America the Beautiful

Do not get me wrong. I love Europe. I am having the time of life and am loving absolutely every second. I am not trying to brag, but I am. Just to bring me down from cloud nine, let's list the things that I miss about America:

1. Free water. I don't think we appreciate this the way we should. They charge you for tap water here! Crazy.
2. In direct correlation with number 1, free refills. Oh how I miss my endless supply of Diet Coke.
3. A good salad or Jamba Juice. This is probably because I am eating cheap which means a lot of schnitz and brauts, but I feel like I am not getting a lot of fresh food. I would kill for a good salad bar.
4. Bathrooms. Free ones, mind you. They have them here but you are expected to pay for most of them.
5. Having to schedule everything. I miss being able just bring friends home and have it be ok.
6. The "y" key. On German keyboards, the "z" key and the "y" key are switched and you never realize how much you use the "y" key until you keep typing "Ellen Llozd" or "zours trulz". It is quite annozing.
7. Prices. Stuff is expensive here, especially when you factor in conversion. I long for my good old Target.
8. Smiling. I miss smiling. I am a smiler. When you smile here, people think that you have mental problems.
9. People minding their own business and not telling you to cover your mouth when you yawn. Yes, this happened to me.
10. English. I miss English.

So, there they are. Again, I am not complaining, just documenting the things that I miss.

Vienna So Far- A Readers Digest Version

Vienna is awesome so far! I live with a Kimberlee and a Kimberly, and oddly enough I am the only one with a nickname. Here I am known as Ayon, the Spanish pronunciation of my name. I love living with the Kims because we have so much fun together. Even when we are lost in Vienna, we are having a blast cracking ourselves up and looking like obvious outsiders. Our couple that we live with are the sweetest people ever. Helmut and Edit. Helmut was described to us as a teddy bear and that is Helmut to a tee. He is this big teddy bear who is always cracking jokes and trying to make sure that we don’t get lost again. Edit is his cute little wife who is always rushing around us to make sure we have enough Nutella (God’s greatest creation) and yogurt to keep us happy at breakfast. We get breakfast every morning and it is always this awesome spread of meat, cheese, toast, yogurt with muselee (sp?), toast with Nutella, juices, and fruit teas for my sore throat. Food here is basically amazing. Edit took us on a walk through the Vienna Woods and we ended up at this restaurant that had every meat you can imagine schnitzeled. It was awesome. School is going really good and I can already feel my German improving. The city is gorgeous and the people are very helpful. We just got back from our day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia where it downpoured all day long, but we still had a really good time. I will try to be more consistent with my blog entries now that I am caught up, so until next time, Schuss!

Day 13 - Vienna! At Last!

On this day, I awoke to Vienna. From the train station we made our way to the Institute where we would be going to school and waited for the rest of our group. At this point, nothing was more welcome to me than the thought of unloading my luggage, seeing other people besides the three I had spent the last two weeks with, and showering. We were to stay in a hotel in our first night in Vienna. Before, checking into our hotel, we all had to go on a walk around Vienna. This was all fine and dandy except Kimberlee and I had not showered in 65 hours! We know, we counted. So, after our walk we got to our hotel and showered. I can’t remember feeling so refreshed. That night we ate at this really good pizza place, paid for by the institute. I had this really strange pizza, but it was awesome. It had shrimp, some sort of leafy lettuce, and a more biting cheese than your normal mozzarella. That night, the girls in my room and I stayed up and chatted for a while.

Day 12 - Switzerland

I awoke in Switzerland and having to lug my bags off the train. We had to settle some things in Geneva, but after that was all done we got on the train to Zurich. This train ride only made me sad that we were not spending more time in Switzerland, because the countryside there is beautiful. We drove past some of the cutest little towns I have ever seen. Most of our time in Zurich was spent in the train station with our stuff but we did take turns getting out and seeing some of the city. It was really fun and I had my first brutal wake up call that I was going to be speaking German for the next 3-4 months. We eventually got on our night train to Vienna.

Day 11 - Barcelona

For this day, there is not a whole lot to say because we had a bit of drama, which I dread like the plague, and I do not really feel like delving into that again. Highlights, without going into a ton of details would be:

1) I got to see the Barcelona Football Club and I bought a jersey. It was basically awesome and I was muy triste that I didn’t
get to see a game.
2) We went to a park that Gaudi designed some pieces in and that was pretty cool.
3) I got to eat some delicious fruit in a market.

That was pretty much my last day in Barcelona. I was a tad disappointed that we did not get more in, but such is life. Unfortunately, this did carry onto the next day a bit. We took the night train to Geneva, Switzerland that night. So for the record the night before was the last time I got to shower until Vienna. The train was fun because Kimberlee and I were sharing our car with the cutest little Catalan lady. She sat and peeled her apple with her little pocket knife and laid out all of her clothes for the next day.

Day 10 - Barcelona

Barcelona started with finding our hostel. (Are you noticing theme here?) After another disastrous search that ends with us eventually getting settled we went to lunch at this really good place that Rick Steves recommends. (Rick Steves has the best travel books, in my opinion, for future travelers) After lunch we headed towards La Pedrera which is an apartment complex designed by Antoni Gaudi. He definitely has a different style which I don’t really like all that much but it is definitely something that you have to see because it is quite a sight. We rounded off the Gaudi tour by going to La Sagrada Familia, which is a church that Gaudi designed and has been in the works since the 20s. It is still not supposed to be finished for another 50 years. After the Gaudi bonanza we got some food and wandered along Las Ramblas, which is the shopping area of Barcelona, until we reached the Mediterranean. After sitting there for a while we headed back to our hostel to close another day.

Day 9 - Cordoba

I awoke the next day feeling un-flu-like but very cold-like. I toughed it out though to see the beautiful gardens of the Alcazar palace. It was worth it, even if it was sweltering hot and I sounded like a hoarse man. There is not much else to be said for this day other than we got on another train and headed to Barcelona. We had hoped that getting into the Barcelona train station at midnight, we could just chill there all night and not have to get another night at a hostel because we had to cancel our plans to be in Sevilla that night. When we found out that we were going to get kicked out at 1, we rushed to find a hotel and the closest we found was a pretty swanky place off of the station. We were not used to places with lobbies. Lobbies with chandeliers, nonetheless. The place was pretty nice but it had this really gross, weird, almost pornographic painting in our room right over the bed. If you want to see a picture let me know. So we got a pretty decent night sleep on that night.

Day 8 - Cordoba

Cordoba was next on the agenda and this meant another train ride. We got into town at about 8:30 am and started the search for yet another hostel. This one was as cute as the last and had the most amazing air conditioning ever. I actually don’t know how amazing it was but it sure was a relief in this city, because it was hot. In fact, with all this heat I was feeling not so hot. As we headed for the Mesquita (another Muslim palace) I could feel something was not right. To put it delicately, I became well acquainted with what the inside of the toilet at the palace looked like, which was not part of the tour. The coolest part was that I met a family who was picking up there twin sons who both served their missions in different parts of Spain and oddly enough grew up with my buddy, Starr. I was so glad that I was meeting people looking as hot as I am sure I did. I decided to sit out on wandering the street of Cordoba for a while and went back to the hostel. I awoke to my group telling me that we would be going to a Flamenco show that night. The Flamenco was fun and a given when in Spain. I went to bed that night hoping that I would feel better the next morning.

Day 7- Granada

Next stop was Granada, so we got up very early to catch the train and made the journey without too much hassle. After scavenge through the city to find our hostel, we arrived at the cutest little place you have ever seen. After lackluster chain hotels, this place had all the charm that a little 4-story complex could contain. When we had all settled we headed to the Alhambra, which was the palace, the Muslims had when they were in control of southern Spain. We made the long journey only to find out that the tickets to get in were sold out so we were only able to walk around the outside. I had been here on my previous trip to Spain, so I did not entirely mind but I felt bad for the others. We ended the day just right, though by having an amazing dinner where we were seated outside the restaurant along this quaint little street. Throughout dinner we were entertained by the cutest little boy who apparently could only say “Hola, Que tal?” But, in the cutest way possible. It was quite funny. We wandered a bit after dinner and got some gelato. I got Chocolate Orange and then banana. So good. We came across this street show where this group of drummers were playing and everyone was in the streets dancing. It was way fun. All together, we had an awesome day in Granada, even if we didn’t get into the Alhambra.

Day 6 - Madrid

So, on the next day in Madrid we went to the Prado and saw some awesome art, which I had already seen in my last trip to Spain, but it was still cool. Don’t get me wrong, I love art, but I would never call myself an aficionado and I was getting a little tired of the museum scene. After the Prado, we found some lunch, which ended up being a mistake because we mistook the cheap prices for a great deal as opposed to what it really was, gross, cheap, crap. We wandered a little bit after lunch and saw some cool stuff and then made our way to the Palacio Real. It was amazing. The craziest thing about these palaces is that people actually lived in these places and didn’t wander through them with velvet ropes keeping you from going through the entire room, as I was. After much time in the Palacio, we made our way to a park so that Eric could take a load off, seeing as how he was still very sick (I don’t remember if I mentioned, but Eric was sick throughout most of Paris). It was pretty fun to just chill for a while as opposed to rushing from one place to the next. Then, we did the only shopping that Kimberlee and I asked to do on the whole trip, which is not bad for two girls in Europe. I mean, we didn’t even ask to go into one store in Paris! So, the guys waited for an hour while Kimberlee and I went to H&M. Best store ever. And they are all over the place here. For dinner, we just got some snacks at a store and then headed back to the hotel.

Day 5 - Madrid

Day 5 does not have much to report. After sleeping for a grand total of about two hours and reading pretty much all of my book for the other ten hours of our train ride, we arrived in Madrid. When we got through the train station, to the Metro station, we found out that our hotel was out in the boondocks of Madrid and that it was going to take a bit of a trip to get there. We set off and after about an hour of changing metro lines and changing buses a few times and taking an overpriced taxi, we reached our glamorous hotel. We were all so tired, though, that we didn’t take any notice. After we unloaded our stuff we decided to power through the rest of the evening and then just get to bed earlier. We took our journey back to the city now more seasoned professionals and we eliminated the taxi. We found and internet café and each sent off our one email that cost 2 Euro. Then we found some random place to eat. We all got mediocre paella with mediocre drinks, mediocre table, and even worse service. This lady did not like us for some reason. Maybe some American early-twenty-somethings committed some heinous crime against her and she now takes it out on all of us, I don’t know. We walked around Madrid a bit and then started the epic journey back to our hotel in no man’s land. After a long day of lugging my bags around, I cannot think of bliss much greater than that of climbing into bed.

Day 4 - Paris

Today started off with a surprise. We were going to let ourselves sleep in and wake up at 8:30 rather than our normal 5 or 6. I am the only one in our group with an alarm clock and am in charge of waking everyone. This morning I learned that my travel alarm has to be open to make the alarm go off because I awoke to the cleaning people coming. I thought it was strange for someone to just be walking into our room and then leave, then I looked at the clock and realized it was 11:30!! Meaning we were supposed to check out an hour ago, so we basically rushed out of there and set off for the Rodin Museum. We did the obligatory poses with “The Thinker” and saw some amazing sculptures. For lunch, we bought some sandwiches at the café that was in the gardens of the museum. I found that 80% of my diet here in Europe has consisted of baguette usually with ham and chesse. The French put butter with this combination and it is awesome, I highly recommend. After lunch we headed over to the Monet museum but it was closed so we went to the Modern Art Museum but that was also closed. Word to the wise, when in Paris don’t plan on going to museums on a Tuesday because apparently they all take their day of rest on Tuesdays. Seeing as how we were not aware of this, we just walked around some more. This always ends up being my favorite thing to do in other countries because you get more of a feel for what the culture is like as opposed to what the tourism market makes it. We ended up doing our favorite thing in Europe and found somewhere to eat. Kimberlee and I went for gelato. We have both found that when food is very expensive and you have no money, apparently your stomach shrinks from lack of food. This has been pretty beneficial to us in the money department, which was root of this in the first place. Funny how things come full circle like that. This gelato shop was awesome! First of all, beautiful, beyond delicious gelato and second of all, an awesome Italian gelato shop in a gorgeous area of Paris and it is playing “Born in the USA” over the speakers. The irony was too much for Kimberlee and I so we filmed it. After we all finished our meals of sorts we started heading back to our hotel to get our bags and head back to the train station to catch our night train to Madrid. Note for future European travelers: When taking a night train just splurge for a sleeping car. It is really not worth it to try and sleep with all of the lights on and legroom that is not even adequate when sitting up. This day did end in as much bliss, but it had been pretty blissful.