Week 2: France, C'est Sketch

Okay at this rate I know I wont be able to finish up my trip for possibly a few years but I need to at least do one more week before I quit and move on to other stuff.

I took the chunnel train from England to Paris. It was a short trip and on those high speed trains you don't really feel much at all. I was a little disappointed when I got into Paris to find that no one was there to stamp my passport. There was barely any customs officials at all since this was inner EU travel. Once in Paris I found my way over to the metro station where I was stopped by some woman Dutch woman who pleaded to take a picture of my t shirt. Somewhere in the Netherlands is a computer with a picture of my torso. Anyways, I navigated my way around the train system to the St. Garmain Des Pres station, and I busted out some poor rusty ass French to ask people how to find my way to Rue De Sein where Evan's apartment was. This is the part of the trip when I met up with my traveling companions for the next few weeks. This motley crew consists of: Ethan Emerson "Fanny pack connoisseur," Sean "Fashion" Rosen, Evan "West coast soccer ball representative for RABRO" Span, Alex Paulos "Cartography expert," and Josh "Late night grub" Yousem.

I arrived to find the apartment in good form, but the group was already set into a deep stupor of cabin fever. They had made it off a 10+ hour flight, to discover that their baggage had been left behind at their LON to CDG connection. They had been waiting for their baggage to be delivered and were set in a thick madness, catalized by French wine, cheese, and jetlag. Their eyes were beady and they were rambling incoherent nonsense. Nonetheless, it was bastille day and shenanigans were due to go down!

That night we grabbed a few bottles of wine and left off to a bridge 5 minutes away from the apartment which connected us to the Louvre. We watched the tail end of some fireworks while finding some space to sit down in the swarm of people on the bridge. As the night progressed the people thinned out a bit and some of our group let back to the apartment. That was when we made a new friend. A man came up to us and told us something like he was Dutch, then Turkish, then some other country. He told us he did not really speak French or English, but told us that he was "hashish." Some other dude came over they started spouting off in a flurry of Arabic and then switched to French. Then the guy started screaming at him and then left. "Hashish" then settled back down next to us and chilled for a bit until some tattered possible crack whore came by and sat down next to him they talked for a bit and his other friends came around to our little circle. This is we started to feel a bit sketched and left gracefully after offering up the rest of the wine and whiskey we had with us to some strangers with cups that came up to us. Other highlight Josh bought a beer off a man on the street that tasted like it had been dragged out of the sea.

The next few days included walking the city, the Louvre ( which I think had a very unimpressive collection but the building itself was awesome ), the Musee D'orsey ( which had both awesome building and one of the best collections I have seen in a museum ), Paulos' cousin studying in Paris set up a party in the apartment with kids from her trip, sketch extra traveling companions, Montmartre, Sacre Ceour, Pigalle, Ethan and I hit up the Catacombs, the arch de triumph, Notredam, a cemetery which had the corpses of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Gay Le Sac, and a lot of other places.

There was also a meet up with French friends Cedric and Stephan. It was good to see those guys since it has been about a year since I have last seen and talked with them. They left us off at the Eiffel Tower which gave us a great view of the city all lit up at night. It was very romantic being there with 5 other guys.... Not exactly, but it was still fun going around Paris with friends. The food and wine was good, it was nice in the apartment, the guys finally got their bags, and it was time to get on the train and to take off for Amsterdam. In my next post more on Amsterdam, and possibly a post in between to discuss my recent trip to Oakland to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bubb Rubb.

Eurotrip: Week 1, Bad teeth and screeching accents

Well, well, well, I think I should get these posts rolling out before I hit the statutory limit of time when I can justify not writing about this trip anymore. Here's a little intro to my trip. It started weeks ago on July 7th and finished up august 14th. A fairly decent chunk of time. It all began and ended at Heathrow airport. I did not get arrested or banned for life from anywhere, and I never got robbed of anything except for about 12 euros from a club in Barcelona (but more on that later).

The trip started for me in England, which I flew to by myself. The flight was uneventful, and I easily enough found my way to the tube (London metro). When I got on the tube I was reminded of a fact that I would get reacquainted with fast. For some reason people think I know the answer to questions which I have in reality have no idea. My theory is that it has something to do with me being a tall, white, male which coupled with peoples built in stereotypes leads them to believe that I must know everything about everywhere I am. When I was younger I used to slightly abuse this, when people would ask for directions to places I had never been to before I might point them in a random direction and make up a little story so complicated they would surely have to stop some other tall white guy to get new directions. Anyways I was stopped three times right off the plane with people asking me how to use the subway machine, asking me for directions in a city I've never been and had previously barely scanned a map of, or asked me how to transfer on the subway. To be fair one of the girls was khazikstani, and the other one some miscellaneous ethnicity, so they probably could not tell an American accent from a British one. The third American guy was just an ass. Thank god, I didn't have a clip board or headset though, that raises the pseudo official appearance a hundred times higher.

Anyways, I made it to Golder Greens. It is a nice area of North London, where my distant relatives live with whom I stayed. To be honest I have no idea how I am related to these people. I think they have something to do with my grandmothers cousin or something but who really knows. The other thing was I had not seen these people since I was like 11 years old. Oddly enough though, they weren't even going to be there in their house until the last night I was there. Apparently the wifes whole family flew to some resort in Spain for some big anniversary or something. That meant that the Hungarian slave (maid) was to pick me up from the trainstation. I quickly got to their house and was given my own bedroom and bathroom on the third floor. I met the other Hungarian house keeper and learned the score. Basically she could speak English the other one who picked me up as I had already learned from the car ride basically couldn't but was all smiles so it didn't matter. The English speaker spoke for both but didn't do much work and was fairly surly. Whatever. I dropped my bags off and was ready to explore London. I called Sam, my ex roommate from D.C. who happened to be staying with his Uncle in posh central London, and then went off to meet him at Holborn.

This night pretty much consisted of walking the city for a hours as Sam played tour guide and buying liter beers from the supermarket, where I got my first indication of how much the pound of England was planning on forcing me on my hands and knees and dragging me on a leash while barking like a dog. Basically it is about double the dollar while stuff costs the same as if it were dollars not pounds being requested.

This post is getting out of control long so I will scan through some of the highlights of England. Highlight one, bars serve beers in Pints so you feel like you feel like a lightweight after getting tipsy on three beers. Watching the world cut finals with Sam near the London School of Economics with all the French and Italian students. The Italians went nuts and there was one guy who looked like he was recreating a speech given by Mussolini while cheering for Italy. My ears were actually ringing from all the yelling. I saw a murder trial at the criminal courts. Lots of wigs and pompous stodgy old barrister, classic Britain. Shakespeare at the Globe theater. Anthony and Cleopatra was fantastic even if I did get the chump standing room seats. Saw some magna carta and beatles original lyrics and notes at the British library. Went to the Bank of England museum, organ performance in westminster abbey, the Churchill bunker, Indian food in Bricklane, the portrait museum, the Imperial war museum, city of London museum, Science museum, Buckingham palace, and I pretty much walked the entire original city and much of London south of the Thames. Plus when my family got back they took me to Windsor to see the Castle and treated me to a bunch of awesome meals. Plus I found out that creepily one of the hungarian maids refers to them as Mom and Dad. There was also the British museum which is one of the most incredible museums I have ever been too. They pretty much just took everything cool from Egypt and Greece and preserve it really well.

One last thing to talk about before closing this ridiculously long post about the first week of my trip. British people after listening to them for a week sound terrible. I don't know how the rumor they sound refined got started because they all sound like a bunch of harpies being rattled. Its weird though I still dug British chicks a lot. They all have some slightly unique aesthetic to their faces which is a bit bulgdy in the eyes, there still was a huge proportion of hot girls. I think it is because they are all curvy yet not thick or fat like a curvy Americans tend to be. I have a theory that living on an island made the British people all slightly in bred and weird looking. This made for many a funny person on the street which I tried to get pictures of as often as possible. Well I am going to stop this post here as it is way too long for only the first week of my trip. Oh also British people are some of the biggest drunks I have ever seen. The japanese did drink a lot but the British business men would get hammered during the day and then go back to work! They would get as drunk or more drunk as the japanese salary men too but they would drink many more beers to get there. Next installment will cover Paris, and more people stopping me on the street asking me for directions.

No liquids on the plane and no snakes on the plane.

So after the terror alert level in England went down from "Critical" to "Severe" (I am guessing this means we are still screwed just not screwed as badly?) I was able to board my plane in Heathrow and I am back in the US. I now have the immediate task of finding a job and sending out resumes. I will post some stuff and pics about the trip but probably not today, and only a maybe on tomorrow. I have spent the day I have been back mostly sorting pictures and the job stuff so if you want to save me some trouble please just find me a decent job and then I can post an extra long entry about my Europe extravaganza...