Mr. National’s Travel Blog

Yeah…. a week late, but here are some updates.

Finally made it to Paris for New Year’s.  It’s been on my list of things to do before I die for a while, and I can finally cross it off.  Unfortunately, I think I built it up in my head, and it wasn’t able to deliver.

First off, I usually like traveling alone, but for some reason it felt like I should have had company.  Theresa was initially supposed to meet me here, but she procrastinated on getting a hostel, and there weren’t any available, so she stayed in Marsielle for New Years.

Then… I initially wanted to go up to Sacre Coure cathedral and get a nice view over the city and watch the fireworks from there, but fog was going to get in the way.  I checked weather.com and said PM fog, so I scrapped that idea.  No point being up there if I can’t see anything.  I decided to go with my second choice of Champ de Mars below the Eiffel Tower.

I wandered around Paris taking in Sacre Couer and Montmatre before taking a nap and venturing out again about 6pm.  I walked down Champs de Elysees to see the Arc de Triumph, Place de la Concord, the huge ferris wheel, before heading to Dome des Invaldies and finally the Eiffel Tower.  I got there about 9pm, which was a perfect time to get a good spot, before the thousands of people got there.  The only problem was staying outside in 20 degrees for 3 hours.

The Eiffel Tower was lit up all blue with 12 gold stars, which made it look like the EU symbol, which I’m sure was the point.  Every half hour it would light up with little white lights flashing all over the tower.  It was ok.  Nice change of view while waiting for the new year. It finally came around, with the gold stars going out, one by one, as a countdown.  I was really excited.  Couldn’t wait to see all the fireworks. A couple years ago, I had seen a video of a new year celebration where fireworks were shooting out of the bottom two floors and up in the air from the top.   The only problem was that there were no fireworks.  Anywhere in Paris, well, professional ones anyways.  There were some Parisians lighting up their own.  All that happened was the  same white lights lighting up until the tower gradually went from blue to the normal orangeish light.

Disappointed and cold (I think my body temp was probably 95 degrees), I decided to down the bottle of champagne I had and head back to the hostel.  Thankfully the metro was still running and was free for new years.

The other several days were relatively uneventful.    I’ve been to Paris before and hit up most of the major sights, so I just spent those days wandering around and trying to find interesting things that are kind of off the beaten path.

The last day (the 2nd), Theresa finally made it to Paris, so we spent the evening checking out the some of the main sights until she got to cold to stay out anymore.  Thank god for the buses.  It’s pretty hard to cheat the metro in Paris, but thankfully the buses don’t check for passes…

Next stop was Bruges.

So I arrived at Santa Apolonia station for my 4pm train ride to Paris.  I was extremely surprised to see only a handful of people getting on the train. I got to my assigned seat and had it all to myself. The happiness I figured would be short lived because the next stop was Lisbon Oriente, which is the main station for international trains.  Again, to my surprise, only a handful of people got on, and none of them were in my cabin.  I couldn’t control my happiness.  I hate sharing cabins with people.  I never feel comfortable falling asleep with all my stuff lying around, especially my laptop and railpass. 

Two more stops, 6pm, almost no one got on. I finally decided to relax, close the door, and try to get some sleep.  This was just in time for the next stop, in which I could hear the hordes of people getting on the train.  Several seconds later, 4 people who I could only describe as looking like Gremlin junkies, came into my cabin and started throwing their stuff around.  Motherfucker!!! Out of all the people I could have had to share my cabin with, and it was junkies.  At that moment I resigned any idea of me getting any sleep that night.  I stayed awake, carefully guarding my things.  The entire night they kept bouncing off the walls, opening and closing the window, opening and closing the door, going out to the walkway, then back in again.  I was seriously thinking about jumping out the window, and if I survived, walking to Paris.

The 3 guys finally went to the bar and left their girl friend there. The entire time she kept staring at me.  I was actually kind of scared.  To make things worse, she kept sneezing without covering her nose, and then she coughed and, like in super slow motion, I could see a huge ball of mucus/snot/spit flying at me and landed on my knee.  Not so much as an “I’m Sorry”.  She just stared at me.  Can’t wait to see what kind of disease I contract from that.  Maybe some TB or a little syphilis or something.

Later when she feel asleep, if I had any thoughts of falling asleep, they would have gone out the window because she was probably the loudest snorer ever.  On top of that, I was mesmerized by the constant waterfall of drool running down her chin, soaking the front of her shirt.  Thankfully the guys stayed in the bar, and she slept through most of the rest of the trip until Hendaye station where I transferred trains to Paris.

Got to Lisbon on the 27^th about 7:30am and got to Rossio square about 8:00.  The night before, when I left my hostel, I checked the directions on and it implied it was right on Rossio Square above the Metro stop, so I decided I didn’t need to find a pen and paper to write down the directions, I would be able to spot it when I got there.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t RIGHT there.  I wandered around for an hour looking down all the different alleyways for anything saying Rossio Hostel, but it was no use.  Couldn’t find it anywhere and the worse part is, it started to rain, right when I walked out of the Metro stop.  I finally found an internet café and looked up the address.  It was right in Rossio Square, the only problem was, in order to find it, you have to look at the doorbells.  That’s the only place that says anything about it being a hostel.  Nothing on the door, outside wall, nothing. 

I finally got in, was given my room, and took a shower.  By the time I was done, it was pouring, so I was forced to stay inside the first day.  Even if it was nice out the next day, I wasted 1 day getting there, 1 day inside because of the rain, and 1 more day getting to Paris.  I highly doubted that the next day would be worth all the hassle…

The next day I woke up to the sound of rain.  Many cuss words were going through my head.  Got up, took a shower, and decided that no matter how hard it was raining, I had to go out and see Lisbon.  Thankfully it stopped raining by the time I was done showering.

I headed out to Castle of St. George.  Pretty impressive.  With student discount it was only 2.50 Euros, and it had nice views and provided over an hour of places to wander through.  My mind kept going while with images of the castle under siege, pretending I was there. 

Later I checked out Place de Commercio, and got a beer in Rossio Square before meeting up with Gun Sil, one of the girls I had class with.  We headed out to Belem, saw the Monument of Discoveries, Belem Tower, and had little custard pastries that Lisbon is famous for.  We later got a bite to eat and wandered around a little more.  I mentioned how much I wanted to go back to Asia, and she really tried selling Korea.  She filled me in on opportunities in Korea for English tutors if I wanted to spend a lot of time over there.  Pretty tempting.  $50/hour with meals and stuff included.   After that she headed back to the house that she was couchsurfing at.  I had to get ready for another extremely long train ride to Paris the next day.  22 Hours!

I know I’m several days late, but it’s been a pain in the ass to find internet that is cheap and that I can use long enough to write something.  So anyways… the headache that was my trip to Barcelona…

Since I was able to get internet access in Florence, I checked my train schedule at www.bahn.de, just to make sure that the train would be running.  It told me that I was able to catch a 7pm train from Milan to Barcelona, non-stop and arrive in Barcelona at 11am.  So the next day I said goodbye to Theresa who was heading to Cinque Terre, and I headed to Milan.  Got there around 1pm, with plenty of time to get my reservation and maybe go check out “The Last Supper.”  I didn’t find out until later that I wouldn’t have been able to anyways because you have to get a reservation in advance.  Anyways, I went to get my reservation, just to find out that bahn.de lied to me.  There was no train to Barcelona that day and the information desk wasn’t any help.  They apparently have no access to anything outside Italy.  Thanks to some logistical support from home though, I was able to get to Geneva, Tolousse, Narbonne, then onto Barcelona and arrived about 1pm.  Not as fun as a non-stop train that I could sleep through.

Expecting everything to be closed because it was Christmas Eve, I thought I would just do laundry and post some pics, but found out that everything was open.  Didn’t see anything closed, except for the laundry place across the street from the hostel.  So I decided to spend my time seeing some of the sights.  We’ll part of them at least.  Much to my disappointment, the Sangrada Familia was about 70% covered because of construction and the towers were closed.  On top of that, they wanted 10 Euros to get in.  Decided against it because I figured my disappointment was bound to follow me inside.  I walked back to my hostel, taking in some sights along the way.  My hostel was right around the corner from Las Ramblas, the pedestrian boulevard and one of the major places to wander around in Barcelona.  Got to see artists, living statues, scammers (the find the ball under the cup kind), and other stuff.  Even saw a place selling live chickens, pigeons, and other weird “pets”.  Later that night I had dinner down by the waterfront under the Columbus statue, before heading back to my hostel and crashing.  The train ride didn’t provide for much sleep.

The next day, Christmas Day, everything except Las Ramblas seemed to be closed, so I wandered around there again, tried to check out the Gothic Cathedral, but it was 100% closed due to reconstruction.  It didn’t even have the picture of it on the outside of the scaffolding like many other places do.  With nothing else to do, I headed back to my hostel and watched the movie Hostel before going to bed early to get going to Lisbon the next day.  I wasn’t too impressed with Barcelona.  Wished I would have chosen a different, more Spanish, city.  From what I saw on Madrid on my layover to Lisbon, I think I would have liked that much better.

We took one of the trains to Florence just after we checked out of the hotel. We got to Florence around 3pm, dropped our stuff of at the hostel, and headed to Pisa before dark. After some gelato, we took some of those really cheesy pics of holding the tower up, leaning against it, and in my case, pushing it down. It really is cheesy, but it felt like I had to do it. Theresa agreed. After the pictures, I tried getting up to the top, but it had closed 15 minutes earlier. Oh well.

We realized we missed one of the trains, so we decided to get some dinner. Pasta and lasagna. We’re in Italy, gotta have that stuff, right? I was so happy to find out they had beer on tap, so I ordered a large just to find out that a large is 1L. The only other place I’ve seen that is in Bavaria. Even in Northern Germany a large is .5L. I was so happy, until I found out it was 12.50 Euros. The most expensive beer I’ve ever paid for. Oh well. It was good. Would have really sucked if it was some crappy beer.

We made our way back to Florence and checked out our magnificent hostel, PLUS hostel. If anyone is planning on going there, you have to stay at that hostel. 13 Euros/night for a 7 person dorm. Included is a gym, pool, sauna, laundry facilities, internet, a restaurant, pub, among other stuff. Each room had a bathroom ensuite. Definitely one of, if not, the best hostel I’ve ever stayed at.

Anyways, we set out the next morning to see the Ponte Vecchio, Dante’s church, a couple squares, and of course, Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore and the Duomo. That thing is freaking amazing. While the inside of the cathedral isn’t anything spectacular (except for the inside of the dome, which very much is), the views after we made our way the 463 steps to the top, were fantastic. Later we made our way to get something to eat. Our fabulous map, provided by the hostel, told us that there was a Mexican restaurant close by. Our mouths started watering. We walked all the way there just to find out it was closed. Luckily there was a pretty good Chinese place around the corner. Chinese is another one of those ethnic foods you don’t realize how much you need them until you don’t have them anymore.

After dark we made our way to Piazza Michelangelo to check out a night view of the city and to check out one of the copies of David. The original, in the Gallerie d’Accademia, was closed on Mondays. We decided to take the bus, and since we were riding without tickets, after 45 minutes we got nervous, figured we were close, and got off to walk the rest of the way. We were wrong. We walked some of the way, but ended up getting on another bus. After taking in the views, we figured it was shorter to walk, so we headed back to the hostel to turn in for the night. Had to get ready for the headache that was the Italian train system the next day…

I’ll upload pics tomorrow when I do my Barcelona post…

After my 16 hour train ride from Luneburg to Munich and finally to Venice, I arrived about 6:40am (Dec. 19^th), just before sun up.  I had to wait for a couple of hours before checking into the hotel, so I decided to wander around.  Even before the sun came up, I could tell Venice would crack my list of Top 5 Cities.  I crossed the Scalzi bridge and wandered around Santa Croce for a while before finally checking into the Hotel Adua.  I got there and my room wasn’t ready, so some other guy who was there offered to let me stay in one of his 3 rooms, which were right around the corner.  On the way he asked if I wanted a big room or a small room.  I was kind of confused on the fact he thought he had to ask.  Before I could respond, he said “For you, Big room!”  Ended up finding out that it had two twin beds pushed together and 2 feet of room on all sides.  I would have hated to see what the small rooms were.

I ended up taking a nap before meeting Theresa, who was flying to Venice from Hamburg, outside the hotel.  We dropped her stuff off in our room and took off.  We knew the general direction we were going, south.  We figured we’d wander around and find stuff to see.  We were kind of right.  The alleys ended up being one of the favorites of the trip.  It was really fun.  We’d go down alleys that we were sure would be dead ends, just to find them lead to awesome squares or major canals.  We arrived at St. Mark’s Basilica after dark.  We decided to head back to the hotel after getting something to eat and stopping by an internet café. 

It’s kind of weird.  In Italy, there is a law, supposedly helping to protect against terrorism, pedophilia, and piracy, where you have to register and give a copy of your passport to use a computer with internet access.  Plus it is like 3 Euros/15 minutes.  Needless to say, internet access was kept at a minimum. 

Anyways, after we left the internet café we made a bet on how long it was going to take us to get back to the hotel without using a map.  I put the over/under at 3 hours.  Theresa thought it would be no problem, so she took the under.  It only took us an hour and a half of wandering to end up at St. Mark’s basilica, so heading directly back shouldn’t have been a problem.  Unfortunately, for an hour and a half, we somehow got turned around and ended up south of St. Mark’s instead of north towards the hotel.  To make things worse, we ran into our own little “Luxembourg Square,” which like our roadtrip in Luxembourg, had it’s own little gravitational pull from which we couldn’t escape.  We ended up in the square probably 5 or 6 times.  By then we were actually able to read the signs right, and found our way towards the train station and onto the hotel.  We ended up at the front door at 3 hours and 2 minutes.  I won! : )

The next day we headed back to St. Mark’s Basilica.  On the way we found an outdoor food market, so we got some clementines, bread, cheese, bananas, and some chips.  Then we ate our feast in St. Mark’s square while being harassed by pigeons.  Fucking things wouldn’t leave us alone.  They were climbing all over our bags and even Theresa.  They wouldn’t even leave us alone when we hit them with the bag of peels, so we hurried up and went inside the basilica.  Got to check out the altar where St. Mark’s bones are supposedly beneath.  The story says that his bones were smuggled out of Alexandria, Egypt by boat and brought to Venice a barrel of pork.  Unfortunately I have no pictures because they weren’t allowed.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around.  This time, since we were able to read the signs right, we wandered in a much less lost way.  We also sampled some delicious gelato.  For anyone in Venice, I really recommend the Nutella gelato.  Delicious.

On December 17th, I had my final room check, but I planned to leave on the 18th.  Fortunately, I was able to stay in my room after it, but they took my key, so I couldn’t leave.  After going crazy from bored in my room, Theresa was able to come over after her final and make some pumpkin pie.  Thank god!  It had been so long since I’ve had pumpkin pie, and no one should go through this season without pumpkin pie.  Thankfully, my mother was kind enough to send me a care package with pumpkin pie filling, as they don’t have any here.  I asked a professor of mine where to get a pumpkin pie, and he looked at me confused.  He had never heard of it.  Germans!  They don’t know what they’re missing.  I started to get nervous when we didn’t have all the ingredients though.  No brown sugar or ginger?  No problem, we don’t need them.  The recipe is wrong.  The recipe was in American measurements?  No problem, we’ll just guesstimate.  No pie pans?  No problem, let’s just use these glass bowls.  Don’t know what temperature to use?  Ummm, 200 degrees Celsius sounds good.  I was so nervous.  I finally got a chance to have pumpkin pie, and I could already see the disaster that was about to happen.

We ended up making two small pies with the amount of mix we had, which was perfect.  One for her and one for me.  Plus if we screwed up on one, we had another to try to correct.  They ended up both being amazing!  I don’t see the point to ever use measurements or recipes again.  Just use what your best guess is, and it turns out great.  She also turned me on to real whipped cream.  I always end up with generic, out of the can kind, but real whipped cream was phenomenal.  It only took up 20 minutes because he couldn’t find a beater, so we did it by hand.  Either way, still worth the trouble.  We also ended up finally cracking open my bottle of champagne that I got in Reims, as a celebration for my graduation and her being done with the semester.  It was fun.  I ended up hitting 2 walls and my wardrobe with the cork.  You could really do some serious damage with that.  Ended up not spilling a drop though, so that was nice.  I was impressed with myself.

After some drinking and talking about plans, since we were done with school, I ended up deciding to abandon my Croatia and Slovenia trips and to tag along with her to Venice and Florence before heading back north and over to Spain and Portugal before meeting her again in Paris for New Year’s.  Well, that is the plan anyways.  It’s changed about 50 times in the last 2 weeks, so we’ll see.  Paris is definitely a go though.  No way I’m missing out on that.

Just thought I would do a little post on Christmas markets which are a pretty big thing in Germany this time of year. Many German cities have Christmas markets, and Luneburg is one of them. Christmas markets are street markets which sell things associated with Christmas. They usually start up at the beginning of the Advent season, which is the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas. The practice goes back to the Middle Ages. The one in Dresden, one of the most popular in Germany, does back to the mid-1400s. The other most famous ones are located in Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Munich.

Even though I’m not a Christmas person at all, it was still nice to see the Rathaus lit up and to go walk around with Gluhwein, a warm red wine with a touch of cinnamon and other delicious things. Some examples of which are wurst, roasted nuts, Stollen (bread with candy or fruits and nuts inside), Gingerbread, etc. Unfortunately, my being adventurous, got me introduced to Eierpunsch (Egg Punch). Definitely an acquired taste. It’s egg liquor, white wine, spices, and rum. Yeah, it is really as bad as it sounds, but Germans love it.

Anyways, here are some pics from Luneburg’s…

So 8 years and 3 majors later, I finally graduated.  And, lucky me, I got to spend it packing.  I suppose it’s better than having to sit through a 4 hour long ceremony just for the 5 second walk across the stage.  Time to bust out the $60 bottle of champagne I got in Reims.  And its time for my 3 week blitz through Europe before having to go back to the 9-5 world.

Nice title, huh?  I know, I know.  I’m a little retarded. 

So a couple of us decided we didn’t have enough problems with the first roadtrip, so we decided to try one more before the semester ended.  And we decided to take Derek along this time.  This time we went to Prague.  We had planned on hitting up Belgium and Luxembourg, but that was before the hell we went through driving through it to France.  This time, unlike the last, we ended up with issues, and then it got better. 

I had decided to rent the car out of Hannover since it is closer to Prague than Hamburg.  Plus, since we all have passes that are good for all of Neidersachsen, we could get there free.  Awesome idea, right?  Nope.  Because I have a eurail pass, I was able to take the ICE train that was an hour and a half early to get the car, and wait for everyone else to get there.  I called Theresa after their train was supposed to have left, and she informed me that Julian was not on the train.  To make things worse, he missed the next two trains, so we had to drive all the way back to Luneburg (a hour and a half away) to pick his ass up, then turn back and head back the same way to get to Prague. 

That was pretty much the only issue, except for Keith being caught speeding on two videotape traps.  We’ll have to see if the tickets make it back to me, since my name is associated with the plates.  We made it to Prague with no issues, in fact we made it all the way to about a mile away from the hotel before we got lost.  Then a fun 30 min followed of us trying every direction that we could think of.  We ended up stopping at a gas station and I went in to ask for directions.  Of course the cashier spoke neither English or German, so I ended up buying a map for about 6 dollars.  All that work just to find out that we were only about 3 minutes away from the hotel…

We got to the hotel and parked, just to be yelled at that we were in the VIP parking.  We then got into the hotel at 9am, just to be told that we can’t check in until 2pm.  No problem, we’ll mess around in the casino.  Nope, closed.  Fine, we’ll change some money, get a bus and metro pass and go into town.  Nope, they don’t exchange money until noon.  Mother F#&*!er!  So we ended up walking the half mile to the closest metro station and found an ATM. 

We wandered through Wenceslas Square, the Christmas Market and the Old Town Square, and the St. Charles Bridge before getting something to eat and heading back to the hotel to check in.  Of course the day wouldn’t be complete without one last problem.  It was the same scumbag at the desk when we got back.  I thought that it was just me, but later we found in the room that the previous guests thought the employees treated Americans like crap, so maybe it wasn’t just me.  Anyways, he told me that he only had my name in the computer for 1 room for 3 beds.  Nope.  Thankfully I had my printout of my reservation and wasn’t budging.  He finally gave me the two rooms and Derek, Keith, and Julian were able to go to sleep.  Theresa and I ended up watching CNN (and she slept) for about an hour and a half before Theresa and I went out to wander around Prague.  I thought it was funny.  The two people who have actually been to Prague before (me twice, and her once) were the ones going out while the other 3 slept the rest of the day.

Theresa ended up taking pictures around the city and of the castle.  Then we just randomly walked around looking for a restaurant.  Thankfully, because of my small bladder, we found an awesome place with really cheap beer and awesome food.  As Theresa has said, I ordered enough food to feed an army, but with our two main courses, two appetizers, and a total of 2 liters of beer, and it came to less than $30.

On our 12:30am bus ride back, we ended up seeing Derek, Julian, and Keith walking away from our hotel.  Unfortunately for them, we were on the last bus, and there was no way they were walking into town.  It was then that we realized that none of our phones worked properly, so they had to figure it out the hard way and walk all the way back.

The next day was pretty much devoted to sightseeing.  Keith had friends in town, so he ended up staying with them and we made an appointment to meet later.  We checked out the Prague Castle, were Julian and I were able to shoot an authentic medieval cross bow.  I think I did pretty well for how bad the aim was.  And the fact that it was like 25 ft. away.  Got all five on the paper, which is more than I can say for Julian.  Later we checked out the Jewish Cemetary, which was closed and ended up looking at through the gate.  Later we got some more food and beer at the Christmas market before meeting back up with Keith in Wenceslas Square.

Keith ended up deciding to stay out with his friends all night.  Which was nice because I got the feeling his friends would have annoyed the hell out of me.  Plus Theresa’s Czech friend Helena met up with us.  She took us out to some pretty cool bars which were COMPLETELY off the beaten path.  Wasn’t sure how anyone was supposed to find the first one…

After like 20 beers, 8 shots, and 6 hours later, we had to get home in order to catch the last metro and bus to our hotel.  Plus I knew eventually I was going to get sick because the shots were Apple Schapps type shots.  Mixing beer and sugary liquor is never a good idea for me.  Plus there was no way we were walking 10 miles back to the hotel.  It was so sad.  Helena was almost to tears when we said we had to leave. 

After the 30 minute metro ride, we got back to our station, just in time for me to puke on the tracks.  I know that I need to stay away for sugary liquor, but it never happens.  Then we ended up walking back to the hotel and debating whether we should leave Keith behind if he wasn’t back by 11am the next day.  Much to our surprise he was already passed out in his bed when we got back.

Our ride back was pretty uneventful.  No real problems, except for the weather.  We went through all 4 seasons driving back.  1st we hit cloudy, gray, cold weather.  Then lots of snow, then rain.  Later we hit nice and sunny weather before ending back up in cloudy, cold Hanover.  All within like 6 hours.