July 25

We awoke from a chilly night in the park in Geneva quite early. I don’t know why Ben feels the need to wake up at 6:00 am lately, but we were going to have to do with five or six hours of sleep. I remind him how hard he was to get out of bed throughout the beginning of the trip. I think he is just trying to return the favor. Needless to say, we aren’t used to these 70° F temperatures and we both woke up freezing during the night. After we made it through the night, we went to the train station to find that the next train left for Bern ten minutes later. We still didn’t have any Swiss Francs, so we weren’t able to purchase any breakfast. Fortunately, we did have some peaches left from the day before. They held us over until Bern.

When we arrived in Bern about two hours later, we were immediately impressed. The information booth was the most helpful we have experienced thus far. The lady gave us a map and told us where everything was that we were looking for. Our first order of business from there was to find an ATM and the youth hostel that she had pointed out. We found an ATM, but my card didn’t work, so I was forced to open a tab as Ben as my creditor. We found the hostel shortly after. The cheapest beds cost about 35.00 USD, so it looked like we would be searching for yet another park. Luckily, Bern is a beautiful city full of nice parks, public bathrooms, and a river full of fresh mountain water. It looked like the only thing we would have to battle would be the sub-scorching temperatures. However, unlike Ben, I didn’t ship home any of my warm clothes. I should be fine.

Once we figured out where we would be sleeping, we went out to discover the Medieval city of Bern. It really is an awesome town. It is extremely small, but it is still the nations federal capitol. We basically walked the entire thing with our backpacks strapped to us. There was a nice cathedral, a clock which was built in 1530 and still holds the city’s official time, and some nice shops. However, the most spectacular thing that Bern has to offer is the view. With the Alps in the backdrop of the Aare River winding its way through the town, it is one of the few things that the States can’t offer. I felt like I could spend hours just taking pictures of the scenery. They will be uploaded as soon as I find internet that is consistent enough to handle the task.

We spent the remainder of the day informing our mothers of our whereabouts and relaxing in the park. Ben found a mystery/thriller book in English that kept him occupied for a good chunk of the afternoon. I spent the time trying to figure out a good place to spend the next two days in exploration of Switzerland. Later, while Ben was making a fool of himself via my webcam, I found a miniature British flag and an umbrella in the park. I stuck the flag to my bag in an attempt to hint to passersby what language we speak. I also found a spot for the umbrella because the forecast looks like rain (from what I could tell by what little German I know). I learned this lesson the last time I threw an umbrella away in Dublin. The time has come for us to now go stake out our sleeping quarters. Hopefully tonight will be warmer.

July 26

The night was not warmer as we had hoped. In fact, it was quite brutal actually. We both froze throughout the night, all the while thinking the other one was warm and cozy. But let me first describe how we arrived at our sleeping spots. After having previously staked out a couple nice spots to spend the night, we were discouraged to find them both unavailable for various reasons. We then went in search of another spot somewhere more secluded. We eventually arrived at two park benches somewhere in the middle of the woods along a Bern hiking trail. The eeriness of the spot was heightened by the pitch darkness and the knowledge of what Bern was originally famous for. Bern acquired its name when the founding king discovered that a bear had been killed while on a hunt in the area. Ever since, Bern has been known for its bears; not something that would comfort two backpackers seeking shelter in its woods.

As I said, the night did not treat us kindly. When I finally got up at 7:00 am, it had felt as if I hadn’t gotten an ounce of sleep the entire night. It seemed as though you either were freezing or extremely uncomfortable on the wooden bench. No compromise of the two could result in sleep. It must have gotten down to the low fifties during the coldest part of the night. It is not a good feeling when you are wearing every piece of clothes in your bag and are wrapped as tightly as possible in your blanket just to find your battle with the cold fruitless. Needless to say, I was never so happy to see the sun rise as I was that morning. It wasn’t until after we had peeled ourselves off our wooden resting places that we learned that the other had shared the same experiences throughout the night. We decided that we would get up and walk around during the night if it got that cold again. I found the only time that I was warm all night was when I was squirming around for minutes at a time in search for a bearably comfortable sleeping position. The warmth ceased, however, after my left calf decided that it was going to cramp itself up more than the rest of my body already was. It cramped so badly that I could actually feel it with every step I took throughout the day. Luckily, not many steps would ensue.

The first part of our day consisted of find a church to attend for a Sunday service. We knew one church started at 9:30 am and the main cathedral started mass at 10:00 am. We had visited both the day before (along with a couple other churches) so their whereabouts were relatively sketchy. Since we did wake up so early, we had plenty of time once we decided that we would attend the 10:00 am mass at the cathedral. As we walked in, I noticed a sign that said the 10:00 am service was supposed to be protestant. It very well may have been, but since we didn’t understand a single word of the German service, I really couldn’t tell you for sure. I did enjoy trying to sing the hymns in German though; pronouncing the words as German as I knew while searching for a familiar tune.

Once the service had completed, we headed back to the train station to find out when and where we could head out for a day excursion. We ended up deciding on going to Interlaken, an area south of Bern in between two lakes. Even before we had arrived, I knew that Switzerland had already outdone itself. The view of the lakes with snow-topped mountains set as the backdrop was indescribable. The lakes were a milky blue color surrounded by green mountains capped in white. There was a canal that connected the two lakes. We found the first dock for the lake steamers and asked where we could go with our Eurail passes. They told us that we could board the steamers for free and could go to any stop along the way. We soon found out that the lake steamers acted just like trains of the water. They had stops all along the lake and made return trips based on a set timetable. It probably would have served us well to inspect the timetable a little closer.

We didn’t know where we wanted to go, but as long as it was free, we were going to go for a ride at the very least. We decided part way through the boat ride to get off at the next stop. They all seemed to be similar, and our deck seats in the sun were beginning to get uncomfortable. After disembarking the steamer, we walked a little ways through a small town consisting of a couple tourist hotels, a hostel, and a small grocery store (unfortunately closed on Sundays). We asked a local if there was anywhere with a beach nearby. She laughed and replied with a German accent, “You won’t find any beaches in Switzerland.” She did show us a place where we could jump into the lake and directed us to the hostel in town. We checked out the hostel, and it was much too expensive as we had guessed. Our next task was to find the place to go for a swim. It didn’t take long before we had a spot picked out with a nice grassy ledge to keep our stuff. Ben sat down in the shade to delve deeper into his book and I went to check how cold the water was. I figured it would be cold since it was fed from the mountain streams, but I didn’t expect it to be as cold as it turned out to be. I have swum in Lake Superior recently enough to guarantee that this lake was colder. Normally, I wouldn’t have gotten in, but since I was already thigh deep, I convinced myself that this was probably the only chance I would ever get to swim in a lake in the middle of the Alps. I dove in and it felt like a million needles were piercing my skin. It was oddly refreshing, but it took almost an hour in the sun to feel warm again after I got out. I managed to stay in the water for close to ten minutes though. I talked Ben into diving in, but he only lasted a few seconds before he had enough.

We spent the remainder of the day reading the novel while the other went to explore the town. A weird series of events demonstrated Ben’s ability to fall head over heals into good fortune. Since he had eaten all his food and the grocery store wasn’t open, he was in need of something to stop his grumbling stomach. Fortunately, he turned around to find the hillside littered with blackberry bushes. Although they weren’t as plentiful as you might find in the forests of northern Michigan, it was definitely something. Then, he went on an exploration of the town and came back with a bottle of ketchup and some mustard packages. Apparently, a restaurant didn’t want them anymore and he became the beneficiary. Finally, after yet another trip around town, he came back bestowed with a handful of plums he had found growing near and old barn. He said the tree obviously wasn’t being harvested based on the number of plums on the ground and there were more than we could possibly eat. We decided we would go back later.

We finally decided to head back to the port at about 7:30 pm after Ben read in the brochure that I had picked up that there was a tent hostel in Interlaken for only 10.00 Swiss Francs a night (about 10.00 USD as well). We started to head back to the dock, but not before we made a pit stop at the plum tree. However, to our dismay, a family of swans had beaten us to the spot. These swans were mean and with little ones, so they persuaded us that we weren’t that hungry. Once we got to the dock, we checked the boat schedule to figure out when the next one would come and pick us up. You can imagine we weren’t happy to find that the next boat didn’t come until 9:45 am the next morning. It looked like we were going to end up sleeping in that little town after all. We found a nice spot (or at least we hope; that’s what we though the previous night as well) underneath the roof of the information booth right next to the dock. I read a good chunk of the book while Ben fell asleep listening to his I-pod. Currently, I am wearing every item I could find in my backpack and praying for warmer temperatures tonight. I hope these benches are a little more comfortable than last night, although since the lack of a good night’s rest has escaped me for a couple nights in a row now, I’m sure anything will do as long as its warm.

July 27

Well we have officially learned that benches are not the way to go. I made it halfway through the night before I moved to the concrete. I slept so much better there. Surprisingly, it didn’t get that cold inside the information booth. The room had nearly all glass walls and except one side didn’t even have a wall which is why it was surprising that the inside temperature was about ten degrees warmer than the outside. It certainly was nice not to freeze though. Ben tried waking me up at 6:15 am again, but I refused to talk claiming that I had at least forty-five minutes before I was required to respond. Once 7:00 am rolled around, we got up and headed toward the small grocery store we had spotted earlier. I couldn’t even afford a loaf of bread so I ended up eating cookies from my backpack for breakfast. Ben bought a loaf since he had over eighteen Swiss Francs in change he needed to blow before we left the country. I told him he could just exchange it back, but he thought he could have more fun this way. We had to wait until 11:00 am now until our steamer came that would take us to another train station. We had originally thought it would be 10:00 am, but we hadn’t really figured out how to read Swiss steamer schedules yet.

We got on the steamer as scheduled (to the minute actually--the Swiss do everything better) and enjoyed a beautiful trip across Lake Brienz. We witnessed at least five different waterfalls, one of which was right by the boat shortly after one of the stops. We saw everyone starting to get their cameras out, so we knew something was coming. If you looked up in the mountains, you could see multiple, small waterfalls high above the lake running off the mountain’s many ledges. It was quite a site. When we got to the train station on the other side of the lake, we found what time we would head to Luzern. We expected that city to be just as gorgeous, since it was right on Lake Luzern. However, once we arrived, we were not really impressed with what we saw. The train ride there was well worth the price of admission though. Our train climbed through the Alps winding through multiple Alpine villages and towering over a couple lakes at the bottom of the gorge. The pictures from the train didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, but they wouldn’t have done the scene justice anyway. After arrival in Luzern, we checked into going up in a cable car the local mountain, but of course, it was too expensive. We ended up just getting back on a train to head toward Basel.

We wanted to go to Basel because it was supposed to be right on the Rhine River and our Eurail passes were supposed to be good for a free trip on the Rhineline Boat Tour. Once we arrived however, the information lady claimed nothing existed of that sort. We weren’t really sure if the Rhineline was actually in Basel or not, but we figured we would give it a shot since we still had two days until we were supposed to meet Mark at his apartment. However, since we ran out of things to do and had no more Swiss Francs, we decided to head into Germany toward Mark’s apartment. We ended up getting a train itinerary that would get us to Reutlingen in about three and a half hours. We were already impressed with the German train system. Once we got to Reutlingen, we had to figure out a way to find Mark’s apartment. Mark told us to take the bus to a certain stop from the train station, but we are cheap and had two days of leeway to find it ourselves. With our acquired knowledge of mass transit systems, we figured we could just follow the bus line to our stop. Mark told us what bus to take, so we would just follow the bus on foot if possible. On our way, we semi-inadvertently took a shortcut that proved helpful. We knew Mark’s road name, his bus stop, and the line name of the bus. We just kept looking for signs for any of those things to get us closer. We only had to walk for about two or three miles before we were successful in finding his place without even asking for directions. Now it was just a matter of waiting time of approximately thirty-six hours before Mark was set to arrive. This meant we would need a place to sleep for two nights. Immediately, we began searching out our most desirable resting spots. Unfortunately, it started raining even before nightfall, so all our best spots were wet. We ended up setting up camp under a cement staircase that was part of Mark’s apartment complex. Ben found a broken chair and stripped the pad off to use for his bed. I took the nylon seat apart and made a sack to use as a pillow. I used the rest of the wood frame to anchor down my newspapers I had found laying around. Together with my new pillow and newspaper bed, I had quite the upgrade from the previous two nights. I was quite excited for sleep.

It didn’t take long either for me to fall asleep. Unfortunately, we were awaken by thunder--some extremely close. It started pouring almost immediately. However, we finally had outsmarted mother nature as we were already camped out under a concrete staircase.

July 28

(10:00) Mother nature found a way to win again. She found a small crevice in the staircase to send her raindrops down. Although the staircase is four stories high, there was still room enough for the rain to find its way down the wall and into my bed. I noticed Ben get up to change locations during the rainstorm. I immediately checked to see if I had been taking on water at all. I was tucked pretty far underneath the staircase, so I doubted in greatly. I felt my blanket down to my waist and felt no water. I even checked the wall to make sure none was dripping down. After feeling no water whatsoever, I rolled over and tried going back to sleep. Almost immediately, I felt a few large drops hit my blanket down by my legs. I sat up and leaned down to find the outside of the bottom half of my blanket was already soaked. I couldn’t feel it because I had jeans on and it was only partially soaked through the blanket at that point. I jumped up and grabbed my blanket to analyze the damage, then moved to a similar location of Ben. I threw my bag far enough under the staircase where I knew it would be safe from the rain, and then ran to find a new spot. I had just hoped that the water wouldn’t completely soak through my blanket to get me wet as well. There would be nothing more miserable than spending a night outside with all of your warm clothes soaked. Thinking quickly, I took my nylon sack of a pillow and stuck my legs into it. I had hoped that this one more layer of protection would help keep the water off me. It work excellently as the outside of the nylon was wet by morning, but the inside (and myself) was not. I ended up sleeping pretty well despite the two storms that rolled through that night.

When Ben woke me up, we got up and headed into town to see what we could find. We were a bit early for the grocery stores to be open yet, but we sat around and ate breakfast while we waited. We didn’t really need any groceries, but we had nothing better to do and we were excited to see the type of food we would be buying (and hopefully cooking) for ourselves during our stay at Mark’s. We didn’t end up buying anything, but we have some good prospects for a later time. Now we just plan on spending the day lounging outside of Mark’s apartment for another twenty-four hours or so until he should arrive.

(24:00) I’m not sure how these things keep happening, but somehow we turned another boring day of sitting around into the weirdest, craziest, and best day of our trip. And it all started with a smile…

She was walking by our little camp around the staircase as she was half laughing and half smiling at us. I smiled back and she walked on by, assuming that would be the last I saw of her. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When she was on her way back to her apartment, she smiled again, this time saying something to us in German. Of course, we had to act like morons again asking her if she could speak English. She asked us how our sleep was the night before while laughing. We told her exactly how our night went and how they had been going previously. She must have felt bad for us because she offered us her shower and bathroom. We declined, but thanked her anyway. We talked for a little while, but then she retreated back to her apartment. A little while longer, she came down with two bowls and a large bowl of fruit salad. She asked us if we wanted to finish the rest because they made too much. We told her that it looked delicious, but we didn’t need any handouts because we actually had lots of food with us at the time. I think she must have either misunderstood us or just realized that we really did want a taste of the fruit salad because she left it all on the ground for us and then walked away. After we had devoured the entire bowl within moments, we walked up to her apartment to return her dishes. We thanked her and talked to her and her roommate for a little while. We actually learned that the girl didn’t even live there, but just makes herself at home in her friend’s apartment. The apartment is designed for six people, but all but the one girl are on “holiday.” We then went back to our staircase for a little while before she came down and tried to pass by us on an ice cream run. She ended up sitting down and talking for nearly an hour before she went and got her ice cream. She told us of her favorite ice cream and we did the same to her. Neither of us had heard of the other’s favorite. She insisted that we try hers, so we agreed that we would sometime. She went on to get her ice cream and came back a few minutes later carrying three ice cream push ups. I knew what she had done. She went and bought us all ice cream as if she hadn’t done enough for us already. We ate it and it was delicious. She yelled from her apartment’s balcony asking if we enjoyed it and we thanked her again. Later, she came down and asked us if we wanted to go to Stuttgart to a barbeque with her friends. She said that she was going to spend the night there at her parent’s house and we could sleep there. We were hesitant at first, but we knew we would be going no matter what; this was too good to pass up. I quickly scribbled out a note to let Mark know where we were in case he beat us there and then we grabbed our bags and headed to her car. I believe it was at that point when we all introduced ourselves and we found out her name was Sarah. At least this time we weren’t already in the car with the person before we learned her name. However, as the tradition goes, I took more video footage of yet another car ride with a relative stranger.

The car ride was supposed to take about a half hour, but it turned into nearly a two hour ride with the help of a standstill traffic jam on the expressway. Once we got to her town, which is actually a suburb of Stuttgart, we went into the local grocery store to buy supplies for the barbeque. We told her that we needed to buy something for to bring because we didn’t want to be moochers. We thought we should bring some sort of meat. She went off to get supplies for her pasta salad while we went in search of the perfect meat to bring. We found a package of about ten pork steaks that we thought should be efficient. When Sarah found us to see what we had bought, she started laughing out loud. Apparently your not supposed to bring that much food to a barbeque with only ten people. She then found another smaller package for us to buy. Then we decided that we should bring some potato chips as well. When we went to find them, all we could find were smaller sized bags about the equivalent to one quarter of the standard American size bags. We grabbed three bags and she began laughing at us again. She said “There is going to be ten people there!” So we picked up a couple more bags thinking that she meant that we needed more. She laughed again telling us that we probably only needed one bag. We didn’t believe her so we bought three bags anyway. We finally checked out and then went to her house. She prepared her pasta salad while we went out on their balcony and had a beer with her parents. They laughed at our hesitancy to their hospitality. We normally would decline anything because we didn’t want to feel like we were mooching again, but we began to sense that it would be more rude to decline. They continued to try to pamper us the entire time we were there. On top of that, we had a great conversation with them despite our ignorance of any German and them trying to sort out the words among the four languages they can speak. They enjoyed us talking about all the German heritage that we are familiar with in the thumb, and they even were able to explain to us what Frankenmuth, Frankentrost, and Frankenhilf meant in German. They are all old German words meaning “carriage,” “caring,” and “the help” respectively. We told them how it felt more like home there than anywhere we have been. It felt like we were only a fifteen minute drive from Frankenmuth to Reese away from home.

Once Sarah got done making her salad, we were on our way to the barbeque. When we showed up everybody was happy to meet and greet us. Since nearly everybody under forty knows English in Germany, we were able to communicate pretty well the entire night. They did get a kick out of us trying to pronounce some of the German words though. For the meal, we had authentic bratwursts, German potato salad (the best ever by the way), some garden salad, Sarah’s pasta salad, and later, our schnitzel (steak) we had purchased. This was all accompanied by the pride of Germany--Beck’s Beer. For desert we had an awesome raspberry custard dish followed by Swiss chocolate. The whole thing was amazing. After the dinner, we just sat around talking about cultural differences and arguing about whether Richville or Germany could drink more beer. Finally it was time to go back to Sarah’s house to go to bed. When we got there, she led us to a room with a slide out bunk bed in it. We insisted that we sleep on the floor so we would dirty any sheets. She told me to “stop being stupid and get in the bed.” Sensing that I again was offensive for turning down hospitality, we got into our beds and slept like somebody had knocked us out with a two-by-four.

July 29

(12:00) Today is the day we meet Mark! The only problem was that we were still a half hour away sleeping in a strange bed. It didn’t matter though. We knew we were going back sometime and Mark said he would be there all day.

When we got up, we were the first ones up in the house. Apparently we have grown accustomed to waking up when the sun comes up and it didn’t help that the neighbors had a rooster that didn’t think one crow was enough. We sat around downstairs for only a few minutes before Sarah’s mother came in to offer us breakfast. We insisted that we didn’t want much, but she gave us some version of cold cereal, some toast, fruit, and some cold cut meat. Even though this wasn’t our first experience with lunch meat for breakfast, I asked Sarah what we were supposed to do with the meat. She laughed and explained that you can just eat it or put it on toast…or really just do whatever you want with it. Her mother laughed even harder when she came in and Sarah told her in German about our exchange. When she was done laughing she calmly said, “ha, funny.”

Then we had to decide what we wanted to do for the day. We had the option of staying at the house while Sarah went to a retirement ceremony at her old school for the morning, or we could join Sarah at the ceremony/party. Since we have grown fond of awkward circumstances, we decided we wanted to at least check out Sarah’s old school. On the way, we learned about the general idea of this event. Unlike an American retirement party, they actually have a little ceremony with performers and speakers. This particular ceremony was for the school director who was stepping down. Sarah was chosen as the representative of her graduating class to attend. When we got there, their auditorium area was already packed. We decided to sit on the stairs for a little while before we got bored of listening to the German speakers. Ben and I ended up leaving to explore the school for a little while. It is amazing first of all that their schools are in session year round and secondly, that they allow random people from the street to wander the halls. You can tell the people are more carefree here. We then managed to make our way outside to relax under a shade tree while the rest of the ceremony concludes. Sarah said it was only supposed to last about an hour, but it has been well over two now and we are still sitting outside. We can see that there looks like there is going to be a meal afterwards, so we are hoping to partake in that aspect of the celebration shortly.

(24:00) Well we didn’t get to eat any of the food afterward because we didn’t even stay until the end. Sarah was required to wait until the ceremonial handshake, which was nearly the last order of business of the ceremony, before she could leave. As soon as this took place, she bolted out the door to get out of that place. She apologized about seventy-two times for the length of the ceremony as if we had somewhere better to be. Once we made it back to her house, we packed up our things and headed back to Reutlingen to see if Mark had made it back yet. When we got there, we saw that Mark had arrived but wasn’t in his room at the moment. He left the door open for us, but we felt a little uncomfortable waiting for him in his room, so we went to Sarah’s friend Lena’s (as we now know her name finally) room to wait. Eventually we went back to find Mark in his room finishing up his packing. He came up to visit with us and the girls for a while before the three of us guys went to the International Office of the university to clarify what would be happening in Room 93. Mark’s professor was the guy in charge of the apartment and he said it would be alright for us to stay (after we convinced him that we were decent people). We set up the guidelines and ground rules for our stay and everything was set. Next came the task of figuring out how we were going to celebrate Mark’s last night in Europe and Lena’s success on her last exam. Since both girls were going separate ways and Mark had to meet a friend for dinner, we eventually would all meet up in Stuttgart. We ended up going out to eat with Mark and his friend Chin. The meal was delicious and pretty cheap. I guess the doner kabob is the German version of fast food. It is like a pound burrito filled with beef, vegetables, and a type of sauce similar to our dill vegetable dip. Needless to say, we will be going back there quite often since it is on the way to the train station. After dinner, Mark took the bus back to the apartment to get all his stuff and Ben and I were to meet him at the train station. We ended up walking around the city with Chin for a while. He is the type of character that you can never forget. We had a great time chatting about girls and Germany with him and he must of enjoyed our company because he invited us to go out with him Saturday night to this big shindig in Reutlingen. He has actually been living in Reutlingen for about twenty years, so you can imagine how much of a hard time we gave him when he had to call Mark to ask for directions about how to get to the water fountain in the middle of town. He ended up walking with us to the train station and hanging around until it was time to board our train. We kept trying to talk him into going with us, but he was afraid he wouldn’t find a way home the following morning since we were staying at Sarah’s house again. We met Lena there at the train station as well and the four of us road to Stuttgart together. At one point during the ride, someone mentioned how we should have gotten a six pack to drink on the train (since it is legal to drink almost everywhere in Germany). Everybody was then disappointed that we didn’t think of that earlier until Lena pulled a beer out of her purse as if it was nothing. The three of us guys were quite impressed.

After arriving in Stuttgart, our next task was to walk to the hotel that Mark and his mother were staying at for the night so he could drop off all his luggage. Then, Sarah and her friend Alex drove to the hotel to pick us all up. It was quite a squeeze with all six of us in a tiny foreign compact car, but we managed for the short trip to the bar. Upon arrival to the bar, we were shocked to learn exactly how this bar operated. You could bring your own beer or buy it at the bar which was outside. Everybody just sits around in a circle on the concrete surrounding the bar and drinks beer. We thought it was crazy, and then we found out that it’s not frowned upon to take the beer glass with you if you want a souvenir or need to finish your beer on the way to the next bar. Also, many times throughout the night, somebody would drop their glass (accidentally or otherwise) and it would shatter all over the concrete. It happened so often that people never even turned their heads to bother to see what happened. After a couple hours at that bar, where I spent a majority of the time making fun of Ben and his many “interesting” stories with Lena as well as talking to her about her travels. When I asked her what she thought about Ben’s stories, she said that she laughs harder about how he tells them rather than what he says. I agreed. She also told me how she would be leaving for Costa Rica in two days to spend six weeks with her friend. I also found out that she has been to Argentina, the Philippines, and many other European countries. I was quite impressed with her again.

Next we moved on to another bar. Here we sat outside as well, except this time it was at a picnic table. It had an umbrella to which Ben got yelled at for trying to erect over the table. It wasn’t that we needed the umbrella for shade since it was already well passed midnight, but it was in our way of conversation across the table. I guess the reasoning for the umbrella to be down was something to do with the police coming to the bar if they saw the umbrella erected. It didn’t make sense to me or our German friends, but we complied. We ended up spending another couple hours there as well. We were joined by another friend named York to which I had an interesting conversation regarding education. He was angry because education costs had risen to 500.00 Euros (about 700.00 USD) per semester in Germany. He was appalled by the fact many of our students graduate from college with debts tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone was shocked by the fact that we weren’t required to take any foreign language classes throughout or education. In fact, most of our German friends could speak at least four languages. This is a concept that we can’t even come close to wrapping our minds around.

Anyway, after some of us had grown a little tired, we all split up to head home. Mark went back to his hotel, Lena and York left in York’s car, and Alex dropped Sarah, Ben, and myself off at Sarah’s house before heading home. Before we went to bed (and I wasn’t about to refuse a bed again), Sarah made up a list of the things that we would need to pick up from the store in order to make her famous Dampfnudels, which were like pancake dough balls. She was a little surprised about how early we woke up the morning before and she insisted that we stay in bed until at least ten o’clock. We said we would shoot for 8:00 am, even though it was already 4:00 am before we got to bed. The grocery list was for something for us to do while we waited for her to wake up around 11:00 am. We knew it would be interesting because Sarah wrote the list in German to make sure it would occupy us a little longer.

July 30

We slept until 8:00 am, but that was all we could muster. We both laid awake in bed for another hour and a half or so before we decided to head to the super market. When we got there, we only needed to get three things, but we still didn’t really know what those three things were even though they were written down in front of us. We walked around the entire store looking for “vanilla sauce” before we gave in and asked a lady working there to help us out. She ended up taking us on a tour of the store to pick up each item we need. It turned out all we needed was this vanilla sauce (which was nothing you could find in the States), various fruits for fruit salad, yeast, and butter. I also purchased another pretzel as I had the day of the barbeque. This was my delicious breakfast.

After we got back, we had to wait a little while to get into the house as we let Sarah sleep a little longer. Once we were in the house, it took Sarah a while to completely wake up. It was going to be a couple hours before everybody came over to eat dampfnudels, so we headed up to Sarah’s room to get out of the way of the maid who was cleaning. Her room was neat because it had a section for bed and another for a living room area where her desk and couch were situated. The highlight of the room, however, was the acoustic guitar I spotted hiding in a corner. I was so excited to play for the first time in over a month that I didn’t even have to ask and Sarah was already inquiring if I wanted to play it. At first it felt like I was just learning to play all over again. Eventually it came back a little bit, but no where near what I was used too. My fingers hurt after only playing for a short time since all my calluses had been long gone. She even had a couple song books with a majority of the music being in English. We had a pretty good time trying to hammer out a couple songs we knew. Then people began to arrive and we went downstairs to start making the fruit salad. At one point, I was chopping up kiwis and putting them into the bowl when Sarah walked by and was flabbergasted to see that I was leaving the skins on the kiwis. After I told her that this was what I was used to, she agreed to let me keep my one chopped kiwi in the bowl. I think she may have been more shocked when she saw me eating the peelings from the other kiwis.

After dinner was finally served, we enjoyed the delicious German dish to which I again ate way more than I should have. After we had finished eating, we sat and talked for a couple hours with the four others at the table, Sarah, Lena, York, and Alex. Later, our friends we met at the barbeque, Kirsten, Marie, and Maurice, also showed up. Now we were only missing Hannah, Axle, and Chin to complete the circle of all our new German companions. We didn’t stay long after that, however. The previous night Lena had forgotten her bag in a locker at the train station, so she needed to go back to pick it up. Since we need to get to the train station to make it home, we were happy to get another ride from Sarah. Before we went to the station, however, we went to a sporting goods store so Lena could buy a backpack for her trip to Costa Rica. Ben and I spent the entire time playing with the little boy Sarah was watching for the day. This little guy was really cool because he never cried or got upset and he already had an awesome afro. I don’t think he had reached the age of two yet. He also grew fond of my ball cap I was wearing and it actually fit him quite well due to the big puff of awesomeness on the top of his head. It was funny when he tried talking to you because you didn’t know if he was speaking German or just baby gibberish. One word I did notice was “auto.” He took quite a liking to anything on wheels.

Anyway, eventually we made it to the train station and we had to say goodbye to Lena until next summer when they come and visit us (or so they adamantly say, but I will be excited to believe it when I see it). We then made plans to meet Sarah the following night again in Stuttgart. We hugged goodbye to both (German hugs are much more sincere than American I have noticed thus far), and got on our train. After about a mile walk from the train station in Reutlingen to Mark’s apartment (now our apartment more or less), we were happy to be in a somewhat permanent residence. Ben took a shower “because he can” and I boiled one of the sausages I have been carrying around from Switzerland. We ended up talking to Tiff and found out that she is actually in Stuttgart at the moment. We made plans to meet up with her tomorrow as well and it looks as though she will be partaking in all our excursions for a while. We will be happy to once again have somebody else to talk to on our day trips. I also talked to my mom for about an hour on Skype about all the craziness that has been happening to us over the last few days. She also informed me that my basement living quarters had flooded slightly and is now in shambles. I am glad I don’t have to deal with that situation right now. It has been a long (yet way too short at the same time) couple of days and I am exhausted. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to sleep in (or “sleep out” as the Germans say).

July 20

We woke up after another hot night in Athens at 7:00 am. Luckily the fans kept working all night, so we were able to stay asleep for the majority of the night. We were so excited to get out of Athens that we were literally walking down the street toward the train station less than fifteen minutes after we woke up. I believe this was the first time that I didn’t have to tell Ben more than once to get up. Actually, I didn’t even have to tell him once. He just heard me sit up in bed, rolled over, and said “I hate the sound of you getting up because I know you’re going to make me get up.”

On the walk to the train station, I picked up the croissant thing I had picked out the night before. I found out it was filled with a type of spinach dip which turned out to be pretty good. It was also quite hysterical watching the guy trying to explain spinach in broken English. I understood him right away, but was so enthralled with making sure the guy picked out the right one that I didn’t have time to tell Ben what he said. The guy started singing the Popeye the Sailor Man theme song as part of his description of spinach. I guess you just had to be there.

Once we got to our train to take us down to the port, it surprisingly didn’t take us that long to figure out the Greek that told us which train we needed to take. We made it to the port in no time at all. Once we got there, however, it was a struggle to find a place to buy tickets. We went to a place right in the train station, but we moved on hoping we could find cheaper prices elsewhere. It turned out that all the companies had the same prices so it didn’t really matter. However, before we knew this key information, we shopped around at all the kiosks around the port. Somehow, most weren’t open. We thought we got a discount with a certain ferry company so we went into their ticket office to ask. They told us that they don’t sell tickets there, even though there was a big sign when you walked in that said “TICKETS”. She told us where to go and I told her that we just passed by there and they weren’t open. She turned to ask her co-worker something in Greek and turned back to me and told me that they were open. Dealing with Athenians; just one more reason why we were happy to be getting out of Athens.

Once we finally got our tickets and boarded the ferry, we were soon in a much better mood. We needed this vacation pretty badly after a strenuous trip through Spain, France, Italy, across the Adriatic Sea, and through Greece. We were looking forward to becoming beach bums for a couple days on some Greek island we have never heard of. The island is called Aegina I guess. The ferry ride was gorgeous. The water was sparkling blue, there were green islands all over, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Aegina was very similar. We could see the beach from the port and the view was amazing. We are surrounded by islands and the water is crystal clear. We ended up walking right into the water as soon as we got to the beach. We stayed in the water for quite some time. We tried to keep under the water to shield ourselves from the sun a bit, but it didn’t work all that well. We would have put sunscreen on, but the cheapest we could find was for 14.50 Euros (about 20 USD) for a small tube that probably wouldn’t even last us the day. We decided we would rather wear a snow suit to the beach. We ended up working pretty hard to stay out of the sun after we got burnt a little bit during our first swim. We knew that too much sun could make our trip miserable for the next few days. We actually wore our shirts into the water the next couple times we went out. We actually saw a guy with a net and a harpoon gun swimming around. He ended up getting two fish, a crab, and an octopus. He spent a couple minutes slamming the octopus against a rock. That was probably the most interesting thing we witnessed all day.

After sitting under a shade tree for quite a few hours while waiting for the sun to go down, I went and snapped off a few photos of the sun setting before starting to figure out where we were going to sleep. We knew it would be outside, but had no clue after that. I ended up finding a piece of plywood and a small piece of cardboard I may have stole from a bum. I’m not positive someone had claimed it, but it was left unattended and we all know a bum would never leave his stuff unattended. Ben found another piece and we spread them out under a shade tree on the beach. I think our beds here are better than the ones we had in the hostel. At least nobody is going to come in and wake us up to make the other beds. The only problem I see right now is the battle we are having with the bugs. They seem to be winning. Since they are attracted to the light of the laptop, it is time to go to bed.

July 21

We woke up under our shade tree when the sun came up. We went to bed when the sun went down. In between those two things, we really didn’t do much. We went to the market for food twice and we went into the water a couple times. The only thing that was a constant was our struggle to stay cool and to stay out of the sun. We wanted to go into the water more often, but we had to wear our shirts and ball caps in to keep the sun off us. We also had face away from the sun and pull our collars up to shade our necks. This turned into such a hassle that we didn’t spend too much time in the water. We tried not to leave our shade tree, but there were holes in the leaves that led to a lot of moving around on our part to dodge the sun. When we did have to go out to brave the heat, our feet got burned on the asphalt and sand. Since my sandals broke the day earlier, my feet got beaten up pretty badly. All in all, though, it was a great day. We did absolutely nothing, which was kind of boring, but at the same time, it was extremely relaxing and exactly what we needed. If there’s anything that you can probably take away from previous blog posts, it’s that traveling like we had been doing is hard work. Even the days we spend riding the trains for ten-plus hours have taken a toll on us. An uneventful day was just what the doctor ordered.

However, there was a slight emotional toll taken on both of us during this day. Because there was nothing to do, we got enthralled in a number of conversations covering topics ranging from completely pointless to extremely deep. The one that seemed to keep popping up was what we wanted to do when we got back. After Ben made me describe what the perfect first day back would be like in my mind, I began to realize the things I miss and crave the most. Some of these things include my bed, grandma’s cooking, playing guitar (all my calluses are gone already), ice cream, a Chinese buffet, a root beer, and relaxing with friends and family. Now that I have these things installed into my mind, I am excited to heat up the traveling again to get my mind off it.

July 22

We woke up this morning to the sound of a backhoe tearing down some trees only a dozen feet away from us or so. I felt like we had better pack up quickly because they didn’t seem like they were excited about stopping if we were in the path of destruction. We were up and going momentarily. We took a quick pit stop in the bathroom to water up for the day and then headed toward the dock to get the first ticket out of that place. Since we hadn’t even looked at a clock in two days, we had no idea what time it was. I found my watch stashed deep in my bag and I knew we were going to be able to catch the 7:55 am ferry which was the first one leaving for the day. We ended up getting back to Athens at about 8:15 am. We then waited for an hour to catch the next train to Patras. Four hours later, we were walking toward the ferry office in Patras to see if we could exchange our tickets to leave a day earlier. After finding out that it was almost a kilometer away, I thought our chances of being able to pull off the switch wasn’t even worth the walk. However, I had already talked Ben into making the walk, so we were going to battle the Greek sun once more. Once we found the ferry office, I was giddy to find out that we could exchange our tickets for no extra cost. We now had a place to sleep on the overnight ferry back to Brindisi, Italy and a fresh day to follow to go north toward Venice. Before we were able to snag this express escape route, we were planning to somehow stumble upon another beach to sleep on. As it worked out though, we were able to exchange our tickets and walk back and board the ship immediately. After we boarded, we sat down and ate our lunch we had picked up at a grocery store on the way to the port. Surprisingly, ham, bread, and water still doesn’t taste that bad.

On the ship, we realized that there was hardly anybody onboard this time. It seemed like we had the ship to ourselves. We went and staked out our spot on the floor of the room that we now know we are allowed into. We are sailing on the exact same ship that we crossed the Adriatic on the first time, and I have my exact same spot on the floor.

I nearly forgot to mention the significance of this day. July 22 marks the exact midway point of our trip. It seems like we are already coming down the homestretch based on what we have accomplished thus far, but now I realized that we have another thirty-one days to go yet. The other significance of the day is that we are only one week away from being able to relax at Mark’s apartment in Reutlingen, Germany. We have been looking forward to July 29 since we left Tiff’s. Our trip turned out to be seemingly broken down into three major sections. We had three weeks before we got to stay at Tiff’s, now we are in the middle of the three weeks between Tiff’s and our stay at Mark’s, and then we will have roughly three weeks after that until we leave. If it weren’t for these goals for a respite the two months might be a little overbearing.

It is almost 9:00 pm aboard the ship here. We gain an hour due to a time zone change tonight, but 10:00 pm is still sounding pretty late to me. I think I am going to hit the sack (or the floor I should say) and wake up in Italy in a ten hours or so.

July 23

We woke up on our ferry just as we were pulling into port at about 8:00 am. We got packed and walked to the exit of the ferry just as they were putting the ramp down for the foot passengers. We got off the boat to the memory of Italian heat. It didn’t take long to remember that Greece isn’t much warmer that Italy. We were roasting within minutes. We got our free shuttle ride back to the main square in Brindisi and headed toward the train station. We stopped at our familiar grocery store to get a stockpile of food. We found a tremendous deal on an Italian version of Swiss cake rolls, so we bought four big ones. Later on the train, we found out why they were so cheap. They taste like some sort of chemical that is not meant to be eaten. We haven’t decided if we are going to try to eat the rest or not, but I am still hauling them around just in case.

Once we paid for our groceries and got to the train station, we found that the next train to Bologna didn’t leave for another two hours. We were able to pass the time relatively easily as two hours of waiting seems like fifteen minutes these days. Once we boarded the train, we found that the coaches were designed in a cabin-style format with six seats in a cabin. Ben and I had our own cabin, so we were living luxuriously…for the first two hours at least. Then our trip took an awful turn for the worse. Two cranky Italians (Ben named them Mr. and Mrs. Mussolini) came into our cabin and kicked us out of our window seats quite rudely. They started yelling at us in Italian even after we put on an obvious display that we didn’t speak Italian. At one point during their rant, I actually said, “Yeah, we still don’t speak Italian!” We were able to understand pretty easily that they were upset that we had our shoes off and that they thought our feet stunk. We played ignorant for a while, but then they tried opening our cabin door to try to air it out or something. This was a bad idea since it was about 100° F in the walkway and our air conditioner was keeping our room bearable. They didn’t comprehend that 100° F temperatures will create more of a stink than a couple of bare feet. However, needless to say, they learned that lesson the hard way when I finally let them keep the door open. This result came after about a five minute fight where the door must have opened and closed at least ten times. It wasn’t long before everyone in our room was drenched with sweat. Because our air conditioner was working so hard to battle the never ending flow of heat, it ended up quitting all together shortly after. The end result was that we ended up riding the rest of our nine and a half hour train ride to Bologna wallowing in our own perspiration. The only joy that came from the ride was a conversation about how everything is better in America. Basically, we were bashing Mr. and Mrs. Mussolini and their country behind their backs right in front of them thanks to a little thing we call the language barrier. We could tell they had been bashing us to a few others who had wanted to sit in our cabin by their hand gestures. They even went and got a crew member to complain about the supposed stench and the air conditioner. He basically laughed at them and made Ben put his socks away that he had lain across the rack to air out. After that, Mr. and Mrs. Mussolini hardly spoke to us or each other the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, Ben and I passed the time by trying to recall the rosters of various sports teams throughout the years. I must say I was quite impressed when he rattled off the entire roster of the back to back Stanley Cup champion Red Wings of 1998-1999. At one point though, I had to use the restroom, so I got up to find one. I ended up walking the entire length of the train checking all fifteen or so bathrooms before discovering that not one was supplied with toilet paper or hand towels. This wasn’t a problem as long as I could hold it for another five hours. Based on this train ride and our other previous trips through Italy, we have come to the conclusion that the myth about the quality of Italian trains has utterly and ridiculously expired. We figured that these trains probably were top notch when Benito Mussolini himself had them built in 1944. Not to worry though, two more Italian trains is all we were going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives (hopefully).
After our never ending train ride finally let us off in Bologna, we had an hour to find food and water before the last train for Venice left for the night. We ended up finding a place that served authentic Italian pizza, so we split one. It came with one small bottle of water as well, which we split. The concept of a complimentary glass of water hasn’t caught on here yet apparently. The pizza was okay, but we both agreed that we would rather have Karp’s (or I guess I should say The Rocket’s).

Next it was off to find our train. We were required to pay to use the bathrooms again at the station, so we refused as usual. The day I pay to do my business is the day I move to the backwoods somewhere in Canada. We were/are to have nothing of the sort. We were luck enough, however, to stumble upon the rare sight of a public drinking fountain within the station. We filled our bottles, chugged a bunch of water, and then filled our bottles again. Seven hours of sweating can have that effect on a body. We then went and found our train and are currently headed to Venice. It looks like we have put ourselves in the familiar position of arriving in strange city at night without a place to sleep. The only catch this time is that everything is surrounded by water in this city. Finding a park to sleep in might be a little bit more of a challenge. We will cross that bridge when we get to it though.

It’s days like these that make you appreciate home. It’s ironic to think that at the start of the trip over a month ago, I had more of an open mind about culture than I do now. I was always the one defending others’ customs and traditions even if they were different from ours. Now I just feel like telling Italians how stupidly and inefficiently they operate. Previously, I would have said that America isn’t better than any other culture, we are just different. Now I exclaim, “America is better than everybody else and that’s just the way it is!“ Maybe these cruel feelings will wear off once the water kicks in, but for now, GOD BLESS THE USA! Right now, I am going to see if we are lucky enough to be blessed with toilet paper on this train.

July 24

We ended up finding a nice spot to sleep right next to the train station. It was on a back area that seemed to hold no purpose except to pamper weary backpackers. The air felt almost misty because of the extreme humidity in Venice. Luckily, it also cooled down quite a bit during the night time hours, so our sleep was pretty comfortable. I slept soundly until Ben woke me up at 6:15 am. He couldn’t sleep anymore so he wanted to get up and get going. Though ambitious, this turned out to be a futile effort because nothing opened until 9:00 am the earliest. We basically spent the entire morning waiting around for everything to open. We were able to take in a couple fantastic views of the Venetian canals, however. Finally, the grocery store opened and everybody rushed in buy their groceries. You would think that with that many people wanting to get into the market that they would think about opening up a little earlier. Anyway, we made it through the store a picked up a healthy amount of food. As we were approaching the check out counter, we even found a bag of eight croissants for only 0.38 Euro. We went through the check out and were happy to see that we kept our total bill under 10.00 Euros. As we were walking back to see if the glass store was open, I was checking the bill to figure out who owed what. I saw something for 2.39 Euros that I didn’t recognize. It turned out to be our 0.38 Euro croissants, or what we thought were 0.38 Euro croissants. If it weren’t for those things, our bill would have been remarkably under budget.

After we went to the glass shops to find that they were still closed, we sat down on one of Venice’s thousands of steps to enjoy breakfast. Finally, we saw that one shop had opened. We had seen some of the prices from the shop in the train station the day before and had hoped that the other shops would be cheaper. However, it was the opposite that held true. We ended up going back to the train station to buy our stuff. Ben bought a variety of things for gifts and favors and I may or may not have bought something for my mom. Ben ended up shipping all of his purchases back to the States (as well as a few pieces of each of our wardrobe that have become more burdensome than useful). I decided I could haul my purchase around for a month or so without breaking it. Only time will tell if this was a wise decision or not.

After a tedious stint in two post offices to get Ben’s stuff shipped, we headed back to the train station to see how quickly and cost-efficiently we could get to Switzerland. They tried telling us that we would have to pay 36.00 Euros to get to Bern, but we told him of the quote of 5.00 Euro we had gotten previously from the lady in the booth next door. He was adamant about his price, so we interrupted the other lady and had her tell him what the deal was. He wasn’t very happy with us or the whole situation, but we ended up getting tickets for 5.00 Euro to Geneva, so that was going to have to be good enough. Unfortunately, we still had a four hour wait until our train left. We spent this time doing a variety of things including searching for public water, napping, and sunbathing on the train platform. During my search for water, I had to walk all over the train station before I found a free public restroom in the back corner of the station’s restaurant. After I got back, Ben realized that there was a public fountain on the other side of one of the pillars mere yards away. At least I found something to pass my time for a half hour or so.

A couple hours into our seven hour train ride to Geneva, we stopped in Milan. This was a relief because most of the people in the train got off, leaving us a little more leg room. A few hours later, we started running into the Alps. The views from the train made the last couple hours fly by. Unfortunately, it was too hard to get a picture through the window of the train, so very few turned out at all. We did ride around a huge lake on the border of Italy and Switzerland that had a jaw-dropping view and Lake Geneva was very pretty as well, even though it was dark by the time we got there. In Geneva, we had nothing to do but find a place to sleep until we could catch a morning train to Bern, Switzerland’s capitol. When we stepped of the train, there was a detailed map directly in front of us. We saw that there was a nice park only a couple blocks away. When we got there, we remembered what we had been missing through our travels around Southern Europe. This park had all kinds of great sleeping places, balconies in case of rain, and a free water fountain. We staked out our place, and passed out from exhaustion nearly immediately. It is getting to the point now where I fantasize about a nice grassy park to sleep in rather than an actual bed. This was to be our fifth night in a row not spent in a bed.

July 19

To everyone that has been reading this online and making comments on the blog page, I apologize. I just found out yesterday that people were able to post comments, so I haven’t been reading them. I will look at them for now on and try to reply if anybody has questions or anything.

(13:00) This morning we woke up at around 8:30 am. Our fans had quit working sometime in the early morning, so we were sleeping in our own sweat for the last few hours. I had to hound Ben a little bit in order to get him out of bed. He claimed he was still tired because our roommates were so loud last night and this morning. I agreed, but convinced him that he didn’t want to walk up to the Acropolis at noon in this heat. That got him out of bed relatively quickly. We started walking and I stopped to buy a doughnut from a street vendor. It wasn’t a very good deal, but I don’t do well without breakfast, so I was going to have to deal with it. It was only a little after 9:00 am while we were walking and already the heat was unbearable. On top of the heat, the Acropolis is was located on the top of a small mountain overlooking the city, so the entire walk was a climb uphill. Once we got there, it cost us 6.00 Euro to get in with our student cards. Unfortunately, we had forgot a free pass that another backpacker had given us back at the hostel. We definitely weren’t walking back all the way to get it. The hostel claimed on their website that they were only 800 meters from the Acropolis. They also claimed to have free internet as well, but they are just stealing it from the place across the street and the signal is very weak.

Once we were inside the Acropolis, we realized how little it actually was. There were about five ancient buildings to see, but none of them were astounding. The amphitheater was probably my favorite part, but it still only took a minute or so to observe its structure. I’m pretty sure the steps aren’t actually original; just the surrounding building. The Parthenon would have been more spectacular had it not been littered with scaffolding. Nearly the entire thing had reconstruction taking place on it. The hole thing took less than an hour to see, and that included our fifteen minute water break. I guess it was worth it to see, but it was a little disappointing. I actually thought this would be one of the cooler tourist sites to see. It still is pretty interesting to think back to how old these structures actually are though.

After we had made our rounds inside the Acropolis, we headed back down the mountain and made sure to check out all the street vendors on the way back. I went into a small grocery place and was about to buy a pre-made cheeseburger that I would just need to warm up back at the hostel. Then the store owner yelled at me for having the refrigerator door open too long. I told him I was looking at buying something in there and he told me to look from the outside. I laughed and walked out. Then I went to a street vendor selling all kinds of souvenirs and was looking at a chain of beads. I couldn’t get one down so I asked the vendor to unhook it for me. Once he got it down and let me look at it, I asked what the purpose of it was. He showed me how to swing the beads back and forth around your finger. I didn’t understand how that was supposed to be amusing so I told him I wasn’t interested. He then rolled his eyes and mumbled something in Greek under his breath. I guess he wasn’t happy about taking five seconds to unhook a strand of beads for me to pass on. The next place we went to had a sign out front for hot dogs and hamburgers for 1.50 Euros. We both went in and got a hot dog which turned out to be pretty big. I was pretty full when I got done (which shows how small my appetite has gotten). Then Ben went back to a vendor who we had passed on the way to the Acropolis and he ended up buying a hat for 3.00 Euros. It was a pretty good deal. The only thing was that it said Greece on it, which neither one of us are too fond of yet. A short while after that, we saw two people getting taken away in handcuffs near the subway station. We’re not sure what they were in trouble for, but they didn’t seem to upset about it. We finally made it back to the hostel shortly after. I took a nap while Ben updated his photos. We are looking into taking a ferry to the island of Hydra tomorrow. I hope it works out, because we could use a vacation.

(23:00) Well we laid around for the better part of the day. There really was nothing appealing about going out into the heat just to check if anything cool was going on. Eventually, I went online to check what the internet had to say about fun things to do in Athens. It told me that there was a flea market about a half mile away from our hostel. It said that Sunday was the big day, where everyone came down to sell their “antiques” in the streets. The word “antique” in Greek apparently means “junk” in English. We went down there around 6:30 pm to see if we could find any hidden treasures. I asked one vendor how much a broken pocket watch cost. When he told me he would sell it for 110.00 Euros, I stopped asking for prices. It literally was junk, but you could tell that most of the people there were tourists, so I’m sure they made their money by preying on unsuspecting passersby. We spent about a half hour down there walking around before heading back home. We spent the walk home scouting out places to pick up breakfast on the way to the port in the morning. I’m excited to visit one vendor I spotted who looked like he had a couple good deals. I noticed the doughnut I bought was half the price at another vendor as well.

Once we got home, Ben had to go use the restroom. I knew this because he had been informing me of these plans for about an hour before we got back to the hostel. He came back from the bathroom with a funny story. Apparently he had to go so bad that he broke the golden rule of using a public facility. He forgot to check for toilet paper before it was too late. Once he checked the bathroom across the hall and saw a similar situation with the other toilet paper dispenser, he made a decision to which I am still laughing. Apparently he decided his best option was to use water as a substitute for toilet paper. He then jumped in the shower to finish up his business. Needless to say, I decided to go with another shower when I took mine. I actually just took my third shower of the day. I am still finding sand in places on my body I would rather not disclose from our night on the beach. However, I didn’t take three showers to wash the sand off, it just seems like it’s the only way to keep cool. I turn the water as cold as it gets and just let it run over my head for a few minutes. I still don’t have a towel, so I just run to a fan in the room to dry off. However, I’m always sweating about fifteen minutes later, so it’s a never-ending battle.

Right now, we are getting ready to go to bed. It’s almost 11:00 pm so it’s a pretty late night for us. I just got done watching Ben make a fool of himself all over facebook. He just learned how to leave video messages with my webcam, so his face is plastered all over everybody’s facebook pages now. I apologize to all those people; I should have tried to stop him.

Well the guy running this place that we’re staying at just now decided that he was going to come in and change the sheets for the next two guests. Ben was already asleep and I had just put the computer down to go to bed, but it doesn’t look like anybody wants us to sleep around here. I guess we can just add this to the list as to why this is by far the worst place we have stayed so far. We will be happy to be out of Athens tomorrow for sure.

Well anyway, we plan on getting up early to get to the port as soon as possible. It looks like the only thing to do to get a ferry is to go down to the port and try to get on a ship. I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but what’s the worst that could happen? At least we will be out of here.

July 18

We woke up from a decent night’s sleep on the floor of our room on the ferry at about 7:30 am to the captain’s announcement that we were pulling into port. We quickly packed up all our stuff and basically walked right off the ship onto the street in Patras, Greece. We asked for directions about how to get out of the port area and started walking. My guide book that I brought along informed us that the train station should be 500 yards to the right of the port, so we started walking down the street. We walked for nearly a mile before we decided that we should probably turn around. We then asked directions again at a restaurant and the only guy that spoke English there was able to direct us back. Once we got to the train station, we were pretty disappointed to see that it was directly across the road from where we got off the ship. It was literally about fifty yards away from the ship and we had to walk right passed it to get out. I guess the cobwebs hadn’t quite cleared for the day yet.

Ben went to the grocery store while we waited for our train. He came back with a feast consisting of a loaf of bread, a half kilo of ham, and four bananas. It was the cheapest groceries have been since we’ve been over here, so we were pretty optimistic about the prices in Greece.

We then boarded our train toward Athens. Our train tickets said our seats were located in the third coach. When the train pulled up (late as usual) we noticed that there were only two coaches. We soon found out that our seat numbers didn’t mean anything and that it was actually first come first serve. I ended up getting a seat right next to the window. It was nice to have a great view of the countryside, but the air conditioner couldn’t compete with the Mediterranean sun beat down on my side of the train. I was sweating the entire way. However, it was hard to notice because I was so entrenched in the beautiful landscape of southern Greece. Nearly the entire trip I could see mountains on one side of the train and the sea on the other. The water was an amazing blue and the mountains were an equally gorgeous green. The five hour trip seemed like nothing. I actually fell asleep with an hour and a half left in the journey when it started to get more urban. Once we got to Athens, it was all urban. We were really disappointed with the city itself. It is probably the most dirty and run down city we have seen so far. We haven’t been able to explore the entirety yet, but what we have seen thus far has not impressed. On top of that, the people were supposed to be pretty nice here, but we haven’t experienced much kindness from the locals either.

This would be an understatement for the guy in charge of the hostel. The trip to the hostel was quite a chore since the Greeks not only speak a different language, but also use a different alphabet. We couldn’t really ask for directions because we didn’t even know what we were looking for. All we were basing our search on was a mental image of Google maps and an artistic drawing I made to resemble a Greek road name. Eventually we came to a road on our way back to our starting point that resembled what I had drawn. We started walking and were just going to walk to the Best Western to ask for directions when we happened to stumble upon our hostel. I’m not sure how this continues to happen, but we are always thankful.

Unfortunately, our hostel was not all we had hoped. First of all, it took a minute or two to get buzzed in. Once we made it up to the fifth floor where the hostel was, there was nobody working in there. There was one guest sitting in the reception area. He told us that the guy working had to go get something and that he said he would be back in ten minutes or so. I guess he was left in charge of buzzing people in while the guy was gone. He showed us how to buzz people in and we took over his responsibility. The ten minutes turned into about an hour. Once he finally got in, he was too busy with other things to talk to us. Once this older Japanese guy finally gave us some attention, he told us that we had book the following two nights and had had no room for us today. On top of that, he told us that he would be charging us for the other night that we didn’t want. We calmly tried to explain to him his error, but he kept telling us to settle down. We hadn’t even raised our voices at that point at all, but we were about to if the situation didn’t get any better soon. He kept telling us that he would do us a favor and let us sleep on the floor in the reception area for 10.00 Euro for the first night and then give us our bed for the following night while still charging us for a third night. We were going to have nothing to do with that, but then he ignored us and started talking to another guest. He told us to relax again, even though he hadn’t seen us upset yet, and then he started dealing with other guests. I kid you not, he ended up telling the next three groups the same thing he told us. He said there were no rooms available and that he would have to charge them for another night for whatever reason. He kept telling everybody that he was doing them a favor by letting them stay or by knocking off a Euro from the price. He had everything written down in a book on the desk and had nothing computerized. Once the place had calmed down a little, Ben asked him if he could double check again with the computer to make sure he had us down for the right dates. He said he would call his guy that dealt with the computer in ten minutes. So we thanked him and he reminded us how big of a favor he was pulling for us. After a couple hours had passed, he somehow disappeared and still hadn’t made his call. We found another Japanese guy that worked there and told him our complaint. He told us that the other guy was crazy, that he couldn’t read or write, and that he had never went to school. We found this quite interesting. He then went on to quote us 8.00 Euros to sleep on the floor and said he would find the other guy. Eventually they had both disappeared so we decided to go for a walk to cool off (in the most figurative sense since it was about 100° F outside). We sat on a park bench for a while before heading back to see if he had called yet. When we got back, he accused us of searching for another place to stay since we had taken our bags with us. We assured him that we had just gone to get a bite to eat. He could see that we were beginning to get angry, so he sweetened the deal for us. He said that we could sleep in the reception area for the night and have a bed the following night and he would only charge us for two nights. He made sure to tell us that this was something he doesn’t normally do. Shortly after this, two guys from LA that had been staying there for a few nights tried to reserve their room for another night. He told them that they didn’t reserve it in time. Then, without leaving his desk or answering the phone, he told us that his computer guy called and said he had made a mistake and our room was reserved for tonight. We ended up getting the beds of the two LA guys while they ended up sleeping out in the reception area. I’m not sure how it all worked out in the end, but we paid the guy for two nights and we are now laying in bed ready to shut it down for the night. It’s about 10:00 pm local time, which is an hour ahead from Italian time, so we are basically going to bed at 9:00 pm again. Hopefully tomorrow with result in better feedback from Athens. We plan on seeing the Acropolis which is supposedly only a few hundred yards from where we are staying.
A funny tidbit from this story: the two LA guys informed us that the names of the two Japanese guys were Mr. Miyagi (the nicer guy) and Elvis (the reception guy). I found it quite hysterical when the reception guy disappeared for an hour or so and one of the guys from LA shouted “Elvis has left the building!”

July 16

(11:00) Last night was pretty interesting. Two tents over there was quite a ruckus being stirred up. The tent walls are obviously pretty thin, so we could hear everything. Our neighbors, two tents down had their tent walls shaking for quite some time. It sounded like the couple inside were on their honeymoon or something. However, I’m guessing this wasn’t the case since I could hear them introduce themselves and exchange contact information after they were done. Another interesting thing happened when we got back to our tent late that night. The girl who had moved into our tent with us was already in bed. She woke up before we did and took off, so we never actually saw her face.

When we woke up, it was about 7:00 am. We wanted to get to St. Peter’s Basilica early in the morning in order to beat the line. The day before when we arrived there, there was probably a two hour wait to get in. We walked to the train station and rode the train to the Vatican. When we arrived at the Basilica, there was hardly a soul there. We were able to take some nice photos and walk right in. The cathedral was the biggest and best we have seen by far. It was huge. It didn’t even seem that big from the outside, but once we stepped in, it was monstrous. Every inch was covered with detail. I took a three or four minute video just to capture the general beauty of it. We happened to be there right as a morning mass was starting so we went into that room for about fifteen minutes to watch. We couldn’t hold our attention very long since we didn’t know Italian. It was a neat experience though. Once we made our way through the Basilica, we went to check out a couple other things, but they cost money so we decided against it. However, standing in line we saw a guy we had talked to the night before at the Coliseum. We talked to him last night because Ben had to apologize for getting his big head in one of his pictures. He was pretty cool. He told us how he was a history teacher now living in Cairo and was finally experiencing the things he was teaching about all these years. After he gave me a hard time for wearing the same shirt two days in a row (and I explained that I had already worn one shirt seven days in a row), he wished us luck and we were on our way back. We walked back to the train station and hopped on the first train thinking it was ours. It turned out to be going the wrong way down the fork, so we had to turn around and come back. Then we went to the wrong platform and missed our next train. We are now in the midst of an hour wait until the next train comes. We will then have to walk back to the campground to get our bags, go get some food, and walk back to the train station to catch our train to Brindisi. The train is already late, so hopefully this doesn’t turn into a colossal error.

(24:00) Well we made it to our train in plenty of time, and this is was the beginning of the weirdest day yet. I actually remembered thinking that morning how it’s been a while since something crazy had happened. This has topped them all.

It began on the train ride to Brindisi. About a third into the trip, the air conditioning quick working on the train. Everyone was pouring with sweat (even the Italians; that’s saying something) and complaining in Italian. Pretty soon, it turned into a dull roar and people almost started freaking out. It was probably close to 100° F outside so it was at least that hot in the train. Finally, at the next stop, they shut off the train and restarted it and somehow got the AC to reset. Shortly after this, an old woman sitting next to me had to get off. While she was sliding by, she knocked over my computer and exclaimed “Mama Mia!” I thought that was pretty funny. Earlier in the ride, Ben had to grab her as she walked back from the bathroom because she was about to walk right on by her seat. Apparently she couldn’t remember where she was sitting. However, once we finally arrived was when the fun started to happen.

Shortly after arrival, we went to a couple places that sold ferry tickets. We couldn’t find any that would give us the price we were looking for so we kept looking. We decided to stop to see if we could pick up the internet anywhere. Just as we were sitting down, a young Australian lady came up to us asking if we spoke English. Once she realized we did, she was so relieved. Apparently she was having the worst day of her trip so far (which had been a couple months already). She asked us if we knew of any place to stay in the area. We told her that if she stuck with us, we were trying to find internet and would then be able to tell her. We picked up a signal from a hotel, but it wasn’t strong enough. She told us where the hotel probably was and then said that she was going to get a bite to eat. We told her that if we found anything we would come back and try to find her. I pretty much expected to never see her again.

After failing to bring up the internet, we happened to be walking by a diner when she saw us and grabbed our attention. Once we told her that we were unsuccessful, she told us that we could leave our bags in her car if we wanted while we walked around. We were hesitant at first, but then she gave us her keys to get into her car, so I figured she was the one taking the risk here. We took her keys and went and found her car after quite a search. On our way back, we found another ferry place that was closing in a few minutes. We decided that we should try to get our tickets before we went back. The ferry place ended up taking a long time to get us taken care of, but we ended up getting a pretty good deal. In the mean time, we were pretty sure that the girl thought we had driven off with her car, so Ben went to find her while I took care of the tickets. Once he found her, they came and met me at the ferry place and we began plotting our next step. We had told her earlier that we were planning on sleeping on the beach, but we didn’t expect her to want to partake. We offered to possibly find a cheap hotel and split the cost three ways. Then she shocked us by saying that sleeping on the beach sounded like a good idea. She later informed us that she had made a little pact with herself to try anything at least once while on this trip. We then all piled into her tiny compact car and began searching for a beach. We had found the water with out a problem, but unfortunately, everything was an industrial port. Since she knew a little Italian, she was able to muster up enough charm to get some directions toward the nearest beach. We started off toward where we thought the beach was, but ended up driving around for a half hour before coming back to our original starting point. We were driving around lost in town for a few minutes when she actually turned the wrong way down a one way street toward oncoming traffic. This wasn’t even the worst part. The oncoming traffic turned out to be a police officer. She pulled us over and got out to talk. She spoke hardly any English, so it was hard to understand the conversation. Eventually, I guess our friend was able to change the subject quick enough to get them to understand we were lost in foreignland. We told her we were looking for a place to stay the night. The lady cop then gave us a police escort to a bed and breakfast. Our friend got out and the cops helped her ring the bell to try to get in. Apparently the place was closed because no one went in and no one came out to greet us. After another lengthy conversation with the cop, we then got another police escort back to the main drag and then we split off and were on our way again. We eventually found a place to park and then walked back into town. We went to a local party store and our friend and Ben went in on a bottle of lemon spritzer just incase we ever found the beach. The guy at the party store knew decent English so he was able to direct us toward the beach. We learned that it would be about a fifteen to twenty minute drive, but we had nothing better to do, so we went for it. We started walking back to her car before we realized that none of us could remember where the car was parked. We ended up walking around for nearly a half hour before we finally found something that looked familiar and found the car.

We then started on our journey toward the next town over to find the beach. I started taking video footage of our car ride when I realized that I didn’t even know our Australian friend’s name. I actually videotaped our formal introductions; probably about two or three hours after we met. Her name is Rebecca.

We drove for quite some time trying to get as near the water as possible. Eventually, we stopped and asked a gentleman on the side of the road where the beach was. He directed us down the road a little ways but told us that the beach had already been closed for the night. We went anyway to check out the scene. Once we got there, we found that the gate was still open and we could walk down to the beach. We started getting our stuff all set to go down when a man walked out with a flashlight to meet us. I’m not sure what was said between the Italian and Rebecca, but it sounded like we were getting kicked out. After they were done talking, she came over to us and told us that he was going to open the beach back up for us. He went and turned the light on down on the waterfront and everything. We were ecstatic.

After hanging out down by the beach for some time and covering many topics of conversation including politics (particularly gun control), cultural differences between the US and Australia, and religion, the man with the flashlight came back down to the beach. Again, it sounded like we were getting kicked. The only English I recognized him saying was “Let’s go!” We then followed him back up to the parking lot. Rebecca and the Italian had another long conversation where she tried to explain to him that we wanted to sleep down there. I figured that this would never fly. However, eventually she came back and told us that he said we could sleep down there. She said that he was closing the gate and so we would be locked in until 7:30 am the next morning. We agreed, he showed us how to turn the lights on if we needed them, and then we went to our separate sleeping quarters. We ended up finding three beach chairs down there to sleep on. We curled up in our blankets, talked, and watched the stars for a while. The stars were amazing because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It is funny that we see the same Big Dipper, North Star, etc. as back home. We saw quite a few shooting stars as well that night. And if the night couldn’t get any better, just as we were about ready to fall asleep, fireworks started shooting off in the distance.

The night literally ended in fireworks

July 17

(13:00) We woke up from our sleep on the beach at about 7:30 am. It was an amazing sleep for being covered in sand and sleeping on a plastic reclining chair. The waves crashing onto the shore and the stiff breeze was all anybody needed to have a good night’s rest. Once we began waking up, we hauled our chairs back and started up toward the parking lot. We almost had everything ready when we were met by the flashlight man again. He wanted to know how our sleep went. We told him as well as we could that it was great and that we were very grateful. We got back in the car and drove back toward town. It was another beautiful day. We got back to town center and finally found a place to park. We needed to find a grocery store and a post office so Rebecca could send a suitcase of clothes home and so Ben could send a postcard to his grandma. We also needed to find an internet café so Rebecca could get some things sorted out back home. We accomplished all of these things over the course of the morning. We were even able to book a hostel in Greece upon our arrival.

Once we had finished our morning errands, we were walking back to the car when Rebecca informed up that she needed to have to car back to the rental place by noon (thinking she had at least an hour). I then informed her that it was 11:45 am. Since she had to drive a half hour to get there and we still were a good walk from the car, we all knew this wasn’t going to happen. She then decided that she would keep the car for another day, drive to Rome (about a six hour drive), and then fly to either Greece or Turkey. And I thought we were spontaneous. Once we finally arrived at the car, we got our bags out and she took off. We told her to facebook us if she ended up going to Greece. I don’t expect to see her again, but by the way this trip has been going, we just might. Right now we are sitting under a shade tree in the middle of the main drag, waiting for our ferry. Everything is closed up for the afternoon due to the Italian version of siesta time. Our ferry leaves at 6:30 pm tonight which means we now have only five hours until departure.

(21:00) Well we sat around in the shade until our free bus left toward the ferry. I bought a dozen plums at the convenience store. Ben ate two, there is three left, and I ate the rest. There may be some negative consequences that ensue from that decision. We will see.

We checked in and ended up walking the rest of the way to the ship. We later figured that there was probably a bus to take us the rest of the way to the ship, but no one was very helpful in our inquiries as to where we were supposed to go. That trend seemed to continue aboard the ship. First we tried to figure out where our seats were and the only thing they told us was that we had to go outside. We went outside to find flimsy chairs and benches as the only accommodations. Besides that, they were wet and stained with who knows what. We then went down to the common area to hang out for a while. I went and took a shower to try to get some of the sand out of my hair from the previous night. Once I got back, Ben was lying on the ground by our seats. Pretty soon we both laid down on the floor and used our bags as pillows. We laid like that for a couple hours before a crew member came and told us that there was no sleeping in that area. I’m not sure how you can make a rule such as “no sleeping,” but we were told to leave. We then went and asked the reception desk where we were expected to find sleeping space. His name tag said he spoke English, but he had to go get someone to translate for him still. Basically, he told us that we were supposed to be in an area that the previous guy told us we weren’t supposed to be in, so we went with his word. Right now we are camped out in a room with just rows of seats. We have our blankets rolled out in the isles, so we are hoping to sleep here without getting kicked out. I’m hoping to just wake up and be in Greece. Let’s see how that plan goes.

July 12

First of all, I need to start the day off with a correction. To be clear, the guy that died at the San Fermin festival actually died on the day that we ran. We didn’t see any commotion, but must have ran right by him. We only found out later the next afternoon at Tiff’s via the Spanish news. Since we hadn’t picked up Spanish yet, we had just made the assumption that since we didn’t hear anything while we were there, it must have happened the morning of the news telecast.

Today we jumped back into the crazy world of international travel yet again. The day started late when Tiffany’s alarm failed to go off. Ben and I slept on the floor in our room in the Holiday Inn Express. We slept pretty well though. I never imagined we would ever be staying at a Holiday Inn during our two months in Europe, but I guess when you travel with girls, you can’t expect to talk them into sleeping on the beach. The plus side of splitting a hotel room was a free shower, internet access, and a complimentary breakfast. The breakfast was amazing. I ate two muffins, a croissant with awesome foreign chocolate spread goo, a bowl of the Spanish version of Coco Puffs, and a sandwich. Yes I said sandwich. I guess they eat sandwiches for breakfast in Spain. The best part was that it was a build-your-own type thing, so I stacked piles of ham, two types of salami, and two types of cheese between two pieces of toast. If I would have been thinking, I would have made about three of them and lined my pants pockets with plastic bags. However, I was full yet again. I am afraid I have been stretching my stomach out too much over the last couple days which is going to make the next couple weeks that much harder. Either way, I have no regrets…yet.

After we got packed and ready, we walked to the train station and began to navigate the Barcelona mass transit system. It is hard to remember exactly what transgressed due to the large amount of blunders made in a short period of time. We knew we had about an hour and a half to get to the cathedral to get free entry. The first mistake, though, was that we hurriedly jumped on a train just before it left with only a fifty-fifty chance that it was the right one. Of course it turned out to be the wrong one and it took us even farther away from our destination. Once we got turned around, a comedy of errors began to take place. I will not try to explain everything that happened, but we didn’t make it to the cathedral in time and I wasn’t willing to pay 5.00 Euros to see the inside of another cathedral. So we started walking to our next destination, Sangrada Familia (not sure of the spelling here). This is an awesome cathedral still under construction after eighty years or so after it was started. It is predicted to be complete in 2039. I predict that it will be at least fifty years due to the Spanish tradition of Siesta. I still can’t believe that a country can operate efficiently while most businesses take a four hour break every day. This is just attributed to the laid back, live for today attitudes of most Spaniards though.

After we walked around the outside of the cathedral (we didn’t have time or funding for the inside tour), we went back to the train station to find a nearby restaurant to eat at before we parted ways. Ben and I then attempted to find a train to go to Marseilles, France, but found we could only get slightly across the border before having to find another train. They were unable to tell us any information on French train timetables, so our plans after the train were completely up in the air. This is when the experience started to get interesting.

First, we met two guys from Seattle who had just graduated from high school. Their names were Sam and Kurt. I told them that I needed to know their names for the blog; they wanted to be world famous. They had a similar problem to ours since we both didn’t know where exactly the train was headed and we both just wanted to get anywhere in France. We ended up talking to them during the entire two and a half hour trip. They seemed impressed by our stories thus far and were happy to hear that the Spanish trains were the worst we had experienced. After the train arrived, we said “good luck” to each other and headed to the information booth to figure out when the next train to Marseilles left. Unfortunately we found that it didn’t leave until 7:00 am the following morning. The gentleman helping us seemed to not understand what we meant when we told him that we just wanted to go somewhere closer to our destination, even if we can’t get all the way there. We were left to figure everything out for ourselves again. We started walking toward where we were told the town was, but saw nothing but a concrete jungle ahead of us. There were some homes here and there, but the rest seemed to be a wasteland. We decided to walk to the top of the hill to see if there was anything that looked like a place to stay. Once we got to the top, we spotted an old uniquely styled building that said hotel on the top. It looked so cool from a distance that we actually stopped, took out a camera, and took a picture. The videos we took of this place will hopefully tell the tale better than I can. However, I will attempt to explain one of the weirdest things we’ve seen so far. The hotel was build on top of a rocky ledge of a cliff side overhanging the Mediterranean. It was a nice view, but the outside of the hotel was not. As we got closer, we noticed broken windows on the side and nothing but darkness inside. The driveway to the top spiraled around the cliff so the entrance was all the way around to the back. We walked in a screen door flung open wide to see a storage room with junk piled high. We took a staircase up one floor to find a large dining area with a view of the sea. There was what looked like a reception desk inside the dining area, but after closer inspection, we began to get a weird feeling. We still hadn’t seen a light on in the entire building and the reception area looked like it hadn’t been used since 1940. Dust covered everything; including an old operators board you see in black and white films. Ben yelled to see if anyone was around. There was no response. We walked out to find another hallway leading to another set of stairs. The eeriness began to build as we decided that we should walk up to see what was upstairs. This is the point in the story to cue the scary theme music. I think one of us actually made a comment at the time about how if felt like something was going to jump out at us with a chainsaw soon. Once we made it to the top, there was a weird sitting area that resembled some sort of indoor miniature garden thing that was all made of plastic. Ben and I both took about five minutes to come up with an explanation of it, but that was all we could muster. There were about a dozen numbered rooms up there and we could actually hear people talking somewhere. At that point we decided to walk quickly back to the train station to see if we could find a train to anywhere. We videotaped nearly the entire experience, so I hope everyone can check it out sometime to build their own opinion.

Once we made it back to the train station, we quickly read the big board to learn that the last train departing for the day was leaving in two minutes. We had no clue where it went, but we were going to try to get on if it was the last thing we did. Of course, it had to be on the platform farthest away from our location, so we found ourselves sprinting toward a train yet again. We made it in time, although we got yelled at by the ticket takers since we ran right by them without showing our tickets. They did help us explain where the train was going though. They seemed confused that we were sprinting toward a train in which we didn’t even know its destination or direction. We just explained that we hoped to get as close to Marseilles as possible, but would settle for anything outside of the town we were in. He told us where we should get off. Right now, we are riding on an old train headed east. That is about all we know. I’m sure it will be after midnight before we get off based on the pace we are making thus far. I really hope the reputation of the Italian train system holds true as we could use a change from the trains we have been riding on the last couple of days.

July 13

When we got to Montpellier, we walked around until we found a decent park to sleep in. Our train didn’t leave until 6:00 am the next morning so we had about five hours of sleep to muster up somewhere. We ended up finding a spot overhanging a highway. We had to step over a small fence and push through some bushes to get a nice hidden spot. It was so hot that I just laid on top of my blanket and didn’t even cover up. We woke up at about 5:15 am and then walked back to the train station to catch our train. To save everyone the boring details, I will try to some up our travels in one sentence. We went from Montpellier to Marseilles, from Marseilles to Nice, from Nice to Vertiglia, Italy (finally crossed the border to Italy), from Vertiglia (no idea on that spelling and I’m too lazy to check) to Genova, from Genova to Pisa, and now we are on a train to Grosseto (about half way to Rome). We have no idea what we are going to do in Grosseto, but we couldn’t find any parks in Pisa so we had to try somewhere else. To sum up the day, we have traveled a few hundred miles, taken six trains, been through three countries (counting Monoco), and have been on a train for about ten hours.

There were a few interesting tidbits from the day, however. First, the reason why we had to take so many trains was because the Italians are apparently on strike for something and you can’t get a ticket for an Italian train until you cross the border. Since all those need to be reserved, we were unable to plan multiple destinations at once. Also, I find the need to comment on the toilets we have experienced thus far in Italy. First, at one of the train stations, I walked into a stall to find a hole in the floor with two platforms for your feet. Apparently you are expected to do your business while squatting and standing. To flush, you needed to reach up and pull a chain. Luckily I only had to take a #1 because I’m not sure if I was ready for that type of culture shock. Ben on the other hand, really had no choice in whether to partake in his culture shock. He went to use the bathroom on the train and opened the lid to see the ground passing by at about sixty miles per hour. Needless to say, he left his mark on the Italian train tracks.
The other touristy thing we did was go to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was about a half hour walk from the train station and we figured we would have to catch another train yet tonight so we had a brisk pace. By the time we walked all the way there, snapped off some photos, and walked back, we were pouring with sweat. We then proceeded to take a shower in the public drinking fountain we found near the train station. We both felt so much better and we decided that we weren’t going to put a shirt on until somebody made us. Right now we are riding on a train in first class with our shirts off. Now that’s what I call first class.

July 14


Anyway, since we made it to the train station in Grosseto around 12:30 am. There was hardly anybody there with the exception of some bodies littering ground in sleeping bags. We found that the next train to Rome was not until 4:18 am. We decided to go survey the town for something to eat. Luckily, we found some sort of bar that was still open and they decided to make us a cold-cut sandwich. We had the hardest time trying to decipher what they were trying to tell us, but eventually we managed to understand how much they would cost. We were starving so it didn’t matter too much.

After we got done eating, we went in search of a place to nap for a couple hours. We went to the hotel outside the train station to look for a map. We got a map, but could not find any parks in the area. We then went into the train station and found a couple benches next to our train. Even though the train didn’t leave for three hours yet, it was still parked inside the station waiting for departure. I couldn’t talk Ben into just getting on the train and sleeping in there. Instead we stayed outside on the benches. I did fall asleep, but only for a little while before Ben and his new friend came and woke me up. Apparently Ben found an Italian that spoke English and happened to be waiting for the same train. A little bit later, the Italian got the attention of the conductor and asked him if it would be alright if we boarded the train an hour early. He said it was no problem, which made me wish that I could have talked Ben into getting on the train the first time. We got on and Ben and the Italian kept talking until his stop. He really was a nice and extremely knowledgeable guy, but I just wanted to sleep, so I was very talkative. I believe he and Ben exchanged some contact info so they may be staying in touch. By the time the Italian got off the train, it was already about 5:00 am and I still hadn’t really slept. I tried to sleep on the train, but our empty train car quickly began to fill up with more and more people headed toward Rome with every stop. Once we got to Rome, we had to decide which of the five stops in Rome would be closest to our destination. Since, again, we didn’t know where our destination was, it looked like we had ourselves another crapshoot. We got off at the last stop in Rome and asked directions as to how to get to the address of our hostel. We found that we had to go four stops backward and the stop was right on the road we needed. Once we got back to that station, we got directions to the hostel. The man suggested taking a bus, so we were fearing the worst. Of course we were too cheap to pay the 1.00 Euro a piece to take the bus, so we started walking. There were no sidewalks or even a shoulder from the road, which eventually grew into a main highway. It was kind of scary walking that close to traffic, but it turned out to only be for about a half mile or so. We eventually got to a crosswalk when a couple fellow backpackers saw that we looked confused so they asked us if we were looking for the campground. They directed us around the corner right to the place.

Once we got there, it was about 8:30 am. We hadn’t eaten anything since our sandwiches in Grosseto, so Ben went in search of food while I checked up a few things using the campground’s WiFi connection. We had to wait until noon to check in, but we could use the pool, Jacuzzi, and internet before then. By the time we ate up and got our internet updates done, the pool was open, so we checked our bags and went for a swim. I fought the urge to fall asleep on a deck chair in the sun, but still managed to get a little red. The sun here is like I have never experienced. I literally got burnt in about fifteen minutes lying on my back. We will need to be extremely careful over the next two weeks or so to make sure this sun doesn’t get the better of us. It already feels like we can’t drink enough water.

Once checked in, we checked out the facilities a little more and bought a little bit of snack food to hold us over for the day. Our tents were too hot to stay in, so we moved back to pool deck to look for some shade. We both ended up falling asleep for a couple hours under the awning by the pool. I then went and used the internet for a couple hours to update some more pictures and videos and ended up talking to my mom for a half hour on Skype. I’m sure this made her happy since it had been at least a week before the last time she talked to me face to face. After this, we went back to our tents and sat outside in the shade for a half hour before we went to bed. It was only 7:00 pm. All in all, it was a pretty uneventful day…just what we needed.

July 15

We woke up at about 6:30 am after falling asleep at 7:00 pm. I guess we were tired puppies. We got up and got ready and had to hurry to catch the first bus to the Vatican. Ben actually had to tell the bus driver to wait until I got back with the tickets. Since the bus driver didn’t speak any English, he actually pulled him over to the security guard to translate for him. It worked out pretty well for us and we were at the Vatican by 9:00 am. The museum and the Sistine Chapel weren’t really as impressive as we had hoped. There were a few impressive things, but it was relatively small and only took us about an hour and a half to get through. We weren’t supposed to take any pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, but we managed to snap a few low quality ones off anyway. Once we got through and caught the last bus back to our campground, we did our best to escape the heat. We first went and got some more groceries, then we used the internet for a while, and then went to eat our dinner. We bought a loaf of bread that was about the size of a basketball. We have grown accustomed to eating a lot of bread (I ate two, two foot long baguettes myself one night), but we still couldn’t finish this one between the two of us. After lunch, we went to hang out by the pool and cool off. Once the sun got a little closer to the horizon, we began making our way toward the Coliseum. We had to walk a little less than a mile to get to the train station, ride a train for about forty-five minutes (due to a delay we never found cause for), and then walk another couple miles to get to the Coliseum. Before we left the train station, we had to wait in line for about an hour to get tickets toward Brindisi for the following day. We were not happy about having to pay 10.00 Euro apiece to reserve our spot on a train. The Eurail passes that were supposed to be for unlimited free travel are not really all they were chalked up to be. I’m sure we will get our money’s worth; just not as much as I had hoped.

The Coliseum was pretty cool actually. We didn’t get to go in unfortunately because it was already closed, but we did get to take quite a few pictures of it as the sun was going down. We also saw the Arc of Constantine and a few other neat pieces of ancient architecture. On our way back, I told Ben that I wanted to see if I could break off a loose piece of the Coliseum. He didn’t know why but I went in search of a loose piece while he went to take some photos. I searched hard and eventually was able to get a small chunk. When I got back, Ben had ripped off an entire corner of a brick. I’m sure he didn’t even want it, but he had to out do me. We had to hustle back to the train, which meant we were dripping with sweat yet again. The train ride back took less time than the trip there, which was nice since we were both pretty tired. Once we got back, Ben got on the internet and I went to check out the live band which turned out to be one dude with a guitar. He wasn’t very good; I felt like getting up there and showing how it was done. We’ve found that foreigners singing American songs don’t usually fair too well. Well that about sums up the day. It was just another day as a tourist. Hopefully we can make it to Greece in a couple days and start having some more adventures in the Mediterranean sun.