Over the next few days, in no particular order (I guess my notes aren’t detailed enough), I managed to see the church of Notre Dame (which was seriously lacking in Hunchbacks), Montmartre, and some other touristy sites. I also managed to meet up with Jazz and Zaq, a British/French friend who had lived with me in the International House at UCSD, and her boyfriend who is also from San Diego.
I also managed to get aboard the Bateaux Mouches with the entire UCLA study abroad group, with some help from Kim’s very generous professor.
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My morning mitfahr to Paris was a bit sketch. The guy driving spoke German with a strong French accent, which was definitely something I hadn’t heard before, and that led to some trouble getting our meeting point straight. I got lucky that it was like a little service that a few French guys had decided to run, and there was more than one mitfahr from Cologne to Paris that morning from the train station. Despite betting ditched by the first driver, there was a second ride available to get me to Paris.
My arrival in Paris was rainy, for the first time in what seemed like weeks. I had been dropped off in an area the opposite side of Paris from where I needed to be, so I made my way to the metro to begin the now-familiar exercise of learning a new metro system. After my experiences in Frankfurt, the Paris metro was very easy to manage, despite knowing little to no French.
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Leaving Mareike’s house in the morning quickly became an adventure when I realized I had left my coat in her house. I had planned my train journey to have less than 5 minutes to spare. Forgetting my jacket almost certainly meant that I would be late to meet my next mitfahr to Cologne.
I literally ran back to her house, regretably had to wake her up to get my coat, and then ran back to the train station to catch the next train, which was literally pulling into the station as I was going up the stairs of the entrance to the train station. I had to board the train without purchasing a ticket otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to board. Read More →
I took the train into Frankfurt to meet up with my first mitfahrgelegenheit which for all intensive purposes means ride-share. There were two other people sharing the ride as well, and it went by fairly quickly. Everyone was friendly and I got to get in some good practice speaking German since we are basically just sitting in the car together for about 7 hours.
We arrived in Berlin in an area called neukoln, and I made my way to the nearest subway to find out what region of Berlin that even was. Every subway has a massive map, so they are pretty useful for getting your bearings, even if you won’t take the train. I ducked into a little internet cafe to find out where a good hostel was located, snapped a photo of the google maps page on my camera, and set off to find BaxPax Kreuzberg.
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My Ryanair flight from Milano to Frankfurt only cost me about 40 euro (1/4 the cost of the train), and was just a 1-hour jump over the alps. Strangely enough, the bus ride from the airport to the city takes longer than the flight (because I took a budget airline). On the flight I was seated next to a American family that lived in Germany because daddy was a soldier, and on the bus ride from Frankfurt I was sitting with some Canadians.
On the bus ride from the Hahn Airport I made friends with Tim & Alan, two Canadians who were visiting Germany and Scotland on a little vacation. They had once lived in Frankfurt awhile ago, so I talked to them about the city, and learned a bit about what it was like for them to live there. We managed to talk the entire bus ride in, and once we arrived some time after midnight I set off to find a hostel in Frankfurt. Read More →
Lars & Kerstin were kind enough to offer me a ride to the Nice Airport with them in the morning. From there I took a shuttle bus to the main train station in Nice, bought my train ticket to Milan for the evening, and headed out to explore.
My day in Nice was hot, and not particularly interesting. I am glad I was only there for one day, because despite it’s beauty, Nice didn’t have much happening. There was an unreal proportion of retirees that had staked out all the beaches, and I didn’t really find anyone to spend the day with, so I decided to hike around. Read More →
I had my first Swedish lessons in a little town in the French Riviera, and Vin och Ostbricka means Wine & Cheese, which is appropriate vocabulary for my time with Swedish relatives in Le Thoronet. With help from my dad I was able to arrange a meeting with Lars and Kerstin in a train station not far from Marseille. From there we drove back to their little house out in the country, and proceeded fairly quickly to join a Swedish dinner party a few Kilometers away. Read More →
After Pamplona I went back to BCN for a day or two with Mariona’s family before heading out again on a bus to Marseille. I was apparently a few hundred meters away from the Tour de France stage 6 before leaving BCN, but it was rainy and I was resting, so I missed it. My bus was leaving early in the morning, so that night before Mariona took me out clubbing with a couple of her friends: Killian and Adrian. Our ride bailed out on us so we ended up biking to the beach before heading for the clubs, and then in typical BCN stlye we didn’t leave the club until 6am.
I got a little sleep on the bus to Marseille, but once again I should have gotten more (as if I have a choice) before arriving because I had my work cut out for me in Marseille. I didn’t have any hostel or hotel arranged before leaving, and it turns out that every single room in the city was booked. Read More →
Jaume, Mariona and I took the bus from Barcelona to Pamplona on a Tuesday Morning. We got a little sleep on the ride there, but looking back I wish we had gotten more in preparation for what was to come.
We got out at the bus station and were immediately surrounded by hundreds of people dressed entirely in white and red, and as we worked our way outside the station, a little park was packed out with another thousand or so people, half of whom were sleeping, at around 3pm. This was just the start of what was to come. The festival of San Fermin is no joke. Read More →
“Vale!” is the sound of Spanish in Europe which translates roughly to “ok” and can be heard in every conversation in Barcelona, even when they are speaking Catalan. Spain was a good change of pace, and I had some good times with I-House friends Jaume and Mariona in BCN before heading to Pamplona for San Fermines (and the running of the bulls). Read More →
