Homeward Bound

I have literally traveled around the world this summer. It's been amazing, and I can't believe it is almost over. But, as they say, there’s no place like home. And from my limited international experience I feel like I have discovered some of the reasons why they say that. What follows is a list of things I love about the United States and reasons why I am, despite a good portion of unsatisfied wanderlust, quite glad to be going home.

1. Water. Eating lamb in New Zealand, dim sum in Hong Kong, bratwurst in Germany, and lasagna in Italy was fantastic. But having to eat all of the above with 200 ml drink that costs 3 Euro (Hong Kong and New Zealand are excluded from the expensive complaint) leaves me appreciative of the US policy of willingly refilling water glasses throughout a meal. (That reminds me: how’s the drought in the southeast going?)

2. Street signs. This is one thing that I think the US does extraordinarily well. Everywhere else seems to be in one of three schools. School 1: no street signs at all. School 2 a.k.a. European style: making the street signs as difficult to find and read as possible. Germany is exempt. School 3: having street signs but pointing them in ambiguous directions, causing me to wonder if I am on Falcon Street, crossing Falcon Street, or if Falcon Street is actually the overpass.

3. American English. I have been able to get by with almost no trouble (the notable exception being the Polish rail system) speaking only English, but I miss being able to blend in with the crowd, since even in New Zealand and Australia my accent stood out.

4. US Politics. My first presidential election as a voter!

5. US Dollars. Not that I am particularly pleased with the good old USD right now, but at least at home I don’t have to think about how much cheaper this trip would have been a year ago. (Funny note on this subject: at the exchange places in Croatia, the abbreviation for our dollar is not USD, like everywhere else, but SAD. I found this funny because right now changing dollars is sad).

6. Routine. No more giant backpack. No more maps. My own bed. School. Friends. No more constant worry about losing my passport. A kitchen all the time. My phone. Things like that. This isn’t really specific to the US but after three months of sleeping in hostels, on trains, on planes, at train stations, and at the airport, I am ready to wake up every morning in the same bed, brush my teeth at the same sink, go to school, and complain about having to do homework every night.

As soon as I get back into my routine I will probably want to head off again, but that how it always goes. I’m glad I extended my little project into an entire summer, because I feel like I have made the most of it, and spent just long enough abroad to really appreciate coming hope without beginning to under appreciate traveling. I would like to thank my backpack and various forms of public transportation for being the defining elements of my life for three months, and I intend to reward them with some time off.

The Long Haul

Step 1. Ten hours on a bus from Dubrovnik to Zagreb. When we boarded the bus and found our seats in the very front of the upper level of the bus, we rejoiced over the leg room. We soon learned that we were actually being slowly cooked by the sun streaming in from the front and side windows, a fate not suffered by anyone else on the bus since they were not in the front and had curtains for the side. It was surprisingly okay though. We both did a lot of reading.

Step 2. Nine hours on an overnight train from Zagreb to Munich. Having learned our lesson on the way to Rome, we booked beds and slept. I love trains.

Step 3. Four hours on a train from Munich to Frankfurt.

Phew. We hadn’t booked anywhere to stay in Frankfurt, but Frankfurt was obliging. Right outside the train station we found a hostel with free internet and free breakfast. One night here and then we are off to spend our final night in the airport since Kevin’s flight leaves at around 7:00. Then I have a few hours of reflection before my noon flight, which will bring me home, completing the circuit and providing me with a chance to do my laundry, which is important, because I’ve been stretching it this time around and I’m a little bit smelly.

Stairmastered

This trip has been a mixture of work, culture and vacation. Croatia was all vacation. Kevin and I spent one night in Split and four nights on the island of Hvar. There aren’t really beaches, but that doesn’t stop anybody. You just lay out your blanket on rocks and spend most of your time in the water. We spent most of our time wandering around in the sun and entertained ourselves looking for clouds (of which there are few in Croatia). Two nights in a row we saw spectacular sunsets from the rocky shore, and we got to jump off the white rocks into the ocean. Kevin got a little sunburned, but other than that it was absolutely beautiful.

You would think Kevin and I would be expert travelers after a whole summer and that our last stop, Dubrovnik, Croatia, would be a breeze. Except that there are no breezes in Croatia. It’s wonderfully, beautifully, oppressively hot there all the time.

Our hostel was right near the bus station, which would have been great except that a nice Croatian man picked us up at the bus station and drove us ten minutes in the wrong direction, so we had to walk across town to get there anyway. Let me explain. We got off the bus to see a friendly looking man holding a sign that said, “Kevin Kiley.” When he saw us eyeing him he thanked us for booking at his boarding house, helped us load our bags into the car, and brought us there. It turns out that this man was actually the owner of a hostel we had booked but then canceled around a month ago, and from some sort of miscommunication between Hostelworld.com, him, and us, he hadn’t heard about the change of plans. So we apologized, ate some pizza at a nearby restaurant, loaded our backpacks on our backs, and followed the directions for our actual hostel across town to “Kunska.” On the map, Kunska looks like a street. In person, it looks more like a staircase. By the time we had made it up the 329 individual stairs (to put this into perspective, your average staircase has around 12) we both just collapsed on the beds and fell asleep for two hours.

The next couple of days were pretty care-free, but not stair free. The old town in Dubrovnik is one of the only walled cities which still has its entire wall, and the coolest/only touristy thing to do there is walk around the city on the wall, so we did, and it was pretty cool. We spent the rest of the day eating, swimming, and looking for clouds (still none).

The next day we decided that the stairs to our hostel just weren’t enough for us, so we hiked up the hill outside the city to get some good pictures of it from the top. For the first time in Croatia, there were clouds! I think I counted three. But for the few blissful minutes that they covered the sun I wanted to run up the hill, embrace the clouds, and hug the water out of them. The pictures were magnificent. So were the drinks and ice cream we bought when we reached the bottom again.

We left early the next day for the trek to Frankfurt and its airport.

Let's take a short cut (and write a very long blog entry about it)

If you have a map of Europe handy, locate Munich. Now find Split, Croatia. Here’s the game: pretend that you are in Munich, and that you have six days before you need to be in Split. What do you do?

No matter what you answered to that, it won’t be what Kevin and I ended up doing. We wanted to go hiking since Zakopane had rained us out of spending much time outdoors while we were there. And I wanted to go to Italy, because it’s Italy and I love Italy, since if you ignore the Adriatic it’s kind of on the way. So we made this plan:

July 21. Take an early train from Munich to Innsbruck and go hiking a little that day.

July 22. Hiking in Innsbruck.

July 23. Hiking in Innsbruck again, and then an overnight train to Rome.

July 24. Do as the Romans do!

July 25. Keeping doing as the Romans do!

July 26. 6:00 am train to Ancona, 11:00 ferry to Split.

So you have probably already guessed that this plan was tweaked a little, since generally when I mention a plan it’s only to make it easier for me to explain the deviations. Everything went okay for a while though. The train to Innsbruck was easy, and hiking was nice. It rained, but it turns out that this time it wasn’t personal-Innsbruck is just like that. It is completely cloudy and rainy until about 12:00, when it becomes partly cloudy and rainy, then at 2:00 it becomes partly cloudy and sunny, and by 4:00 it’s actually pretty nice. But I still get to say that Kevin and I set aside six days of our European tour for hiking and that it rained on every one of them. Other than the hiking, Innsbruck was pretty uneventful. We saw the world-famous tourist-drawing Golden roof, which isn’t even a whole roof but a pretty little protrusion from a pretty normal looking building. Nevertheless, every time we went to the square there were hoards of people taking pictures of it. We took pictures of it too.

Then we took the overnight train to Rome. This was my idea, and I take the blame for it. I can sleep pretty much anywhere and Kevin said he was up for trying it, so we booked a compartment instead of a sleeping car. They came in asking for our tickets every hour or two, our compartment was full of people most of the time, and the Italian guys who weren’t in seats but just hanging out in the hallway had turned it into an impromptu concert hall and spent most of the ride singing. At one point two girls came into the compartment, sat in the vacant middle seats on either side. One of the girls put her head in Kevin’s lap and her feet in another guy’s foot space and fell sound asleep. I was jealous, not really that she had her head in Kevin’s lap (though if anyone had the right to utilize Kevin’s lap as a pillow, I would like to think it was me) but more that she was fast asleep. I felt slightly vindicated when the next time an officer asked for our tickets, he looked at their tickets and started saying, “Verona? È passato. È passato.” The girls looked confused, so I asked if they spoke English. When the said yes, I told them they had missed their stop. I should have felt sorry for them, but I was tired and grumpy and kind of enjoyed it. I feel kind of guilty about that, hence the public confession.

We arrived in Rome exhausted, but after a failed attempt to nap in a park we did Roman things anyway. The Coliseum, Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, Trevi fountain, the works. The next day we went to the Vatican and checked out St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel and the gazillions of works of art they have stored up in there. I’ve been once before but I still think it’s ironic that the most famous and ostentatious display of wealth in the world is in a Church state. I love ancient Roman history even though I don’t know much about it (the unavoidable result of seven years of Latin) as well as how every inch of Rome looks like it was crafted by a master artist (most of it was). But I can’t say it was my favorite part of Italy. That prize goes to the great, the beautiful, the delicious world of…

ITALIAN FOOD! Kevin and I decided that we weren’t going to eat on the cheap in Italy since we were only there for two days. We ate out and had lasagna and carbonara and Bolognese and pizza and gelato and it was wonderful. My stomach may never be as happy as it was then.

So we woke up absurdly early and caught our 6:00 am train to Ancona. Somehow we were chatting about what we would do if we missed the ferry and ended up deciding that we didn’t care. We had these rail passes and we might as well just use them to get to Croatia rather than pay 60 Euro each to ride the ferry. So when we got to the Italian port city, we didn’t even leave the train station. We just caught the next train to Venice, arriving mid-day.

Venice is an awesome city for a half-day stop. We had our last gelato in Italy, went and saw the square with all the pigeons, waved at some gondolas, and were charmed by all the little streets and bridges. What made it so great was that it was a completely spontaneous adventure. A few hours earlier we weren’t even planning on passing through.

From there we jumped on the overnight train to Zagreb, Croatia. Having learned our lesson, this time we booked couchettes and slept until our 5:00 am arrival in Zagreb. We couldn’t get on the early train to Split, so we waited at the train station for the 11:00. What’s nice about traveling with someone is that you have someone to hang out with during six hour waits at a train station, which can be tedious if you are by yourself. I am not a great traveling companion. I fell asleep immediately and woke up at 10:30, just in time for our next train. Sorry, Kevin.

If you still have your map of Europe out, you can see how out of the way Rome was, and how far we had to travel to go up and around the Adriatic instead of over it. But it was worth it.

Germany in a nutshell

Since it’s been a while since I’ve written here, I’m superblogging now and what follows is an abridged version of our adventures in Germany. If you feel cheated check our Kevin’s blog.

After touring around Poland for ten days, Kevin and I met up with Ola (my host sister from last summer) and Marta and Justyna (two of my students) at Warszawa Centralna, where all five of us caught a train to Berlin for a week. We were in Berlin for a whole week, which was awesome because there is so much to do and see and learn in Berlin. My favorite activities were the tour we did on the first day, which gave a great overview of the sights and history, and climbing the Reichstag dome. Going into the dome was free, since it’s a government building, and the last entry is at 10:00 pm. We got in line at around 9:15 even though it didn’t look promising. At around 9:45 we were at the sign that says “From here it will take you about 30 minutes.” But we just made it in the last round, and it was awesome. The last light died when we were up there, so we got to see everything by night. We spent nearly two hours taking tons and tons of pictures, which are really the only way to explain how cool it was.

From Berlin, Ola and Marta and Justyna headed home and Kevin and I moved onto Munich for a few days. Munich is a cool city, but I wasn’t as taken with it as I was with Berlin. But the Glockenspiel was about the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life. Just kidding. Apparently it’s been voted one of the 10 most underwhelming sights in Europe, and for good reason. It did provide lots of good jokes though.

We made some Swiss friends one night, and what started as them trying to convince us that Swiss beer is the best in the world (ironic that they were doing this in Munich) ended up with Kevin and I waking up the next morning with considerably less zeal than usual. This was the beginning of the most bizarre day of the trip.

It was Munich’s 800^th or 850^th anniversary or something that weekend, so the city was putting on a little celebration. We walked out of our hostel to find that tons of people were dressed in traditional Bavarian garb: lederhosen for the men and those milkmaid dresses over white blouses for the women. Strange. I didn’t know that they still dressed like that. We went in search of food and couldn’t take ten stapes without running into a polka-playing quartet and people doing elaborate choreographed dances (still in the traditional garb). There was one performance of two guys with long whips who were cracking them in time and creating an impressive but scary kind of music. As we munched on some stellar bratwurst, we were pushed off the road by a procession of two knights on horseback surrounded by a marching band. I hope that Munich is like this every Sunday. The final straw in bizarre wanderings came as we wandered into a little square. Wandering in opposite us was an absurdly tall man (on stilts), wearing a purple silk outfit whistling and strolling along like this was normal. When he noticed us taking pictures I got to hold his hand. Then he whistled himself away. Weird.

You'll never guess what I lost...

My sleeping bag! After all the effort I went through in Melbourne to keep it with me, you would think that I would be more careful with it. And for a while I was more careful. At the hostel in Wroclaw I lovingly strapped it onto the outside of my backpack before Kevin and I set out for the train station. Then I spent some quality time with it in Wroclaw Glowny waiting for the train to Warsaw. Then when my backpack didn't fit onto the luggage rack because the sleeping bag stuck up too far I gently unstrapped it and placed on the rack as well. It seemed happy there and wasn't having too much trouble making friends with the other bags, so when our train arrived in Warsaw that's where I left it. I remembered just in time to run back to the platform and see the train rolling away. Farewell little red sleeping bag! It was fun while it lasted.

Since we are on the subject of trains in Poland, I have to say that things could have gone better. First of all, Poland doesn't participate in the EuRail Pass, but we didn't figure this out until Kevin and his pass were already in Poland. This meant lots of buying train tickets in a country where most people don't speak much English. In one instance I had to buy my ticket twice. I asked for a ticket on the next train to Krakow, took the ticket I was given, and got on the next train for Krakow. When the official came by and looked at my ticket, he informed me that my ticket was for a later train (in Polish, so it took a while for me to understand what was going on) and that I would have to buy another one for this train. I tried to explain what had happened (in Polish, so I'm not sure if he ever understood what was going on) but he wouldn't budge and I didn't really have a choice so I bought another ticket. Kevin and I couldn't get student discounts because we aren't students in Poland. None of our experiences with the Polish rail system were easy, so traveling to Germany, the land of efficiency and punctuality, has been a welcome change. I love Poland and have ever since I lived there last summer, but the rail system could use an update (and hopefully will before Poland hosts the 2012 Euro Cup).

Back in Poland!

From Istanbul I flew into Warsaw, where I was met by Ola, my host sister from living in Poland last summer, and her mom, Anita. When I was planning my summer and decided to do the last part of my project in Berlin, it seemed ridiculous to be so close and not see them, so I worked in a four day visit to Makow. We spent a day in Warsaw and then a few days in Makow just having a good time, and I got to meet this year's Makow WorldTeach volunteer, who seems great. After around 7 weeks of traveling on my own (except for the week with Courtney in New Zealand), it was fun to have someone to talk to who actually knew me. One thing I've loved about this summer has been meeting all sorts of people and the completely new feeling that I can be fairly certain I will never see any of them again, but it's also nice to be reminded that I have actual friends too.

On that note, my plan for the rest of my summer has changed a little. (This bit is for Mom, who worries when I don't update my blog and wants to know where I am, and Dad, who keeps asking me for an itinerary which I have been unable to provide because I don't really have one). I met up with Kevin in Krakow on July 1, and we're traveling around Poland until the 10th. Then we are spending a week in Berlin with Ola, Marta, and Justyna, who are friends from Poland last summer. Then we have four more days in Germany (Hannover and Munich), and the next firm plan after that is going to Croatia on the 26th, spending a few days in Split and Hvar before heading to Dubrovnik on the 31st. We'll meet up with Alex (a friend from UNC) and Eleanor (from SPS) there, and head back to the states on August 7th. That leaves July 20th-25th with no plan, but we're thinking either hiking in the Austrian Alps or doing a quick trip in Italy (clearly there are no bad options here). Phew. That's all I've got so far. I'll have a more fun entry soon, I promise.