München: Land of Beer and Giant Pretzels

Spelled in English, this is Munich. Try your hardest to think of the most stereotypical German setting. Then try harder. Maybe you're thinking of giant beer steins filled with an impossible quantity of pitch black beer. Or perhaps giant pretzels bigger than your face. How about outdoor seating for 500 people filled to capacity for lunch AND dinner with people consuming huge, fatty meat and potatoes plates of food and washing it all down with liters upon liters of beer. Yeah, that's München.

Almost as soon as we dropped our bags at the hostel (and got our wifi fix, of course), we set off the three or four blocks to the Augustiner biergarten, one of the most popular in the city. Saying this place was packed would be an understatement. We're taking every single table filled. My guess is that there were well over 800 people there. Getting the food was a crazy experience in and if itself. To put it simply, we shoved our way into a corral where there were several stands with plates of fatty, wurst-centric food and gigantic 1L beer steins. I got a curry wurst with a 0.5L weissbier because I didn't feel like drinking a full liter of beer, nor did I feel like paying 7€ for it. After paying, we proceeded the 10 minute walk around the gigantic area of tables looking for a place to sit. Having read that it's common in biergartens to sit with people you don't know, we tried doing exactly that. Unfortunately, no one would have us. We got waved away by more old dudes and ladies than I care to mention. Eventually we gave up and just sat on the ground near the playground toward the entrance of the place.

 Munich itself wasn't a terribly interesting city architecturally or monumentally, to be quite honest. We did a ton of wandering around like we do for most cities, but there weren't any stunning things to look at or amazingly rich history to attempt to absorb. However, the place was a lot of fun. We only had two nights in the city and both of them were spent drinking beer and eating delicious, fattening German food. We also had our fair share of fun at the hostel, meeting a lot of hilarious kids traveling from London and the west coast of the US among other places. Our asses were kicked several times in foosball, but I think I held my own in pool. This was the first time we really partied with any vigor with the kids at our hostel.

The second night we went to the Haufbrauhaus; a beer hall. This was an indoor place and was pretty much exactly what you might imagine a German beer hall to look like. There were huge long tables everywhere, packed full of people, a live band, and waiters running around carrying 8 1L beer steins in two hands from table to table. Everything was in German and communicating with the natives and the waiters was interesting to say the least. It was an absolute blast. I finally consumed a full beer stein (plus an extra half liter), too. The dark beer was surpringly delicious. Good thing it was so freaking plentiful!

We also went to the BMW museum. Alex and Michael are way more into cars than me, but it was still pretty cool to look around and see all the pretty cars and exhibits. They even had their hydrogen-powered prototype engine on display along with some pretty cool gadgets.

Our night train from Munich to Berlin left at 11pm; our latest one yet. It was also the last night train of our trip, and that made me quite sad. For some reason, the regular sleeper compartments we had become so accustomed to were nowhere to be found on this train. Instead, there were two bunks on each side of the car, protected from the isle lights by a curtain. It was quite strange. The ride was good though. I actually slept for more than an hour, something I had not yet been able to achieve on this trip. Train couchettes are never really all that comfortable and they can be quite claustrophobic.

All in all, Munich was definitely worth the itinerary change. We all had a lot of fun in the city, and I'm very glad I got to fatten myself up with all that beer and German food. Next up is Berlin and my 22nd birthday!

Final Words on Austria

I actually did not expect to be back in the shadow of the glorious Alps again after our departure from Switzerland. But I am so glad I was wrong! Our REAL final encounter with those mountains came from the Austrian side of things, in the city of Innsbruck. Upon our arrival in the city and the sight of the alps dominating the skyline once again, you can bet we set off hiking as soon as possible (meaning, of course, the second day in town since the first night was spent stuffing our faces full of pizza from a university-oriented pizza shop while sitting by the river).

Unlike Gimmelwald, where we essentially took the cable car to base camp and then hiked both up and down the mountain for multiple days, here we just took the tram/funicular (one of the coolest transit engineering feats I've ever seen) and cable car up to Seegrube at around 2200m above sea level, which also happens to be the tree line. The three of us got a real kick out of being able to throw snowballs at one another in July. All the snow and stark gray walls of rock surrounding us were quite beautiful. The view of Innsbruck and the surrounding Austrian countryside wasn't too shabby either.

 

 

Our hike this time was completely down the mountain. That means that, while we didn't get the cardiovascular workout we got in Gimmelwald, we definitely got very intense leg workouts. The hike took a total of around 7 hours, if I'm not mistaken, and was made up of a mixture of overly graveled roads and a few poorly marked woodsy paths. One thing is for sure: the Austrians fail at mountain path signage compared to the Swiss.

Besides all the Alps hiking and general exploration of this cute town sized somewhere between Bern and Interlaken, this was a pretty low key stop for us, and a nice close to our time in Austria.

Quiet Days in Salzburg

We were in Salzburg, home to Mozart and The Sound of Music, for two nights. The first night we stayed in a place that was an odd combo of a hotel and hostel instead of Yoho (where we had our original reservations) because of the date changes and reservation conflicts that resulted from our addition of Munich to the itinerary. We spent that first night wandering around the old city and the gardens where a few scenes in The Sound of Music took place. We also found an awesome ice cream stand with odd flavors such as poppyseed and chocolate chili that all proved to be delicious, and indulged ourselves there for a while.

The next morning we woke up to a 45°F, windy, rainy city. We trapsed the 30 minutes from the hotel, past the grocery store at the train station, and to the Yoho hostel where we were to spend our second night. After a few hours of watching The Sound of Music and eating our grocery store lunches, we decided to just kill the rainy day by going to see Harry Potter at the cinema.

Let me just take this minute to compliment the Austrians on their seemingly ubiquitous English skills and politeness, even in non-touristy areas. It has been consistent our whole stay in Austria thus far and it has been really nice.

After the movie we got dinner at the grocery store (noticing a pattern here?) and went back to the hostel where we spent the remainder of our evening talking to the awesome British girls in our room who had decided to stay in for the night when the rain ruined their plans to find apple strudel and ice cream in the city. We were lulled to sleep by constant shouting and banging from a number of the other guests imbibing in the bar downstairs.

We woke up early the next morning to be out before 10 (the earliest we've left a hostel this whole trip) so we could actually see some of Salzburg. We took a fernicular to the Salzburger (not kidding) castle on top of the large hill in the city and afterward, we stopped by Mozart's birthplace and former residence. Finally, we hopped the 2pm train to our final stop in Austria, Innsbruck.

First Days Back West

We got into Vienna, spelled "Wien" in almost every language except English, yesterday evening. We took a 4pm train out of Prague and spent those last hours in eastern Europe just bumming around the hostel. We got here around 9pm and took a very slow tram (quite reminiscant of a city bus, actually) from the Südbahnhof train station to Westbahnhof, where we had taken our connecting train to Budapest from Venice at 6am a week or so ago. It was nice to see a familar train station and eat at a familiar pastry shop while using familiar currency. That's not to say that I haven't loved using forints, złoty, and korüna, because I loved all those, but it's just nice to not have to do decimal point moves and division in my head every time I look at a price. I actually think I'm now more used to thinking in euros than in dollars, something I'm quite sure will be reversed upon my return to the home of the latter.

Anyway, this hostel is called Wombat's and it is quite the factory. This place is more like a college dorm than a hostel, with the addition of a large bar in the basement. This is definitely a party hostel; the staff is distant and mediocre, most of the people are American frat guys, and there is hardly an air of community (outside being drunk) anywhere. This place makes me miss hostels like those in Gimmelwald and Barcelona. To make matterw better, we are staying in another branch of this hostel in Berlin as well.

We got quite a late start today. We took the metro over to Schoenbrunn, which is a palace and set of beautiful gardens that mimic Versailles. Our day was filled with walking around there, getting chased by merciless mosquitos at every turn while still enjoying the fountains, gardens, and above-ground mazes. After, I was finally able to find a replacement pair of my linen pants at a nearby H&M (mine have a huge hole in the crotch, black leather stains from the rainstorm in Rome, and hadn't been washed in about a month since I literally wear them evey day) before we got dinner from a grocery store. Packaged sandwiches, yogurt, and apples; our de facto meal for the past few weeks. Delicious!

To end the evening, we went to a kitchy, local movie theater and saw Brüno (English with German subtitles). It was quite funny and stupid, I must say, but it certainly did its job in providing me with an evening of entertainment. It would appear that Vienese people have yet to get over the whole Hitler thing, judging by the almost absolute silence in the theater whenever he was mentioned in the movie.

There has also been a route change for the trip! This is our first major one, and has proven to be quite an interesting experience to plan. Let's just say I'm very glad we booked all our hostels before this trip began. Otherwise, things would have been way more stressful, annoying, and expensive. Anyway, we decided we wanted to see Munich after all. So we cut a night each off of Vienna and Salzburg and got a hostel in Munich for two nights. I believe that increases the city count for this trip to 22!

Czech, please!

 

 

 Without a doubt, Prague was one of the most beautiful cities we've visited thus far (excluding all Swiss cities, of course). Castles, towers, and other forms of ridiculous architecture cover appear in almost every part of the city. The Bohemian flag is flown everywhere in addition to the modern Czech Republic flag, testifying the country's strong connection to it's cultural history. There is even a good story behind the Czech people's perverse adoration of their absurdly difficult language, but I won't get into that here except to say that their language is truly one of the most ridiculous Western languages I've ever seen.

This turned into quite a relaxing city, even though I don't think we meant it to be. We arrived on Saturday and meant to go out to a really good club, but ended up all falling asleep instead. I blame the ridiculously good pasta we made with vegetable sauce and sour cream. It was quite heavy and coma-inducing. Finding the ingredient was quite the adventure, too. We must have spent 20 minutes staring at a case full of cream cheese and wandering around the yogurt sections in the grocery store before finding what we hoped, and what turned out to be, sour cream. We sure bought that tub on a gamble! Gotta love languages with almost no English cognates.

Most of our three days in Prague were spent wandering through all the different quarters, touristy and not, taking in the amazing views at ever corner. The Jewish quarter here is home to the oldest synagogue in Europe, dating back to the 13th century AD. It was quite the sight, and if I'm not mistaken it still functions as a synagogue as well.

Since the Czech Republic is famous for its beer, we decided to try to sample some of it in a few different local bars. Unfortunately we were not all too successful in finding any local brews outside of Pilsner Urquell, which is basically like the Budweiser of Czech: very light and not too flavorful. The bars themselves were always a cool experience, and it only cost us about 30Kč—or $1.50—for 0.5L, but I was a little disappointed at the lack of variety we found. Perhaps we just weren't looking in the right places. I did, however, discover a new favorite liquor! It is called Becherovka, and basically tastes like Christmas in a glass. Has anyone heard of it before? It's also really good with tonic water. Hopefully it's sold in the US, otherwise I may find myself importing bottles from a distributor's web site that hopefully already exists.

70km from the City of Death

Kraków, Poland is a small, medieval looking town mildly reminiscent of Bern. The pirogies are delicious, authentic, and unbelievably cheap along with every other type of Polish food imaginable. 70 km away from this cute, bustling little town sat two much smaller towns called Auschwitz and Birkenau. At the onset of World War II, the Nazis kicked out the Polish citizens living there, destroyed their homes, and built what was to be the center of all the death camps in Europe. Our only reason for going to Poland in the first place was to see these two camps, so we headed to the smaller of the two public squares in Krakòw at 8 am—just an hour after arriving at our hostel—to meet our tour bus.

During the hour and ten minute bus ride to the camps, we watched a documentary on them and on the Holocaust on general. The film certainly was not something I hadn't seen before, but as with all Holocaust films, it set the mood and made me a bit teary eyed.

When we arrived at the site of Auschwitz, it became obvious that it had been turned into a museum and was quite the popular tourist attraction. The original entrance of the camp wasn't even visible from the parking lot or public entrance. Inside the welcome center we were all given a tour guide and a radio receiver with headphones so we could all hear what she was saying without having to crowd around her.

The camp wasn't what I was expecting. I always have wondered what it would be like to visit the place in all those horrible black and white pictures taken during the war, and even standing on the grounds themselves where all those hundreds of thousands of people died, I must admit it did nit feel like the same place. There were fields of perfectly manicured green grass everywhere, blue skies, birds chirping, tourists everywhere; certainly nothing compared to the desolation shown in those original images. The bunkers where the prisoners lived had all, with the exception of one, been converted into museum exhibits much like the ones in the Holocaust museums in Israel and Washington, DC. The one that remained almost the same, Block 11, was the penal block. If you were in the camp, you could be thrown into one of these torture cells for pretty much any reason the SS saw as valid. There were there different cells that you could be thrown into: the dark cell, the starvation cell, and the standing cell. All were equally horrible and usually ended in death.

We saw many exhibits that were similar, as I said before, to other museums. The difference here was size. I have never before seen 2000kg of human hair before, nor have I seen such a huge room filled with nothing but shoes or combs or mirrors. The tour guide was sure to remind us multiple times that what we were seeing was only a small sample of what was actually collected.

Right before the end of the Auschwitz tour, we approached a small, grassy hill surrounded by white brick. As we neared it and the hill's crest came into view, a smoke stack made itself visible rising against the sky. Around the front was a stark white wall with two doors. As we walked into Kremetorium 1, the first gas chamber in Auschwitz, I had to keep reminding myself what I was about to enter; it was all too surreal. The inside looked almost like a locker room with a dirt floor, separated into six segments without walls. In the ceiling above each of the segments was a single hole where the cyanide gas canisters were dropped. The next room contained a dolly track on the ground and two furnaces with sliding trays. Use your imagination to guess what those were used for.

We then got into the bus and drive another 5 minutes to Birkenau. This camp is totally different than Auschwitz. It is 40 times bigger and was never fully completed before liberation. The Nazis also almost completely leveled the camp before taking more than 60,000 people on the Death March as the Soviets neared. Most of the barracks, which were made of wood instead of brick like the ones in Auschwitz, were simply shallow foundations rising out of the grass. The 15 or so that remained standing were like photos out of a book. The 3-level wooden bunks and the rows of hundreds of holes carved in stone (the toilets) were exactly as I imagined. But the grass still detracted from the depressing feel I had thought I would have. Even the train tracks, where the deported prisoners arrived, seemed far too bright.

 

 

 Overall, I'm glad I got to see the camps. However, it was not the horribly depressing, moving, thought-provoking experience I had imagined. It was just far too surreal for me to feel any sort of tangible connection with the events of the past.

Back in Kraków with only one night to explore, we ate wonderful authentic Polish food for mad cheap from a restaurant frequented by locals an tourists alike right around the corner from our hostel. We also discovered an awesome little bar called the Polish Pub that was actually beneath the street. We had these shots called Mad Dog which was a small amount of raspberry sauce with tobacco and vodka layered on top in a shooter glass. They were super fantastic and I hope to be able to make them when I get back home.

The Beautiful Blue Danube

Our first eastern European country! We arrived at the Budapest train station a bit after noon from Vienna after our night train debacle in Venice. The poor signage, bustling crowds, street advertisers, and a severe sleep debt made figuring out that the metro station was separate from the train station quite a confusing task. When we finally found the metro station, we got yelled at by a stocky, middle aged Hungarian woman for moving her chair 3 inches so we could see the prices for metro tickets.

Let me go off on a small tangent about this city really quick. Budapest is actually 2 cities governed as one, divided by the beautiful blue Danube river (which is actually quite a murky brown, despite what the song title may lead you to believe). Buda sits on the west of the river and is filled with rolling hills and many residences. It is also home to the castle district, which is the original city of Budapest surrounded still by castle walls. Pest (pronounced "pesht") sits on the east side and is filled with everything you'd expect from a modern, commercialized city including malls, bars, restaurants, clubs, stores, offices, etc.

Anyway, after another 40 minute exploration of the train station in an attempt to find an ATM with cash in it, we were finally able to buy our 10-pack of tickets for 2400 Forints (around $12) and were on our way to the hostel. We finally arrived after a confusing run in with a tram whose driver refused to let anyone board, followed by an obnoxiously crowded bus ride.

Budapest is an awesome city. We finally are experiencing the different type of culture and customs we have been waiting for this entire trip. Hungarian has almost no cognates ad none of us have any familiarity with the language, so communication promised to be interesting. The city also gives a vibe that's hard to put into words: I don't think "enchanting" is the right way to describe it because it certainly does not have the same feel as Amsterdam. Either way, we decided the city was awesome almost as soon as we arrived.

That evening we crossed the river to Buda and climbed a large hill to see a beautiful view of both cities from in front of a huge citadel adorned with some pretty interesting statues. It was a much longer, harder walk than we expected and we most certainly worked off the dinner from the Viking restaurant we ate at earlier.

 

 

The next afternoon, we went over to the largest Jewish synagogue in all of Europe. Seeing it after seeing all of the Catholic stuff in Rome, Vatican City, and pretty much every other city we've visited, certainly left much to be desired. The temple paled in comparison to the other places. It actually looks like a church both on the inside and out except that there are Jewish symbols adorning everything instead of crucifixes. It is also a quarter the size of the main sanctuary of my temple in Cleveland, which I think says something. Either way, it was still pretty cool to see and to feel among my own people again. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

After the synagogue, we found a huge fresh food market a few blocks from our hostel and were blown away by the sheer amount of food, clothing, and made-in-China souvenirs. On the top level we scored jackpot: prepared Hungarian food. We hadn't really eaten anything yet, so our delicious experiments of authentic Hungarian food proved to be an excellent, delicious beginning to our day. I had pasta with cream sauce and pineapples, a fried ball of rice and vegetables, and a sort of beef strogenoff looking dish. Afterward, Alex found a bar near all the food shops upstairs that served 6 or 7 different types of Tocaji, a sweet honey wine native to Hungary that anyone who has read The Golden Compass should recognize.

Then we took an all-day figure eight walk around the city and finished off with a ridiculously invasive yet oddly affordable 90-minute Thai aromatherapy massage (with oils I apparently have an allergy to) followed by some delicious pasta and sausage from a nearby grocery store; a wonderful treat given our annoying lack of kitchens in the last few hostels.

On our third and final day, Alex went to Monument Park while Michael and I went to the castle district. Sadly, it turned out to be super touristy and expensive. Despite that, we still managed to eat cheaply by sticking to cauldrons of goulash and potato products at a cute little cafe we found. We even found the hilariously overdone labyrinth that runs beneath the whole district and spent a good our or so on there walking around and laughing at the ridiculous levels of cheesy at every turn.

Following that we headed over to one of the biggest Hungarian baths in the city where we met up with Alex. Yes indeed: the baths. Put all QaF references aside, please. This place was ridiculous! It must have had more than 20 pools and hot tubs and the same number of saunas and steam rooms, each labeled with its temperature and where the water is from. Most of the soaking pools indoors were filled with naturally heated mineral water directly from underground thermal springs. And then there were the steam rooms. You think a hot sauna is hard to handle? Try a 60 degree Celsius room filled with more water vapor than oxygen gas. Now THAT is intense.

After drying off and shamelessly enjoying the eye candy scattered everywhere, we headed to the hostel to collect our bags and then to the train station. Luckily our night train was still running. We got a T6 sleeper compartment, so it was quite cramped. Still a lot of fun, though. We even got a decent few hours of sleep in before arriving in Krakow, Poland at 6am.

One more thing I'd like to say about Budapest: it is not cheap. Sure, it may be cheaper than Switzerland, but what isn't? The Forint may be worth 1/200 of a dollar, but essentially the prices were similar in every respect (with massages as the exception) to prices in the US; there just happens to be a different number representing those prices on the tags. Budapest is definitely not the place to go for cheap food and consumer goods.

A Bumpy Train Ride Through the Iron Curtain

Enter the Venice train station, 8:58pm, July 5th. Our 9:30 train from Venice to Budapest appeared on the departures screen with a strange abbreviation in the time column: "SOP". Unsure of what that meant, Michael ran into the train information office with 2 minutes to spare before closing. Alex and I waited outside the doors for him to emerge. Turns out the train was canceled due to a workers' strike. Great. There go our 60€ couchette reservations. He told us there was a train leaving immediately for Salzburg, Austria that would connect with a train heading to Budapest at 4:00am. We of course decided to do that since it was far cheaper than paying for another night at the Venice hostel and hoping the Budapest train would be running the next day. We ran full speed out of Venice St. Lucia and down the length of 10 train cars before arriving at the front, where the non-sleeper cars sat.

We had no reservations for this train, so we found the first open compartment with seats. A few stops later we were joined by a bunch of chatty Madriños on holiday for two weeks with their trusty InterRail passes getting them around. Sounds familiar! They spoke pretty good English, and they generously shared their jambón español with us as they made their sandwiches for dinner. We talked for a few hours before all falling asleep in an oddly comfortable tangle of legs and torsos. Luckily there were only 5 of us in the 6-person compartment or it would have been much more difficult to sleep.

The Spaniards left around 1am, so we pulled all 6 seats into full reclines and had ourselves a decent sleep lying down. Of course, just our luck, the train was running half an hour late the whole trip and our connection in Salzburg was half an hour after the expected arrival time. That means no connection for us. Luckily there was another train out of Vienna at 9am, so we stayed our course until it arrived in the Austrian city around 7am.

We had a brief touch with German at the train station and got some interesting pastries from a shop on the bottom level as well as some nice relief in the restrooms before finally heading off to Budapest. We arrived here around 12:45pm, just a little over an hour after our expected arrival time had the original night train from Venice not been canceled. Not too shabby! This trip really made us appreciate the flexibility a EurRail pass offers. We would have never been able to do this without it. Even better, in Vienna, the guy in the ticket office gave us free seat reservations on that Budapest-bound train once we explained what happened to our original one.

All in all an interesting yet fun sidetrack from our original plan. We still got here safe and relatively on time, and our first eastern European city has done nothing but amaze us. But I'll save those details for the next post.

Happy Birthday, America! Love, Venice.

 

 

For the first time in about a year I am eating McDonald's. How else could we tip our hats to our beloved imperialist mother country all the way from Italy? Unfortunately, there are no fireworks shops we've found so no sparklers for us. This is by far the classiest McDonald's I've ever seen, done up in a classy Italian style, of course. They are even playing a dance music set to keep things lively. And the Royal with Cheese... IT EXISTS!!

Anyway, back to Venice. This is decently sized pedestrian city built on a ridiculous series of canals and waterways. Quite literally, there are no automobiles. Any situation you can think of within a single city where one would be necessary, just replace it with a boat. The public transit system is made of water bus routes. Hotel shuttles from the airport are boats. Even the DHL delivery "trucks" are boats. It's pretty cool!

There really wasn't anything in particular we meant to see in this city, so we've just been walking around the tiny alleyways and streets seeing all the sights and attempting to avoid tourists at places like St. Marco's Square. It's nice to just be among the Italians when we walk. Ther conversation are far less distracting than those in a language we actually understand.

Since there really isn't too much going on here, I'll spare the long blog post this time since the last two were so huge, and save all those words for the awesome eastern countries coming up.

Tomorrow night we leave Italy for good and head to Budapest, Hungary.

One of those nights that will live on in infamy

Holy shit, I cannot believe that just happened. There we were, walking the 7 minute walk back from he laundromat to our hostel. Looking up, the sky had turned ominously dark and stormy. But we were used to that; all of our days in Rome had ended with a thundery sky and the occasional sprinkle of rain. So we kept walking until little droplets spattered on our heads. We all hastily opened our daypacks and brought out the umbrellas. After another 10 steps or so, the wind roared and and tore all the umbrellas inside out and upside down, threatening to rip them from our hands. And then came the rain, unlIke anything I've experienced. It turned from small, dense drops into a horizontal, pounding mix of water and hail the size of globe grapes. The wind yanked our umbrellas in every direction and we ran.

A large set of arches sits halfway between the laundromat and the hostel, and under them we took refuge along with two oher soaked Italians. We too were pretty wet at this point. Within seconds of gaining cover under the arches, we realized our mistake: they had turned into wind tunnels. The wind's intensity quadrupled and Michael shouted, "let's make a run for it!". We were still about a 4 minute walk away. So we ran.

It was like jumping head first into a raging river. The rain was all I could hear and taste, and it was so thick that I could not see Alex in front of or Michael behind me. All there was was rain and hail smashing into my face, stomach, and legs. The onslaught was so severe I could barely breathe while running. About a minute from the hostel doors the wind ripped my umbrella apart and it flew out of hand into the air, disappearing into the rain. It was amazing how much faster I could run without the umbrella bucking and pulling me with each wind gust.

Alex arrived at the hostel doors first. I burst through the doors seconds later, and Michael after me. We were all soaked to the bone. We literally had not one centimeter of dry on us. Shirts clung to skin, pants seemed to weigh 20 pounds, hair covered eyes, and the puddles of water in our shoes squished loudly with each step. We got quite the audience of onlookers in the hostel as we clammored soaking through the doors and made our way to the common room downstairs to dry off, collect ourselves, and retell our story.

But that's not the end of it. Not even close.

After showers, blowdryers, and food, it was time for us to head to the train station to catch our 10:36pm night train to Venice. So we gathered our still-damp belongings and headed out to the bus stop, about a 9 minutes walk, to catch the 105 bus to the Roma Termini station. After an uneventful but traffic filled bus ride, we arrived. It was around 9:50 at this point. Michael got some food, we stopped at an ATM for some cash, and then we went to look at the departure board to find our track. But there was no train to Venice listed anywhere. Crap. We confusidly consulted our reservation paper wherein we discovered that our train actually left from Roma Tibertina on the other side of the city. And we had less than 30 minutes until departure.

Thinking quickly, Michael briskly walked out of Termini into the street while Alex and I jogged to keep up. "Where are we going?!", I yelled ahead. "Taxi." Oh, nice. An excellent plan.

We jogged to the front of the station where we were met by a dark-skinned, semi-Italian looking man who offered to taxi us for 25€. Skeptical, Michael asked him many questions to confirm price, speed, and location. The man, clearly flustered, held out a questionable lamintated card that claimed he was a licensed taxi driver. We hesitated, then followed. But he took us away from the taxi stands and to the street. I told myself we'd turn around if the car was unmarked. He led us straight to a black, unmarked hatchback parked alongside the curb. I shouted, "no way! We're going back!" I hastily about-faced and my companions did the same. We hightailed it back to the taxi stand with the illegal taxi driver in toe trying to convince us to go with him. Fat chance.

We saw a driver get out of a marked taxi cab. He saw us hurrying in his direction so he approached us and asked where we were going. While Michael told him we needed to get to Tibertina in 25 minutes, the illegal taxi man approached us and the real driver, STILL trying to convince us to go with him. The gall! We ignored him and threw our bags into the taxi's trunk. The ride would be 40€, but that was a small price to pay.

Let me tell you something. You think NYC cab drivers are insane? They are sheep compared to the Roman ones. That was the most exciting cab ride I've ever taken. We flew through the city like lightening, taking bends and turns while dodging traffic at speeds I don't even want to discuss. But we made it, and with 15 minutes until departure.

Roma Tibertina is a sketchy hole of a train station. We had a brief scare there as well: Venice still wasn't listed on the departure board, and apparently the station doesn't believe in posting train numbers. Turns out Venice simply isn't the terminal stop of our train. No biggie. We headed down the end of a long hallway toward track 17. And of course, we were met by an impassible construction wall at track 16. So we hauled ass all the way back, following the yellow detour signs we had failed to notice. We ran now, full out sprinting through the station in our sandals with all our bags. Hallway after hallway, it was like being in a movie complete with music echoing fom every direction from the buskers' guitars. After running through 4 long hallways, up a movable ramp that most certainly was not moving, and up a flight of stairs, we made it. Track 17. And as the train arrived we once again had to sprint to the far other side of train to car 9 where I now lay in my somewhat comfortable couchette. There is no air conditioning and it is hot as hell in here, especially after all that running. To top it off, the train arrives in Venice at 5:26am. It is now 12:25am.

In short: this was the most ridiculous day ever. I freaking love this trip!!!!!!!!!!

The Great Ancient Empire

Our Roman hostel was a relatively small place located in a quiet suburban neighborhood around 10 minutes by bus to the Circus Maximus and 15 to the Colosseum. Our host, Marios, gave us an excellent first impression that lasted our whole stay. The hostel, he Hotel Lodi, was definitely a wise choice.

We just so happened to arrive in Rome on St. Peter and Paul Day, a city-wide holiday commemorating the two saints ad shutting down almost all local businesses in the process (including grocery stores and most restaurants). Luckily for us there was a nice take-away pizza place 5 minutes away from the hostel that was open. So Alex and I walked there and purchased our first Roman pizzas of the trip. They have very thin, crunchy crusts and a variety of strange topping combinations, all for a very small price. 5€ for a 6 piece pie? I'll take three!

We headed into the city near the Tibas river where we stumbled upon a huge street fair complete with food stands, trinket tents, and live runway fashion shows. Apparently it was also Bulgarian Fashion Day or something and a troupe of girls has come to Rome to strut their stuff. There was also the most fantastic dried and candied fruit stand I had ever laid eyes on. Alex and I spent a fair number of euros purchasing our evening snacks from them. After, we proceeded down a large flight of stairs to the riverbank to discover a performance that reminded me of amateur hour or open mic night at a bar. The two girls were singing in English and were totally fantastic. I feel that one of them should audition for American Idol some day.

The night bus ride back to the hostel wa insane. The first bus was so quickly flooded with an innumerable mass of Pakistanis that there literally was no more physical space on the bus for us to fit. So we waited 30 minutes for the next bus to take us.

The next two days were filled with walking around Rome seeing all the sights. St. Peter's Basillica and the Pantheon were sights to behold.

 

 

Sometimes it is truly difficult to understand how ancient buildings like that really are. The Pantheon, for example, was remodeled in 400 A.D. to remove the statues of the pantheistic gods and insert monuments to Christ. The building had already existed for around 200 years at that point.

We also celebrated the end of our first month abroad at a lovely restaurant near the fountains of Trevi on the night of July 1st. Let the second half of the trip begin!

The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel were also incredible. I have not heard of another museum on Earth that contains such a ridiculously large array and variety of art and artifacts. Many of these ancient items were actually just sitting on windowpanes to conserve floor space. It was ridiculous. All that art along with the frescos of the Sistine were amazing to witness in person, but that whole Catholic thing sort of detracted from it for me. I was pretty exhausted by the end of the walk through the museum, most likely because I lost interest halfway through.

Tonight we go to pick up our laundry from the laundromat (you have no idea how much I am looking forward to clean clothes) and then we head to the train station to catch our night train to Venice.