The return to France wasn't bad, with a few exceptions. I took the Eurostar (Italian high speed train) from Rome to Milan. While the other Italian trains are pretty sucky, the Eurostars are nice. A lot nicer than the TGV, but then the supplement is 12 euros instead of 3. While I was waiting for the train to leave, a guy came up to me and asked if this was second class. I said yes, then asked if he had a reservation (reservations are always required on high-speed trains, while on most trains your ticket kets you just get on any train you want). He said no, so I tried to explain that he needed one because it was a Eurostar. He started saying no that couldn't be right, at which point I reached the end of my Italian. So the other people tried to explain it to him too, but he still wouldn't believe them. They managed to convince him to go talk to the conductor (the train had left at this point), so thanks to us he avoided a big fine, but he was still pissed off he had to pay the supplement (a whopping 13.50 euros), and he never thanked us for saving him the fine. Jerk.

Anyway, I got into Milan, and promptly got crapped on by a pigeon, for the fourth time. The pigeons definitely saved the best for last. I was walking along, when I all of a sudden felt something wet hit my hair. I thought "Goddam, that'd better be water," then stuck my hand into my hair. "Fucking shit," I mumbled, followed by "Literally!" I went to find something to wipe it off, but for some reason when there's pigeon shit in your hair and you suddenly feel it start to ooze onto your forehead and towards your eyes, it suddenly becomes very hard to remember the Italian word for napkin. So, I ended up just saying "Scusi!!" at a sandwich stand and pointing at my head like an idiot until the woman got a horried look on her face, shoved some napkins at me, and pointed me to the bathroom. I swear, the next time I come to Europe, I'll be buying some arsenic and mixing it with some pigeon feed.

My train was 45 minutes late leaving Milan, and I had a 30 minute connection to make once it got to Karslruhe. Fortunately, the Germans made up a bunch of time once they took it over, because I ran out of credit on my cell-phone while trying to call Dan to figure out what I was going to have to do to make to Metz before noon if I missed my connection (I needed to get there before noon to take my suitcase back from the office in my dorm).

I made it Metz early Friday morning, got my suitcase, rented a room for a night, and promptly passed out (I think I had slept two hours the night before). I ended up just hanging out, catching up on the news, and writing in my travelogue all day because my feet were incredibly sore and I really didn't feel like going anywhere else.

On Saturday, I headed to Strasbourg, and basically did more of the same. Everyone had been telling me to read The Da Vinci code, and since I didn't have anything better to do, I went to the bookstore to buy it. I couldn't find it except in large-print, so I ended up buying Angels and Demons, the book that came before it. I also got myself my last cheap trappist beer (some Chimay blue... quality stuff). The book turned out to be incredibly good. It had a good plot, and it was really cool because it was set mostly in Rome, so I had just been to a whole bunch of the places it described a few days earlier.

And now here I am, in the Paris airport, waiting for my flight to Atlanta. The airport actually has little desks with power outlets, so people with laptops can use them before getting on their flight without draining their batteries. I thought I was going to have to find an outlet somewhere and sit on the ground, and here I am with a desk and padded stool. Anyway, that's pretty much everything. I have to go back and fill a bunch of holes in my travelogue, some of which I'll do now and some of which I'll probably do back in Atlanta. After I've let thing percolate in my head a bit, maybe there'll even be some deep thoughts that no one cares about except for me.

Wow. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting in Naples, but I don't think it was anything like what I found there.

The first day (Sunday) started in Perugia. I was on the way out of the hostel when I held the door for a guy and he said "Appreciate it". Having lived in the South for four years now, I immediately replied "Uh-huh," took a few steps and then thought "Wait a minute, that's the first time I've heard anyone say that this trip." So I talked to the guy, who turned out to be from Alabama. While we were talking a girl came up to us and asked him about Assisi. It turned out we were both on our way to Rome, her to head home and me to connect to Naples. So we hung out for a while in Perugia and then got on the train to Rome.

In Rome, I had about a 40 minute connection, so I went and got myself some food from the massive supermarket (called, for some reason, "Drug Store") under the station and then got on the train. The train ride was pretty interesting. There was an Italian guy practically molesting an Italian girl he had just met on the train. She was saying no, but in a way that it was obvious he just had to wait until they got off the train. There were the southern Italian teenagers trying to hit on a group of Asian girls who didn't want anything to do with them and probably wouldn't have even if they had spoken any English. So, I had some good entertainment and didn't even have to get out my iPod.

Once I got to Naples, it was what I had been told to expect. The street outside of the train station was really dirty and after a few minutes of trying the normal way, I figured out that the best way to cross the street in Naples is to cross at the middle of the block by waiting for a slight break in traffic and then going across frogger-style, hoping the cars will slow down enough to avoid hitting you. I think you're more likely to be killed by a scooter on the sidewalk while waiting for the walk sign than by a car while jay-walking. Getting to the hotel was quite an adventure, because I had to cross about 10 lanes of traffic (not all at once) to get there from the train station.

When I got to the street with my hostel, I found out it was extremely dirty. Like, unbelievable amounts of trash in the street. It turns out that there's a market in that street every day, that the mess gets cleaned up every night, and that no one bothers to try to make the people with stalls at the market clean up after themselves. I'm actually not sure if the market is at all official, since I'm pretty sure the Dolce & Gabbana jeans on sale weren't real.

So I went into my room, where I found a girl and a guy. I introduced myself and the whole "where's everyone from thing" started. When I said I was from Canada, the guy started celebrating, so I asked if he was Canadian too. He said "No, I'm just glad I'm not and you two are." It turned out the girl was called Bonnie and that she was from a farm north of Grand Prairie, Alberta (which for you non-Canadians means she's from a place that's even colder than where I'm from, and Winnipeg is cold by Canadian standards) and that the guy was from somewhere in Normandy and claimed to be half Swedish and half French. Within less than two minutes he had declared Bonnie and me to be married. This was even before I had a chance to find out his name (which turned out to be Jean-Guillaume). He was travelling with a friend, except that they weren't friends anymore, who was off seeing some Roman ruins somewhere.

The three of us headed out to eat pizza (what else would we eat in Naples?). The place had really good pizza (and really cheap too... like 4 euros for Margherita con funghi) and really shitty wine. We ate pizza and just chatted for a while and then headed back to the hostel. By that time Jean-Guy's travel buddy (David) had shown up, so I got introduced to him. That was pretty much it for day one in Naples.

On Monday, Bonnie was going to Amalfi. Since I had wanted to go, I tagged along. It turned out that to get there it took an hour and twenty minute ride on the Circumvesuviano railroad to Sorrento, folled by a over one and a half hour bus ride to Amalfi. To make things worse, there were so many people waiting for the bus that we had to wait for the second one to come before we got a seat. So, we ended up deciding not to go to Amalfi, and instead got off the bus at Positano to save the extra half hour ride to Amalfi.

Positano itself was beautiful. It was your typical Italian Mediterranean coast town: incredibly blue water, pastel-colored houses rising up steep mountainsides, and hordes of tourists. There wasn't much in the way of a public beach (just a tiny little bit between the private one and the harbor) but it was all good because it actually had sand and the water was a perfect temperature. So we picked a spot and did the beach thing for a while. Bonnie stayed for around two hours and then had to head back to Naples to catch a train to Belgium. I stayed for another hour and then headed to the bus stop. On my way I spotted a granita stand. They had freshly-prepared granite made with real lemons--incredibly good stuff after a few hours at the beach.

The ride back to Naples was pretty much like the one to Positano, just in reserve, and with no shade in which to wait. There was a giant group of Asian tourists at the front of the line, but both times the bus came, everyone suddenly crowded in front of them and they wouldn't push the people back, so they didn't get on. I got on the second bus, but who knows... they might still be there trying to get on the bus.

I got back to the room to find Jean-Guy and David. We were sitting around chatting, when a girl came in, did a double-take, and said "Oh, c'est mixte?" (Oh, it's mixed-sex?) Her name was Stephanie and she was French was well, so I suddenly found myself switching gears back into French. She asked if anyone had had dinner. I hadn't, so we decided to grab some pizza, and the other two decided to come along. There were three Brazilians in the hostel who also needed dinner, so we all went to the same pizza place as last night again.

At dinner, we found out that everyone except for David spoke English, and everyone except Liege (one of the Brazilians) spoke French. Most of the people at the table spoke three or four languages, and it seemed at any given moment during dinner at least three of them were being spoken at once. The French people were off in their French world with one of the Brazilians. Since I didn't want to the other two Brazilians to feel cut off, I ended up speaking English with them. I kind of pissed me off that David didn't speak English. He was busy trying to learn Italian when he didn't know the single most important language in the world. I think it's much more excusable for a Brazilian to not know French than for a French person to not know English (pretty much every French twenty-something I've met has spoken English). It was just annoying getting cut out of half of the conversation because I didn't want the one Brazilian to be completely isolated. But, aside from that, it was really fun and interesting talking to such a diverse group.

After dinner, Jean-Guy, Stephanie, David, and I went to a nearby bar to have some Guinesses. I quickly started to realize why Jean-Guy was really regretting travelling with David. The guy was so French it hurt. He seemed to be trying to fulfill every single bad French stereotype in existance. First, there was his insistence that English was a useless language. Then, I was pretty sure he made a conscious effort to make his French as French as possible (it's hard to describe, but Stephanie laughed at him for his word choice a few times, so I wasn't the only one). The guy was also incredibly arrogant. He kept on going on about how being a teacher was an incredibly noble and respected profession (he was about to take some exams to become a teacher). He insisted on dominating the conversation, and kept on dragging it around to whatever popped into his head. Since I think a lot more slowly in French, it basically meant I had to sit there and listen, because whenever I came up with something to say, he'd always moved the conversation to something else. One of the times that I actually got a chance to make a comment, he actually said it was wrong and then explained what I must have meant! Fortunately, Stephanie and Jean-Guy were both really funny people, so there'd usually be good banter going back and forth between them, and I picked up a whole bunch of new words. Too bad my French still isn't good enough to be able to make jokes that quickly.

Tuesday morning, I decided to go to Pompeii and Herculaneum, two Roman cities preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. They were both incredibly cool. Pompeii had a really good audioguide with lots of good descriptions, so that by the end of my four hours there, I could usually walk into a house and pick out all of the typical components. I think I'd be pretty at home if I ever time-travelled back to Ancient Rome. "Hey Marcus, how's it going? I see your impluvium is bone-dry too. Crazy weather we've having having lately, eh?" I guess I'd have to learn a few more words of Latin first though. A few of the highlights (like the Colosseum and the brothel) were closed, but there was so much to see it didn't really matter. Some of the coolest things were plaster-of-paris casts of the cavities left by bodies that were made during the excavation. You could actually see the expression of terror on their faces from when they were buried alive by the volcano. It was kind of unsettling to look at them, but it really connected you with the inhabitants of the city. After I saw those, it suddenly became a lot easier to visualize Romans wandering around the town, going about their everyday business.

Herculaneum was also pretty cool. The guying running the audioguide booth for some reason told me they were closed, even though ten minutes later, I saw people coming into the site with audioguides. It turned out Herculaneum was a lot better preserved than Pompeii, so you didn't need the audioguide quite as much. It was also smaller and shadier, which was nice. I'd brought a lot of water, and it was about the same temperature as but less humid than Atlanta, but the heat still got to me after a while. After all, I usually don't make a habit of spending hours at a time outdoors in Atlanta during the hottest hours of the day.

When I got back to the hostel, they were just in the process of kicking some random guy out of my room and putting an extra bed in. Stephanie had been planning on moving to another hostel, but changed her mind (she obviously couldn't get enough of us). An Italian friend of hers was coming to spend time in Naples with her, and since her friend was in a wheelchair, they decided to stick the two of them back in our room because it was the first one and the hallway was very narrow. After she and her friend got settled, we headed out to check out Naples. The random guy had apparently wanted to come with us, but everyone had forgotten. But, as I pointed out, he only spoke English, so he wouldn't have fit in anyway. "Yeah," Jean-Guy agreed, "he's not a polyglot--screw him."

So we wandered around Naples. We made our way to Fantasia Gelateria, which probably had the best gelato in Naples. It was so good, I ended up having two cones in a row. After that, we just sat around on some benches, people-watching and drinking some shitty Italian beer (Jean-Guy said it was "Top" for Italian beer, but it was still shitty). Once we got hungry, David wanted to go back to the same pizzeria as the last two nights (among other things, he was really cheap). I put my foot down and said I wasn't eating at the same place three nights in a row, so we found another place.

Dinner was interesting, because Stephanie's friend Lucia spoke about as much French as I spoke Italian. We managed to have a conversation, but I was really sweating at the end of it. I don't think I've ever pushed my language skills that far before. Not only was I trying to have a real conversation in Italian (instead of just buying train tickets or something), but whenever I got stuck, I would have to puzzle things out in French with the help of Stephanie and David. After one particularly long burst, where I someone managed to explain some engineering and marketing concepts in Italian, everyone burst into applause and Lucia wiped my brow for me I was sweating so hard. I really need to have that kind of conversation on a regular basis to really improve my Italian, but it can be so frustrating and humbling.

David continued to show himself to me more French than the French by insisting on accenting the last syllable of every word in Italian. In Italian, the syllable that's stressed is important and can actually change the meaning of the word. It's usually on the second or third-last syllable, but sometimes an accent is used to show the stress is on the last syllable. In French, the placement of the stress is less important, but it's almost always on the last syllable. Anyway, not only would David put the accent on the wrong syllable, he would actually correct everyone else. For example, if I were to say "E' vieTAto" ("It's forbidden," said correctly), he would look puzzled for a half-second and then say "Ah, é viataTO!" So basically, the same treatment that some particularly stuck up French people had been giving me for my accent all summer, but this time I knew I was really right. I really wanted to smack the guy.

So that was pretty much it for Naples. I didn't see a huge number of sites, but I met for really awesome people (and one annoying but sometimes unintentionally funny one) and ended having an incredibly good time. On the way back to the hostel, Stephanie asked me if I'd enjoyed my trip in Italy and I said yeah, definitely. It's so much easier to meet people like that when you're travelling (especially alone, because if you don't reach out, you end up eating by youtself and being incredibly bored) and the nice thing about Italy is, if you don't find friends for the day, there's still lots of great scenery and cool sites to see.

Well, I'm doing laundry, so it's time to fill in more stuff about my travels.

Today was my second day in Florence. I had planned on getting up early, doing laundry, and then going downtown and seeing some museums. Well, I didn't get up early, and then the desk didn't have any laundry tokens. So, I headed downtown to see some museums. The first one I went to was the Bargello, which was mainly a sculpture museum. It was alright, but I didn't think it was anything special. I think the Louvre really killed sculpture for me. The Renaissance sculptors were definitely really good (especially in comparison to what came before them), but the things the 17th and 18th century French sculptors were doing were just amazing. The level of detail they managed to get was incredible, and their work is better preserved (which definitely helps). After the museum, I headed to Vivoli again to get some more of their gelato. It definitely is the best gelato I've ever had. It really tastes like you're eating whatever fruit it is supposed to be (I've decided the mark of quality is how good a gelateria's fruit gelatos taste).

My next stop was the Uffizi. I was dumb and didn't get reservations, so I went and took a look at the line. It was really long and not moving very much. So, after grabbing a bite to eat, I went and took my place. A French couple from Lyon got in line after me, and we chatted for a while about the different regions of France and Canada. But the husband got impatient so they ended up getting reservations to come back later. So, I turned to the people in front of me, who turned out to be from Toronto. We chatted for a while, but then they gave up too. So, I talked to the people behind me, who were also from Canada. Finally, after close to three hours of waiting, we got in.

The museum itself was really cool. It was very well laid-out, showing the progression of Italian painting from the Byzantine period to the beginning of the 18th century. It was mostly Italian, but every once in a while they'd throw stuff in to show how other countries were influencing and being influenced by the Italians. Everything was nice and chronological, so you could see for example when people stopped using gold backgrounds and started putting in real stuff, when they started to figure out perspectice, when they started using atmospheric perspective, when they started doing non-religious stuff. Then, right at the end, you all of a sudden started to see things that didn't even have people in them! That was where the collection ended, which was too bad. I guess the Italians were less important in the 18th and 19th century, so there was less stuff to show.

After the Uffizi, I was pretty much done with Florence. I headed back to the side of the river where the campground is, got off at Piazzale Michelangelo to check out and record the view, and then headed over here to do laundry.

Well, I'm once again wearing down extra internet time, and I'm pretty beat, so it seemed like a good idea to write some more.

So I arrived in Florence around 11h00 this morning. I just barely caught the 10h00 train from Lucca. I got to the station, checked my bag, and then promptly lost the claim ticket. I'm really hoping no one found and went to get my bag, but right now I just really don't want to know. Since I'd decided to wear pants today, I figured I should knock all of the churches out. I started at Santa Maria Novella, which was absolutely beautiful on the inside (no pictures allowed though). It was pretty crappy on the outside though. The Strozzi side chapel I thought was really cool. The frescoes were very vivid (although not quite so much as the dome of the choir of one of the churches in Verona) and I just thought it really meshed well with the architecture.

On the way to San Lorenzo, I naturally stopped at one of the recommended gelato shops, this one being the Gellateria of the Bermuda Triangle. I didn't disappear or anything, but the gelato was pretty good.

The next stop was San Lorenzo, which also had a crappy exterior (apparently Michelangelo was supposed to design an exterior but didn't finish it) and a really really nice interior. The art was actually properly lit, partly because of the design (thanks to the genius of Brunelleschi), which let in a lot more light than you usually get in the Gothic cathedrals in France, and because they actually went to the trouble of setting up nice diffuse lighting that let you view the works from all different angles. There were some really cool sculptures by Donatello.

My final church was the big kahuna, the Duomo (Cathedral) Santa Maria del Fiore, one of the most massive cathedrals in the world. When I walked up to it I thought, "at last, a cathedral with a decent exterior". It actually didn't feel all that big from the inside, but it was once again very nicely lit, although not quite as well as San Lorenzo. There wasn't much in the way of art on the side, which was pretty plain and boring. I decided to shell out for the bell tower outside the cathedral. The climg wasn't too bad and the view was pretty cool, but there was this damn dome in the way :-P.

After the cathedrals, I went to eat at the Trattoria Anita. They had an awesome lunch menu: two courses and a vegetable for only 5.50 euros. There was an American girl inside who was also eating alone, so I went and introduced myself so that I wouldn't have to eat alone. Her name was Eleanor a she was a Biology major at Harvard. Turns out she was also studying in France and spending a little bit in Italy before heading back to the US. It was nice having a cool person to talk to at dinner once again (I seem to be having a pretty good record at that so far). After lunch, she wanted to go to the Duomo and I was going to the science museum, so we went our separate ways.

The science museum was really cool. They had all sorts of scientific instruments from the Renaissance onward. There were tons of telescopes, Galileo's middle finger (which I thought was a particularly appropriate choice), all different kinds of compasses (the geometric, not magnetic kinds), globes, a whole bunch of chemistry things, very detailed anatomy models showing how to do Ceasarean sections, breach births, and all that good stuff, and a whole bunch of electrical stuff that I didn't have time to look at because the museum was closing. There was also a girl called Rachel who went to Ohio State who was just as interested as me in all the stuff (almost everyone else was just breezing through). We got to talking and after the museum closed we went for gelato together. We went to Vivoli, which very well may be the best gelato place in the world. The flavors were all so rich, and everything was so creamy. Their peach was incredibly peachy. I'm definitely going to have to go back. We were both pretty beat, so we just sat down in a random place and chatted for an hour. Weirdly enough, she had also finished a study abroad in France, was travelling in Italy before heading back to the US, was staying in the same hostel as Eleanor, and recommended all of the same museums.

So that's day one of Florence. For day two, I'll be checking out the art museums. Of course, I'll probably also be spending a lot of time checking out the lines because I didn't get reservations. Oh well.

Well, Lucca ended up being not quite everything I had hoped for, but it was still a nice day.

My problems started on the way from Venice to Lucca. My train from Venice was an hour late, so I got to sit around forever waiting for it to arrive. There were a bunch of Italian teenagers in my compartment, but they didn't speak much English and I wasn't feeling up to stretching my limited Italian enough to have a conversation, so we didn't talk much. Then when I got to Florence, I had to wait over an hour to transfer. So, I ended up getting into Lucca around 3 pm.

I had written down the wrong directions for my hostel, so it took me forever to find it, no thanks to the people who run it (their website said they were inside Lucca, which was untrue, and they were useless when I called them). When I got there, the hostel looked really great, but they told me to go upstairs and "Wait ten minutes so they could take me to the other building." I thought I was just going next door or something, so I wasn't sure why I had to wait so long. I found out it was because they were actually putting me in another hotel on the other side of the city. The guy who ran it was even more surly than the people at the place I was supposed to stay at, and the place was just dirty. There were all kinds of marks on the walls, the paint was peeling, and the floor of my room hadn't been swept. Plus... well, let's just say the walls were thin. Obviously when you're staying in a hostel you aren't always going to get the nicest places, but I think it's reasonable to expect a place to at least try to be clean. And, it's just really shitty when you put a lot of time into planning a trip and finding a good place to stay only to arrive and find out that someone's running a bait and switch on you.

I was just on my way out when my roommate arrived. He was an officer in the US Army called Luke, a few years older than me, and pretty cool. He was definitely much more refined than you'd expect from an army officer. I guess just the fact that he was spending part of his leave in Lucca was a pretty big hint.

So we headed into town and checked out the sights, not that there were all that many. Lucca has a decent cathedral, but it was being heavily restored, so there wasn't much to see. Plus, it was raining lightly, so we didn't feel like doing too much exploring. After wandering around for a while, we ended up having dinner at some random tourist trap. I couldn't believe how bad their Insalata Caprese was--a complete disgrace to Italians everywhere. After dinner we just sat and talked about random stuff for a while. Unlike almost every other restaurant I've been to in Europe, the waitress really seemed to want to get us out of there, because she immediately gave us the cheque (I almost always have to ask) and then hovered 5 feet away waiting for us to pay it/.

The nightlife section of the Lets Go profile of Lucca basically was a description of the felateria, which apparently had "throngs" of people every night. We checked it out after dinner, and while there were no throngs in sight, they had some pretty good gelato. Not the best, but still very good. They were the first gelateria where I saw "Zuppa Inglese" (yep, English Soup... still no idea what that means). After the gelateria, we wandered around a bit more, then went to an enoteca (wine bar) recommended by the waitress at the restaurant. I wanted to try grappa, which I tried to order, but they were apparently out of it. I got the gist that the waitress was suggested something else instead, but I had no idea what she suggested, so I just smiled and said, "Si, va bene". Whatever I got was incredibly alcoholic: even more so than grappa according to Luke. I could feel my stomach rebelling after just the smallest tastes, so I ended up not finishing it.

So that was pretty much it for Lucca. After the enoteca, we headed back to the hotel, got some rest, and then went our separate ways in the morning. Lucca was a pretty cool town, but the hotel really ruined it for me. It's really a place where you want to go to just relax and unwind. But for that, you need a few good friends, and a place to stay that feels homier and doesn't make you pissed off about being ripped off. The walls of the city were pretty cool. They're like 15 yards wide, and they've been made into a park that forms a ring around the city, with trees and bike and walking paths. They would have made for a great walk with views of the city and the surrounding hills... if it hadn't been raining.

So I'm in Italy. I probably won't normally be this obsessive about posting, but I had to pay for a full hour of internet so that I could get my purchase confirmation for my opera tickets for tomorrow, so I figured I might as well use it and make a post.

I had to stay up way too late last night getting my room cleaned up, so I'm pretty beat. I got into Milan at 7:30 pm after pretty much a whole day on the train. The train ride was really nice. We went through Switzerland, so the scenery was naturally beautiful. There's just something about riding through a valley seeing mountains disappearing into the clouds on both sides of you. And for some reason, lakes look ten times more beautiful when they're in the mountains. Once we got into Italy we passed by Lake Maggiore, which looked like a great place to take a vacation. It was kind of overdeveloped, but the scenery was just so incredibly green, and the lake looked pretty peaceful. The city of Stresa looked like a had a little beach on the lake... if only I had time to check it out.

So as soon as I walked out of the Milan train station, I ran into a guy who was claiming to be Hungarian tourist and clearly trying to scam me. It was a pretty nice introduction to Milan. Pretty much all I've done in Milan is grab dinner and, of course, gelato. As soon as I got done with the scammer, I saw people eating gelato and tracked down the closest gelato stand. Since I'm running on 5 hours of sleep and it's incredibly hot even at 10 pm, I think I'm just going to bed. Tomorrow I'll spend a full day exploring Verona and then go see Aida in the Roman arena, which apparently has amazing acoustics. In case anyone cares, this is my itinerary:

Well, after an absolutely horrible week, I'm heading to Cinque Terre, Italy to meet up with Dan and Vickie. Here's the town (Riomaggiore) where I'll be staying:

Vickie and I went to see the Tour de France, because it was pulling into Nancy, which is just 45 minutes by train from Metz. It was pretty cool. The route was pretty crowded, but it was cold and rainy, so that helped keep the crowds to a reasonable level. I'm not a Tour expert, but I have a feeling that in good weather we wouldn't have been able to get to the front of the barricades 250m from the finish line.

We had to stand around for an hour waiting for the racers to arrive. Fortunately, there was a bunch of entertainment, with a local radio station announcing the race, a jumbotron just barely in view, and a whole bunch of floats and cars driving the route throwing out promotional stuff. I think the truck with the hose and the foam mallets would have been a bit funnier if it hadn't been so cold and wet. There was also a bunch of trucks with girls who looked like they should have been wearing bikinis who were instead wearing long sleeves and pants.

After a bunch of cold and wet raining, the riders finally started to get close to the finish line. The leader was a dude from the Lorraine region, so the announcers and the crowd were very excited. You could feel the excitement and the tension building as he got closer and closer to the finish line, but the rest of the pack got closer and closer to him. Finally, when he was 900m meters from the finish line, most of the excitement drained away as he wiped out in a tough turn. One of my professors said he was going to lose anyway, so it was probably better for him to go down that way.

I got to see Lance Armstrong, I think. He was more of a yellow blur than anything else. If he hadn't had the yellow jersey at the time, I don't think I would have recognized him.

After the riders went by, we took a half hour to get through the crowd and back to the train station, just making it in time for the next train back to Metz.

So this weekend I went to Barcelona with Nicki, where we met up with Nich and Vickie. We took a night train to Port Bou (on the French-Spanish border), and then took a local train to Barcelona. The night train was pretty nice. I'd had the brilliant idea of buying a sleeping bag that I could use as a pillow on the train, so I slept pretty well on the train. That is, until 7:00 am, when the kids in the compartment woke up and started walking way too much. An hour later, when we were almost in Port Bou, their dad finally told them to go outside. Sigh. Once we got into Port Bou, we waited around for an hour, and then hopped onto an absolutely packed train to Barcelona. The train was pretty much a glorified subway, and there were so many people on it that the seats and all of the aisles were full.

We got off at the wrong station in Barcelona, but it turned out to actually be closer to our hostel than the one we planned to get off at. It ended up being only a few minutes by subway from our hostel, not that I would have minded a longer ride because the subways in Barcelona are actually air-conditioned. When we got off the subway, we ran into some girls from McGill who were going to the same hostel as some as our friends. I don't think I've had a single weekend in Europe without talking to some Canadians.

Nicki and I checked into the hostel, where we discovered that Spanish is pretty much useless in Barcelona because everyone says they only understand Catalan. Nich walked into the hostel just after we checkied in, which was some pretty amazing timing. After he got settled in, we decided to go to the beach. We walked to the beach, and ran into some people from GTL who had a way better hostel than us. It was called Seapoint, it was right on the beach, and it had a bar downstairs. It was cloudy and windy, so we ended up sitting on the terrace of Seapoint drinking some incredibly strong Sangrias.

After we got tired of the Sangrias, we headed back to the hostel to get changed for the evening and then went to the Chris Columbus statue (apparently the Catalans claim he was Catalan instead of Genoan) to meet up with a bunch of other GTL people for dinner. We went to a place called, I think, Ciberon. We all got Paella, and everyone but me got a ton of Sangrias. The Paella was delicious, and there was a live band that was pretty good. It was pretty much a perfect evening. Good food, good company, good music, and a nice view of the sea. The waiter gave me the bill at the end of the evening. I kind of gulped when I saw the total (over 200 euros), but considering that that was for 10 people and the food was incredibly good and plentiful, that wasn't bad at all.

After dinner, Nicki and I went to meet up with Vickie, who had just taken a train all the way from the Czech republic to meet up with us. Then, we went to a club called Fiesta, which felt pretty much like being in a club in the US, except that the crowd was way younger (like some people who were obviously under 18).

On Saturday, we hit up the beach. On our way to the beach, Nich and I were looking for some cheap food. We finally gave and and grabbed sandwiches, only to find out that half a block later there was a place offering what looked like really good Paella for only 5 euros. Sigh. The beach was pretty nice. The water could have been a bit warmer, and we could have done with fewer people walking along Shouting "Hola. Acqua. Fanta. Cerveza" or offering us messages. We did see one cool vendor who ran around with a tray of donuts on his head while playing a triangle and singing donut songs. We stayed at the beach for most of the afternoon. I kind of got burnt.

After the beach, we went back to the hostel to get changed, where Nich met a girl called Penny who went to school somewhere in DC. We ended up going to dinner with her. The place we went was really nice. They had good food, but the waiter was unhappy that we weren't spending a lot of money, which is understandable. Of course, he probably shouldn't have said it to his manager while standing right in front of us and assuming none of us could understand. After dinner, we grabbed some ice cream, some aloe for my sunburn, and then headed out to find a really good bar Nich had heard of. We never found it, so I ended up heading back to the hostel because my sunburn was really started to get to me.

I woke up nice and early Sunday morning to the loudest snoring I've heard in my life. There was a big Spanish guy in the next bed over who I swear had sleep apnea, because he would snore incredibly loudly and every 30 minutes or so it sounded like he would choke a bit, after which he'd shift around and start snoring again. To top it all off, he was wearing nothing but bikini briefs.

Most of Sunday was spent doing tourist type stuff. We checked out one of the main parks. We went to the Picasso museum, which was pretty cool. On the way there, we ran into some kind of public performance in Placa San Jaume. We weren't sure exactly what it was, because it was all in Catalan, but it involved a princess, a giant preying mantis, and a caped guy on stilts.

After the Picasso museum, we went to the Sagrada Familia. It was really cool, because it's a giant basilica that's still under construction. It kind of gives you an idea of what people felt like while all the great Gothic cathedrals were being built. Some of those took hundreds of years to build. The Sagrada Familia has only been under construction for around a hundred years, so it's still pretty young. The church was amazing, even considering that it was a giant construction site. I can't imagine what it'd be like to go to mass there once the construction is complete. We walked all the way up one of the towers (and they're really high--lots of steps), which was pretty terrifying at some points because there are decent-sized windows all the way up the tower without bars that really drive home just how high you are.

Once we got down from the Sagrada Familia, we grabbed a snack from a local vendor and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. We ended up running into some other GTL people on the way to dinner, and they showed us this really good and cheap restaurant they'd found. The place had a great Paella and Sangria deal, so we naturally did that.

Monday was the Fourth of July, which I celebrated on trains. I pretty much spent the whole day getting back to Metz.

The weather forecast in Barcelona:
Friday: Partly Cloudly, High of 28, low of 23
Saturday: Mostly Sunny, High of 29, low of 23
Sunday: Sunny, High of 30, low of 23
Monday: Mostly Sunny, High of 30, low of 24
And almost no chance of rain for the whole weekend. Looks like there'll be some quality beach time 8-).

We had a giant storm yesterday. And this wasn't one of those wussy little storms like you get almost every day in Atlanta. This was a serious storm, with gale-force winds. The winds knocked over trees all over the Technopole. Someone's bicycle actually blew away in the wind. Someone else tried to go outside during it, and actually got knocked over by the wind. The flags in front of the building got torn up. The water was blowing sideways and the wind was strong enough that it was forcing the water in through the doors of the GTL building. It was the worst storm since 1999 according to the locals, making it the worst storm of the millenium! Anyway, the nice thing is that it brought an end to the hot and humid weather that we'd had for like 2 weeks straight (apparently the worst June in recent memory), so the beach will feel like a real break instead of more of the same weather we have in Metz.

I've had way too much homework lately, so I haven't been able to write about everything that I've been doing, but here's a map showing my travels over the last few weeks. The pins with the lines going to them are places I've visited, while the pins without lines are places I'm planning on going to. I'm going to most of the places in Italy after the semester's over, except for Cinque Terre and Milan (the two red pins in Italy). Click for the full-sized view. The photo's shitty because I used my phone.

So this weekend I went to Bruges (in Belgium) with Nicki, Ben, Annemaire, Kendra, Christine, Katie... I think that's pretty much it. We left inredibly early in the morning on Saturday. I got up at something like 4:45 to make a 6:30 train. I'm still not sure how I managed to do it. We got on a Belgian train in Luxembourg, and as soon as we got across the Belgian border, it filled up with kids, making it impossible to sleep.

One of the first things we did when we got to Bruges was have lunch. We were looking around for a restaurant when I noticed a street vendor who had Bratwurst and waffles. It was a pretty awesome lunch for 3.50 euros. Belgian waffles are incredibly good. Those first ones we had were pretty crummy by Bruges standards (they were reheated instead of made fresh), but they were still really good. I guess what we had were Flemmish waffles, because there are apparently a bunch of different kinds of waffles in Belgium, but anyway, they're made with a much more bread-like dough than American waffles. Instead of pouring batter into the iron, they would press a wad of dough into the iron. They wouldn't quite cook it all the way through, so the center would still be just a little gooey. I'm not sure how they get the timing down so well, because all the waffles I had in Belgium had exactly that consistency.

After lunch, we went to the hostel to check in and drop off our bags and then met up with Katie, who had come earlier. Then we went out exploring. We went up the bell-tower in the main square, which had such a bad spiral staircase that they had a rope up the middle to hold onto. The staircase kept on switching between clockwise and counterclockwise as if to keep you from getting into a good rhythm. It also had hundreds of steps. Once we got to the top, it was definitely worth it, because it had an amazing view of Bruges. We also checked out the Church of Our Lady, which was your typical cathedral. Apparently its distinction is that it's the tallest cathedral made entirely of brick. Bruges is apparently really known for its chocolate and lace (news to me), because there lots of both shops around the city. One chocolate shop had this chocolate fountain set up in front of their shop that looked incredibly mouth-watering. The Belgians definitely know how to eat, because in addition to the amazing waffles, the loads of chocolate, and all the other great food, they had some of the best ice cream I've had outside of Italy.

Being in Belgium, we naturally did a lot of beer drinking. On Saturday, we visited a brewery that had a cool tour. They used to be a big brewery, but when health codes made them do things like actually enclosing everything the beer was processed in, they switched to being a micro-brewery and made the old brewery into a museum. After the your, we naturally got to sample their beer, which was pretty good. The funniest part was our waier, who was really friendly, but kind of weird. He spent a lot of time talking to us and trying to hide from his boss, who I don't think was too happy about all the time he spent at our table. He spent ten minutes telling us how much he hated the French (which is apparently a common sentiment in that part of Belgium). Then he told us all the bars we should go to and suggested a bunch of beers to try. He told to where the bar to meet all the young people was. We were all interested until we found out he meant 16-18 years old.

After the brewery, we headed back to our hostel for dinner. Our hostel had a restaurant downstairs that was apparently pretty good, so we decided to eat there. Most of the people had a Flemmish stew, but I had some amazing spareribs. I haven't eaten that much meat in quite a while. Ricky, a guy from GTL who we were sort of hanging out with, had met a guy who worked for Let's Go, so we had dinner with him. It turns out Let's Go only hires Harvard students, which was news to me. He was a pretty nice guy, so apparently going to Harvard doesn't get to everyone's head. After dinner, we headed out to check out some of the bars, but a bunch of us were just incredibly beat from the long train ride, so we ended up turning in early.

On Sunday, we started the day with some of the best waffles I've had in my life. They were made fresh right before our eyes, and they were... just amazing. I never knew waffles could be so good. We tried to find the vendor later, but she had disappeared.

After breakfast, we headed to a boat tour of Bruges. Like many other cities, Bruges claims to be the Venice of the north because of its canals. I'm not sure if it's canals are quite up to that level, but they were pretty cool. I think the highlight of the tour was the "world's smallest window", which looked pretty small. After the tour, Ben and I tried to find the place we'd had waffles for breakfast while the girls shopped for souvenirs. We failed, but we ended up finding some pretty good waffles, just not up to the standards of that morning.

For lunch, we found a cafe, where we naturally sampled a whole bunch of Belgian beers. I had Grimbergen, a really good trappist beer recommended by the waiter at the brewery. A bunch of people got different kinds of fruit-flavored beers. I was already pretty sure that the Belgians made the best beer in the world, but that lunch sealed the deal for me. I'm told Grimbergen isn't anywhere near the best beer the Belgians have, and it was already way better than any beer I'd had before (not that I've had that many. We didn't even bother getting Stella or Leffe because they're considered so common in Belgium (like Coors or Budweiser), but even those beers are so much better than the junk most Americans drink.

After lunch, we headed to the Basilica of the Precious Blood, which apparently has a piece of cloth with Jesus's blood on it. You couldn't actually touch the cloth, but you could touch the thing that held it, if you wanted to wait in line. The church itself was kind of interesting, because the bottom of it was a very typical Romanesque church, while the relic was housed in an upper church that was an incredibly gaudy version of a Romanesque church. Basically, it looked like someone who was trying to go Romanesque, but just couldn't keep himself from using way too much paint and gold leaf.

After the church, it was pretty much time to head back to Metz, which we did. On the way back, the train was once again filled with kids. We changed trains in Brussels, where we naturally took the opportunity to get Belgian waffles one last time.

Note: Entry backdated because I felt like it.

So this weekend I did a giant tour of southern France. The original plan was to go to Avignon, Arles, Marseille, and Carcasonne, but I couldn't work it out, so instead I went to Avignon, Arles, Marseille, Nice, and Monaco. Not bad for a four day. Shane and Joel were my partners in crime for the weekend. None of us had a digital camera, so I stole all of these pictures off of the web. If you don't like that, sue me. (Actually, if you own the pictures please don't sue!)

We took a night train from Metz to Nimes, arriving sometime between 6 and 7 am. Since we had a while to transfer in Nimes, we went and checked out Nimes's Roman arena, which was pretty impressive looking. I was pretty tired so I don't remember much else of Nimes. We were only there for about 40 minutes, because we hopped on to a train to Avignon.

Avignon was really cool. It was a big city, but it had a really relaxed feel to it. I think the feeling was kind of like what the Southern US is supposed to be, but without the road rage and racial tensions of Atlanta. We walked around Avignon's old city for a while, checking out the city hall, an ancient church, and a bunch of other things I forgot. The church was interesting, because the spire was way shorter than they usually are. I noticed a lot of them the south: church spiries that looked like they'd had 100 ft chopped off the bottom. Next we headed to the Palais des Papes (the palace of the popes), where the Pope lived for around 100 years way back in the day (14th century). The palace actually looked more grim than anything else. We didn't bother going in because I had heard it isn't all that great inside. We went next door to Notre Dame des Doms, which was your basic Romanesque cathedral. Apparently there's a bench there where the Pope would kneel, but I missed it. The coolest thing about the Palace was the Rochers des Doms, which was a park beside the palace that gave you an awesome view of the Rhone river valley, the bridge, and Villeneuve-les-Avignon. The park was right near a bend in the river, and it's one of the highest points in Avignon, so you could see tons of great views from it.

After checking out the view, we walked down to the city walls, and went along them to the Pont Saint Bénezet, aka le Pont d'Avignon, aka the famous bridge in the nursery rhyme. Since we were still being cheap, we decided not to shell out to walk on the bridge, so instead we walked down to the river, and then walked along the river.

We decided to head across to the river to Villeneuve-les-Avignon, which, in spite of its name (the New City of Avignon), is 700 years old or so. Apparently, even though the French king encouraged the Pope to move to Avignon, he felt it necessary to build a fort on his side of the river to protect himself from the Pope. No, that doesn't make much sense to me either. While we were waiting for the bus, I had a nice chat with an older woman who had a son working in Canada, although she didn't know where. So we took the bus across the bridge (but not the bridge) and then hiked up to the Fort St. André, and then back down again.

That was pretty much it for Avignon. Our next stop was the Pont du Gard. We had to take a bus, so we went to the bus depot and were lucky enough to find that the next bus left in five minutes. An hour or so later, we were at the bridge. The bridge was really impressive. I don't think the massiveness comes through very well in the pictures. It's apparently the second-tallest surviving Roman structure (after the Colosseum). From up close, it looked incredibly massive. And to think that it was built completely with human power. We walked across the bridge, then went down to the river to get the view from below, waded in the water for a while, watched people diving, skipped some stones, and then headed back across to find out when the next bus came.

The bus was a great story. It turned out the next bus wasn't for four hours. Oops. So, we took a different bus to the town of Remoulins (don't worry, I hadn't heard of either), got some lunch (moussaka), walked around for a while, and then got on a bus back to Avignon. Once we got to Avignon, the next train to Arles was cancelled, so we had to wait for two hours before we could finally get moving again.

On the train to Arles, we met some girls from Quebec who were really nice. I knew they were Quebecoise immediately because they sounded like they were speaking French correctly (as opposed to all the French people who just sounded plain wrong the first month I was here). OK, well, the giant Canadian and Quebec flags on their backpacks were a giveaway too. We chatted about our trips on the way to Arles. It turned out they were taking two weeks to see the region we were seeing in four days. Once we got to Arles, we went our separate ways because they were staying in a hotel and we were staying way the heck out in the HI hostel.

We got to the hostel, then went back downtown to find some dinner. There was a square with a ton of restaurants, including the Cafe la Nuit that we had been warned was super expensive. So we had a great meal at another place that someone in the square told us was the best restaurant in the square. I had some lamb and some fries that I think had been fried in olive oil. More people need to start doing that, because they were delicious. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and passed out. To think we did all that, and it was only the end of our first night!

Saturday morning, we got up and to check out the sights in Arles. Shane told me that there the girls from Quebes were in the breakfast room. It turned out their hotel had fleas, so they sneaked out and came to the hostel. We chatted for a bit, and then we checked out and headed to the sights. There was a cloister, that was pretty cool but nothing special. Your de rigeur Gothic cathedral. The Roman arenas, which were pretty neat because they're in pretty good condition. I just stood there for a while and imagined thousand of people in togas screaming as gladiators fought it out down below. Provence just has this feel to it that makes it feel like those times weren't all that long ago. We went back to the square with the restaurants to have lunch. The waitress was really nice--she was really interested in our travels and I think she loved having the chance to practice her English. A pigeon crapped on my hand and my shorts, which wasn't quite so nice. We had tartine, which is basically the Provence equivalent of bruschetta, but closer to being a pizza on bread. It was also great stuff. If the people in Provence know how to do one thing, it's definitely cook. After lunch, we dashed to the train station, ran into the Quebecoises one last time, and then hopped on a train to Marseille.

I think if all we had seen in Marseille was the view from the train station, it would have been worth it. We stepped out of the train station to an amazing view of Notre Dame de la Garde at the top of its hill. The sun shining off the statue at the was an amazing effect. It's rare to see a building that just seems so well placed.

Anyway, we didn't have much time in Marseille, so we went to the Quai des Belges to board a boat to the Ile d'If. The island is of course the site of the famous Chateau d'If, where Edmont Dantes was imprisoned in The Count of Monte Cristo. The castle was pretty cool. I thought we were going to get a tour, but it turned out to only be a "commentary" before we went off to see it on our own. The girl who was giving the commentary was pretty funny, and there was a lot of joking back and forth between her and us. Unfortunately, Joel and Shane didn't understand much French, so they didn't enjoy that part nearly as much as us. After the commentary, we checked out the castle, which was pretty cool. They had a "cell of Edmond Dantes", as well as cells used to imprison real people. You could even see some of the scratchings made by prisoners back in the day. And, there was the whole story of the Rhinoceros on the island...

Once we got back to Marseille, we took a bus to see Notre Dame de la Garde. The church looked just as impressive from up close. The upper chapel was naturally incredibly gaudy (we didn't get to see the lower one because there was a mass). The view of Marseille was great. After seeing the church, we basically just got something to eat and then got on a train to Nice.

Still more to come...

I've got a bunch of research to do for ECE 4000. Then I need to put together a 5 minute presentation on my work. I should also be getting a head start on my thermo homework, because it always takes 4-5 hours. Naturally, I'm blogging about my weekend instead.

The weekend started with some poker over at RESAM. I came in second this time, so I got my money back. I almost got knocked out. I was getting bad cards and was getting bored the game and so, as I usually do when I get bored, I started to bluff way too much. With a bit of luck and some discipline I dragged some the depths of my soul, I managed to hold on for second. It's not that I was worried about the money; it just annoys me when I start playing so crappily. A bunch of French guys were watching us; they'd apparently never seen people playing Holdem before. We started chatting with one of them. He was a pretty cool idea. He'd taken classes in Scotland for a few months, which we think was the reason he said "fucking" so much. OK, pretty crappy story, but whatever.

The astronomical clock in Strasbourg's cathedral.

On Saturday, I took the train to Strasbourg to meet my aunt Rosemary. I hadn't seen her in eight years, so it was kind of cool catching up on a lot of the stuff in our lives, but at the same time it was a little bit weird because it felt like we were such strangers. She used to live in Strasbourg, and you could really tell that she loved the city as she gave me a tour. It was neat because she knew a lot of the history of place. Things like "This is the square that used to be packed with people listening to Hitler's speeches although no one will admit to having attended them anymore" or things she remembered doing with my uncle (who died around a year ago) really made the place come alive.

Temple Neuf in Strasbourg.

Temple Neuf in Metz.

There was a bunch of neat stuff in Strasbourg. Their protestant cathedral is called Temple Neuf, just like Metz's. They aren't exactly the same, but they definitely have a lot of similarities, especially (to my eye anyway) the relative lack of ornamentation and the visible brickwork. I think Metz's Temple Neuf is definitely the better of the two. Waaay better location, and a cooler building too. Strasbourg's cathedral also has an astronomical clock. The clock is still on the time Strasbourg used before the introduction of standard time, so it's a half hour off from the rest of the world. Anyway, at the top of the hour (bottom of the real hour) you can watch the clock do all sorts of things. Bells gong, saints go marching, the 4 different stages of man walk around, etc. It apparently shows all sorts of different things, but it was pretty hard to figure most of them out.

Like a lot of churches in the area, their was an inscription in the cathedral honoring the memory of the American GIs who died while liberating the area in WWII. It's too bad a lot of Americans can't understand the inscriptions, because you see them everywhere, and they're pretty moving. I think most towns I've seen in this part of France have a street named after the XXth American Corps, the unit that did most of the fighting in this area.

I also learned a bunch about French food, which is definitely one of my weaker points. It turns out that choucroute is sauerkraut (good stuff). Crudités turn out out to be raw vegetables. Rognons, which sounded appealing, turn out to be kidneys. Note to self: Learn more about French food before I eat something truly nasty.

After an afternoon in Strasbourg, I hopped onto the train to Munich. I'm really not sure about this vaunted German efficiency and timeliness. My train was delayed over an hour getting into Munich. I talked to people who had delays on German trains and ended up getting back into Metz a day late. Shane and Kirsten apparently also had delays getting into Munich. At least the DB trains are much nicer than the SNCF ones.

One of the four gates into the old city of Munich.

Now that I've gotten to Munich, I can start to show pictures again, because I met up with Kirsten and Shane and so I have pictures from Kirsten again. We were staying at the Wombat hostel, which is an awesome hostel just across the street from the Munich hauptbanhoff (main train station). Since Kirsten and Shane weren't there when I checked in, I went out and explored the city on my own. I headed along Bayerstrasse to the old city. The first view I got was of the gate shown to the right, except when I saw it it was night out. There were still just as many people there at 10:00 pm as there were when Shane and Kirsten saw it though. I walked around the still-bustling old city and checked out all of the sights. It was pretty cool touring a city at night, because we usually do it during the day. Of course, it also meant I couldn't go into most of the sights.

King Ludwig II's bed in Schloss Linderhof.

Outside view in Linderhof.

On Saturday, Shane and Kirsten's friend Christoph and his fiancée Constanze took us on a highlight tour of Bavaria, which was super awesome because it meant we got to take a car. We started at Schloss Linderhof, one of three castles/palaces built by King Ludwig II. This one was apparently intended to be his private retreat. We walked in the front door for our tour and I thought to myself, "hmmm, that statue of Ludwig looks awfully like Louis XIV". Turns out it was good old Louis. The entire palace is pretty much a giant temple to Louis XIV. It was incredibly incredibly gaudy (I think the picture of his bed pretty much says it all). You could tell that the staff really loved the place, but it was showing wear in a number of places. I thought it was kind of ironic that we sort of look down on Ludwig for living in the past and yet there we were, tramping through his hundred-plus year-old castles.

After Linderhof, we took a super scenic drive through Austria to Neueschwanstein. The drive was really beautiful and the scenery reminded me of the Canadian Rockies. I was explaining how the Rockies tend to be jammed with German and Japanese tourists and that I thought it was because the Rockies reminded Germans of Bavaria. Just as we were saying it, we passed a bunch of Japanese tourists taking pictures on the side of the rode. Apparently, Japanese tourists are a world-wide stereotype. Between Christoph being a crazy drivier and the windy mountain roads, I almost got carsick. I think if the trip had been five minutes longer it would have been all over. Europeans will apparently make out absolutely anywhere, because we saw a couple who were apparently so overcome by the beauty of a mountain lake (which was pretty beautiful) that they were going at it right at the side of the road.

The best view of Neueschwanstein is from an incredibly scary bridge.

Group shot! Shane, Constanze, Kristoph, me and Kirsten outside Neuswchanstein. Yes, I have my eyes closed again.

So we got to Neueschwanstein, cookies bar barely untossed. That is to say, we got to the base of the mountain Neueschwanstein sits on. The plan was to hike up to a lookout behind the castle, check out the view, hike down into a gorge, and then finally hike back up to the castle in time for our tour (you had to buy tickets for tours at a certain time). I was still feeling queasy, so I almost didn't do the hike, but I decided to tough it out. I'm glad I did. The picture in the post below is from the halfway point of the hike. When we got to the top, we went and checked out Mary's bridge, which crosses a really steep gorge. The bridge was scary as all hell. It was small, really crowded, and reminded me way too much of my own mortality. So I admired the view real quickly and then rushed back to solid ground. Next we hiked down to the bottom of the gorge the bridge crossed. There was a really tall waterfall feeding a stream with the clearest water I've seen in my life. I figured I wouldn't have many opportunities to drink from a mountain stream, so we all drank a few handfuls of water. Yep, tasted just like water. Finally, we hiked up to the castle, waited a half hour for our tour time, managed not to kill the obnoxious Americans, and checked the place out. It was pretty neat. The view was awesome and it looked really good inside. It's crazy to think it was built at the same time as sky-scrapers were starting to go up in New York and Confederation was happening in Canada.

A view of Hohenschwangau, this time without my head in the way.

Two castles was more than enough for one day, so we headed over to Andechs, a monastery cum beer hall. We were so incredibly tired that I actually managed to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation with Shane in the car. We skipped the monastery part and went straight to the beer hall. They had some good German beer and even better pork, both of which were pretty interesting. It's apparently pretty common in Germany to mix beer with Sprite or Coke. There are rules for which types of beer you mix with which drink. I tried a little bit of a beer and Sprite, which didn't taste half bad. The pork they had was more like a hunk of pig. It was pretty much part of a leg, roasted with the skin on. You could still see bristles on some parts of the skin. It was some of the tastiest pork I've had in a long time. The skin was really good, although I skipped the part with the hair on it.

After the beer hall, Christoph dropped us off at the train station so we could head back into Munich. I ran into some people with Canadian flags on their backpacks, so I grilled them to make sure they were really Canadian. We got back to Munich, walked around the old city a bit more, and then went back to the hostel. Sunday was pretty much just a travel day as we took most of the day to get back to Metz.

Me, with Hohenschwangau in the background. Now, say Hohenschwangau 10 times as fast as possible!

And now, exclusively on jacquestravelogue.blogspot.com, a sneak preview of my trip to Munich. This is me at an overlook on the trail up to Neueschwanstein. The castle in the distance is Hohenschwangau. If you're wondering why my eyes are closed, you're supposed to be looking at the scenery, dammit (and this is one of three pictures of me from the trip, so it's not like there were many options).

So far, all pictures on this site were taken by the multi-talented Kirsten. The witty and engrossing prose is all by me, with the exception of the following quote, which is also from Kirsten: "Castles rock, literally".

The plan for this weekend: Meet my aunt (who I haven't seen in over well over 5 years) in Strasbourg, then continue on to Munchen to meet Shane and Kirsten.

Exciting CORA purchase of the day: A euro-wallet. Finally, my 50 euro notes won't stick out of my wallet announcing "Hey, hey, over here! I have money to steal!"

My southern France trip is coming along slowly. I've got one person coming along, and I'm starting to put a plan together. Hopefully I'll be able to use a lot of the train time on the way to Munich to figure everything out. Right now I'll definitely be going to Avignon, Marseille, and Aix-en-Provence. I'm still waffling about Nice and Carcasonne... one... both... neither?

This weekend I went to Paris with Shane and Kirsten. Saturday was a crazy day with something like 16 hours of sightseeing. Sunday was more relaxed, but we didn't get to do everything we wanted to do. Oh well. Going armed with a guidebook and ideas for stuff to do and getting a map definitely made it a better weekend than the first one.

We arrived on Friday night. Getting there was a little bit of fun. There was a guy at the ticket office who was a complete asshole. They have this weird automatic system for people waiting in line but the sign aren't clear about how it works. He came by and basically treated everyone in line like a bunch of children instead of just saying "Yeah, the sign doesn't say it, but you need to stand behind this line for the system to work". Anyway, he was a complete asshole to Shane (who speaks a little bit of French, but not enough to always communicate fully) and basically got him thinking there was a strike and then sent him away. So when I got there we went to buy tickets stopping in Nancy. The woman looked at us like we were a bunch of morons and said "The strike was yesterday". Ahhh, civil servants. Anyway, Friday night was pretty uneventful. We checked into the hotel (which turned out to have a double bed and one single instead of three singles... oh well), got a late dinner, and went to bed.

Van Gogh's House: The highlight of the trip.

We came around a corner near Sacré Coeur to this view. The weird-looking building straight ahead in the distance is the Centre Pompidou.

Saturday started early. Our hotel was in Montmartre, so we started by walking around the area. We saw Van Gogh's house, which was pretty unimpressive, especially given that it was more of a flat than a house, it actually belonged to his brother, he only lived there for two years, and all we saw was a plaque on the building. The next stop was the Moulin de la Galette, site of what's probably Renoir's most famous painting. I think the area's changed a lot since then, but being at the site of such a famous painting was pretty cool. We walked through Place du Tertre, ignored all the hawkers, and turned the corner to an awesome view of Paris spread out below us. A block later and we were at Sacre-Coeur, which is a pretty neat church with an awesome view. After a while checking out the view and the church, we took the little train down the hill (just because we could with our metro passes), and walked down through all the tourist traps to the main drag. Kirsten, who absolutely relishes being a tourist, bought herself two Eiffel Tower statues. We walked along the Montmartre main drag (which changes names constantly like all French streets), checked out Place Pigalle and all the sex shops along the way (from the outside, I swear!) and hopped on the Metro.

Marshal Foch's Tomb

Our first stop was Les Invalides, home to a veteran's hospital, Napoleon's tomb, and a bunch of military museums. I actually walked to Les Invalides while waiting for the train at the Gare de Montparnasse last weekend, not realizing that it was such a famous site. I think it was closed then. Anyway, we discovered what an awesome investment our 18 euro museum day pass was, because we skipped the line and went right into Napoleon's tomb. The tomb was pretty awe-inspiring. There were also a bunch of side chapels for different heroes of the Republic. My favorite was that of Marshal Foch, commander of the Allied armies in World War I. Apparently poppies are a symbol of rememberance for WWI in France as in Canada, because he had a wreath of poppies at the foot of his tomb. It turns out at least some Americans aren't aware of In Flanders Fields. Anyway, we apparently missed an awesome WWI museum at Les Invalides, but that's life.

The next stop was the Rodin museum, which is just down the street from Les Invalides. It's definitely worth a visit, especially if you have a museum pass. It was neat because it had a whole bunch of famous Rodin statues in a garden setting, on the same grounds where he lived when he created many of them. At the Musee d'Orsay they have the plaster moulds used to cast a lot of the bronze statues in the Rodin museum, so it was neat to get to see the statues in both forms. The Thinker, the Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais, Balzac, and a whole bunch of other ones were there.

After Rodin, we walked over to the Musée d'Orsay, with a quick pit stop along the way for lunch. On the way, we walked by Hôtel Matignon which is the official residence of the Prime Minister of France. The Musée d'Orsay was cool: tons and tons of impressionist paintings. Once again, the museum pass saved us something like a half hour of waiting in line. I think we spent over 3 hours at the museum. We even ran into some other people from GTL. The only bad thing about the museum was that it was absolutely clogged with Americans.

After Orsay, we did a sort of quick walking tour of downtown Paris. We walked to the Conciergerie (former French court, used as a prison during the Revolution most famously to hold Marie Antoinnette). Then we went next door to the Sainte Chappelle which has the neatest interior of any church I've seen so far this summer. After that we walked to Notre Dame and decided not to wait for an hour to get into the towers or 20-30 minutes to get into the church.

Box

The next big stop was the Centre Pampidou, a super cool modern art museum. Unfortunately, the fifth floor was closed, so we didn't get to see much early 20th century art (like Picasso). The fourth floor had some pretty cool comtemporary stuff. I really liked the sculpture at the entrance called "Box" which looked nothing like a box. There was also a cool room that you looked into with tinted windows that looked different depending on how far and from which angle you looked at it.

The statues weren't the only ones getting it on.

After Pompidou, we went to a nearby restaurant in the Marais neighbourhood, where I once again discovered that I know almost nothing about food in French. I know the names of the basic meats and some of the vegetables, but beyond that I'm almost completely useless. It's really strange that I speak French so well but am so hopeless in French restaurants. We spent a while at the restaurant and then hopped onto the metro (for only the second time that day) and went to the Jardin du Luxembourg (the Luxembourg garden). The Luxembourg garden is apparently the place where French people go to enjoy chilling on the lawn, probably because they don't have lawns of their own. There were some snazzy statues donated by Catherine de Medici, including one that we were told at our GTL seminar was a statue of Zeus watching "two lovers getting it on". There were chair conveniently placed near the fountain for people who wanted to immitate the statue. It being France, there was naturally a couple getting in on in one of the chairs.

After hanging out in the garden for a bit, we headed off in a whirlwind tour of Paris. We rushed over to the Jardin des Tuileries on the metro, dashed through the gardens to the looted Egyptian Obelisk at Place de la Concorde, looked at the Eiffel Tower in the distance, hopped back onto the metro to the Champ des Mars (which, by the way, looks like an excellent place to have a picnic... nice lush green lawn with a great view of the Eiffel Tower) arriving just in time to see the Eiffel Tower's hourly sparkling at night. Then we dashed over to another metro station and went to the Arc de Triomphe, trying to get there before 10:30 pm so that we could use our museum passes to climb to the top for free. Unfortunately, we failed, so we ended up just checking out the bottom. After that, we walked along the Champs Elysées, shuddering at the inflated prices at the cafés along the way. We also got to check out their preparations for the 2012 Olympic bids. They'd closed down the Champs and were installing facilities for a mini-Olympics type thing. When we got to the end of the touristy part of the Champs, we got back on the Metro and headed back to Montmartre.

When we got back to Montmartre, we set out along the main drag again to check out the Moulin Rouge at night, try to find a late night crêperie (it was almost 1 AM by this time), and just look at the night-life in general. The Moulin Rouge looked much cooler at night, the only places that were selling crêpes looked really sketchy, and I didn't see any of the working girls the guidebook claimed we would see. We ended up grabbing pastries from a 24hr Viennoisserie and heading back to our hotel. By that time it was nearly 2 AM, which meant we had been touring around Paris for 17 hours straight.

One of the fountains we didn't get to see working.

On Sunday, we were originally going to go see Versailles, go back into Paris to check out the catacombs, and then head back to Metz. That was the plan anyway. The first wrinkle was that the Gare de l'Est (from which the train to Metz leaves) doesn't have luggage lockers. So we had to go to the Gare du Nord to put our luggage away. Then there was a long line to get RER tickets. Then we just barely missed the train to Versailles and had to wait a half hour for the next one. Once we got to Versailles, the lines were super long (the first Sunday of every month is free), so we just went around back to the gardens. They jack up the prices for the gardens on the weekends because they run the fountains, which are supposed to be pretty impressive. We missed the first showing and we couldn't stay late enough for the second showing, so we ended up walking around the gardens a bit and then chilling near the fake canal Louis XIV created for his village of imported Venetian gondoliers.

That was pretty much everything. The last bit of excitement was Shane getting fined 8 euros for using the Blue discount during the White period on the train back to Metz.

I went to Spain to meet my friend Melissa from Atlanta. We spent two days in San Sebastian. It was fun... mostly. Definitely an adventure.

I ran into Jessica (a French student, even though she has an American name) on the way to the train station. It turns out she's the first person from Metz (the first Messin) I've met at Supélec. I'll have to see if she's going to be around for the summer because most of the French students are leaving in a week or two. In fact, I think I hear one of their farewall parties through my window...

I had a bunch of time to kill, so I wandered around Montparnasse. There was a cool looking military history museum, but I was closed. I had my first French crêpes, which were kind of interesting. I think you can get literally anything on your crêpes. The crêperie had much better Sangrias than the ones in Spain...

From Paris, I caught a TGV night train to Irun. The TGV night trains Irun, in a word, suck. The seats don't even recline, and I'm incapable of sleeping while sitting up. Add to that the loud French people on my car, the dude with the headphones playing way too loud, and the fact that I didn't know there's apparently a lightswitch on each car (so I didn't try to turn the lights off), and I probably got 3 hours of sleep all night. The train ride from Irun to San Sebastian was nice and painless, especially given that there's some local train bahn.de hasn't heard of that runs every 20 minutes or so.

When I got to San Sebastian, I found out Melissa had only been able to get a two person hostel room for her and her friend, so we spent two hours trekking around San Sebastian looking for a bed for me. It turns out there was some kind of convention in town, so I ended up paying 120 euros for the last bed in a pretty nice hotel. Ouch. Good thing I worked non-stop for a month before coming to France. The next night we were able to get a triple room at a pensione. If you're ever in San Sebastián, Pensione Larrea is comfy, clean, comes with bed linens and towels, and the woman who runs it is super duper nice.

San Sebastián is seriously into tapas. Apparently in most other parts of Spain, the bars only have them during certain times of the day. In San Sebastián, they're pretty much in the bars constantly, and they're all pretty good. The bars all also have a local white wine called Txacoli (it's Basque, pronounced chacoli). It's a little bit fizzy, and it's apparently essential that it be poured from as high as possible, because all the bartenders did that. Before I learned its name, it was easy to ask for it by just miming a pouring motion from the top of my reach.

So we ended up not doing much of anything, because the weather was pretty crappy (cold and wet) which ruled out the beach. On Saturday, after getting a bunch of tapas and some Txacoli, we hiked up a hill in the town to see and ruined castle and a giant Jesus statue. The view was pretty nice: the ocean on one side, the city nestled between lush green hills and the beach on the other side.

On Sunday, there was a fair representing all the different regions of Spain, with good and fine from each. I sampled the wine of Rioja (a region that apparently includes San Sebastián), which is some seriously good stuff: I brought a bottle back with me. I also got some wine from Extremadura that I wish I'd gotten the name of. Finally, I tried some Manzanilla, which is a kind of Sherry from Andalucia. For some reason it at first gave me the impression of being sweet, even though it was very dry. It was some pretty good stuff too.

I had serious problems with Spanish. I couldn't stop myself from sayingOui instead of Si. Plus, every time I would search for a word in Spanish, I'd usually come up with an Italian one instead. And, I would always try to pronounce Spanish words in Italian. In spite of that, I could understand a surprising amount of spoken Spanish (like maybe 1 word in 4, but usually those were the key ones), and even more written Spanish.

Getting back to Metz today was an adventure. I needed to get to Hendaye (Hendaia to the Spanish) at 10:30 am. Unfortunately, I got the time of the train wrong (it left at 7:45, not 8:45). So, I hopped onto a train to Irun, hoping I'd figure stuff out from there (no one in the train station in San Sebastián spoke English or French, so I could only do the most simple of communication). The people in Irun did speak French, but they had heavy Spanish accents and there was a jackhammer going full-tilt in the station. So, I ended up getting help from a Brazilian migrant worker of all people, who showed me where to get the Topo, a metro that went from downtown Irun to the train station in Hendaye. Good times.

The TGV back to to Paris was cool. TGVs, in case you were wondering, are fast. It's hard to realize because the ride is much smoother than with trains like the EuroCity. But when you see how fast you're passing cars on the highway, it really sinks in.

Being me, I started my day by running around doing chores I should have done a week ago. One of them involved going to CVS to pick up a prescription. The lady at the counter of course butchered my name and called me "Jack-ques". I corrected her and said "No, it's 'Jacques'".

"Oh," she replied brighly, "you shortened it!"

"No, that's the way it's spelled," I said, leaving what I really thought unsaid. And then I thought, "that's the last time I'll have to deal with that bullshit for three months because at the very least people in France will be able to say my name." And so, that brings me to France... almost. First, the trip.

The lady at the checkin counter in Atlanta insisted on calling Strasbourg "Strasenburger". I have no idea why.

I talked to a retired woman in the departure lounge who was doing an "elder hostel tour" of England and France. She told me that this was her first time going to France because "The French can be so...". She seemed at a loss for good word, so I suggested "French". She happily agreed, so I explained to her my theory that acting less American would probably go a long way toward making the French act less French. Of course, that's a bit harder when you don't speak any French.

There was a moment of panic on the flight when I woke up and couldn't find my glasses. I fumbled around trying to figure out how to turn on the light, until finally the lesbians in the row behind me took pity and showed me the button carefully hidden on the armrest. OK, it wasn't really hidden, but I was half blind. Even with the light, I couldn't turn them up, so I had to go to the flight attendant, who exclaimed "Ah, c'est vous qui les avez perdus!" Phew... the idea of doing a connection and then finding a train and getting to Metz without my glasses had me seriously panicking.

This trip was all about timing. I had pretty much 5 minutes to spare in my connection from Paris to Strasenburger. I arrived at the Strasbourg train station, got my pass validated, and realized the next train left for Metz in 3 minutes. I didn't mind having to hustle because it meant not having to wait.

The train ride was pretty boring. Guess I didn't miss much by only taking one train ride in the first 22 years of my life. The iPod was the smartest purchase I made for this trip (well, second behind the Eurail pass, but that was a no-brainer). What with the music and the noise-cancelling headphones, those train rides go by twice as fast.

So I've met three people in my residence so far, and none of them is really from France. One of them's from Austria. He speaks fluent German, French and English and is working on picking up some kind of Chinese. My suitemate is really French I guess (his parents were native-born, but his grandparents were from India). I have a feeling that having non-native-born grandparents still makes you somewhat of a foreigner here. The last one is my "mairenne". I think she said she's from Morocco. Or maybe she just has a Moroccan name and is from France.

One of the French guys was amazed that you would have to pay fees to go to a public university. Ahh, the French and their socialist ways.