Beaujolais Nouveau, Crotch Holes, Machismo and the Vortex

Yes, I know I´m way behind.. to give you an idea on my laggardness... This blog is going to be about the past oh 2 weeks.. which will encompass France and Barcelona. Here´s what I´ve been up to:

Hit up the French Riviera (Nice) just in time for the Beaujolais (god that is hard to type, let alone spell) Nouveau to come out... we are talkin´it came out the weekend I was there... FANTASTIC, so this Canadian guy I was pal´in around with and I decide to get ourselves 7 bottles and have a tasting with the rest of the hostel (read Myself, this guy and one or two people having like a glass) Ah good times. My apologies to those of you who I drunk IM´d or drunk emailed that night.

With said Canadian, another Canadian and two girls from Ohio, I went swimming in the Med. The water was about as warm as the air temp (roughly 16 C or about 65 F)Really wasn´t that bad, but this guy on a sailboat that was anchored at the beach we were swimming off of (he was wearing a parka and a winter hat) and taking pictures of us... presumably to show his friends the stupid tourists swimming in the sea in November so they could all have a laugh.

Lost €8 in the Casino in Monte Carlo, Monaco. I could only play the slots because there is a dress code to get into the Casino there and the crotch holes in my jeans apparently just didn´t cut it.

Speaking of crotch holes... they suck. I was down to one pair of wearable pants by the time I got to Barcelona. (I broke down and bought a new pair of jeans...which lead to a new outfit, which led to new boots... which led to me spending way too much money but being extremely happy because when you wear the same 3 outfits for 6 weeks straight, there is NOTHING better than new clothes!)

With looking nice, invariably comes the forward european guys. Now I can handle the che bellas and whatnot... and fully expect to get cat called by guys in Italy, France, and Spain, but seriously, I got whistled at today... not like a "you´re pretty" whistle... it was an "i´m calling my dog to come inside the house" whistle. I did not appreciate that.

Nice, France happens to be the vortex of a massive black hole. Almost everyone that was staying at the Hostel I was at (Villa St. Exupery)ended up trying to leave to wherever they were going next at least once and ended up making it back to the hostel for the night. This happened to the two girls from Ohio for 3 nights straight. 1st the trains were cancelled, 2nd one girl forgor her purse and missed the train, third (I was with them this night) the ticket guy would not sell us tickets because he said the night train to barcelona was too dangerous for girls. It actually got to be a joke, every time they left, they´d say "see you guys in an hour" jokingly.. but they´d be back. CRAZY.

I decided that I love Antoní Gaudí. Parc Güell is quite possibly the coolest park I´ve ever seen. It looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book (I wonder if this is where the Illustrators for Dr. Seuss got their inspiration?) but all of his buildings are amazing.

And finally... everyone smokes in Europe. I mean EVERYONE. I was at a restaurant today and there were these ladies sitting at a table near me and they were pretty physically handicap (at least enough to where they had very limited speech motor skills, were in wheel chairs, and had to have an aid feed them) I know it sounds mean...I am in no way trying to be.. but, I was just kinda shocked to look over and see one of the ladies in a wheel chair (who could not hold a fork) was doing just perfectly fine holding a cigarette and smoking it there like nothing. WTF. Ever have one of those moments where things surprise you.. I am not easily surprised.. I like to think I´m quite jaded... but that surprised me.

How to almost get kicked out of an entire town in Italy

Step 1- Arrive in Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre and stay in the only hostel in the town, on the towns only street and meet up with 12 other really cool people at the towns only bar.
Step 2- your hostel is apartment style complete with kitchen and sitting room
Step 3- the group is made of 6 Aussies, 5 Americans and a Kiwi who all like to drink.

add in a chef, about 50 bottles of wine over 3 days, dinner parties, and a progressive between a couple of the apartments and finish off the nights down at the marina sloshing around in the water (I definitely ended one of those nights soaked and bleeding...but not too badly)

multiply this by 3 nights

and you get some really pissed off italian ladies banging down your door and the village church bell ringing incescently (Tony said he stopped counting at 60) at about 530 in the morning.


Heres to one of the best weekends I've had... quite possibly ever, with some awesome new friends! Cuz' you just can't seem to fuck up perfect. (especially when its on the Italian Riviera)

**a short side note on perfectness...As a traveller, you always hope to meet people who you just click with, and get along with. Every so often this happens, usually with one or maybe 2 others who you just enjoy haning with. (most of the time, its just a bunch of nice people that you pal around with for a few days, send some photos and then be on your merry way...not that they're bad people, you just don't mesh) The most amazing thing was that the 5 Terre group seemed to all be made to find each other there that weekend. The rain held off when you needed it to, started up when you got indoors, people ended up staying extra days, and Bryce outdid himself with brazed rabbit and homemade soup. The travel gods were in our favor that weekend. Its tough to meet one or two people who you get along with, but 12!? I don't know, maybe its just me, but every person there after knowing for 4 days, I felt like I had been friends with forever. And it was an amazing feeling. One you can only hope to find. Maybe that is why Cinque Terre was so great. The area itself is absolutly beautiful, but it truly is the people you are with that make the experience
memorable.

bienvenuto alle Italia

The wine is plentiful and cheap.

The supermarket was basically the first place that I went and spent like an hour and a half in there and I got to drink the best juice EVER: arangia rossa (blood orange)

There are churches everywhere and they are all beautiful and ornate.

Today I walked past buildings that were about 3000 years old.

Gelatto, gelatto, gelatto!

I got to drool over some of the very very hot men that played on the World Cup champion team (sigh...daniel de rossi).

Oh, and I got excited when the water in the shower turned luke-warm enough to be able to take a shower. (luke warm read: not icy cold)

benvinuto alle italia (I dont think that is correct Italian though).

Ciao!

(here is a picture of Lisa and I at the Roma v. Fiorentina game. Roma won 3-1 :)

Amsterdam-you early morning bus!

I have a new found appreciation for the army, notably bootcamp. We ran about 2500km from our Hostel in Amsterdam to the bus station because we were running late to catch an 8:45 bus to the Eindhoven airport. Running through the streets of Amsterdam with about 20kg of stuff in your backpack is not fun. But Lisa, Jen and I made the bus with 4 minutes to spare, nice work girls!

Amsterdam is a beautiful city! Its all canals and brick buildings. Brick and water are two of my favorite things, I wanted to stay there forever. And as a classic example of Dutch practicality... here is the skinniest house in Amsterdam, a whopping 1.6 meters wide. (and that dude was our tour guide for spacial reference)


Did you know that marijuana (because everyone knows you can smoke it in The Netherlands) is not actually legal in the Netherlands. The Dutch are just practical people and decided that going after hard drugs like heroin and cocaine were a better use of their dollars and police force. Therefore noone has actually been arrested for smoking or posession of pot since the mid-70's.

There are also a lot of hippies, black people and Rastafarians (I'm sorry if I spelled that wrong... and I'm sorry to kind of steriotype...but its true) in Amsterdam. You may be thinking, "thanks for pointing out the obvious, laur".. well duh. But the interesting thing here is that they are mostly all tourists. Only 9% or so of Dutch adults smoke pot, compared to 16 or 17% of Americans, mid-teens % of Spanish, British, Italian, Germans, 20-some-odd percent of Aussies, etc. Why is this a point worth bringing up? Well I'll tell you, tourism and tax dollars. Get with the program upstate NY! If you want to boost your tourism dollars, just look the other way about certian "illegalities" and semi-regulate it so you can tax it. People will come.

Its Keboperific! stop-man/go-man said so.

Subtitled: Adventures in Deutchland and Amsterdam.


I previously discovered the Doner Kebop (which is kind of like a Gyro only WAY BETTER) in Cork in Ireland. It was the first non-fried, potato-less food (besides Guinness) that I had eaten in the land of Eire. Let me tell you, the Germans really know how to do a Kebop! First off, they are everywhere (think of it as a similar ratio of Taco/burrito joints in the US...except Kebops are Turkish) secondly, when you are starving, and just got off the train at 1am in Munich, and there are about 12 Kebop places open for business on the way to the hostel, it is quite possibly the best most fabulous food ever! ( funny story about this, Lisa, Jen and I were so intent on obtaining our delicious, succulent, 3,00 euro (that is actually the most appealing aspect of the kebop) kebop goodness that we got a little lost trying to find our Hostel. Go Figure.

Here are the things I learned from Munich, Berlin, and Amsterdam:
-People actually do still wear leiderhosen (sp?) and I hear it is actually quite comfortable.
-the architect of the big cathedral made a deal with the devil to finish the building in 20years...and fooled the devil, so now there is the devil's footprint in the entranceway. (see photo below)


-In Bavaria beer comes in 2 sizes... .5Litre for Weisbier only, and 1 litre goblets for everything else (pils,hells, and dunkell). There is no other option unless you are a kid (and you would be surprised by the amount of kids who looked no older than 12 drinking, not the kiddie sized mind you..but the full litre...with their parents for lunch or something.
-Here are the major breweries in Munich: Augustiner (the best beer award, and you can only find it locally in Bavaria), Paulner, Spaten, Lowenbrau, Haufbrau (Haufbrauhaus wins the most amazing beer hall on the planet award.. complete with oompa bands liederhosen and funny hats!!) and Schneider Weiss (which had the best authentic food at their place)
-lets see, my neck was very sore when we got to Berlin. Most people would attribute this to the oh, 12 hour train ride from Munich to Berlin, I will attribute at least part of it to the fact that I was making out with a 6'5" german guy at a club the night before (hey now, we were in a club, thats what you do, you drink, you dance, and occasionally you smooch with the guy you are dancing with...this club was pretty cool though, it was like the IB in Geneseo only hopped up on crack, steriods and speed and it was huge...although they basically played the same music I remember from the IB when I frequented there, oh um 4 years ago, and there were a lot of drunk white people who can't dance there-myself included- so in that respect it was just like being back at college.)
-The older trains in Germany, the WC flushes right onto the tracks. I was very intrigued by this when I went to flush and I saw daylight and traintrack down the drain.
-Visiting a WWII Nazi concentration camp (Dachau) was probably one of the most intense experiences of my life (along with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam). It gives you chills, I really can't quite describe it...but its cold. You know that scene in the 6th Sense where the ghosts visit the kid and it gets frigid. That is what it felt like. Chills.

-Berlin was really sweet as well. My favorite part of Berlin however were the ampelmann. I am kind of obsessed with them. They are the crosswalk lights in East Berlin, and they have a funny little man in a hat. Coolest x-walk signs ever! They are so cool, in fact that when the city was reunified after the wall came tumbling down (which was thought to be a drunken/hungover really big fuck-up by the communist pressman in '89..go figure) West Berlin gov't wanted to change the signs over to the more boring West Berlin signs and the people of East Berlin protested because they loved their ampelmann. It is also the easiest way to tell which part of the city you are in.
- I also bought a piece of the Berlin Wall (in postcard form). Which i thought was ironic. It probably is the biggest slap in the face to communism that capitalism can do. Selling the modern symbol of communism to tourists for a profit. Isn't capitalism great!!