Europe 2007

Parts I and II of Standard Trip Accompaniments

2007-06-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

It's been about a week since we've been home and I've finally gotten around to uploading and organizing stuff.

So without further delay:

Part I: Pictures

Part II: Journal

Part III (as people who live nearby are forced annually to endure know) consists of a trip video and will be done in a month or so.

Thanks again for following along!

Homez0r

2007-06-20T07:59:00.000-04:00

Its simultaneously a startling and exciting thing when you realize just how small this world is. Whether returning from a trip to the Rocky mountains, or a trip to Europe, in what seems like a short blur of time and space, you can go from eating lamb and drinking Mythos beer in Athens, Greece to mowing the lawn in Mystic, Connecticut.

After a rough night of "sleep" on the hard, high traffic carpeting of Brussels International Airport, the fight was smooth, even arriving 45 minutes early. A couple train and subway legs later, we picked up the white monster dog and pulled into the driveway.

Trip: complete success!

The pictures have been pulled off the cameras, I've started to rip video from the DV cam, and now, I get ready to head up to UConn. It happens that quick.

Another update in the next couple weeks with links to everything (but a few choice pictures below). Thanks for reading!

Out the window right now...

2007-06-18T05:13:00.000-04:00

..I can see the columns of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece!

The trip to Greece from Italy:

Air conditioner on the 5 hour Italian train leg dies halfway through.
No dorms available on the overnight ferry. We sleep in an "aircraft" seat. It sounds and feels like the ship has thrown a propeller blade. We do, though, wake up to the Greek coast, shrouded in a ethereal layer of morning fog.
Air conditioner on the 4 hour Greek train leg never comes alive. The narrow gauge train rocks and sways and bumps, but to our amazement never derails.

Yesterday we ventured on a high speed ferry to the Island of Poros for a day on the Mediterranean. Turquoise waves washing shore. Laying under a beach umbrella drinking beer. Reading and eating pistachio nuts. Biking around Porostown. Despite an egregious sunburn, it was a deserved and needed respite from the 'adventure' that the trip had been to that point.

Today, our final day on the grand continent of Europe, we headed out to see the Acropolis, Temple of Zeus, Plaka (bunch of cool street shops), and the Agora. After a farewell lunch, we'll begin to make our way to the airport. Then an overnight layover in Brussels, and finally, we'll arrive in JFK around 12pm tomorrow, back on American soil.

It has been a long way from stepping out of the train station in Paris for the first time. Terribly jet lagged, lugging 40lb packs through the cold rain, the initial and unique blast of disorientation of being immersed in a foreign country. Fast forward to arrival in Greece. Despite the combination of yet another new language and a new alphabet, we efficiently and stress free move through the subways and streets, eating local food and drink.

It has been an incredible journey. I'll send out an email to everyone once I update this site with pictures and the complete journal.

See everyone soon!

P.S. Greek keyboards rule (σδερφςΣδγξΘΞλπλΩΨωψφρυτηΜΝΣνα)

Italians should not have ever..

2007-06-14T10:22:00.000-04:00

..been introduced to the invention of the internal combustion engine. Bill Bryson, or something close to what he said.

The streets of Rome are insane.

Picture a red light. Mopeds usually outnumber cars, and while waiting at a red light they work their way up to stop line. As the last daring pedestrians (you have to be prepared to take significant risks to life and limb just to walk here) sprint across before the light changes, knowing what comes, the mopeds start to rev their engines. Then, BOOM, the light changes and all the mopeds lay into the throttle at full bore. A fury of bluish smoke and the unmistakable "bwaarrrrrrrrrrrrr". And just as this happens, the whole thing begins to repeat itself for the other side of the street.

After arriving into Rome we immediately headed to the Vatican Museum. With regard to that: 1) The Sistine Chapel is a lot more than just that God touching fingers with man thing. Also, 2) St. Peters is freakin ginormous. I mean, really freakin big.

Yesterday we did the "Caesar Shuffle" and made our way through the Colosseum, the Forum, Palantine Hill, etc etc, basically all the sites you expect to see when in Rome. The blaring sun damped our enthusiasm slightly, but it was really something else to be walking down basalt lined streets that one day, a couple thousand years ago, Caesar himself could have been walking down.

Last night, after a requisite siesta, we headed out for a night walk through Rome's hotspots. Revealing another dimension to this pretty damn cool city, fountains and piazzas were jammed pack with street entertainers, gypsies, tourists, and locals alike, eating gelato and drinking.

After a few days of too much sun, pizza, and ice cream we're headed to Athens via a 5 hour train ride to Bari (oh boy), a 14 hour ferry ride to Patras (wheeee!) and finally a 4 hour train ride from Patras to Athens (awesome).

Final update from there.

Italia

2007-06-11T12:32:00.000-04:00

Despite being stopped in somewhere in the middle of northern Italy due to Bush protests for a few hours (not only can GW trash entire countries but he can even try to ruin your vacation), we made it to the small island of Venice a few days ago. After checking out San Marco we plunged into the depths of the city with the full intent to get lost. Its a fun place to walk around, but after a half a day we ventured back to Mestre for sleep.

Over the days since we made our way through to Cinque Terre, a beautiful region of the Italian Riviera that is listed as "hidden" in all of the international guide books. We were discouraged early on when 3 separate people said that it was jammed pack even weeks ago. This morning though, setting out from Monterosso for the full 5 hour hike through the 5 towns, we encountered very small crowds, and for the first few miles, hardly anyone at all.

The trail leads through truly amazing scenery. In 15 minutes you can go from being immersed in terraced vineyards to overlooks of crashing waves against 100 foot cliffs to viewpoints of one of the 5 extraordinary towns. The weather cooperated and even gave us some well received shade during the more exposed sections.

After making our way back to La Spezia, we hopped onto a train for Florence (Firenze for the show offs) where I now type this post. Tomorrow we make our way down to Rome and base from there for a few days before moving onto Greece.

One week left!

Greetings from Milan

2007-06-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

Switzerland. Freakin. Rules.

I don't know how else to say it. From the moment we woke up (5:50am a few days ago in our train) and looked out the window until the moment we left the country (a few hours ago via the Bernina Express through the Alps) every bit of the country was incredible.

A night train from Vienna deposited us in Zurich and from there we made our way via train and gondola to the small town of Gimmelwald, the scenery a gradual crescendo from lush, green hills near Zurich to the unbelievable peaks at our destination. Even with this gradual introduction, when you get off the final train in Gimmelwald you stand around in complete awe. Vertical mountain faces, thousands of feet tall, tower around you, snow capped peaks and glaciers in the view across the valley, and a small town where cattle out number people. Words will do only slightly less injustice than the pictures, so I'll move on.

After settling into our room, we headed down to the Mountain Hostel and met up serendipitously with a friendly San Fransican named Mike. He was in the process of assembling a hike to the top of the Shark's Tooth (Tanzbodeli). After gathering Esther from Columbus, Ohio, and James from Melbourne, Australia, we took off. MaryBeth and Esther took off to see Chilchbalm, a meadow area surrounded tremendous mountain faces, and Mike, James and I continued on a total quad busting ascent (apparently the Swiss do not believe in switchbacks). 2.5 hours later we were rewarded with yet a further incredible vista panning out in all directions.

Today we departed from Chur on the a scenic train, the only one to traverse the Alps from north to south. Moving from scenery akin to New Hampshire to pure alpine meadows akin to Alaskan tundra, the 4 hour ride dropped us off in Tirano, Italy. From there a 3 hour train ride to Milan.

Tomorrow we'll head out to Venice, and then after that, Cinque Terre.

Austria eh? Throw some shrimp on the barbie!

2007-06-05T14:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the truncated entry, but our train leaves in 20 minutes!

Vienna was great, but more on that later. Headed to Switzerland tonight and will probably be out of internet reach until Milan, Italia a few days later.

Auf wiedersehen!

Deutschland #1!

2007-06-03T12:21:00.000-04:00

Night trains are categorically designed not to allow for sleep. Between the extra hard cushions, beds just short enough to prevent you from fully stretching, and the fact that you´re on a train where things make lots of noise and bounce around, we arrived at 6:30 AM into Munich much less than fully rested.

We hit the ground running, though, and went for a 3 hour walk around the city before anyone was really up. Despite a slight chill in the air and periodic spurts of light rain, we ventured to Odeonsplatz, the Opera house, Marienplatz, Residenz, and took a break in Hofgarten.

When you walk through the gate at Dachau Concentration Camp there´s a message cast into the heavy bars, ¨Arbeit Macht Frei ¨- Work will set you free. Dachau was the Third Reich´s first concentration camp, set up in the early 30s for people who the regime didn´t take a liking to (and who´s maltreatment didn´t end at evil phrases on doors). It was a significant experience to visit the camp, hearing and seeing the stories of the 200,000 people that passed through its gates- I don´t think its possible to viscerally feel the magnitude of the Holocaust until you walk through the ¨showers¨ and into a room with four ovens, gates open, waiting.

On that happy note we headed back into Munich and checked into our hotel, did some laundry and headed over to the Hofbrauhaus for food and beer. For the classic Bavarian biergarten experience, this place is second to none. Loud, big, and a pervasive atmosphere of fun. Of course, the liter sized mugs of beer go a long way in faciliating all of those things. After a dinner of sausages and mashed potatoes, four liters of beer (! - this is where the title of this post comes from as I decided that saying that very loudly was a good idea), a full evening with new freinds, we made our wobbly way back to the hotel.

Today we took advantage of the nicer weather to visit the Englischer Garten and watch people surf (yes thats right). A stop at the Deutsches Museum and then back to Marienplatz for some food.

Tonight we say goodbye to the land of the most delicious pretzels ever (I theorize that God has a hand in making them) and at 11:30 pm board a night train bound for Vienna. With a 6:00 AM arrival, we´re in for another long night.

Prost!

Praha++

2007-05-31T12:17:00.000-04:00

There's something undeniably intimidating about being awoken from sleep to the insistant knock of a police officer from another country. That was the pleasant good morning we had as a Czech border agent asked to see and stamp our passports.

Our night train deposited us into Prague (aka Praha) at around 10:30am. After exchanging money, restocking some supplies and checking into our pension, we headed out onto the town.

Prague is awesome! Wikipedia describes it as "Prague is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe" and from what we've seen, that statement is dead on.

Everywhere you walk in the downtown area you're surrounded with a mixture of understated elegance and outright extravagence in building facades and statues. The people appear to be universally friendly, if not a little curious, of tourists and the area is easy to manage despite the alphabet difference. Amidst getting beer in the thick of the Old Square, we spent several hours exploring the Jewish Quarter, the Old Quarter, Charles Bridge, and the general vicinity on the east side of the river.

Tomorrow we will be exploring the castle area and then catching an 8pm night train to Munich!

What country are we in?

2007-05-30T16:53:00.000-04:00

That was the question that we and a new freind Charles asked as we got off a train in Duisburg, Germany, en route from Amsterdam to Prague.

Damn it, another strange keyboard, this one different even from the last. It appears that the letters are configured in a completely different and random fashion, just so they are distinct from countries.

Yesterday we took the train in from Paris to the town of Bayeux in northwestern France. This town was largely undestroyed during the war and as a result, has a 1000 year old church to show for itself. Our Normandy tour took us to the artificial concrete pier at Arromanches, the D-Day war musuem, the American cemetary, Omaha Beach, and Point du Hoc. Just amazing stuff.

The beach shows no traces of the hell that was unleashed there years ago, but it doesn´t take much imagination to trace a line across a green ridgeline over the incredibly massive expanse of the beach and think of 87 machine guns laying down coordinated fire. At Point du Hoc, the French had the foresight to leave the area as it was in 1944, 30 ft craters and collapsed sections of concrete the size of small cars.

This morning we took the train from Paris to Amsterdam and spent the day there. It wasn´t much time, but we took in the city as best we could. Pot smoke - check. Getting knocked at through windows in the red light district - check. Drinking beer at a sidewalk cafe- check. Of course there was some other inconsequential stuff like seeing the Anne Frank house and hanging out in Dam Square, etc. , but come on, hookers!

We´ve been killing a few hours in this town drinking beer and looking at each others´pictures, but our train should be arriving shortly. It will be our first experience with train sleeping and tomorrow will be a new day in Prague.

PS: for those of you who left comments that did not get published, my apologies. This computer is set to be in German, and while that lets me make cool stuff like Ö°ÄÜÜ, it makes me unable to understand some of the words like Approve Comments. Sorry!

Bon Jour!

2007-05-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

Where to start! We've experienced so much in the last few days, it's hard to know how to summarize, not to mention the fact that french keyboards are apparently not the same as american keyboards.

It was only 2 days ago that arrived in Paris via Brussels, tired from the obvious jet lag but awake from the adrenaline of being dropped into Europe. After some struggle with getting train tickets and the initial shock of a language barrier, we found ourselves standing bewildered outside of Paris train station, shouldering 30 lb packs, in the cold rain, operating on a few hours sleep. WOO!

All the guidebooks talk about how Parisian drivers are some of the most cautious and safe drivers in all the land (please note the implied sarcasm) and as a special welcome gift a friendly motorcycle driver decided to run over MaryBeth's heel as she finished crossing a street (while not apparent from that description, it was without doubt his fault). No fear though, MaryBeth, the trooper that she is, walked it off without any lasting injury.

After finding our hotel and dropping our packs we gathered our bearings and headed off to spend the afternoon in the Palace of Versailles. By seeing this palace we've rendered viewing any other European palaces unnecessary as they're either modeled after Versailles or not worth seeing. Really. Its freakin huge, its freakin the definition of extravagance, and the Sun King was just a little egotistical. A stop on the way home at a sidewalk cafe for some dinner and we settled in for a much needed rest.

Today was Paris In A Day day. We got up early to be 3rd in line at the Louvre (and in doing so ended up in the front row as the initial crowd rushed to the Mona Lisa), and after a few hours there headed out into the city to see the Standard Tourist destinations, Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, a stroll down Champs-Élysées, and about an hour or so of random wandering through the extremely charming (and narrow) streets. We had off and on rain today, but overall it was a great (but busy) day. We are both very much pleasantly surprised with Paris, despite the French.

Tomorrow we're going to make our way into the French countryside, and try to end up on the beaches of Normandy. We're specifically aiming for Omaha Beach, but without any transportation arranged as of yet, it'll be an adventure.

Until the next post!

Blast off

2007-05-26T08:22:00.000-04:00

It feels odd to pack a backpack and not include a sleeping bag, stove, bed roll, etc., but nonetheless, everything is crammed in and ready to go. Our flight doesn't leave until 6:05pm, but with transit to JFK and the ungodly 'arrive 3 hours ahead of your departure' thing, we'll be headed out shortly.

The next, and first substantial, post will be from across the Atlantic Ocean.

Until then!