Hi,
I have not exactly written my next post so I will give a brief update. I am in Gumpoldskirchen again. I am leaving today for Nova Rock. And I am roadtripping from there to Dusseldorf where I will be flying home from on Wednesday.
Hope you are well. The next post will be up... soon.
Cheers,
Ryan
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
A Rambling Guy
I am currently sitting on a train from Amsterdam to Berlin. It has been a long trip and I am now heading towards the end of my adventure. At the end of my train adventure I will have only nine days left in Europe and then home. This is very bittersweet and I will try not to dwell on the fact.
So it probably is a blatant clue that a hostel will be a dive when it is named “The Peace and Love Hostel.” This is in fact the name of the hostel of which I spent my night in Paris. The hostel’s reception was also its bar and the staff were rather distracted by their own conversation which they felt obliged to bring me into. “I am going to call the damn police if she comes here again” exclaimed the proprietor of the establishment as I walked in. A Danish man employed by the hostel leaned over to me “did you hear what happened” he asked. I was curious how I was to know anything that was going on as I had just set foot in the place for the first time. “No” I said. “A couple of the customers here were standing outside the bar last night and this lady who lives next to the place poured bleach on them from her balcony.” This seemed like a good start to my stay. I eventually got the receptionist’s attention “Okay,” she said “ooh, you are going to be in room eighteen.” “That’s a bummer” said the Dane. “What is wrong with room eighteen” I enquired. “Oh nothing is wrong with it. It is just that it is at the top of eight flights of stairs” he said. “I see.” “Okay you are ready to go to your room and there is only one key which you must share with the others in the room. And the water isn’t working right now. We should have it back this afternoon” said the woman. This nixed my personal hygiene plans.
I walked up the eight flights of very narrow winding stairs to my room. And got around to explore Paris and meet my friend Charlotte. I was to meet Charlotte at 5:30 at the Opera so I had plenty of time to kill. I headed to the Arch De Triomphe Etoile, it was nice, and then walked to the Eiffel Tower. I was surprised to find that I actually liked the Eiffel tower. I expected that I would get there and find it to be a giant disappointment, but no I found it very beautiful. The only thing I can say against the tower were the Nigerians and the Gypsies. The Nigerians moved in a horde going up to tourists and trying to force them to by E1.00 Eiffel tower key chains. They were incredibly annoying and relentless. But, as bad as they were the Gypsy women were worse. There must have been twenty of them. They would go up to tourists and they would all do the same exact thing, they would ask “do you speak English” and if you answered “yes” they would give you an elaborate story as to why you need to give them money. If you answered “no” they would give you a piece of paper written in French giving the same story. So I chose to pretend I could only speak German. This led them to desperately use sign language to illustrate how I was to disassociate myself with my hard earned currency. One would come up to me every sixty seconds or so and then suddenly, as one, they all walked away. I saw two cops walking over in the distance. Later I saw the Nigerians show off their sprinting skills as the police came after them.
It is a fact. Paris is a very beautiful city. You cannot escape this. You walk into Paris for the first time and you are confronted with the fact that this place you have seen your whole life in movies and books is real, and even more grand in real life. But I really really wish it didn’t have to be so expensive. € 5.50 is an ungodly price for a glass of coke. Really everything was expensive and I am bad at the backpacker method of eating. My problem is that I do not prepare myself for being hungry in the future, it completely slips my mind. I think to myself “I will just find a grocery store while I am out and by a 60¢beggaite” only to find that I am a half a half hour from the nearest grocery store and starving from just having walked four miles. So I invariably stop in a café to buy what looks like a reasonably priced sandwich and a drink only to find that the sandwich is bite sized and that the reason they didn’t put a price on the drink is because it is more expensive than the sandwich. Okay that is my rant on eating.
I took the longest route through Paris to the Opera because, well I had the time and I want to see some more of the city. I caught up with Charlotte and we went to get a drink and then went to Notre Dame. It was nice seeing Charlotte. We spent most of the time nostalgically talking about seven months before when we had been in Australia. One of Charlotte’s friends joined us and we had dinner at a café (I am going to avoid cafés for the rest of the trip) and spent thirteen Euros on quiche and a soda. They took my map and jotted down where I needed to go the next day. We got to the metro and bid our farewells.
The next day I woke up to find that there was still no water in the hostel. I walked down the stairs to the kitchen only to be told I could not use the kitchen, it was 8:45. They said it was being cleaned. Eventually they told me I could go down stairs but I would have to mind the smell. It is always fun witnessing health code violations. The staff was busy cleaning the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen which had been trashed by the bar goers the night before. But, since they had no water, the staff was using two buckets of water they had brought in and were spreading fecal matter throughout the kitchen floor. I grabbed my bag of food and checked out.
I went and walked down Avenue Des Champs Elysees, a street Charlotte insisted I had to walk so I could say I had been there, and got to the Louvre. I have, I believe, the distinct honor of having been to the Louvre, but have never seen its outside. It was pouring down while I was walking so I took the metro thinking I would just walk out of the metro and cross a street to the Louvre. Instead I got out and found that the Metro actually goes through the Louvre. Amazing! So I was spared any further drenching and walked through the labyrinth which is the museum.
I went and saw all the sites in the Louvre that were expected of me (i.e. The Mona Lisa) and then wondered around looking at relics from the Egyptian era to the Renaissance. I honestly do not have a whole lot to write about the Louvre. It was very big and had quite a lot of paintings in it. To be frank I was tired of Paris and eager to get to my next stop of Amsterdam.
It seemed as though the universe did not want me to go to Amsterdam. My train from Brussels to Amsterdam was canceled and the replacement train (an hour later) was stopped halfway through because one of the passengers became ill and they had to call the ambulance. So waking up from a well deserved nap I rushed to the next replacement train and arrived in Amsterdam at midnight.
I must say I am a little disappointed at the minimal amount of time I had in the city. I did not go to the city for its organic pharmaceutical nor its women of negotiable virtue, but it is a very pleasant and unique city. The city seems to have been founded on the contradictory ideals of socialism and capitalism. The state is welfare oriented and tax driven yet the culture is one of freedom and doing anything for a euro (*cough* hookers*cough*). You really feel the relaxed atmosphere the second you set foot in the city.
I chose to take the New Europe tour of the city. Our tour guide was an incredibly intense Bostonian named Kevin, who had been going to school in Amsterdam for two years. He was a psyche student studying abnormal sexual tendencies (okay I do not remember the exact name of his studies but this was the gist I took from it). We went through the Red Light District (it was daytime so there were no women behind the windows) and Kevin gave us the lamenting statistics of how there were once 480 “coffee shops” and now only 150, and how there use to be 1,200 working women in the Red Light District and now there were only 700. He was passionately bitter about these facts, though with the small size of the city the current numbers still seemed huge. Down one street I walked it seemed as though every other store was a “coffee shop.”
I should be quick to point out that the city does offer much more than just carnal capitalism, it is just that the city planners decided to strategically place these areas immediately outside the main train station, making this is the first thing most visitors to the city see in blaring detail. The city is full of beautiful architecture, with many of the houses leaning forward. The city is built on reclaimed soil so this creates an inherent oddness in the buildings’ designs.
But as I said before my stay in Amsterdam was a short one and so I find myself heading to Berlin. I will most likely spend one day there and then (hopefully) take a night train to Switzerland to finally catch up with Karin and see the country properly.
Hey this post is only 1,751 words!
Okay have fun everyone I will talk to you again soon.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
So it probably is a blatant clue that a hostel will be a dive when it is named “The Peace and Love Hostel.” This is in fact the name of the hostel of which I spent my night in Paris. The hostel’s reception was also its bar and the staff were rather distracted by their own conversation which they felt obliged to bring me into. “I am going to call the damn police if she comes here again” exclaimed the proprietor of the establishment as I walked in. A Danish man employed by the hostel leaned over to me “did you hear what happened” he asked. I was curious how I was to know anything that was going on as I had just set foot in the place for the first time. “No” I said. “A couple of the customers here were standing outside the bar last night and this lady who lives next to the place poured bleach on them from her balcony.” This seemed like a good start to my stay. I eventually got the receptionist’s attention “Okay,” she said “ooh, you are going to be in room eighteen.” “That’s a bummer” said the Dane. “What is wrong with room eighteen” I enquired. “Oh nothing is wrong with it. It is just that it is at the top of eight flights of stairs” he said. “I see.” “Okay you are ready to go to your room and there is only one key which you must share with the others in the room. And the water isn’t working right now. We should have it back this afternoon” said the woman. This nixed my personal hygiene plans.
I walked up the eight flights of very narrow winding stairs to my room. And got around to explore Paris and meet my friend Charlotte. I was to meet Charlotte at 5:30 at the Opera so I had plenty of time to kill. I headed to the Arch De Triomphe Etoile, it was nice, and then walked to the Eiffel Tower. I was surprised to find that I actually liked the Eiffel tower. I expected that I would get there and find it to be a giant disappointment, but no I found it very beautiful. The only thing I can say against the tower were the Nigerians and the Gypsies. The Nigerians moved in a horde going up to tourists and trying to force them to by E1.00 Eiffel tower key chains. They were incredibly annoying and relentless. But, as bad as they were the Gypsy women were worse. There must have been twenty of them. They would go up to tourists and they would all do the same exact thing, they would ask “do you speak English” and if you answered “yes” they would give you an elaborate story as to why you need to give them money. If you answered “no” they would give you a piece of paper written in French giving the same story. So I chose to pretend I could only speak German. This led them to desperately use sign language to illustrate how I was to disassociate myself with my hard earned currency. One would come up to me every sixty seconds or so and then suddenly, as one, they all walked away. I saw two cops walking over in the distance. Later I saw the Nigerians show off their sprinting skills as the police came after them.
It is a fact. Paris is a very beautiful city. You cannot escape this. You walk into Paris for the first time and you are confronted with the fact that this place you have seen your whole life in movies and books is real, and even more grand in real life. But I really really wish it didn’t have to be so expensive. € 5.50 is an ungodly price for a glass of coke. Really everything was expensive and I am bad at the backpacker method of eating. My problem is that I do not prepare myself for being hungry in the future, it completely slips my mind. I think to myself “I will just find a grocery store while I am out and by a 60¢beggaite” only to find that I am a half a half hour from the nearest grocery store and starving from just having walked four miles. So I invariably stop in a café to buy what looks like a reasonably priced sandwich and a drink only to find that the sandwich is bite sized and that the reason they didn’t put a price on the drink is because it is more expensive than the sandwich. Okay that is my rant on eating.
I took the longest route through Paris to the Opera because, well I had the time and I want to see some more of the city. I caught up with Charlotte and we went to get a drink and then went to Notre Dame. It was nice seeing Charlotte. We spent most of the time nostalgically talking about seven months before when we had been in Australia. One of Charlotte’s friends joined us and we had dinner at a café (I am going to avoid cafés for the rest of the trip) and spent thirteen Euros on quiche and a soda. They took my map and jotted down where I needed to go the next day. We got to the metro and bid our farewells.
The next day I woke up to find that there was still no water in the hostel. I walked down the stairs to the kitchen only to be told I could not use the kitchen, it was 8:45. They said it was being cleaned. Eventually they told me I could go down stairs but I would have to mind the smell. It is always fun witnessing health code violations. The staff was busy cleaning the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen which had been trashed by the bar goers the night before. But, since they had no water, the staff was using two buckets of water they had brought in and were spreading fecal matter throughout the kitchen floor. I grabbed my bag of food and checked out.
I went and walked down Avenue Des Champs Elysees, a street Charlotte insisted I had to walk so I could say I had been there, and got to the Louvre. I have, I believe, the distinct honor of having been to the Louvre, but have never seen its outside. It was pouring down while I was walking so I took the metro thinking I would just walk out of the metro and cross a street to the Louvre. Instead I got out and found that the Metro actually goes through the Louvre. Amazing! So I was spared any further drenching and walked through the labyrinth which is the museum.
I went and saw all the sites in the Louvre that were expected of me (i.e. The Mona Lisa) and then wondered around looking at relics from the Egyptian era to the Renaissance. I honestly do not have a whole lot to write about the Louvre. It was very big and had quite a lot of paintings in it. To be frank I was tired of Paris and eager to get to my next stop of Amsterdam.
It seemed as though the universe did not want me to go to Amsterdam. My train from Brussels to Amsterdam was canceled and the replacement train (an hour later) was stopped halfway through because one of the passengers became ill and they had to call the ambulance. So waking up from a well deserved nap I rushed to the next replacement train and arrived in Amsterdam at midnight.
I must say I am a little disappointed at the minimal amount of time I had in the city. I did not go to the city for its organic pharmaceutical nor its women of negotiable virtue, but it is a very pleasant and unique city. The city seems to have been founded on the contradictory ideals of socialism and capitalism. The state is welfare oriented and tax driven yet the culture is one of freedom and doing anything for a euro (*cough* hookers*cough*). You really feel the relaxed atmosphere the second you set foot in the city.
I chose to take the New Europe tour of the city. Our tour guide was an incredibly intense Bostonian named Kevin, who had been going to school in Amsterdam for two years. He was a psyche student studying abnormal sexual tendencies (okay I do not remember the exact name of his studies but this was the gist I took from it). We went through the Red Light District (it was daytime so there were no women behind the windows) and Kevin gave us the lamenting statistics of how there were once 480 “coffee shops” and now only 150, and how there use to be 1,200 working women in the Red Light District and now there were only 700. He was passionately bitter about these facts, though with the small size of the city the current numbers still seemed huge. Down one street I walked it seemed as though every other store was a “coffee shop.”
I should be quick to point out that the city does offer much more than just carnal capitalism, it is just that the city planners decided to strategically place these areas immediately outside the main train station, making this is the first thing most visitors to the city see in blaring detail. The city is full of beautiful architecture, with many of the houses leaning forward. The city is built on reclaimed soil so this creates an inherent oddness in the buildings’ designs.
But as I said before my stay in Amsterdam was a short one and so I find myself heading to Berlin. I will most likely spend one day there and then (hopefully) take a night train to Switzerland to finally catch up with Karin and see the country properly.
Hey this post is only 1,751 words!
Okay have fun everyone I will talk to you again soon.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Passenger
When I last left you I was on my way to Nice. I was at a level of fatigue I didn’t even know I was capable of. I was too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep. One thing that I can say as a positive of being so hungry is that when you do eat it feels as though you are on the point of ecstasy. But I digress. I arrived in Nice at five pm and attempted to find some sort of route to Barcelona. I found a route but it was rather off the beaten path and the last train of the trip left only ten minutes after I was to arrive and was fully booked. I was told I should ask the train master if I could get reservation once I got to the train. The next train to Barcelona would be eight hours later and I would essentially lose another day of my trip. So with a mind full of certainties the next two days probably would not be any easier than the last, at nine o’clock I hopped on bored the first train from Nice to Toulouse. I got into Toulouse at five am and had an interesting conversation.
I was sitting in the train station half asleep when a disheveled looking man in his late thirties and a young girl of about sixteen sat next to me. The man proceeded to talk at me in French (he probably spoke English) whilst his daughter/sister/girlfriend (I could not tell) translated poorly. “Where are you from” the man asked in French. “I’m from the USA, I live in Florida” I replied. “Oh California, very nice” the man replied. He then made the astounding intellectual leap of “you look really tired.” “Yes I am. I have been travelling for three days without a place to sleep and have had very little to eat.” He gazed at me with a bemused knowing look on his face. He made some gestures pointing at me with a frown and then pointed at himself making the “I am strong” gesture while still speaking in French. “He says that you are an American so you are weak and he is French so he is strong. He also has been travelling for three days” the girl translated. I nodded my head and tried to figure out how to get out of this conversation. “I am Arab” the man said. “What is your name” the man asked (still in French). “Ryan” I said. “And yours?” “Je ma pal Osama Bin Laden” he said, which seemed to cause him no end of amusement. After taking my snus and running his grubby fingers through it and then dropping several pieces I politely bared my adieux.
After the next train got into the station I was in a bit of a panic knowing that I had just ten minutes to make my train and no reservation. While looking for the train I bumped into two Finnish girls who were also looking for the same train and as it turned out we had been to all the exact same places at the exact same times and had not run into each other until this point. We did make the train and I sat in a seat that I probably had no right to sit in and struck up a conversation with the girls. Their names were Mari and Kati. They were sisters who had taken the summer off from school to do the classic rite of passage of interrailing across Europe. I was happy to meet more Finns as I had made a good friend who was Finnish whilst in Australia and now able to learn even more about this unique nation. They were quite shocked and sympathetic when I related to them all that had brought me to this point. [Okay so I am definitely not over everything that happened to me but even I have to admit that it makes for one hell of a story]
And so after impressing them (at least this was what I believe I did) by knowing all their references to British television and knowing a fair amount about Finnish culture. We went out about Barcelona together and found that it is a real bitch to locate a hostel in Barcelona. They exist but they are few and far between and many of them are actually run down hotels that are far too expensive to ever be considered a hostel. We spent two hours being lost and dragging our worldly possessions across the city and eventually we found a hostel and they went to stay at their friend’s house. We met up later and went to a special effects exhibit featuring original pieces by *Blank* movies. And then we went to the Sagrada Familia Temple. We sat outside the temple and I purchased for 4.50 Euros what was advertised as a delicious Spanish dish bat was instead heated potatoes drizzled with hot sauce. As it turned out the Kati and Mari would be in Amsterdam about the same time as me and we decided that if things worked out we should meet up there.
Barcelona’s main attraction is the work of Gaudi, which the owners charge a premium for tours thereof. The streets are littered with examples his work, each one with its own tour. I found his work captivating though I noticed a running theme. It appeared to me that Gaudi built the models of these buildings out of wax, left them in a warm room for slightly to long, and then said “oh well, let’s just build it like that then.”
I left the next morning to Madrid. I actually got to the train station an hour early so with quite literally one minute to spare I convinced the train attendant to change my reservation and let me hop on the earlier train. I got into Madrid and immediately liked the place. This was like when I went to Killarny in Ireland, I felt as though I had finally arrived in Spain. I got to my hostel with relative ease and went on my mission of tracking down “La Violetta.” La Violetta is a candy store in Madrid that makes all its candies with violets. My mother fell in love with the store when she went to Madrid at the age of sixteen and I was instructed by my father to procure said candies. This actually turned out to be a great place to be sent to because La Violetta is located at the heart of Madrid and by all the major landmarks. So I was more than happy to run such an errand. I spent the rest of the day touring all over the city and sitting in little café’s with warm atmospheres eating reasonably priced meals of which I found delectable. I also went into several guitar shops (no purchases were made) and heard real Spaniards playing real Flamenco music.
That night, while sitting in the hostel lounge, I struck up a conversation with a Swiss guy named Caspar who, when not in school, is a juggler/ magician who had gone to the world juggling championships in Canada. Finally my misspent youth of magic books and apparatus came into use in an intelligent adult conversation. We discussed things that to anyone else would seem nonsense and went on youtube where I showed him Steve Martin’s obnoxiously bad magic performances and he showed me a man eating lit cigarettes.
And yes more travelling. The next morning I headed out six hours to Algeciras to catch a bus to Gibraltar.
You know things are not good when the woman behind the tourist information booth speaks no English. As I had been travelling I had noticed less and less people accustomed with the English language, and it appeared I had hit the high point of this in Algeciras. I was actually initially delighted when stepping out of the train station. I looked around and said to myself “ah this is exactly like Mexico, I have only fond memories of Mexico.” This is true, Algeciras is remarkably similar to Mexico. And being slightly naïve, and having gotten all my sparse information from internet posts I set about walking through Algeciras. I thought it would be just like Mexico and I could find some nifty little street corner restaurant offering delectable home cooking for tuppence. I would then find some hostel (because according to the internet there is only one hostel in Gibraltar and it is a... “not very nice place”) and catch a bus for five minutes into downtown Gibraltar.
Looking back I take great amusement in the innocence begotten in me. Walking up the main street I started to notice no places to eat or at least none that posted any prices, only greasy bars. I also noticed that the state of the architecture was in a state of disrepair past the point that anyone could honestly call “quaint and charming.” In essence I realized that I was in a slum and had no idea where I was and nobody spoke English. This was not the Mexico I loved when I was a child travelling with my parents, this was the Mexico that is the reason it is known as a third world country. But I was too hungry to turn back. I needed to find food. Walking three miles uphill, I eventually came across a grocery store and had a fine meal of a bottle of pineapple juice and sliced ham. I walked back the three miles to the train station and located a train which took me twenty five minutes to a town just outside of Gibraltar. I did not know this. My only big clue that this was not the former English outpost I was seeking was the fact that the signs were still written in Spanish.
I went up to a woman who luckily spoke English. “Okay” I said “this is going to sound like a really stupid question but am I in Gibraltar?” “No. This is the town just outside of Gibraltar. You need to walk down that road a little bit and you get there.” So I walked. I like Gibraltar. I particularly like its laughable customs agency. Walking through they asked to see my passport. I began to pull it out and without looking at it they waved me through. I was carrying a bag of Spanish candy past the “items to declare area” and no one paid me any mind. One thing I will say as a negative of Gibraltar is that is geography does not lend itself to maps. Receiving a map from the Gibraltar Information Center I was comforted that everything I needed was close by and next to each other. The problem with this is that the country has an inherent rising and falling nature to its landscape. And the roads are of a spiralling intertwining sort which, when combined with the fact that one of the roads is basically above the other, means that what one sees on a map bares no correspondence with what is there in reality.
So I walked for an hour getting to the city center and trying to find the only real hostel in Gibraltar. The hostel itself, while devoid of most human comforts, was reasonably priced and liveable. I was now on a mission to meet my long lost cousins. At this point I didn’t even know if they actually wanted to visit me or had known of my arrival based on the odd conversations I had been having with my cousin Jennifer over the past two days. Jennifer is a sweet and charming girl of thirteen and we had chatted quite often over the internet over the past several months. *I just realized that this was my second time this trip meeting people I had only known before on the internet... eerie* Anyway, being short-sighted I neglected to inform her father (also a cousin technically- got to love genealogy) assuming the information would be passed along. I found an internet cafe, contacted Jennifer, and was told that her Dad (Barry) was on the way. The Whenlocks are good people. Despite the fact that up until midnight the evening before Barry was only dimly aware of my existence, they did everything they could to introduce me to their rather unique country and to connect to their distant relative. We hit things off pretty well. The next day they planned to show me around and I was to take it easy. As they said, I had been travel a lot and now that I was in Gibraltar I should enjoy myself. I heartily agreed.
Barry is a really great guy. We spent the night talking about British cultare and the interesting linguistic differences between our two cultures. Really it was the first relaxing night I had had since Vienna and I was grateful.
Gibraltar is a really really weird place. It is a beachside tropical country with a population (known as Gibraltarians) whose official language appears to be Spanglish. The country is very difficult to get to but is a tourist haven for the rich and up until ten years ago it had been a major military base for whoever at any particular moment occupied it for the last several hundred years. Technically Gibraltar is its own sovereign country and the locals identify themselves with other former colonial countries such as Australia and Canada, yet the national currency is the “Gibraltar Pound” which looks exactly like the British pound (with the addition of the word “Gibraltar”) and is worth exactly the same amount as the British pound. It is an incredibly surreal experience to travel six hours by train to an area that appears to be a Mexican ghetto, only to take a train for twenty minutes to an Anglo/Spaniard beachside paradise.
Another unique aspect of the country is that the government seems reluctant to dispose of anything. Most of the buildings have been there in some form or another for several hundred years, and many of the military sites are still present. A great example of this is Casemate. Casemate is where I met the Whenlocks on my first day in Gibraltar. Today Casemate is a trendy two story building used as a shopping center in the center of town. But, up until ten years ago it was a haven for illegal Moroccan immigrants, and was where the ghetto of Gibraltar began. I really could not believe a place like this could exist and I was unaware of it.
I had an amazingly good time in Gibraltar. The Whenlocks really did everything they could to make me feel at home and to show me their fair country. On my second day in Gibraltar they took me all over the country (which can be traversed from beginning to end in an hour or two) and took me to the Rock of Gibraltar. The rock is in fact where Gibraltar gets its name. The name “Gibraltar” comes from the Arabic word for rock. The rock is seriously fun to go up, partially for its view of all of the southern tip of Spain and the northern tip of Morocco, but mostly for the monkeys. These creatures roam all over the rock in packs entertaining tourists for fruit and Doritos. I liked the monkeys. Gibraltarians hate the monkeys. They tend to equate them with rats. “They are vicious and will bite you without warning” Jennifer and Mellissa had informed me. I would have none of this. I was determined to see the monkeys. Like the tourist I am, I went over with Barry, while the rest of the family stayed in the car watching their insane American cousin, and coaxed a baby monkey to climb my back. I was lucky that I did not hack off the parents. Another American tourist got annoyed that one of the baby monkeys would not climb on her back so she grabbed at it, in front of its rather large parents. The parents leapt on the girl to the great sadistic amusement of the rest of us.
That evening we went to a Mexican restaurant run by a Canadian, whose accent sounded Californian to me except for the constant use of “eh.” Jennifer and Mellissa are my two charming young cousins aged thirteen and twelve respectively. I am the oldest of three, two of whom are girls, eight and seven. Eating with Jennifer and Mellissa and answering constant questions of the sort “do they have KFC in America” made me feel like I was back home. I had a good time, but that night I realized that, despite its allure, I should not stay another day. If I were to stay another day it would most likely kill another two days of travel time and as is I was already looking at cutting another country out of the trip. I asked Barry and Deborah what they thought and they agreed. So the next morning (with my alarm clock being twenty minutes slow and leading us to get there with one minute to spare) they drove me to the train station and I bed my farewell.
I have come to hate the European railways system. It was my understanding that the EU was meant to standardize most European public utilities. Obviously trains were not part of it. In some stations, say the Vienna station, I could buy a reservation from Berlin to Poland, but then in the Atocha Madrid station I would need to go to the Chamartin Madrid station to procure a reservation from Chamartin and would not be allowed to buy any from outside of Spain. This is exactly what happened to me. Though, it took me several hours of standing in line to learn this. I was left with the choice of paying eight Euros to get a train from Madrid to Hyden, with ten minutes to get on a train to Paris (being unable to buy the tickets until I got there) and then get in at eleven pm, OR, pay forty seven Euros for a reservation in first class (the only available space) at seven the next night in a superfast sleeper train, get there at eight in the morning, and have another day in Madrid. I chose the supertrain.
I located a hostel in Madrid and rested. I finally had a good night’s sleep without the need to wake up at any particular hour. The next morning I met two Quebecois girls named Christine and Katherine. They asked if I would like to join them on a free tour guide trip through Madrid. At the word “free” I said yes. When we got there we found our tour guide standing alone and looking a little bugged. His name was Juan and he was from Chile, he had about six different accents which he dispersed randomly over sentences, and he looked like a cross between Douglas Adams and Elvis Costello.
“Where did you get your brochures” Juan asked us. “The Musa Hostel” we replied. “Yeah they still have the old one. The tour has been canceled but I am still allowed to give you recommendations of where to go, so I’ll wait for others to show up and give you a rundown of what you should do.” As we learned Spain, who would have thought it, is often very corrupt. The tour guide industry is run by a cartel who makes it, in the words of Juan, statistically easier to become a surgeon than a tour guide in Spain. The franchise known as “New Europe,” was founded on a business concept I found ingenious. They offered free in depth tours of major cities all over the world receiving all their pay in tips. And judging by Juan, they hired charismatic entertaining young people to give the tours. The Spanish government was pressured by the cartel to crack down on the company even though they technically did nothing illegal, and so “New Europe” in Madrid now makes all its money in bar crawls and Tapas tours.
Our group was joined by two Americans who had just finished studying in Sweden. They were first people on my trip who were travelling with kamikaze intent like me, and we compared notes. So, on our own and with the map drawn by Juan, we toured Madrid and made what was supposed to be a thee hour tour last only an hour and a half. I still really liked the idea of the New Europe tours, and as they are set up in almost all my next counties, I will try to go to as many of them as I can.
So this now lead us to me now sitting in the Madrid Chamartin train station waiting for my train at 6 pm on June 8th. I am at the half way point of my train adventure and then will have a week and a half left of the rest of my trip. Take care everybody.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
I was sitting in the train station half asleep when a disheveled looking man in his late thirties and a young girl of about sixteen sat next to me. The man proceeded to talk at me in French (he probably spoke English) whilst his daughter/sister/girlfriend (I could not tell) translated poorly. “Where are you from” the man asked in French. “I’m from the USA, I live in Florida” I replied. “Oh California, very nice” the man replied. He then made the astounding intellectual leap of “you look really tired.” “Yes I am. I have been travelling for three days without a place to sleep and have had very little to eat.” He gazed at me with a bemused knowing look on his face. He made some gestures pointing at me with a frown and then pointed at himself making the “I am strong” gesture while still speaking in French. “He says that you are an American so you are weak and he is French so he is strong. He also has been travelling for three days” the girl translated. I nodded my head and tried to figure out how to get out of this conversation. “I am Arab” the man said. “What is your name” the man asked (still in French). “Ryan” I said. “And yours?” “Je ma pal Osama Bin Laden” he said, which seemed to cause him no end of amusement. After taking my snus and running his grubby fingers through it and then dropping several pieces I politely bared my adieux.
After the next train got into the station I was in a bit of a panic knowing that I had just ten minutes to make my train and no reservation. While looking for the train I bumped into two Finnish girls who were also looking for the same train and as it turned out we had been to all the exact same places at the exact same times and had not run into each other until this point. We did make the train and I sat in a seat that I probably had no right to sit in and struck up a conversation with the girls. Their names were Mari and Kati. They were sisters who had taken the summer off from school to do the classic rite of passage of interrailing across Europe. I was happy to meet more Finns as I had made a good friend who was Finnish whilst in Australia and now able to learn even more about this unique nation. They were quite shocked and sympathetic when I related to them all that had brought me to this point. [Okay so I am definitely not over everything that happened to me but even I have to admit that it makes for one hell of a story]
And so after impressing them (at least this was what I believe I did) by knowing all their references to British television and knowing a fair amount about Finnish culture. We went out about Barcelona together and found that it is a real bitch to locate a hostel in Barcelona. They exist but they are few and far between and many of them are actually run down hotels that are far too expensive to ever be considered a hostel. We spent two hours being lost and dragging our worldly possessions across the city and eventually we found a hostel and they went to stay at their friend’s house. We met up later and went to a special effects exhibit featuring original pieces by *Blank* movies. And then we went to the Sagrada Familia Temple. We sat outside the temple and I purchased for 4.50 Euros what was advertised as a delicious Spanish dish bat was instead heated potatoes drizzled with hot sauce. As it turned out the Kati and Mari would be in Amsterdam about the same time as me and we decided that if things worked out we should meet up there.
Barcelona’s main attraction is the work of Gaudi, which the owners charge a premium for tours thereof. The streets are littered with examples his work, each one with its own tour. I found his work captivating though I noticed a running theme. It appeared to me that Gaudi built the models of these buildings out of wax, left them in a warm room for slightly to long, and then said “oh well, let’s just build it like that then.”
I left the next morning to Madrid. I actually got to the train station an hour early so with quite literally one minute to spare I convinced the train attendant to change my reservation and let me hop on the earlier train. I got into Madrid and immediately liked the place. This was like when I went to Killarny in Ireland, I felt as though I had finally arrived in Spain. I got to my hostel with relative ease and went on my mission of tracking down “La Violetta.” La Violetta is a candy store in Madrid that makes all its candies with violets. My mother fell in love with the store when she went to Madrid at the age of sixteen and I was instructed by my father to procure said candies. This actually turned out to be a great place to be sent to because La Violetta is located at the heart of Madrid and by all the major landmarks. So I was more than happy to run such an errand. I spent the rest of the day touring all over the city and sitting in little café’s with warm atmospheres eating reasonably priced meals of which I found delectable. I also went into several guitar shops (no purchases were made) and heard real Spaniards playing real Flamenco music.
That night, while sitting in the hostel lounge, I struck up a conversation with a Swiss guy named Caspar who, when not in school, is a juggler/ magician who had gone to the world juggling championships in Canada. Finally my misspent youth of magic books and apparatus came into use in an intelligent adult conversation. We discussed things that to anyone else would seem nonsense and went on youtube where I showed him Steve Martin’s obnoxiously bad magic performances and he showed me a man eating lit cigarettes.
And yes more travelling. The next morning I headed out six hours to Algeciras to catch a bus to Gibraltar.
You know things are not good when the woman behind the tourist information booth speaks no English. As I had been travelling I had noticed less and less people accustomed with the English language, and it appeared I had hit the high point of this in Algeciras. I was actually initially delighted when stepping out of the train station. I looked around and said to myself “ah this is exactly like Mexico, I have only fond memories of Mexico.” This is true, Algeciras is remarkably similar to Mexico. And being slightly naïve, and having gotten all my sparse information from internet posts I set about walking through Algeciras. I thought it would be just like Mexico and I could find some nifty little street corner restaurant offering delectable home cooking for tuppence. I would then find some hostel (because according to the internet there is only one hostel in Gibraltar and it is a... “not very nice place”) and catch a bus for five minutes into downtown Gibraltar.
Looking back I take great amusement in the innocence begotten in me. Walking up the main street I started to notice no places to eat or at least none that posted any prices, only greasy bars. I also noticed that the state of the architecture was in a state of disrepair past the point that anyone could honestly call “quaint and charming.” In essence I realized that I was in a slum and had no idea where I was and nobody spoke English. This was not the Mexico I loved when I was a child travelling with my parents, this was the Mexico that is the reason it is known as a third world country. But I was too hungry to turn back. I needed to find food. Walking three miles uphill, I eventually came across a grocery store and had a fine meal of a bottle of pineapple juice and sliced ham. I walked back the three miles to the train station and located a train which took me twenty five minutes to a town just outside of Gibraltar. I did not know this. My only big clue that this was not the former English outpost I was seeking was the fact that the signs were still written in Spanish.
I went up to a woman who luckily spoke English. “Okay” I said “this is going to sound like a really stupid question but am I in Gibraltar?” “No. This is the town just outside of Gibraltar. You need to walk down that road a little bit and you get there.” So I walked. I like Gibraltar. I particularly like its laughable customs agency. Walking through they asked to see my passport. I began to pull it out and without looking at it they waved me through. I was carrying a bag of Spanish candy past the “items to declare area” and no one paid me any mind. One thing I will say as a negative of Gibraltar is that is geography does not lend itself to maps. Receiving a map from the Gibraltar Information Center I was comforted that everything I needed was close by and next to each other. The problem with this is that the country has an inherent rising and falling nature to its landscape. And the roads are of a spiralling intertwining sort which, when combined with the fact that one of the roads is basically above the other, means that what one sees on a map bares no correspondence with what is there in reality.
So I walked for an hour getting to the city center and trying to find the only real hostel in Gibraltar. The hostel itself, while devoid of most human comforts, was reasonably priced and liveable. I was now on a mission to meet my long lost cousins. At this point I didn’t even know if they actually wanted to visit me or had known of my arrival based on the odd conversations I had been having with my cousin Jennifer over the past two days. Jennifer is a sweet and charming girl of thirteen and we had chatted quite often over the internet over the past several months. *I just realized that this was my second time this trip meeting people I had only known before on the internet... eerie* Anyway, being short-sighted I neglected to inform her father (also a cousin technically- got to love genealogy) assuming the information would be passed along. I found an internet cafe, contacted Jennifer, and was told that her Dad (Barry) was on the way. The Whenlocks are good people. Despite the fact that up until midnight the evening before Barry was only dimly aware of my existence, they did everything they could to introduce me to their rather unique country and to connect to their distant relative. We hit things off pretty well. The next day they planned to show me around and I was to take it easy. As they said, I had been travel a lot and now that I was in Gibraltar I should enjoy myself. I heartily agreed.
Barry is a really great guy. We spent the night talking about British cultare and the interesting linguistic differences between our two cultures. Really it was the first relaxing night I had had since Vienna and I was grateful.
Gibraltar is a really really weird place. It is a beachside tropical country with a population (known as Gibraltarians) whose official language appears to be Spanglish. The country is very difficult to get to but is a tourist haven for the rich and up until ten years ago it had been a major military base for whoever at any particular moment occupied it for the last several hundred years. Technically Gibraltar is its own sovereign country and the locals identify themselves with other former colonial countries such as Australia and Canada, yet the national currency is the “Gibraltar Pound” which looks exactly like the British pound (with the addition of the word “Gibraltar”) and is worth exactly the same amount as the British pound. It is an incredibly surreal experience to travel six hours by train to an area that appears to be a Mexican ghetto, only to take a train for twenty minutes to an Anglo/Spaniard beachside paradise.
Another unique aspect of the country is that the government seems reluctant to dispose of anything. Most of the buildings have been there in some form or another for several hundred years, and many of the military sites are still present. A great example of this is Casemate. Casemate is where I met the Whenlocks on my first day in Gibraltar. Today Casemate is a trendy two story building used as a shopping center in the center of town. But, up until ten years ago it was a haven for illegal Moroccan immigrants, and was where the ghetto of Gibraltar began. I really could not believe a place like this could exist and I was unaware of it.
I had an amazingly good time in Gibraltar. The Whenlocks really did everything they could to make me feel at home and to show me their fair country. On my second day in Gibraltar they took me all over the country (which can be traversed from beginning to end in an hour or two) and took me to the Rock of Gibraltar. The rock is in fact where Gibraltar gets its name. The name “Gibraltar” comes from the Arabic word for rock. The rock is seriously fun to go up, partially for its view of all of the southern tip of Spain and the northern tip of Morocco, but mostly for the monkeys. These creatures roam all over the rock in packs entertaining tourists for fruit and Doritos. I liked the monkeys. Gibraltarians hate the monkeys. They tend to equate them with rats. “They are vicious and will bite you without warning” Jennifer and Mellissa had informed me. I would have none of this. I was determined to see the monkeys. Like the tourist I am, I went over with Barry, while the rest of the family stayed in the car watching their insane American cousin, and coaxed a baby monkey to climb my back. I was lucky that I did not hack off the parents. Another American tourist got annoyed that one of the baby monkeys would not climb on her back so she grabbed at it, in front of its rather large parents. The parents leapt on the girl to the great sadistic amusement of the rest of us.
That evening we went to a Mexican restaurant run by a Canadian, whose accent sounded Californian to me except for the constant use of “eh.” Jennifer and Mellissa are my two charming young cousins aged thirteen and twelve respectively. I am the oldest of three, two of whom are girls, eight and seven. Eating with Jennifer and Mellissa and answering constant questions of the sort “do they have KFC in America” made me feel like I was back home. I had a good time, but that night I realized that, despite its allure, I should not stay another day. If I were to stay another day it would most likely kill another two days of travel time and as is I was already looking at cutting another country out of the trip. I asked Barry and Deborah what they thought and they agreed. So the next morning (with my alarm clock being twenty minutes slow and leading us to get there with one minute to spare) they drove me to the train station and I bed my farewell.
I have come to hate the European railways system. It was my understanding that the EU was meant to standardize most European public utilities. Obviously trains were not part of it. In some stations, say the Vienna station, I could buy a reservation from Berlin to Poland, but then in the Atocha Madrid station I would need to go to the Chamartin Madrid station to procure a reservation from Chamartin and would not be allowed to buy any from outside of Spain. This is exactly what happened to me. Though, it took me several hours of standing in line to learn this. I was left with the choice of paying eight Euros to get a train from Madrid to Hyden, with ten minutes to get on a train to Paris (being unable to buy the tickets until I got there) and then get in at eleven pm, OR, pay forty seven Euros for a reservation in first class (the only available space) at seven the next night in a superfast sleeper train, get there at eight in the morning, and have another day in Madrid. I chose the supertrain.
I located a hostel in Madrid and rested. I finally had a good night’s sleep without the need to wake up at any particular hour. The next morning I met two Quebecois girls named Christine and Katherine. They asked if I would like to join them on a free tour guide trip through Madrid. At the word “free” I said yes. When we got there we found our tour guide standing alone and looking a little bugged. His name was Juan and he was from Chile, he had about six different accents which he dispersed randomly over sentences, and he looked like a cross between Douglas Adams and Elvis Costello.
“Where did you get your brochures” Juan asked us. “The Musa Hostel” we replied. “Yeah they still have the old one. The tour has been canceled but I am still allowed to give you recommendations of where to go, so I’ll wait for others to show up and give you a rundown of what you should do.” As we learned Spain, who would have thought it, is often very corrupt. The tour guide industry is run by a cartel who makes it, in the words of Juan, statistically easier to become a surgeon than a tour guide in Spain. The franchise known as “New Europe,” was founded on a business concept I found ingenious. They offered free in depth tours of major cities all over the world receiving all their pay in tips. And judging by Juan, they hired charismatic entertaining young people to give the tours. The Spanish government was pressured by the cartel to crack down on the company even though they technically did nothing illegal, and so “New Europe” in Madrid now makes all its money in bar crawls and Tapas tours.
Our group was joined by two Americans who had just finished studying in Sweden. They were first people on my trip who were travelling with kamikaze intent like me, and we compared notes. So, on our own and with the map drawn by Juan, we toured Madrid and made what was supposed to be a thee hour tour last only an hour and a half. I still really liked the idea of the New Europe tours, and as they are set up in almost all my next counties, I will try to go to as many of them as I can.
So this now lead us to me now sitting in the Madrid Chamartin train station waiting for my train at 6 pm on June 8th. I am at the half way point of my train adventure and then will have a week and a half left of the rest of my trip. Take care everybody.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Gratitude
I am in Madrid right now (again). Leaving for Paris tomorrow night. Should be good :)
Untill I upload my next giant post I leave you with photos!
Yay
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Satellite of Love
Okay so I may be completely out of my mind. With another three weeks till the Novarock festival I have been kicking around ideas as to how to fritter and waste my hours in an offhand way (thank you Pink Floyd). So like many tourists I have chosen to purchase a eurorail pass which allows me unlimited travel. But being a person who has a slightly kamikaze mindset as it comes to travel I have chosen to test myself. I will attempt to go to eleven countries in fifteen days. Yes! I am a loon. This should be interesting.
The countries I will be going to (in theory): I will be going from Vienna to Venice Italy (so I can say I have been to both Venices), through France to Barcelona to Gibraltar (to visit my long lost family) and then Madrid, Paris (where I will hopefully be catching up with my old friend Charlotte) Amsterdam (where I will refrain from becoming a junkie), Berlin to Poland (this might be my subconscious way of dealing with being burnt by an Israeli girl- okay bad taste), the Czech Republic, to Zurich (visiting Karin) , to Budapest, and back to Austria where I will be staying in Linz and visiting Christoph.
Whether or not this plan will come to fruition we shall soon see. But judging from my misadventure yesterday of getting to the wrong station completely and having to hop on a train to Innsbruck to get to Venice this should be an interesting journey.
And now for what I have been doing for the past week. My first day in Austria was an exhausting one to say the least. Even though I slept on the train ride it did not feel like it. I was haggard. I got into Vienna at 8:20. I had roughly eighty pounds of luggage I was carrying around in the form of three bags. A large part of the aforementioned fatigue may have been due to the fact that I was not eating. When under duress I find it impossible to work up an appetite, and if you have been following my blog so far you will see that I was indeed under a fair amount of stress.
Okay so my loyal readers will know that I was in a state that could be called more than a little depressed at this point. And my physical fatigue was not helping the matter. So after meandering about Vienna for a little while I went back to Starbucks and watched Harold and Maude on my laptop. After a fun filled eleven hours of trying to keep myself distracted I waited in front of the Stephen Cathedral for Georg. And it was such a surreal experience seeing my old pal again. I had been lost in my own world of gloom and here came a person I realized I had begun to put into that place in my head reserved for sentimental memories.
That night Georg took me out on the town. We went to a night club with a group of is friends and I was able to demonstrate with ease and charm my complete and utter ignorance of German.
This was all incredibly healthy for me. I believe Georg’s goal was to keep me constantly distracted. Of this he was pretty successful. The next day he took me on a tour of Vienna taking me to a plethora of Austrian landmarks. We saw the town hall, the emperor’s palace, introduced me to proper Kabaps (some of the best food I have ever had), and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. His main goal of the day, however, was to get me an interrail pass allowing me unlimited train travel in Europe. I actually had voiced no interest in the matter but Georg it seemed had decided this for me. So after dealing with the excruciating process that is the Austrian railway system I eventually bought the pass and set about planning the trip.
The next day I went on a tour of Vienna again, but this time with Georg’s best friend Dominic. I must say that Georg has what I always thought of as an eclectic personality, and when I knew him in Australia I always thought he was incredibly unique. Now this is not by any means a slite on Georg, but having come to Austria and meeting his large group of friends and his siblings, I felt as though I was in Georg-World. Chatting with his mates and hearing them go “it’s gonna be legendary” and constant quotes from Lost was a little unnerving. But of them Georg still acts like this in the most extreme. Dominic also has many of these attributes. I enjoyed hanging out with him. Dominic is a cool guy. If ever there was a person who embodied my mental image of the young modern European Dominic would come pretty close.
Back to the story: I am a big fan of the painter Gustav Klimt. So it was quite the treat for me going to the Belvedere with Dominic. For you see the Belvedere holds within its walls a huge body of Klimt’s works including the famous “The Kiss” but more important to me “Judith.” Okay I am a pretty big fan of Klimt and I felt a little like the proverbial kid in the candy store. But the Belvedere was just a generally fascinating place for me the place is a bastion of classical paintings which had for years been drilled into my head via history books. Like many of the giant architectural wonders of Vienna the Belvedere had once been a palace of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
I am an avid and die hard capitalist but there is a certain absurd coolness to Vienna directly derived from its socialism. One example which comes irresistibly to mind is the Museum Quarter, which, despite what the name would imply, is a giant outdoor lounge for young adults and the center of the Vienna art and night club scene. Dominic took me to there and we lounged about the bright yellow cinderblock shaped foam latex cushions, relaxing after a long day of walking.
The rest of the week was marked by me meandering around Vienna and Georg’s hometown of Gumpoldskarchen aimlessly, enjoying the oral extravaganza which is Austrian cooking and attempting to get my trip together. I eventually gave up and decided to use an outline of where I wanted to go with three distinct places I am determined to go to, those being Gibraltar, Paris, and Switzerland.
For the last three days of my time in Vienna I was dragged to a plethora of nightclubs and parties. Georg had finished a major exam and wished to live it up. It was during this time I was introduced to the rest of the Strasser brothers (minus the Strasser sister). Georg’s older brother Thomas is a medical student and an avid partygoer whose catch phrase when meeting friends is “what the fuck?” He is a really nice guy and looks exactly like Heath Ledger. Georg’s oldest sibling Michael is a snus using theology student whom I immediately clicked with. For my first night of partying Georg left me with a group of his friends who seemed to embrace me as part of the group without hesitation. We went to play pool (of which I am hopelessly bad at) and somehow I managed to make all the balls do exactly what I told them. From there we went to a night club and had a rather pleasant night.
The next night Georg joined the group and we went to the “Flex” nightclub. The club was everything I had always imagined in European nightclubs and is home to Mr. Flex. Mr. Flex is a man in his sixties with an Andy Warhol haircut who every night from open to close, stands on the main dancing area and without any expression moves his hands about wildly completely out of sync with the music.
The next night the brothers Strasser and Georg’s large clan of friends took me to a nightclub in the Museum Quarter which was even more European than the last club. Georg’s friend Bernard came up to me in the club. “You should stay here!” here announced. “It is very tempting” I said earnestly.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself that night and at one point had a strange out of body experience. Whilst dancing with several of Georg’s attractive female friends I stood back and looked at myself. I thought “okay, who the hell meets a female Israeli soldier on the internet whilst in Australia, goes to Ireland to meet her where he gets his heart broken, is left for dead in Switzerland, goes to Austria to stay with his friend from Australia and ends up in a hip Vienna nightclub about to go on a Eurotrip alone when he is suppose to be in Florida studying?” I burst out laughing and was asked if I was drunk.
We got home at the crack of dawn and a couple hours later we went to a Strasser family get-together. I was amused at how uncomfortable Georg was as he was convinced all his family members would think he was gay since he brought a male friend.
I got home and packed [note: Georg’s amazingly beyond belief kind and caring parents completely kitted me out with backpacking gear for my trip of which I am eternally grateful] and at three in the morning took the train to the main station. When I got there I was informed that my ticket was for a different station and that I had no time to get there so I got on a train to Innsbruck and from Innsbruck to Venice. This caused me to get there four hours later and to miss my connection to Barcelona.
I have discovered that I really don’t like Venice. Okay I don’t like either of them but the one in Italy annoys me as well. This might be due to the fact that the place eerily reminds me the European Pavilions in Epcot Disney. It is probably also due to the fact that the place serves no purpose except to be Venice. I quite liked Vienna because, while it was filled with beautiful sites and history it was also a fully functional city where people got on with their lives. Venice is a place where foreigners go to sell things manufactured in China to foreigners at a premium.
I quite possibly am being harsh on Venice, which might partially be for the fact that when I got there I was unable to locate any place to sleep and so had to sleep in the train station surrounded by other people in the same situation only to be kicked out at one in the morning to sit outside where the homeless dwelt.
At seven this morning I caught the train to Mallon and now am on a train to Nice France hoping that when I get there there will be a train to Barcelona.
Things are interesting for me. I am trying hard to keep my faith be a yesman and continue to take advantage of the situation. Also I have get some amazing reactions when people ask me to explain what I am doing here. I either give them the whole story or just say "it involved a female Israeli soldier, Ireland, and being left for dead in Zurich."
I hope this post finds you all in good cheer.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
The countries I will be going to (in theory): I will be going from Vienna to Venice Italy (so I can say I have been to both Venices), through France to Barcelona to Gibraltar (to visit my long lost family) and then Madrid, Paris (where I will hopefully be catching up with my old friend Charlotte) Amsterdam (where I will refrain from becoming a junkie), Berlin to Poland (this might be my subconscious way of dealing with being burnt by an Israeli girl- okay bad taste), the Czech Republic, to Zurich (visiting Karin) , to Budapest, and back to Austria where I will be staying in Linz and visiting Christoph.
Whether or not this plan will come to fruition we shall soon see. But judging from my misadventure yesterday of getting to the wrong station completely and having to hop on a train to Innsbruck to get to Venice this should be an interesting journey.
And now for what I have been doing for the past week. My first day in Austria was an exhausting one to say the least. Even though I slept on the train ride it did not feel like it. I was haggard. I got into Vienna at 8:20. I had roughly eighty pounds of luggage I was carrying around in the form of three bags. A large part of the aforementioned fatigue may have been due to the fact that I was not eating. When under duress I find it impossible to work up an appetite, and if you have been following my blog so far you will see that I was indeed under a fair amount of stress.
Okay so my loyal readers will know that I was in a state that could be called more than a little depressed at this point. And my physical fatigue was not helping the matter. So after meandering about Vienna for a little while I went back to Starbucks and watched Harold and Maude on my laptop. After a fun filled eleven hours of trying to keep myself distracted I waited in front of the Stephen Cathedral for Georg. And it was such a surreal experience seeing my old pal again. I had been lost in my own world of gloom and here came a person I realized I had begun to put into that place in my head reserved for sentimental memories.
That night Georg took me out on the town. We went to a night club with a group of is friends and I was able to demonstrate with ease and charm my complete and utter ignorance of German.
This was all incredibly healthy for me. I believe Georg’s goal was to keep me constantly distracted. Of this he was pretty successful. The next day he took me on a tour of Vienna taking me to a plethora of Austrian landmarks. We saw the town hall, the emperor’s palace, introduced me to proper Kabaps (some of the best food I have ever had), and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. His main goal of the day, however, was to get me an interrail pass allowing me unlimited train travel in Europe. I actually had voiced no interest in the matter but Georg it seemed had decided this for me. So after dealing with the excruciating process that is the Austrian railway system I eventually bought the pass and set about planning the trip.
The next day I went on a tour of Vienna again, but this time with Georg’s best friend Dominic. I must say that Georg has what I always thought of as an eclectic personality, and when I knew him in Australia I always thought he was incredibly unique. Now this is not by any means a slite on Georg, but having come to Austria and meeting his large group of friends and his siblings, I felt as though I was in Georg-World. Chatting with his mates and hearing them go “it’s gonna be legendary” and constant quotes from Lost was a little unnerving. But of them Georg still acts like this in the most extreme. Dominic also has many of these attributes. I enjoyed hanging out with him. Dominic is a cool guy. If ever there was a person who embodied my mental image of the young modern European Dominic would come pretty close.
Back to the story: I am a big fan of the painter Gustav Klimt. So it was quite the treat for me going to the Belvedere with Dominic. For you see the Belvedere holds within its walls a huge body of Klimt’s works including the famous “The Kiss” but more important to me “Judith.” Okay I am a pretty big fan of Klimt and I felt a little like the proverbial kid in the candy store. But the Belvedere was just a generally fascinating place for me the place is a bastion of classical paintings which had for years been drilled into my head via history books. Like many of the giant architectural wonders of Vienna the Belvedere had once been a palace of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
I am an avid and die hard capitalist but there is a certain absurd coolness to Vienna directly derived from its socialism. One example which comes irresistibly to mind is the Museum Quarter, which, despite what the name would imply, is a giant outdoor lounge for young adults and the center of the Vienna art and night club scene. Dominic took me to there and we lounged about the bright yellow cinderblock shaped foam latex cushions, relaxing after a long day of walking.
The rest of the week was marked by me meandering around Vienna and Georg’s hometown of Gumpoldskarchen aimlessly, enjoying the oral extravaganza which is Austrian cooking and attempting to get my trip together. I eventually gave up and decided to use an outline of where I wanted to go with three distinct places I am determined to go to, those being Gibraltar, Paris, and Switzerland.
For the last three days of my time in Vienna I was dragged to a plethora of nightclubs and parties. Georg had finished a major exam and wished to live it up. It was during this time I was introduced to the rest of the Strasser brothers (minus the Strasser sister). Georg’s older brother Thomas is a medical student and an avid partygoer whose catch phrase when meeting friends is “what the fuck?” He is a really nice guy and looks exactly like Heath Ledger. Georg’s oldest sibling Michael is a snus using theology student whom I immediately clicked with. For my first night of partying Georg left me with a group of his friends who seemed to embrace me as part of the group without hesitation. We went to play pool (of which I am hopelessly bad at) and somehow I managed to make all the balls do exactly what I told them. From there we went to a night club and had a rather pleasant night.
The next night Georg joined the group and we went to the “Flex” nightclub. The club was everything I had always imagined in European nightclubs and is home to Mr. Flex. Mr. Flex is a man in his sixties with an Andy Warhol haircut who every night from open to close, stands on the main dancing area and without any expression moves his hands about wildly completely out of sync with the music.
The next night the brothers Strasser and Georg’s large clan of friends took me to a nightclub in the Museum Quarter which was even more European than the last club. Georg’s friend Bernard came up to me in the club. “You should stay here!” here announced. “It is very tempting” I said earnestly.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself that night and at one point had a strange out of body experience. Whilst dancing with several of Georg’s attractive female friends I stood back and looked at myself. I thought “okay, who the hell meets a female Israeli soldier on the internet whilst in Australia, goes to Ireland to meet her where he gets his heart broken, is left for dead in Switzerland, goes to Austria to stay with his friend from Australia and ends up in a hip Vienna nightclub about to go on a Eurotrip alone when he is suppose to be in Florida studying?” I burst out laughing and was asked if I was drunk.
We got home at the crack of dawn and a couple hours later we went to a Strasser family get-together. I was amused at how uncomfortable Georg was as he was convinced all his family members would think he was gay since he brought a male friend.
I got home and packed [note: Georg’s amazingly beyond belief kind and caring parents completely kitted me out with backpacking gear for my trip of which I am eternally grateful] and at three in the morning took the train to the main station. When I got there I was informed that my ticket was for a different station and that I had no time to get there so I got on a train to Innsbruck and from Innsbruck to Venice. This caused me to get there four hours later and to miss my connection to Barcelona.
I have discovered that I really don’t like Venice. Okay I don’t like either of them but the one in Italy annoys me as well. This might be due to the fact that the place eerily reminds me the European Pavilions in Epcot Disney. It is probably also due to the fact that the place serves no purpose except to be Venice. I quite liked Vienna because, while it was filled with beautiful sites and history it was also a fully functional city where people got on with their lives. Venice is a place where foreigners go to sell things manufactured in China to foreigners at a premium.
I quite possibly am being harsh on Venice, which might partially be for the fact that when I got there I was unable to locate any place to sleep and so had to sleep in the train station surrounded by other people in the same situation only to be kicked out at one in the morning to sit outside where the homeless dwelt.
At seven this morning I caught the train to Mallon and now am on a train to Nice France hoping that when I get there there will be a train to Barcelona.
Things are interesting for me. I am trying hard to keep my faith be a yesman and continue to take advantage of the situation. Also I have get some amazing reactions when people ask me to explain what I am doing here. I either give them the whole story or just say "it involved a female Israeli soldier, Ireland, and being left for dead in Zurich."
I hope this post finds you all in good cheer.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
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