Arms spread wide on the starboard bow

I left Rome pretty early for Bali, Italy to catch a boat to Greece. In Bali, I met a guy who bought me 5 (yeah, five) beers and a pizza before I got on the boat. He was probably disappointed by how well I held my liquor but I was completely sober by the time I got onto the ferry, despite his continuous attempts at distraction. Towards the end of the evening I could tell he was purposely trying to get me to miss the passenger loading, probably so that I'd have to stay the night at his place. Hah. The beer was pretty good though. And the pizza was AMAZING. Best pizza I've ever had and totally worth the increasingly awkward advances of the young dock worker.

The beers:

My boat:

On board:

So yeah, I paid for a couple hours of internet on board and then ate some cranberries and watched The Benchwarmers with Greek subtitles. It was fun. I think I was just so happy to hear American voices again that I laughed far louder than was necessary at the jokes, but the other Greeks around me were laughing pretty hard too so I didn't feel bad.

After the movie, I fell asleep on a couch in the bar area because I didn't have a cabin ticket (a lot of the other deck-only passengers did the same). Someone woke me up when we landed in Igoumenitsa at 6am but I was mostly just annoyed by that since my stop was the next one at around noon. I went into the "airplane seating" area, which is just a dark room full of airplane style, slighty reclining seats, and slept a few more hours in there since most people had gotten off. Then at around 10 I woke up and just wandered the boat until we landed. It was pretty cool when we got in close to all the Greek islands.

When we landed I was quite well rested and ready to get to Athens. Unfortunately, the guy on dock who was in charge of directing people where to go, told me and two others to wait for a bus to the bus station where we could catch a bus to Athens. I hate buses btw, but that's a different story (mostly because they aren't free like trains are for me). So, we all waited for about 40 minutes, and then one of the guys waiting with me went inside and came back out and said that the buses don't run on Sunday. Thanks dock worker guy. Jerk face.

So we three walked to the bus station. They barely spoke English but helped me figure out where to go and helped me buy my ticket to Athens as well. Very nice of them.

So I got on the bus at 3pm, fell asleep a few times, and arrived in Athens around 6pm.

There's some kind of Mardi Gras-esque holiday going on all month leading up to Lent and the riot police are keeping a close eye on it all apparently.

I wandered the allyways for a few hours looking for a hostel, and I think I'm lucky it was a holiday because there were happy, drunk people everywhere dressed up and on their way out or home. That probably kept the muggers away from me and targeting them. So I finally got to a hostel, called AthensStyle (a very nice Greek couple in their late 30's helped me find one) and crashed.

Pizza and the Colosseum

I don't really like riding Italian trains. Somehow, they're always packed and they always make me pay an 18 Euro "supplement" to ride them even though I have a Eurail pass (Kelley's leftover one, as mine was stolen). Austrian trains however, are the shit. They always have compartment cars, which I love and they're far less crowded. The dining areas are also very reasonably priced and the staff usually aren't rude.

The only redeeming quality of Italian trains? This:

If you don't get it, go play more video games. And sorry about the lack of quality; I don't have my camera or my laptop with photoshop anymore. I'll fix up the pictures when I get home.

So, after a couple train rides, I arrived in Rome pretty late at night. Arriving in a new city is always the most difficult part for me because I don't have a map yet, I don't have hostel reservations, and I'm carrying a pretty heavy backpack. So, on average, when I get to a new city, I spend about 2-4 hours wandering until I find somewhere to stay. It's usually pretty scary too. Once I find a hostel though, I'm fine. They give you free maps, wifi, somewhere to lock up your stuff, options for food, etc.

So I settled in at the Alessandro Downtown hostel. It wasn't bad, just a few minor annoyances like advertising free pizza and then telling everyone at the last minute that it's over at their other uptown hostel. Whatevs, bro.

So I went to bed after some peanut butter crackers, and had a Clif bar for breakfast the next morning. Then I went for a walk, because I prefer it to public transit, to the Colosseum.

So so cool. I learned a lot from the museum area inside too. I'm sure it's all on Wikipedia or something but it's more fun to learn when you're there I guess. Oh, and there's this:

Someone had to ruin it for everyone, Ezio. I guess one too many guards were pulled to their deaths.

After that, I basically just wandered Rome for the rest of the day.

All day it was nice and sunny and warm and good; until I got to the Vatican. As soon as I could see it, the sun went behind the clouds and everything got dreary and darkish.

(Static noise inc)



I think that sun thing is a bad sign right? I waited a while to see if the sun would come out and got some pizza and a beer from one of the wheeled vendors right outside the gate to the Vatican.

It was weird. More like a fried panini than a pizza, but it was pretty good. I do love mushrooms and pizza on all occasions.

Then I went and stood in line to go into the Sistine Chapel and all that, but oh, bummer, I couldn't go in. Apparently the Pope is on high alert for pocket knife wielding assassins, so I was denied entry. Just one more thing Ezio has ruined for me this week, but he's still my favorite Italian.

So of course after I left the Vatican, it was suddenly sunny and warm again. Whatevs. Oh, and at pretty much every major tourist attraction in Rome, there are guys dressed as Gladiators hanging around and charging you a few Euros for pictures.

After wandering for a while, getting lost for a bit, and eating a delicious hazlenut candy bar from a vending machine, I went back to the hostel and went to bed.

Goodbye mom, hello drink week

So I said goodbye to my mom, um, one night? At like midnight I saw her off from Munich's main trains station to the Munich airport to catch her flight in a few hours. After that I went back to the Euro Youth Hostel, where they had let me check in earlier with my mom's passport since my was stolen. There I crashed, since mom and I had been drinking and wandering for a couple hours.

We drank a bottle of wine on the train from Garmisch. Wait no, I drank that bottle of Moscato. Then we wandered the Marian Platz with the two beers she had in her backpack. Isn't she adorbz?

Then we went to the Galleria underground mall/Wal Mart thing and looked at suuuuper expensive alcohol.

Yeah, those bottle are both over 500 USD each.

Then we went to the Hofbrauhaus again and I had delicious white sausage with sweet mustard. Two things I usually don't like! Success!

So yeah, I spent the week in Munich barely doing anything but going to Aldi and drinking at nights with new friends. I met a LOT of cool people that week and was sober enough to remember to Facebook a few of them.

So yeah, also saw a party bus?

And then said goodbye to Munich to head for the eternal city.

Catch Up Part 2: Venice

From here the picture quality is going to decrease slightly because my camera charger was stolen and I'm now using my mom's camera and laptop. Thanks mom! It's my fault really for not buying her a better camera but the Fuji Waterproof is more suited to her needs in Iraq (it's drop proof and more weatherproof than most).

Soooo, I took my mom on a weekend trip to Venice while in between her Arabic classes and I must say, it was pretty spectacular. If Venice were in northern Europe, I would consider moving there.

Here's the view from our hotel window. Does it not make you just want to climb all over the rooftops?!

I totally could've made the jump across the 3 foot alleyway below but my mom probably would have closed the window behind me. But yeah, if the Parisian catacombs were like World of Warcraft, Venice is like, getting dropped straight into Ezio Auditore's body. Or mind. You know what I mean, you've played it. I mean, this is a terrible picture, but check out the dottore mask in the window here. And there were everywhere since Carnivale was going on. People were dressed up everywhere; I just didn't want to stop them to ask for pics.

And here are few more pictures, just because they're pretty and/or climbable.

So yeah, we didn't get to stay long because the train was about 5 hours and my mom had to back for class on Monday but it was all very rad, albeit cold. And a bit expensive but what do you expect? It was fun.

Catch Up

Here's the post where I pretend that all of my procrastination (not updating) over the past couple weeks is just because my backpack was stolen and not because I'm just suddenly lazy any time I'm within 50 feet of a wifi connection.

Time seems to move very slowly here and I'm having a really hard time remembering what happened after my last blog post. It feels like it was months ago. So, for that exact reason and also because I don't want to include a bunch of information about my family's vacation without their consent, I'm going to leave out about a week's worth of activities and instead give a short recap. (However, all my pictures from Norway until last weekend were on the stolen laptop so all I have now are the pics on this blog and the ones I've already uploaded to Facebook.)

We stayed 3 nights at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort (stock photo) and then a week in the Edelweiss cabin "Vacation Village". Apparently, in this context "village" means "place where the bathrooms are 100 yards away through a field of treacherous snow and ice".

And then, I'm pretty sure stuff happened. Um. Wow, I'm having a really hard time remembering things right now. This is my second day in a row of being hungover though. And I haven't had a single drink in over 36 hours. Drinking really does kill brain cells, kids. Obviously. Or maybe it's because I've always had a really bad memory and now I don't have pictures to look at to remind me what happened.

Oh, I remember getting really drunk and then going on a super early tour of a Monastery/Brewery in Ettal the next morning. And I threw up in the bathroom of a cheese factory there. I'm really not an alcoholic but Germans must just buy each other drinks like crazy.

So skip ahead a but, Rob and Kelley went back to the states, while I stayed in Garmisch with the moms. But shhh. Don't tell anyone I stayed with her; I wasn't supposed to I don't think.

From there I took a three day trip to Paris. The catacombs were sososo cool. I seriously felt like I was in World of Warcraft.

(Shameless plug of my youtube video, which oddly enough was recorded exactly one year ago minus one day! Neato!)



I also stayed in a really lame hostel there called St. Christopher's Inn, which has a high rating on hostelbookers.com but I kinda didn't like. The bar downstairs was overpriced and there was literally someone going into or coming out of my room every single hour all night long. Plus it was 25 Euro a night and my room had like 10 Italians in it. At this point, I'm kind of sick of anyone who comes from a romantic language country. Totes don't understand why women have fantasies about French/Spaniards/Italians. Yuck, imo.

I wish I had my pictures.

After that trip I took another 3 or 4 day trip, this time to Florence, Italy. Florence itself was actually a little boring. The architecture was pretty cool in some places and reminded me Assassin's Creed (as I'm sure most of Italy will) but I only spent one night there. The next morning I took an early train to Pisa, and spent about an hour there before getting on a train back to Florence so that I could catch another back to Garmisch. Well, I don't really like remembering this part, but my backpack was stolen on this train so I got to spend the next 15 straight hours in Florence train station, trying to get someone to help me get my bag back. The people working for the station were the most rude and douche-y people I've ever met. I was literally crying and they basically told me to fuck off because bags get stolen there all the time. They wouldn't even call the police for me OR tell me where the police station was. Later that night I took a train back to Pisa to try to get them to help me but they gave the same response. By sheer accident I found an English speaking (barely) policeman outside the station in Pisa who gave me a phone number of a lost and found to call and then left me there at midnight with nothing. I got back on another train to Florence since I couldn't see any hotels in sight in Pisa.

On the train I met a guy who looked like he was either homeless or had been travelling for a lot longer than I had been. I never asked because his English wasn't great. But we could talk about basic stuff. Sadly, my Italian is limited to understanding sheet music annotations. When we got to Florence, he asked if I knew where I was staying yet, and I said I was just going to try to sleep in the station. Btw, sleeping in train stations SUCKS because they are all completely open to where trains come in and so are freezing in February. He said that if you were sneaky, you could get on a train that was already done making trips for the night and sleep a lot better there and so I followed him.

Please note, that I did have my pocket knife on me, and I am (mostly) not retarded.

The train we got on already had two people sleeping on it so he slept a couple spaces down from one and I slept in the area across from him. He noticed that I only had a small hoodie so he let me borrow his super thick sweater (made in Nepal and very warm) as a blanket and eventually ended up giving it to me. Nice.

It was a lot warmer than outside but I still just kinda dozed because I didn't want to get murdered or some shit. But the next day he bought me tea and a delicious warm milk drink with honey it and then I said goodbye to him after getting on a train to Innsbruck. It was all very interesting-frightening.

So yeah, that's most of what's happened lately, but I think I'll split this blog post in two since it's already a wall of tl;dr.

Blog Hiatus

My backpack was stolen off a train somewhere between Florence and Livorno, Italy. It had my laptop, passport, train ticket and a bunch of other stuff in it so I probably won't be updating this blog any more until I get home.