Rodey on the Road

So I got into a bit of a fight. Eddy was convinced it was going to happen early on in the trip, but apparently I hold out until the last week. It wasn’t much of a fight, so we’ll get to that later. Here’s how the past couple days went. The last day in Athens was spent wandering a bit, going to the airport about five hours before my flight, reading, getting on the flight with the intentions of sleeping in the airport then getting up early to get on a train to Prague. I met a girl named Mya on the plane, she’s from Slovenia and would be spending the night in the airport as well. So I had someone to talk to, and we traded guarding the bags while the other one went to the bathroom/for a wander etc etc. She slept on the bench, I slept on the floor behind the bench, curled up next to the radiator. I actually overslept, as I guess I was so comfortable on the airport floor. I had received an email the night before though from Lucy, a girl I met in the hostel in Florence, and she offered me a free place to stay. She is schooling in Switzerland, so I opted to go for the country covered by my Eurail pass and the free place to crash. Ten hours and no food later, I arrived in Lausanne, Switzerland. I met Lucy and we went to her friends dorm room for some Fondu. It was really good, as there was alot of it, I hadn’t eaten yet, and it was free. Afterwards we played drinking games (with their vodka, again free) and went to a bar for live music. On the way to the bar, there was a little confrontation. A very drunk 16 year old Swiss guy came up to the group of us looking for cigarettes. We didn’t have any and he began swearing at the group. One of the girls started mocking him, swearing back and he started to follow us down the street. We all stopped and he got agressive. He was swearing and getting very close to us and geting more agitated.James tried to talk him down to no avail, so Amy and Lucy tried. He started pushing closer and closer and eventually pushed Amy out of the way and slapped Lucy’s hands out of the way. That’s when Mikey stepped in. I told him, in very plain English, that I didn’t understand a word he was saying but you don’t hit girls, and he shoved me. He was smaller than me, I didn’t move much, but I didn’t shove him back. He shoved me again, and again, and eventually I pushed back. He started swearing, I told him to fuck off, and, get this…he kicked me. He kicked me in the side of the leg. I was so stunned, I never expected it. I laughed at him and asked him, really, who the fuck starts a fight with a kick. He kicked me again, this time higher up and now I knew it was coming. I grabbed his foot in mid air and tossed it upwards, sending him to the sidewalk. He got up again, took a run at me, stopped at an appropriate kicking distance, and I tossed him down again. He was pissed, he started going off in French and reached into his backpocket. I figured we were about to have a little red knife fight on our hands, but it was for a cellphone, he was calling his friends to come and beat me up. Fantastic. His friends showed, I was ready for them but had been led away to let Amy and James handle the confrontation. The friends apologized for the kicker’s behaviour, saying he was drunk and crazy, and we left at the bar. So travel tip, when fighting a swiss kid, dont even worry about watching for the punch, keep an eye out for those feet.
So we arrived at the bar, it was a guy from England on piano and a guy from Brooklyn on guitar. They played requests, including ours which included an array of Beatles and Dylan. We stayed till the end of their set, then left for sleep. My bed is a mattress on the floor of a Dorm room, and it is so comfortable and warm…and cheap. Tonight we are doing Fondu again, in honor of Lucy’s friend Jaqueline who is in the room tonight too, who I also met in Florence. Just a few days left of the trip, headed to Amsterdam at some point in the next couple days, then I’m catching a plane to the T-Dot and then to the wilds of Waterdown.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2005 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.