German Hospitality

Which includes really good wine apparently... Wow. The evening is a bit overwhelming however, as the conversation keeps switching from German to English and I speak... no German. So I´m taking a break on the offered computer. My wonderful host is the daughter of the man my father worked for thirty years ago. Dad´s here too by the way and I´m enjoying spending time with him alone.

I am currently in Munster, where I´ve seen four churches, the building where the Peace of Westphalia was signed (thereby ending the 30 years war) and a swan that fell in love with a swan-shaped boat.

Oh, and I´ve eaten a lot. Now I´m fighting off the exhaustion that naturally comes by a long day wandering in the rain followed by three large glasses of spanish wine and a lot of paella. (I know, I thought I´d left Spain too. But then, it is a small world.)

Well, I should get back to my hosts. But not to the wine, I do need to actually need to be able to walk to my bed tonight...

Chocolate!

The best part about traveling in a fly-by-night manner is that one can change plans at any time. In this spirit, when I arrived last night in Brussels and immediately had the urge to go hide somewhere, I decided that I wouldn't be staying any longer than necessary. I stayed one night, as it was already nearly 8pm, but the next day I left, pausing only to pick up some of the pralines the city is so famed for.

After arriving in Cologne, Germany (a city I immediately and mysteriously adored) however, I found myself regretting my rash action.

Do you know they have a chocolate museum in Cologne? With a drool worthy gift shop?

Well, they do.

Originally all I bought was a chocolate squirrel, produced onsite, as a host gift for the family Dad and I am staying with for a couple days. (All those decency lessons from my mother finally paying off.) But then... I went into the main gift shop...

But you can all wonder at my amazing restraint, for I purchased only 2 items. The first was a bar of chocolate in the bizarre flavour of Pinapple and Paprika (though you should've seen some of the flavours I passed by as being too weird...) The other is a souveneir rivaled only by the collapsing Julius Ceaser toy I got in Stratford. A spice grinder full of chocolate, cardamum, orange peel, and various other things I can only guess at as they're listed in German. It smells divine however. I put some on my pasta tonight, tossed with a bit of olive oil. Delectable. I have a suspicion it might be tasty on buttered toast as well...

It's odd, the cities I'm falling in love with. They are rarely the ones I expect. Loved Seville for instance, but not Madrid. Who knows, maybe I love the little ones because there are no expectations to disappoint.

Friends

It's been so much fun doing this trip with Bach. We really haven't had much time to spend with each other in the last few years and what with him moving to DC in August and me doing... goodness knows what for the next few years, we'll certainly meet less and less frequently. So this trip was wonderful. A lot of reminiscing, and a lot of philosophy. Nothing like deep talks about the meaning of existence over a pint of Guinness. Mmmmm... I love Guinness, it's dark and smooth, like proper chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate I think most of my budget for my day and a half in Belgium will be spent on sugar. Yum, can't wait.

Ireland redux

So I'm back in Ireland. I love this country, despite the fact that it's raining and sixty degrees. This time is fun however, because I'm here with Bach, an old friend. Tonight we are going to do a little town-painting. It's about time, as Amsterdam was peculiarly quiet. Most likely due to the fact that I was there with my parents. Not that it stopped my sister from going out with locals and not getting back until five in the morning.

For the last day and a half the two of us have been travelling with Bach's family, a surprisingly nice expirience. Yesterday we went to see this ancient (3000 BCE) burial site called New Grange, about an hour north of Dublin. Apparently it hasn't leaked since it's construction. The neolithic carvings were very cool, lots of swirls. One theory is that they were designed by schroom users. Makes some sense...

In any rate, it's been a really low key few days. Except for the bike ride into the country outside Amsterdam that I took with my Dad. In the Rain. On badly-sprung bikes. Still, I enjoyed it. Mostly.

Tuesday I leave Dublin to head to Brussels for a couple days before meeting my family again in Germany.

Family

So I met my parents and sister at the train station in Amsterdam today. It's really nice to see them again. I mean, I like how independent and grown-up I feel traveling around on my own and seeing things that they aren't seeing with me. My separate, adult life is beginning, but... family is like nothing else. The comfort and warmth that comes from sitting next to your little sister, even when she is falling asleep from jetlag, is something special.

There seem to waves on the canal now. The other nice thing about being with one's family is that they pay for things. After all, I would never be able to stay on a houseboat on my budget, but this is really cool. We have a garden room on the boat, with a retractable roof. Hopefully tomorrow it won't rain so much and we can actually open it up.

Freiburg

As usual, I completely overreacted yesterday. Everything was fine, I found a place to stay and ate much delicious bread. I got to Freiburg (pronounced fry-berg) just fine, found my friend, walked up a bell tower, a cathedral, and a watchtower, and am now happy full of snitchal (spelling is completely wrong, I know, I think there's a z in there somewhere...)

Tomorrow we're going to the Black Forest and hopefully Christina (the sister of my sister's foreign exchange student... yes, I think that's right...) will join us. With any luck, it won't rain as it did all day today. However, it's a nice change from the warm beautiful sunshine of Spain. (No, I'm not fooling myself either) Though truthfully, I don't mind the rain and all my clothes are cleverly fast drying.

Tonight MaryJo is taking me to a soviet bar, where they make their own vodka. Chocolate vodka, you and I have been strangers far too long. And I'm sure after tonight I'll never want to see you again.

Hateful

So Seville was fantastic, loved every part of it. However, the last 24 hours or so have been less wonderful. First, I had to pay an extra €70 just to leave Spain. Well good ridence, it probably worked better under fascism. So that was upsetting, but almost as upsetting was learning, when I finally did get to Paris, that every single train to either Switerzland or Germany was full. For the entire day. So here I am, stuck in Paris, having thrown away all my Paris information (map, locations of sleeping places, etc) on the assumption I wasn't returning. And so I have spent the last hour blindly walking, hoping to find a hostel close enough to the train station to be able to catch my 6:30 train out in the morning. Oh... and due to the fact that I've spent the last 24 hours travelling... I rather need a shower. So yeah. There you are. I'm really looking forward to joining my family on Monday.

End of Spain

So tomorrow I spend one night in Sevilla to sample proper Flamenco and then I spend a day and a half traveling to get to Basel, Switzerland, where I will crash for one night and then go into Germany to visit a friend studying there.

Just so you know.

It´s been a quiet day in Madrid. I wanted to be see a play tonight, but unfortunately, like most sensible cities, Madrid doesn´t have any theatre on Monday nights. So I went to the cinema instead. I could´ve seen a spanish film, but I wasn´t feeling quite up to it and saw an American (version original) one instead. Ah well, no one said I needed to give up my own culture in order to participate in others...

Yeah, not a great excuse is it? But then, I did enjoy it a lot, so maybe that´s excuse enough.

Madrid

My train got in at 7:30 this morning, I got a bed at my first choice hostel and walked towards my first free museum, the Renia Sofia. (You gotta love free museum Sundays) Everything would have been great if a guy heading home from a night of clubbing hadn´t decided that I was the woman of his dreams and refused to take a hint and shove off.

Granted, I didn´t handle the situation very well, but even men in Spain should know how to read the´"I´m not interested" signals.

Bah.

But I finally shook him off, wandered to the park, went back to my hostel, met some girls from Iowa and we went to the Prado museum and then got some incredibly tasty pizza. Often the restaurants turn out a great disappointment and I´m left wishing I had just stuck to bread and sausage, but this was good and the company was nice.

Men are annoying, especially when they follow you in the street. I miss my well behaved Englishmen...

Sleepy in Spain

I´m not sure what it is about this country, but I find myself willingly dreaming away the hours and even taking naps. Crazy. I spent last night in the small town of Tarragona, mostly interesting for their surviving Roman ruins. The hostel I went to originally seemed quite expensive, until I got to the room and discovered it was a single room with an ensuite bathroom. I was quite excited and after going down to the beach to swim in the Mediterranean Sea, I took an extra long shower. Showering in communal baths is fine, but doesn´t tend to lend itself towards luxury.

Most of the day was spent wandering aimlessly about the small and moderately charming town, sleeping, writing, or daydreaming. It was a good day.

Today I have returned to Barcelona in order to see the Picasso Museum, which I was too lazy to see earlier in the week and then I´m taking a night train to Madrid. I plan to visit Seville as well, but time is ticking on and I doubt that I´ll be able to visit Granada or any of the other Spanish towns I was considering. This time crunch is due to my desire to visit a friend in Germany before meeting my family in Amsterdam next Monday. My schedule is getting unusually full, since it looks like I´ll be meeting up with another friend between Amsterdam and Germany. I might either go to Ireland to meet him or he might come to the continent, we shall see...

Barcelona

There are many wonderful things about Barcelona. Tomorrow I will drink less Sangria and enjoy them more. Or perhaps not enjoy them more, but at least comprehend them. When they say Grande in this country, they obviously mean it.

Sadly I was unable to go to the craziest cathedral in Europe, despite it´s supposedly being open until eight because something was going on inside. Not sure what, my Spanish is very useful, but certainly not the awesome tool I would like it to be. So I will return again tomorrow to La Sagrada Familia and see just what all the fuss is about.

By the way, Night Trains- surprisingly comfortable.

,qn; itùs q zeird keyboqrd1

So, had this been an American keyboard, what I just typed would read: Man it's a weird keyboard!

Paris is growing on me, I wasn't sure I liked it when I got here, but it would take a harder heart than mine not to glow a little at the sight of the Notre Dame Cathedral rising above the river Seine.

I feel (or at least my feet do) that I've been everywhere, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, the Grand Arc in the industrial quarter. I've been to four museums and eaten two crepes. (yum)

Tonight I take a night train to Barcelona, where I'll probably spend the first day lounging around. I think my pace is too fast right now, I'm a bit concerned that I'll burn out if I don't slow down. Speaking of which, I think my next stop is a sidewalk café for expresso, which I learned to enjoy in London. See, I know travel would broaden my horizon: coffee, crazy...

France

Okay, this is weird, my blog site is in French. Luckily I know where all the right buttons are, so I don't need to worry about what they say.

I got to Paris without any trouble, other than being a bit sad to leave London. The last couple days were quite wonderful and it made going away much harder. However, the weather is much nicer this time than when I was here in January and for some reason the language barrier isn't as scary. Besides, most people speak english. Except the beggars, who have their sob stories written out on postcards and have learned just enough english to ask "do you speak english?" before putting it in your face. I was impressed enough with the effort involved to hand over a couple euros.

The trick with this money is that their 1 and 2 euros are coins and after years of not dealing with coins over 25 cents, I have this idea that coins aren't real money and are therefore open spending territory. But it's only after six euros have left my pocket on nonessentials that I stop and go, hey, that's sort of a lot of money when one is living on 50 a day...

Speaking of tight budgets, I really lucked out today; it being the first sunday of the month, all the museums are free! So I went to the Louvre (nice, but not life-changing), after that I was pretty arted-out, so I took a break and ate my lunch in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Then, refreshed, I went to the Museum d'Orsey- which was wonderful! All my favorite impressionist painters.

My feet are quite sore however, since I've decided to save money by walking everywhere. And while Paris isn't a really big city- it's big enough when you're walking everywhere, but that's the only way to really learn a city, by foot.

Tomorrow I plan to go to the Picasso Museum (there are two apparently, one in Barcelona as well) and go back to the Eiffel Tower to ride the elevator up. Tuesday night I'm taking a sleeper train to Barcelona (hopefully; it's my first eurrail ride, so I'm a little paranoid that it's all a lie and my many hundred-dollar ticket isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I should learn to control my paranoia at some point...)

Leaving London

So tomorrow I go under the channel to Paris. Goodbye sedimentary life in London. Hello life on the road. Will I make a good beat poet? Very likely not. Will I make a good traveller though? One does not need to write free-form poetry in order to travel light and cheap after all. (Though I think it helps) I am excited for my travels. I mean, of course I am. And I am starting to fret a bit here in London. The weather's not been great, the crowds are immense, etc.

However, I will miss this job. And what makes me saddest as I leave is the knowledge that even if I return to London as a visitor, I will never again have this job and I have never regreted leaving a job more. Perhaps part of that is the feeling that as soon as I do leave, all the really interesting stuff will happen. (You know it's true, it's always true.)

Still and all, I must leave and I'm sure I'll love it once I'm there. I just hope my cold gets better soon.