All Good Things Must Come to an End

I'm sitting in my house in Chico now...a house that I had inhabited for almost a year before my sudden disappearance into the European Continent. It's still my house, and nothing here has really changed. But yet, it doesn't feel like my house. It all feels quite strange. It's like what David Byrne from the Talking Heads says in one of his songs: "This is not my beautiful house...How did I get here?"

Well, I'll tell you how I got here...it took about 27 straight hours to be exact...a new travel record for me. It was one of those days that just wouldn't end, where I kept finding myself stuck in some chair with my knees bumping up against the seat in front of me. For the London to New York leg, the trip started out quite pleasant as I chatted up a pretty young woman named Dorothy getting her doctorate in clinical psychology at UC-Berkeley. She had just gotten back from Morocco, and so we exchanged travel stories and had a good laugh. The plane ride was also quite pleasant as they fed us lunch and let us watch movies on the tiny screens built into the backs of the seats. Watching movies felt like such a luxury to me. I hadn't seen a movie in God knows how long. It didn't matter what movie was playing...I was watching it. "Shrek the Third" could have been a complete piece of crap, but I wouldn't have known. At that moment, it was an artistic masterpiece to me. Then I watched "Lucky You," which was some movie about people playing poker. Once again, this movie could very well have blown chunks, but I was in heaven anyway. And then finally, it was Marlon Brando giving the performance of his life in "On the Waterfront." Oh, I was so happy I could have cried.

However, as I kept heading west, I noticed that the people around me kept getting weirder and weirder, and my travel situation kept becoming more and more unpleasant. For the New York to San Francisco leg, American Airlines suddenly became cheapskates and were now going to charge me to eat a meal. They were also now charging me for headphones to watch the movie "Lucky You," which I had just seen. Lucky me, my ass. Disappointed, I sat down beside a gentleman who at first seemed normal. Then I suddenly realized that...hey...this guy only has one arm. One arm! That put everything into perspective for me, and I suddenly remembered that old saying from my youth: "I cried when I had no airline meal to eat, until I met a man who had no arm." Or something like that. Anyway, after seeing this man with just one arm, I just counted my blessings, quit bitching and read my book.

The Amtrak leg of the journey from San Francisco to Chico seemed interminable. Just when I thought I was through with all the frat boy college types, this whole crew of guys piled into the bus heading to Emeryville, exhibiting the typical dumbass behaviors I had been trying so hard to get away from all summer. There was a "Rock the Bells" concert going on in S.F. which they had all just attended, so they kept screaming "Rage!" and "Wu-Tang!" over and over and talking about getting wasted and getting high. I just wanted to throw myself in front of the Amtrak bus and just end it there.

The late-night Amtrak train to Chico wasn't too bad...just extremely late at night. It was about at this point that I started getting a little delusional from being up for almost 24 hours. The 9-hour jet lag was really started to affect me. Several times I woke up out of my groggy haze and thought, "Crap, Eric, we gotta get off the train or we'll miss our stop!" and then I'd suddenly realize that Eric wasn't there, and I wasn't in Europe anymore. Yep...I was really starting to mentally lose it. Once I got off at the Chico train station at 2 am, I started looking at some of the other folks getting off. Talk about some scary-looking individuals. I mean, I was nothing great to look at either after being a bum in Europe for 10 weeks, but compared to some of these folks, I wasn't doing so bad.

So now I'm back in Chico at my home, ready to get my life back together and move on with the next phase in my life. I think it's going to be a slow process these next few days. I've suddenly realized how dumb I've become when it comes to doing some of the simplest things...like operating a cell phone. I'm afraid to see what's going to happen when I try to drive my car again! Yes, living in the land of America again will be a little odd for me. When you go from having nothing but the junk on your back...to suddenly having access to cars and computers and refrigerators and a nice comfortable bed to yourself...you suddenly realize how good you really do have it in America, and you feel a little spoiled. You also realize that you really don't need to accumulate a lot of stuff in life to make yourself happy. For me, what makes me happy is travelling around, and seeing things, and taking pictures, and then writing about it and sharing it with others. I like stories and memories. I've even debated writing a book about the experiences I just had in Europe. I hardly doubt anything would come of it if I do write it, but at least I'd have it for my own benefit.

To all of you who've kept up with the blog this summer, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. And I hope it inspires some of you to go off and check out some of the wonderful things that this world has to offer. As I've learned during my 32 years on this planet, life is short, so take full advantage of the time you've got here and see as much as you can.

Well, I guess that's it for The Travelin' Fool. Hey.... you don't need to cry. Here... dry those tears with this napkin I picked up at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. There you go! There's no need to cry, because there will be other adventures in the future. The Travelin' Fool will live on... but for now, it's time to put away the blog and move on to other things... such as finding a job so I can support future trips around the world! Oh, once the travel bug hits, it's a deadly thing. So much to see in this world, so little time.

Brian

It's Time For Me to Fly

I'm comin' home, America. See ya back in Chico in 24 hours.

Brit Happens

Well, isn't that something.

I'm sitting here in London, in the basement of the hostel, eating my breakfast of toast, cereal, juice and coffee, and who should be looking at me but that crusty old sea captain painting that I encountered at the beginning of my trip.

But something is different this time. When I was just starting this trip, he seemed to have a scowl on his face, like he didn't approve of me or anything I'd done with my life. His look seemed to say, "How did you end up in MY scullery room, you bloody prick? Off with you!" But now that I look at him again, 10 weeks later, he's different. His scowl is no longer a scowl, but a slight look of surprise that seems to say, "Wow...you survived your trip. I AM impressed. Good job, my boy. Good job."

It's a good feeling to start coming back to what I know. It feels as if everything is now coming full circle, and like walking backwards in time, I'm seeing everything pass before me again a second time as I head back west. The creature comforts of the world I know are starting to come back: English keyboards, people speaking English again, CNN and BBC. It feels nice to know that I'll be shedding my backpack in a matter of a day or two, ditching the campgrounds and the hostels and getting back to my normal life. Not to say that anything of my experience this summer was bad. As a matter of fact, it was all pretty incredible. But after doing it for 10 weeks, you need a vacation from the vacation.

When you backpack, you end up making a lot of sacrifices that you never expected. First of all, your privacy disappears. You're stuck in rooms crammed with 30 other people, all bumping into each other. Or you're stuck in a tent next to someone who stinks just as bad as you. Each bathroom you go to looks like a toxic waste dump because 100 people trashed it right before you got there.

And then there's the continuous moving around from place to place, constantly packing...and repacking...and packing again. You realize your backpack can't nearly fit everything you had hoped it would, so you're continuously telling yourself that you can't acquire things. And then you start seeing yourself wearing the same clothes over and over. You feel like you're some cartoon character or cast member from "Gilligan's Island" who never has a new outfit to show.

At first, all of this is no big deal. But after a while, you start to miss the privacy...and the cleanliness...and the variety of clothing that you had in your former life. That's when it's time to pitch the backpack over into the river and call it quits and go home, which is where I'm at right now. Except I'm not throwing my backpack in the River Thames...it cost me way too much.

I think my breaking point was two days ago in Munich when I was at the Euro Youth Hostel. I was awoken at 2 am to the sounds of these young drunk American kids yelling and making a racket about something. One of them had thrown up on the floor of the dorm room, and glass was broken all over the floor. They just started waking everyone up, turning on lights, and making a scene. That's when I started realizing, "Hey...I'm 32 years-old. I really don't need to put up with this crap anymore. I'm done with this."

Yep. I think my backpacking days of wandering around willy-nilly across the globe are done. Not to say that I won't do a little more of it in the future, but nothing of the magnitude I've just done. I'm an adult now, and don't need to subject myself to this fraternity house atmosphere anymore. It was all good and fun, but now, I ready to move on. I got it all out of my system, and it feels good.

A Day at Dachau

Boy...talk about going from Yin one day, and going to Yang the next.

I woke up this morning, without a clue in the world as to what I was going to do. Some American expat named Mike handed me a brochure on taking a biking tour of Munich, telling me that "It´s the most fun that I´d have in Munich with my pants on." I don´t know quite where he´s coming from...I have lots of fun with my pants on. Besides, if I went around town wandering with my posterior all exposed, who knows what German prison I would end up in. And besides that, think about the chafing and sunburns from being naked down there. Ooooh...don´t like the thought of it. I think I´ll keep my leiderhosen on.

Anyway, I decided to not go along on Mike´s Bike Tour, considering I somehow ended up visiting every "hidden, off-the-beaten-path" place by accident yesterday for free that he takes people to for 20 Euros a whack. But I didn´t see the nudist section of the English Garden, as Mike promises he will take me to. But I´m sure there´s a lot of "bad naked" there and not the "good naked," so I think I´m better off without his tour.

What I did do today is go to Dachau. I knew absolutely nothing about this waking up this morning. I read that it was a former Nazi concentration camp, and I was shocked that it was so close to Munich. So within minutes, I bought a ticket and hopped on the train and bus to get out there. I figured it would only take about 2 hours max to see this place. I spent 6 hours there total, and despite it being very sad and depressing, I´m really glad I went today. I learned more about why WWII came to occur than I would watching the The Hitler Channel...sorry...The HISTORY Channel all day long. Dachau put a lot of what happened during the Holocaust into perspective for me. And after doing a year-long stint with the California Dept. of Corrections, it really affected me being in a prison setting again, trapped inside barbed wire and seeing where people were housed like animals. It´s disturbing, but I think that once again, all Americans should see this once in their lifetime. I also once again feel proud about my country, because they were the liberators for the prisoners of Dachau.

I´d type more, but I´m running out of Euros. Gotta save them for my final day in Germany tomorrow. Will type more later.

Budapest Exposed

Hoohah! What an awesome day so far in Müchen (a.k.a. Munich). Already, I hit the Hoffbrauhaus for lunch (and waited over an hour just to get served by my pissed-off waiter who had some grudge against me. Very odd. Maybe I sat down at the wrong table. Maybe he hates tourists...especially Americans who come in wearing their Sierra Nevada Brewery T-shirt. Don´t know. The Hoffbrau is a nutty place with chaos all around. I don´t know how they keep anything straight), wandered around the city, checked out the broken Glockenspiel (are the people on it supposed to move around and dance to chimes or something???), climbed up the St. Peter tower to see the city from high above, watched Germans surfboarding on the canal (I kid you not...they´ve got a pressurized stream of water pouring out from under a bridge, and it´s a surfboarding park now), and then ended up eating and drinking at the giant beer garden called Englischer Garten (that´s how Germans pronounce "English Garden" when they start getting wasted. I swiped the huge 1 Liter beer stein I put a deposit on, as those snooty Arizona girls from back in Prague had told me they had done (maybe they weren´t total idiots after all). Makes a nice souvenir.) My my...Munich is really shaping out to be everything I expected it to be.

But then there´s Budapest, which didn´t do hardly anything for me. I don´t know...maybe some external factors were influencing my opinion of this place...maybe I was just getting tired of seeing the same types of stuff over and over. But as a whole, Budapest didn´t seem to have a lot of the high cultural attactions that I´ve seen in the other cities I´ve visited. I felt like Budapest was still trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps after years of being suppressed by the Communists. Sure, Budapest has some churches to check out, but they´re nothing spectacular as compared to other cities. For example, I tried checking out the Jewish synagogue in town, but they were charging way too much for nothing (way to go, Judiasm, for perpetuating your demeaning stereotype), so I went to the Catholic Church instead (which was free...hooray!) and saw the severed hand of their saint. It was about 1,000 years old and clenched up in a fist like it didn´t want to let go of its control. It was a little disturbing, but I guess these Hungarians cling onto any holy relic they can get their "hands" on! Ha! Oh, I´m just killing myself here! There´s a whole entire history about how this "hand" has changed hands over the millenium. It even ended up in the USA while WWII was going on.

Other than the severed hand, everything else in Budapest tended to revolve around war, or terror, or their past association with communism. Oh, wait now...there was a silly musical fountain that would dance to opera music. That was pleasant. Everything else...not so pleasant. Their warfare museum was interesting in the fact that I got to see the losing side´s interpretation of WWII (Hungary sided with the Nazis. Bad mistake.). Although the signage was horribly translated in English (which I´ve also noticed in all the other countries I´ve visited. Europe needs an official English copy editor to proofread all their stuff), I could still get the gist of what they were saying, and it came across to me that they were rewriting history. They put themselves as innocent victims to Hitler and Germany and just HAD to go along with them with all the mass genocides... and it was their God-given right to reclaim the lands taken away from them at the end of WWI. So, my B.S. meter was going off the charts. Further on in the museum, they had some swastikas and uniforms displayed that rather shocked me. I figured they would have removed all that stuff completely. I guess not.

Another thing that´s shocking is how there´s a wax museum at the top of the Citadel on the Buda side of the city has Nazi soldiers putting prisoners-of-war in horrible situations. They title the attraction "1944." Once again, I find it horribly wrong that a country is continuing to display inappropriate stuff like this. I mean, this ain´t "Hogan´s Heroes" we´re talking about here with that crazy, lovable Colonel Klink. If this was America, Jewish groups, Holocaust victims, and even Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Push Colition would be out protesting this thing. Here in Hungary, it´s all good fun. Oh, here kids...put on these funny Nazi hats down at the gift store and let´s take your picture. Oy vey!

One attraction that I checked out, that I´m glad they did keep, was called Statue Park. It´s located about 5 kilometers south of the city, way far away from everything, and contains all the old statues that used to be around during the days of communism. Once communism starting falling in the early 90´s, anything even connected with communism was quickly removed and destroyed. Luckily, Budapest saw the need to preserve some of this stuff to show future generations what communism was like. The park contains about 40 statues, some of which are Lenin with his business suit on, holding out his hand as if to say "Welcome to my repressive kindgom. Can I show you around?" But most are done in that bland propagandist style where "the worker" is made up into a giant superhero. All the people have blockish features to them, and their muscles are just bulging out all over like they´re Barry Bonds on steroids. They´re a real trip to look at. I would have hated to be one of the artists making those at the time, because they were limited on what they could do. "Oh, so you want me to make ANOTHER non-descript big worker waving a flag? And put the communist star somewhere in there? Boy, like I haven´t done THAT before!" The funniest part about Statue Park is when you leave it. At the exit, they´re selling T-shirts, most of them with tie-ins to South Park and McDonald´s (I´m sure Lenin is just rolling in his glass viewing box). There´s also one of those boxy crappy cars (Der Trabis???) that everyone in Communismland would have to drive just sitting there as you leave. Yes, communism is dead. But I´m glad someone perserved some of these old relics so I can appreciate what I have in my country.

Our "hostel takeover" in Budapest was also pretty bad. The first hostel we stayed at was called "Amazing Hostel." The only thing amazing about it was that it wasn´t shut down and condemned by a safety official. It was inside an old apartment building that looked like a Russian tank had tried to blow it up from the outside. It was completely empty and falling apart except for 3 rooms way in the back that had been renovated. Just walking to my room everyday was putting my life on the line. One false step, and I would have fallen over the 3-story railing and plummeted to my death. The rooms were crammed with beds, giving you no room to even move around or pack your stuff. Eric had a classic Chicago "porch disaster" in his bed when the wooden frame broke. Luckily, he was on the bottom of the bunk bed and only fell a foot. I put on my structural engineer hat to access the damage to see if I was in danger of falling, but I appeared OK. Then the next morning, Eric fell again in his bed. Poor guy. Then his locker door fell on top of his head. Yes sir...welcome to Fawlty Towers.

The other hostel, Island Hostel, was located on (surpise!) an island in the middle of the Danube River. It was a dump as well...looked like it used to be a summer beach home at one time, then had fallen into disrepair and was eventually turned into a hostel. The smell of mildew just hovered in my room. However, the hostel´s one redeeming feature was that it was located on the river. Beautiful view at night. Just gorgeous. Oh well. I guess you gotta take what you can get when you´re cheap.

Homeward Bound

Gutentag once again, everyone! Just got into Munich about an hour ago, and although I haven´t seen anything in this city yet besides the train station, I´m getting this warm fuzzy feeling that this city is going to be awesome. The hostel I´m at--Euro Youth Hotel--really has its act together. And I was just given a map showing all the beer halls and gardens in this city. Oh, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning right now!!! I´ll only type a little for the moment, because I want to get out and visit a museum or two and sample Munich´s best here.

As the title of this positng indicates, I´ve now turned directions and I´m making the pilgrimage back to the States, bit by bit. It´s a little sad, because you realize that the trip is coming to an end. While heading east, there´s no end in sight and you have no grasp of time...it´s a never-ending journey into the land of mystery. But my internal homing device went off a few days ago in Budapest, and now I´m on autopilot heading back west. There´s no getting off this train now...I´m on my way back home.

I parted ways with Eric yesterday morning, which was a little tough. We spent 9 continuous weeks together, through both the good and the bad. That´s the longest amount of time I think I´ve ever been around anyone non-stop. Sometimes we got along great...sometimes I think we annoyed the hell out of each other with our own individual quirks. But like a marriage (in a non-gay sort of way), we made it work, and it´s a little hard when that person isn´t around anymore to chew the fat with. So I will definitely miss his company. It´s weird being by myself again. Already, I´ve noticed a significant change as several weirdos are starting to come up to me and harrass me now that I´m a lone target. I´ll get into some of that more in a later post.

Vienna Wieners

Gutentag, everyone! It's another language, another country again. Actually, another TWO countries!!! Whew! What the hell happened these past few days? It went by so fast. Man, my head is spinning from all the stuff that's happened. I've got to sit down, take it easy and collect my thoughts. Wooooo......slow down, Brian. There we go. Nice and easy.

All right. I'm ready to spill the beans on the last few days. Who knows where this diatribe is going to go, so bear with me.

Our remaining days in Prague were filled with the drunken revelry that we had been hoping to experience in this city. If you recall from the previous posting, our first night in Prague was pretty lame. Playing Czech Monopoly with a snarky Canadian, a spacey Mexican, and a depressed Texan do not make for an exciting evening. I felt as if I had somehow been sent back to church summer camp.

Our next evening was only slightly better...Eric and I couldn't find anyone at the hostel to venture out on the town with us, so like Lewis and Clark, we went out into the unknown, blazing our own pub trail. In the process, we did happen to run into two 22 year-old girls from Arizona who were also at the hostel. They had just graduated from school and were trying to see all of Europe in a month, which is a pretty idiotic thing. First of all, it's impossible, and second, jumping around from city to city every other day leaves you no time to enjoy your travels. Anyway, we were trying to find a good pub to go to, but they got impatient and forced us into having a beer at an overpriced restaurant. I got rather annoyed by this...and their snobby spoiled attitudes got on my nerves after an hour. Thankfully, they split from us and took off to find a dance club. We just went back to the hostel, feeling screwed out of our cheap beer. You come to Prague for the cheap beer. If you miss out on it, it's such a tragedy. At least that's how us guys see it.

The third night was an awesome night. The dynamics of the hostel changed with some new arrivals. After dinner, the dining room turned into a massive card tournament with about 20 people drinking cheap bottled beer and trash talking. We learned a new game, but since it's name is vulgar and there might be a young audience reading this blog, I'll refer to it simply as the "Game That Must Not Be Named," or GTMNBN for short. The GTMNBN was a crazy bizarre game with rules that had to have been made up by a bunch of drunk frat guys. At first, it makes no sense. But then after a round of it, it's actually quite a blast. For example, 2's start the deck, 3's force another person to take all the cards, 5's are invisible, 7's make the numbers go backwards, 8's skip the next player, 10's clear the deck, and then you have face down cards that you have to play without getting to look at them (this probably makes no utter sense to you, but I guarantee, come and visit me when I get back home and we'll have a grand ol' time playing GTMNBN). Another great thing about the game is that the winner gets to decide upon a punishment for the loser. In our first round, we made the loser go around and hug everyone in the room, which was rather amusing for those who didn't know what was going on. In the second round, Eric actually lost, and for his punishment, he had to wear a party dress during the next round of the game. One of the Canadian girls brought out her dress for Eric to wear, but it was too small. So she brought out a stretchy dress and made Eric get into it...but like O.J.'s glove, it just wouldn't fit. So, Eric was off the hook, which is probably a good thing, because I think he'd make the ugliest, hairiest girl I've ever seen.

After the cards, a massive group of us went out into Prague to go to a dance club. We had a contingent of Americans, Canadians, British, and Irish in the group, which made for an interesting evening. Throw in some Australians and some Kiwis and it would have pretty much completed the entire Anglo alliance. The ride on the tram into Prague devolved into chaos when noone knew where the tram was taking us, so after getting lost, we somehow bumbled our way to "Central Europe's Largest Dance Club," which doesn't say very much if you think about it, because Prague IS central Europe. Anyway, Club Latzke was a 5 story towering inferno of lights and loud music. On each of its five floors, there was a different type of music playing. Floor 1 had that freaky European techo Sprockets stuff. Floor 2 was all 80's music. Floor 3 was modern butt-grinding music which I somehow never heard before (dang, I'm getting old). Who knows what was playing on Floors 4 and 5...I didn't make it up that far. After two hours of this, it was suddenly 4 am and I was ready to call it quits. So I skipped out on the group of young 'uns and took a tram back to the hostel so Old Man Brian could get some rest.

The fourth evening was more subdued. Eric and I joined the Irish contingent (with a Liverpool straggler and some new guy from Portugal) and hung out at Double Trouble. Double Trouble sounds a lot worse than it really was...it was just some hole-in-the-wall dungeon where people drank. I kept looking for the "trouble" but didn't seem to find it. It ended up just being a couple of guys talking about football, which I have no clue about over here. The Irish kid who looked suspiciously like a young Jack Black was a riot to listen to. He would just jabber on about the stupidest things...it was like listening to a live version of Wikipedia. I split at 2:30 because we had to get up early to catch a bus to Vienna.

The next morning, I found Eric in a catatonic state on his bed. He did not look good from practically staying out the entire night long after I had left. The Eurobus ride to Vienna was rather quick and painless, but once we arrived at the campground, Eric was knocked out in the tent for hours. We ventured into Vienna that evening to check out the sights...

...and that's when the rain began. It rained. And rained. And rained. We sought shelter in a Greek/Turkish pizza place and ate there, then ventured over to the 1516 Brewery to wait out the storm. But the rain kept on going. Back at the campsite, my side of the tent was completely flooded, soaking everything I had. I have a name for that tent, and that, too, cannot be posted in this blog, so we will simply refer to it as the "Tent That Must Not Be Named," or TTMNBN. I was frantically using my wash towel to bail out TTMNBN, like it was a sinking ship. The sleeping bag was like a sponge, so I had to throw that outside and try to make due wearing warm clothes and sleeping just on my mattress. But my clothes were soaked, too. And the temperature in Austria started dropping. So around 4 am, I was a miserable, shivering mess.

That's when a vision of Bear Grylls (host of Discovery Channel's "Man Vs. Wild") suddenly came to me and kicked me into survival mode all of a sudden. I could hear Bear telling me how having wet clothes was the worst situation you could put yourself in, and you had to do something quick to get warm. I would have built a fire, but all these European countries don't let you make fires, which is pretty lame (and I don't see Smokey Bear anywhere around here, so it can't be THAT bad a thing). So I was thinking and thinking of what to do. Then it hit me: this campsite has a dryer...a real working clothes dryer. But I had no Euro coins to plug in! Crap! I rushed over to the dryer anyway at 4 in the morning, admidst the torrential rain...and to my surprise, those foolish Austrians hadn't installed a coin machine on the dryer. It was free! I couldn't believe it! So like a madman, I hauled everything I owned over to the laundry room, and camped out there into the morning hours shoving everything into the dryer until it was toasty dry. I finally got back to bed about 6:30 am and crashed for the next 4 hours as the rain started to dissipate.

We spent all day Friday wandering the city of Vienna, checking out the massive buildings and crazy statues that they have there. They have a lot of violent statues, I've noticed...statues of people clubbing each other over the head with big sticks, poking each other with long metal rods, and strangling and fighting each other to the death. Unlike the French with their plain graceful statues of Greek gods and goddesses, the Austrians like their gory violence and show the actual stories of the gods and goddesses taking place in their statues. Austria is a tough-feeling country with a lot of male machismo all around. You ride Vienna's underground, and you've got the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling out all the stops for you in German: "STEPHENSPLATZ!!! KARLSPLATZ!!! HESSENGASSE!!!." It sounds really tough. I made sure I got off at the right stops or else I felt the train would come and kick my ass. Even the handles on the subway doors require brute strength to get them open. You've got to turn the handle and yank really hard, all within a few seconds. No wonder why this country produces so many tough men (and women). It's a workout everyday just riding public transportation.

But Vienna is a beautiful city. Seems like half the people there are dressed up as Mozart. Either there's a Mozart impersonator convention going on in town, or Vienna is trapped in time and hasn't picked up the latest copy of GQ to figure out what current fashion trends are. With all these faux Mozarts walking around, I felt that the REAL Mozart was getting slighted here, so I jumped on a tram with Eric (who was like the walking dead at this point) and found the cemetery where he and all the other decomposing composers were buried. Dumb luck reared its head again. After an hour wandering around lost in this cemetery, unable to find the titans of classical music, I gave up, and on the way towards the exit, I just happened to run into the whole entire lot. Beethoven. Mozart. Brahms. Shubert. Strauss. The list kept going on and on. Man, there must be a curse in Vienna that kills off all these composers once they arrive. If I was a composer, I wouldn't want to live there for fear of dying. It's like those silly horror films with the dumb white people going into the haunted house...and staying there despite all the ghosts and creepy stuff trying to kill them. Get the message, people: Get out!!!

Eric kept deteriorating, so he split for the campsite and I spent the evening wandering around Vienna. I bumbled into a film festival outside their main town building. They were showing a film of Placido Domingo singing opera, and they had people eating and drinking in the grounds around it. I then hopped on a tram and found a restaurant called Centimeters that bases the price of its food on the length of the sandwich you order. Pretty clever. They had metric rulers all over this restaurant. I opted to get some strange pancake thing filled with meat and covered with au gratin sauce. I love the German language...it makes me laugh. Reading a menu in German is a riot for me. Every word sounds like a sound effect.

On Saturday morning before we headed out of Vienna, I grabbed some strudel at a local bakery to eat on the bus. We then went to Cafe Central, which is a coffee house/restaurant. I read about it in my travel book and figured it would simply be some regular coffee house with students and the regular intelligentsia hanging out on couches with their laptops. Oh my gosh...stepping into this place, I was suddenly transported back in time. Inside I was greeted by a grand palace with gothic arches. It was so beautiful. I sat down and got their Viennese Breakfast, which consisted of Julius Meinl coffee (I love that stuff), a hard-boiled egg that I got to crack with a dainty spoon, and a big plate of assorted rolls...all for about €5,90, which is awesome!!! The Austrian waiter was a hoot as well, dressed in his dapper red jacket and going "Soooooo" before everything he said to us in his broken English. Cafe Central was such a pleasant surprise, and a great way to end my brief Vienna experience.

But now we are in Budapest, and this place confuses me even more. The language is even screwier, and I can't even begin to pronounce anything. This is the farthest east I'm heading, because I've got to start heading back west in a few days to travel back home. I'll be spending a few hours working on the final itinerary today. Looks like a trip to Munich might be in the works. Eric is finally looking back to normal again, so we'll probably check out some of the former Communist sights here and try not to get suckered by the locals. I'll give you the low-down on Budapest in the next day or two, so stay tuned.

The Prague Blog

Good morning, everyone. I would have greeted you in Czech right now, but with all the hard consonants and "Ka" sounds in this language, I didn't want to coat the computer monitor in spittle. Czech is a strange language that looks a little like Russian, a little like Polish, and makes no utter sense to me. But thank the Lord that pretty much everything is translated in English here, which seems a little bizarre since we are nowhere near an English-speaking country. I would have thought that German would be the secondary language here since Germany is nearby, but I guess after WWII, these Czechs here didn't want anything more to do with those stinkin' Sudetenland jerks and just kicked out any German they laid their hands on.

Prague is a unique place indeed. It feels like you're walking through an alternate universe here, where things feel somewhat like what you're accustomed to, but then you realize that things are slightly off...like the time when Homer Simpson traveled back in time, screwed things up by clubbing dinosaurs over the head with a bat, and then it started raining doughnuts. I haven't seen doughnuts fall from the sky yet, but I wouldn´t doubt it if it happened. Prague feels like a mixture of so many different styles and eras...some Gothic here, some Renaissance there, some drab Communism here, and capitalism just bursting all over the place. If I threw a rock, chances are it would hit a McDonald's around here. Or a KFC. Sad to see that our country's impact on the Czech Republic tends to be strictly fast food joints nowadays. I guess that's the price you pay for a capitalistic society.

Prague is a city lost in time that feels like it's trying in spurts to come up to speed with everyone else. There seems to be so much history and things to see here, and yet, you look all around and there's not a whole lot of tourists...or people for that matter...crowding the streets or rushing around in a hurry. Not much traffic here, either. This is the first time in Europe where I haven't been afraid of getting knocked over by a motorized vehicle. Prague has a minimal underground subway system and tram system that most people seem to use here, and it works just fine.

This hostel that we're staying in, the Boathouse, is a real treat. To you, it probably sounds like we're sleeping in somebody's barn amongst the rats and the rowboats, but that's not the case at all. The hostel is located along the southern part of the river in Prague in what used to be a boathouse at one time. If you can imagine a large mobile home-like structure up on stilts with long ramps leading up to it...that's our hostel. What makes this place amazing are the women that run the show here. Two women in their 50's check you in, make you wonderful dinners in the evening for cheap, will do your laundry for a small price, and will give you advice and treat you with the greatest respect. It's like having your Mom here. Oh, it's so wonderful! Nothing beats having a home-cooked meal. And the backpackers coming through here have tended to be pretty nice. It's a very social hostel where the crowds and the dynamics change on a day-to-day basis. Our first night here, we met a few Canadians and Americans and tried to play the Czech version of Monopoly, where Boardwalk and Park Place are now unpronounceable names that you've never heard of in your life, and instead of dollars, you're now working with Kroners. Like I said, it's like you're living in an alternate universe here, where things aren't quite right.

Coming here to Prague after riding on a 16 hour bus ride was a little tough. We came into the city about 6 am in the morning on a Sunday, and it took a few hours to jump start ourselves and figure out how things worked here. The first problem was acquiring coins to plug into the automated ticket machines, since they only take coins in this country. That's been one of my biggest complaints in the countries I've visited...how they never accept bills in their machines. If you're a local with a lot of spare change in your pocket, it's no big deal. But as a tourist with lots of big bills, you're constantly screwed and have to go buy small items to get some change to buy your tickets. And that's where McDonald's comes into play. Although I hate saying it, McDonald's IS our embassy here. What other place in the world can you go into and get cheap food, change, and a FREE public toilet ALL within minutes??? McDonald's has saved our asses on many occasions here in Europe when everything else is closed or not catering towards the tourist's daily dilemmas. I may not like their food or their philosophy, but McDonald's is quite the savior.

Prague is also a country that can take advantage of you if you're not careful. When we arrived here, we were so hungry, so we went to one of their hundreds of sandwich stands scattered throughout the city. Sandwiches are dirt cheap here. As we were ordering two sandwiches, the lady at the stand started pouring shot glasses of cheap lemon whiskey and was urging us to drink with her. We declined, but she was so insistent that we drink with her. We thought that maybe this was just what they do here, and we didn't want to be rude. So after we received our change, we partook in raising our shot glasses, saying "Cheers!" in Czech, and drinking with her and the 3 other patrons gathered around the food stand. Everyone seemed so happy, and we were highly amused. And that alcohol...oooh, it burned. I felt like it was Rotgut or something and would eat through my stomach. So we sat down to eat our sandwiches, and as Eric was counting his change, he realized that he was missing about 300 Czech Krowns. The lady had not given us the right change, even though it appeared she had. So for two sandwiches that cost about $3.00 USD, we had paid about $20 for them. We realized that we had been hosed. Oh, we were definitely hosed on that one. That lady knew we were right off the turnip truck and took full advantage of it. So we basically paid for a whole round of shots we thought were on the house. Not only were our stomachs burning, but our minds were after that screw-up.

Time to go explore the city some more today. I think I'll check out the Museum of Communism today (I know...it sounds hilarious, doesn't it?) as well as the Mucha Museum, and then see where the day takes me. Probably have a few cheap beers since they are so plentiful here. And I gotta have the REAL Budweiser (Budvar) here. Tasty beer, that Budvar. Those Czechs really know their beer.

Having a Praha Moment

Hello again everyone! My my my... it's been awhile since we really sat down and chatted. So how are you? How are the kids/significant other/family/pets/weather/sporting teams/whatever you value in life? Uh huh....uh huh...I'm listening....uh huh...oh, I see...interesting. Wow!!! You've had a lot happen while I've been sucked away into my European vortex here. We'll have to catch up more when I'm back across the pond, especially about "you know what." That's some real juicy gossip you've got there!!! Wooo!

This past week has been rather hectic for me and Eric with all the travelling around and sightseeing. And the blog has reflected that with the minimal lack of postings. But we're finally in a place where we've got some breathing room and can slow down once again: Praha, a.k.a. Prague. Prague is a beautiful place, with a nice winding river, beautiful people, and...

What's that you say??? Did I skip over some important details, like how I suddenly went from Paris to Prague in a heartbeat? Huh...you're right. I guess that does seem a bit odd. Now that I think about it, how the heck did I get here after all? This wasn't at all part of the original plan. I was supposed to be in Greece or Turkey by now. What hapened???

First, let's go into the Way-Way-Back Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman here to fill you in on some of the random stuff that occurred in Paris. As I mentioned earlier, Paris is a great city in my opinion. I know I saw it from a tourist's perspective, and the outskirts are supposed to be bad and the city is supposed to be having major racial tensions right now...but from what I saw, I thought it was a top-notch city. It wasn't dirty or smelled like cigarettes or had nasty rude people like people have been telling me over the years. Paris reminded me in a lot of ways like my fair city of Chicago, except a lot more spread out and minus a giant lake. I just enjoyed the vibe there, walking around and seeing cool things everywhere I turned.

On our first day, after nearly being crushed by the swarms of people at Le Tour de France, we ambled down the Champs-Elysees (the main drag in Paris where all the big events over its history have occurred. Check out all the film footage from WWII and the armies/parades are always marching down this street. One end of the Champs-Elysees is now like a Michigan Avenue with all the big shopping stores) and saw the Arc d´Triumph. We then went over to Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) and tried to go up, but a security guard busted me for carrying dangerous items in my backpack, such as a pocket knife and a jar of peanut butter. I'm still trying to figure out how a jar of peanut butter poses a national security threat to France. Maybe they see it as encroaching upon their Nutella market here. Come to think about it, finding peanut butter in France is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It doesn't exist. We had to find an Arabic grocery store to locate a jar. But man, I didn't realize how much I missed that stuff until I had a peanut butter sandwich again. Wow...great stuff. It's the simple pleasures in life that you somehow miss.

So we didn't get to go up the Tower...at least not right off the bat. Two days later after seeing the long queue at the Musee d´Orsay, we headed back over to the Tower sans peanut butter and WERE able to climb up it. And I'm so glad I did. That was a real highlight on this trip, and I didn't expect it to be as cool as it was. We climbed the stairs up to the first and second levels, and even from there you could get an awesome view of the entire city. We didn't feel the need to pay the extra Euro to ride the elevator to the tippy-top to see a slightly higher perspective of Paris...the second level was sufficient enough. They had a Ben and Jerry's ice cream stand up in the Eiffel Tower, and I noticed how Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream wasn't there (while Cherry Garcia was, along with some weird Max Haveland character I've never heard of before), which I consider a major travesty especially since we helped liberate France from the Nazis. I think I'll write Stephen Colbert when I get back to the U.S. and let him know about this so he can take prompt action to fix this issue. I think I met more Americans up in the Eiffel Tower than anyplace else we've been to here in Europe. It felt like an American embassy in some ways, and what American embassy doesn't have the proper ice cream?

The Louvre had some great stuff, but it was overrated in my opinion. We only had three hours to spend there before they shooed us out. With 15 minutes to spare at the end, we saw Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa, which didn't do too much for me. The David in Florence, Italy impacted me. Mona Lisa...not so much. Maybe if I could have gotten closer instead of being stuck 15 feet behind the velvet rope and having to view it through 3 panes of security glass I would have liked it more. The real art museum that WAS worth it, in my opinion, was the Orsay. We spent 4 hours there, and I saw paintings I never would have expected, like Whistler's Mother, Van Gogh's famous self-portrait (of the 100's he did), and several Monet and Renoir paintings. Great stuff all around. Totally worth it.

We took a short train ride out to the Palace of Versailles to see that, since that is another thing you're supposed to do when you visit France. We only had an hour to see the Grand Apartments there since they closed at 6 pm (with France's 35 hour work week, nothing is open late, which blows if you're a tourist). And France doubled the prices of Versailles within the past few months, just because they knew they had you in their tight little grip. I wasn't too happy with that. So we saw King Louie XIV's enormous moment to himself. The palace was beautiful and ornate, but with all the Asian tourists being herded around while we were there, it turned into a traffic jam and wasn't very enjoyable. We then went outside and walked the entire 5.5 km around the big lake/canal in the gardens outside. Felt like being at the Washington Mall, except with nicer grass. Just a big, rectangular pond that seemed to go on and on forever. Overall, I'm glad I went to Versailles since it is a historical place, but it way too overrated.

The hotel we were staying at, Hotel de Cozy, was a cheapie hotel with a crazy staircase we had to climb up every day to get to our room. They had linoleum with a wood grain pattern that was printed slightly off-register, so if you put on some 3-D glasses, it would probably pop out at you and poke you in the eye. But like the name, it was a cosy little hotel, and our next-door neighbors could totally vouch for that with all the groaning and bed spring action coming from next door. For the first time this trip, we had televisions in our room, so like nerds we tuned in religiously to CNN to catch up on world events, like the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota. Yep. Looks like we're all caught up on world events.

We left Paris on Thursday and headed on a train to Bayeux, which is in Normandy. Bayeux is a cute little town overrun with Brits, Americans and Canadians, and rightfully so since Normandy is a pilgrimage site for these three countries because of the events of D-Day. We hired (rented) bikes the next day and rode out to the beaches of Normandy to check out the cemeteries and battle sites. We went to the British Gold Beach first, ate a sandwich, then cycled through the cow pastures and rolling plains of grain and corn (beautiful stuff...just beautiful) to get to Normandy American National Cemetery, where all the soldiers who died at Omaha Beach were buried. I knew I'd get all choked up at this place, and sure enough, inside the Visitor's Center, within a minute of hearing the patriotic music and seeing the video of people sacrificing themselves for their fellow soldiers, I got all teary and choked up. It's like the guy's equivalent of watching a sappy love movie...it just makes you crumble seeing all this.

So, after gaining my composure again, we went out to the cemetery to see the rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David, which just stretches on for awhile. We then walked down to Omaha Beach, which is just a nice, serene beach now with no evidence that the bloodiest fight in history was fought here. We then jumped on our bikes and rode back past the small churches and villages to Bayeux to have some crepes and reflect upon our day. I honestly believe that as Americans, we should all be required to visit Normandy and see the cemetery there. It makes you realize what sacrifice is all about, and how lucky you are to be an American and living in a country that is free. It's a moving experience, and I'm very glad I went off the beaten path and made the journey to see it.

After Normandy, we took a train back to Paris and then went on a never-ending 16 hour bus ride into Prague, because, hey, why not? It's Prague! So here we are now, enjoying the sights, the cheap beer, and taking a few days to decompress after the whirlwind week we just had.

Time to go again...the people at the Boathouse Hostel I staying at are eager to push me off this computer since I type for so long. "Czech" out the blog in a few days and I'll give you the low-down on Prague and let you know what's going on here. Peace.

France: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Bonjour again, everyone! Eric and I are about to skedaddle out of Paris after spending 4 great days here. Even though it sounds pretty spoiled, all this touring around can really wear you thin. Since everything in Paris tends to shut down at 6 pm, you have to really haul ass to see all the sights and museums here. No time for lollygagging around. It's a marathon here everyday. But we've seen some great stuff.

I only have a few minutes left before I have to go. But in a nutshell, here's what's good, bad and ugly about France, based on what I've seen.

In the Good Column: Food, sights, nice people (a real surprise), wine, cheese

In the Bad Column: Expensive prices, lack of public toilets, lack of toilet seats on the public toilets that DO exist, squat (or Turkish) toilets, vending machines that only take coins and not their own stinkin' bills, tiny drinks that cost 10 times what they normally should

In the Ugly Column: my hair after 8 weeks. It looks like a rat has built a nest on the top of my head. It's beyond help. I've often wondered what I looked like with an afro.

An American Moron in Paris

Bonjour everyone! I'm back from the dead a few days ago. I apologize for being gone from the blog...I'm sure my Mom caught you up-to-snuff with my predicament. Let's just say that I was enjoying my time in Lyon (pronounced like "Yonne"...I don't understand the French and their wacky language. They have "L"s in words and don't pronounce them...then they insert "L" sounds into words that have no "L"s. What the "L"???). Lyon is a beautiful city with a lot of history. I learned all about "Le Resistance," which had its base of operations here during WWII. This city has a lot of secret passages you can sneak through that the Resistance used to evade the Nazis. Lyon also has some great farmers markets where you can purchase some tasty wine. Quite tasty. Just watch how much you consume.

Our hostel in Lyon was the best we've had this entire trip. It was up on a tall hill in the St. Georges district, and it overlooked the entire city with its sprawling rivers. I would just hang out there on the patio for hours looking down at the city. The environment at the hostel was quite fun. It was especially a hoot watching the flamboyantly gay Frenchman/bartender turn the place into a discotecque and start getting all Coyote Ugly on us, dancing and laying all over the counter top and humping chairs. We talked with several of the travelers going through. During the infamous wine drinking episode, I had a great time talking with a guy from Thailand who had just graduated from film school in London and was going back home to direct commercials in his native country. I learned important stuff from him, such as where to get the best kebabs in France, and to not see the "Transformers" movie because it is supposedly pure summer popcorn movie crap.

But now we are in Paris, and I must admit, I am pleasantly surprised. Everything anyone has told me about this place has been wrong. This is a great city and it's not at all disgusting, or rude, or the hellhole every jaded stuck-up American I've met along the way has made it out to be. We caught the end of Le Tour de France on Sunday. It was nuts...I was trapped in a sea of bodies waiting for the bikers to come down the Champs-Elysses. But we saw the bikers ride by about 14 or so times, which was great. I was so happy for how our guy Levi did, and how Team Discovery Channel did. It was definitely worth seeing this.

Eric and I have spent the rest of our time here exploring the city. We went to the Louvre yesterday, and to all the big monuments the day prior. Today we'll be hitting Notre Dame, the Orsay museum, Montmarte and other things, then try to see Versailles tomorrow. I love this place. I could spend a week or more here if possible. The only problem is the price of everything here, but hey...it's Paris. Just suck it up and enjoy it.

A Note From Brian's Mother

Dear Readers of "The Travelin' Fool,"

Please excuse my son, Brian, from posting a blog today. He's not feeling very well due to partaking in a little bit too much wine last night. He's slowly recovering at the HI hostel in Lyon, France and is finally getting some food back into his stomach again. He'll be back on his blog in a few days when he reaches Paris. And he's promised me he's learned his lesson about wine. Poor boy thinks he can handle a full bottle when his scrawny body just can't take the abuse. I thought he would have learned his lesson a few years ago in Italy (boy, what a disaster that was!), but you know how kids are. I did the best I could on raising the child, but there's only so much a poor mother can do. He's got to figure things out on his own now. He's a smart kid, but sometimes, I just don't know what's going on in that crazy head of his.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Martin

Livin' on the Fringe

Bonjour from Avignon! I'm at another screwy French keyboard again, so it'll be a short message, unfortunately.

I've had PLTB---"Post-Le Tour Blues---these past few days. It was just so surreal (especially for an avid biker like me) to be witnessing the holy grail of all bike races on Monday...and then it disappear so suddenly. But we may have a 2nd chance to catch it on the big finale in Paris this coming Sunday. That would put away my Le Tour blues and definitely be the icing on the cake.

After Le Tour left Foix, the rains came through and made the day quite depressing. We climbed up to the Chateau du Foix on the hill overlooking the town. It's a 1000 year-old castle which looks pretty cool, and since it's the only thing to do in town besides the jazz festival at night, we went up it along with the other gullible tourists. We then walked the 2 kilometers back to Camping du Lac. This campsite wasn't too bad...except for the French lady with the purple hair and her horrible gyrating on the disco dance floor beside the restaurant. Just watching her made me sick to my stomach. It felt like I was at Deiter's Dance Party. And I don't know where they dug up that horrible music. It was Euro-pop from the 80's which I had never heard. It sucked. They could have at least played "99 Luftballoons" and I would have been OK with that.

To block it all out, Eric and I drank wine, ate our experimental frozen pizzas which we cooked over Eric's hobo stove (Note: don't attempt putting the insides of two frozen pizzas together to make a stuffed pizza...especially when cooked over a grill. It doesn't work), and watched this really nutty French game show called "Interville" where towns across France compete with each other. They dress up in big-headed animal costumes (such as frogs, alligators, rats, beavers) and then run through crazy obstacle courses. Then they have this live bull come and ram into you while your standing on pedestals, throwing you up in the air while wacky sound effects are played as you hit the ground in pain. All the French kids at the campsite were laughing their heads off at that part. Then between all the crazy events, the French fly-girls come out with their pom-poms and shake their bootylicious stuff like the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. And this is family television for France. What a country!

We got out of Foix on Tuesday, and after a long day of catching trains...and missing trains...we finally made it to Avignon. We helped a German couple from Frankfort (who looked like Velma and Shaggy from "Scooby Doo," except with German accents) find the campsite we were hiking towards. Once we got there, however, the sign said it was all filled due to the big enormous arts festival going on in Avignon. Eric and I about turned away...until Velma and Shaggy solved the mystery and showed us that backpackers with tents were still welcome inside. Jinkies! This campground is a hoot...I feel like I'm at Woodstock with this giant tent city filled with grubby stinky hippies. Last night, some drunk French granolas were serenading us on the guitar outside our tent with their renditions of American tunes. It's a real treat to hear Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" sung by a bunch of people who don't quite know the words.

We spent all of today inside Avignon's city walls observing the really cool fringe festival going on. It's probably similar in a lot of ways to Edinborough's Fringe Festival. Here, hundreds of theatre troops from around France and bordering countries were giving performances. The city is slathered in theatre posters, giving the place an off-Broadway feel. I attended a clown/mime show called Housch-ma-Housch that was a lot of fun. It felt like watching Mr. Bean with sound effects. In Blue Man Group fashion, Housch-ma-Housch unraveled several rolls of tape and passed them up into the audience to continue pulling on. The lady in front of me kept getting pissed at me when the tape I was pulling kept catching her hair and messing it up. All I have to say is "Tape happens."

Tour de Force

From Foix

Back again, folks. This time, I'm in the sleepy town of Foix (pronounced "Fwah"), located about 100 kilometers or so south of Toulouse. You'll have to forgive me for the brevity of this message. My time is short here due to the exorbient 3 € an hour internet rates as well as the screwy French keyboard that's not set up like a QWERTY KEYBOARD. Why do these French always have to be so different with everything (I'd put a question mark symbol here, but can't find it on the keyboard. This really blows). Spanish keyboards weren't too different from English ones. They just put the @ symbol in a different place, so that was an easy hurdle. In this country, however...shoot, I'd rqther just resort to postcards again. They were much quicker than having to hen-peck on a keyboqrd, plus much cheqper:

It was a pretty awesome experience to actually see Le Tour de France go through Foix this morning. Around 9:30, they had the "caravan" start it out, which is basically the fastest parade of floats you'll ever see in your life. Each of the sponsors of the event had one, with their sexy French "booth babe" girls out on each float shaking their stuff. Some passed out free stuff like bottled water, hats, gummi bears, etc. A float with a giant pair of glasses and a sexy glasses girl handed me a cloth to clean my glasses. When you're a travelling bum such as myself right now, you'll grab at anything that's free.

Then on the large yellow Le Tour main stage, they had the announcer of the parade speaking while other events were going on. After being mesmerized by these two weird women dressed in gold spandex bodysuits contorting their bodies into positions not suitable for young children to look at (which still begs the question, "What does any of this have to do with cycling (insert question mark here)"), we took our places along a barricade of the prestart route at about 10:30 to get some decent pictures of the bikers as they came though. At 11:15, the entourage of multicolored spandex came whizzing by, and in less than a minute...it was all over. Shoot...this was quicker than the bull run a few weeks ago. I just took a lot of pictures, hoping I just happened to capture some important biker (any of you Le Tour experts out there feel free to browse the photos and let me know if I at least got Levi Leipheimer or Michael Rasmussen).

Then within an hour of the riders going through, Le Tour packed up all the barricades, the Le Tour village...and took off. I couldn't believe it. If this was America, they would have stuck around a few hours more to make some bucks off of you. Nope, not here. They waste no time. On to the next town.

So Foix is a sleepy castle town once again. Hardly even feels like Le Tour was here.

Toulouse: Le Trek

From Toulouse

Bonsoir Monsieurs et Mademoisselles! We're here in beautiful Toulouse right now, experiencing overcast skies and periodic showers. It's mid July, and I can't believe that people are wearing warm black jackets and going around carrying umbrellas. Just add a baguette underneath everyone's arm and stick berets on all of them and it would complete my stereotypical image of the French. I think our proximity to the Pyrennes mountains makes this region cool in the summer time. I remember walking in Bordeaux and the lady at the desk of the hostel was dying, and it was probably 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Makes me laugh.

I'm glad we're out of Bordeaux. It really didn't have much going for it, other than the wine. I guess I should have figured that out after seeing the logo for the town of Bordeaux, which looks suspiciously like a biohazard symbol. With all the dog crap scattered on the sidewalks of Bordeaux, a biohazard symbol would probably be very appropriate, now that I think about it. We enjoyed our last night in Bordeaux, having a fish and rice feast, drinking rose wine and eating Camembert cheese and bread with this guy Peter from Quebec we befriended. He looked strangely like a shorter version of Tom Green, except not as annoying. He was originally from Newfoundland, so I picked his brain on everything I could about Newfoundland, including how to properly pronounce it (in case you're curious, don't say the letter "O").

We then went out to find a place to drink. We got duped into going into a bar that had a big American flag hanging from it. We figured, "Oh, they must like Americans. Let's go in there!" It was a Harley-Davidson themed bar with all these black leather-clad girl posters on the walls. Very manly. But then they charged Eric a whopping 5 Euros for one bottle of Budweiser (called "Bud" over here due to trademark issues with the real "Budweiser" name (called Budvar) in the Czech Republic). That comes to be about $7.50 American dollars for a Bud. We then realized that Budweiser here is considered an exotic "imported" beer, so we've vowed off of any Anheiser-Busch products here. If you want cheap beer in France, it's either "Kronenbourg" or "1664." Or just get some wine. Nobody drinks beer here anyway, and why should they? The wine is great here!

So after roaming the streets of Bordeaux late at night, and realizing that nothing is open late here in France since they will only work 35 hours a week and no more, we decided that it was time to move on from this biohazard town. So we hopped a train the next day over to Toulouse. It's a major improvement. There's life here late at night, due primarily to the fact that Toulouse is a major college town. About one-third of the population (or about 120,000) are students here. Most are gone for the summer, but the college vibe and energy is still here. Toulouse also some great museums and sights to check out. Today, we spent time at the Musee des Augustins, which was probably my most favorite museum on this entire trip. It has a wide variety of artwork, stretching from the 1200s up until the early 20th century. I especially enjoyed the gargoyles on display, stretched out like a bunch of French can-can girls ready to kick up their legs. Also present were a few Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, as well as some gorgeous works from the Art Nouveau movement that I really enjoyed.

Upon arriving in Toulouse, we met up with a doctoral student named Joni (nickname for Jonathan) who was going to host us for the evening. There's an internet site called "Couchsurfing.com" in which people across the world volunteer their couches and floors to travellers. So basically, anyone can have a hostel set up in their house. And one of the major perks is that you don't have to pay a thing to stay at these people's homes. So we hung out at Joni's little studio apartment in the heart of old-town Toulouse. Joni was an interesting character, to say the least. He was studying to be a neurosurgeon...was born and raised in Israel by his French parents, then moved to Toulouse for school, and was moving to Holland within a week to continue his studies. Joni was also a major granola at heart. He just became a vegan, so he fixed for us a rice dinner with imitation meat and some lettuce salad on the side. He was so nice to feed us, but I must admit, after the third serving of rice (since that was the only thing on the table) it was starting to get a little old and I was dying for some flavor.

Joni was a riot to talk to. He led us around town for the evening to show us the sights. Then we crashed on his uncomfortable futon bed. In the morning, we had to leave around 10 am so Joni could meditate on his straw mat in front of the futon. He was just starting to get into meditation as well and was attending some "meditation camp" outside of Florence, Italy in a few weeks. I was curious about all this "meditation" and asked him what exactly he thought about when he meditated, and he says, "You can't explain meditation. You just have to experience it." Uh, all right then. I just left it at that, not wanting to cause an international incident by calling him out for speaking mumbo jumbo on me.

After getting kicked out of Joni's place, we had another death march with our packs on to get to the bus station to take us to our campsite. However, once we got there, we realized that the bus schedule was lousy and had limited runs to the campground, so we ended up getting a cheap 1 star rathole hotel in the heart of the city. The location was excellent. However, the drunk Frenchmen yelling outside your window and getting into fights at 3 am got old in a hurry. If I had a pick between drunk Frenchmen and drunk Spanishmen outside of my window, I'd go with the Spanish, because at least they are happy drunks most of the time.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

From Bordeaux

Bonjour, my friends! After 5 weeks of roaming around Spain, we finally got enough courage to make the jump over the border and into France. It was a hard change to make... we were just starting to get used to the Spanish lifestyle: the 2 to 3 hour siestas during midday just to chill out... the beautiful beaches... the cheap boxes of juice... the beautiful beaches... man, we're really going to miss those.

But now it's on to bigger and more mysterious things. It's literally like we're throwing ourselves in freezing cold water and seeing if we can survive again. We were quite hesitant on coming to France, because everyone we've met along the way has only had negative things to say about this country. Across the board, everyone mentions how rude the French are to Americans and how they just go off on us for not being experts at their language. But so far, I haven't seen any of that. Where I'm at, the French have been anything but rude. They've actually been quite pleasant.

We're in the city of Bordeaux right now, home of the wine by the same name. The hostel we've been staying in—Auberge de la Barbey—is a pleasant change from our Camping Igeldo experience in San Sebastian. Anytime I go from camping to a hostel, I feel like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer awakening to a strange new world. "You mean, there's something called a MATTRESS that doesn't force me to sleep on the hard ground? And I can now keep my food cold in something called a REFRIGERATOR? Wow... these new fangled conveniences of your civilized world amaze me! Next thing you'll be telling me is that I can communicate instantly with the world through big tubes linking everyone together. It's almost too much for my puny Cro-Magnon brain to process!"

This hostel feels like it used to be a residence hall for university students at one time. It doesn't have much character aesthetically, but it does provide a lot of food for breakfast in the morning, which is a major plus in my book. As I mentioned before, good breakfast equals good hostel. The location of this hostel is in a seedy part of town where all the illegal immigrants have set up shop. When we first walked around the neighborhood here, I had that cheesy opening song from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" going through my head, where everyone is so darn happy, bursting open windows and saying "Bonjour!" to each other. So when I paired that with what I was actually seeing around me—the young lady pushing her mom in a wheelchair and getting urinated on by a dog in an overhead balcony... the tourists stepping in piles of dog crap on the sidewalks and cussing... the French "gangsta" rappers bumming around with their shirts off, their pants dragging off of their asses and bottles of hard liquor dangling from their hands—it just seemed like such a disconnect. That's what I get for Disney handing me such a sanitized version of France.

I think the most bizarre sight we saw was late one night after returning from an Irish pub. We had been drinking some store-bought Bordeaux earlier, then had gone to the pub for a half pint of beer to drink (French prices on beer are insane... it's better to stick with the wine.) As we were walking back to the hostel, we happened to see this angry-looking midget on the sidewalk, with his shirt ripped off, showing off his rock-hard muscles and tattoos while walking a giant great dane. We both thought we were hallucinating. I mean, this guy could've just jumped on this dog and used it as a mode of transportation. We also realized that, despite the size of this guy, he could probably kick both of our asses. So we quickly walked away to avoid any chance of pissing off a French midget.

Here in Bordeaux, we've tried to have the ultimate Bordeaux experience. This morning, we stopped by a local market and I picked up some Camembert cheese, because I've read from multiple sources that this is the thing I'm supposed to do. The lady opened the cheese container for me and let me "squeeze the cheese" to check its quality. We then set off on a mission to have an official wine tasting at a chateau on the outskirts of Bordeaux. Like two bumbleheads, we didn't know what we were doing. They had prearranged winery tours and tasting for 22 Euros and above, but we didn't want to pay that much, so we decided to cobble together our own winery tour. After two hours of trying to figure out how the public transportation worked here, we jumped on a bus for Medoc, which is on the northwestern outskirts of Bordeaux. Medoc is supposed to have a lot of wineries to check out, and you're supposed to reserve tours and tastings well in advance. But we decided we'd take our chances and just sneak into a wine tasting and see what happened.

The bus eventually dropped us off in a suburban area where we didn't see any wineries at all. So, after trying to read the confusing maps, we just started walking east, hoping that something would appear. Meanwhile, I started smelling something funky coming from something near me. At first I thought it was Eric, because that kid can sweat a lot and sure smell rank in a hurry. So I distanced myself from Eric as much as possible, but that putrid stench kept following me. Frustrated, I looked at the bottoms of my sandals, thinking that maybe I had stepped into a pile of French dog crap. Nope... my sandals were clean. Then I thought that I was the one stinking really bad, which concerned me because I had just taken a shower earlier that day. I smelled under my armpits, but they were clean. Where the hell could that smell be coming from?

Then, as I was taking off my backpack, it suddenly occurred to me: IT'S THE CHEESE! It's the cheese inside my backpack that's stinking! Oh, thank the Lord it's not me! So we sat down at a bus stop, made some sandwiches and tried out the Camembert. Let me tell you... despite the rancid smell, that is one great cheese! No wonder why these French folks love it so much. It's a little on the runny side like Brie, but it's dang tasty. And I had somehow bought the real deal and not one of the cheap knockoffs found throughout France. I think I found my new love... and her name is Camembert.

After having our lunch, we then wandered down the street some more. It looked like a hopeless cause... we didn't see any wineries in sight. Then, over the horizon, the clouds suddenly parted and before our eyes, we saw a giant field of grapes appear, with a sign pointing the way to the Chateau du Taillan... a winery! It was a wine tasting miracle! So we approached the winery and wandered around inside its giant mansion, but we couldn't seem to find anyone. We then wandered over to an adjacent building where it appeared they might conduct their tastings, and we waited for someone to appear.

After 15 minutes, a group of people being led on a tour suddenly appeared, with a camera crew in tow. As we inquired about the wine tastings, the camera crew pointed their cameras straight at us, making me feel a little uncomfortable and wondering what the hell was going on. At first, the lady leading the tour was hesitant, but then said, "Well, all right. Come and join us with the tasting." So we joined the group at a table above the chateau, and for two hours, while the camera crew was filming us, we were wine tasting. The two ladies in charge were speaking completely in French, so like clueless Americans, we just smiled and tried to mimic what everyone else was doing... swirling their wine in glasses, smelling the wine, sipping it, then spitting into these plastic spittoons. Every once and awhile, they'd say something in English to us so we weren't totally clueless. Luckily, there was a German couple in the group who also couldn't speak French, so we weren't the only morons present.

I have been to wine tastings before in Napa Valley and Amador County, California, and at those, there was none of this spitting out your wine into buckets and just tasting it. People actually drank the wine. So I applied my experiences in California to my wine tasting here in France, and within about 10 minutes, my glasses of wine were completely bone dry. The lady talking to the camera noticed this and proceeded to come right over to me, point at my empty glasses and say, "Oh, it looks like your friend came here for the tasting, but YOU just came here to DRINK!" So everyone was laughing at me, the cameras were all recording this, and I was just sitting there, looking like a complete schmuck. It made me feel like Thomas Haden Church's character Jack from the movie "Sideways" who couldn't seem to get wine tasting right, either. Way to go, Brian. Here I am, an ambassador for my country, and now the French are going to perceive all us Americans as a bunch of uncivilized drunks.

So after being filmed for two hours, we were finally allowed to go. The lady didn't charge us anything for the tasting, which was extremely nice. We later found out that the camera crew was there to make a documentary for French television on this winery and 3 others, all of which were run by women, which is not common in France. It's going to be a 2 hour documentary which will air in March 2008 in France. More than likely, we'll make a small appearance in it as the two grubby Americans just stumbling upon a winery and wanting to drink. Great... just how I wanted to use my 15 minutes of fame.

After walking around the grounds of the winery, we headed down the road to a convenience store and bought a 5 Euro bottle of red wine that was made by the chateau we just visited. The man at the checkout counter looked at the bottle and started glowing, saying such wonderful things about my smart purchase. I've never been complimented before for buying a wine... and coming from a Frenchman, it meant that much more. He and an elderly women at the store then wanted to know where we were from. We told them America, and they couldn't believe it. I guess Americans never come to their neck of the woods, so they found it so odd that two clueless Americans would just wander in randomly off the street and buy a great local wine. Fortunately, the two French people didn't say anything bad about America... at least not to our faces. As we left the store, we could hear them laughing. If the French were indeed rude as people say, at least they had the decency to badmouth me behind my back, and that is OK in my book.

Overall, I can't believe the good fortune we had in actually making it to a wine tasting. The wine gods were definitely smiling down upon us today. I just love it when a plan comes together... especially when you're as clueless as we are.

Beach Blanket Bozo

From San Sebastian

I´m not too happy this morning, folks.

My camera is dead. Again.

But before I get into that, let me give you the lay of the land here in San Sebastian. It´s a nice little beach resort where the Euskadi culture reigns supreme. The town itself doesn´t have a lot of tourist attractions to check out...maybe a gothic cathedral or two. Other than that, it´s all beach...when they actually have beach here. During the morning hours, there´s quite a bit of beach along the city walls. Playa de la Concha is the most popular of their three beaches, where all the beautiful people strut their stuff amongst the not-so-beautiful people washed up on shore like beached whales. As the afternoon hours wear on, though, the tide rises, and the beach starts disappearing, until everyone is crowded on a thin strip of sand. I´ve never seen so many people crammed into such a tiny sandbox before. It´s quite amusing.

Nearby the beach is a small mountain called Monte Urgull, or as I like to call it, Mt. Jesus. The reason I call it that is due to the giant statue of Jesus up on top, overlooking the town below. It´s similar to those big statues of Jesus that you´ll see up in the mountains of many South American countries. On Saturday, Eric and I hiked up Mt. Jesus to go pay our respect to the big guy. Eric didn´t seem too thrilled. After a few steep climbs, we finally made it to the base of Jesus...and lo and behold, they had a museum about the history of San Sebastian underneath Jesus. I was really impressed with this museum. It was multilingual and done up incredibly with great multimedia presentations. And all for free, too!

But then we both had to use the bathroom in a hurry. We had to climb up into the base of Jesus to get to the bathrooms. Who would have thunk that Jesus would have a bathroom at his feet? I came up with a great marketing slogan for this town: "Come to San Sebastian, and you, too, can sit on the throne with Jesus!" Well, now that I think about it, maybe that won´t go over so well. Scratch that idea. When you get to the top of Mt. Jesus, you´ll notice that Jesus is actually very happy looking. He´s smiling wide with his hand up, like he´s waving hello. You don´t see too many happy Jesus statues. But after I trekked down Mt. Jesus and hung out on the beach, I could see why Jesus was so happy. He´s got the best view in town, looking down upon a topless beach. Oh, that Jesus! You sly devil, you!!!

San Sebastian does things a little differently than the Spanish. Instead of tapas, they have something called pintxos, where they make up all these plates of tiny sandwiches and food and place them all out on the bar counters for people to come up to and buy. It´s basically the fast-food version of tapas, where instead of waiting for your tiny plates of food to show up, you can just grab your food and pay for it there. All the floors at the pintxo places are littered with wadded napkins and papers. During pintxo hour in the evenings, people all huddle into the bars, drink, chat, eat, then throw their stuff on the ground. Maybe it would help if the Basques actually invested in some garbage cans for their patrons.

And then you have the Euskabi (Basque) language here, which is nothing like all the Latin-based languages you find throughout Europe. It has a lot of consonants, especially C´s, K´s, and X´s, and it makes no utter sense to people not from this region. They all use the same font for anything spelled in Euskabi. It´s a wacky circus-like font, where the A´s look similar to that on the title of a MAD Magazine. It´s not a font that´s easy on the eyes, but I guess it´s their font dating back thousands of years ago. Gotta stick with tradition around here. This area is also very political, with banners and posters plastered around town, speaking of Basque independence and stuff to do with the ETA that I don´t want to even know about.

But it seems to be a very friendly, happy, well-to-do beach town. They have great dining here...San Sebastian has more Michelin-ranked restaurants than any other city in Spain, and it´s right below Paris in the number of rankings. They have goofy celebrations here as well. On Saturday, we watched an event where kids would try to see how far out they could walk on a pole before they slipped and fell into the harbor. This was big stuff here in San Sebastian.

Alright. Back to the camera saga. So after a nice day of hanging out on the beach, relaxing, and swimming out into the Bay of Biscay to some floating docks, then swimming back, it was time for us to head out. So I put my shorts back on, which held my new camera in my pocket. Up ahead by the staircase to get out, the tide had strangely come in, so people now had to walk through a foot of water to get to the stairs. I stood there, analyzing the situation, and didn´t see a problem with walking through it. So I´m midway through it, when suddenly a slight wave comes up, knocks into the wall beside me, comes back at me in a tidal wave and just soaks me to the bone.

Eric is pointing and laughing at me, but I pull out my camera in horror. Eric wasn´t laughing too much after that. I´m now freaking, because I think my camera is ruined. Eric takes the camera, turns it on, and it appears to be fine. I take it from him, turn in on...and it´s dead.

You know, there are moments in my life that I´m not too proud of. This was one of them. I try to take good care of my stuff. But crap happens every now and then, and then you hate yourself for being such an idiot for not taking even better care of your stuff. I´m really surprised, though, that my camera couldn´t handle a light splashing. When I took it out of my pocket, it wasn´t dripping in water. It was actually quite dry. But this Fujifilm camera was made cheaply and not like the battle tank Canons that I´m used to. From here on out, I´m sticking with the Canons. Even though mine crapped out after two years, that thing was pretty rock-solid tough.

So I´m back to the drawing board, looking around town for a camera...again. Hopefully there´s an El Corte Ingles around somewhere. My backpack is now turning into a dead digital camera graveyard. Like I said, I´m not too proud of myself for this. Chalk this one up in the "life´s little lessons learned" category.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Five---Move 'Em Out, Rawhide!

From Pamplona

All this time in Pamplona, I had been waffling on whether or not I would participate in the "Running of the Bulls." At first, I wasn´t going to do it, because there´s no way you can possibly outrun a bull. Even a fast runner like me knows that. But after being in Pamplona for a few days and seeing how this "Running of the Bulls" actually works, I realized that it wasn´t about how fast you could actually run. It was about where you positioned yourself on the street, and how close you wanted to get to the bulls to "prove" your manhood. And the real danger wasn´t the bulls charging down the streets...it was the big mass of people that were running along. If someone tripped in front of you, it could cause a major pileup of people and create a mob condition where people could get hurt and die.

So I went back and forth on whether or not to include myself in the actual running. The way I saw it, it was like playing Russian Roulette, where chances were that you wouldn´t get hurt if you played your cards right. But there is always that remote chance that you get the bullet in the chamber and get screwed up by either a bull or a pack of humans. If you positioned yourself so close to the barricades and didn´t actually RUN next to the bulls and touch them like a lot of the loonies do, there was a high chance that nothing at all would happen to you, and you could still claim you did it and put it to sleep for good.

If there was going to be a day of me doing the run, it would have been Thursday. I was going to play it by ear and see how I felt. And if it felt right, then I´d do it. However, after getting into camp so late, and not wanting to get out of my sleeping bag at 6:00, I decided to nix my plans of ever running with the bulls. This was my one shot, and I decided against it.

After sleeping in for awhile, we finally packed up our stuff, left Camping Ezcaba and then headed off into Pamplona to catch the next bus to San Sebastian. While standing around, waiting for a bus to arrive, I overheard conversation from a guy who had run with the bulls that morning. He was describing to some fellow travelers the pain and horror of what had ensued in the streets. This seemed rather odd to me. In the previous days, nothing bad had really happened. What had happened this morning that I had missed?

So once we got to San Sebastian, I checked online and watched the "Running of the Bulls" that I had decided to bow out of (you can see it at www.sanfermin.com). Let me just say this: I picked the right day to give up running with the bulls. What I saw in that video was sheer horror as one bull went chaotic and started nailing people left and right. Chances are, I probably would have made it out unscathed, but after watching that video, I´m glad I didn´t take any chances. I did my "Running of the Bulls" with a stuffed cow charging after me down a bus aisle. And that´s good enough for me.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Four---A Big Bunch of Bull

From Pamplona

I was having the best sleep of my life at Camping Ezcaba, until my watch suddenly awoke me at 3:30 in the morning.

Damn.

Did I really want to get up for this? Was it really worth this much effort to see a bunch of bulls whiz by? Eric seemed to be dragging as well. Our sleeping schedule over the past few days had been chaotic, and we could use a few days or normalcy. But that would have to wait. We were now on Pamplona time, where you were supposed to stay up all night, and spend the morning and afternoon hours recovering.

So we made it to our 4:00 bus, got into Pamplona shortly after, and then wandered the streets to check out the lunacy. The parties were still raging in the streets, and people were looking pretty wasted. By 5:00, the street cleaning crews were starting to make their rounds and spray the layer of human sludge off of the streets to clear the way for the bulls. Eric and I wandered all the way to the start of the running, where the bulls were all housed. They were peacefully looking out of their pens, wondering why the drunk frat boys were yelling "toro" at them at such an early hour of the morning. We then walked down the entire route of the running: up the cattle ramp, over to Dead Man´s Curve, then down the straight-a-way as it curved into the stadium. We saw a free spot on the barricades down near the stadium, so we decided to plop our butts up on it and wait for the big show.

Sitting up on a wooden plank for over 2 hours is literally a pain-in-the-ass. I came up with a great way to make money off this event: design a spectator chair that can rest on top of the plank. I would have paid dearly for a chair like that. So for 2 hours, we stayed up there, occasionally moving around to get the blood flowing to our posterior region. We had two American girls from Texas sitting next to us on our left, so I chatted them up for awhile on all things Dallas since they were from there. They had just graduated from school as well and were doing a whirlwind trip of Europe in a month. They told us they had spent $280 at a hotel in Pamplona, just to get 3 hours of sleep there. We told them that they were crazy. We then mentioned how we had spent the night in the park...and they looked at us like we were crazy. Yep...we probably should have just shut up about the park...they didn´t talk to us much after that. Probably thought we were a bunch of nasty bums. Oh well.

As we waited for the running, all the drunk nutballs were gradually being forced out of the streets by the police. One merrimaker had a giant stuffed soccer ball (or futbol as known here) similar to the crappy large plush animals you get for knocking down milk bottles at carnivals. He started kicking it within the barricades where the bulls would run, and within seconds, an improptu futbol match began in front of us. Drunk fans started cheering and falling on their prats as they tried to kick the ball in the air. Within minutes, the plush futbol became a dirty sangria soaked rag as it rolled about the streets. They kept aiming it towards my head, so I had to deflect it with my fist to avoid getting splattered in the face. The futbol game must have continued for 30 minutes before the ball suddenly deflated and went limp. The fans were devastated and continued trying to kick it, but it was no use. Game over.

About this time, the red berets went through the middle of the barricades, shoulder to shoulder, kicking out anyone still lingering in the streets. Paramedics and camera crews appeared in front of us, taking their positions. Then around 7:40, all the delusional runners came out, yelping and screaming and taking their positions along the street. Most were still looking hammered, but they appeared to be happy.

Finally at 8:00, the first firework went off, and then the second, and within a minute, people once again started running quicker and quicker past us, until suddenly it was an all-out panic as if a tsunami was about to hit the coastline. And then, within a matter of seconds, the mass of bulls went through. It happened so fast that it was hard to get good pictures of it. You just aimed and hoped the shutter on the camera went off at the right time. Then all the runners trailed behind the bulls and entered into the stadium.

After about a minute of the runners disappating, I figured the run was over, so I jumped off the barricade. Then suddenly, more runners started going berzerk, and I realized that ANOTHER bull was still out there roaming the streets, so I jumped back on to see it, but by then it was already in the stadium being penned up.

And that was it. I had finally witness an official "Running of the Bulls." It seemed rather anticlimatic. You expected to see these bulls up close and really doing some damage, but they go by so quick. When Eric and I went to the Plaza del Castillo, they were playing video footage of the whole event on large jumbotrons, and you could really get a sense of what had just happened. In slow motion, we got to see one of the guys get tossed to the ground by a bull, and then stepped on and bit by it. It was much more exciting seeing this on huge video screens than what we had witnessed live.

Eric and I then randomly ran into a guy from Berkeley, CA and a guy from London who were backpacking together. They had just pulled into town and we were giving them advice on where to go in Pamplona. Both of these guys had just recently hiked up to the Base Camp of Mt. Everest, which after reading "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, is much more insane than doing a running of the bulls. We buddied up with them for an hour, took them to the grocery store to stock up on food, and then went to go find our bus stop to get back to the campground...but got lost. Pamplona is one of those screwy little towns with fountains at every street intersection that all look alike. So it´s easy to get confused and get lost.

So, we ended up missing our bus and had to hang out in Pamplona for another two hours. I had bought some cereal and some cold milk in a bag (not a box, surprisingly) at the store, anticipating that we´d be back at the camp to enjoy some big heaping bowls of cereal. But now we were stuck in Pamploma, and my milk was starting to get warm and needed to be used up. And I was REALLY hungry. So I poured out half the cereal into a grocery bag, then poured the milk into the cereal bag and used that as a poor excuse for a bowl. And since we had no spoon on us (oh, I would have died for a spoon), I had to slurp the cereal up through the bag. People passing by on the street were giving me really strange looks. I felt like such a homeless person, just trying to survive with the minimal stuff I had on me. Eric tried eating cereal out of a grocery bag, but it turned into a disaster when the bag leaked. Oh, the things you do when you´re hungry for a bowl of cereal.

After witnessing the big head parade go through again and whack the kids upside across the head, we finally caught the 12:00 bus to the campground. On the bus, some fellow campers were starting to get goofy. One Spanish guy with a stuffed cow started goosing everyone in the rear with the cow. He then had the cow nibble on Eric´s baguette of bread. Then he motioned me forward and said, "Rrrun! Rrrun!" So not wanting to offend him or his culture, I ran in slow motion through the middle of the bus, while the stuffed cow chased after me, gaining quickly on me. I did a slow motion fall onto the bus aisle, and the stuffed cow went down on me, goring me in the gut with its pillowy soft horns. Everyone in the bus was loving it.

Then the Spanish guy approached Eric and said the same thing: "Rrrun!!! Rrrun!!!" Eric was stubborn and wouldn´t budge with all of his groceries. Then the Spanish guy kept prodding him to run, until Eric finally gave in and ran down the aisle of the bus being chased by the raging stuffed cow. Oh, it was comedy at its finest.

Back at the campsite, I went to the front office to check in for an additional night. A couple of Brits waiting in front of me were playing the ukelele and singing a drinking shanty, until the lady at the desk told them to shut up. Then they turned to me and told me to drink from their sangria bladder (it´s another wacky tradition during San Fermin to drink sangria from a leather bladder that hangs from the side of your hip. You´re supposed to aim the nozzle of the bladder toward your mouth, and then keep pulling it away so a long stream of sangria is pouring into your mouth without spilling on your clothes). At first, I declined. Then they kept egging me on, and I´m not one to offend, so I said "All right already!" and tried my hand at it. Surprisingly, for my first attempt, I had a pretty long stream of sangria pouring into my mouth without any spillage at all. Then all the Brits cheered triumphantly for me. It was quite the cultural exchange.

Eric and I then crashed in our tent for a few hours, ate a bocadilla, stuffed our pockets full of sangria and beer, and then took the bus back to Pamplona to see the bull fight. Our bus was running late, so when we finally made it into the stadium at 18:45, nearly 15 minutes after it started. When we made it into the stands, I could not believe my eyes or ears.

The whole stadium was roaring with cheers. Bands were playing marching tunes. The energy in the stadium felt like a college football game...times 100. I asked the usher where our seats were, and he motioned to the stands, telling me to sit anywhere. I looked up in the stands, and they were already bursting forth with people. If I had seats up there somewhere, they were already long taken. Eric and I made an attempt to find some seats in the stands, but within seconds, an entire cup of sangria flew at me and smashed across the back of my head, dribbling sticky alcohol down my neck. I then realized that I was screwed, so Eric and I went back the way we came in and squatted down near the entrance of the upper deck.

All around us, food was flying everywhere. People were throwing sangria on anything white that just happened to walk by. Everyone was a bullseye just waiting to get pommelled with whatever food item was handy to throw. I had overheard from another traveller that they throw sangria at these bull fights, so I showed up not wearing white, but (lucky me) my sangria-colored maroon shirt. Doing so probably made me even more of a target in the sea of sangria-stained white, but I didn´t care. Whatever they threw at me wouldn´t show. I was ready for the food fight.

Within minutes, the first bull fight began. Even though I´m not a big fan of watching bulls get killed in a ring, I wanted to experience this part of Spanish culture to try to understand a major part of their lives here. In my opinion, it´s not really much of a "fight" going on there in the ring. It´s pretty unevenly matched, if you ask me. You´ve got several people who keep poking the bull with metal spikes attached to poles, so the bulls lose more and more blood until they become weak and disoriented and just follow the matador´s cape on the ground until the matador finally stabs a long sword through its body, thus slicing up the internal organs of the bull as it´s still walking, causing it to fall to the ground and go through death spasms. There´s not much "sport" in that. It would be more of a fight if you put the bull unharmed in the ring with a matador and see if the matador could survive that for at least 5 minutes. Once you start introducing knives and swords, there´s just no challenge anymore. Get Bear Grylls from "Man vs. Wild" in that ring, and I´ll betcha money that crazy Brit will have the bull pinned to the ground within minutes and will be tearing into him with his bare teeth.

So as the bull fights were going on, the spectators were singing bull fighting songs at the top of their lungs. It was loud and intense...probably the same sort of energy that you feel at the futbol games here in Europe. In between each bull fight, the bands would play, and the people would fling more food and go crazy. A lot of the people around me were wearing white lab coats because they knew they would get trashed with sangria. A couple of times, I got beaned in the head with an orange slice or two. Anytime I´d stand up to take a picture, someone in the audience would see that as a target and try to throw sangria on me. So I had to be quick and duck a lot. For the most part, I was out of range and didn´t get clobbered too much by food. One of the pleasant surprises that we noticed at the bull fight was the communal nature of the spectators there. The people around us were sharing all their food that they brought in with them, like this was a giant potluck dinner. We had meatballs, sangria, chocolate and some other edibles that were passed our way. And it was all pretty good stuff, too.

During the third or so bull fight (it´s hard to know for sure with the sangria you´re consuming), we watched the matador get gored by the bull and crumple to the ground while the bull kept pushing on him. They had to bail him out and the matador had to walk away injured. When this happened, the whole audience erupted in cheers and applause with the "Ole! Ole ole ole! Ole! Ole!" song that you always pair at futbol (soccer) matches. I was confused at first, because I thought the people were cheering for the matador. But then this Mexican tourist in front of me explained that the spectators are actually rooting for the BULL, not the matador. I never would have expected that. I guess it´s kind of like watching a car race, where you´re hoping to see a big nasty crash, but with the driver walking away alive.

So the rest of the evening, I was cheering for the bulls, even though I knew full well that they didn´t stand a chance next to a giant sword thrust through their hearts. You feel sorry for those bulls, and there´s a little bit of a suspension of disbelief going on. Immediately after they fall, they´re dragged quickly from the ring by a team of horses, so your mind still thinks that they´re alive, even though they aren´t.

After leaving the stadium soaked and reeking of sangria, we wandered the streets of Pamplona for a few hours checking out the partying going on in the streets. Eric had a little too much to drink, so I served as the designated walker for the evening and made sure we got back safely to the campsite on the right bus. We made it in to the campsite about 2:00 in the morning, and then crashed in our tent, exhausted from exposure to too much bulls for one day.