European Superlatives

So today is the last day, and all along I've been saying to myself that I wanted to do the real yearbook thing to conclude my voyage: Superlatives. So, without any further ado, I give you the highlights (and lowlights) of three months on the European continent.

Favorite Stop: Grindelwald, Switzerland. Nothing can really beat the impressiveness and the natural beauty of the Alps. Incredible views, the simple fact of being in the Swiss Alps, a fun place to stay, good company, the chance to make snowmen and good weather made the experience one that won't be quickly forgotten. Being outdoors, hiking, and all that fun stuff was an incredible departure from the rest of the trip.

Favorite City: Berlin. I'm too much of a history nerd to say that I like any other city than the one that dominated the twentieth century. Staying there for eight nights gave me the chance to really learn about the city, explore it, and delve into it. With it's rebuilt historic sites, remnants of the wall, and futuristic, modern architecture, it was easily my favorite city, the only stop I could see myself living in and the place I most want to go back to.

Most European-feeling City: Rome, Italy. It has all sorts of ruins, statutes, historic sites that make you think of Europe, but on top of that it has the sort of congestion, crazy driving, and surly people that I think of when I think of Europe. Totally takes the cake. Plus, it has a really European food selection.

Best Old Town: Wroclaw, Poland, with its wide-open square with multi-colored buildings clustered together, the old town of Wroclaw felt like it was still . What made it cooler is that it was almost completely destroyed in World War II, and has been rebuilt since. What makes it even cooler is that it was originally a German town (Breslau) and was made into a Polish town following the war.

Favorite person met: Sally Dunbar, who accompanied me to Grindelwald on the Alpine adventure, made the experience way more interesting, and it's nice to make a friend in your travels. A Finnish man (whose name I cannot remember) I met in Zurich on the night of the Italy-France and Netherlands-Romania who made it his duty to see that I had a wonderful night comes in a distant, but notable second.

Best Train System: After more than forty train rides, I can safely examine the rail systems of multiple countries and tell you that Switzerland's SBB, which took an hour between any destination, regardless of how far, was the most efficient. It was also the easiest to navigate, and had trains going where I needed to go when I needed to go. Second place goes to the DB, which was cleaner and more friendly than any other rail system.

Worst Train System: Poland's PKP. We can talk about the PKP in person. The PKP and I did not get along.

Best country for food: Italy. Even though we were only there for three days, I had more food in Italy than I probably had on the rest of the trip. Pizza, pasta, and everything else you'd expect to eat in Italy, only better and in larger portions that you would expect.

Best meal: Toss-up between a traditional Berlin meal of almost entirely meat (chicken, fish, steak, sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes, beer and champagne) in Germany or a real Italian meal (pasta, various meats, Sicilian broccoli, prosciutto, mozzarella, ect.) when we were in Rome.

Best Snack: Belgian Waffles. Annie told me that they would be good. They were incredible. It's sugar in waffle form, covered with sugar in fruit form, covered in sugar in whipped cream form.

Worst country for food: England. While Mrs. Boulicault's cooking was wonderful, the English completely live up to their reputation of having food that isn't too good. On top of that, it's really hard to find anything that's really English in London, so most of the time I settled for eating other food. On top of that, it was all really expensive, which was a bad way to start a trip.

Best Building: On the modern side, the Hauptbanhof in Berlin with its glass and steel, futuristic space-station look is the winner. On the pre-2oth century side, the Roman coliseum did not dissapoint. On the 20th Century side, I found the Palace of Science and Culture, with its overwhelming communist feel to be really cool. On the Best fusion of old and new, the winner is the Reichstag in Berlin with its futuristic dome capping the historic parliament building.

Worst Buildings: The European Union section of Belgium might be one of the most hideous places I've ever been.

Favorite traditional clothing: You can't really beat Lederhosen. It's just silly. Comeon, it has a flap in the front so you can pee. That's silly.

Best City for Running: London, but that's only because where I was staying backs up to Hampstead Heath, and therefore I had a giant park to play in whenever I wanted.

Worst City for Running: Brussels. Simply put, there is no green space in Brussels, and nowhere to go where there aren't a million people.

Most Bizarre Sight: The Water Parade in Brussels. I don't think anything will come close to stumbling upon a several-mile long parade dedicated to water, and every fifteen minutes the whole city jumped.

Favorite Random Fact Learned: The Smurfs come from Belgium, and the Belgians love the Smurfs.

Best Hostel: Krakow. Annie and I had our own room that was as nice as a hotel room, for cheaper than any hostel I had stayed in to that point (hooray for Poland!). Plus, it had a sweet kitchen, a nice common room, good location, and felt safe.

Worst Hostel: The Blue Corridor Hostel in Vienna. On the fourth floor of a building with no elevator, no air conditioning, five people in a four-bed room, no common area, and showers with no doors, inviting everybody to share you bathing experience. For twelve nights I stayed here.

Coolest statute: The Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Object I wish I had with me: More socks. I can't tell you how many times I had to wear stinky, dirty socks, or walk in sandals when it was too cold to wear sandals.

Object I wish I didn't have with me: I brought a hoodie sweatshirt, and I still can't quite figure out why. I wore it once, when I was all wet after hiking in Austria, but other than that it just took up an unusual amount of space in my bag.

Most Memorable Experience: Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and historical site. Going to Auschwitz and Birkenau will probably be something that will stick with me forever.

Best Experience: Croatia v. Turkey. The first game I went to, where I randomly ran into Alex Lim, which went into extra time where both teams scored, and then to penalty kicks to decide the winner, who ended up being Turkey.

Favorite Football-Related Experience (other than games): Witnessing the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers fans in Glasgow and when I encountered them elsewhere. It's a fierce rivalry, it runs along lines that are deeper than fandom, and those involved in in view the world through it. It's fascinating.

Worst Experience: Taking a night train from Innsbruck to Rome without somewhere to sleep, while a North African woman slept in my lap and 200 Italian cowboys partied outside our compartment. I'm still bitter.

Most unimpressive, underwhelming sight: This is a difficult one. Two sights really both excel in this category: the Mannequin Pis, a statue of a little boy peeing that is the national pride of Belgium; and the Glockenspiel in Munich, a contraption that rings bells and reenacts significant moments in 16th century Bavarian history through life-size wooden figures. The golden roof, from Innsbruck, also competes in this category, but it somehow more impressive than the other two.

Most impressive, overwhelming sight: The View from Grosse Schidegg in Grindelwald on the second day of hiking in the alps. For man-made impressiveness, the winner is seeing the city of Berlin at night from the top of the Reichstag building.

And I think that sufficiently wraps up the blogging experience for this summer, and I'm heading home bright and early tomorrow. For those of you who read often, I appreciate it. For those of you who read sparingly, I appreciate it. For those of you who maybe read one or two postings, I appreciate it. It's been a fun trip, and I'm glad I could share it with you.

Kevin

And for those of you who just can't get enough of Kevin Kiley blogging, that other blog I started a while ago to post my project (http://politicalpitches.blogspot.com), is about to be updated like whoa in the next few weeks to compensate for not doing anything to it in the past month.

A Long Way (But not THE long way)

We started the last leg of our trip Monday at 7 a.m. when we got on a bus from Dubrovnik to Zagreb. We were all excited because we had the front seats on the second story of a two-story bus. In case anybody cares, those front seats, in the hot Croatian weather, are basically an oven. Our blisteringly hot excursion back to the Croatian capital took a horribly long 10 hours in which neither Annie nor I slept a wink and were cooked alive. On top of that, there were only two pee breaks, which I guess was fine since we sweated out anything we drank anyways.

Back at Zagreb (again, not doing anything but grabbing a train), we grabbed a real meal (since we hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning) and then jumped on an overnight train heading for Munich, Germany. The last time we took a night train, we had great roommates who were interesting and, most importantly, willing to sleep. This time around we weren't so lucky, as we were joined by two Dutch women who preferred to fold up the beds and sit down instead.

When we got to Munich around 7 in the morning, we had just enough time to grab a few Bratwursts (yay being back in Germany!) and jump on an early train to Frankfurt, which would add another four hours of travel, bringing the total to roughly 24 hours of pure, hardcore travel in slightly more than a day.

We'll Have a Dalmatian Vacation

This was day four on the sands of Croatia, a country that nobody really knows anything about but has become the latest travel destination for Europeans, and apparently backpackers after they tour Europe.

We left Split Monday morning after spending only one night there, and caught a ferry to Hvar, an island off the Croatian coast. The ferry only took an hour, though I have to admit that I slept most of the ride, bringing back fond memories of the ferry rides in Greece.

We arrived on Hvar mid-afternoon, unpacked our stuff, changed into bathing suits and set out for the closest swimming hole.

For somewhere that's billed as an island paradise, Hvar's beaches aren't too nice. Most are just rocky coastline where vendors have decided to capitalize by hawking sun chairs. Laying out on a towel is an interesting experience, and probably not too good for the back. There are really nice beaches, they're located just offshore on a nearby island, and I wasn't really up for spending more money on a taxi boat.

But, determined to take a dip in the Adriatic, we staked out a spot on a nice rock outcropping and jumped in. The nice thing about a rocky coastline is that you can jump in and not have to do that awkward half run, half dive move that's always torture with somewhat cold beaches.

Day two was the epitome of how I was feeling. That would be exhausted. We didn't wake up until around 2:30, mainly due to the fact that since we left Berlin we've been going nonstop, and frankly we were a little tired. Throw on top of that the fact that we haven't slept more than 4 hours for the past few nights, and you can begin to understand how one can sleep more than 12 hours. The rest of the day passed in a blur, and I can't really recall doing anything besides being overwhelmingly tired and wanting to go to sleep. So that's what we did eventually.

On day three, Annie and I went exploring around Hvar in hopes of finding a sandy beach or something that isn't jagged rock. After noticing a spot on a Google map that looked promising, we set off in that direction only to get distracted at another beach, and while it might not have been that pretty, we were soaking with sweat, and decided that a swim might be nice.

After our dip we pressed on in search of that far off beach, eventually realizing that the road had narrowed down into a slightly used path that was only noticeable because of the discoloration of the stone, which we supposed meant that it was well-traveled. I think it was actually discolored to warn against taking it, as it was possibly the most perilous path I've ever been on, occasionally coming very close to falling off into the ocean. As we made our way around, we came to another beach, where we took another dip. After pressing on from that beach for a while, we realized that where we stopped was actually the nice beach that we were looking for, but by this time it was getting late and I was starting to feel like I was getting sunburned.

By the time we made it back I was sufficiently sunburned, and we headed inside to drink lots of water and relax in air conditioning. As the sun started going down we wandered around town and found a good spot to sit and watch the sun go down.

Being sunburned, I didn't really feel too up to laying around in the sun, so we spent most of the next day inside watching movies on the computer. As the sun started to go down, we again braved the heat to hike up to the Hvar fortress, situated high above the city. Coming down, we again made for the beach to watch the sun set. I have really good pictures, but none of them are on the computer yet, so I can't post them.

The next morning, bright and early, we headed back to Split in order to catch a bus to take us down to Dubrovnik, which, while it's really the tourist-capital of Croatia, doesn't have a ferry or railroad or any kind of easy transport running to it. In addition to the languages being similar, I'm beginning to notice more and more similarities between Croatia and Poland. It must have something to do with being stuck behind the Iron Curtain for so long.

The Long Way

The reason we ventured so far down the Italian peninsula was the hope that we would catch a ferry to Split, Croatia, which was our destination. While in Rome, we decided to figure out exactly where and when and how much this ferry would be. Turns out, a Ferry across the Adriatic is close to 50 Euro, so we axed that plan. On top of that, we weren’t sure if we could get to Ancona – the port of call – before the ferry left. Plus, we still had to figure out where to buy tickets. It was going to be a long day, that’s for sure.

So we woke up ridiculously early Saturday morning (5 a.m.), and caught the first train from Rome to Ancona. While on the train, we had a brainstorm. If we most likely weren’t going to make it to Split until Sunday anyway (since the next ferry ride was late and long) why waste a lot of money on the travel. Why not, instead, just take a train north through Italy, over the top of the Adriatic sea through Slovenia and down into Zagreb, and then take a train from Zagreb to Split. We both had rail passes, so it would essentially be free. We’d get there a little later, but ultimately end up saving money.

We found that an overnight train left Venice around 9 p.m., and standing in the Ancona train station, we saw a train getting ready to leave for Venice. Perfect. After popping into the ticket office to see if we needed a reservation (we didn’t), we jumped on a very full train to Venice. After getting kicked out of our seats because someone else had a reservation, we took a seat in the hallway and played numerous games of twenty questions to kill the time.

Despite two fairly long train rides, we arrived in Venice by 2 p.m. Cool, now we have seven hours to kill in Venice, which seemed like a pretty cool plan.

Venice is a really neat city – for a day trip. We wandered the city and made it to the famous square where we fed pigeons and took pictures. It’s really beautiful and the canals make it really cool I think the best way to see the city is to take a boat, but since a Gondola ride costs about $80, and I’m not quite ready to spend that much for sightseeing.

After the day in Venice, we hopped on an overnight train to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Unlike the last overnight train, we booked sleeping space, which was a much better plan. While our room was unbearably hot, I managed a good night’s sleep until we reached Croatia at 4 a.m.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much sleep in the past few days, but it’s alright, since we’re on our way to Croatia, where we’ll be doing nothing on the beach for a few days. Then, of course, we’re making another mad-dash back to Frankfurt, Germany, where we’ll finally make our way home.

It’s hard to believe that we’re in the last country we’ll be visiting, and that I’m on my fortieth train ride, and I'm glad that the rail pass is finally paying off. It's easier to believe that I haven't really slept in two days, nor have I showered, and both Italy and Croatia are very hot, so I've been quite sweaty and stinky.

When In Rome

Day 1: Ancient Rome

Arriving in Rome on less than two hours of sleep seemed like a difficult concept, especially considering we didn’t know where our hostel was and the fact that it was 9:30 in the morning and already 80 degrees.

With luck and my guide book, which pointed us to a nearby internet cafe, we were lucky enough to find the hostel, which was surprisingly close to the train station. We check in, put our stuff down, and, exhaustedly realized that it was still only 10 in the morning, and we had a full day ahead of us.

Our initial plan was to take a nap in a park, but Roman parks aren’t that nice or comfortable, so we figured that we’d tough out the day. Finding parks not easy to come by or sleep in, we thought we would seek out what we really wanted: food. That's not hard to find in Rome, and after lunch of Lasagna and Pizza, right outside of the Colosseum, we thought it best to do some sightseeing.

After charging my camera battery, we made our way to the ultimate European tourist destination – the Roman Coliseum. Most people say you’re disappointed by the Coliseum, but I don’t think I was. In my mind, the Coliseum fulfilled my expectations. It’s awesome to think that an ancient civilization could build something large enough to hold a crowd about the same size of Kenan Stadium. Good thing I charged my camera battery because I took a ton of pictures. I just feel like pictures of the Coliseum are the kind of thing I’m going to want to have when I get back home.

We took a guided tour of the coliseum and then headed into the Palatine Hill and the Forum, where someone who is clearly an awkward art history graduate student showed us around and told us things he, too, learned from his history textbooks. But seeing the forum was really neat, and exactly what I expected to see when I thought of it.

After finishing the ruins of ancient Rome, we made our way north to check out the Trevi fountain, which might just top my list of favorite fountains (even above the Mannequin Pis in Brussels. I know, shocking). I would hate to describe it and do it an injustice, so just Google Image search, look at my picture of it, or go to Rome and see it four yourself.

For dinner we had an incredible meal. Annie really loves Italian food, and I figured my mom and my dad and my grandpa would come down on me pretty hard if I went all the way to Italy and didn't have an incredible Italian meal. So we had one. Three courses from this amazing restaurant down this funny little side street in the heart of Rome. It might have been the highlight of the trip. Plus, the next day, we found 50 Euro in the train station, which I deemed to be Karma repaying me for giving a guy back $400 that he dropped while I was walking around Zurich.

Day 2: Catholic Rome

I guess it's not technically considered to be in Rome to go to the Vatican, seeing as it's its own country, but I'm going to consider it Roman anyways. Anyways, I like to think of it as the third reason for going to Rome outside the nifty ancient history and the incredible food.

Yeah, so this morning we headed across the Tiber River to check out where the heart (the old, Papal heart) of Catholicism resides.


When we arrived in St. Peter's Square, I was shocked at how many people there were there. Well, actually, I was more shocked by how many people were waiting in line to enter St. Peter's Basilica, a line which we soon joined. The Basilica is massive. And every inch of it is elaborately decorated and worth more than I will ever make in my lifetime. I'm not really a church person, but I enjoyed the Basilica.

After the Basilica, we headed into the Vatican museums, which culminate in the Sistine Chapel, where you're unfortunately not allowed to take any pictures. I wasn't overwhelmed by the Sistine Chapel. It's cool, but it's just as cool as all the pictures. It doesn't rank up there with the Mannequin Pis or the Glockenspiel as the most underwhelming sights of the trip, but it doesn't get up there with the view from Eiger or the Berlin Wall or the Trevi Fountain as the most impressive either. If I made a scale, the Sistine Chapel might fall right in the middle.

The rest of the museums were cool. At some point in history, some Pope ordered that leaves be put over all the nude statues' private parts, which made for funny, out of place leaves. While I know nothing about art and will not claim to, I will say that my preference for sculpturedefinitely involves soldiers fighting stuff or scenes from ancient mythology (which usually involves people fighting stuff), rather than just people standing around.

We moved from the Vatican to the Pantheon, another religious site, and then to the Piazza Navona, another square with a fountain I wanted to see. Now, the only real reason why I wanted to see this piazza was because someone is killed there in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (really the only part of that whole book I can remember, which is sad since I'm in Rome and would probably enjoy remembering things from it). Unfortunately, the fountain is undergoing major renovation and was not available for viewing.

We saw the Spanish steps tonight. Tomorrow we're trying to make our way to Croatia (yay) where we'll be lounging on the beach for a while, since, you know, after all this Euro-travelling, we really need a vacation. Please don't hate me.

A Midnight Train Going Anywhere

Introduction: Remember that post I did a while ago about when I missed the entire football game due to the weather, and I was really bitter. This post should be read with that same irritated tone.

The next stop on what I had deemed the “mind the gap” adventure – filling the space between scheduled stops – was to make our way south so it would be easier to reach our final destination of Croatia.

We looked at where trains from Innsbruck were heading, and decided that the most appealing southward direction was Italy, and if we only had two days to spend in Italy, we might as well make it to Rome.

We thought that since we had rail passes, and we didn’t want to waste any time going extremely long distances, why not take a night train? That way, we could save money on accommodation and it would be nifty to fall asleep in Vienna and wake up in Rome.

I can’t sleep on planes. I can’t sleep in cars. I can’t sleep on buses or in vans, and I’m fairly certain that I can’t sleep in any kind of contraption in which I am sitting upright. Why I thought I would be able to sleep on a train is beyond my comprehension, but I believed it, and so we booked seats on the 11 p.m. train from Innsbruck to Rome. While that was pretty much the only mistake, it was a big one.

We boarded the train at around 11:00 p.m., so we were already tired. Our compartment already had two guys going in and out of sleep taking up the window seats, so Annie and I took the seats by the compartment door. Also probably a mistake. Since we had hiked for seven hours that day, I figured that I be so pooped that I would have no problem falling asleep. Wrong. I find it impossible to get comfortable enough to fall asleep in any kind of sitting up position. And when the train conductor is coming in every 10 minutes and checking your ticket (doesn't do that on any other train, only the one where I'm trying to sleep), it becomes hard to enter a real slumber.

I'm not quite sure where it was that we stopped, but about a billion people got on our train, so our compartment door was opening and closing every 10 minutes with someone looking for a seat.

Then into our compartment barge two French women who proceeded to take the two middle seats in the compartment and proceeded to seep into every other seat in the compartment as well. After about 10 minutes I was sufficiently cuddling with one of them and quite unhappy. That’s also when the Italian cowboy disco picked up in the hall outside.

So with everybody drinking, smoking, and carrying on outside our compartment, a French woman's head in my lap, and 1 cubic foot to sleep in, I finally gave up and proceeded to glare at Annie for several hours, who was nodding off peacefully. I was not a happy man.

The French women were supposed to get off in Verona, but instead missed their stop and had to get off in Bologna, where, lucky me, another man in our compartment got off as well, meaning that, at around 6 a.m., I finally had enough room to sleep. That is, of course, until people started boarding around 8 a.m. for their morning commute.

Obviously, night trains aren't my thing.

The Hills Are Alive

Seeing as how Annie and my plans had rearranged drastically since we left for the summer, we had a gap of about five days to fill and no real idea of what to do with them. So welcome to a few days on improvisation. Where would we go first?

Since I had been regaling everyone I knew with stories of my Grindelwald hiking adventure earlier this trip, and Annie receiving the brunt of it, and seeing as how our hiking plans for Zakopane in Poland didn’t quite work out, due to unfavorable weather and the both of us just being exhausted from the first halves of our trips, we thought we should try our hand again at hiking.

Unfortunately, when you try to book hostels a night or two before you’re supposed to be somewhere, they tend to be full, especially during tourist season in Europe. My first few ideal destinations didn’t pan out. So, luck and numerous full hostels brought me back to Austria, where Annie and I made for the mountain town of Innsbruck, home to the world’s coolest ski jump tower and a golden roof that it pushes like a cocaine dealer, proud host of two winter Olympics, and this summer a host city for – you guessed it – Euro 2008. Wonderful coincidence.

Innsbruck is a nifty mountain city, which is bigger than a mountain town. When you look at it from high up on hills, you can see that it is much larger than say, Grindelwald. It makes it so that, even though you've been hiking for hours, you don't really feel like you've gone anywhere. Kind of frustrating.

Seeing as how one does not get many chances to go hiking in the Austrian Alps, we decided that whatever the weather might be, we would tough it out and do some hiking.

That turned out to be an interesting decision. The weather in Innsbruck is fickle. It rains. It’s sunny. There’s wind. There’s no wind. Some parts have snow. Some parts are dry. And this is all at the same time. Within 15 minutes one can experience almost every type of weather on the planet in this humble mountain city. Dressing appropriately was difficult, and I often found myself putting on and taking off layers.

So when we started our first day of hiking, it was gorgeous. Then it was rainy. Then it was gorgeous again. We hiked up for about three hours, and then we hiked down for about two hours. That is, until we got to Geologensteig.

Coming down the mountain, we thought it would be a good idea to take this shortcut we had noticed on the way up. We disembarked from the main trail and headed town a tiny, windy side path. It got tinier and windier, until it eventually disappeared. Me, being the genius that I am thought I would follow where I thought it would go, and that's when we went over a minor cliff to find a small, windy trail. So we followed that. And things went worse from there. We ended up sliding down half of the mountain, holding on to trees for dear life to prevent us from certain death. And then we ended up in someone's back yard, about 50 meters away from where we should have been. It was an adventure.

Day two saw nasty, rainy morning, and in hopes that the sky would burn off in a few hours, we made our way across the city to catch a glimpse of the Bersigel ski jump tower. I don’t know how many people know this about me, but I am fascinated by the sport of ski jumping. I find it to be ridiculously awesome, in the sense of both awe-inspiring and absolutely ridiculous. To me, it encapsulates everything the winter Olympic Games should be: obscure sports that involve a certain element of mortal peril. People hurling themselves down an ice sheet of metal and flinging themselves several football fields through the air to what could be a devastating crash certainly fits the bill.

Unfortunately, the ski tower costs 8 Euro to enter, and when we learned that, we also learned that we would be content admiring it from afar, though not before taking a few pictures right outside of the gate. Plus, they wouldn’t actually let us ski jump (and, honestly, I wouldn’t let me ski jump either), so that took most of the allure out of it.

With my dreams of Olympic ski jump gold thoroughly defeated by extortionate prices, we made our way back to the same path we started up the day before, not going quite so far, since we were pretty tired from the day before (I haven't been doing quite as much exercise as my body would have wanted this trip).

On day three, we woke up and got ready for our major hike. Too bad for us, the weather wasn't going to let us have a good time, but we thought we would tough it out through the rain and the fog in hopes that it would burn off by the time we got to the top, just like it had other days. After getting lost and following what ended up being the same path as day one (not the shortcut, but the way up), we ended up getting pretty high. As the following picture clearly indicates, the weather did not burn off.

I can’t say that I liked Innsbruck as much as Grindelwald, but it was nice to get out into the fresh air and out of the city again. Grindelwald had that mountain town allure, while Innsbruck seemed like a big city stuck in the middle of the mountains, too big for its location, kind of like when tall men drive Volkswagon beetles.