Foreign Affairs

Never on Sundays

2009-09-09T20:10:20Z

June 12:
Slept in of course as we were so tired from the month's journeys. We woke up around noon, filed some pictures on our computers, and then had some feta cheese and tomato omelettes. Afterwards we tried the shower for the first time. Needless to say, it's not the Hilton.

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You turn it on, wait for it to warm up, and then hold it while you bathe. And get the whole bathroom wet. It's a step above waiting for it to rain. Still, it gets the job done and will make me appreciate first world countries all the more when we get home. We also took some last shots of the apartment. Here's our bedroom.

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And leading off from our bedroom is a sliding glass door to the balcony.

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The balcony goes all the way around the apartment, so you can look into any of the rooms from the outside. Here's Annie looking in the kitchen!

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The only bad thing is we're on the back of the building so we don't really have any great views. Here's a shot of the building from the street. You can see how the balconies go around, but you can't see ours as we're on the exact opposite corner from where the pictures is being taken.

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Around 3:30 we finally headed out to walk down to the school. Once outside it was incredibly hot. There would be no random walking around today, only business. We headed straight to our school. It's directly down the street our apartment is on, only about a ten minute walk. Not bad.

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It's pretty nice. Three stories, lots of classrooms. Annie and I each have our own classrooms for the year. It's nice to not have to move around. Plus, we can leave our materials in the classroom rather than dragging them around with us.

After checking out the school we did a little shopping for necessities and then went home. We mostly lazed around the apartment, snacking, nap, reading, etc. Once the sun went down we headed out again. We walked down the street directly to the marina and turned left along the water. From the pier you can see clearly across the water to Turkey, only a few miles in the distance. It's beautiful watching the sunset and then the lights from Bodrum, the city on the other side of the water, come on.

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After checking out 'Old Town', where most of the shops in Kos are, we headed home for a feta and veggie dinner.

June 13:
Went for a long walk after sleeping in until 1:30. We wanted to see if we could find an internet cafe as the internet in the school and our apartments wasn't hooked up yet. No dice finding the cafe, but we did find a giant Greek flag.

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It was also while walking around this day we realized that there are more cats than insects on the island.

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Everywhere you go on the island there are many stray cats. Sometimes solitary, sometimes in packs, sometimes missing an eye. Everywhere. Mostly they're cute and we haven't been attacked yet, which is good. Still, the day they decide to have an uprising, the numbers are on their side.

Around this time the heat got to us again. From the first day we landed (until the time of my writing this which is September 9th) there was not a single cloud in the sky and the temperature was anywhere from 78-90 degrees. Every, single, day. Makes going to the beach nice, but just walking around town is like approaching Hell from the desert. Any chance to hunker down in some shade, even if only for a minute, is a relief. Here's me cowering in the shade of the ancient fortress on the tip of the island facing Turkey.

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The last thing we saw as we headed home was the cute mass transit system they have in place for the tourists who come here. It's a long train that you can take from the center of the city to the archeological sites on the outskirts of town, too far to walk. For a small price you can hop on and hop off anytime you want.

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We spent the rest of the daylight hours watching Peep Show and washing up. When we went out again for dinner, we chose a cafe by the water. We brought our laptop since any cafe you eat at has wireless internet. We watched the lights from Turkey reflect on the water while having a nice dinner and checking our e-mail for the first time since being on the island. We had some ice cream for desert and then went home.

June 14:
After watching a movie on our laptop we went our to lunch with Pamela, her husband, and daughter. The father told us to call him 'Teles'. Short for Aristoteles. That's right, the guy's name in America would be Aristotle. Awesome.

They took us to a beautiful restaurant right on the water. It was empty because of the time we chose to go. For lunch they didn't order one dish each. Instead, they ordered a bunch of dishes and everyone just shared. Way too much food to go around, it was crazy. Appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, etc.

After lunch Teles went home with Dmitra while Pamela drove us down the coast to show us the area. She pointed out the entrance to the hot springs on the island, drove us through a Turkish settlement in the middle of the island, pointed out various restaurants, and even showed us where an internet cafe was. Really helped us get an idea of our area. After getting home we relaxed a bit because she wanted to have her first meeting with me concerning classes the next morning at 10:30.

June 15:
I got up around 9:40 and went to school while Annie stayed behind to rest. As I said, the facility is everything you need, tons of reference books, photocopier, etc. Pamela showed me which books I'd be using and gave me a set of keys to get into the building so I could come whenever I wanted to do lesson plans and such.

After work I went home to get Annie. We went to the internet cafe to check up with our families and then had lunch at the taverna directly across the street from our apartment. The family that owns it is friends with the Patouris, so they were nice to us. After a quick nap following lunch, I took Annie back to the school to show her my room. Along the way we found the wall of snails. I was a bit put off.

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It confused me how such a large number of snails could survive so close together on a wall that provided absolutely no obvious form of nutrition.

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Some of them even did it while fully exposed to the sun without cooking.

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While walking this way, which we hadn't gone before, we also found the large church that this end of the island uses for most of their religious functions. It's quite massive, and dominates the street that it's on.

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Once at school I did a few things and then talked to Pamela for a bit about my classes again. She also showed us her garden in the back of the school. It's a vegetable garden where she grows eggplants, tomatoes, green peppers, mint, etc. Periodically throughout the summer she would harvest the garden and give us a bunch of veggies to take home with us. Of course, you have to watch out for cocks who try and steal your food.

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After walking around the school and then the old town again for a bit Annie and I sat down at another cafe. The waiter was nice and asked us how long we were staying. When we told him he was surprised, as he mostly meets tourist. He said the summers are beautiful but that it only rains throughout the winter. That made me happy. We spent the meal drinking wine and feeding some of the cats that came to our table. It was fun since they aren't very bothersome, but quite receptive to any handouts they get.

June 16:
I had to go to school again in the morning to get some things prepared for class. Annie showed up at 11 to surprise me since it was my birthday. :)
She had dropped our laundry off on the way to school and wanted to look up a recipe on the internet for me for dinner. We don't have a laundry machine in our apartment and there isn't a proper laundromat anywhere near our apartments. Across the street there is a man who owns a small laundry facility who is friends with Pamela's family. So we just drop our clothes off there every week and he washes and folds them for us. Since we're with the family, he even gives us a discount, knowing we'll come the whole year. It's nice to not have to worry about doing the laundry. Plus, since we don't have cell-phones or cars or anything, it's our only real monthly expense outside of food.

We were home by one and Annie gave me her present. It was an absolutely amazing video she made for me. It's not up on youtube since she used copyrighted songs to make it, but if anyone wants to see it, just get in touch with our families, they all have copies. We then went to the internet cafe and I got to chat with Dana for a bit. Then we went to the beach for the first time. The water was a bit cold, but it was a beautiful day and eventually you got over it. The beach was sandy, but from three feet before you get in the water until about five feet into the water it's rocks, making entering and exiting the water without looking like a tool extremely difficult.

We picked up the laundry on the way home and settled in for the night. I hung up the birthday cards and other cards from home in our kitchen next to the map of where we live.

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Annie finished making dinner while I did that and then we sat down to her movie she made and a birthday meal of macaroni and cheese!

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Go away and procreate

2009-08-31T20:53:52Z

June 10 (still) - 11:
The annoying part about the Athens airport, besides the layover, was that we had to exit the terminal and then re-enter through the main gate. That meant security check again, carry-on check, shoe check, etc. Luckily our luggage was transferred to a holding area for the next flight, so we didn't have to collect all that again, but it was still annoying.

Annie slept in the main lobby and in the waiting area for our flight when we made it through security. As I stayed up all night watching our stuff, when we finally boarded our flight, I passed out. I don't remember anything about it.

We landed at the airport, which was pretty small. Only one runway, but then again I guess they don't get much air traffic. Just lots of tourist planes during the summer and that's it. We picked up our bags and met Pamela at the front gate. She paid a cabbie to take our bags for us while we hopped into her car. The drive to the town was about a half hour, as the airport is in the middle of the island and our school is in the main town at the tip of the island. As we drove into town, Pamela kept pointing out all the people and businesses. She knows or is related to most of the people in the town.

We made it to our building, which is three levels. The whole first floor is a tailor shop and apartment owned by her father-in-law. He's supposedly very well known for his work, and we see him in hist store at all hours working or passing the time with some friends. On the second floor is Pamela's apartment on one side and her neighbor on the other. The third floor contains about four or five apartments, which means they're a bit smaller than Pamela's. That's fine with us, as we're used to living in close quarters.

She showed us around very quickly so as to give us time to settle in. She just explained how to use the oven, showed us how well she cleaned to prepare for us, and pointed out the food she stocked us with. When we left we took an inventory and were quite impressed. We had a number of different fruits and veggies, a full tray of eggs, bottles of wine (red and white), a bottle of Johnny Walker red, a cake, and some cooking supplies (sugar, olive oil, etc.) The bed in the apartment was new, as was the oven. Here's the entry way. The door leads to the hallway, the door to the left to our bedroom.

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This is our kitchen, taken from the entrance.

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Here's our tiny bathroom. The shower is behind the curtain on the right.

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To shower, you pull the curtain across the whole room and hold the shower while you do your cleansing, as it's not attached to the wall. Attaching it to the wall isn't really an option because then the water would be directed out of the shower area and get the whole room drenched all the time. As we were too tired to go out, Pamela brought us some food she had made for her family.

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We took brief showers and caught a nap to rejuvenate. At around 7:30 we went for a walk with Pamela and her daughter, Dmitra. They showed us the beach (about two blocks from our house) and the downtown area. While we were walking, Dmitra pointed out a tree in town that her grandfather had planted, further reinforcing the idea her family has been here a while. We stopped in a shoe store so Annie and Dmitra could try on shoes while Pamela conversed with the owner. Annie said she liked the pair she had on, so Pamela bought them for her!

We then went to a nice outdoor cafe for coffee. I don't drink coffee, so I got a milkshake. While sitting there, random people would come up and say hi to Pamela. On the way home, we made one final stop at the local ice cream place, which was delicious. Pamela got us cones and we walked on home.

Once in the apartment we settled in for the night. The only other thing that happened was when Annie was sampling some of the food from the fridge. Pamela had left us a dish of figs, which Annie had never eaten before. While eating them, she remarked that they tasted just like fig newtons. A minute later, she realized why they were called fig newtons.

I found Berlin

2009-08-31T18:31:46Z

June 8:
Finished packing all our belongings to head back to our starting point, England. Checked our internet in the morning, caught a subway, and headed to Gare du Nord for the Chunnel train.

The security getting on the train was like an airport, only not as well organized. Everyone had to go through a customs check, have their bags examined, etc. Only there were no ropes to control lines, so it was just a mass of people moving forward slowly. The train ride was fairly boring. The only difference between it and the other trains we'd been on the last month was that for a long time in the middle it was black outside the window.

We arrived at St. Pancras and walked back to the hostel we stayed at the first time in London. We checked in and were given the annex again, a room in a different building owned by the hostel. When we got there a man was just finishing cleaning the room, which was nice. It meant the room was clean AND we had first dibs on where we wanted to sleep. After dropping off our stuff and changing shirts, we walked down to Trafalgar Square. We didn't have time to check out the National Gallery last time we were in London, so I convinced Annie to go in because it's awesome and free. We walked around the galleries for a little while looking at the pretty pictures. Annie took a number of photographs of all her favorites (and mine!) Here's me in front of one of my faves (which I have a print of back home), the Execution of Lady Jane Grey.

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Annie gave me the camera once we got to the Van Gogh room because she wanted to look at the paintings closer. I took one picture.

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And then was promptly dressed down by a security guard who said pictures weren't allowed. Damn Annie. We hurried through the rest of the galleries, taking in the main attractions (Monet, Manet, Arnolfini Wedding) and then left. Since we had no real plans, I convinced Annie to take a little walking tour down my old stomping grounds when I lived there a decade ago. We walked down Charing Cross Road, the main street leading up to where my apartment was in Camden.

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I was quite happy I could remember where I lived. We stopped to get a picture of me in the same spot I'd been photographed before when I lived there.

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After all that walking we needed to rest and decide what to do that evening. We walked back to the theatre district because it was near our hostel. We looked around and finally decided on seeing Chicago. It was close to where we lived and we got tickets for a pretty fair price. We had a few hours to kill before the show, so we stopped in a pub for some ciders with black currant. After a few rounds, we went to a local Punjabi restaurant for dinner, which was amazing.

The theatre finally opened after dinner was over, so we went in. We were really excited because besides not paying much, we had box seats!

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The set was fairly minimalist, with the orchestra taking up most of the stage in tiered boxes. The conductor was my favorite part of the show as he was very animated and took part in some of the scenes. In addition, from our seats we could see the prompters over the audiences heads which showed the actors and orchestra what the conductor was doing. Whenever a song was performed, he would sing the whole thing while conducting, which was quite amusing. He obviously loved his gig. The only other noteworthy thing from the evening was that the male lead in the play was performed by Jerry Springer. It was amusing, but that's all, as he wasn't very good, couldn't sing, and had terrible timing.

After the play we went back to our hostel to wash up. We were back to sharing rooms with people, which wasn't really a problem except that the floor was REALLY squeaky so you felt bad whenever you moved around. Around one in the morning there was a knocking at the door. I went to check on it and it was one of our roommates who had locked himself out.

June 9:
We were downstairs by eleven partaking of the free internet and complimentary breakfast of cereal our hostel had to offer. We were checking in with Jess to see what time we'd be meeting up. We got her number and called from a pay phone covered in ads with naked women and smelling of urine. She said she'd be in town around two-ish and to meet near St. Paul's Cathedral.

We got on the Underground and headed over to the Tower Bridge, as it was the last sight I wanted Annie to see that we didn't have time for when we were in London previously. While trying to get to the bridge we saw that the Circle Line was shut down, the connection we needed to make it to our destination. We had to get out at Aldgate and walk the rest of the way. We took the requisite pictures of the bridge and then stopped for lunch. We had Indian food again because it's so good in England and we didn't know when we'd have a chance to have it again. We then hopped the tube again to meet up with Jess.

We had no real plans for the day, so we just moseyed around the city. We ended up at Covent Garden for some window shopping. There were performers there singing opera in front of one of the restaurants and one of the best signs ever in front of a store.

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We stopped at a small little shop that sold candy cupcakes. These were cupcakes that were covered with a candy glaze and had a jelly bean on top. Annie's jelly bean looked like an egg.

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I wasn't hungry but I was thirsty so I opted for a skittles milkshake. It was exactly like how it sounds. They had the standard milkshake in the blender and then added a whole package of skittles. It was amazing. While we were sitting down eating Annie and I were amused that pigeons kept attacking Jess. (Not attacking really, just flying really close to her head repeatedly. She did not like it.) I then took this shot for Amy.

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We were trying to decide what to do that night. Annie and I suggested the theatre. Jess was happy because she wanted to do that too, but thought we might not be in the mood as we saw a musical the previous night. We went to a ticket shop and got some pretty cheap seats for a performance that evening.

Since we had a lot of time before the play started, we went for a drink at the Sherlock Holmes pub. It was also the last opportunity for Annie and I to get pub food, which we love. We gave the menu a quick glance and ordered some food that looked good while avoiding others.

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After dinner we walked over to the playhouse to see:

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This is the play the movie 'The Birdcage' was based on. Our seats were cheap because they were in the back row but we could see everything perfectly anyway. The musical was fantastic. It was absolutely hysterical. The two leads were perfect in their roles. The timing for the jokes was superb, the dancing from the chorus was outstanding. All in all a great show. My favorite part was at one point one of the leads is introducing the show he puts on at his club and is talking to the audience. At one point while talking he locks eyes with an audience member. Very slowly he bends down, lifts the guys head with his hands, and kisses him full out on the lips. I thought it was so funny, given the stereotype of English people being reserved, that the audience member went along with it. It was an amazing last night in London.

After leaving the theatre we walked back to the tube with Jess. We were concerned because starting that evening a massive strike on the underground was supposed to begin. Luckily, the strike didn't affect the lines she needed to use to get back to the train station. We went with her to Euston to see her off and we walked back to our hostel.

June 10:
We woke up and checked out of our hostel by 9. The tube strike didn't affect us as we could walk to the train station from our place. We called Jess from the station and she picked us up when we reached Hemel Hempstead. We went back to her place and her parents were nice enough to let us grab showers before we repacked all our suitcases that we had left there. Jess then took us out to a lovely part of her town by the river with her brother. I particularly liked crossing the river.

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The bridge looks lovely, but apparently is evil.

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Jess took us to a restaurant she likes called Woody's. It was an organic vegetarian restaurant. Annie ordered an amazing broccoli and cheese soup and a salad with noodles. I got a delicious pizza. The waitress had a most inappropriate shirt on that didn't quite cover her fully. It was a good meal.

It was a quick jaunt back to Jess' place to say our goodbye's and grab our bags. Her car wasn't big enough for both of us and all our suitcases, so we had to take two trips. I went first with two bags to figure out which bus stop was ours (as it was at a terminal with many stops) while Jess hurried back for Annie and the rest of our luggage. While waiting, a toothless man came up and started making small talk with me. I was quite happy when Jess returned with Annie. Jess waited with us for as long as she could but eventually left when a traffic cop yelled at her that her car was blocking a bus stop. We caught our bus soon after and took a two hour ride to the airport. We got hit with some overages for our luggage (later overturned when I challenged the amount on my credit card, woo-hoo!), had to take our shoes off because we look like terrorists, and got some Haribo (gummy bear-type treats) and magazines (Cosmo) while waiting for our plane.

The flight to Athens wasn't bad. We got to watch the movie In Brugges, which was fun because we'd just been there. The worst part of the journey was after we landed. The layover at Athens was seven hours. We found a place to camp out and settled in for the evening. I stayed up to watch our stuff as I'm paranoid and gave Annie a chance to rest. In a few hours we'd be boarding a plane to begin our next year teaching on the island of Kos. This is how our European backpacking journey ended.

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This world is small

2009-08-31T16:13:05Z

June 5:
For our first full day in Paris we got up early and were on the streets by 9:30. We took the subway as we had walked to the center of town the previous day and wanted to get there faster. We went directly to the Louvre, figuring the earlier we'd get there the less tourists we'd have to contend with and the more time we could spend. Once inside we made a bee line for the major works first (i.e. - Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, etc.) as those galleries tended to fill up the fastest over the course of the day. Here's Annie with Ms. Lisa.

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After we'd seen the big pieces, we decided to just wander around aimlessly for a while instead of heading for any specific rooms. This way we got an interesting mix of the different kinds of exhibits they had from different periods and eras. One of the first rooms we ran into was an interesting exhibition detailing the planning and building of the Louvre itself. It included original building shots, adding the pyramid, art that had pictures of the Louvre in it, etc. Really interesting. The other special exhibit we ran into was a photographic history of the Louvre during WWII. The pictures contained how the Louvre was protected during the bombings (sandbags over the windows, etc.), the packing up and moving out of art to keep safe, and the Nazis looting the place. Most of the Nazi high command by the end of the war had paintings from the Louvre hanging in their homes. After the war there was a problem locating all the missing pieces and then figuring out what belonged to whom. NAZIS IN THE LOUVRE!

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The funniest part of the exhibition was the captions that went along with all the pictures. Next to one of the pictures it talked about how the city "liberated itself" in August 1944. If by "itself" they meant "with the help of a few other countries fighting for them" then I agree. Writing it doesn't make it true, France.

We continued walking about. Lots of the displays were of course interesting, but we were slightly annoyed that it was difficult to get more information about every piece. Of course, the displays were all in French and that makes sense as we were in France. However, there was limited information available in English unless you got a headset to walk around with. Some rooms had placards you could walk around with that described some of the paintings, but they were usually in use and only described a few of the pieces. That's why I don't know much about this next piece, only that it's amazing.

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Annie really liked how open the museum was. If you were an art student you were allowed to set up shop in the middle of the corridors to copy some of the paintings.

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It was close to here that we wanted to get a couple shot in the Louvre. We really liked the mirror behind the Egyptian guy.

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We made it all the way down to the lowest level and found the footprints of the original building, which I liked since it gave more of a history to the building itself and not just the pieces of art inside it. It was also in the bottom floor they had a tactile display which let you touch some of the art pieces.

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We were hungry after walking around so much so decided to grab lunch in the cafe. The prices weren't crazy and we received huge portions of food. For less than I would have paid in a restaurant we got huge slabs of freshly cooked ham with a number of vegetables and small bottles of wine. I'd recommend it!

We only went to two more exhibitions after lunch. On the top floor was a reconstruction of Napoleon's apartments. It was a series of lavishly decorated rec rooms and bedrooms and such. Here is the chair Napoleon sat in when presiding over court functions. You can tell it's his because of the subtle monogram on the cushion.

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While walking back to the stairwell we had an excellent view of the plaza through the windows of Napoleon's apartments.

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The last thing we saw before leaving was Hammurabi's Code, which was a giant stone block with the first set of written laws carved on it. Wanting to end on a historical note, we decided to take our leave. All in all, we spent about four hours walking around the place, and definitely didn't see everything.

We hopped back on the subway as we had an all day pass and went to the stop marked "Bastille". There we found the road called Bastille and the Opera house where the original fortress had been. While walking around we found a park near Victor Hugo's house that we sat down in for a bit and watched some kids playing. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to rest up for the evening.

Around seven we headed back out to near the Arch/Eiffel Tower area to attend the show at the Crazy Horse. We got our own little booth off to the side of the stage which was perfect since it gave us a clear view of everything and no one to bother us. Included in the price was a bottle of champagne, which we enjoyed over the course of the evening. Before the show started we were reading a list of names on the wall of some of the people who had been here. It included famous actors, musicians, entertainers, politicians, etc. After settling in for about twenty minutes, the show began. It was an all-nude burlesque show broken up into different segments. Each segment the girls were "dressed" and danced to a particular theme. Some of the themes included were: Pirates, English guards, an elaborate spinning circle in the middle of the stage with two girls dancing on it, a swing, the Great Depression, and a jungle cat caught in a cage. The show was interspersed with video from the history of the theater in-between each segment. Also, at one point in the second act, a guy came out and did shadow puppets for about ten minutes. It was quite a non sequitur, so we figured it was a stall for time while they took care of some issue backstage. The dancing was pretty phenomenal, and the nudity wasn't raunchy at all, but rather just a part of the experience.

We stepped outside to see the Eiffel Tower lit up and glowing for the evening. We hopped back on the subway and went home for some candy bars and sleep.

June 6:
Slept in a bit today following the late night show. When we finally got down to the subway to buy our day passes, the woman asked Annie how old she was. She was young enough to score a youth pass, which made her happy and me feel old.

Our first stop for the day was O'Chateau. We had booked a wine and cheese lunch that was being held in the former basement of Louis XV's sommelier (French for guy who chooses the wines at meals).

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The host for the event was funny but spoke very quickly. While we ate he gave a brief history of the wine industry and showed us the different areas of France that produced wine while comparing them to wine's from around the world. He introduced each bottle that was served with our meal (we had six total, including some champagne) and taught us how to properly taste each one to get its full effect. He also showed us how to look at the wines to see the difference in amount of sugar, viscosity, age, etc. The people we took the lunch with were nice, a mix of Irish, Americans, English, and Spanish. In addition to the wines there were a number of cheeses, each suggested to matched with a specific bottle, along with bread and sliced meats. My favorite was the camembert because I like soft cheese.

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Feeling a bit tipsy following the lunch, we decided to take it easy and not do anything too touristy. We rode the subway to the Gare Nord station, where we reserved our Chunnel tickets for going back to England. We saved money by buying round trip tickets as the one way tickets were more expensive for some reason. Round trip tickets came out to be half the price of the one ways. Weird.

Once we had our tickets, we headed over to the Cemetery du Montparnasse. It is one of the two main cemeteries in the city proper. It was full of many family crypts erected quite close together to save space. There was a map in the front showing the location of some of the more famous graves. We didn't go out of our way, but managed to find Sartre's grave near the entrance.

Since we'd been walking around so much, we thought it'd be nice to just relax for a few hours. We ended up near the Arch again and were on the Champs de Elysses so we decided to take in a movie, as this was where most of the English language theatres were. We went into one cinema that had a gigantic, beautiful theatre. The screen was huge, the ceiling was domed. It was amazing. Unfortunately, the beauty was ruined by Terminator: Salvation.

After the movie, we got on the subway again because Annie wanted to see where the Moulin Rouge was. At the subway stop we finally took a picture of the scary, alien-type sign that showed the entrance to all of the subway stops.

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The exterior of the Rouge was not as impressive as Annie had hoped for. As we walked through that part of town back towards our hotel, we realized that the Moulin Rouge was in its own special area of Paris.

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Sex shops were everywhere! In hindsight, it kind of makes sense, but it was surprising at the time without knowing it was coming. We made it back to our area of town and sat down for a nice meal of Belgian mussels, as there was a Belgian restaurant right by our hotel. Following that, we went to sleep.

June 7:
We got up early once again because we had two main things we wanted to do that day. First up we headed for the center of town to find the entrance to the catacombs that ran under Paris. The line was short since we were there so early so it didn't take too long to get inside. Once you entered at the street level, you descended 133 stairs straight down. We walked through the first few tunnels with no problem, as they were mainly just stone corridors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkNLLxHcAWY

Along the way there were various signs telling you where you were in relation to the streets above.

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I was surprised that I didn't get very claustrophobic, given how low the ceiling was in some areas. Sometimes, it was only Doug-high.

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As we walked along, there were some pretty amazing sights. In one area there were large stone models carved into the walls. The original diggers had done this in their spare time. The coolest part of this was that all the sculpting was highly detailed and done solely from memory.

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There were underground waterways that scared the heck out of me, as you could see how deep the wells went.

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And then occasionally the corridor would open up into giant domed archways. These supported some of the main crossroads of the tunnel while also giving you a break from the feeling that the walls were closing in around you since the ceilings were so high in these areas.

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And that's when the skeletons started.

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The walls for the rest of the catacombs were composed of millions of bones from previous occupants of the city. The walls were laid out in such a way that the bones fit neatly together and wasted no space.

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Sometimes the walls were just femurs and arm bones. Sometimes they were skulls. Sometimes mixed!

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In some places the architects decided to get a little fancy. So, not only walls, but also columns and supports were constructed with bones surrounding them.

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It was difficult to take pictures in the corridors. The lighting wasn't the best and I was playing around with my camera's aperture, so some shots were dark. This wasn't one of the best shots, but it shows an underground chapel that was built so the workers could have services held in memory of what was going on around them.

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Finally, we found one area that had enough light for good pictures. So we took a couple shot. Here's us and a large number of dead people.

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Once we exited the catacombs, we realized how hungry we were. It was about a 1.7 kilometre walk to get through the whole complex. Of course, that thought was immediately driven from my mind as the giant ball of flaming gas in the sky burned the retinas out of my sockets following their prolonged exposure to minimal light underground. For the next few minutes we blundered our way down the street, nearly blind, hoping not get mugged. Once vision returned, we stopped in a small cafe for some sandwiches and pain au chocolat. After that, we got on the light rail and took a trip to our last sight, Versailles!

When we got to the palace it was about a thirty minute wait in line to get tickets, which I didn't think was too bad because on busy days it supposedly takes hours to get inside. Once inside the building, however, we kind of lost focused. It was just like a lot of the other galleries and museums we'd seen, only this one was in a palace. That didn't make it different enough to keep our attention, as we'd seen so many similar things recently. We were hoping for more history. Where the servants slept, how meals were prepared, life at court, etc. Instead, it was mostly art galleries and preserved rooms. And compared to the Louvre from two days before, they weren't laid out nearly as well. Still, the building itself was quite pretty. Couple shot!

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My favorite picture from the day was of Annie. We were in the king's bedroom and I wanted to take a picture of the ornate grandfather clock in the corner. She thought I had the king's bed in the frame. Cuteness ensued.

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There were only two rooms that were very interesting. There was a giant cathedral built into the palace near the king's chambers. It was a few stories high and you could see into it from different levels while walking through the palace. The other room we liked was the hall of mirrors. It didn't have as many mirrors as I thought it would, ironically, but I could see how beautiful the room would be during sunrise or sunset since all the mirrors faced huge windows that let in plenty of light. Couple shot!

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After the inside o f the palace we took a cursory glance over the gardens, which were beautiful, but would cost extra to enter. As it was starting to get a bit rainy and we were tired from all our walking, we decided to just head back to town. Once near our hotel, we sat down for a nice, authentic French meal Annie had been wanting to try since we got there.

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After that we went back to the hotel for some internet and final packing before our road trip was over.

Banana Respite

2009-08-27T14:55:36Z

June 4:
We left our hostel in Brussels and went down to the Central train station. After a quick connection at the Zuid (south?) train station we were on our way to Paris. Free internet was provided on the train to Paris, which was nice because we wanted to catch up on e-mails to our families.

Once in the train station we hopped the metro to our closest subway stop, Republique. Checking in was no problem, but the elevator to the fifth floor was tiny and only one person could take it at a time. Annie hopped in with our bag while I hoofed it to meet her at the top with the rest of our stuff. The room itself was nice, particularly the fact that it had a balcony!

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We dropped off our stuff and hit the streets, heading towards all the main sights down by the river. We walked along Rue de Temple, which connected our hotel all the way through the city down to the Seine. On our way to Notre Dame, Annie saw this guy. You were supposed to leave money, but let's face it, he's got an accordion. What's he going to do, chase us?

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We crossed a bridge and walked won the island Notre Dame was on. We took the requisite pictures. There's the front, which is nice but kind of oppressive. I just want to drop a tetris piece in the top to make it solid concrete block. One of those three across pieces, with a piece coming down the middle.

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I prefer the garden in the back. It's really pretty, has wifi for some reason, and I like the architecture on the back of the building as opposed to the front.

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We crossed back to the mainland from the Notre Dame island. We then found a staircase that took us down pretty close to the Seine as opposed to looking at it from about twenty meters up.

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We next hit the Louvre. We didn't go inside since we wanted to spend a lot of time in the museum, so we just took some nice shots of Annie on the outside by the glass pyramids. Here, she's bigger than the whole museum.

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And here we've shrunk her down and marooned her on a fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

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I like this picture.

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After walking around the glass pyramids a bit we headed down Champs de Elysses. We passed one of many obelisks that we'd be seeing over the next few days. Paris seems to have a lot of Egyptian architecture. We took the regular picture of the Arch de Triumphe.

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I don't know why, but I got a huge kick out of this street sign.

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I'm sure it's there for historical reasons, relating to WWII. But I'm sure it pisses off some French people that one of the main streets of the Champs de Elysses is named after an American. There's a Lincoln street in the city too.

We took a detour at this point to a theatre called the "Crazy Horse". Annie really wanted to see a show in Paris, so we read about this one and Annie seemed interested. We booked seats and would be returning the following evening.

We started walking toward the Eiffel Tower but at this point were pretty zombified. A few weeks ago we were in Edinburgh, freezing underneath multiple layers of clothes and jackets. Now it was the exact opposite. The sun was quite oppressive and we didn't have much water with us. However, we still managed to get an amazing shot of us in front of the tower. Jealous?

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Since we were so beat we decided to head on back home. We caught the light rail and headed the wrong way on it. We figured it out pretty quickly though and turned around after just one stop. We then connected to a subway and had to speak to a man entirely in French. We got off a small conversation pretty well as he explained to us how to use the tickets transferring from light rail to subway.

Once back in our hotel area we stopped for dinner at an Italian restaurant. We figured we'd get enough French cuisine in the next few days and really wanted something simple. The waiter was really nice and funny. He saw we didn't speak French and asked us what we spoke in about five different languages. We settled on English. After a nice pasta dinner and a bottle of wine, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep to rest up for another day of walking around.

Delete the queen

2009-08-25T17:47:35Z

June 3:
After a nice sleep in we headed out for the central station. We wanted to get there in time to reserve tickets to Paris for the following day and catch a train to Brugges. It was the shortest train ride we had the entire trip, which was nice as we had planned to only spend the day in Brugges and get back to Brussels that evening. Once we got to the town, we walked about a block from the train station and the realization that it was the first non-capital we had been in since leaving England hit home when we saw how quaint the town was.

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The whole town looked like it was out of a storybook. There were cottages and cobble stone streets, old buildings and churches, cute little houses, and even a beautiful canal cutting through the center of it.

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We walked directly into the heart of town and ate at a restaurant here, constantly remarking how this town was definitely one of the places Disney took its influence from when designing their parks.

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The restaurant was great because it overlooked the central square and was directly across from the bell tower in the middle of the town. Our waiter was quite flamboyant, joking around with us and even patting Annie on the head because he liked her hair. It was fun, yet kind of weird. For lunch Annie had a scary-looking-yet-quite-delicious tomato with shrimp salad. I enjoyed an appetizer of frogs legs in an amazing sauce followed by Flemish beef stew. It was no Irish stew, but it was still quite tasty.

After being energized by our food, we set about climbing the bell tower. It was 366 steps from bottom to top, which got continually smaller and narrower the closer you got to the bell.

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It was definitely worth the exertion though, as when you reached the top you were got to see the mechanism in the tower that rang the bells. I really liked how it was designed. It took up the entire center of the tiny room, with the bells all being hung above and around it

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Of course, the reason you climb a tower is to see the city and countryside around it. I really enjoyed being in a much smaller town than all the cities we had previously been in. And with Paris and London both ahead of us, it was the last "small town" feel we were going to get for a while.

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After the church we went to the only other main tourist attraction we wanted to see. It was a church whose main possession was a holy relic (a vial) which is said to contain the actual blood of Jesus. Here's a painting of it in the narthex.

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We had just missed the mass where they took it out and I guess prayed over it, but we got to see it in its casing. So officially Annie and I have seen where some of Jesus' blood is and the supposed resting place of some of the Buddha's ashes in Seoul. We're just trying to cover all our bases.

After the church, we headed directly to a chocolate shop. We purposely avoided getting any in Brussels, wanting to try Belgian chocolate from a small town shop. We were not disappointed. It was some of the best chocolate I think we will ever eat. We bought two boxes as gifts for Thom and Jess' parents and then spent the afternoon walking around the town. Here's Annie in front of the canal, bell tower in the background, chocolate in her hand.

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The town was great at getting lost in because it was gorgeous no matter where you went and after a few minutes, you'd find your way again by running into the canal. We particularly liked this area as it was a beautiful brick building that connected to an old stone bridge spanning the water across from a stunning church.

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And then Annie goes and gets herself arrested.

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After meandering through the town for a while we took a few couple shots by the canal and headed home.

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In the train station, we saw a restaurant that had in my opinion the most racist hot dog I've ever seen.

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And I don't know why, but this guy also rubbed me the wrong way.

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The train came and we made it back to our hostel. We stayed in for a bit and rested while watching an episode of the Simpsons. We left after an hour or so to look for dinner. I was really in the mood for pasta, but as we were in a French speaking country dominated by cafes I didn't know how lucky I was going to be. Providence came through though and a block from our hostel overlooking a lovely green courtyard we found a cafe advertising pasta in their window. We sat down and I immediately knew what I wanted. When the waiter looked at Annie, she asked if he spoke English. He replied that he spoke a little, and showed her the menu. As Annie was perusing it, a nice, loud, chimney-smoking, drunk lady helped us communicate. Her English was pretty good, but it deteriorated over the meal as she continued drinking. When the waiter returned, I ordered spaghetti. Annie only wanted a salad, something simple like mixed greens. The waiter paused for a second and then waved his hand over the menu saying, "That is not possible".

Annie got lasagna.

The cafe was a fun place to be in. It obviously had a regular, local clientele and they were all drinking and talking merrily. Drunk lady would occasionally speak to them and then sometimes engage us in broken, drunk conversation. The environment was nice and we felt the people enjoyed the fact that we were American, although we couldn't communicate as well as they could. After dinner (during which drunk lady consumed at least 4 DIFFERENT drinks and who knows how many before hand) we went back to the hostel. We showered, repacked our bags, and enjoyed some tv before bed.

How much black?

2009-08-19T12:54:20Z

June 1:
We woke up in time to catch the breakfast at the hostel. It wasn't amazing, but it WAS free, so that was good. Some mixed luncheon meats, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, bread, etc. Afterwards we packed our bags, caught a bus to the central train station, and waited for the Brussels express. The train was about ten minutes late, but as we had no plans for the day we weren't really bothered. What DID bother us was the waste of skin who got on the train with us. This idiot of a human being was with a family. She was obviously a part of some tour package and had been their guide for the past few days in Amsterdam. Since the train was late, she was telling the family stories about past groups. As the train pulled up, she was in the middle of a story about how she had gotten on a train with a family to make sure their seats were correct. She boarded the train with the family to finish her story, wherein she lingered too long on the train and it set off before she disembarked, so she had to ride with the family to the next city. She was such a bad story teller and it took her so long to get this horrifically boring anecdote out that when she said goodbye to the family and turned towards the door, it closed and the train started moving. While telling a story about getting stuck on a train she got stuck on a train.

We made it to Brussels after a pretty short ride. Once we got out at the central train station our first priority was to hit an ATM. We wanted to make sure it was Amsterdam that was messed up, not our ATM cards. It worked perfectly in the machine, we replenished our cash reserves, and struck out for our hostel. It turned out that this was a hostel in name only, as it looked and was furnished like a hotel. The door was locked, so we had to buzz to get in, which made me feel good from a security standpoint.

The receptionist who opened the door seemed annoyed that we were bothering him to do his job. He gave us a key to the room, told us the password to the door so we wouldn't have to buzz him again, and then went back to the kitchen to continue watching TV and talking to his friends. He wasn't rude or mean, I was just amused that he hurried up to give us access to the building but didn't ask for money.

We dropped off our stuff and headed out into the city. We had no clear direction in mind as it was the afternoon and we figured most tourist places would be closing soon anyway. We headed in an opposite direction from the middle of the city and found ourselves in an immigrant neighborhood. The cool thing about it was they were having a street fair that day. There were stages set up with music playing, go-karts, pony rides, and giant inflatable rides for kids. It was nice, but we were kind of hungry so our priority was finding an open restaurant, not riding on a go-kart.

We found a nice little cafe a few blocks away. Annie had a salad espagnol, I had the salad niciose. They were alright, but the ice cream at the end was amazing. It was drenched in caramel and covered with walnuts. Fantastich. The funniest thing that happened during our meal was at the table next to us. A woman was there with her daughter and a friend of hers. The woman wanted to smoke a cigarette but was all out. Instead of going to the store or asking her friend to go, she gave her EIGHT YEAR OLD DAUGHTER some money and her go to a store to fetch her a pack. I was incredulous that not only did she choose to send her daughter, the daughter actually succeeded in making the purchase.

We started the walk home after that. We picked up some provisions for the evening (peanuts, beer, and water) and settled into our hotel room. There was a TV in the room, but it only had two English channels and was positioned at an extremely awkward height, as Annie will now demonstrate.

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We also finally took all of our old clothes out from the bottom of my backpack and washed them in the sink with the travel detergent Annie brought.

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The hotel had internet, so we used the opportunity to Skype with every single member of the Peters family because they were all on at the time. Then we watched some TV on my computer and went to bed early so as to be ready for a full day of touristy stuff.

June 2:
We got up and immediately headed for the Grand Market in the middle of the town.

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We then went to a small restaurant that specialized in the local cuisine. Belgium is apparently very famous for its french fries, waffles, ice cream, mussels, and chocolate. For lunch, we decided to focus on the mussels and fries.

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As expected, they were delicious. The restaurant itself was pretty cool. It was situated close to one of the more famous sites in Brussels, a statue of a little boy peeing. It's so famous that countries from all over the world send outfits to Brussels so the boy can be dressed in different outfits for different holidays. These outfits were reproduced and displayed throughout the restaurant. Of course, upon leaving our first priority was going to see the statue, which was in a fountain a block away.

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He's so popular that you can even eat him if you want.

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Following the pissing boy fountain, we decided to just wander around the city for a while with no real agenda in mind. We discovered that the city was very much into comic books. We found many stores that specialized in comics from around the world, with the focus being French comics of course. This love of comics extended from beyond the stores onto the buildings themselves. This is an example of one of the MANY murals we saw throughout the city that had obviously been commissioned. You can see it has a very "comic book" feel.

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That's not to say that the people who did normal graffiti weren't artists themselves. This was on the back of a bar in a small, dimly-lit street that smelled suspiciously of urine.

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We next hit one of the local souvenir shops. We collect magnets from all the places we go to. Annie also liked to grab postcards, both to send home and to make scrapbooks with.

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The economic recession was in full swing at this point, and some stores were making no bones about how much they wanted you to buy their products. (Not work safe.)

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The funniest thing we saw (after the pissing boy of course) was an advertisement that was posted all over the city, including next to our hostel so we got to pass it many times. I believe it's trying to play off the love affair people have with the french fries in Brussels, and that nothing is more important than getting some.

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We were tired from walking around so much by this point and were in the mood for a repast. We had already tried the mussels and fries, so we opted to go for some waffles. Annie got hers chocolate covered, whereas I went for the glazed.

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If you think they look good, you're wrong, because they were god-damn great. Recharged with sugary goodness, we headed across the city towards the jubilee park. On the way we got to pass by the complex where the governing body of the EU resides, which I thought was pretty cool. Of course, I think self-timers on cameras are cool, so what do I know?

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The park itself was beautiful. There was even a small castle in it for some reason.

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Before leaving the park we found this archway. I was confused, because I'd already seen it in Germany. It's like the arch they have in Paris that's also in London, NYC, Rome, etc. Can't these cities get their own unique structures?

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Annie liked the way the archway was melting though, so I guess that makes it look a little different from the German one.

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After a full day of walking we headed back to the hostels, making only two quick stops. The first one was to get a beer from the tap in a nice quiet bar, which was delicious. The second stop was the grocery store to get a few cold beers and some bread for dinner that night (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with fruit, as per normal). On the street somewhere Annie saw this and thought it was funny.

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We got in, showered, internetted, caught Old School on the one English channel, and went to bed. Tomorrow, we'd be going to a movie...

You can have my pants if I can have your bicycle

2009-08-15T16:52:29Z

Once again we were treated to compartment seating, but it was much better this time as we had our own room. No one else was assigned to our section. We spent the time reviewing old pictures, eating sandwiches, and watching the country pass us by out the train window. The journey was an hour longer than it should have been because we were held up at some stations but it was still the afternoon when we arrived in Amsterdam.

The problem with hitting Amsterdam from Berlin was that it connected you to a station on the south side of town, not the central station in the middle of town. It took us a bit to get our bearings, but with the help of a VERY nice transit man, we were shown how to use the metro to get around town and reach our hostel.

This time we were staying in a place that was pretty far from town center (about 15 minutes by bus), but that didn't bother as us there was a bus stop right outside the front door and we had our own private room for the same price as some of the multi-bed rooms that were offered in the middle of the city. We checked in and relaxed in our room for a few minutes, enjoying the privacy and the fact that we had our own bathroom. After freshening up, I checked with the front desk about the best way to use the transit system. The lady at the counter explained the ticketing system they used in the city which worked on all buses and trams. It was pretty simple to figure out, so we headed off to catch what was left of the daylight in the middle of the town.

After a short bus ride which took us through most of the neighborhoods where immigration was readily apparent and along one of the canals that form semi-circles in the city we were left off at the main train station. One of the things Amsterdam prides itself on is their lack of cars, preferring many forms of public transport and personal, non-gas-guzzling transport. This was immediately noticeable as soon as we stepped off the bus.

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The train station itself was a pretty amazing building in the heart of the city.

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As we were walking down the street, Annie wondered out loud if the stories about the city were true and whether or not some of their main commodities were marijuana and mushrooms. As we turned a corner at a pizza place, Amsterdam said yes. There was a whole pedestrian street full of stores that just had paraphernalia and such in the windows. People were walking around smoking joints. It was quite pungent. We continued walking around and were amazed at how prevalent it was everywhere. We stopped in a small grocery store, blocks away from the street full of "coffee shops", and were amazed that even there they had bongs and pipes and such, next to the milk and fruit. We stopped to replenish our own pantry, which was growing light since we had eaten so many sandwiches in the previous few days. We also wanted to get the snack that Annie had been craving ever since we learned about it in Oslo from our Dutch roommates. Stroopwaffle.

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Stop reading now and go find a store that sells these things, as they are the best snack ever. We also picked these up to go with our sandwiches, as we thought they had a very funny name.

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The light was fading and I wasn't interested in being in the middle of the city at night when the more "colorful" people come out to enjoy Amsterdam, so we grabbed a bus and headed home to enjoy watching tv in our own private room. We had sandwiches and snacks for dinner while watching 12 Monkeys and Starship Troopers. It was kind of surreal.

May 30:
We slept in for the first time that trip as we had two days in the city to enjoy and no one to bother in our room by being lazy. We took long showers and headed out to the bus stop by noon. Once we got to the city center we had no real direction. We just wandered through the streets taking the city in. There were no big landmarks we knew of, so we decided to just look for our own neat things to see. We thought Thom might get a kick out of this.

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I particularly liked how this one church kind of blended in with the buildings that were immediately surrounding it.

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We walked along one of the canals and found a giant outdoor market. It specialized in fauna, and you could get all sorts of flowers there, tulips in particular as they were the main flower of the Netherlands. If you wanted to, you could buy some bulbs to ship home.

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Or you could ship home other things to grow.

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Around this time we started getting hungry, so we found a nice, small, bar-type restaurant for lunch and had sandwiches with fries. When we left, we decided to follow one of the canals for a bit, because they were so beautiful.

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After a while following the canal and enjoying the nice residential parts of town with their quaint stores, we were once again surprised by a store that had some "other" things in the display window.

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We turned around and found this place right across the street.

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So, naturally, we went in. I found that the term "museum" was used rather loosely here. However, there were some interesting displays inside. I found the corner showing the wonders of hemp to be quite amusing. I mean, if for no other reason than this hemp should be grown all over the planet. You can make clocks out of it!

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And if that wasn't enough to convince you, there was a great big bag of it you could just run your hands through, for some reason.

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We left the weed museum and headed down the street to the hemp museum. Buying entrance to one included entrance in the other. It was more of the same thing, showing the "wonders" you could do with the plant, from paintings, to clothing, etc. Once we looked around for a bit and left we noticed that the area we were in was quite different than the quaint little areas of before. These buildings all had windows, like the earlier buildings, the only difference being that these windows contained whores.

We had unwittingly strolled into the red light district. Almost all of the buildings along the street had ladies standing in the window, waiting to be "chatted up" as it were. They didn't pay much attention to us, as we were obviously a couple that weren't in need of their services. But any single guy that came by would get propositioned or given a look. Here's a shot of the canal directly AFTER the red light district because any loved how the buildings looked on the water.

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You weren't allowed to take pictures of the ladies in the red light district because they were protected by the police who would take your camera or yell at you or something. Personally, I thought it would just make them sad, as if they were objects on display for your amusement or something.

In addition to the lovely entertainment in the windows, almost every other building was a sex shop. For those of you not interested in spending your money on goods but rather services, most shops contained live sex shows. There were lots of pictures on display in front of the stores so you knew exactly what you'd be getting when you walked in, which is why Annie and I didn't walk into any of them.

Rounding the corner, the theme of the red light district changed from sex back to drugs. Here there were tons of establishments more than willing to offer you all kinds of goodies. You could choose between 'smart' shops or 'coffee' shops. At 'coffee' shops:

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you could walk in and find a bar-like atmosphere. There would be a full bar selling beer and liquor in the front and tons of tables. Go near the back and there's be a small window where a guy would sell you pot. You could get it in various quantities, rolled into joints, loose, mixed with tobacco, etc. At most tables there were bongs and hookahs you could rent to enjoy said products once you bought them.

'Smart' shops:

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ere just stores that you weren't allowed to do things in but they sold more. This is where you could purchase your mushrooms, herbal ecstasy, pipes, etc. This particular one is supposedly the fore-runner of all modern day smartshops, being the first one to sell mushrooms legally in the city limits.

We left the red light district and headed to the main square in the center of the pedestrian part of the city. We watched a street performer for a while who had a large crowd of people around him. He was good, riding a unicycle, juggling flaming torches, etc. But, he had a microphone on and whereas he was a great performer, he was a terrible orator. Everything he said made me hope the tire on the unicycle would pop and he'd fall on a torch. After a bit we decided to move on, as his stock had fallen rapidly after his first trick was over.

It was getting late and we'd been walking around a lot that day, so we meandered back to the bus stop. We got a quick bite for dinner and then headed home. We both showered and then checked our e-mail to get in touch with our families. Having a private room was so much better than all the hostels we'd stayed in before.

May 31:
We woke up the next day and were out by eleven. This day we thought we'd try and find the one landmark we were aware of in the city, the Anne Frank house. While looking for it, we found this really weird balcony hanging off a building. Was it art, or something weird someone did while they were high?

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Eventually we found the house. Not as exciting as you'd think. Or maybe as exciting as you think. I mean, it's just a house.

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And here's the reason we didn't go in.

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I appreciate the story, but that doesn't mean I have to pay a bunch of money to see the closet it took place in after spending hours on line. Instead, we grabbed lunch (take that Anne Frank) which consisted of some really good pizza, salad, and soup. From there, we continued along the canals heading for Vondol Park. Along the way, we saw this awesome (if a bit naughty) mural on the side of a building.

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We reached the park and enjoyed all of the people that were there. Some were eating, some on blankets, some playing guitars. A nice, open atmosphere. Plus the lake was gorgeous.

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We looked around for a bit to take a nice couple shot and found these weird, out-of-place "statues" in the middle of a field. We figured they represented the town about as good as anything else.

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It was around this time we hit our big snag in the whole trip. Following lunch we didn't have much cash. However, since we were headed to a park, looking for an ATM wasn't a big concern of mine. After we got back into town, we started looking for a cash machine a bit more intently. We looked for HOURS. Any machine we used rejected my card. We eventually found out that it was because our card was from a bank that was not popular, or even present, in Amsterdam. Unless you had a more widely-known, or Dutch, bank card you were out of luck. We decided to just charge some groceries and walk slowly back through town to head home with our final bus tickets. On the way, we ran into Paulo!! He was our Brazilian roommate from Oslo who we ran into again in Stockholm. It was the weirdest thing that happened to us the whole trip. He was in the city with his mom (making it even weirder) before they moved on to Berlin. We had a nice chat, he kissed Annie on the cheeks, and we parted ways for the final time.

We made it back to the hostel, repacked our bags, showered, internetted, and hit the hay. Tomorrow, Belgium!

Eat meat and mate

2009-08-14T21:18:24Z

The train ride was pretty normal until around 1:30. At this time the train pulled into a depot and stopped. In order to cross from Denmark to Germany, they had to move the train onto the deck of a gigantic ferry. Once the train was on board, we were all made to disembark and proceed up to the top deck for safety reasons. It was fun because we got to walk around for a bit and watch as the ferry crossed the water to Germany. The wake was incredible due to the size of the ship. On the deck we came from were all the train cars, and on the two decks above the train were dozens and dozens of cars brought on by people doing the crossing. We just couldn't believe how much weight was on the ferry. After about forty five minutes the ferry docked and we were allowed back on the train to continue our journey. I really liked seeing how the tracks the train were on went from the ferry and connected to tracks waiting on the land. The way they synched up was quite amazing to see.

We made it to Hamburg and after a short delay caught our connection to Berlin. On this train instead of being assigned seats in an open car we were in a closed compartment with four other people, two Brits and two Germans. Due to track construction what should have been a ninety minute trip turned into a two hour and twenty minute trip. Because we were kept on the train for an extra fifty minutes everyone was given snacks. I chose orange juice and what was described as cheezy bread. When I ate it it tasted like sausage though, which was quite tasty. The Germans helped us translate the different snacks and the announcements, which was quite nice. After a while, we finally made it to the Berlin train station.

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We followed the signs in the station to the public transit office to see how to get to our hostel. The lady at the counter didn't speak English, but using maps, computer print outs, and charm we managed to get out of her which local elevated train to take to the other side of the city and which tram to switch to in order to reach our destination. It didn't take too long to reach our destination, nor did it take long to figure out that our hostel was definitely in what had been East Germany. Not a lot of commerce, giant concrete apartment blocks, etc. It was interesting, which probably also explained why the hostel was so cheap. It was called Generator and was a fine place. The rooms were nice, it had atmosphere, it was just a bit off the beaten path. We liked it though since it was interesting to be staying in a hostel in a place twenty years before we would have been shot at for being in. After checking in and dropping our stuff off in our room we headed out for some light, evening sight-seeing. When we first stepped outside we got a very auspicious sign.

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We walked around our area for a bit and it just became more obvious that we were in what was formerly East Germany. Block apartments, no ATM's, no restaurants, etc. We walked down Karl Marx Boulevard. It was quite an experience. After walking around for a long time, we finally found a restaurant, which was underneath a dinner theatre. Hidden from people being able to see it easily in the past maybe? We had been walking so long looking for sustenance that by the time we sat down my hands and legs were shaking a bit from the exertion of walking/looking and the lack of food/water for an extended period. The food was quite excellent and we had an excellent, East Berlin dinner. Afterwards, we walked back to the hostel and hit the hay.

May 27:
We got up and had breakfast at the hostel. It was included in the price, which means it's not very extravagant. A couple different cereals, bread, meat, cheese, etc. Good enough to get us going. Headed out of the hostel and decided to walk into town center rather than take the tram to see more of the city. As we got going, we noticed that the crosswalks had different pictures in them than the normal "green - go" man and "red - stop" man. Apparently, when the city was divided, in the Eastern side the man in the lights looked different. He had a hat and walked in a slightly different way. When the city reunited, one of the things the East Berliners wanted to keep was their crossing man. As we walked to the town centre, Annie found a pretty good representation of what he looked like that was easy to photograph.

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Near the story Annie took this picture we saw our first example of the Berlin Bear.

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This guy is all over Berlin in different colors and poses to represent the different districts in Berlin. Once we grabbed these photo ops, we continued on to the center of town, and caught our first glimpse of downtown Berlin when we saw the Berlin tower break through the skyline.

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We were headed for the train station as we wanted to reserve our seats on the next train we were going to take in two days. As we were headed to the train station, we found the best named store ever.

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We also found an interestingly named part of Berlin which we never found out the real use for.

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We made it to the train station without any troubles and reserved our seats for the Netherlands. On the way out I saw this giant sign. It confused me as the whole sign is in English, except for the name of the country. Why would they do that?

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Heading back into town we passed the central government building THE REICHSTAG!!!!!!!!!!!

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We never went in as there was always a huge, continual line, but felt it was cool enough to grab a picture of from the outside. We next headed for the main arch in the center of town that was one of the main division points during the Cold War. We felt the area had seen enough hate, it deserved a little love.

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After seeing the arch we decided to grab a little lunch, so we hit a restaurant in the area and rocked some schnitzel, which is basically chicken or pork cutlets beat down to about a millimeter in thickness. Pretty good overall. Headed back to the arch and walked along the line in the street where the Berlin wall used to be until we found the outdoor museum dedicated to the Holocaust. It didn't contain any facts or histories or anything. It was simply a wide-open concrete park that was full of casket-sized stone statues. These ranged in size from one foot tall to eight feet tall, making the outer parts of the display easy to see and the inner parts like a maze.

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We continued following the line of where the Berlin wall was until we came to the point in Berlin where the three main areas connected - the British, American, and Russian sectors.

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There were a number of displays here, including giant sections of the original wall that were intact from when it came down.

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The line in this area was also clearly marked, so it was easy to see where East and West Germany originally were divided.

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Following the line led you out of the main square where the three powers divided Berlin and took you along where the original wall was still standing as it led to Checkpoint Charlie. Some sections of the wall remained standing with their original graffiti-art still displayed.

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Once again, Annie and I thought a bit of love would be nice for such a sad area.

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Checkpoint Charlie was marked by a giant billboard with pictures on it. On one side was a picture of a Russian soldier looking towards East Berlin. On the other side was an American soldier looking towards West Berlin. Here's the American guy.

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They also had a replica of the original warning sign hanging where it would have been at the checkpoint where you could cross from East to West Berlin (the original is in the Checkpoint Charlie museum).

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After checking out this area we started heading back towards town center, stopping briefly at an outdoor exhibit called the 'Topography of Terror'. It was an outdoor picture exhibit discussing the various buildings throughout Berlin that Hitler used to coalesce power and build up the Nazi party, culminating in the beginnings of the Holocaust. We then walked around downtown for a while, stopping in at places that looked interesting like the lego building with the giant Einstein face, which moved!

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Wanting to save some money, we stopped into a small grocery and grabbed some bread (for the peanut butter and jelly we still had) and pears for dinner that evening. We then began our slow walk home, stopping to take a picture overlooking the river that cut through the city.

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On our way, we ran into the Berlin tower again and checked to see if we could get tickets. As it was a slow day, there were still spots available, so we headed on in to get a bird's eye view of the city. When we purchased our tickets and headed for the elevator, we passed through security where we learned you were not allowed to bring food up into the tower. We started freaking out, worrying that all the stuff we had just bought for dinner would have to be disposed of. Luckily, we found out you could just leave your bag at the base and pick it up again on your way out. It would have been nice if they'd mentioned that at the beginning! We headed to the top of the tower and took some nice landscape pictures of the city. These pictures evoked some pressing questions about Berlin's place in a relatively new unified Europe. One of the more troubling ethical questions I was faced with was, when you think about it, who really let the dogs out?

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However, questions soon leave the mind when you are looking at the beauty of one of the capitals of Western civilization spread out before you.

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It reminded me of the last scene in Willy Wonka (the Gene Wilder, original, good one) when he's in the glass elevator flying over the brown roofed houses of Europe in the 70's. After checking out the town from up above for a while, we headed out and got some ice cream. We then grabbed the tram at the base of the Berlin tower, laughing because that's where we had transferred the previous day to get to our hostel but were so preoccupied with getting the right train we never noticed the tower in the background. Once we got back to the hostel we e-mailed our families, ate our PB and J dinners, and then planned the following days activities.

May 28:
After the hostel breakfast in the morning we decided to take the tram into town rather than walk as we did the day before. Our first stop was the official Birkenstock store in the town center because it was one of the main souvenirs Annie wanted to grab through our travels. After her purchase, we walked to find the Ramones museum that was advertised in the streets, but discovered it was just a cafe with lots of Ramones memorabilia in it. We opted not to enter and walked back to where the arch was in the center of town, but instead of following where the Berlin wall was next to it we walked through the arch and dove into the main park behind it.

We walked the length of the Tiergarten, the largest park in Berlin, and stopped to take in the various sites, like confusing road signs.

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Restaurants named after family members.

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And amazing monuments to war and glory.

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Our goal was the Berlin Zoo, which was at the base of the park. Once inside we saw many of the random animals you'd expect in the zoo and a few worth mentioning. We got to see the famous Knut the bear, one of the crown jewels of the Berlin Zoo. While watching him it began to rain so we ducked under a tent near his compound and checked him out for a bit. We also got to see a hippopotamus and her baby.

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Annie particularly liked this bear because he seemed very down-to-earth and non-judgemental.

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The most interesting part of the visit was that we luckily timed it so we were there for feeding time for the giant cats and mongoose paddock. It was simultaneously amazing, as the cats were very active prior to and following their feedings and disgusting, as none of them ate pasta so much as other animals. Only click on this if you don't mind disgusting.

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The last interesting thing that happened was during our time in the cat house a freak hail storm started. The hail was about the size of ping-pong balls to tennis balls. It made the cats all rush to the windows, making it easy for us to see them quite close up. It also made us laugh because at the beginning of the storm, an entire colony of rodents were out doing their thing but when the first ball of hail hit the ceiling they immediately scattered to their hidey-holes in a quite amusing way. We left the zoo after a while and found an amazing church that had been hit in the bombings during WWII. The church was mostly intact, but they left it damaged (including all the windows missing) as a memorial to the war. It was quite an impressive site.

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By this point we were masters of the public transit system in Berlin and hopped a tram back to the center of town for some dinner. We found a famous beer hall that specialized in Lowenbrau. We got some white beers, Annie got a wiener schnitzel, and I rocked a traditional bratwurst and sauerkraut. Yes, I finished the whole thing.

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From there we headed along the river back towards our hostel. While walking, I realized that after two large beers I really had to pee. Feeling incredibly nervous and embarrassed, I broke a few laws behind a building in lieu of wetting my pants. However, the payoff was we made excellent time to the East Side Gallery, a large section of the Berlin wall that has been preserved to save some of the art that was done during the Cold War. The wall stretched for a very long time, but these were some of our favorite images from the site.

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We especially liked one area of the wall that was reserved for artists to continue what was started in the 80's by putting up new murals to represent the past, present, and future in Berlin. We actually got to see an artist in action touching up a piece he'd been working on for a while.

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We headed home to our hostel after that, with our last picture being of a street that paid homage to not only my family, but an important part of American cuisine.

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We showered, packed our bags, and went to bed.

The last story of the day happened at about 1 in the morning. A new roommate came in around this time. I was between asleep and awake so I got to watch as he came in, was confused at which beds were taken, and threw all his stuff down on an occupied bed. I would have felt bed except for the fact that the bed happened to be occupied by a complete tool, so I got to fall asleep in a good mood.

May 29:
We packed our stuff, grabbed a quick breakfast, and grabbed some mass transit for the Berlin train station. The train came ten minutes late, but since they announced that would happen we weren't concerned. We got on board and prepared to hit the Netherlands.

My country is older than your vinegar

2009-08-14T12:40:58Z

Catching the later train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, we found that our seats were in a compartment which we shared with a nice Swedish man. We made small talk about jobs and such (he was in the military, going to Copenhagen to do some exercises with their army) and he was also kind enough to translate the announcements for us. After two hours we had to leave the compartment though and move to other seats. Since we had gotten our tickets at the last minute, the best the ticket guy could do was move our seats at certain stops since there were no two empty seats on the train for the whole journey from Sweden to Denmark. It all worked out though and in addition to not having to switch trains we had free internet and got free sandwiches and drinks because we were first class passengers. We arrived in Copenhagen and Annie figured out how to get to our hotel from the train station pretty quickly. She took us through the square in the middle of the city and down one of the main roads to Dan Hostel, which was a giant concrete block. It looked like an apartment complex or a hotel from the outside.

We checked in and were in our room by eight o'clock. There was already a guy sleeping in our room, so we dropped off our stuff quietly and headed out for the evening. The first place we went to was Wagamama's. It was close and we had a coupon from the hostel for a free drink. Plus we really like the restaurant and we didn't know the next time we'd have a chance to eat there again. After an amazing noodle dinner we stepped outside and started a long evening stroll. Even though it was kind of late, it was still pretty light out, just as it had been in Norway and Sweden. The first thing we saw was Tivoli, a crazy amusement park and garden attraction in the middle of the city. We didn't go in, but we could see a ride that someone told us about in a previous hostel.

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That's a normal swings ride you'd find at any carnival with a twist. It rises two hundred feet in the air before it starts spinning you around. We walked away from the park though and dove into the middle of town, heading through the pedestrian streets near the town square.

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Annie really liked window shopping, especially when she got to see some of the ridiculous fashions that were for sale.

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My favorite new thing I saw were the trash cans.

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They use solar power to provide energy for a crusher inside the can so the trash gets more compacted and uses less space in bags. I thought that was really neat. It was starting to get dark by this time though so we headed back to the hostel, took a shower, and went to bed.

May 25:

We got up pretty early and headed over to the train station to reserve tickets for our next journey. The man at the counter was really nice and explained how to transfer trains at Hamburg to get to Berlin. We then went back to the middle of town to see some of the sights. First, we saw the street named after one of the most famous Danes.

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From there we went into the H. C. Andersen museum. It was pretty depressing, as the fairy tales in their original forms are mostly sad. Find some on-line and check them out. From there we walked to the Guinness World Records Museum. When we walked in, the lady didn't charge us. This made me happy at the end, because the displays were pretty boring and wouldn't have been worth the admission price, but they were definitely worth free.

We spent most of our time walking around the town, because it looked so different from everywhere else we'd been so far. The architecture was amazing and I liked how all the streets were wired with lamps hanging in the middle of the street.

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We started to get hungry so we headed down to the canal area to grab some lunch. This is what the area we ate in looked like.

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Annie opted to get the special that was advertised on the table consisting of local cuisine, predominantly fish-based.

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Lunch was amazing and cheaper than it had been in previous countries so we were happy. We followed the water along the canals and headed for the main river cutting through town. This took us by the political center of town, close to the Parliament and head of government. There were guards there that reminded us of the soldiers guarding Buckingham Palace.

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We set up the camera for some timed shots and decided to dance through Copenhagen.

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We dove back into town looking for the statue of the Little Mermaid. What we found first was the Danish museum dedicated to the resistance during WWII. It was only closed one day a week, the day we happened to be there. Still, we got to see some interesting vehicles around the museum.

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Along the way to the mermaid we explored an old church close to where the statue was. It was situated on a beautiful lake and surrounded by a field of green.

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From there we finally saw a group of people standing along the shore which helped us find the elusive statue. If you take a picture that includes the opposite side of the river it's not very spectacular as there is some industry in the distance. However, if you crop out everything but the statue and water, it looks quite nice.

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We walked back away from the water through a fortress that is still used by the military today. There were a number of rules (no dogs, eating, etc.) but you could walk right through the little army town which was neat. We got to see the barracks the soldiers lived in and the vehicles they drove around in. The coolest part of the fortress was that it was in a star-shaped depression in the ground. From the middle of the town you were surrounded by a sloping hill on all sides. If you climbed to the top you saw the town had five points, forming a star, and was surrounded by a moat.

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Plus there was a windmill!

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We walked through the town and out the other side, stopping to take a rest on a bench since we'd walked so much to get from the center of town to the Mermaid statue and back. While we were stopped, I took a short video of a phenomenon that we noticed throughout Scandinavia. We were traveling in May, so it was the height of pollination season. In every part of every city we traveled in there was a constant shower of seeds floating through the air in the afternoon every day. The video doesn't do it complete justice, but you get an idea of what we were walking through for a week. It made you feel like you were surrounded by fairy dust, or walking through a dream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLuy8hBJvNo

We stopped for one more timed shot to capture the moment and then headed back towards our hostel.

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We decided to walk along the main roads that connected the college of Copenhagen to the town center. We got to see all the academic buildings and stopped to rest in a giant park on the side of campus. Tons of students were here relaxing, studying, drinking, throwing frisbees, etc. We just sat down for a while and people-watched. It was quite relaxing.

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The weirdest thing in the park was watching this Asian woman walk between groups of college kids with her kids. They would walk up to groups separately (sometimes the woman approached a group, sometimes her seven year old son) and then steal any empty beer cans or bottles and put them in a bag. I guess it's how they made money, but the way they were moving between groups you'd think they were up to something, not cleaning up after people taking their recyclables. We watched her operate for a bit then left when we saw another Asian woman enter her area for fear of getting involved in a recycling turf war. As we left the park, we noticed how beautifully laid out it was with it's tree-lined paths and other flora.

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We made it back to downtown near our hostel and got some European ice cream. Annie had a dark chocolate cone with cake/cookie pieces mixed in and a chocolate swirl. I had a green apple ice with a chocolate shell. Quite nice. Since it was still early and we weren't tired, we decided to go watch a movie. We opted for 'Observe and Report', the Seth Rogan movie that was out at the time. We bought our tickets and then got a bag of popcorn to share. While waiting for the movie to start, I was sampling the popcorn, which was deliciously buttered and salted. Annie took the bag from me and told me to stop eating it or we wouldn't have any for the movie. When we got into the theatre, we had assigned seats. There were only five other people in the theatre, and we were all assigned to the same row. Annie continued to keep the bag as she was scared I would eat more before the movie started. She then wanted to get situated since she had just let the last person walk by her to get to their seat in the row. She put the popcorn on the space in between our seats and reminded me not to eat any and be careful so I don't waste any popcorn. Four seconds go by. All of a sudden I hear Annie say, "Oh shit, Doug, I spilled the popcorn". I wasn't angry as it was such a hilarious thing to happen at that moment, considering her worry about the popcorn getting wasted. While trying to control my tears, I helped her pick up all the popcorn and we settled in for the movie. It was alright. Lots of good one liners, but not a good movie overall.

Following the movie we went back to the hostel. We spent our last few coins in the local currency to buy some bottles of Carlsburg, the local brew, and reviewed the pictures we took that day. We didn't mind getting rid of the money as the next day we'd finally be hitting countries that used the Euro and we would be able to stop getting new money every country. Then it was off to shower and sleep.

May 26:
We got up, packed, and left the hostel by 10. We walked to the train station and caught the 11:26 train to Hamburg.

They Are Us

2009-07-09T16:46:12Z

May 23:
Woke up, got dressed, and went to look for our shoes. At this hostel you have to take your footwear off before entering the living quarters. That worked out to our advantage, as walking a lot made my sneakers not smell the best. So instead of having them in the room, I got to leave them in a shoe cubicle with other people's shoes. Take that Swedes.

We stopped in the main lobby of the hostel and enjoyed the breakfast they offered (sandwiches and o.j.) We talked about what we were going to do that day and about our train ride to Stockholm the previous night. We took advantage of the train rides to write notes, Annie kept a journal, eat sandwiches, and to review pictures from each country on our laptop. To remember these rides and what we did I took a picture of Annie. Unfortunately, stalker-lady ruined every one of them. (Note how bright the night train is!)

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Our first stop was the train station near the hostel so we could reserve seats for the following day's train to Copenhagen. The guy who did our reservation seemed a bit off, but we weren't bothered at the time and chalked it up to the fact we were communicating in his second language. From there we wandered down the main streets of the city heading for the piers. There was a giant street fair going on of different foods from around the world. Tons of tents were set up with different culinary delights for you to sample. I enjoyed this tent with the HUMAN-SIZE WOK of paella.

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We made it down to the docks and got to see all the different islands that made up the municipality of Stockholm. There were many beautiful buildings along the waterfront, this being a typical example of how pretty they were.

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We crossed a bridge from the piers that led to an island most of the city's touristy attractions were on. The first place we visited was the Vasa Museum. In the 1600's Stockholm built a huge merchant ship, but rushed it through production too quickly. It made it about a mile from town and then sank. In the 1950's a guy finally found it again and proceeded to raise it, intact, over a period of three years. They finally got it on the surface and actually sailed it back to Stockholm, supported between two boats. The museum is basically built around this ship. Annie was reminded of the ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean when she saw it. I took one look at it and immediately knew it belonged to "One-Eyed" Willie.

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The exhibits around the ship were quite interesting. I particularly liked the one display that showed the different parts of a cannon and how it functioned.

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Annie took this knowledge and put it to practical use.

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One of Annie's favorite displays was a giant model of the ship cut in half to show you how the ship functioned, where its crew worked, and what the different levels of the ship were used for. I never really thought about how many decks an older ship like this could have.

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Lastly, just how big of an anchor would a ship like this carry?

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The final display in the building showed you how they had tried to get to the ship over the years. There was a great display explaining the process in the 1950's, but Annie's favorite was the diving bell they used in the 1600-1700's to try and access the ships cargo. Here's me demonstrating how it was used. Would you go hundreds of feet under the ocean in this sucker to try and grab stuff from a sunken ship's hold?

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Following Vasa, we headed over to the Swedish cultural museum. It was pretty big and had lots of different displays from different eras of Swedish history. The first exhibit we went into was a kind of Swedish "woodstock". There was a park where bands played with similar style music, there were peaceful protests, hippies, etc. Videos played throughout the exhibit so you could see and hear what it was like. On the next level there was a photography exhibit from the past hundred years, comparing modern day photos to old family ones that was fairly interesting.

Annie really liked the next room because it was full of about a dozen displays of eating through the ages. Each table was set to look like a dinner was being served from different eras. It started a long time ago when the table was quite sparse with just a hunk of meat on it. As people became richer, and more pretentious, things became a tad more glamorous. Like, if you're going to serve fowl, why not kill a whole other bird to serve the cooked bird in?

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Or why use one plate for many different things? Let's get plate-specific. Guess what was the only thing they served on this guy (Alton Brown would be furious).

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There were further displays about holidays in Sweden, where eggs are apparently important. I'd have more information, but this room was only presented in Swedish.

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In the cultural arts display room I saw the most inappropriate spoon I'd ever seen.

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There were further exhibits on weddings, 'fair' clothing (on how recycling and trade policies regarding clothes mess over third world countries), and living spaces (where they showed you different homes throughout Sweden and then a number of people's faces. Your job was to guess who lived in which space, which was interesting).

Having had enough culture through the wonder of museums, we headed over to Skansen, a gigantic outdoor culture/theme park/zoo/aquarium. It was gigantic and had all kinds of displays, restaurants, rides, and exhibits. We grabbed some lunch and had some Swedish beer, which was amazing. After one big glass of it we were each a little bit giggly. We proceeded to head deeper into the park after lunch when we ran into our hostel-mate from Oslo, Piedro. We had a quick talk and remarked how amusing it was that we ran into him, considering Stockholm itself is a pretty big city and Skansen was a big attraction. We swapped e-mails and wished him well on his trip.

Skansen was on top of a hill, which gave you a decent view of the city. We could see the new stadium that had been built recently, which was touted as the LARGEST SPHERICAL BUILDING IN THE WORLD or something. It looked like a mini-deathstar prototype.

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Walking through Skansen was fun as it was similar to the culture park we had walked through in Oslo, only more-so. There were a number of different structures that had been moved from all over the country to be presented here. Our favorite parts though were the animals that were native to Sweden. For example, I had seen reindeer in movies and such, but couldn't remember ever seeing one live.

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Moose!

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And this owl which stared me down.

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Since this was such a friendly touristy area, even the animals that weren't in cages were unafraid of the humans and would come right up to you looking for food. Annie made friends with this cheeky squirrel that I liked because of the coloring of his fur.

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The last cool animals we saw were the bears. They weren't cubs, but weren't quite adults yet either. They were just at that age where brotherly love turns to wrestling. That's right, we got to see some live-action bear wrestling from fifteen feet away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWndD7FTUuk

After a few hours walking around, we decided to head off museum and check out other parts of the city. Walking past the piers again, I saw what was probably the best named boat ever.

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We crossed two bridges and found ourselves in the middle of old town, so-named because it was one of the oldest sections of Stockholm. Unlike most other countries in Europe, Sweden was pretty much untouched during WWII and so retained most of its original architecture. This island was a maze of close-knit buildings, all surrounding the palace on the south side of the island. Annie!

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We stopped in a small little grocery, got some pasta sauce and pepsi, and then headed for home. We crossed the wrong bridge from old town and ended up on the wrong island from our hostel, but quickly figured out our mistake and headed in the right direction. The reason we had bought sauce when walking through the city was because our hostel gave our free pasta every night. There was a giant container in the kitchen full of the stuff and you could help yourself, using their utensils to cook with. We ate dinner in a room full of Germans who were quite nice about sharing the extra stuff they had. We offered some of our pepsi in exchange which created a pretty good vibe during dinner.

In our room we met the guy from Eritrea whose name was Jhonen. He had been traveling for about a month, taking a break from his education in an NYU grad program. We also met Sebastian, a German (who had been raised in East Germany before the wall came down) who was quite nice and gave us tips (and his number!) about exploring Berlin once he found out that we would be heading there in a few days.

We showered, planned our travels for the next day, and went to bed.

May 24:
The next morning we toasted some of our bread, threw some jam on it for breakfast, and were checked out by 10. We had time before our train, so we headed back to old town for some souvenir shopping. There was a store that had beautiful slippers in the window Annie wanted, but when we got there saw it didn't open until 12, which would cut it close trying to make our 12:30 train. Annie gave up the dream so we just walked around a little bit more and headed to the station. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop in here for a drink.

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We made it to our train and found that a woman was sitting in our seats. We checked the tickets and saw the 'off' guy had made a mistake. We had only checked our seat numbers and the train time, but never checked the actual date of the train, figuring telling the guy 'tomorrow' enough times would let him know the date we wanted to leave. We got off the train and went to the ticket office, where thankfully a different guy was working. He saw the error and printed us two new tickets for 2 o'clock, no charge. He was super-nice and really helpful. We love him.

The good part of this was it gave us time to head back to old town. We went to the store that was finally open and Annie got her slippers, which she loves. While walking down to the palace, we got a chance to see the scariest bee-keepers in all of Europe.

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No, I don't know what their actual job is, I'm just guessing. But aren't they scary?

We had a bit more time to kill, so we went down to the palace and took some timed shots. People sitting around the river were watching us and smiling, which made acting goofy a bit easier.

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We sat down at a nearby monument for some PB and J's for lunch and got a chance to see a military processional with full band accompaniment walk by the palace.

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So all in all, catching a later train cost us nothing and we got to do a few extra things in Stockholm, which was great. We then made it back to the station and caught the 2 PM to Copenhagen, Denmark.

It fuels his rock

2009-06-28T15:57:55Z

May 20:
We woke up rather early and headed out of the hostel by 8. We wanted to have plenty of time to get to Heathrow and catch our flight. We took the tube all the way out to the airport and made it with two hours to spare. We sat down for some breakfast after passing through security and waited for our gate. The flight was quick with no interesting anecdotes, as it was so short. We landed in Oslo and were questioned quite briefly by customs. Anyone with an EU passport flew through the line, but they stopped us just to ask a few simple things (where are you from, going, why, etc.) After we got our bag (I checked the giant traveling backpack for the flight), we hit the railroad station that connects the airport to the center of town. We gave the lady at the counter our Eurail pass and she stamped it with no problems. The only concern I had was that she did the math wrong. Our pass was good for 21 days, but she put the expiration date of our pass at 42 days. It never came up while we were traveling, I was just amused that if we wanted to, we might have been able to get an extra 3 weeks of train rides. We caught the 4:28 train and were on our way.

The train itself was beautiful. It was very large, with lots of space for passengers and bags. The scenery on the way from the airport to the city was gorgeous as well. Lots of fields and trees, no ugly urban sprawl (like catching a train from Newark airport to Edison). We got out at the city-center and immediately went to the tourist office outside the train station. There we picked up a map and had a nice lady point out where our hostel was on it. We left the train station and headed down the main street of town that connects the station to the palace. The first thing we took a picture of was of an amazing thing they have in their Burger King's that we should totally bring to the US.

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That's right, if you're in the mood for fast food AND mexican, they've got you covered. After a walk of about ten minutes we were at the Anker Hostel checking in.

The room we got had two sets of bunks and then two twin beds next to each other in a walled off corner of the room. Annie and I pushed the twins together and dropped our stuff off on them to claim our space. The room was nice as, besides beds, it also had its own kitchenette and bathroom, so we didn't have to share with a whole floor. We unpacked a few things and then headed out into the city.

The hostel was in an area of town that had a HUGE immigrant population. Norway has an excellent immigration policy and is currently trying to boost its population. As such, certain areas of the city aren't Norwegian at all as so many different cultures are moving in. Our area was predominantly Middle-Eastern, with halal meat stores and various clothing stores from that area in effect. It also had a bit more graffiti than other areas of town, but I kind of liked their style.

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The only store that really stuck out for us was a skate shop, as it had an interesting name.

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We stopped at a Thai restaurant for dinner, then headed back to the hostel for some internet time (we got to Skype with the whole Peters family) and our first showers in two days. We also met some of our roommates. One was Ed, a writer from Seattle who was traveling for stories for his book. He was going to spend a month in Norway and Sweden. We also met Pedro, a Brazilian who was touring Europe following his graduation from university. We planned our sights to see the next day and then went to sleep.

May 21:
We got up early and headed downstairs. We bought an 'Oslo card' from the hostel that allowed you to use any mass transit in the city for free and provided you with free entrance to most of the museums in the city. We then headed down to the piers in order to catch a ferry to the island Oslo keeps most of its museums on. From the water we had a great view of the downtown harbor, with the imposing-looking city hall in the background.

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After disembarking, it was a short two block walk to the museums. On the way, we noticed that it smiled of lilac's EVERYWHERE! Annie loved the smell and continually pointed out the floor that was blooming in front of every house. The first museum we entered was a viking ship museum. They had found three ships that were hundreds of years old, excavated, and were then able to display them intact in the museum.

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It was small, but very interesting as there were tons of associated artifacts and human remains from the three ships. Following that, we headed over to the folk and culture museum. It consisted of an indoor museum with exhibits and then a gigantic outdoor area with buildings representing the history of Norway. Be careful though, as you are not allowed to bring dogs, cigarettes, or ice cream into the museum.

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We checked out the indoor exhibits first, this one being our favorite.

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It was an entire exhibit on the 80's, but from the perspective of Norway. Needless to say, American culture dominated the exhibit, but through the lens of popular culture and interest in Norway at the time. Our favorite display was Norwegian playboy.

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We headed into the giant outdoor area next to see some old Norwegian structures. It started with a reconstructed Norwegian town from the 1700's, which Annie said looked a lot like colonial Williamsburg. This led to a giant open area with single buildings from different eras represented. I loved the old structures that were such a part of their environment, they actually cultivated greenery on top of the house.

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They also had an amazing old church which I think they transported as a whole from one area of the country to this outdoor museum.

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We left after that and headed to the last museum on the island, the Norwegian holocaust museum. We got a bit turned around and ended up in a park close to the museum, which turned out to be good since the park was so absolutely beautiful. Annie loved the scenery, particularly the children playing in the water.

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The museum was very informative on Norway's part during WWII. We had a headset that walked us through the exhibits, translating everything. I took this shot for people who are familiar with the movie 'Falling Down'.

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We walked back to the piers after this and had some cheeseburgers while waiting for the ferry. It was 3:30 and that was our first meal of the day, so we were hungry! We found this weird sculpture on the water, which turned out to be a gift from Canada. Not the best present in my opinion, although Annie enjoyed trying to mimic the statue.

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The ferry came and dropped us off in the town square, close to the Nobel Peace Prize museum.

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It was the most technological of the museums we'd seen, with a number of interactive exhibits. Very interesting and informative. My favorite exhibit was in an empty room with a giant book in the middle. The book was empty, but every time you turned a page a projector would fill in words and pictures which you could interact with using your shadow. Our last sight was the palace which we passed on the way back to the hostel. It wasn't very majestic, just looked like a big building. Similar to Buckingham palace, but less regal. It started to rain around this time, so we ducked into a supermarket. We purchased some bananas and components to make PB and J's, figuring we could save money while traveling on trains and stuff by making our own lunches. When we got back to the hostel we had two new roommates from Holland. They were young and had come to Norway because it was the cheapest flight they could find for their holiday from school. They were lots of fun though since they were so young and full of energy. Here they are, with Ed on the left.

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They had met four other Dutch people on the same flight and invited them up to the room for drinks. They shared with us, which was quite nice. The drinks were VERY alcoholic Schnapps. We talked about our trips and how we'd be heading to their country soon. They gave us some snacks they brought with them and wrote down the names of other things to buy while in the Netherlands. The best thing was Stroopwafel. These were basically little waffle-type snacks drenched in caramel. Amazing. We exchanged e-mail addresses and then they all headed out for drinks. We stayed in to wash, pack, and get some sleep as we were heading out again the next day.

May 22:
We got up and left the room around 9:45, saying goodbye to all the new people we had met. It was a fun room with good energy, so we were going to miss our roommates. Pedro was cooking pasta for breakfast since he had some leftover and the Dutch guys were getting ready to go walk off their hangover. They gave us some more candy for the road and we headed out. We stopped at the grocery store again for some apples and some more bread and then headed to a park to check out some waterfalls and eat lunch. Our train wasn't for a few hours, so we wanted to see some more of the city before we had to leave. After that we cut right through the heart of town and came upon one of the scariest things I had ever seen. Apparently the evening before there had been a party in one of the town squares and this is what it looked like the next day. I'm glad I didn't see it at night. (See Annie on its bottom left for an idea of scale).

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We were also intrigued by some of the wall art we saw on the buildings on the way back to the train station.

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We made it to the train station and saw we still had lots of time to spare, so we headed to the Opera House which was close by. It had won many international awards for its architecture. It's supposed to resemble a ship from the distance. It rises right out of the water.

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And you can walk along the water all the way up the inclines to the roof of the structure. We thought it might be a nice place for a couple shot.

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Walking along the water, Annie put the traveling backpack on for the first time because my back was starting to get tired. She enjoyed it immensely.

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Our last sight in Oslo was the fortress/military base they have by the piers. It was a series of barracks and general purpose buildings the army uses. The most interesting thing was the statue of the giant naked lady with the little naked man.

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Outside of the base was my favorite thing we saw that day. It was a street full of poles with outlets in them. You could use these for free to charge your electric car, if you had one.

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As we hit the train station, we decided to get some fast food since we still had time to kill. This is where the worst part of Norway really hit home. Norway has tons of social problems to help its citizens (health care, unemployment, etc.). They get tons of benefits just by living in the country, which explains why immigration is on the rise. The flipside to this coin is that they have very high taxes. It doesn't bother them, since they get all the benefits of paying the taxes, but it kind of hits the tourist pretty hard in the wallet. For example, our lunch from McDonald's cost $20.

Another annoyance was the restroom in the train station. It cost money to be able to use it. Annie really had to go, but we had purposely just spent the last of our money so we wouldn't have it with us in any other country where we couldn't use it (Norway doesn't use the Euro). I watched our bags while Annie went back to the Opera House to pee. I found it very amusing we couldn't use a restroom in a train station without money but for free Annie could use the bathroom in the multi-million dollar award winning building which turned out to be very nice.

Our train to Stockholm had been canceled due to construction on the tracks. Instead, we were put on a bus which took us to Karlstad and from there we were able to board the train for the rest of the way. On the train we had sandwiches and wrote in our journals. There was also free internet on the train, so we could use my laptop to see what we wanted to do the next day. The last thing to mention is that we were so far north that even past nine in the evening the sun was still shining strong. This would continue throughout most of our trip, making it seem all the more surreal as the sun would be out when we woke up, while we were out all day, and when we went to bed at night.

We arrived in Stockholm and after a quick map check walked to our hostel, which was very close to the train station. We had a full room at this one, sharing our space with a guy from Eritrea, two Japanese girls, and three other people who were sleeping when we got there. After a quick shower we hit the hay to rest up for the next day.

Foggy in the bathroom

2009-06-26T10:55:58Z

May 18:
We slept in a bit since we had no real plans this day other than get to London and check in to our hostel. We looked at pics from the past week, had some tea, packed slowly, and showered. We hit the road by about noon. We had to get back to Hemel Hempstead to pack our bags (since we would be leaving a majority of our stuff with Jess while backpacking the mainland) before heading into London. Along the way, we stopped at the "Comfort Cafe" outside of Cambridge for a traditional English breakfast.

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We made it to Jess' house by the early afternoon and packed our bags over another cup of tea. Her family wished as well as Thom and Jess gave us a ride to the train station. They gave us one of their cell-phones so they could meet us the following day in the city. We boarded a train in Hemel and went directly to Euston Station in the middle of London. I was ecstatic, as this was about two blocks from where I used to live. As soon as we stepped out of the station and I smelled the air my brain immediately reverted back a decade. Without using a map I managed to find the way to our hostel, pointing out things to Annie along the way (Russel Square, the hotel my parents used when they visited me, etc.)

The hostel was located in a very central area, close to the train stations, main tourist sites, and the theatre district. We checked in and found out we were in a room with ten bunks. This was Annie's first time in London AND her first time sharing a room in a hostel with people we didn't know. Only one of the bunks was occupied when we got there by a nice guy from Egypt who was looking for work. He was quite polite, so we made introductions as we dropped our stuff off and then went out for dinner.

It was rather late at this point, so we were worried about restaurants being open. As we were walking within the space of ten minutes two different sets of people stopped to ask us directions. Annie and I must look so nice. :)
We eventually chose an Italian restaurant for dinner since it was open and I was in a pasta mood. The food was great and it was fun to sit down with just Annie for a meal since we had been road-tripping with friends the whole previous week. After dinner, I took Annie down to the river so she could see the major tourist sights lit up at night. When we got to Parliament there was a huge protest rally going down. The leader of the Tamil Tigers (a separatist group in Sri Lanka) was killed that day and hundreds of Sri Lankans and others were congregated in the area with signs, drums, chants, etc. There was a huge police presence there, with some roads closed and paddy wagons everywhere. It was a bit intimidating, so we avoided that crowd and approached Parliament from the other direction, as to avoid any possible conflicts (needless to say, the people were less than happy during this protest). So instead of a group of angry people, we took pictures like this instead.

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And of course the London Eye(sore).

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It was around eleven at this time, so we took a slow walk back along the river to our hostel, excited to get some sleep and then spend a full day in London.

May 19:
We got up and ready by 9 since we wanted to have a full day of sightseeing. We had breakfast in the hostel, which consisted of cereal, but since it was included I didn't really complain. After that, we dove right into the touristy areas of London so Annie could see the major sights. First up was Picadilly Circus.

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I also wanted to take a picture of this for my mom since she loves them.

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Buckingham Palace was next. (Annie isn't saluting, it was just bright where we were).

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From there we walked along the park and down to Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Museum. Big Ben is in the background. Can you see us?

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We were waiting for a call from Thom and Jess. We knew they didn't want to do all the touristy stuff we did, but we didn't want to do to much in case there was something they wanted to see. After discussing our plans with them on the phone, we decided they would meet us to go up in the London Eye since they had never done it before, but we should hit Westminster Abbey to kill some time before they showed up since they weren't as interested in that. On the way, Annie almost got attacked by a royal horse.

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The Abbey was beautiful of course. I'd been there before, but Annie was enjoying looking at all the sculptures and graves inside, explaining their relevance in "The Da Vinci Code" to me". It was around this time that the sky opened up and there was a downpour, but it only happened while we were inside the Abbey. After we left, it stopped and didn't rain anymore the rest of the day. Me and an Abbey!

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There were more protests going on in front of Parliament when we left the Abbey. This was a combination of the Sri Lankan rally from last night and a continued hunger strike going on against the war in Iraq. Don't worry though, Churchill was keeping an eye on it.

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We walked over the bridge in front of Parliament, taking pics of the river, Big Ben, etc. Bought a bunch of postcards from a stall (15 for a pound!) and then waited under the London Eye for Thom and Jess to show up. When they arrived, we grabbed a cheap, buffet lunch from the building next to the eye and then bought our tickets to go up. We took tons of pics of the skyline and each other. Only classy pics though.

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Following that we walked along the river past the Tate gallery and stopped at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. I was excited because following this we crossed the Millenium Bridge that connected the Tate to the area where St. Paul's Cathedral is. I'd never done that before, as it was still under construction when I was there. I really liked it, since it's the only footbridge that crosses the Thames, so you can get clear views from both sides without having to cross traffic or anything. Once at St. Paul's, we took a breather from walking and had a bit of a rest while waiting for Jess' brother Tom to catch up with us.

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Tom showed up with his friend, Jake, and we continued our journey. St. Paul's was closed by the time we got there, but we weren't bothered since it was expensive to get in and Annie and I had already paid to go in Westminster Abbey. Instead, we went to a pub for drinks and to talk to Tom's friend. The reason he came is he heard we were Harry Potter fans, and he just happened to have been in the fourth movie! We stayed for a while and he told us tons of stories from the set. He played Seamus Finnigan's double. His experiences were that most of the actors were really nice and humble, no real big ego's (with the exception of Crabbe, who was kind of a tool, letting celebrity get to his head). He had some interesting anecdotes, like the girls who play the Patil twins aren't actually twins and don't like each other in real life. The guy who plays Malfoy enjoys remote control cars, so you'd see them zoom by the set sometimes with him after them. Of all the stars, he talked the most to the guy who played ROn, so they were kind of chums. After all of this he pulled out a bag and started showing us all his cool swag from his time on set. Unless you are Dana Peters, you probably won't be interested in all these pictures.

A signed, first edition of the Goblet of Fire form the principal cast members:

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Signed publicity shot of Hagrid:

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Annie with Jake and the picture:

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Jake and publicity shot of Hermione Granger:

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Annie and Daniel Radcliffe shot:

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Publicity shot from the movie, signed:

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The bad kids from the movie shot, with Goyle's signature:

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Script:

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Holiday card given to the cast from the underwater scene of the movie:

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Finally, his ticket to the premier in London.

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After having a wonderful chat with Jake, he went on his way and the rest of us (me, Annie, Thom, Tom, and Jess) finished our drinks and then went to another pub to meet up with more of their friends. We had pub food for dinner (fish and chips) and spent the night drinking and talking with their friends. Conversations ranged from music, to movies, to Mongolia (one of his friends was moving there with his girlfriend, so we told him we'd been there), philosophy, religion, etc. A normal night out drinking with a bunch of people who were easy to get along with. The girls were having an especially good time.

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Following that, we took the tube back to the train station to say goodbye to Thom and Jess for a few weeks. They left the subway and we stayed on one extra stop to get to our hostel. We then had to climb a 200-step, curving stairway to leave the station. It was fun having a bit of exhaustion at the end of the day like that, since it helped us get to sleep in preparation for hitting the continent proper.

Multiplication of the flies

2009-06-25T13:45:14Z

May 17:
Woke up quite refreshed at Thom's house since we got a comfy bed for the night. Thom brought us tea in the morning like at Jess' house which was incredibly nice of him. We definitely wouldn't be doing that for guests who came to visit us. The best they would get is if I could guilt Dana into cooking everyone breakfast. :)

We had originally planned to go to Cambridge to go punting, but the weather was rather spotty, raining on and off, and we didn't want to drive that far only to get rained out. Thom's parents had the idea of just renting a boat from the town of Wrexham close by and puttering down the Norwich broads. Since it was basically the same idea as we wanted to do but closer, we went for it. We showered, piled in the car, and were off.
Our first stop was the beach near Thom's house. He lives on the easternmost part of the island close to Norwich overlooking the North Sea. Annie got out of the car to enjoy the beach and the lovely breeze coming off the water.

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Our next stop was their local grocery mart. We wanted to buy some sandwiches and snacks, figuring we would have lunch on the boat. Annie and I enjoyed this part of the day because it was such a small, local business. Over the last week we had gone to big cities or tourist spots where being an American wasn't anything special as they were coming out of the woodwork. Going to a small shop in the middle of nowhere England brings smiles to the faces of people who might not have ever heard an American accent in person. It was cute being a novelty.

It was around this time we entertained Annie's desire to see what driving in England would be like. Thom pulled into an empty parking lot and let Annie go to town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFK8Ndfm_s

We then headed to the Broads, the waterways we would be motoring through. When we stepped out of the car, it started to downpour. However, by the time we hit the bathroom and booked our boat, it had stopped and the sun had come out. I was amazed that they would let you take a boat out with no previous experience. All you needed was an address (which we could have faked since they didn't match it to anyones ID) and about twenty pounds (Not each, TOTAL!) A man came to the boat with us, gave us a twenty-second "this is how you operate a boat" lesson, and we were tooling down the river.

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And now in motion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=108EBw82-Lc

On the boat we had our lunch. It consisted of normal sandwiches, weird English candies, and some interesting drinks. We made Thom and Jess try root beer for the first time. They made us try a drink that was a combination of beer and soda. I liked it, but Annie didn't.

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While heading down the waterways, we saw many boats, but this guy was definitely our favorite. Instead of having ice cream trucks, they had these.

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The river itself was beautiful. We took turns driving the boat and enjoying the scenery. Also, every twenty feet we would throw potato chips out to the ducks on the river, who would then follow us for awhile. All along the river there were beautiful little English, thatched-roof cottages.

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Annie and I took a nice couple shot (thanks Jess!)

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And we were all thoroughly confused as to why this even exists.

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After a lovely afternoon, we headed back to Thom's house for the evening. We watched an episode of Band of Brothers with Thom's mom and dad. We discussed the war from their perspective a bit and how all of the actors in the series are English. Afterwards, his mom prepared a beautiful family tradition for us, the Sunday roast.

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It consisted of tons of meat (with horseradish sauce), veggies, and my first time ever trying Yorkshire pudding.

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Probably the best part of the meal was the jug of gravy on the table. You could just pour as much as you wanted over everything, and it was amazing. After that we spent the rest of the evening playing board games and drinking. We didn't want to go out and get too tired, as Annie and I were leaving the next day to begin our backpacking trip, starting with two days in London.

Invisible texture

2009-06-24T14:55:37Z

May 16:
We woke up, packed, and headed out of Edinburgh. We woke up pretty early and hit the road as we wanted to drive pretty far that day, with a few stops. First up was the border between England and Scotland. About as exciting as it sounds. Only Jess and I got out of the car to check it out. Basically it's a big rock that says England on one side, Scotland on the other. Whereas they technically ARE two different countries, come on. You share the same culture, language, government, money, etc. How different are you? If Scotland is that different from England, Canada is a different planet compared to America.

Next up we checked out a section of Hadrian's wall. Built by the Romans, it basically cut off the south of the island from the savages in the north. It is rebuilt in the movie "Doomsday" to keep a plague contained within Scotland to save the rest of the island. Don't see this movie.

SInce the wall extended across the entire island, we just saw a small section of it as it connected with a Roman garrison (Fort Chester I believe). We walked around a bit, but it was pretty much a broken down wall in a field. Excellent for history buffs to see, but not quite interesting to talk about or post pictures of.

To save time, we bought some sandwiches and ate them in the car on the way to our next destination, York. This is the city invaded in "Braveheart" for those who need a movie reference. Also, there are peppermint patties that share the same name.

We parked at the train station since it's pretty centralized in the town. We crossed the river through a beautiful bridge/archway and then entered the first place the girls were interested in, the cosmetic/soap store "Lush". Afterwards, we headed down to the Jorvik Viking exhibition. It was touted as an experience taking you back in time to the time of the vikings when they sacked York and named it Jorvick (pronounced Yor-vick, thus eventually becoming York). Basically, you sat in a cart and went through a Pirates of the Caribbean-type ride, only about one-third as fast and far less interesting. Quite a tourist trap, which was annoying as it was recommended in the book we had. It was the last time we used that book.

Following that, we headed downtown and checked out the shops on the oldest street in York, which looked like an English street from a few hundred years ago. We stopped in a "chintzy" tea shop for afternoon tea. This consists of tea (I had the Irish blend Lapsang) and scones that have butter, jam, and clotted cream on them. It was absolutely delicious. Clotted cream is my new favorite topping. Here's Annie enjoying it (wearing the wrist warmers she loved and got in Edinburgh).

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On the way out of the street, I noticed this sign on a low-hanging door and thought it was funny.

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It was a nice afternoon, so we just took a slow pace through town, without paying to go into anymore tourist traps. We ended up at the tower castle, which was caught pretty sitting on a green hill.

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We then took a slow stroll down the river in town which was lovely and headed back to the car park to continue our journey. It was our last big drive. To save money, we had decided to push on to Thom's house where we could crash for free as opposed to spending another night in an overpriced hostel (since they were kind of posh in this area of England). It took a while, as we had to go down the entire Western coast of the island down to the point that juts out to the side, as that's where Thom lives. The one weird sight we saw was the "Angel of the North". It's a gigantic stone angel in the middle of absolutely nowhere that you can see for miles from the highway. It was kind of surreal. We stopped at a pub for dinner outside of the city of Norwich, and then finished the drive to the coast on the bottom-right side of the island. We made it to Thom's house kind of late, but his parents were still up. They were amazingly polite and talked to us for a bit over tea. Since Thom's sister was still at university at the time, both couples got their own bedroom which was nice since we'd been hosteling it for a bit and enjoyed the real beds and privacy.

Gigilo for us

2009-06-23T13:37:31Z

May 15:
Woke up and had to check out of the Castle Rock hostel. Since we were getting to the beginning of the busy season, and we were there on a weekend, they were booked up for the second night we wanted to stay there. I was sad to leave the hostel since I liked it so much, but was very excited to check in to our next place.

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Yes, it used to be a church, and is now a place where foreigners come to pass out drunk for very little money. We dropped our stuff off and headed out. It was within walking distance of the main sights in Edinburgh, so we weren't very bothered. We stopped on the way for some breakfast. I had an amazing dish of toast, covered in scrambled eggs, with smoked salmon on top. It was AMAZING.

We left and walked through a shopping district, followed by a graveyard. Finally, we made it up to the castle area.

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We walked up to the entrance of the castle, but didn't go in as it cost about twelve pounds each. For the four of us to enter, that would've been forty-eight pounds, which is something like five hundred dollars. As much as I'm sure the building is historically important, let's face it, it's an antiquated structure made out of rocks. In addition, since we're living in Europe, I think we'll see a castle or two while we're here. We walked into the front entrance, looked around at what we could, and headed out.

We DID however drop some money to go into the camera obscura exhibit close to where the castle was. A camera obscura is basically an optical trick using light, mirrors, and lenses that can project images from around a tower onto a blank slate. When you dim the lights, the blank slate looks like a movie screen, showing you IN MOTION whatever you point the mirrors at. It looked exactly like a TV, which was amazing since these things are hundreds of years old. We thought it must have freaked people out back in the day, and we were pretty impressed ourselves! In addition to this, the entrance fee included rooftop access to the tower so we could see all around Edinburgh, as far as the sea. We then spent the next hour or so working our way down the tower, as each floor had its own exhibit focusing on different aspects of optics and light. There were too many things to talk about, so I'll just mention three. The rooms that had multiple reflections.

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Mad-scientist room.

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And Predator room. (Infra-red camera, notice how cold Annie's eyes are!)

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On the way out, there was a machine that could take your picture and then you could morph your image into different shapes. Here's Annie videoing me becoming a number of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUYnI9tKjs

Afterwards we started walking down the Royal Mile and shopping in some of the stores. In one, Annie fell in love with a pair of wrist warmers (picture later in journal). While talking to the shopkeep, he learned we were TEFL teachers and started a conversation about his desire to become one. Annie started putting tammy hats on me while we were all talking to amuse herself. I didn't want to get one as I already have one from Edinburgh. To try and spur me on, Annie said she liked it because it was poofy. Unbeknownst to Annie, this is slang where we were (offensive term for a homosexual man) and the shopkeep started laughing and arguing that it looked manly.

We went outside and stepped into a trend that would follow us during the first half of our European trek, clouds and rain. They would only come on days we were walking around cities, but days we were traveling the weather would be gorgeous. To escape it for a bit we went into Deacon Brodie's cafe (across from the Deacon Brodie pub). Deacon Brodie was a man who was nice cabinet maker during the day, but was eventually hanged for being a thief at night. He would become the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We had some tea and hot chocolate in the rooms where he used to have his shop.

We continued walking down the mile and made an impromptu decision to join a tour that was about to leave exploring the underground of Edinburgh. Our tourguide was very good, if dressed a bit like Pinhead (he joked about it, referring to himself as the "S & M Willy Wonka" and then asked if we wanted some candy). He was amusing, kept your attention, and was extremely knowledgeable. During the tour he described various horrors throughout the history of Edinburgh, including the treatment of prisoners and torturing. Guess who got picked to be his model when he demonstrated some of the tortures?

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The tour ended by taking us down some side streets and then into a building which led under the streets. This was coupled with ghost stories and the origin of the underground caves. Excellent time overall. On the way back up to the tourist area, I saw this and had to take a picture.

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We followed this with a movie about the Loch Ness monster, IN 3D!!!!!!!!!! It was incredibly cheezy overall, but worth it because it was so cheap (the lady gave us all discounts since it was a slow day and she had no one to talk to.) The movie starred a "scientist" with a ridiculous beard who did some cheap 3D tricks and explained how he explored the loch over the past few decades. It didn't give you any hard evidence and wasn't compelling in any way, but it was fun.

It started to rain a bit harder at this point, so Ann and Jess hit a pub while Thom and I finished walking the mile down to the palace. We took some pics and then headed back to meet the girls. We ate dinner at the pub (I had chicken haggis) and just talked over a couple of pints. We walked back to the hostel after that to settle in and plan the next day's drive. It was the first chance we had to appreciate our accommodations. They turned the entire chamber where the pews used to be into a series of cubicle-like rooms, but didn't put a roof on the rooms so you could see the whole expanse of the chuch as you slept.

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A symphony of bananas

2009-06-22T11:09:06Z

On May 14th we got up and packed and headed downstairs for the complimentary hostel breakfast. This would be the single best included breakfast we would have for the remainder of our European travels. It was a cafeteria style kitchen with anything you could want breakfast wise (eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, pancakes, etc.) including all the British breakfastisms (baked beans for example). The chef behind the counter was an amazingly cheerful Scot who chatted anyone up that came down the line. Quite a lovely meal to start the day.

We headed back to the carpark and plugged in our Sat-Nav (or GPS). I loved what its name was (upper-left corner).

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We left Bristol and began our long-haul north. To break up such a long drive from the south of England to Edinburgh, we had a few stops planned. First up, we went to a rest area. This was necessary for a bathroom break, some petrol, and the requisite trashy mags. ANnie noted that I apparently become very concerned about the stories I read in my trashy mags.

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The thing that caught my attention about the mags was that, unlike in the US, nudity seems to be a selling factor. Not posing-for-Playboy nudity, but more like Kate-Moss-caught-on-the-beach-topless nudity. Still, rather surprising.

After that, we headed towards where Jess went to college. Not to visit her old alma mater, but rather the Monkey Forest that was nearby. In the middle of England, not near anything and for no apparent reason, there's a large reserve with hundreds of monkeys from two species you can go visit. There ARE some rules though.

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And how close can you get to the monkeys? Excited Annie can show you.

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After hanging with the monkeys for a while, we moved on. After driving for a few more hours, we pulled over for lunch in the town of Preston. Thom and Jess said it was a run-down town, and in our heads we compared it to New Brunswick or Camden. When we got there, it looked like a perfectly normal little English town. It was a bit bigger than Hemel Hempstead and had a few closed up businesses, but other than that it was fine. We stopped at a small restaurant for a cheap lunch of fish and chips with mushy peas.

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Following lunch we hunkered down and prepared to knock out the rest of the drive. It was a GORGEOUS day for driving. Lots of sun, no traffic, and good roads made the trip seem to fly by. Driving was pretty fun because we were still amazed at how different it was, in addition to the fact that our hosts had severely different driving styles (Jess had been driving awhile, whereas Thom had only gotten his license in the past month). We were quite excited when we got to Scotland (Annie and Jess both had never been there), as leading up to Edinburgh the scenery would change between beautiful hills and countryside, small villages, beautiful cottages/houses standing alone, and back again. We didn't see a proper town or city until we finally hit the outskirts of Edinburgh, and even then it only increased in population and size gradually. We drove to the Royal Mile on the tourist side of town and checked into the Castle Rock Hostel. I was excited as this was the place I'd stayed twice before when I was in Scotland. It has a nice, young atmosphere and is quite cheap. All the rooms have different themes and all the beds are labeled to help you find them (i.e. - In the "Matrix" room you would sleep in bed "Neo"). When we checked in, I was pleased to note that we were assigned to the "Winnie-the-Pooh-" room, because I thought my mom would get a kick out of it.

We dropped off all of our stuff and headed out to catch what daylight we had left. The first thing we did was to take Annie's picture in a pretty standard tourist shot, as this was the first time she had ever seen one of these.

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We headed down the mile and stopped at the pub I ate at last time I was in Edinburgh for dinner, Deacon Brodie's. I knew it had an upstairs dining room and served the local cuisine, haggis. Thom ordered us an amazing pear cider, Kopparberg. If you can find some where you live, drink it, it's amazing. I considered smashing the bottle on the table to get the remaining drops stuck to the inside of the glass. For dinner Annie went with salmon, since it's excellent there, while I convinced Thom to join me in the traditional main course.

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We ate and drank so much we were quite tired after a while, and since the sun had gone down we moseyed on back to the hostel. I went to the lobby to try and get us on the internet so we could plan the next few days driving while the rest of the gang walked around taking pictures. I love the signs they have in the hostel, like walking through this low hallway.

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We went to the room and each claimed a bed.

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Although Annie and I crammed into one, using the other one to lay our stuff out on. We were tired, but weren't quit sleepy yet, so we stayed up for a bit with the lights out, telling ghost stories and swapping anecdotes about our families.

Stop with the dong

2009-06-21T14:43:19Z

May 11:
After some last minute packing and saying goodbye to family members, we finally embarked upon our next quest, the conquering of Europe.

Dave picked us up and after figuring out his car, as economical and environmentally friendly as it is, is not cut out for transporting people and suitcases to airports. We felt bad as we moved everything into my parents car which he would then have to return that evening before getting his car back and heading home. If it was Newark airport we were leaving from it wouldn't have been a big deal, but since our flights were coming out of JFK, we realized how annoying it would be. Thanks Dave!

We got there hours early, as airport security always suggests you do, and were checked in within twenty minutes. Since we had nothing else to do and were hungry, rather than grabbing a quick MickeyD's meal, we sat down in one of the restaurant airports and had a proper pasta dinner for our last night in America.

Afterwards we headed down to the gate and plugged in the laptop to watch some Band of Brothers before the flight. I went up to the hit the bathroom before taking off and when I returned found Annie in a conversation with some strange Irish woman. Now, by conversation I mean the lady was talking about herself continually expecting Annie to fill in the appropriate follow-up questions so she could talk more. Anytime Annie tried to change the topic, the lady kindly would plow right on through discussing her time in Houston. This is why I can't leave Annie alone in an airport. :)

We got on the flight and were mentally prepared for a very long journey with no in-flight entertainment since our tickets were so cheap. We were happy to discover that they had the normal tv screen in the back of the chair in front of you from which you could select movies. Of course, the movies were terrible, but beggars can't be choosers. My favorite part of the flight was that since it was on Aer Lingus, every announcement was made in English and Gaelic.

May 12:
We landed in Dublin and had a pretty easy transfer to our connecting flight. It was only an hour layover, so it wasn't a long wait, nor was it too short a time to cause anxiety getting to our next gate. We were concerned when we got there though since our flight was basically a puddle jumper to London and we would be sharing it with a German class trip, most of whom had bought giant, green, Irish Leprachan hats and had the personalities to match jack-asses who would buy hats like that. On the plus side, they didn't speak English, so their conversations were much less annoying than they would have been otherwise.

We landed in London, got our bags, and headed out the gate. Thom and Jess were right there when we got out and we were all excited to see each other. We went down to the parking deck and got into their cars. They brought two since English cars are tiny and we each had two giant suitcases. Jess took Annie while Thom and I rode together.

Getting to their house was interesting. I sat in the front with Thom where, in America, the driver would sit. I wasn't used to this at all, and spent the entire car ride wondering where my steering wheel was and why we were on the wrong side of the road. Since you're sitting in what would normally be the drivers seat, you instinctively have "drivers reactions" to things happening in front of you. For example, when Thom would make a left turn on red, I would expect to die.

Our destination was Jess' house in the lovely town of Hemel Hempstead.

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We dropped off our suitcases and met her family, all perfectly wonderful English people. There was the dad, Brian, her mother, Noelle, and her brother, Tom. Since it was the mid-afternoon and we hadn't really eaten anything yet that day, Thom, Tom, Jess, Annie, and I popped into their car and headed to the next town (St. Alban's) for lunch. We ate at one of Jess' favorite restaurants (and one of my favorites from back when I lived in England), Wagamamas. It's an excellent noodle house that serves all its food fresh. With wooden spoons.

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After lunch we headed into the town proper. It was Annie's first time walking through an English town, and she was very excited. We started on main street and just walked along the stores, stopping in a chocolate shoppe for some dessert. The cashier was very friendly and after figuring out (quite quickly due to accents) that we were Americans started to give us tips on how to use British pounds and get rid of change. I thought that was kind of weird, but the sentiment was nice.

We ended our sojourn in St. Alban's by hitting up their Abbey. How excited was Annie to see her first sight in England?

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We walked around a bit, looking at chairs and chests that were older than our country, and getting a nice photo-op at a place that people who are serious about religion come to do pilgrimages. We just wanted a picture.

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After all our traveling, we were kind of tired, and headed back to Jess'. Driving in England is different, wrong-side of the road aside. They use traffic circles (which we got yelled at for saying since they only call them "roundabouts") much more than we do. Check out this little nightmare.

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That's one giant circle, and every little circle inside of it is it's own roundabout. Every time we entered it, I didn't think we would ever get out, alive or otherwise. My other favorite thing about this sign is the picture of the elephant. They love using pictures to represent destinations. Whenever you see an elephant on a sign, it means "zoo". I thought having elephants being a destination in town would have been much cooler.

After a brief bit of tea and talking with Jess' parents, we were rested up enough to hit the local pub to meet some of Thom and Jess' friends. It was Annie's first pub experience, and it was quite a nice, quiet place.

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The backyard was on a canal, and after it got too cold we went inside and had our own corner in the pub with multiple sofas to sit on. One of the pub's claims to fame was that Shakespeare drank there back in the day. While talking to Thom and Jess' friends, I played a trivia game standing in the corner and won three pounds. You have to love a country that has machines set up that will pay for your next round if you're smart enough.

We headed home after picking up some KFC takeout for dinner. It was then we started divvying up rest areas. Jess was wonderful and gave Annie and I her room. Thom and Jess slept in the the living room. Harry Potter was stuck with to the cupboard under the stairs.

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May 13:
We got up in the morning and were all super-excited to begin traveling. For our first week in Europe, we were going to take a road trip through England and up to Scotland, driving with Thom and Jess. Thom got up early and started cooking us bacon (which was amazing)and tea for breakfast while Annie and I poured over travel books. Annie was very happy to begin.

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We were showered, dressed, packed, and on the road by 9:30. We had a glove box full of cds, an iPod full of tunes, and Annie energized enough to power a plane. Not a large plane necessarily, but definitely a vehicle capable of flight for at least a small group of people. We headed west from Hemel Hempstead on the way to our first stop, Stonehenge.

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Not much to say about it really. What you see is what you get. That's us. That's a bunch of rocks behind us. Moving on!

We continued heading west from Stonehenge and stopped for lunch in the town of Bath. This was a beautiful city that Thom and Jess will be moving to in July to teach some summer school. It was named after the Roman Baths that you can see in the town if you spend a lot of money, which we were not willing to spend. Instead, we walked into the town centre, past the church with an incredibly frightening outside art exhibit going on.

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Annie and Jess became interested in a man they thought was dressed up like a Roman, until they figured out it was a mannequin.

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We stopped for lunch at a pub in the touristy part of town, because that's where all the restaurants are. When we ordered, the waitress was super nice and complimented Annie for her menu skills. They had a nice chat about being waitresses and comparing American restaurants with ENglish pubs. Annie had soup and a sandwich. It was her first introduction to the English use of butter on sandwiches instead of mayonnaise or the like. She did not like it, though for the rest of the trip and into Greece that's how I've taken my sandwiches. I had a jacket potato which was amazing, and since Annie had never seen one wanted a picture.

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Before leaving the pub, I hit the loo, and had to take a picture of the vending machine in there.

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Now, condoms I understand, but would you buy a pill in a vending machine in a bar?

We got back to the car and continued our journey. It was during this leg of the trip that we hit our biggest snag of the whole week. The car broke down.

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This was quite worrying as not only was it day one, tomorrow we would be making the longest drive of the week, up the west coast of England to Scotland. However, it wasn't a very big deal. The English equivalent of AAA got to us and told us what to do. The radiator had a slight leak. He filled us up and told us what to get to fix it. We drove down the road a short ways and bought K-Seal, a liquid you pour into the radiator that closes up the gap. After we did that, there were no more worries the whole time with the car.

We finally made it to that day's destination, the city of Bristol, to meet up with Jess' friend Donna. She is an event coordinator and had lived in the city a while. She showed us how to get to our accommodations for the evening, the YHA hostel near the town center. After we checked in, we headed into town for some pics and dinner. Here's us in front of a giant, mirrored globe for some reason.

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Afterwards we had dinner in a Latin restaurant where the waiters kept pronouncing paella with the two l's. It was amusing for Annie and I, as no one else noticed the problem. After a few drinks there, we headed back to the hostel, grabbed a shower, and went to sleep.

Is this going to go on all night?

2009-03-13T11:55:22Z

Last entry from Corinth/Vrahati. Here's the crazy elevator in the building where we went to school. When you step into the elevator, the floor goes down a few inches, as if it were on springs (which then pops you up when the elevator stops moving). The rest you can see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pB9elehId4

And here we are at the graduation ceremony. We passed!

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Annie and I both scored VERY COMPETENT on all components of the class, thus earning us a Merit attached to our Certificates. We rule.

Home tomorrow. Taking the bus to Athens with Peter and then hitting the airport. Next journal entry will be in a foreign country, as I don't write while I'm home.

Is that your face?

2009-03-10T17:37:12Z

Nothing much going on here in Corinth. Just sitting at the main study desk in school while Annie teaches, waiting for her to finish so we can go home and eat tuna sandwiches. :)
No pics or vids this time, just going to ramble about some various day-to-day stuff and observations about our past month here.

As I've mentioned, the bathroom in our house can be legally considered a torture chamber in some countries. The hot water (once you've had the boiler on for thirty minutes) lasts a good fifteen minutes before turning cold and never back to hot again. The delightful part about the hot water is that if while you're taking a shower and someone in the village happens to use water in any other way during the fifteen minutes before your water turns cold, that person will suck all the cold water out of the pipes making your shower scaldingly hot.

In addition to the cockroach I mentioned in a previous entry (which is the only one I've seen since I've been here although the other roommates said they saw one in their bathroom) our bathroom has a plethora of little winged flying guys. They're especially good at hiding until you least expect them, such as right when you sit on the toilet. The times that they are the most annoying are when you get in the shower, turn the water on, and then three come out of the woodwork to fly around you. You then find yourself hunting them down while in the shower without realizing that every second you spend doing this is another second that your precious little hot water trickles away down the drain.

On to other matters, the laundry machine sucks. It's the same as in Korea, where it's a front loader that spin-dries afterwards. We all have to share it, so there's no time for drying cycles, which means everything is hang dry. Nothing happened to any of our laundry, but one of our roommates lost her black underwear after she had hung them up to drive. Selective wind, crazy cats, or a creepy neighbor have all been discussed as popular culprits, but an answer has not been found. And she is still without her undies. (Don't worry, she has others).

As far as food goes, Annie and I have been very good about eating three meals a day. Breakfast consists of yogurt, cereal, or a gingerbread like doughnut we bought at a local place. For lunch, I consistently eat two pitas. Every day. They're awesome and I don't know when I'm going to get something like them again. Annie goes back and forth from salads to pita's to chicken platters, etc. Dinnertime is always the most fun as pretty much everyone cooks every night. We all have different foods we are used to and hang out in the kitchen cooking and commenting on each other's culinary choices. Our specialties usually involve pasta and fresh veggies, but we've done stews and soups and other things. Just recently, Annie stole a curry chicken recipe from one of our roommates and it was amazing. Dinners are great because they're fun to prepare with the roommates and they mean the day is over.

Public transportation here is easy if not weird. Peter used to drive us to and from school in his mini-bus but due to his recent illness we've been stuck with catching a car ride in the morning (which only seats three) while the rest take the public bus. At night, we basically all take the public bus together whenever we get out of work. The workers are very helpful on the bus, the passengers tell us if we're in the right place, and the busses all follow easy routes so you know where you are. The only weird thing is that there is no smoking on the bus, unless you're the driver.

This is an interesting anomaly in many places here. No smoking signs are posted in lots of places, but seem only to apply to the people visiting the places, but not the employees. The bus drivers almost all have makeshift ashtrays next to them and smoke continuously. Sit near the front and you can't avoid the smell, but sit near the back and there's no problem. The other example I saw of this was in the train station. No smoking signs everywhere. I looked over at the information booth and the employee was sitting in there with a depressed look on his face chain smoking. Everyone is very good at following these rules, but there is some unwritten law about them not applying to workers.

Tomorrow is our last day of morning classes and afternoon teaching sessions. Then on Thursday we've got our final exam and Friday is our graduation ceremony with champagne and cake I believe. Saturday we are headed to Athens on a bus to get to the airport and then are headed home until we land a job somewhere. The job market is very open for us at the moment and we are looking at many locations. We could have jobs right now if we wanted (Indonesia, Korea again, Greece, etc.), but we're giving it some time and being very selective about some locations. We want to know our options before we're off again for a year or more.

Possibly one more entry before the end of the week with celebratory pictures and a video of the deathtrap that serves as an elevator in our building. Otherwise, we'll be back in the US in about four days.

Liberal Chili

2009-03-08T19:08:29Z

Monday the second was an easy day. Our instructor had been sick, so we didn't take the mini-bus to school. Instead, we grabbed the bus, which made us a bit late to class. That didn't matter too much as it was being taught by his assistant. She's all right, but she's no Peter. She seemed to care more about impressing us and being our friend than actual education. She also relied more on her own personal examples in her limited teaching experience than the theory we were supposed to be studying. Luckily for us, that morning's lesson was on teaching theory and not grammar, so it wouldn't be on the test.

After the morning lessons, we stayed around for a bit working on our lesson plans for the following day but left soon after. Monday was the official day of the Carnival Holiday. There weren't festivities on the street or anything, but this was the day Grecians officially observe, so schools and businesses were closed, allowing us to head home early! When we got back into town, Annie was in the mood for a treat, so we stopped at the local pastry shop that apparently stays up for anything up to and including the Second Coming. Annie got a frappe and some cookies for pretty cheap. Priyanka then ordered a few cookies and got them for free. Racist Greeks. >:(

After getting to the house, a few of us wanted to try and get some things for dinner that night. The main supermarkets were closed, but we were told the local grocer might be open if we went down the back lanes to another town's square. It was a fun walk, but of course the store wasn't open. If the major chains aren't open, country-Bob ain't opening on the holiday. The only reason this anecdote is in this journal is because on the way home, Josee saw something and freaked out.

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That's right, that's a lemon tree. AND an orange tree. In one tree.

The next day was a bit difficult for me. It was the day before my project lesson was going to begin and the first time I was teaching adults in the program. My partner got sick this day though, requiring me to plan the whole hour and a half lesson myself AND prepare a whole lesson for the project on the off chance she wasn't feeling better the next day. I was able to get through it all, but it was quite the busy day. For lunch Annie and I went out grocery shopping and I got two pitas, my standard lunch since we've been here (they're so good!)

The 90-minute lesson I had was the last class of the day, so by the time I got out, most everyone had gone. Annie waited for me, but she was starting to feel sick, so we caught a cab rather than waiting for the bus and I made her a nice stew with broth to help her cold.

Wednesday was dull. Annie was sick. We got a ride to and from work from Peter's wife. The project lesson went well since my partner came back to school and had time to prepare. For dinner we had leftover stew and tuna sammies.

Thursday for me was awesome. Since I had to teach double on Tuesday, I didn't have to teach the evening class. My partner took the whole duty. I basically waited around after morning lessons reading movie trivia for a few hours until Annie was finished and we could go home.

Friday morning was annoying. We headed out early to catch the bus for school only to just miss it. We had to hop in a cab to get to class. The reason we were annoyed was because we wanted to get to school early. We were having our mock final that day. At the end of the course, there's a comprehensive exam covering most of the grammar they teach you throughout the program. We were having a mock exam that morning to see the format of the test and get some practice. We were given an hour and were told for the real test we'd have two hours, so we shouldn't expect to finish it in the time he gave us. Of course, four of us finished it within the time frame. When they were graded, Annie and I scored well above the necessary score to pass the class, so we're not worried about the final on Thursday. We headed home soon after lunch in joyous moods. We went grocery shopping for some essentials for the weekend. While we were in the grocery store, we heard the song "This is How You Remind Me" by that terrible Canadian band Nickelback. However, it was being sung by a woman in Greek, so it was noticeably better than the original. We got back home after shopping and loaded the fridge with what we got for the weekend. See if you can guess which shelf in the fridge is ours.

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We ate some baklava while passing the time since our Internet was down.

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And then since it was Friday, we started the drinking. Here are two of the beers that we like from Greece since they are bigger than normal beers and are 5% alcohol.

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I cooked dinner that evening. Regular pasta with a bunch of sautéed veggies over the top.

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Saturday was a bit more of an interesting day for us. We slept in a bit but then Angeliki drove us to our final outing, Ancient Corinth. It's a fortress settlement on top of a mountain right near the city. It's a good last excursion since it's pretty close to where we live so it didn't take all day and was completely free! Angeliki drove us to the top of the mountain and dropped us off, setting up a point to pick us up later in the village at the base of the mountain. The entryway to the fortress was imposing, but then again, I suppose that's the point of a gate in a fortress, no?

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We walked around the entryway for a bit taking random pictures of each other. Like Annie on a cannon for example.

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She was not amused at some of the pictures we were taking though.

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We climbed up to the highest point in the fortress and took a shot of the whole top. It was a much bigger place than we had thought, with many foundations and remains of a number of structures that had obviously once housed a large number of people.

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It was also a bit more of a hike than we had first anticipated. When Angeliki told us she was dropping us off at the top, we thought it'd be an easy walk through a castle. Instead, the whole top of the mountain was a series of hills and structures that required a great deal of exertion (it's the next day and Annie is still very sore). However, the views just couldn't be beat. Here's a shot off one side of the mountain towards the sea. Our house in Vrahati is somewhere near the coastline, in the middle of the towns shown.

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The only upsetting thing about the excursion was that at the top of the hill there was a tower that we climbed to get to. However, all the stairways had been sealed off to get inside and I only found one window. But when I got to the window, it was obvious they didn't want me to go in there.

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We made up for the disappointment by taking a nice couple shot in an archway.

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We also had fun with timer shots again.

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As far as things to do on the mountain, there wasn't much besides the views. The only intact structure we came near was the small church that had a bell on it. So of course we rang the bell (notice how Annie checks her watch to see the exact time for some reason).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8byp5QF_7Fo

Near the church we saw this:

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which Annie said was for wheelchair access. I laughed for a bit while one of the people we were with started arguing how wheelchairs couldn't make it that far into the fortress. Sigh. The last view that was worth seeing was the town of Corinth itself. I like how it looks circling the gulf. Through the middle of the town, which you can't really see form the picture, is the channel that cuts through the isthmus connecting the gulf on one side to the water on the other.

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Throughout the fortress there are a series of underground chambers and passageways, but they are almost all sealed off, so you can only see them through grating. Near the main entrance there are two open chambers though that we think you're allowed to go in. Well, no one was around to tell us no anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbqNQiQlO-E

Josee came into the chamber with me to take some pictures. She really liked this one because she said it looks like I'm dying and heading towards Annie who looks like an angel in the light.

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Here's us after passing to the other side, which surprisingly looks like Greece in the daytime.

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After this we headed out of the fortress, which we weren't looking forward to since the road down to the town was a LONG way (see pictures further down for size of the mountain). The trip didn't seem to take a very long time though since we were entertained by sheep and goats grazing on the side of the road. After we passed them, the herder thought it was time to bring them home and so put them on the road after us. Annie kept remarking that until the zombie invasion finally happens, this is as close as she's going to feel to a zombie hoard coming after her.

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The thing I liked most is how modern day shepherds use technology to combine the best in herding and laziness.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2589.jpg

However, our favorite picture of the day was this. Can you guess what it is?

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If you said a goat grazing in a tree he climbed, you're right! After the sheep and goats went down another road to the farm, we were without any animals. Until the local stray dogs came out to play.

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Don't let the picture fool you. He's not growling or angry with us. That was his happy face. He kept wagging his tail like mad and rolling over to try and get us to play with him. After he saw we had no food though, he sauntered down the road and we laughed that he just wandered into every house's gated yard he could looking for food.

We made it to the little town at the bottom of the mountain and waited for Angeliki. The town wasn't very big, mostly some tourist shops, a few cafes, and the requisite church by the town square.

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My favorite thing about foreign countries is how they will use English perfectly and yet it still sounds a bit off to a native speaker.

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There was a museum in the town with a few more ruins in it, but we were late coming down the mountain and everything was closing. Lucky for us, there was a restaurant that met our needs for both food AND some ruin observation.

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It also had a pretty good view of the mountain we had climbed previously, allowing us to take in just how far we'd come before eating.

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After lunch we walked through the town, watching stray dogs and shopping the stores until Angeliki came and got us. Since then, we've mostly stayed in our rooms. It's the following evening and pretty much all we've done is take care of e-mails, send off more job applications, and watched some TV. Tomorrow begins our last week of school. Three more lessons and a final and we're done! We'll be home on Saturday around 11 in the evening. I'll probably have one or two more entries before then relating the waning days of the course and covering some of the things we did on a daily basis I just haven't gone into detail on yet.

Teenage Tactics

2009-03-02T20:06:14Z

Friday the 27th was an easy day. No teaching practice in the afternoon, so we only had to do our morning lessons and then our foreign language component in the afternoon. For lunch, Annie had a salad prepared, so I went out by myself to get a pita. Here's the place we go to mostly for lunch. Generally speaking, the food is referred to as "souvlaki", and it's the Greek equivalent of fast food (pitas, gyros, grilled meat on a stick, etc.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2154.jpg

Instead of heading right back to the school, I took a little stroll around the area. There's a major road in front of our school, but a block down there's a little street that's just for pedestrians and has tons of shops, cafes, and restaurants. The pita place we go to is on the corner of this street. Here's a view looking down the street from in front of the restaurant.

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I took a slow walk around the block and headed back towards the school. Someone please tell me what the hell the purpose of this is.

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After lunch, we managed to finish putting our resumes together. Since then I've been sending them out like candy to schools throughout Europe and the rest of the world. We want to see what our options are like and what's out there, job market wise. We then went to the Maori lesson taught by Andrea. It was interesting, but my mind was on job applications at that point. I'd already seen her teach Maori once, so the point of the lessons (teaching a foreign language to students with no knowledge of the language) had already landed. I wasn't as interested in the second lesson.

After school, we got to go home a bit early (around 5 instead of around 8). We dropped off our bags and headed to the grocery store to grab some things for dinner. My favorite part of the grocery mart (which is the same in all grocery marts) is the counter in the back where they have numerous kinds of cheeses. It's similar to the lunchmeat counters in super markets at home, only cheese oriented.

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It's a bit daunting shopping for food in foreign countries. The aisles aren't arranged in ways you're used to. In addition, there's tons of things on the shelves you won't be able to understand what their purpose is. Is this a cheese whiz or a toilet cleaner? That's a dangerous mistake to make, either way. It can get overwhelming if you're not careful.

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However, occasionally you'll find a gem, like if you need some really intense paper towels.

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Even though we went food shopping, we weren't really in a cooking mood. We just went home and cut some tomato sandwiches and washed them down with some beers. We hung out for a bit with the roommates, then watched some TV and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up and had some cereal along with our final few eggs. We wanted to use them before they turned. I then went into our room and knocked my paper for that week out while Annie did some work on her computer. I wanted to get the paper done since we were going to be busy the rest of the weekend. We showered, got ready, and met up with the flat mates to head to the bus station. Only Lori and Josee were going to be with us that weekend. Priyanka and Marianna had gone to Athens separately to meet family and friends. However, that didn't diminish our moods that much. We were going into Corinth for the Carnivali!

It was the first time we were taking the bus from Vrahati. Peter had always driven us in the mini-bus to get to school and our other side trips. We made it to the bus stop and waited for a bit. We knew we were in the right place because there were a few other people waiting. We could tell they were going to Corinth because they or their children had costumes on. When the bus pulled up, I was quite surprised. For public transportation, it didn't look anything like a public bus I had ever seen. Instead, it was a tour bus like you'd see on cross country-guided trips throughout Europe. The seats were comfortable and expansive, it was clean, had a toilet, etc.

We got on and saw that the bus was almost full. There were only a few seats available, so our group had to split up. Since it was Carnival, tons of people were headed to Corinth, particularly at that time since we left at 3 and the parade was supposed to start around 4. Annie ended up sitting in front of me while I sat next to an older Greek lady. You sit there until the bus starts going again and then a guy walks down the row looking for people without tickets. You mangle a bit of Greek to tell him which stop you're going to, pay him one euro and forty cents, and he gives you a ticket for proof you paid.

The bus had many people on it, as I said, and most of them were dressed up for the carnival. It seemed to me like an unfocused Halloween celebration. Some had costumes, some just had wigs, some had face paint, one girl had goggles and a snorkel on (with normal clothes otherwise). It was interesting. As the bus went on, more and more people got on at every stop. By the second stop, every seat was taken and the aisles were crowded. By the stop after that, the aisle was full. The stop after that more people got on and the aisle was full to capacity. The stop after that more people got on and the aisle squeezed two more people in while the rest of the new people had to stand on the bus stairs. The stop after that more people squeezed on to the stairs and the bus was officially full. There were two more stops after that, and at each one more people got on. I couldn't believe the people getting on actually pulled it off. At one point, Annie had the idea to come sit on my lap to at least make one more seat available. And the ticket-collecting guy was amazing throughout all of this, somehow materializing around people randomly to collect fares from the new bus riders.

While watching this, Annie and I kept remarking that if this happened on a bus in Jersey or NYC, people would have already been shot, fights would have broken out, and at least a few people would have been physically removed from the bus. This bus was the complete opposite. People were joking loudly in Greek with each other. Every time the bus stopped to let more people on, people would laugh and joke with the people on the bus and then the people getting on. It was a very jovial atmosphere that was fun to ride in. Conversations continued throughout the ride without anyone getting loud or angry.

The only other anecdote from the bus ride I can remember concerns the old lady sitting next to me. Getting to Corinth means passing through a number of villages on the main road dotting the countryside around the city. Each city has a church in the center. Every time we passed a church, the lady would make a sign of the cross. I had never seen someone do that before.

The bus finally arrived in Corinth, dropping us off a few blocks away from the park by our school. The main parade route was on one side of the park. When we got there, hundreds of people had already lined up to see the parade. Carnival!

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The costumes among the populace continued to be unfocused. I could see many wigs among the crowd. However, there were also full Halloween costumes, men dressed as women, people dressed as Mexicans for some reason, a few people dressed as babies, etc. There were also the scary clown decorations still up around town to celebrate Carnival in the scariest way possible.

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After we got our places on the side of the road, music started playing at the loudest possible volume human technology can broadcast sound. The play list ran the gamut from Mambo No. 5, to La Bamba, to a conga song, to Mambo No. 5, to some more Spanish music, a single Greek song, and finally Mambo No. 5. They really like that song apparently. Spiderman and Superman definitely liked dancing to it.

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We waited for a bit while the music played until the parade finally hit the section of the street we were standing on. If you would describe the costumes as simply unfocused then you would have to describe the parade as a surrealist's loss of his grasp on surreality. To begin with, the parade was intermittent. A float or group of people would go by and then there'd be a gap of anything from one to ten minutes. The parade started with some people walking down the street in what were unquestionably breech of copyright laws as various Disney characters. I particularly liked it when they came down the center of the parade route back from the way they'd come with their heads off after nothing followed them for a bit. I spotted them later on the back of a float drinking water. They were followed, eventually, by thousands of these guys.

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They'd dance down the street and occasionally stop to lie on the ground, all jumping up simultaneously to some cue the rest of us never heard. After them there was the first float. I think it was a representation of the god Bacchus, only a slightly modern/unflattering one.

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The best thing about the float was that it was too tall for the street decorations. There were strings of lights and clowns strung across the street from lampposts. Each float had to have a guy walk along the road with it and whenever they reached one of the light strings, the float had to stop while the guy used a long stick to life the lights over the top. It was awesome. The floats didn't really have a strong theme following this first one, ranging from cavemen singing, to a giant clam with live women dancing in it, to this thing that will haunt the deepest parts of my subconscious forever.

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Groups of people dressed with a common theme would walk between these floats. One group consisted of a few guys that had plastic figures on the top parts of their bodies, representing old, drunk, Greek men. But I'll be damned if Hitler didn't sneak in there somehow.

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My absolute favorite part of the parade was a group of people dressed as my favorite food running together, Pitas.

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After a little while my brain couldn't take it anymore, so I convinced the group to abandon our spot in the parade and walk around parallel to the street to see if anything else was going on. As soon as you got to the other side of the park, the people stopped. There was nothing and no one on any street outside the one the parade was on. We walked down the pedestrian arcade by our school and I stopped to take a picture of a building I had been meaning to for a while because I think it looks neat.

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We walked down to the water and took a quick picture next to a giant Carnival decoration.

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Annie and I took a quick shot next to the Pegasus fountain in the middle of the square.

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We then walked all the way down the pier and started walking among the rocks at the shore with the mountains in the distance.

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I somehow convinced Annie to climb into the rocks for a picture. I can't believe she did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhPJ_10AHUY&feature=channel_page

We were getting hungry around this time, so we headed over to the souvlaki restaurant we get lunch from sometimes. We sat down and ordered some pitas, chicken on sticks, and beer.

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The parade ended around this time, while we were eating. Unlike parades in most cities I've seen, this one involved ZERO clean up.

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Even by Monday when we went back to school, confetti and spray cans were everywhere on the ground. We sat around and talked for a while, and then everyone wanted to hit the loo before continuing back to the park. I took a quick picture of the bathroom before anyone came in as I was quite amused by the configuration.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2357.jpg

If you're a girl this might not mean much to you. But guys, I've never seen a corner urinal before. Also, please take notice of the placement of the mirror next to it, and now guess how much it reflects while you're going about your business. If you answered everything, you'd be right.

We left the restaurant in time to see the scary clowns on the side of the streetlight up into even scarier clowns on the side of the street at night.

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We got back to the park and watched for a bit while a band played. We didn't stay long however as even though the music wasn't bad, it was the worst performance I'd ever seen. Every human on stage made it their job to move as little as humanly possible. Zero interaction with the crowd, which also stood still moving as little as possible. We decided to head on home at this point, stopping for a little treat on the way.

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We walked around for a bit looking for the bus. After walking a few blocks, we finally stopped to ask someone, who said because of Carnival it had moved a few blocks back where we came from. On our way back to the park, a motorcycle zoomed by and said something to Lori. We didn't really catch what it was. Luckily, as we crossed the next street, we found that the motorcyclist had circled the block to catch up with Lori and take some pictures with her. At was at this point we decided to just grab a cab on the way home.

On Sunday we woke up early to catch the bus to Athens (Athena). We caught the bus at the same place in Vrahati, but paid a bit more as we were going a little farther (Corinth is twenty minutes away whilst Athens is about ninety minutes). When we got to Athens, Josee took the lead since before coming to the program she had spent a few days in Athens. She had walked around and seen a bunch of out of the way sites, but hadn't seen the major places, which is why she was with us. We went down to the subway station which was right next to where the bus dropped us off and Josee showed us how to buy tickets and which train to take. We went four stops and got off at the station marked 'Akropoli' (Acropolis).

We got out of the station and started to head to the ruins. Annie was a bit peckish however as it was the morning time and she hadn't had anything to eat yet. We stopped at this nice lady's stand and Annie purchased a pastry.

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It was a plain donut COVERED in sugar. Not powdered sugar, straight up sugar. One bit and you had enough energy to climb rocks the rest of the day. Annie ate the whole thing.

It was on the way to the entrance to the Acropolis that we came across one of the most disgusting things any of us had ever seen.

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For those of you who can't tell, that's a line of caterpillars. They were following each other one after another through the cracks of the sidewalk. Now, if you think that's disgusting, you should check out the tangled mess the line is emanating from.

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We made it to the entrance to the archeological site and were incredibly happy. The site is free on Sundays throughout the winter. That saved us twelve euros apiece. We wouldn't have to pay for a single attraction all day. As we walked up the steps, we found that this had a few downsides. For starters, all along the stairs were guys selling stuff you didn't want. My favorite was the smash toys like the one Annie and I got in Korea (see previous country's journal for video).

The walk up the mountain isn't very difficult, but it IS a little time consuming since the Parthenon lies at the very top. Along the way we'd occasionally stop to take some pictures. Here's the Theatre of Dionysus, the God of Wine, from up above.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2379.jpg

The views of the city from the mountain as you go up are breathtaking. It's amazing how far the city sprawls out, and that most of the buildings are uniformly white.

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Here's the Temple of Zeus from the top (which we would be visiting later).

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And lastly here's a view of the other side of the city, with another temple in the foreground (that we would be visiting later also).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2384.jpg

We finally made it to the top and had to sit to take a rest. Still, great time for a photo op at the Parthenon!

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The Temple of Athena at the top is quite an amazing building. It's gone through renovations and reconstructions, but it still looks like it's the original structure all around.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2402.jpg

It was up here that I finally perfected a function of my camera I'd been working on for a while, the timer.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2403.jpg

From this point on, throughout the day, we'd end up putting the camera down somewhere and setting it up to take multiple shots, just for the heck of it. (Note: in the following picture it is the camera that is crooked, not the Temple).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2414.jpg

We took quite a few pictures and then headed down the mountain once it began filling with people. Free Sundays attract lots of tourists. We walked through the Agora, a connecting site of ruins and an old church linking the Acropolis to the next Temple. We had more fun with timers here.

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At was at this point Annie had the great idea to set her camera on video while I set my to timed shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9YAMDSEUGc&feature=channel_page

Our next stop was this building.

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It's another Temple, but I can't remember which God it's dedicated to. However, I really dug the architecture.

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I particularly liked the shadows the columns cast.

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We were going to do a timed shot here spelling out TEFL to give to Peter our director for advertising. As we were setting the shot up, someone scolded us and said we weren't allowed to take indecent pictures. More on this later. As we walked out of the whole archeological site I noticed this restaurant, which is proof that no matter how important and historical a tourist attraction you have is, it ain't nothing until the Irish get there.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2431.jpg

The area we were in was very touristy and there were tons of street performers (including a few groups of indigenous Indians from Peru playing instruments for some reason). This guy was my favorite because I liked the flute he was playing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WuPub-4uCk&feature=channel_page

We were all getting hungry, so we started walking around the Acropolis back to where the subway was. We figured we'd eat somewhere along the way and hit the Temple of Zeus before heading home. As we headed up the street, we noticed lots of people in costumes. The Carnival was continuing here in Athens in some way. The costumes remained as unfocused here as they were in Corinth, ranging from super heroes, to pirates, to a little girl dressed as a cupcake. This woman though scared the bejesus out of me.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_6957.jpg

And since a still picture probably doesn't explain why she was so friggin' scary, here you go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2MTtHP1YeU&feature=channel_page

Yes, that's her making the sound. And yes, that's all she did for a very long time. She happened to be heading our way, so we got to see her do that for a good quarter to half mile all the way back to the subway. We ended up eating at a little cafe under the shadow of the mountain. We got club sandwiches, which were ok and not terribly overpriced, just slightly. We strolled down the road after lunch and stopped at a few touristy shops. Annie and I ended up getting matching rings, as we didn't want to bring our actual wedding rings traveling with us but wanted something so people could readily see we're married. I like them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_7000.jpg

On our way to the Temple of Zeus, we passed one structure called Hadrian's Arch. I liked it because it was just on the side of the street for people to see for free. Even if it wasn't a Sunday, the arch wasn't fenced off so anyone could go to it at anytime. Plus, I liked how it looked, as most of the things we'd seen all day were columns.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2466.jpg

We went into the compound where Zeus' temple used to be, which now consists of a few remaining columns. We finally were able to do our timer shot with us spelling TEFL for Peter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2462.jpg

We set up another timer shot to get some jumping pictures in when all of a sudden a guard started blowing a whistle at us and motioning for us to stop. Apparently, fun is not something you're allowed to have at these historical locations. I mean, we wouldn't want to piss Zeus off and have him destroy the city with lightning bolts, now would we? As we left the site, I saw the best costume for Carnival yet. Focus or not, relating to religion or not, relating to the festival or not, I don't care. This guy rules.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2174.jpg

We decided to head home after this, so we got back on the subway, bought some tickets, and were off. The bus had dropped us off at one place, but it would leave from a different place. Peter had given us directions to find where the bus station was so we could purchase tickets. We followed the directions to a 'T' and found the exact address they indicated the bus station to be at. Unfortunately, there was no bus station. It was in an area called Omonia. As we went around asking for directions to the bus station, I noticed there were a LOT more people here than in previous areas, and the streets were noticeably narrower. One guy who finally tried to give us directions asked us where we were from, and we said NYC (to make it easier for him, as his English wasn't the best). He said we had to be careful, that this area was very dangerous, worse than Harlem. We laughed. Later, Marianna (our other flat mate not with us that day whose family is from Greece) verified that the area we were from is known for its drug addicts, prostitution, etc. I guess some of the stores should have tipped us off.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2175.jpg

In hindsight, we should have realized the area we were in wasn't the best. There were definitely prostitutes there, as evidenced by the women going in and out of cheap hotels, sometimes with men, dressed in incredibly short cut-off jeans, fish net stockings, high heeled boots, pulled back hair, and ample make-up. Annie would comment afterwards how upset she was she didn't notice them, as she was focused on directions. I still don't believe her, as they were EVERYWHERE. Another tip off was when we asked one guy on the street where the ticket office was. He took us down a block and across the street to a guy sitting on a milk crate with a wooden plank in front of him selling what were obviously local bus tickets for a profit. This man was no ticket office. We pulled an audible, ditched the bus station idea, and headed for the train station. The great thing about this idea was that we didn't lose any money on the subway.

In most subways when you buy a ticket it's only good once, going one way. In Athens, your ticket is good for two hours from when you validate it. Buy a ticket at two, ride the subway at three, and you can use it again up until five. We used our old tickets and headed right for the train station. We got our tickets and waited on the platform for the train to show up. This is usually one of our favorite parts of a trip, as it gives us time to review the day through the magic of digital photography.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_7066.jpg

The train took us all the way to Corinth, where we hopped a cab home. The cab driver was nice, and like the old lady on the bus, did the sign of the cross whenever we passed a church. I really like this tradition. We made it home and had a good time relaxing after such a wonderful weekend. Everything had gone just perfectly. Until I went to the bathroom and saw a giant cockroach hanging on the ceiling of the shower.

Chic with comic books

2009-02-26T17:25:52Z

We woke up excited on Sunday the 22nd, as it was our first excursion with our fellow trainees. Annie and I had stayed up late the night before finishing off our first reports, but two of our fellow students opted out of the trip to stay at home and finish theirs. The reports were pretty intense, with each of us writing over 4,500 words, so we understood that some people needed to stay behind to work on them more. We gave them encouragement and said our good-byes, then loaded onto the mini-bus. Our trip consisted of me, Annie, our instructors Andrea and Peter, Lori, and Priyanka.

The trip was very nice. We didn't go on the main road as I'd expected, but instead drove through the backcountry behind Vrahati, heading through the mountains in the distance. We were heading away from the water and deeper into the peninsula. Our first stop was a little site called Namece. It was one of the old locations were Ancient Greece would have inter-city games, along with Olympia and two other cities. The games we play today are based on the games from Olympia (Olympics), but the other three cities were on the same level back in the day. One of the stories I read about in the museum at the site stated that any athlete from Athens who earned a crown (first place) at the games in Namece would receive free meals for life, showing how popular the games were at the time. Here's our group in front of a giant map of Greece showing the locations of all the local archeological sites at the museum.

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The site consisted of a few different buildings, the most important of which was the Temple of Zeus. In the museum they had a display of an old table used for sacrifices in the Temple. The table had two sections for the animal blood to be collected in, one for whichever deity the person doing the sacrifice wanted to honor, and the other always for Zeus.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_1892.jpg

The museum was pretty small, but it had a lot of artifacts excavated from the site. After we walked around for a bit, we walked out to the main preserved area the temple used to be on. The first thing you come up to is:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2031.jpg

Yup, actual human remains put on display for our amusement. According to the plaque, it was a woman who had lived into her seventies, had at least two pregnancies, and severe arthritis. After that, we walked to a covered area representing where the athletes who came could wash up before and after the games. It was neat because some parts of the site had been very well preserved, like the sinks the athletes used to use.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2033.jpg

The columns that had held up the roof were gone, but the foundations remained. Here's Annie doing her interpretation of what had happened to the columns.

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After that we went to the actual temple area itself. We got a nice little couple shot.

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And then Annie wanted me to do something interesting for my next picture with Priyanka. I was cold and didn't want to do much, so I simulated what it would look like if I got strangely photo shopped into a picture. (Note - the picture IS actually real, there is no photo shopping).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2055.jpg

Annie wanted to play 'Where's Waldo?’

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2056.jpg

And I just really wanted to touch something thousands of years old.

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We walked back to the mini-bus and then drove up a nearby hill, on the other side of which there was the actual stadium where the games were played. I liked walking along the path to the stadium, as it was lined with a number of olive trees, some of which were bearing fruit.

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The path ended at a little cul-de-sac where there were still pieces of pillars in the ground.

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This was the building the athletes would use to prepare for the games (getting dressed, etc.) Basically, an ancient locker room. Annie liked that she was taller than some of the columns.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2066.jpg

The locker room building was separated from the stadium by a giant hill, through which a tunnel had been dug out allowing the athletes a private way to get to and from the games.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2068.jpg

We got to walk through it ourselves to get to the stadium, which to me was kind of a humbling experience. Thousands of years before I had been there, the original Olympic (or in this case, Namecean) athletes had walked through the same tunnel to compete in front of thousands of people. Here's Annie on the other side.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2069.jpg

The stadium itself basically looked like a giant soccer pitch. Lori and Priyanka ran a little race down the lanes just to say they competed there. I just climbed the hill to get a shot of the stadium form the viewpoint of the spectators.

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After a brief walk around, we headed to Mykenae (Mycenae). This was the town from which the Trojan War was launched, amongst other mythological and actual historical occurrences throughout the ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae

It was a little after one by the time we got there, so we decided to have lunch in a little Tavern first. The place was only one room, and the bathroom was literally outside in the back, so it was cold to use. However, inside was rather quaint, with a fire going by our table and lots of streamers and decorations on the wall to celebrate the ongoing Carnival holidays in Greece.

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Annie and I ordered a number of things for lunch. Fried cheese, which Annie was very serious about.

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Meatballs, a tomato salad, bread, and bean soup.

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It was incredibly filling, and we stayed there for quite a while chatting. Afterwards, everyone piled into the bus to climb the mountain at the edge of town to visit the main site. It was great that we were doing everything on Sunday, since during the winter there are no admission fees. Score! However, as we entered the mountain fortress, we were told to hurry as it would be closing at 3. The time then was 2:30. Unscore! We did an amazing job and getting through a half hour whirlwind tour of the fortress. There was the main entrance.

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And then of course the circular burial pit.

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On the whole, the place was rather impressive. I really like how well preserved it was, although probably some parts of it were reconstructed. However, you got a definite sense of the defensive nature of the fortress and how sturdy it must have been at one time.

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The mix of the ruins with the natural surroundings that had started to reclaim the land was amazing.

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Annie was rather captivated by it.

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And even though pictures don't really do it justice, the view from the top was amazing. You could see the ravine that was directly next to the fort, the town down below, a town in the distance next to the water, and the mountains even beyond that.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2100.jpg

We left the site with time to spare and met up with Peter, who had waited in the bus. He'd been to the fortress a number of times before so opted out of walking around here to read in the mini-bus. We then set off for our last stop of the day, the seaside town of Naflia. It was a beautiful town full of cafes and little shops, with a giant castle in the background on top of another mountain.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2111.jpg

We were dropped off by the water, where we had the choice of walking through town or taking a boat out to the fortification that was on the water. We opted to walk through town, although the fort did look interesting.

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Peter went to go park the bus while we made our way to the town square to wait for him.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2116.jpg

Throughout the square there was confetti and empty spray cans. The night before, Naflia had their own celebration for Carnival. The square was decorated and hadn't been cleaned up yet by that point.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2119.jpg

The town was very beautiful, with many side streets to walk through that cars weren't allowed on. You had a definite feel that it was a touristy summer town that was just sleeping for the winter. The cafes were open, but weren't packed. The stores displayed their wares, but no one was buying no matter how cool the stuff was.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2122.jpg

Storeowners would see us walk down the street and come out to try and get us into their shops. Cats would attack us in packs for food as no other sources were around.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2129.jpg

Throughout the town, even though many of the shops were new, there were many places that had obviously been built a long time ago. They looked like old fountains and had some writing inside, which we thought looked like Urdu or Farsi. Here's Annie in one.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2128.jpg

We tried to take a jumping picture together on the streets, but it just didn't end up working out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_1964.jpg

However, that didn't stop us from having a good time. There were tons of things to see and take pictures of. Annie was a non-stop shutterbug. This is my favorite shot of her in action standing on stairs in the middle of one of the town's paths.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2138.jpg

Graffiti abounds throughout Greece. Pretty much everywhere there is a building, fence, house, or horse, someone has tagged it. This was my favorite one in this town. Was it a joke? Why is it in English? Unfortunately, we'll never know.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2139.jpg

Hahahahahahaha.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2140.jpg

On the way out of town I noticed a cute little newsstand selling postcards. Close to the town there is a very famous bridge that tourists come to see. It's rather large and lights up at night. We didn't get a chance to see it on this trip, but I was tempted to grab this postcard, if only for instructional purposes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2141.jpg

Finally, as we were headed to the car walking along the shoreline, I noticed a restaurant advertising its wares to the public. It had its menu presented in both English and Greek. Unfortunately, sometimes when you advertise in more than one language, you make little mistakes. For example, in the Greek alphabet, the Roman letter 'u' is written with a 'y'.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_2142.jpg

We piled into the bus and headed for our last stop. Even though the castle was closed, Peter drove us up to the top of the mountain so we could see the view of the town and the ocean.

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We drove home to Corinth after that, which took about an hour. Everyone was tired after a long day of sightseeing, so most everyone fell asleep. We dropped Andrea off in Corinth so she wouldn't have to catch public transportation and then headed back to Vrahati. Annie and I spent the remainder of the evening doing wash. The laundry machine is interesting. It's similar to the one we had in Korea in that all the laundry goes in through a window in the front, the machine fills up with water to wash the clothes, and then it does a spin dry at the end. There might be a heating setting, but as the machine is in Greek and not Korean or English, we can't use it. Plus, there are four other people in the house so we can't monopolize the machine constantly. After the clothes come out, we hang them to dry on lines outside, the railing, heaters, our other bed, etc. They don't come out the best, but at least they're clean. We had a quick pasta dinner with green beans, watched a movie, and went to bed.

On Monday we had our first graded observations. There are four levels: exemplary (which is a perfect score), very competent, competent, and whatever the failing level is. Annie and I tied, both getting very competent. The teacher said it was the first time she had ever given that grade on a first observation. Keep in mind though that Annie and I have experience teaching compared to all the other trainees who are now in front of classes for the first time. Peter also reviewed our essays we had written over the weekend and said they were good, so on the whole it was a great day for grades.

On Tuesday Annie and I went back to the small cafe we ate at the first day of classes. I had the meatballs again with fries while Annie had the fish again. The guy was super nice to us since he remembered us from the previous time. We did a great job pointing and saying 'Thank You' in Greek and he did a great job giving us food. We had a beer with lunch, which might have been a mistake. It was 5% alcohol and about twice the size of a normal beer. Fantastic for later drinking sessions, but for lunch before lessons we should probably avoid it in the future. However, for less than $3, it's not a bad deal.

It's at this point I must point out that whereas the facilities we learn and teach in are more than adequate for our needs, it's like working inside a concrete block that's been left out in a snowstorm for a week. Every day we get to the school and spend the entire morning with our shirts, hoodies, jackets, and scarves on while listening to the lectures. Throughout the course of the day the place eventually warms up a bit, but it's the 9th circle of Hell every morning.

Yesterday, the 25th, we completed our last lessons with whatever group we had been teaching up to this point in the program. It was my last time with Patrick, the 10 year old. He was great, and we ended on a very positive note, with him contributing more in class than I'd seen him contribute in any class before this, mine or any others. Annie had a rough day with the group of teen girls, but after her 45-minute bit, she never has to teach them again. We made it home after that long day to discuss the heat in the house wasn't on at the time. To sleep that night, we had to take the comforter from the extra bed and add it to our comforter and sheet we were already using. However, by the morning, it was apparent that the heat was back on and working.

Today went well, same as most days before. For lunch I had a spinach pie and a calzone while Annie had a mini-pizza and a pastry. We spent our whole prep time laughing with the other trainees while one of them was stuck in a classroom. Now I'm just updating this waiting for eight so we can go home, eat some pitas, and watch some Lost.

Fish cheeks and 80's Porn

2009-02-21T17:42:39Z

Some updates on our living situation. For starters, Annie wanted me to mention that nothing in the house is ever locked, including the sliding glass door from the front of the house to our room. The town is so small there is zero crime. It took a few nights for me to get used to this. I was the guy while going to a small college in rural PA who would lock his dorm room whenever he was in it. Leaving a house unlocked took some getting used to.

Our nights have gotten a bit more interesting as well. Apparently the grandpa's metamorphosis from the living to the dead is taking longer than movies have led me to believe. If there is to be a cure to the zombie virus, I believe it can be found in this man. At night he still continues his moaning, however, it is now occasionally punctuated by loud speaking (in Greek of course). I firmly believe it is his continuing need to hold on to his humanity which leads him to use his outdoor voice at midnight in his bedroom, fighting the dark for his right to walk amongst the living as one of them.

February 18 was another normal day for us. Yogurt for breakfast, normal morning lessons, standard pita lunch. The thing that made Wednesday different from the previous two classes days was that it was our first teaching day. The program works that every morning we have lectures (teaching methodologies, grammar lessons, etc.) and then the afternoon is spent for lesson prepping and the actual teaching. For my first lesson I had Patrick, a ten-year-old boy with a pretty amazing level of English for his age. The only problem is it's a 1 on 1 lesson as no one else his age is at his level. This makes him a bit shy. The lesson is an hour and a half, with three teachers each taking a half hour. While one teacher is teaching, the others are observing. Having four adults in a room watching you tends to exacerbate your shyness.

To begin the lesson, I introduced Patrick to 'The Office' pound-bomb. That's where you give the other person a pound (closed fist bump) and afterwards pull your hand back and make an explosion sound. The first time I did it it caught him off guard. For the rest of the lesson, he seemed excited whenever I pulled it off, making him a bit more interested in the lesson. Success!

Annie's first lesson was later with a group of teenagers. Their English level is pretty good, however, it was a group of teenage girls who are all friends. Luckily for Annie she went first, before they became bored. Annie said as the lesson progressed, they grew chattier in Greek for the other teachers.

After our lessons we got feedback from our instructors. This went pretty late, so we didn't get home until after 9. It was so late we didn't feel like cooking so we swung by the local pita restaurant in Vrahati for dinner, brought it back home to eat, and crashed afterwards.

The next morning was fun since it was Annie and my's two month wedding anniversary. :)
To celebrate the occasion, the mini-bus for our school was finally fixed, so we didn't all have to squeeze into cars to get to class.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_1939.jpg

The morning routine was normal as usual. For lunch I had another pita. I know it seems like they're all I eat but:

1. They're cheap.
2. They're fast.
3. They're amazing
4. When am I going to be able to eat authentic pitas again when I leave here?

When we got back to school, I finished preparing for my lesson and then spent the next two hours until the lesson begin fretting about it. I got so worked up I gave myself a headache and became nauseous. The class I was going to teach was adults, but beginners. I was nervous about being able to teach them based on their ability with the language. Of course, the lesson went well and I calmed down afterwards, but it was difficult for a while. Annie's lesson went amazingly as she had the advanced adults. I could hear laughter and great feedback throughout her lesson from the other room.

After school, we headed home, got together with Peter and his wife, and went out to dinner. Thursday was a holiday in Greece where bbq meat is the standard. When we first got to Greece and were going around Corinth, I had wondered why there were scary clowns at most intersections.

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Apparently they are decorations for the holiday. To celebrate, we went to a local Taverna for dinner. Our roommate Josee (the French Canadian) came with Annie and me in Peter's car while the other girls came separately a bit later (with good reason, more later). The Taverna was great. It was this homey little restaurant with a giant fire pit in the middle they use to heat up coals to cook the meat.

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The table was right next to the fire, so we were warm the rest of the evening. The group were all in good spirits in preparation for dinner.

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The Taverna had a bunch of wine barrels in the back from which their local little brew is dispensed. Each barrel had a cool picture painted on the front of it depicting different aspects of drinking in Greece.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_5925.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/douglaspeters/Greece/IMG_5926.jpg

This one was Angeliki's favorite and the reason she told me to go back and look at the wine barrels. I hoped Peter wouldn't get in trouble for drinking too much wine with us.

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After we sat, Angeliki ordered us some of the house wine, which came in a cute little pitcher and tasted great, if a bit strong.

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Everyone partook of the wine,

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which led to people getting a bit loose throughout the meal.

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For starters, Angeliki ordered a feta-cheese Greek salad with tzatziki (a cucumber-yogurt that acts as a kind of salad dressing), french fries, fried mushrooms, and some of that awesome fried cheese she made for us the other day (in the corner of the picture on the right).

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For the main course, Angeliki ordered a few platters of lamb chops.

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I was quite happy when the meat came out, as Angeliki sprinkled salt over the plate quite liberally. It flavored the dish perfectly to my tastes (which some people might think is a bit salt-heavy, but I don't care it was amazing). Annie also enjoyed the meal, as evidenced by the number of bones she left behind at the end.

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Dessert came out afterwards, which were cute little heart cakes. Angeliki told us to take a bite of them while you have wine in your mouth, which literally disintegrated the food. The result was rather interesting.

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We finished dinner and then headed outside for a group picture in front of the restaurant's sign.

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The girls who had walked to the restaurant earlier got to take the car back to the house this time while the rest of us walked. There was a reason they planned it this way. When we got back to the house, they had a cake waiting for Josee, as it was her birthday earlier in the week. However, they also had a treat for us, to celebrate our little anniversary. :)

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We went to bed quite full and happy. The next morning we woke up and went through our normal morning routine with one difference, we were happy knowing we didn't have to teach that day and school was going to let out earlier. For lunch I had a pita and Annie had a salad of just tomatoes and tzatziki. The afternoon session had a component slightly different than anything we had done before. To help put us in the mind frame of someone who doesn't speak English, Peter's assistant Andrea gave us a language lesson in a foreign language none of us spoke. The language was Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, where she was from. She spoke only Maori to us the whole lesson, showing us what it would be like to learn a language without knowing it. The point was to watch how she taught us the language. It was quite interesting, and much less stressful than preparing our own lessons.

This was followed by a job session where Peter told us how to write C.V.'s for the TEFL job market and see where our interests were going to lead us after the course. He gave us a bunch of resources and answered a lot of our questions. After coming out of this lesson and talking to him, we are absolutely positive we will have jobs and even have some leads now for jobs in Greece, Turkey, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Decisions, decisions!

We got home around 7:20 and went out to grocery shop for dinner and meals for the upcoming week. Annie cooked up some great pasta and veggies when we got home and then we just hung out with the roommates until bedtime.

Today we got to sleep in (10:30, woo-hoo!). Annie threw together a great breakfast of eggs, potatoes and onions. After that we kind of just relaxed until lunchtime. Angeliki went out early that morning to buy some provisions. In the backyard, they have a big outdoor wood burning barbecue grill.

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Angeliki bought fresh fish that morning from a local market to grill for us.

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We set up tables in the front yard and had a big house lunch, with Peter, Angeliki, and Andrea coming in from Corinth.

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In addition, the girls form the house bought veggies so we could make our own salad and even bought the components to make our own tzatziki.

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The fish was very good, and extremely easy to work with. I just stuck my knife in the middle to split it in half the bones just all came out together.

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We spent the afternoon outside eating, drinking, and talking. We took a bunch of pictures in the group. This one was my favorite, as it looks like I have a rainbow dimple.

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Tonight, Annie and I are staying in to write our papers for school Monday. Tomorrow, our first Greek excursion to archeological sites!

Significant Chunk of Boxes

2009-02-17T20:51:30Z

To round out Valentine's Day on Saturday, we mostly hung out in our room to allow our two newest roommates time to get used to the house and settle in. For dinner that evening Annie prepared some salmon we purchased from a local fish merchant. The roommates all came out of their respective rooms and we talked for a long time in the kitchen before retiring to bed.

On Sunday, we were up at seven yet again. It seems our bodies have been wanting to wake up early for a while now, it just took coming to Greece to bring that out in them. We showered and got ready but then stayed in our rooms for the rest of the morning. We didn't really want to walk around anywhere and we needed to stay close to the house since there was supposed to be a welcome lunch that day. Around two, Peter came down and began to chat up the house. He's from England, is the director of the program, and is married to Angeliki.

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He brought down a few bottles of wine and began meeting his new students while Angeliki finished preparing the food upstairs. While we waited, the other teacher in the program, Andrea, came over. She's form New Zealand and lives in Corinth. She’s been a TEFL teacher for a while now, has taught in a number of countries, and is Peter's assistant here helping with the trainees and the language classes.

After about half an hour Angeliki came down with her kids, Tim and Penny, carting massive amounts of food. Pictured here are an awesome salad, some thin spinach quiche, and chicken with bacon and stuffing inside and potatoes.

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It was all absolutely amazing. I also liked this one dish she baked in our oven that consisted of a number of different veggies and other unknown ingredients with pasta and a light coating on top.

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It's terribly hard to be descriptive when you don't know the names or ingredients of any of the food. Suffice it to say, you wish you were us that day as far as sustenance goes. Here's Angeliki setting the table.

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She even made us a dessert dish, roughly translated I believe as "milk pie". It doesn't sound appetizing when translated, but man it tastes good. We ate, drank, and talked until around five. Andrea headed back home and we relaxed around the house with the roommates. Eventually Annie and I retired to the bedroom to watch some Office and hit the hay, as we had school the next morning.

We all woke up rather early on Monday to begin the shower sharing. Annie turned the hot water on around 6:30 and we all managed to get a nice hot shower in by 8:15. While Annie was getting ready, I squeezed us some fresh orange juice and cut up some bananas to put in our cereal. We had breakfast and finished getting ready for school while watching the movie Clue, which is still as brilliantly amazing as when I first saw it.

At 8:45 Peter came downstairs to collect us for the trip to Corinth. Normally he would drive a mini-bus to bring us all as a group. However, it's in the body shop at the moment so we had to split between his car and Angeliki's. We took the main road into Corinth and were at the school within about twenty minutes. The drive in was beautiful as the road goes right along the coast, with the gulf on one side and mountains on both sides in the distance. It's quite a view, but I have to wait until we have the bus to get some good pictures as a bunch of us were squeezed into Peter's car that morning.

We hopped out of Peter's car in the middle of the street by our school so he could go park while we went into the building.

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Admittedly, the building looks a bit dodgy. However, you can't really be scared when you're in a city that's so trendy even the poor are fashionistas.

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The school is listed as being on the third floor which is a VICIOUS LIE as they don't count the floor you walk in on. It's a walk up as Annie and I don't trust elevators that have large signs on them telling you only two people can get in and there is a 150 kg. weight limit.

We spent the morning sitting in our main classroom for lectures and discussion with Peter. This is where we will be spending most of our time, both while learning and teaching.

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Here's the other teacher, Andrea.

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Here's the amusing sign on the back of the front door. Two points to anyone who can tell me where this sign is copied from.

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After morning lessons, Peter took us out and showed us the local area, pointing out supermarkets, restaurants, etc. He left us at a nice little family owned place. One of the members of our group, Marianna, speaks Greek so she helped order for us. The food was AMAZING. It's different everyday as you can only order whatever the family prepared that morning, which changes. I had a mix of different veggies, potatoes, and meatballs while Annie substituted fish for her main dish. It was incredibly filling and quite tasty.

After lunch we returned to school for our afternoon lectures. Halfway through, Peter's phone rang. Apparently we had one more student who was joining our program. They had signed up that Saturday and were on their way to Corinth at that moment. She joined in around the end of the day when we were observing our first teaching session making the whole class now 6 students, 5 girls and 1 Doug.

I took a picture of the other main room of our facilities on the way out. This is the relaxing room next to the main classroom. It's got a couple computers, some couches, a coffee machine, etc.

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Hanging around the room are cute little postcards and articles relating to TEFL teaching as a profession. I think this one was my favorite.

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The day was over a little after eight and we started walking back to the car park to catch a ride with Peter. There was a lot of graffiti as the car park is close to the water and there are some empty buildings around. Here was my favorite tag.

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After getting back home we had a quick dinner and then crashed since it was such a long day.

We got up early again today, the 17th, to get ready for school. The previous day's routine worked just as well today so we might stick with it the rest of the program. We'll see. Again, Peter took us to school in his car as the bus wasn't ready, but he said it should be ready again tomorrow. Lessons in the morning were similar to the day before, with the added bonus of getting our first teaching assignments. Annie and I were split up, but we had expected that. Tomorrow will be our first day in front of students being observed by our peers. I'll be teaching a ten year old with some fluency while Annie will be teaching a small group of intermediate high school students.

For lunch, Annie and I split off from the others and walked around the area looking for a quick bite. We ended up at a small walk in restaurant that had giant pictures of sandwiches behind the counter. As I was looking at them, the woman behind the counter said, "Only this" and indicated sandwiches were not an option, just whatever was in the glass case in front of her. We opted for two cheese filled warm pastries and a mini-pizza. As we left, Annie said thank you in Greek, which made the woman smile. Go Annie!

The afternoon was spent mainly preparing lessons for our next day of teaching. We ended the day observing a lesson taught by Andrea for a group of semi-fluent adults. After that we all piled into Peter and Angeliki's cars again to head home. While cooking some pasta for dinner and hanging with our roommates, Angeliki came downstairs. She brought with her a delicious fried cheese dish and discussed the rest of the week with us. As Peter is in charge of the program at school, Angeliki mostly watches out for our lives outside of the school. Apparently, this Thursday is a big holiday in Greece. She offered us a choice of what we wanted to do on that day, BBQ at home or go to a restaurant. We opted for the restaurant, as she says it turns into a slightly raucous party, with the local village mostly all coming out to eat, drink, and be merry. Since we only have normal lessons and no teaching on Friday, we figured it wouldn't hurt to party a bit with the locals the night before. Since we decided not to BBQ at home this Thursday, she said we'd have one this Saturday. She'd get up early and go get a bunch of fresh fish from the market. We'd get some wine and sit in the backyard while Angeliki prepares our food. This Sunday, to make sure we're not bored, she's planning our first excursion into the surrounding countryside. I think we're going to visit some local archaeological sites.

Needless to say, it's going to be pretty busy with our long days at school and our full social calendar for this Thursday night and the weekend. Hopefully, we'll be getting enough sleep!

And if someone can tell me what's going on in this store by our school, I'd love it.

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