My dad picked me up after my relatively painless flight. We drove straight away back up to Sonoma County, and crashed for the night at his friend Eddie’s place. We got breakfast at my favorite breakfast place in town: Tubbies, and then I set off to my Mom’s work where I had planned to surprise her at lunch, since she still thought I was on the East Coast. I got the receptionists to phone in a special delivery, and she came up to the front to pick me up. I got her good, and we went out to lunch for burritos. My first legit Mexican food in awhile.
The pictures for this post are the only I’ve taken since getting back to the US and are from a trip to Bodega Head at night with my friend Kevyn.
Returning home, I was broke; but with the help of a couple friends was able to secure a good job within a week of getting back. It’s surprising, no matter how much people warn you about it, how quickly you get back into a schedule. I am writing this more than a month after getting home, because the time that I hadn’t blocked out after getting home got filled up so quickly!
Final entry still to come!
I was sitting next to a cute girl on the bus to Baltimore, and I could tell instantly that she was French (without her even saying anything). Having my laptop already out, I pulled a classy introduction by writing her a message in French and showing her the screen. Claire seemed happy to be able to make some conversation on the otherwise boring drive, but she very quickly exhausted my knowledge of French. The bus ride was pretty short, and after being dropped off in downtown Baltimore, I made my way to Johns Hopkins University, to meet up with a friend from home: Karen Hong.
Karen ditched her sorority meeting to come meet up with me, and we went out across town to get some food at a little restaurant called Golden West that had In-N-Out Animal Style burgers for $11 (which I did NOT test for authenticity). The next day I sat in on some sexy bio-chemistry lectures and heard a lot of funky words. I got the answer to one professor’s question right without really knowing what he was talking about, but I wasn’t brave enough to volunteer it. We tossed a frisbee around, figured out my route to D.C. the next morning, and got some pizza downtown with her boyfriend. The pizza was crazy-delicious, AND came in a square shape. Who could ask for more? Read More →
After spending an extra 500 euros to get back to the states, my budget for the east coast was a bit restricted. I got into Manhattan from the airport and walked around the city for a couple hours before hopping on the subway up to Harlem where I had booked a really cheap hostel. I came up from the underground and discovered pretty quickly that Harlem in the middle of night isn’t the softest of experiences. I had never seen anything like the projects at night. They are generally quiet, but filled with more than the fair share of creepers.
The next day I managed to sort out a phone for being back in the USA. I ended up walking about 100 blocks to the Virgin Mobile store, using it as an excuse to tour half the city. I continued down to Battery Park, past the WTC, and through the Wall Street area. The whole downtown area has a much different feel than farther north on the island, and being near the site of the old WTC was not comforting. Read More →
In the morning I got a ride from Karin, Katja’s mother, and one of my hosts in Fellbach to the local train station. I took a train across town to meet up with my mitfahr, and Megan agreed to come with so that I could coordinate with my driver should I need to call him (since I was passing my phone off to her when I would be leaving). We hung out for a bit by the train station, and some guy at an internet shop was a total asshole and charged Megan and I a whole half hour for going 30 seconds over our time limit because Megan didn’t know the word for “log off” in German and I was in the other room. After a couple morning minutes at the train station I was on my way with a new Mitfahr, and Megan was alone for the first time in her travels thus far, but at least I could send her off with my phone (which would be useless to me in 3 days time anyways).
My mitfahr was with four dudes headed to Oktoberfest also. Two were from Austria, and one had even lived in California for awhile. Once again the mitfahr saved me a bunch of cash over taking the train (20 euro). They even dropped me off just a few train stops from the festival. After arriving I made my way straight to the festival where I was repeatedly searched by ‘the popo’ because I was carrying my backpack. Read More →
Tram to bus to metro to bus to airplane to bus to train to 3-hour wait to train to train to car is a rough outline of Megan’s and my journey to a town called Fellbach which lies about an hour outside of Stuttgart in south-west Germany. We were headed to this town because Megan’s uncle had set us up with some friends of his who were from the area and had generously agreed to host us! In the midst of this journey we spend a couple hours in Stuttgart central where we saw some castles, and loads of German kids who were converging on downtown for some kind of Evangelical Children’s day.
Katja, the most closely connected of our Stuttgart crew, had us picked up by her boyfriend, Joachim, from the train station, and we were taken around Fellbach to visit Katja at her volleyball tournament, before heading back to her Katja’s parent’s house where we were almost immediately fed some delicious home-cooked foods (including Goulash, some regional swabian foods and a delicious pumpkin soup). Katja’s parents Ebbe and Karin joined us at the table, and I was given ample opportunity to show off my German in front of Megan, which I’ll admit felt pretty cool. They all spoke excellent English, but numerous times the conversation needed to switch to a hybrid German-English to get the point accross. Read More →
Megan and I were off in the morning, and had an easy bus-to-bus-to-flight-to-train to Roma. We resolved to do some random exploring when we first arrived, and set off towards the colosseum. We got some help from some (presumably) North African dudes who pointed us in the right direction. On our way towards the colosseum we stopped for some pizza at this great little cheap Roman pizzeria. Our Italian was atrociously non-existent, but the shop owner was really helpful and the pizza was great. We were a few blocks past the pizza place when we decided to start looking for our hostel, so we roamed some side streets until I could bum internet from the air.
It turned out I was only able to get service in the middle of the road, so Megan played lookout for me while I pulled up Google Maps. To our great surprise, it turned out that our Hostel was literally directly underneath the pizza place we had stopped at before for food. We were literally eating underneath our future sleeping spots without even knowing what part of town our hostel was going to be in! The chance of that happening seems unfathomably low, especially in a city as large, and as populated with hostels and pizzerias, as Roma. Read More →
Megan and I caught our train through the Austrian countryside to Munich, and what a beautiful train ride it was! On the ride there I made some conversation with a sweet 80-year-old German woman, who had asked Megan if I was drunk (since my head was down). I heard the old woman and looked up to see a tinge of panic on Megan’s face. She was super old and kept showing us pictures of cute little mountain towns in a magazine that she had.
After arriving in Munich, we only had a couple of hours before we had to meet up with a mitfahr that was going to bring us to Northern Italy! Our path from Austria to Padova is anything but direct, but arranging it this way allowed us to save about $50 each, so it was definitely worth it. Also, it allowed us to take a drive straight through the Alps, which was filled with epic forests and mountains and cliffs on all sides. It was seriously incredible terrain! Our drivers were a couple from near Berlin, and despite knowing some English, they opted to speak German the whole time. Megan was very patient but I still felt bad because I know very intimately how it feels to get cut out of the conversation, as had recently happened regularly in Hungary and the Czech Republic. Read More →
I met my mitfahr on the edge of Budapest, and she was perhaps the slowest driver of all time. It took about twice as long as it should have to get to Vienna, but I guess I can’t complain because it was half the cost of the train. I was running out of minutes on my phone, and I needed to top up so that my friend Megan, who was meeting up with me in Vienna, would be able to get ahold of me when she touched down.
It turns out that vodafone doesn’t exist in Austria, which isn’t true of any other country I visited in Europe, so I was in for a small shock. After asking around I was able to find an affiliated phone company where I could fill up my phone, and I made it back to the train station after two hours of searching with little more than 5 minutes to spare before meeting up with Megan at our scheduled time. Megan and I made our way around Vienna, stopping to check out various epic buildings, statue, and squares, of which Vienna has anything but a shortage! Read More →
The drive from Prague to Budapest was a long one to be sure, but I dug the countryside and scenery we had on the way. We passed a load of really cool old school communist-style buildings that would tower over all the vegetation surrounding them, and seem to be in the middle of nowhere. We also stopped in the capital of Slovakia: Bratislava. We were only there for about an hour, but that makes another country that I can claim I have been to, since I at least made it out of the transport hub!
I got into Budapest in the evening, and found myself confronted with yet another public transport regime. I found my way with the aid of a screenshotted google maps to the hostel, which was pretty close to the center of the city. I got in pretty late after most people had left the hostel to go out for the night. One of the staff at Carpe Noctem hostel offered to show me where the others had gone, but I opted to stay in and get some rest after the 10 hour bus ride. Read More →
I had a late arrival in Prague, but managed to find my way to the hostel I had booked with the aid of a google maps screenshot on my camera. The whole hostel was really social, and we went out clubbing with the staff, who were totally legit and got us sweet hookups. I managed to meet up with 2 Californias, Rob and Fabio, (among 5 I would end up meeting during my time in Prague) who were happy to hang out with me for the night since none of us knew any Czech.
The next day I set off solo to do a massive walking tour of the city, which is really the only way to get your bearings in a huge new place. I found my way to a big mural dedicated to John Lennon. Checked out the famous “old square” which is pretty big but is packed day and night with tourists from everywhere, which can be a bit exhausting. I managed to get a few miles off the beaten path, and after climbing a few walls, found myself in a huge park overlooking the city. That night the hostel came together again for another night of partying, and the hostel staff managed to get us all some free shots at the first bar! I ended up separated from the big group with an Englishman named Jan, and we had a good adventure through Prague in the middle of the night finding our way back. Read More →
