he came with us as well. Anyways, the four of us got to the venue and had a great time. I taught Vane and Danny how to swing dance and they really enjoyed it. Since the place was pretty small, I actually ended up teaching everyone there how to dance East Coast style (in Spanish), since in Europe they only really dance Lindy. Everyone wanted to dance with me the whole night so I felt like a star. Even the Bartender came out from behind the bar and asked me to dance. At the end of the night I said my goodbyes and we headed back to the hostel.

That was the good part of the night, now starts the bad part.

Danny had been drinking quite a bit at the swing dance and was rather drunk when we arrived at the hostel. It turned out he lived 30 kilometers outside of the city, and the trains had already stopped running. Apparently he was expecting to be out the whole night with us, but Vane wanted to go to bed. The Swedish guy just went straight into the hostel and went to sleep but I stayed outside with Vane to make sure everything turned out ok. In the end, he started saying very vulgar things to Vane and threatening to get violent, so Vane and I just ended up going into the hostel and leaving him outside with some cash for a taxi.

Vane turned out to be really happy I stayed with her since she was scared, and I decided it would probably be best if we Couchsurfed together for a bit since she was afraid of doing it by herself. Apparently she hadn't checked out his profile on Couchsurfing and other people had left bad references about him. Anyways, we are going to try to stay with the same host in Florence (where I am going after Nice, France) and go from there, and then hopefully she can regain her confidence in Couchsurfing.

The next day was really rainy and thunderstormy, but luckily I can forecast the weather and I knew it would be less rainy in a city about an hour away called Tarragona. Vane and I used our Eurail passes to our advantage and spent the day in Tarragona instead.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a Monday, and everything in the town was closed on Monday for some reason. We still attempted to wander around and take some good photos even though we couldn't get into the Roman amphitheatre and the ancient passageways beneath the city :(

Yesterday I went out and explored Barcelona by myself. First I hit up the Sadrada Familia, a famous church designed by the architect Gaudi, who is very popular in Barcelona. His stuff is everywhere. Literally. I ended up accidentally standing on one of his pieces later that night.

The next stop on my itinerary was the Picasso Museum. It was actually really good, and I found it funny that they kept EVERYTHING that Picasso did. They even had stick figures that he drew on some pieces of paper when he was a kid. Anyways, I thought it was neat that Picasso experimented and changed his style around so much over the course of his lifetime before he found what he really liked at the end, and thats what he became famous for. For most of his life, Picasso didn't paint what we think of as Picasso-like paintings, he did a lot of realism, and he even did other art like sculpture.

I got kicked out of the museum sometime around 8 and took the metro to a park with a great view of the city (and naturally lots of Gaudi stuff) to do some night photography. One of my photos turned out especially one and captured the essence of the park rather well:

This morning, I left Barcelona on a train bound for Nice. Or actually a train bound for Figueres to catch a train bound for Valence to catch a train bound for Nice which I am currently on without a reservation.

Even though I have a Eurail pass, some trains still require you to "reserve" a seat and pay extra, but they only only have a few spots for Eurail pass holders. If they run out of those spots, they expect you to pay the whole fare. The good thing is most of the people working for the train companies think this is ridiculous so as long as I show them my Eurail pass and say I couldn't get a reservation I am fine.

I thought it would be fitting to end the post with a picture of a shop I saw in Barcelona that would probably be very sketch or illegal in the US:

España, parte uno: las playas de San Sebastian, tapas en Madrid, y un partido de FC Barcelona

Spain has been great! My first night in San Sebastian, I slept for 14 hours and then woke up and went to the beach with some others from the hostel. Exhausted from Paris and train travel, I lounged there for pretty much the whole day. There were quite a few surfers on the beach, and unfortunately one of them got swept away by a rip current and drowned. The rescue attempt was epic though.

San Seb is a really relaxed but fun Spanish town. One night I stayed there I just ended up watching movies in the hostel all night, and two other nights, I just went out to the bar, which consisted of having some wine and beer and playing many games of pool and darts. I realized that I'm actually semi-good at pool, ended up beating a guy who had a table at his house. Darts is a spectator sport here in Europe, some people actually watch it on TV, which I find rather strange. 

The second day in San Sebastian I took a funicular railway to the top of a mountain. For those of you who don't know, a funicular railway is a train that operates on a very steep slope. The train going up the slope uses the weight of the train going down as a counterbalance, so the trains have to depart from the top and the bottom at the same time and they always pass each other on the middle of the slope. It looks like this:

And the view from the top looked like this:

One of the nights I also went out and took photos of the city with an Australian girl named Ashley who worked at a Canadian ski resort. Apparently a lot of Aussies move to Alberta and work at ski resorts, she was the third one I met who did that. We tried to climb a hill to get more pictures from the top, but the path was to dark to see up.

Since Ashley and I were both going to Madrid, we booked the same train there on Thursday morning (and slept the whole way there). The hostel we booked turned out to be in the perfect location, right above one of the archways leading into Plaza Mayor, one of the most happening places in the city. We had awesome views from both sides of our room since it was in an archway. The unfortunate part about being so centrally located was that we had a creepy guy dressed up as a baby in a stroller making baby noises outside our room from sunrise until after sunset every day. I felt sorry for the man as he probably lived a very deprived life.

In Madrid, Ashley and I went on a free walking tour with the same company that led the one I did in Berlin (New Europe). I learned a lot about the history of Spain and saw the house of Cervantes (who wrote Don Quixote), and the guy showed us a place where we went later to get churros and chocolate:

The next night we went on a tapas tour. Tapas, I learned, are small dishes that are supposed to be eaten with a glass of sangria (or beer if you prefer, but I liked the sangria more). Apparently the tradition started when one of the kings of Spain decreed that all drinks must come with a portion of food, since people were drinking too much and not eating enough. Of course this law does not apply today, but the Spaniards liked the idea. I was surprised to find that some of the tapas were seafood, considering that Madrid is landlocked; but apparently the seafood in Madrid is some of the best in the world, since the royals wanted fresh seafood in the golden age of Spain and started a thriving seafood trade.

Last night, I took a train to Barcelona and parted ways with Ashley and all of the others I met in Madrid. I had no idea what adventure was awaiting me when I arrived. It turned out that my hostel was just a few steps away from the FC Barcelona stadium and there was a game starting when I arrived (I guess its normal for soccer games to start at 10 PM here?)

Anyways, I decided to go check out the game. I was about to buy a last minute ticket off a scalper when I realized that I had no Euros in my wallet. I started walking back to look for an ATM, disappointed that I was missing the game at this point, when I remembered that the belt I had bought in Berlin was hollow and I had stuffed it with Euros in case of an emergency. Thankfully, I was wearing it, so I took off my belt, pulled out the Euros, and then also gave him the American money I had brought along to show the Europeans how boring it was (all the European bills are different colors). This added up to around the amount he wanted, so he gave me the ticket and let me in.

The match itself was intense. FC Barcelona dominated the game, being one of the best teams in Europe. They were playing Seville, who weren't nearly as good. I would say that Barcelona had control of the ball around 90% of the time. Unfortunately they never scored a goal, despite about 20 close attempts and a crowd that was very enthusiastic about clapping and chanting "Barca!" 

Well that's all for now, folks! I'll be exploring Barcelona more the next 3 days and then head to Nice to meet up with Abbi again.

Paris has good crepes.

On Friday morning, I met up with my friend Abbi who is studying in Geneva to explore Paris for the weekend. We definitely packed a lot into a little bit of time. After arriving, we checked into our hostel, St Christopher's, the largest I have been to so far, and then headed off to the Eiffel tower to see it in all its Eiffel glory. A little known fact is that I am actually taller than the Eiffel tower, proof is in the photo below.

It really has nothing on me. Anyways, the weather being nice, we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and found out it was in the middle of the busiest traffic circle ever (around 5 or 6 lanes wide with no lane markings). Luckily, we didn't have to cross through the traffic because there was an underground tunnel to the middle where we (naturally, being tourists) took some photos.

After visiting both these sights and walking through Paris, we retired to the hostel, which is a hangout in itself. We met a nice Canadian guy that night named Richard and hung out in the hostel bar with him. He had gone on a walking tour of the city the day before so he told us some cool facts, and told us he knew about a hidden side entrance to the Louvre which had no line. So the next morning the three of us headed off to the Louvre, and sure enough, although there was a 30 minute line at the main entrance to get in, the side entrance was completely deserted. Tourists can be so stupid sometimes.

Anyways, I enjoyed the Louvre much more than Abbi because I had taken an art history class and knew a lot about some of the paintings and artifacts there (she got bored after an hour). Some of my favorites were:

The Hammurabi Code, one of the oldest deciphered texts in the world. It contains a law like the constitution from ancient Mesopotamia.

Jacques-Louis David, the Oath of the Horatii. I wrote an essay on this one in high school lol. It was hidden on a random wall with a whole bunch of other lesser-known paintings. 

One of the heads from Easter Island. So random.

And of course, the Mona Lisa. She really does stare at you wherever you go. You can't escape. Its a schizophrenic's worst nightmare.

Apparently the Louvre would take 8 years to get through if you took 30 seconds to look at each piece of art. We rushed through it in 3 hours, quite impressive I think.

After exploring the Louvre, Abbi, Richard, and I went to see the Notre Dame cathedral and the Pantheon, where many famous people like Voltaire are buried. We had the most amazing crepes at a restaurant near the Pantheon and then went to the Luxembourg gardens to chill out, a relaxing end to a busy day.

Last night I stayed up playing card games until 6 AM and then ended up cooking pasta in a cup in the microwave for a meal. This afternoon I will hopefully be taking a train to San Sebastian, Spain. Quiero practicar espanol y visitar las playas!

Crazy changes to plans, sickness, and Belgian chocolate to top it off

I am now sitting at my hostel in Brussels, Belgium after an unexpected last few days. As I mentioned in my last blog post, Adam and I were having train troubles reaching Amsterdam. Our first train was having engine troubles so it came in 30 minutes late to Munich, causing us to miss our night train to Amsterdam. At first we were dismayed, but in the end it turned out well because we got a room in a 4 star hotel right next to the train station. It was definitely the nicest accommodation I have had so far on this trip, except for the amazing hospitality from the Swedish family from Kuttainen. Another bonus was that we got to hang out with a cool lady we met on the first train for a while longer because she had a similar problem (and helped Adam and I resolve everything and book the hotel room). 

On the train the next day to Amsterdam, I played spades for a while with Adam and a German girl named Valerie who was from Dusseldorf. Unfortunately, after the card game I began to feel very ill, and by the time we reached Amsterdam I had quite a fever, and to make things worse, it was pouring and we had a 15 minute walk to the hostel. After what seemed like forever, I finally collapsed into bed and stayed there for a good 20 hours, only getting up to use the toilet and refill my water bottle amidst a massive headache, sore throat, and vomiting. To add to all the misery, there were 3 annoying jerks in the hostel room who were high on weed and wouldn't turn off the lights or shut up until 4 AM. AND they were throwing salami in my bed. Even when they weren't high, they were still jerks, so I know it wasn't just the weed. Its the person that decides who they are, not the drugs they take. It was definitely one of those times I was like, fml. 

The next night was much better, I finally left the hostel room for more than a few minutes and went out to explore the canals and the city with some guys from the hostel. And luckily the jerks were not there that night because they had checked out, and none of the rest of us would let them in when they knocked at the door to try to come back for some reason or another. It is interesting to note that the whole city of Amsterdam is centered around weed, since it is legal in the Netherlands. All of the coffee shops sold it as well as some other places. Adam and I were trying to find the word they used for coffee shops that didn't sell weed, and we came to the conclusion that the word didn't exist because all of the coffee shops sold it.

Amsterdam canals:

The next morning I parted ways with Adam as he headed back to England to celebrate his birthday. We had in total traveled for almost 2 weeks together through Helsinki, Tallinn, Budapest, Vienna, and Amsterdam, so it was sad to see him go. I caught a train to Brussels and immediately sought out some chocolate. And here I am now, doing my laundry. A good photo of the Brussels skyline as an end to the post and to the night:

Leitungswasser

In the time since my last update I have been roaming the former Austro-Hungarian Empire far and wide, adventuring to do what I have never done before and have wanted to do for a very long time. The first of these activities was caving. Adam, my travelling buddy who I met in Helsinki and met up with again recently, joined me for this activity as well. The caves in Budapest are right beneath the city, which I thought was really awesome. We put on full body suits and helmets with headlamps and started off into the dark with our guide. (Before going, I was thinking "why do we need a guide?" but afterwards I was grateful since the cave was rather disorienting.) The guide took us and the rest of the group through many nooks and crannies where I had to squeeze through holes the width of my head and pull myself over ledges. The caves were made of limestone and were formed by surface water containing carbon dioxide squeezing through very small fissures in the ground and chemically eroding the limestone. I could definitely see myself exploring caves as a hobby in the future if I lived somewhere where caves abounded. Our guide was telling us how some of his friends were exploring the depths of the largest cave chamber in the world, recently discovered in Vietnam. Quite the adventure if you ask me. Anyways, here are some pictures of my spelunking trip:

That night I joined nearly everyone in the hostel for a night cruise down the river. I bumped into two sisters I had met in Prague (one lived in Ghana and the other was a flight attendant in Australia). Anyways, lots of good photos were to be had of the Buda Castle, the Hungarian parliament, and the like.

After the cruise a drunk Hungarian guy came up to us trying to help us with directions and we realized he was going to a bar near our hostel. We joined him at the bar for a while and he and his friend played Adam and I at foosball. I am alright at foosball myself and Adam is pretty good, having been on a foosball team at Oxford, but this guy and his friend were amazing. They were pulling moves I had never seen before, and managed to beat us by quite a few points in one of the games. (I have actually played quite a bit of foosball/table football since coming to Europe, its quite popular here). Oh and the bar had flying rabbits, which is obviously worth mentioning.

The next day Adam and I took a train to Vienna and went to an opera at the opera house (La Traviata by Verdi) since it seemed like a Vienna thing to do. I am very glad I went, since I had never been to an opera before. Very over-dramatic but the classical music was amazing (after all many famous composers like Mozart spent time in Vienna).

It was raining and cold most of the time we were in Vienna, but we managed to get some good photos around town during a short sun break, and eat some Wiener Schnitzel, which I gathered is from Vienna since the German name for it is Wien.

Right now Adam and I are attempting to travel to Amsterdam, but are having problems with train delays, so we will see what happens...

PS The title of this blog is the most useful German word ever, can you guess what it means?

Oktoberfest, the Bavarian Alps, and Hungary

Wow. So much has happened since my last blog entry. I left Prague on Saturday and traveled pretty much the whole day to get to my next hostel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. I took an express bus to Nuremberg which was late because of traffic, but I arrived just in time to see my connecting train roll out of the station, which was quite frustrating. I ended up taking a much slower train to Munich instead and then another slow train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

I arrived in Garmisch-Partenkirchen late at night, so all of the stores in town were closed except for the gas station convenience store, where I had a very limited selection of snacks for the weekend (all of the grocery stores were closed the next two days too... they are closed on Sundays most places in Germany, and on holidays too... and my luck had it that Monday was Reunification Day). Anyways, lets just say I ended up eating out a lot.

When I woke up in the morning, I was stunned by what I saw. I was in the middle of the Bavarian Alps, with old men in their lederhosen (traditional German clothing) wandering the mountainsides. It was spectacular, and I was surprised to find that Leavenworth actually did a good job of imitating Bavaria, except for the people of course.

That day I decided to take the train and go to Oktoberfest, leaving the Alps to be explored later. Oktoberfest is the largest fair in the world held annually in Munich. It had lots of rides and even more beer tents. I had to wait almost an hour to get into one of the tents, and when I was in line I met two Mexican girls and a French guy. They introduced me to more of their friends and we ended up spending the whole evening together drinking excessively large beers and singing songs. I got to practice a lot of Spanish as well. I didn't get back to my hostel until very late, but I felt like I had definitely experienced Oktoberfest and will never forget it or the people I met there.

The next day I explored the Bavarian Alps and took some awesome photos.

One of the highlights was exploring a very narrow gorge with a trail built into the cliff on one side:

Knowing that I would return to even higher peaks and more magnificent scenery later on in Switzerland, I reluctantly left the Alps for Budapest on a night train. My English friend that I had met in Helsinki, Adam, was staying there, so I thought I would join him. I was surprised to find that two Canadian girls I had been to the hockey game with in Prague were also at my hostel.

The day was pretty long but rather exciting. Among other things, Adam and I went to a cathedral with the 1000 year old mummified hand of the first king of Hungary, which we found out was processed around the city once per year. After dinner, a bunch of us dressed up in costumes and went out to sing Karaoke that night, and the highlight was Backstreet Boys as usual.

Now for what was undoubtedly one of the highlights of my trip, if not my life. Adam and I, along with the two Canadians I had met in Prague, decided we were going to skydive over the Hungarian countryside. We took a taxi one hour out from Budapest to an "airport" in the middle of nowhere near the Danube river. The airport turned out to be a grassy field with an abandoned control tower. Nevertheless, Adam and I crammed into a Cessna which could barely hold 5 people and took off into the air. It was both of us, two tandem instructors, and the pilot (the tiny Canadian girls had already gone before us and survived, so we were reassured). After about 15 minutes of flying upwards, the door of the plane opened, my instructor and I stuck our feet out the door, and we jumped out of the aircraft. Free falling was not how I expected it to be, there wasn't too much of a zero gravity feeling but more a feeling of stronger than hurricane-force wind in your face. After about 30 seconds and 5000 feet of falling, my instructor pulled the parachute and we drifted down to land. It was unreal.

The next day, Adam and I went out and explored the city. Some photo highlights:

If you can't tell, that last one is a Stormtrooper from Star Wars crossing the street with a suitcase.

I am hungry for more of Hungary! I promise the next blog post will not be as long as this one.

Cheers,
Josh