Rodey on the Road

The second part in the increasingly adequately named trilogy of lessons learned on the road.

1. Meeting new people never gets old.
2. On the road, you have new best friend every night, you tell each other your life stories, you get along splendidly, you part ways never to see one another again.
3. Italian food and large amounts of quickly consumed wine sit better than mexican food and guinness.
4. Make friends with the people at the reception desk, then the curfew wont apply to you.
5. Take the scenic route
6. When crossing into Italy over any border, time speeds up and your train slows down.
7. Kebaps are God’s gift to travelers.
8. The scenic route makes you appreciate chairs.
9.There are people who appreciate good hockey all over the world…there are leaf fans everywhere too.
10. Large amounts of coffee are the only way to recover from two hours sleep.

The David. It is the reason most people come to Florence. The line snakes down the road, around the corner, as people wait eagerly for the chance to view this man of stone. It is not uncommon to see people in that same line, three hours later, no more than fifty feet closer to the door than when they were last passed. The people who come for the David are a dedicated breed, their desire is so strong that nothing can deter them, no storm can discourage them. They would wait until the end of time.
I lasted 15 minutes.

So having resigned myself to not seeing the David today, I began my wanderings. It is my last day in Florence, there was nothing in particular I wanted to do, so I decided to go and explore the other side of the river for a time. About an hour later I decided it would be a good idea to head back to the hostel for a time, perhaps for use of the internet, a banyo and to rest my tired legs. It should be noted here that I have not once been lost in a city I have been in thus far. If I have no map, and I do not know where I am or where I’m going, I cannot be lost. If I do know where I am going, or am trying to get to a certain spot, I just sometimes happen to take the scenic route. Today I took the scenic route for a solid 20km before finding the hostel.

Other than that no big news, I met a bunch of aussies and canadians last night, and we found a store that sells three bottles of wine for 10 dollars, and there was an irish pub down the street, and there was much merriment, laughter, singing and there may or may not have been a no pants party, and I may or may not have been the only participant. Heavy on the may.

The plan for the night is to get some bread and meat, make a sandwich and go watch the sun set over Florence again. Tomorrow…to Rome.

Well my killing time was cold, awkward and long, but eventually it died. I kind of feel bad that I killed it for nothing more than sport, but alas, we just can’t use every part of the buffalo anymore now can we? So my sleeper train was eventful, the couple from North Carolina had reserved the bottom bunks i the six bunk couchette and they were occupied by two very assertive elderly italian women who were not going to be moving. So naturally, as the polite, considerate young traveler of the group, who is a full foot bigger than anyone else, I was displaced to the top bunk where there is the least amount of room and the most amount of discomfort…not to mention I was getting off before anyone else, so I would have to make my way down the ladder without waking them…which I managed to do at my designated time. The only thing is, my designated time is more on par with the swiss time, which involved our train leaving within 65 seconds of its scheduled departure. But lo and behold, we were in Italy now, and I finally arrived in Florence 2 and a half hours after I was supposed to, which isnt bad I suppose. I made it to a hostel, secured a room and left to liberate my pictures from the evil grips of the store owner and his dog. I had to fight tooth and nail for those pictures, some parts of the ordeal were reminiscent of Braveheart (although today I was actually wearing underwear) but in the end, he conceded defeat when I handed over my receipt and he relinquished the pictures. They are pretty good ones too, at least, that is what I will be telling myself.
So I had some time to kill, and thought to myself, hmmm, pisa is close, and despite what the guidebook says about the stabilization project, that thing could fall at any second, so I decided to go over there and check it out. The lady at the tourist office gave me a map and showed me how to get there directly, but apparently I thought it would be better to walk for an hour and sneak up on the thing, just in case. So I saw the tower, it was actually quite impressive, I stood there gazing in awe of it, and then decided yep, that is the leaning tower of pisa alright. So I got some food, a really good Italian sandwich, and got back on the train to put my crap in the hostel. And that is the story kids, that is the story up until now.

Long fancy title just to fire off a quick one, Im catching a train tonight, I checked out this morning, I have killed 7 out of a 12 hour stretch until my train and I have come to a few conclusions:
1. I do not have enough warm clothes
2. Switzerland is cold in October
3. I have lost weight, I dont have my protective layer of blubber
4. The Swiss are as orderly and clean and punctual as you think
5. There are swiss army knives for sale everywhere
6. With the exception of draft beer everything is expensive (like the 119dollar pair of jeans I saw today)
7. Some sterotypes are justified
8. You get weird looks after waking up on a park bench (its how I killed 1.5 out of the 7 hours today)

Also, there have been a few of you jumping to conclusions about a previous post…I said that one of the shops main functions was hair cutting, but alas, all my hair remains on the top of my head. The OTHER function of the shop, was body piercing, and there is a barbell in my left nipple right now, and it didnt hurt as much as I thought I would, and I watched the entire process. Other than that, I am catching a sleeper train tonight, sans wine and weed and will be arriving in Florence early tommorrow morning to liberate my pictures…hopefully, then on to Roma for friday to visit the pope, confess to all my sins etc etc (if he has time) and gladiate in the coliseum and so on. After that who knows, and who knows how long I will stay in rome. 4 more hours and 30 minutes to go until train time…

First of all I will end the suspense…there was no karaoke. The karaoke was not on the nights we went out, so I was forced to sing my own tunes, which seemed to be sufficent for everyone around me in case they had not gotten their fix of tenacious D, jack johnson, flogging molly and fallout boy.

I did meet lydia, turns out the place I was sitting at eating my nutella sandwich was just outside her school. I met a bunch of her friends and we returned to her house where the lady she is living with also had her brother and sister in law as well as her son and grandson staying for the weekend, so it was crowded but it was nice.

This entire trip I have been wondering what the inside of the locals houses look like, and what it’s like to live in them, and I finally found out. All the conversations were in french, lydia being fluent translated some for me and translated what little I had to say to the other members of the household, but I really just enjoyed sitting back and listening to them talk, as I was very surprised how much of the conversations I was picking up. I couldn’t speak it but I found out I could understand the gist of almost everything that was said…with a few blunders along the way.

So that night we went out in search of karaoke, found none and just had a few drinks and talked with people. The next day we went to Bern to wander the city and we saw the bears in their pits. These bears are the epitomy of activity. They are constantly on the move, hunting and stalking their prey with a determination that would be admired by many, but equalled by few. The way they sat on their butts resting their forearms on a log waiting for tourists to throw down bits of fruit was truly inspiring…they gave 110% all day every day.

Lydia and I had a great lunch, at Einsteins house and the lunch consisted of horse..steak chevalle and it was very very good. We returned to Neuchatel for the night, we had pizza for dinner and then we went to the bars..after me and Lydia had shared a bottle of wine (she was a huge help taking that intial sip and that shot of the wine somewhere in the middle). The one cheap thing in Switzerland is the beer, so I had to do the economical budget thing and take advantage of the bargains where I could find them. The night wrapped up with some dancing in a scottish bar and we returned home on the bus and went to sleep.

My accommodations for the past two nights had been the couch in the downstairs of lydias two story room, and evidently after drinking I snore like an engine steadily working away. I didn’t feel too bad though, as I wasn’t the only one participating in the snoring. Actually, that is a lie, I was, nobody else in the room snores, don’t believe a word of what I just said. It wasnt even snoring really, just the odd sigh or noise, nothing close to the floor shaking bass I was emitting.

So today we awoke..rather slowly and had a very good lunch and I said goodbye to my hosts. I am staying the night in Bern today as I will be going to a place that has hair cutting as among its many specialties and then I must return to Neuchatel to show Lydia. So that is what is happening, I will be in Rome on friday and from there the plan originally was to head up to Munich and then Prague and then Berlin and then Amsterdam and then home…but my plans tend to go through periods of personal growth and change, so who can tell. Until then…

Well the past couple days have been spent wandering florence, I didnt get to see the David this time, but I will be headed down there next wednesday or thursday for the following reason:

I took my disposable camera to the shop to be developed, it would be ready in one hour. I returned about an hour and a half later and discovered bars over al the shop windows and the door firmly locked. From what I gathered with my translation abilities, this was a special day, the only day in fact that they were closing early but not to worry, they would re-open at nine the following morning. At 9 the following morning I would be in Switzerland. So I wrote a note in the simplest and most legible English I could manage saying that I had missed the opening and would be returning for the pictures, so to please hold on to them. That settled, Tara and I walked up a lot of steps, up a large hill and eventually made it to a church. She looked around inside for a while, I opted to stay out as I have a weird little thing with churches, and I saw a gift shop just outside. Upon inspeciton of the giftshop, I decided to get a souvenir. My Christ Chianti was a bottle of wine for only 6euros, and it was going to be for later that night. We walked down a few more steps and watched the sunset over florence, and it was one of the most incredible sunsets I had ever seen. All of a sudden an explosion of pink and orange came over the town, reflecting off the river and the tile roofs of the houses, with the mountains in the backdrop.
From there we returned to the hotel, I got my things, we had dinner of dipping day old bread into mayonaise and I caught my train. There was a school group of kids on the train and a couple americans I met. The americans and I started drinking my wine so that my pack would be lighter and the cramped sleeping quarters would seem more spacious, and we met a girl from brazil who was in the school group. She shared some of her wine and offered to let us in to smoking the joint they had a few cabins down. I declined, the other two said sure and I was put in charge of buying the next round with the americans guys money. I did jsut that, went to the bathroom and when I came out the whole car smelt like weed. I also learned the word gonja translates across all languages. We stayed up drinking and talking until about 3 in the morning, and went to bed. This morning I arrived in Bern, caught a train to Neuchatel and hopefully I will be meeting Lydia at some point today, otherwise I fear it will be Park Time 2: Harder and Colder. Look for the update, hopefully its not a sequel.

Alrighty children, here is the story. The hockey game went beautifully, I cheered for the home team and of course they were the better theam and they won. Went to the bar for a couple beers and then an early night as Tara and I had an early morning train to catch. We caught the train despite my desire to stay and watch the guy outside the station wearing the bucket on his head and we made it to Geneva, Switzerland with no problems. We had to switch trains there to get to Milan, and again no problems whatsoever, we remained in our seats, the trains were on time, it was wonderful. In Milan we had half an hour to kill for our train to La Spezia, and given all we had to eat that day was a baguette and nutella, we splurged for dinner and got a sandwich for a couple bucks. We caught our train to La Spezia and it arrived on time, there were hardly anyone on it so there was even enough room to lie down, a new experience for me on italian trains. Everything was going beautifully, we were on time, way under budget and in the morning we would be in Cinque Terra. The hotel we were going to was full, but he told us about the hotel on the next street, they were full as well. We walked around a bit, not wanting to bust the bank on a three star or anything, so we sat down on a park bench and decided that was the spot for the night.
We did not spend the night on the park bench, it was too cold. We spent the night on the dirt/gravel below the bench using the bench to block the wind. All in all I got about 20 minutes of sleep because I felt like I should be on duty and there were dogs and people about at all hours, so I watched the stop lights for hours on end, and by the morning I had the timing down for the green, yellow and red. We got up in the morning, discovered all the wonderful bites left by whatever lives on the ground in parks, and caught the first train to Cinque Terra. Things went even better from there than the day before, especially in comparison with the previous night. We found a hotel, it was an actual hotel for about the same price as a hostel and it had a full shower in the room, which was a requirement as we were both a little dirty from our day of trains and our night of park. We spent two nights in cinque terra, i showered about four times a day and the scenery was just unbelievable. The food was incredible, we met some great people and it was just an amazing two days of relaxing and budgetary success. Today i find myself in florence with plans to head up to bern, switzerland tommorrow to meet the wonderful miss lydia for the weekend, then coming back down to Rome next friday…maybe. So that is whats been happening, its laundry day tommorrow and im excited about that, and if all goes according to plan I will see the david as well. Hope everyone is doing good at home, wherever your home may be, and keep an eye out for the next update, Im sure it will be filled with wonderfulness as apparently I will be going out to a karaoke bar on friday night. Until then…

I have been in Lyon since wednesday afternoon. After a fairly unsucessful search for a hostel; I found a hotel room for 30 euros that included a shower. It was more than I was willing to pay but it was the only place in town that offered a room. I said fine and left as it would be a few hours until the room was ready. I met up with Kate and her friend (kate you may remember as the girl from the states we met in ireland; had her camera broken, came out to celebrate eddys birthday despite her lack of drinking). We had a beer and agreed to meet again that night to go out. I returned to the hotel, there had been an opening so I now had a cheaper room but with no shower. That was fine with me as I was told there was still a shower available for use. I thanked the man and asked just where it was I could go for a shower. He gave me a key, told me where to go upstairs and said I had until 8. I figured it was a locker room style shower; they shut the water off at 8 maybe. Nope, this was someone else’s hotel room and they just wouldnt be arriving until 8. I showered quickly and returned to my room in case he was renting it out by the hour on the side.
I went out that night with kate and her friends to the aussie bar, a series of dancing in the street and party boying a car followed by chants of USA USA got them back for their constant assault on my way of saying out, and we called it a night. The following day I checked into a new hotel, for 25euros a night i had a double bed; a marble fireplace, a window opening up onto the courtyard, an armoire a sink, a desk; chair and closet. That was my base for my day of wandering the centre area of Lyon. That is also where I saw the add for the Lyon hockeyclub and their game on saturday night, which is why I decided to stay in Lyon until sunday morning. Thursday I just kind of wandered and read my book, I wasn’t feeling too hot so I decided to take it easy. I saw a bit of a fight in the main square and that was it. Friday nght I was in the same hotel, I wandered the old town in search of a marionette museum, but to no avail, so I settled for the museum of fine arts. It was a good little museum, free admission so that helpd as well. I still wasn’t feeling all that great, so after wandering on the right side of the river, I turned it in for an early one. This morning was my big day, I had a hockey game to go to tonight. I checked out and set off in search of the hostel, finding it almost accidentally, and before I had even booked in I met someone to go to the game with and probably travel the next few days with into Italy. Not a bad start to the day. We wandered into town, through a french farmers market then I took a bus out to Kate’s house where she had promised me a lunch. Scrambled eggs and toast hit the spot nicely, and we returned to town so she could find volleyball gear as she had signed up for a league. We parted ways, possibly to see each other again in a couple weeks in Prague, and I left to get ready for the hockey game.

So that’s about the size of it kids, heading to Italy tommorrow morning, possibly cinque terra, possibly Florence, and other than that there have been some good little stories along the way, like that of the chinese man talking about the war or my eating habits the past few days, but if I posted all that, there would be nothing to save for later. Leave them wanting more I believe is the expression, and with that I bid you adieu for now.

Mike

Alright kids, so my last post was filled with hope and a laid back attitude. I wrote that post about 6 hours ago. Four hours of aimless wandering after that post put little mikey into a bit of a bad mood. I wandered across the river, back across the river, down random streets, to an area where there apparently was a hostel, I wandered and I wandered and there was no hostel to be found. thank god or whatever religious entity you choose to worship, that I asked my Dad to bring me my Lets Go guidebook, because I flipped it open and discovered a hostel that seemed cheap and right near the area I wanted to spend my day in. Granted it took me most of the day I wanted to spend to get back there, and by the time I got there mike was in a bit of a pissy mood, but I found it and things have been looking up since. I got the last bed in the entire place, I’m sharing only a three bed dorm room with two guys from Romania who seem to be pretty cool, I forget their names though. On the walk out and back down to my bookstore, there was a bakery, I stopped in and got my pain au chocolat straight out of the oven, so it was so hot and so good and my dear lord thinking about it just makes me drool. After that I wandered aimlessly to try and find my bookstore, and it ended up not taking that long at all, and on the way I also found the all Canadian Bar. And get this, they had guiness on tap. So I sat down, collected my thoughts as my cute canadian waitress who spoke as much french as I do brought me my guiness (the best I’ve had since Ireland) and I thought I’d wander down to the internet cafe to tell you the good news. So in a little while I’ll be off to my bookstore, to read, to calm myself down, to try to doze off a little. I think my dinner tonight will consist of another pain au chocolat and un autre Guiness, and tommorrow I will be trying to make my way towards Lyon or something, I’m not sure. Just thought I’d let you all know. Oh yes, and my shoulder is killng me from lugging my too heavy backpack around for hours upon hours, so lets hear those suggestions for what Mikey should be tossin.

Alright kids, this morning my dad left the hotel room, we said goodbye and he was on his way home. I rolled over, went back to sleep till about 9:30, had a shower, got packed, brushed my teeth and so on, did a final look on the map, repacked all the stuff I had left under the bed, and at 10:36, I was out of the hotel on the streets of Paris-alone. It’s now quarter after 1, so I’ve been doing the solo traveling thing for almost 3 hours now, and as far as traveling goes, it’s alright. I got some pictures back today, very good looking ones some of them, some are not so good, I think I had a roomie in Galway take a picture of his ass, but hey, what can ya do, I would’ve done the same thing. So I’m searching for a hostel, and no luck so far, I have an address but according to my map of Paris, the street doesn’t exist, which is a problem I encountered while navigating through Normandy, so I know how to beat it. The plan for the day is to maybe leave this internet cafe, go to a real cafe, get some coffee (I’ve developed a taste for cafe noir, watch out for the timmys runs when I return home), go to a boulangerie, have a sit down, then try to find a place to stay for the night. Then I’m going to come back to Shakespeare and Co, a great little bookstore that I might have already mentioned, and just spend the day reading and snoozing. I bought two books a week ago or so, but I left them in my Dad’s suitcase, so they are probably at the airport in Germany right now, depending on what time his flights are at.

Plans for the upcoming week are solidifying, I’m going to be headed to Lyon tommorrow or the day after, then I’m going to go to Rome from there, up through Cinque Terra, back to the south of France for a bit before meeting Lydia in Neuchatel next weekend or sometime around there.

I won’t lie, at first I was a little scared as I was leaving the hotel, being on my own for a month now, but it’s also exciting. For the next month I am going to do exactly what I want to do, when I want to do it, and I don’t have to ask if its OK with anyone else, or take a vote or anything. By the same token, it’s going to be much quieter and I will have nobody to blame but myself when things get screwed up, but c’est la vie. I’m sure this upcoming month will be a period of a lot of soul searching, personal reflection, reading, writing and spending time in hostel bars meeting people if the financial situation goes according to plan.

On a side note, we are going to take a vote, anyone who has ever read this blog is invited to participate. I’ve decided that my bag is too heavy, so I want to dump some stuff. Here is a list of everything in my bag- you suggest what to toss, keeping in mind the weight of the object, how much I will need it in the upcoming month (late september/october in italy, france, switzerland, germany, czech republic and the netherlands) and the cost of replacing it once I return home (if it needs replacing).

-Two T-shirts
-1 Golf Shirt
-1 First Aid/Laundry/Sewing/Toothbrushing/Soaping Kit (I think this should stay)
-1 bottle of shower gel (probably tossing, but I just bought it)
-1 pack of cards
-1 toque
-1 nalgene bottle
-3 Bandanas
-1 pair of pants
-2 pairs of shorts (one shorts, one that are like flood pants deals)
-one rain jacket
-1 sweatshirt
-1 rugby shirt
-flip flops
-belt
-shoes
-three pairs of socks
-three pairs of underwear
-sunglasses
-cd player/cd’s (these stay no matter what)
-journal/pens
-eurail passes (these should probably stay)

So there you have it kids, my random assortment of junk brought and accumulated along the way. Thoughts, opinions, random comments not associated with anything mentioned before or above will be greatly appreciated as always. Until next time…