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

Prague/Praha/Australia

Seriously, I'm starting to think I'm in Australia. If all of the Australians are here in Europe, then who is in actual Australia? The only place in Europe I think they don't go is Scandinavia because its too cold for them.

Anyways, just an update on my adventures...

Tuesday night in Berlin I went to this area called the warehouse district with some friends I met (a German girl and an American girl from my hostel and a Aussie/English couple). It was really interesting to see so many bars with different characters in such a small area. The walls of all the buildings were lined with graffiti like something you would see in a movie. One of the bars had a foosball table and I played with the local Berliners, winning as usual ;) At the end of the night we went to an awesome underground techno club (an integral part of the Berlin experience, the city is known for its techno music) and danced the night away.

On Wednesday I explored more of the city and then hopped on a train bound for Praha. I was exhausted by the time I got there so I watched "Green Street Hooligans" and then chilled out and went to bed. If you don't know, hooligans are members of rather violent groups called firms associated with football (soccer) teams in Europe. After the games they normally have bloody fights with memebers of other firms which are sometimes broken up by the police. Rather silly if you ask me, but its a big thing here in Europe. 

Thursday I explored the city center of Prague and then went to a hockey game with some Canadians from the hostel. It was the New York Rangers versus the local team, the Spartans. Although I was secretly rooting for the Rangers, I had to keep pretty quiet to avoid getting mobbed. The guys from the hostel told me that when Prague lost in football the week before there were explosions and very angry fans. Anticipating the worst, we left the game early, seeing as the Rangers were winning 2 to 0 and I was American.

Friday I started the day by going to the Prague Castle. I was walking around the castle and ended up opening a door that led into a passageway. At the other end of the passageway was also another door which was also open. It led straight into the main cathedral, which was magnificent. The cathedral housed the tombs of many Christian martyrs from as early as the 11th century, but the present cathedral wasn't completed until sometime in the early 1900s. I read somewhere that the Prague Castle is the largest castle in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records. On my way out, I realized that there was another entrance where they were charging people to come into the cathedral, and then it struck me that I had just snuck into the largest castle in the world through a dark passage without paying :) Anyways, here are some photos of the cathedral:

Friday evening I wandered around and talked to some of the students working at the tourist attractions. They were dressed in these silly "traditional Czech" costumes which were obviously pretty low budget. One of them almost beheaded me with her sword:

I took some photos of the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle which came out pretty well too.

Next post: my adventures at Oktoberfest and in Bavaria