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.

''Hung Over in Heidi''

Brussels was normal compared to this place. This place would be Munich, by the way. To the Germans it's Munchen. To the Germans Germany is Deutchland. I don't know why we change the names of all German things.

The title comes from Annie, who is correct in saying that I haven't even seen Heidi, which is apparently a movie in which people are wearing traditional German clothing. I don't get it, but it sounded funny, and adequately described the day, which has been by far one of the weirdest of my life.

Okay, so last night, we met these guy from Swizerland who kept buying us drinks, so when I woke up this morning I wasn't in top form. On top of that, more than two months of travel and living out of a backpack takes its toll on the mind, so we were a little loopy. Which makes all of what happened today much funnier.

So, after we took a tour yesterday, we realized that there really isn't a whole lot to do in Munich, so we went for a stroll around town.It has some cool old-timey architecture, which was rebuilt after most of the city was destroyed in the war. That's pretty much it, except for the city's second-biggest tourist destination (next to the massive beer halls, of course): the worldßfamous Glockensphiel. We made our way to the town center just in time to catch the Glockensphiel (sp), which has been deemed one of the most underwhelming sights in Europe. It's this stupid thing that goes off a couple times a day that has these wooden figures that don't really do much other than move in circles. Why we went back to see it a second time is anyones guess, but it now seems an appropriate way to start the day.

As we turned the corner to head down our next street, we began to notice that an odd number of people were dressed in their German milk-maid dresses and the males in Lederhosen, which are kind of like overalls, but stupider, and not made of denim. I thought these things were just gag gifts, but people actually wear them around town, and look like they're in the eighteenth century.

Then we had to clear the street because a procession of mounted knights (yes, like, shining armor knights), was making its way down the street led by pipers in brightly colored tights. Where this ''Glockensphiel procession'' was heading is anybody's guess, but they turned through a huge crowd who gathered to watch, and we couldn't follow.

Wanting a coke, we made our way to this huge market, where we were met by the melodious cracking of whips. A group of lederhosen-clad men with whips were following along with a piper and making music outside of a local cafe. I swear people, I'm not making this stuff up.

As we wandered deeper into the market, things became more German, and stranger. Polka bands were playing oompa music for street dancers who looked like they existed in the seventeenth century, and everybody was eating wurst and drinking beer.

And then we saw a guy on stilts. He took a picture with Annie. That was pretty much the culmination of the day weirdness. He wasn't even doing anything for money, he was just walking around on stilts. He was really happy, too.

As we made our way out of the city's center, we were passed again by the Glockensphiel procession, as if to mark our entry and exit from this bizzare German fantasy-land.

I have absolutely no idea why any of this was going on, and nowhere we've looked has provided any answers. I'd like to think that Munich is always like this, if not all week, then maybe just Sundays.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner (Ein Apfelberliner)

A Berliner is someone from Berlin. It is also a jelly doughnut. An Apfelberliner is delicious. United States President John F. Kennedy came to West Berlin in 1963 and proclaimed that he was a Berliner. I hope he was a Apfelberliner.

So all that mumb-jumbo about not liking cities was wrong. I just like certain cities, and Berlin is one of them. Over the course of a week I fell madly in love with the city, much to the dismay of Annie, though she said she would be willing to join me in my pursuits of the city.

Something I read called Berlin a city which ''Disproportionately shaped the history of the world,'' which is something I would have to agree with, and something that makes it so cool. It was ground zero for seventy years of twentieth century tension, has been more than destroyed and rebuilt, and is everything that Germany is bottled up into a walkable city.

We were in Berlin for eight nights, and I'm sure that wasn't enough. We did a whole lot, and I'm going to recount some of my favorite adventures.

Berlin Day One
So there's this wonderful program in some European cities where they give free walking tours, and the guides work on a tip basis (which is totally a future job pursuit, by the way), so we spent day one getting a crash-course in Berlin. It was a great mix of Third Reich and Cold War history, Prussian stories, displays of modern architecture, basically everything that makes Berlin so cool, which ended with our guide (who was really awesome) recounting how the wall fell. By the end of the day I was already in love with the city.

Red Berlin
Being the history nerd I am, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a tour about the historical cold war sites in Berlin, including the wall, government buildings, secret underground tunnels and bunkers, random streets where meetings and uprisings occured, and all sorts of other, really nifty things. Annie and the Polish women sat out this one and I had to go it alone, which was fine by me, as I kind of wanted a chance to explore the city and get to know her myself.

My tour guide had just graduated from Indinana University, having studied ''Radiacal political change,'' which I dont think is a major offered at UNC, though I could be wrong. He was well-versed in spy stories, anecdotes about torture, struggling workers, and daily life in the country with the most domestic spying of any country ever.

At the end of the tour I ran off to a bookshop and picked up a book about the country's history since 1920.

Reichstag
That night, we waited in a ridiculously long line to get to the top of the Reichstag, the German parliament building. While I wanted to go up, I didn't think it would be anything too spectacular. I was wrong. Going up to the roof of the building, with its futuristic, space-station-looking dome, was one of the highlights of my trip. The dome was designed so that German politicians, if ever in doubt, could look up from the chambers and see what their jobs were about, namely, the people. Being on the roof of the old building, which contrasted greatly, yet somehow worked with the dome, afforded incredible views of the city at night. As we were in the last group to go to the top, the crowed thinned out and we got to spend some time relatively alone with the city. In the dome is the history of the Reichstag, which eerily mirrors the history of the German people. One ironic note of history: while the fire in the Reichstag was a dramatic incident that helped Hitler and the Nazi party seize power, it never housed his regime.

Confronting History
Steps from the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of everything Berlin, lies the Memorial to the Dead Jews of Europe, a massive expansive of more than 2,000 idential cement blocks that create an organized jungle that, at its highest point, stretches taller than two of me.

If I could have done this international project again, I would love to come look at the different ways the Holocaust is remembered in Europe. Being in the Berlin memorial was as emotional experince in a different way from being at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I think its such a hard thing for a country to confront, but I honestly believe that Germany is doing it in extraordinary fashion, and Germans I have spoken to will be the first to recognize and confront the tragedies of the past. To them, its not something to bury, its something to learn from and prevent from ever happening again.

I don't hate the Germans. That was a rant by a disaffected Holland fan who had a bad day. I find Germany, and the Germans, fascinating, and if if Annie wasn't spurring me on, I might have just stayed, adopted a white jersey with the red, yellow, and black eagle, called up my brother to learn a few German phrases, and continued to delve into the city.

So, needless to say, I like Berlin. I was sad leaving it. But don't worry, I'm formulating schemes for getting back to the city, like, for instance, graduate studies. When I start referring to my ''Fullbright plan'' when I get home, this is what I'm talking to. On top of all that, it's one of the cheapest cities to live in, and people talked of apparements that went for €150 a month.

On that note, since I've been here in Europe, working on my project, I've had my eyes opened to all sorts of other things I want to study, not least of which is the perpetual idea of majoring in History, which I'm pretty sure would send my parents into a conniption after my brother pursued the same discipline. I have all these things I want to look into that I just don't have the time to, or the funds. I wish I had the opportunity I've had this summer every summer, which makes me think I should be an academic.

Europe's Dejected Child (Poland)

Sorry about the complete lack of updating this blog. There has been a long time where I've either been having too much fun gallivanting to update the blog, or, more often, I was staying in cheap, crappy hostels that don't have internet. I feel by now I've lost any kind of readership I had before this hiatus, but now I feel ready to get back into it. And so I will

So the first part of this post-project exursion was Poland, and I think I've captured all of Krakow and Wroclaw's glory in the previous post, so now let me get to what I really think of Poland.

It was a beautiful country. Its got wide open spaces, and nifty old-timey cities. I can see why it's neighbors have prided in devouring it over the past several centuries. But more easily, I can clearly see why it was so easily devoured.

Poland was difficult. If you were standing on the border between Poland and Germany, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But then, if you tried to actually do something in either country, the difference becomes apparent. Germany = easy. Poland = headache. Things don't move smoothly in Poland. For example, the information person in Krakow, Poland's biggest tourist destination, does not speak a word of English. Trains even move slower in Poland, and we even saw one roll into the Krakow pulled along by its coal powered enginew from the 1920s. While Annie had no problem buying a rail pass once we got into Germany, Poland (which doesn't count on my rail pass, I just thought I would reiterate that) didn't even know what we were talking about. I would classify it as a country that has some room for improvement. Read Annie's blog, she's probably got it more spelled out.

But despite all of that, I enjoyed being in Poland. After leaving Wroclaw, Annie and I went to the Polish capital, Warsaw, which is really nothing like the rest of the untry. When we arrived in the city, I remember saying that, to get to our hostel, we had to go right out of the train station. Unfortunately, and in typical Polish fashion, having a front door to the train station would be too easy. Emerging on the other side of the street from the train station (and not realizing it) we went right and started walking. Bear in mind that we got into Warsaw at like, 9:45 p.m, and we're carrying about 1000 pounds of stuff on our backs. So we're walking for a little while, and true to our little hand-drawn map, we pass a roundabout, and keep going. And then civilization ends, street lights diappear, and the sidewalk becomes more or less a dirt trail. After about 45 minutes walking down this path, we began to suspect we weren't going the right direction. Eventually, we came across a bus station, where we hired a cab and tld him where we were heading. He ushed us into the back f his cab, and we took off, for like, 20 minutes. He dropped us off at our hostel, where we checked in with a nice young gentleman with a fantastic mullet, climed several flights to our room, took off our sweat-stained clothes and plopped in bed.

When we awoke the next morning and found a map, we sought out where our journey had taken us. We couldn't find it, and then realized that we had walked off the map. That's never a good thing.

Warsaw was interesting. We spent a whole day just wandering around and looking at stuff. They have really great androgenous mermaid statues (one of which made farting noises and ripples in the fountain it was in), an amazing communist building, sweet bear pits (like Bern!), and a fake palm tree. Oh, and some of the coolest memorials and statues, and an awesome Supreme Court building.

I love Poland. That might be an exaggeration. But I'm willing to come back for Euro 2012. I just hope the trains move faster then.

What I Learned About Myself

So, after slightly less than two months traveling Europe myself, my solo journey came to an end when I met Annie in Krakow, Poland, on the first.

But what did Kevin learn about himself through so much alone time on the European continent?

I really like hamburgers. I'm comforted by the fact that no matter where I go, there is most likely a place to get a good cheeseburger. Pizza too, is a good standby.

More important than hamburgers and pizza, though, is the fact that I really like ice cream. Like, to a bizarre extent, most people would probably say. Some day's I'll have multiple ice cream cones. The guy who ran the ice cream counter near my hostel in Vienna got annoyed with me because I came so often and couldn't order in German. Or I'll get one at the grocery store as I'm wandering around and pick up an ice cream bar. It's just that ice cream - and especially fruit ice cream - is so much better here than in the states. And when it's hot out, nothing is better than a good cone.

While we're on the food thing, I would like to be one of those people who tries a whole bunch of different foods, but I'm just not. I really like food, but I like food that I already like. I had my fair share of Wursts and Schnitzels and Kielbasas and meatloaf sandwiches, which they sell in the Germanic countries, and I had Belgian waffles and fries, but I eat all those things normally (in their Americanized form). But going out of my way to try something new just isn't going to happen with me, especially if I'm fairly confident that I won't like it, because then I feel like I've wasted money and time, and I'm still hungry. I'd rather eat something I know I'll enjoy and be full and happy.

I'm not very good at taking pictures of myself. Each try there's a series of about three or four pictures of me trying to get myself with a good face in the same picture as the background, and most often it doesn't come out.

I'm horrible with languages. Really bad. I was in German-speaking countries for like, a month, and I haven't picked up any German except "Ich spreche deutch nicht" (I don't speak German) and "Hallo!" and I can pronounce a few football-related terms since I've heard so many on television. I'm not even trying with Polish. While I complained incessantly about it while in school, maybe I like the classroom type of learning languages better than the "here, struggle with this" kind, seeing as I felt moderately comfortable talking to people in Spanish, and not in anything else.

Swiss chocolate is better than Belgian chocolate. Period.

Parks are awesome. I think the first thing I did when I got to a city was scour a map for green space, or if there was no map, then I would just go wander to find something like a park. I would then return there multiple times throughout the day to run, to read, or when I had nothing to do I would just lie around and people watch.

While I like being able to have "Kevin time," traveling alone got old after a while. Mostly because I had nobody to talk to when I had witty things to say (which, lets be honest, happens quite often), but traveling with someone tends to relax me, especially when things start to go wrong.

I miss reading when I'm in the real world. Here I have ample opportunities to read, especially train rides and days when there was no football, and I've gone through like, 6 books since I've started this trip, and some of them were quite big. Throw on top of that a magazine or two a week (basically anything I can find in English), and I've been doing a lot of reading, and I love it. Plus, it's books that I actually want to read, and that I don't have to do anything with when I'm done, which makes things better. the only downside is that I have a hard time parting with them, so my pack keeps getting heavier.

I'm a big football (soccer, whatever) fan now. Hopefully it will stay with me.

Finally, the ultimate revelation: I'm not a city boy. My favorite stops on this trip have been Grindelwald (barely a town) and Bern (the smallest city ever, and not very city-like, more old-timey). Given the opportunity, I'd much rather head to the mountains or the beach (which hasn't come yet, but I'm sure it will) instead of a city. The noise, pollution, hustle and bustle, the "I need to be here now" atmosphere really isn't my thing. I like the old-timey cities with cobblestone streets and markets and street vendors and short buildings and that jazz, but not the metallic, tower-over you, subway and tram, skyscraper cities.

Alright, that's all for now, more to come later.

Now You Can Call It Gallivanting

I know it has been quite a long time (in blogging terms) since my last post. So I'll try to catch the world up on the past week.

I spent my last day in Vienna doing laundry and packing up all of the clothing, books, hygiene materials, etc. that tend to leap from a backpack to the floor over the course of 12 days in the same city. Te sad thing is that, while it looks like I have a lot of stuff when it's spread all over the floor of my tiny hostel room, it can probably fit into one washer if I really wanted it to, and that's sad. I have managed to pick up more clothing as I've gone along, and I'm always thankful I unloaded that bundle at the Boulicault's in England.

So what does Kevin do now that football is over? He spends the rest of his summer wandering Europe with Annie, of course. I was originally planning to spend two weeks in Germany working with a sports research institute there, and then go travel, but my only contact there was going on vacation, and said I probably shouldn't come. Fine by me. On top of that, I was getting quite tired of traveling alone, and like any whiny, needy boyfriend I was missing my girlfriend. Plus, who doesn't want two extra weeks of traveling in Europe instead of working?

So now is the part of the trip that is officially not "research" and that all of you can refer to as gallivanting or traipsing or being a tourist or whatever implies that I'm just on vacation, because I now officially am.

Let's see how it's going:

On Tuesday I caught a train from Vienna to Krakow (well, actually two trains, but that's not really important). And when I got off in Krakow, there was Annie. Yay! We spent two days in Krakow, which is a very old-timey Polish city, and basically the only place in Poland not to get destroyed in World War II. We saw the old market square (each city in Poland has one, and they all kind of look similar), which was nice. There was a giant statue of a head in the main square, which was great for taking funny pictures:


We also wandered around the Wawel (pronounced Va-vel, though I still like to say Wa-wel, because that's more fun), which is the castle that kind of overlooks the city. Not as cool as the Edinburgh castle, I have to admit, but still pretty cool.

Coolest thing about Krackow: when we were wandering around the Wawel, we saw this cool iron statue of a dragons, and decided to take a picture of it. While I was taking the picture, the statute started breathing fire. Yeah, breathing fire. It was awesome. The legend of the city's founding has something to do with someone slaying a dragon, but I'm not really sure how it goes.

On the second full day in Krakow, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp from World War II. While I wouldn't say that I was "excited" about going, it has always been somewhere I wanted to visit. The Auschwitz camp itself is very much like a museum, which is what I imagined it would be like. It was a lot smaller than I expected, and being there on such a nice day made it hard to imagine that such a terrible atrocity could happen there.

From Auschwitz, you can take a tram to Birkenau, which was the "extermination site," where more than 2 million Jews, Poles, and other groups were murdered in gas chambers. Birkenau has a completely different feel from Auschwitz. The first thing is how massive it is. It stretches forever in every direction, and it's nothing but cabins, which one can imagine being packed with prisoners. There are no trees like there were at Auschwitz, and it's completely flat, so you can see everything. It's so simple when you look at it, with everything made of wood except the main entrance, the railroad track, and the barbed-wire fence. All the information points to 75% of arrivals at Birkenau being murdered as soon as they arrived, and seeing how massive the camp was, gives an incredible feel for how many people passed through the camp. At the back of the camp are the sites of the gas chambers, which were destroyed by the Nazis with dynamite when they fled the camp. The ruins have been preserved, and there is a memorial to the holocaust victims.

I don't really know what to say about visiting the camp. It was a sobering experience, and its so weird to actually see what I've heard so much about. It doesn't make the tragedy any more real to me though. I know it happened, and I've seen how and where it was done, but it's still so impossible to comprehend something like that.

From Krakow we took a bus (a bus? really? I didn't think people took long-distance busses since the 70s, but they do in Poland, which I think says a lot about the country) to Zakopane, a mountain town which is the heart of winter life in Poland.

Side rant: While all signs would make you think that Poland would count on my rail pass, like the fact that its cities are included in the pass' time table book, or that it's routes are clearly indicated on the map, or the fact that the travel agent said that "the Czech Repulic is the only country on this map that isn't included" (and Poland was on that map), it does not, in fact, count on my rail pass.

Zakopane is pretty. It's exactly like all the ski villages, and I can imagine it being really cute during winter, with all sorts of people in ski clothing and carrying skis and poles (poles-Poles, get it! I love Poland puns). As it was summer, it wasn't too busy. They sell cheese in Zakopane. A lot of cheese, and while it's pretty good, I can't begin to comprehend how a cheese shops selling the same exact kind of cheese can exist every five feet.

Our reason for going to Zakopane was to get in some hiking (because let's face it, neither Annie nor I are really city folk), but the weather had other plans. While it was gorgeous in Krakow, Annie managed to jinx the weather into being rainy while we were in Zakopane. Instead of hiking, we wandered around the city, hung around in our hostel and watched movies. We eventually braved the weather and found a trail that got inreasingly smaller and more dangerous until we weren't quite sure that we should be hiking. On top of that everything was wet from the rain (including us), so that was fun. The plus side of the whole adventure was at the top there was a cool rock formation which made for a great picture-taking spot.

Then we almost died like, 14 times each on the way down, and it was impossible not to laugh the whole way.

From Zakopane, we caught a bus back Krakow and then a train to Wroclaw (which is pronounced Vrotes-slav, because the Poles are crazy, but I still call it Row-claw), which is a college city with another cool square and random things to see, including a massive painting that I haven't seen yet. But really, the reason we came here is because when Annie was here last summer, she said it had the best strawberry ice cream in the world, and Kevin has a soft spot for strawberry ice cream. What she didn't tell me, however, was that she didn't really remember where it was. So we spent last night wandering around the city in search of some ice cream stand that might spark her memory. We think we found it, but Annie's still not sure. It was definitely good ice cream, but without the assurance that it is, in fact, the world's best that Annie remember, I'm not sure I'm going to believe.

My itinerary has changed for those who are interested. From Wroclaw, we're going to Warsaw for a few nights, and then we're heading to Berlin for like, a week. From Berlin we're going to Munich (though there might be a random stop somewhere else first). After Munich, we're not quite sure where we're heading, though we think it will be some combination of Austrian Alps (yay, more mountains) and then to the north/east of Italy, where we can catch a ferry to Croatia by the 26th. We'll be in Croatia for a little while, and then heading to Frankfurt, Germany, where we both fly out of on August 7th.