Okay...so weve run into some trouble in the past few days...so we finally got a bus out of Goteborg on our way to Oslo. Unfortunately, the bus broke down halfway there so we were forced to get out and find an alternative way to Oslo to meet up with Katies cousin. We took our backpacks and started walking along the road, with our thumbs out, trying to hitchhike a ride. After about an hour, a big van with some sketchy looking boys that were clearly on some sort of drugs picked us up. We didnt want to get in but we were completely stranded, so we did. Boy, did this turn out to be a mistake. They started smoking something that we think was crack, and they asked us if we wanted to smoke...we were really scared what would happen if we said no so we reluctantly smoked this mysterious white powder. We were so high that we didnt even know each others names or where we were. Once we were in Norway, we got pulled over and were taken out of the car. This is where we got arrested by the Norwegian police. We couldnt understand what they were saying, so they took us to the police station where we had to stay for a few hours. They realized they had no case on us since we didnt even know the kids in the car, so they said for a small sexual favor they would let us go with no paperwork or trouble. We finally found another bus to Oslo by the next morning, where we met up with Katies cousins Vivian and Stine....
Hello Pam! Glad you are reading our blog. This is what you get for snooping.
Of course, none of this happened. But our lovely friends Jess and Carrie decided to inform Katies brother about our blog, who, when innocently reading of our adventures, was intercepted by Pam (Katies mother) who took it upon herself to read the entire thing. So mom, this was for you! DONT BE A SNOOP!
We actually got to oslo with no problems, had a great day yesterday and are now in Kristiansand in the south visiting the rest of Katies family. We will update you all on what we have actually been doing later because we are about to go watch the European Cup finale....GO SPAIN!!
Love, us
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Bernard is on the loose!
So, this fantastic water park was called Tropical Islands and it was very very fun. A free tour bus took us from the train station to the park and we were apprehensive as we approached because we saw no cars in the gigantic parking lot. We thought that it was not going to be as nice as described in the train magazine and got worried. However, once we entered the biodome if you will, it was like entering a magical tropical world! There were three huge water slides that we took full advantage of, three huge pools with hottubs, bubbles and jets, waterfalls and a lazy river. We were like pigs in shit. We may have been the only adults besides the few couples we saw basically banging in the pools but we didnt care and splashed around for about 4 hours until we got pruney and decided to head back to watch the Germany vs. Turkey game.
We got back to our hostel to come across Bernard. He is a stray dog that some how made it inside the building of our hostel. Carla thought it had an owner so she just called it to come over to pet it. The door to our room was wide open and Bernard took it upon himself to run around slobbering all over our floor and decided not to leave. At first we thought this was adorable, but then our room started to smell like shit and there was slobber everywhere we did not think Bernard was cute anymore. We had to call one of the 17 year old Scottish boys to help us remove Bernard. It was in fact Hugh who named him Bernard...not sure what his real name is...but, the name Bernard has a special place in Carlas heart. Oh Beeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhrnarrrd.
We watched the game at a Irish bar called the Happy Pig and split a piggy cheeseburger. We are probably starting to resemble that little piggy right now but thats okay because were fat and happy and thoroughly enjoyed that little piggy cheeseburger with fries. Germany won in a really close game which was awesome so we went out to celebrate in the heart of Berlin. We went with two boys from our hostel one who knows Phil Han which we bonded over how sweet he is and this Canadian kid. We ended up going to this place that Katie has seen on T.V. which is this huge 5 story building with graffiti all over it and sand on the bottom floor. Here is where we came across a version of Coldplays Clocks TANGO style. It was weird. Carla danced Katie felt awkward and didnt. The trains in Berlin stop running at 1 and dont start running til 4 am so the Canadian boy had to leave for home around 6 am so he convinced us to just stay out til they started to run again. After a delightful turkish meal we went to the train station fell asleep on the floor and then got on a train in the wrong direction. Luckily, some nice German girl told us we were going to wrong way so we got on the right train and made it back around 530 am. The sun was out and we were exhausted-drunk.
We had to check out at 10 so we got up and went to go see the Berlin Wall which was pretty sweet. Then we met up with Ben and Dave in the Berlin train station and we all took a 7 hour train ride to Copenhagen and drank rum and cokes the whole way. We had a ferry ride in the middle which was very enjoyable as well. We played cards, watched some movies on Bens iPhone, read (Katie was crying because she thought her book was so funny...apparently the people around us did not share the same joy), etc. it was very nice. We arrived at 1030pm and hit the town.
Once again Pam and Roy pulled through and got us an awesome hotel right in the center of everything. We went to a bar and had cheap jager shots and beers. Then Dave steered us to a place called the Australian Bar which had sand in it too...that was cool. By the way, everywhere we go in Europe they play the song cottoneye joe and we cant figure out why they like it so much its from like 1999 and wasnt even good then? Anyway, coming out of the bar Carla tripped infront of a whole line of people who laughed at her...luckily she was not hurt. Those bastards. Afterwards we had a nice piggy meal at KFC with mashed potatos, gravy and a lot of chicken.
Today we woke up and had a nice piggy lunch at Rosie McGees that consisted of chicken nachoes and another piggy cheeseburger and fries (Just kidding) We got on the train and are now in Sweden and missed our connection to Oslo so we have to take some bus that will arrive late tonight. YAY. Sunday we are going to visit Katies family in southern Norway so that should be fun.
We will write again soon!
We got back to our hostel to come across Bernard. He is a stray dog that some how made it inside the building of our hostel. Carla thought it had an owner so she just called it to come over to pet it. The door to our room was wide open and Bernard took it upon himself to run around slobbering all over our floor and decided not to leave. At first we thought this was adorable, but then our room started to smell like shit and there was slobber everywhere we did not think Bernard was cute anymore. We had to call one of the 17 year old Scottish boys to help us remove Bernard. It was in fact Hugh who named him Bernard...not sure what his real name is...but, the name Bernard has a special place in Carlas heart. Oh Beeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhrnarrrd.
We watched the game at a Irish bar called the Happy Pig and split a piggy cheeseburger. We are probably starting to resemble that little piggy right now but thats okay because were fat and happy and thoroughly enjoyed that little piggy cheeseburger with fries. Germany won in a really close game which was awesome so we went out to celebrate in the heart of Berlin. We went with two boys from our hostel one who knows Phil Han which we bonded over how sweet he is and this Canadian kid. We ended up going to this place that Katie has seen on T.V. which is this huge 5 story building with graffiti all over it and sand on the bottom floor. Here is where we came across a version of Coldplays Clocks TANGO style. It was weird. Carla danced Katie felt awkward and didnt. The trains in Berlin stop running at 1 and dont start running til 4 am so the Canadian boy had to leave for home around 6 am so he convinced us to just stay out til they started to run again. After a delightful turkish meal we went to the train station fell asleep on the floor and then got on a train in the wrong direction. Luckily, some nice German girl told us we were going to wrong way so we got on the right train and made it back around 530 am. The sun was out and we were exhausted-drunk.
We had to check out at 10 so we got up and went to go see the Berlin Wall which was pretty sweet. Then we met up with Ben and Dave in the Berlin train station and we all took a 7 hour train ride to Copenhagen and drank rum and cokes the whole way. We had a ferry ride in the middle which was very enjoyable as well. We played cards, watched some movies on Bens iPhone, read (Katie was crying because she thought her book was so funny...apparently the people around us did not share the same joy), etc. it was very nice. We arrived at 1030pm and hit the town.
Once again Pam and Roy pulled through and got us an awesome hotel right in the center of everything. We went to a bar and had cheap jager shots and beers. Then Dave steered us to a place called the Australian Bar which had sand in it too...that was cool. By the way, everywhere we go in Europe they play the song cottoneye joe and we cant figure out why they like it so much its from like 1999 and wasnt even good then? Anyway, coming out of the bar Carla tripped infront of a whole line of people who laughed at her...luckily she was not hurt. Those bastards. Afterwards we had a nice piggy meal at KFC with mashed potatos, gravy and a lot of chicken.
Today we woke up and had a nice piggy lunch at Rosie McGees that consisted of chicken nachoes and another piggy cheeseburger and fries (Just kidding) We got on the train and are now in Sweden and missed our connection to Oslo so we have to take some bus that will arrive late tonight. YAY. Sunday we are going to visit Katies family in southern Norway so that should be fun.
We will write again soon!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Hup Holland, Gay Sex and Deutschland
Hellooooo! We are in Berlin now for a few days but we have to finish talking about our week in Amsterdam.
Friday we decided to just stay in...we went to this American bookstore and got some books, Katie read 5 Harry Potter books much to Carlas disgust, and we just chilled out before Saturday night. Saturday was the big quarterfinal match between Holland and Russia in the European Cup, so we went with Carlas cousin Jochem (pronounced a very weird way) to this place that was essentially like Bentleys for dinner and drinks while watching the game. It was a really good game and went into extra periods, but then Russia scored 2 unmatched goals and Holland lost...everyone was really pissed but we just went out with Jochem and his friends and raged. We went to all these shitty bars but they were really fun, got hamburgers out of this weird vending machine that is like a wall of heated windows, and you just put in a euro and then open this little door and take the burgers out. Genius. After that we wandered around to all these different bars, and then Jochem dropped us off at the night bus at Central station. We had taken the night bus before so we knew where to get off, but it was 4am and both of us were so tired that we decided to take a little 'nap' on our way. Well, its about a 15 min ride from Central Station to our stop, and we woke up at about 5am and realized that we were veryyyyyy far from where we were supposed to be. Katie asked the guy sitting in front of her where the Hogeweg stop was in relation to where we now were. He laughed, and said 'put it this way...if your stop is in the East Village, we're in the Bronx.' Great...Carla went back to sleep and Katie sat up for the next 45 minutes praying that the bus would eventually turn around and head back into town. The man told Katie not to get out of the bus because a. we were in a really bad area and b. it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. Finally around 545 we got back to our stop and got back home and went to bed. Our original plan was to leave Amsterdam on Sunday but we decided to just wait one more night and leave early Monday morning. So we just hung out Sunday, had a nice dinner with Carlas aunt and uncle and then left for Berlin Monday morning.
We got to Berlin around 530, and made it to our hostel by about 630. The hostelworld website said that our hostel 'couldnt be more centrally located' but that was a damn lie. We are way out the S-Bahn far from walking distance from essentially anything, so that sucks. The hostel is pretty nice though...but anyway so we get to our room and there is this Swedish kid named Thomas sitting in there with a bottle of WODKA, as they call it here. Katie was checking her email at the time, so Carla started talking to Thomas and he told her the most pathetic story ever. He was from Sweden but had lived in Australia for the past year, where he met his German girlfriend and had been dating her for 7 months. They decided to move in together in Berlin, so he went back to Sweden, got all of his stuff, said bye to his parents, and came to Germany. Much to his dismay, 3 hours before he arrived, she dumped him. Poor kid!! Carla didnt know what to say, but he seemed to have a pretty positive outlook on life despite the fact that he just got dumped. He told us 'she was just a possibility, but now she is not a possibility anymore, and i will find another possibility!' We commended him on his attitude, and told him we would hang out with him and have a fun night. In comes Hugh and Mark, two absolutely precious 17 year old boys from Scotland. We felt like we were hanging out with our little brothers, but they were really cute, and one of them reminds us of the boy from the movie Notes on a Scandal, if any of you have seen it. They convinced us to go with them to this other hostel called Wombat, which apparently had cheap drinks and a rooftop bar with good views, so we just agreed to go and check it out.
It ended up being pretty fun, there were lots of people there and we played pool and stuff, and might we add we won 2 games against teams of boys. HA. This is also where we first met STEWIE. He was a beligerent Aussie, of questionable age, who insisted on buying us shots of jaeger and forgot our names like 2000 times throughout the night, and ended up just calling Carla Claire the whole night. He was really entertaining though. The trains stop running at 1am so we just got beds at this hostel and slept there since it was really late and we didnt feel like dealing with any more night bus bullshit. We got split up since we made the reservation so late, so Katie got put in one, normal room, while Carla was stuck with a room full of dudes again. They were this group of uber-republican George Mason kids, and of course the entire room ended up in a heated political debate for awhile. Eventually, everyone 'fell asleep' except for Carla, which is when it started. She was on the top bunk, and felt the entire bed start to shake. She was very confused because the entire room was full of guys except for her, and no one else had come into the room. She then remembered that upstairs two of the George Mason boys had been awfully friendly with each other, and she was horrified to realize what was going on in the bed below her. Although she never saw anything or heard conclusive evidence of the hanky panky going on, she knew it was happening. She is currently still recovering from the ordeal.
Today we woke up, got a train back to our hostel and slept til 3. Then we went and walked around central Berlin and got a really fattening dinner of Chinese food. We are about to go back home, do laundry and sleep more, as we have a full day ahead of us tomorrow. We are going to go to the Berlin wall, then the thing that we have been looking forward to for the past few weeks. On the train one day we were 'reading' this magazine in German when we came across this article with huge pictures of this GIGANTIC indoor waterpark, complete with wave pools, waterslides, etc. We thought...WE MUST GO HERE. We were really sad when we found out it was near Berlin because we didnt think we were going anywhere near here......but now we are here and we are absolutely definitely going to this thing tomorrow. We couldnt be more excited and dont care that we will probably be the oldest people besides parents. WHATEVER. Okay well we will write again in a few days....miss you all!
Friday we decided to just stay in...we went to this American bookstore and got some books, Katie read 5 Harry Potter books much to Carlas disgust, and we just chilled out before Saturday night. Saturday was the big quarterfinal match between Holland and Russia in the European Cup, so we went with Carlas cousin Jochem (pronounced a very weird way) to this place that was essentially like Bentleys for dinner and drinks while watching the game. It was a really good game and went into extra periods, but then Russia scored 2 unmatched goals and Holland lost...everyone was really pissed but we just went out with Jochem and his friends and raged. We went to all these shitty bars but they were really fun, got hamburgers out of this weird vending machine that is like a wall of heated windows, and you just put in a euro and then open this little door and take the burgers out. Genius. After that we wandered around to all these different bars, and then Jochem dropped us off at the night bus at Central station. We had taken the night bus before so we knew where to get off, but it was 4am and both of us were so tired that we decided to take a little 'nap' on our way. Well, its about a 15 min ride from Central Station to our stop, and we woke up at about 5am and realized that we were veryyyyyy far from where we were supposed to be. Katie asked the guy sitting in front of her where the Hogeweg stop was in relation to where we now were. He laughed, and said 'put it this way...if your stop is in the East Village, we're in the Bronx.' Great...Carla went back to sleep and Katie sat up for the next 45 minutes praying that the bus would eventually turn around and head back into town. The man told Katie not to get out of the bus because a. we were in a really bad area and b. it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. Finally around 545 we got back to our stop and got back home and went to bed. Our original plan was to leave Amsterdam on Sunday but we decided to just wait one more night and leave early Monday morning. So we just hung out Sunday, had a nice dinner with Carlas aunt and uncle and then left for Berlin Monday morning.
We got to Berlin around 530, and made it to our hostel by about 630. The hostelworld website said that our hostel 'couldnt be more centrally located' but that was a damn lie. We are way out the S-Bahn far from walking distance from essentially anything, so that sucks. The hostel is pretty nice though...but anyway so we get to our room and there is this Swedish kid named Thomas sitting in there with a bottle of WODKA, as they call it here. Katie was checking her email at the time, so Carla started talking to Thomas and he told her the most pathetic story ever. He was from Sweden but had lived in Australia for the past year, where he met his German girlfriend and had been dating her for 7 months. They decided to move in together in Berlin, so he went back to Sweden, got all of his stuff, said bye to his parents, and came to Germany. Much to his dismay, 3 hours before he arrived, she dumped him. Poor kid!! Carla didnt know what to say, but he seemed to have a pretty positive outlook on life despite the fact that he just got dumped. He told us 'she was just a possibility, but now she is not a possibility anymore, and i will find another possibility!' We commended him on his attitude, and told him we would hang out with him and have a fun night. In comes Hugh and Mark, two absolutely precious 17 year old boys from Scotland. We felt like we were hanging out with our little brothers, but they were really cute, and one of them reminds us of the boy from the movie Notes on a Scandal, if any of you have seen it. They convinced us to go with them to this other hostel called Wombat, which apparently had cheap drinks and a rooftop bar with good views, so we just agreed to go and check it out.
It ended up being pretty fun, there were lots of people there and we played pool and stuff, and might we add we won 2 games against teams of boys. HA. This is also where we first met STEWIE. He was a beligerent Aussie, of questionable age, who insisted on buying us shots of jaeger and forgot our names like 2000 times throughout the night, and ended up just calling Carla Claire the whole night. He was really entertaining though. The trains stop running at 1am so we just got beds at this hostel and slept there since it was really late and we didnt feel like dealing with any more night bus bullshit. We got split up since we made the reservation so late, so Katie got put in one, normal room, while Carla was stuck with a room full of dudes again. They were this group of uber-republican George Mason kids, and of course the entire room ended up in a heated political debate for awhile. Eventually, everyone 'fell asleep' except for Carla, which is when it started. She was on the top bunk, and felt the entire bed start to shake. She was very confused because the entire room was full of guys except for her, and no one else had come into the room. She then remembered that upstairs two of the George Mason boys had been awfully friendly with each other, and she was horrified to realize what was going on in the bed below her. Although she never saw anything or heard conclusive evidence of the hanky panky going on, she knew it was happening. She is currently still recovering from the ordeal.
Today we woke up, got a train back to our hostel and slept til 3. Then we went and walked around central Berlin and got a really fattening dinner of Chinese food. We are about to go back home, do laundry and sleep more, as we have a full day ahead of us tomorrow. We are going to go to the Berlin wall, then the thing that we have been looking forward to for the past few weeks. On the train one day we were 'reading' this magazine in German when we came across this article with huge pictures of this GIGANTIC indoor waterpark, complete with wave pools, waterslides, etc. We thought...WE MUST GO HERE. We were really sad when we found out it was near Berlin because we didnt think we were going anywhere near here......but now we are here and we are absolutely definitely going to this thing tomorrow. We couldnt be more excited and dont care that we will probably be the oldest people besides parents. WHATEVER. Okay well we will write again in a few days....miss you all!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
It's Okay, We're with The Bridge!
HOLA. Since our last post, we have done a lot of exciting things here in Amsterdam. The next night we spent in bed watching a movie called Threesome. We were a little skeptical at first, but it ended up being a really funny/weird/comedic performance of the 1980's. When Carla's aunt came to check on us she asked us what we were watching. Ofcourse we didn't want to sound like we're sex fiends, so we just said "I don't know." This is when she proceeds to pick up the remote control and go to the T.V. guide page and find out what it is called and what it is about. We felt like we were 10 years old sneakily watching some R-rated movie or some shit it was just horrible. "Okay girls, it's called Threesome." We replied with the "Ohhh okay we didn't know." Meanwhile there were sex sounds coming from the T.V. because two of the characters were about to do the nasty. This all in all was a terrifying moment for Carla. She just shruged it off as best as she could.
The next day, we went on a canal ride and went to a really good cafe afterwards. We shopped a little bit and we bought Holland shirts which you will see in the pictures. The only bad thing about wearing bright orange shirts here is that people come up to us and speak Dutch and us being stupid Americans are just like no no, we don't know Dutch. And then they wonder why we have the shirts...it's a big mess. We went to Carla's uncles to watch the game for the first half and then went to a pub for the second half and around the Red Light District. For those of you that don't know, the Red Light District consists of streets with windows and girls in them half naked. They lure the men in and then bang them....sweet huh? Well, the ones we feasted our eyes on were no pretty sight let me tell you. More than one were quite hefty and the rest were just plain hid thinking they're sexy. We went into a dead Irish dive bar and met a nice couple from America (The guy was a gemologist hahaha) and a nice guy from Melbourne who we ended up hanging out with the rest of the night. We forgot that the night bus runs once an hour, so when we got there really high we had just missed it. So, we walked around holding hands in our Holland shirts and just said "Nay" which is how people here say no. We didn't want people to think we were lost etc. because Carla was very uncomfortably high. After we waited for an hour we got the night bus home.
Yesterday we went to the Van Gough mueseum which was really awesome and then walked around a bit. We were really excited for the bridge to play that night. We got ready, and took the tram to go see them. We weren't really sure what to expect but we knew we were going to yell something along the lines of "We're from Baltimore." We finally find the bar and it's completely dead and they are in the back room with about 5 locals listening to them play. We had come up this whole plan on how to meet them/ hang out with them earlier that day but considering we comprised 20% of their listeners this was no hard task. Their manager and friend were at the only table so we talked to them and explained how we love the bridge etc. We tried to get all the locals to dance which were 5-6 80 year olds with missing teeth but failed. Finally when they got more booze in them they started getting up and dancing as best as an 80 year old can. Yay!
We were pretty much the life of the party and the manager said it sucked that not a lot of people were there because they were playing really well that night. We felt like it was a private concert or something which is sawweeeet.
Afterwards we ended up going to another bar with them and hanging out with them til dawn when they had to catch a plane back to the states. Carla kept saying, "It's Okay, we're with the Bridge" and when we walked over an actual bridge she said, "The bridge is walking over the bridge." She thought this was quite witty but, everyone just laughed at her.
Today we basically slept all day, had a nice Indonesian dinner, and topped that off with a little Love Actually. Katie is currently on the third book of Harry Potter re-reading so she can finally read the last ones.
Tomorrow we are planning on going to some more museums, walking around, maybe smoking some doobies as Carla's sister so nicely put it on the phone while Carla's mom was in the room. (Thank you for that one.) We're staying for the Holland vs. Russia game on Saturday and then departing from here on Sunday. Germany, Belgium, or Sweeden....not sure which yet.
We hope everyone had a good time at Bonaroo if you went! We want to hear the stories:)
The next day, we went on a canal ride and went to a really good cafe afterwards. We shopped a little bit and we bought Holland shirts which you will see in the pictures. The only bad thing about wearing bright orange shirts here is that people come up to us and speak Dutch and us being stupid Americans are just like no no, we don't know Dutch. And then they wonder why we have the shirts...it's a big mess. We went to Carla's uncles to watch the game for the first half and then went to a pub for the second half and around the Red Light District. For those of you that don't know, the Red Light District consists of streets with windows and girls in them half naked. They lure the men in and then bang them....sweet huh? Well, the ones we feasted our eyes on were no pretty sight let me tell you. More than one were quite hefty and the rest were just plain hid thinking they're sexy. We went into a dead Irish dive bar and met a nice couple from America (The guy was a gemologist hahaha) and a nice guy from Melbourne who we ended up hanging out with the rest of the night. We forgot that the night bus runs once an hour, so when we got there really high we had just missed it. So, we walked around holding hands in our Holland shirts and just said "Nay" which is how people here say no. We didn't want people to think we were lost etc. because Carla was very uncomfortably high. After we waited for an hour we got the night bus home.
Yesterday we went to the Van Gough mueseum which was really awesome and then walked around a bit. We were really excited for the bridge to play that night. We got ready, and took the tram to go see them. We weren't really sure what to expect but we knew we were going to yell something along the lines of "We're from Baltimore." We finally find the bar and it's completely dead and they are in the back room with about 5 locals listening to them play. We had come up this whole plan on how to meet them/ hang out with them earlier that day but considering we comprised 20% of their listeners this was no hard task. Their manager and friend were at the only table so we talked to them and explained how we love the bridge etc. We tried to get all the locals to dance which were 5-6 80 year olds with missing teeth but failed. Finally when they got more booze in them they started getting up and dancing as best as an 80 year old can. Yay!
We were pretty much the life of the party and the manager said it sucked that not a lot of people were there because they were playing really well that night. We felt like it was a private concert or something which is sawweeeet.
Afterwards we ended up going to another bar with them and hanging out with them til dawn when they had to catch a plane back to the states. Carla kept saying, "It's Okay, we're with the Bridge" and when we walked over an actual bridge she said, "The bridge is walking over the bridge." She thought this was quite witty but, everyone just laughed at her.
Today we basically slept all day, had a nice Indonesian dinner, and topped that off with a little Love Actually. Katie is currently on the third book of Harry Potter re-reading so she can finally read the last ones.
Tomorrow we are planning on going to some more museums, walking around, maybe smoking some doobies as Carla's sister so nicely put it on the phone while Carla's mom was in the room. (Thank you for that one.) We're staying for the Holland vs. Russia game on Saturday and then departing from here on Sunday. Germany, Belgium, or Sweeden....not sure which yet.
We hope everyone had a good time at Bonaroo if you went! We want to hear the stories:)
Monday, June 16, 2008
Holland ATCHA
Wow, we're big tools. Anyway, we woke up around 5 am yesteday morning and took a train to Berlin. We got the sleeper train so we could lie down which was nice until four 17 or 18 year olds ruined our hungover slumber. The only thing Carla wanted was to lie down, not smell cigs or alcohol and not be disturbed. The complete opposite happened. We thought we were golden but after 2 stops our luck changed.
4 German boys thought it was funny to peak into our closed curtain room and when they saw that we were lying down thought it was funny to jump on board and sit on Carla lying down. While one kid put his head on Katie's shoulder, 2 more came in and WREAKED of booze and cigs....fucking awesome. Not only was the room now completely packed with 6 people and 6 huge bags but, we are almost positive they were saying sexual german references towards us for which we had no rebuttle because we do not speak German. They talked for awhile when we clearly were trying to sleep, forced Carla to sit up when she was so happy to lie down in a train because she can't sleep straight up like all the other seats on the previous trains we have taken. As one by one started to fall asleep, one of the boys (name unknown) took it upon himself to use Carlas leg as his very own pillow and proceeded to pick his nose, stretch his arms, and snuggle onto Carla's lap as if he was in his own bed. Carla did not feel like arguing so she just let it happen...whatever.
These boys were in a group of about 15 probably on some highschool field trip so their teacher or coach or whoever came into our train room and started screaming at all the boys to get their asses up. One refused who was on Katie's shoulder..his name was Petey. So, now we hate that name. Their teacher or whoever screamed in German for about 20 minutes until Petey got his fucking ass up and out of the train. We were so happy. We shut the curtains to the max and slept the rest of the time to Berlin.
On the second 7 hour ride from Berlin to Amsterdam there were rare technical difficulties and they kicked everyone off at this stop that was in the middle of nowhere. We sat in the drizzling rain for an hour until they sent a new train. Carla realized that the train did smell kinda smokey but, didn't think anything of it. Good that we got off that caboose.
We finally arrived in Amsterdam around 730 and were greeted by Carlas uncle who owns the 420 cafe. We walk to his place which is directly above it and before we enter he says, "Do you want a spliff first? or freshen up?" This was awkward for Carla.
We showered, had dinner, then took the tram to Carla's aunts place. We met up with Alex and two of his friends from ND and had a really fun first night at a couple of bars. Not sure what we're going to do tonight or the rest of the week except for THE BRIDGE on wednesday which shall be grand.
Holland is doing really well in the European Cup so, we're going to stay for the Quarter final match on Saturday. Apparently it is going to be more insane than it already is here...so that will be fun. Well, thats all I suppose!
P.S. Katie can finally walk on her foot, it is still bruised but, all is well on the footfront. Once again, we're big fucking losers. BYEBYE.
4 German boys thought it was funny to peak into our closed curtain room and when they saw that we were lying down thought it was funny to jump on board and sit on Carla lying down. While one kid put his head on Katie's shoulder, 2 more came in and WREAKED of booze and cigs....fucking awesome. Not only was the room now completely packed with 6 people and 6 huge bags but, we are almost positive they were saying sexual german references towards us for which we had no rebuttle because we do not speak German. They talked for awhile when we clearly were trying to sleep, forced Carla to sit up when she was so happy to lie down in a train because she can't sleep straight up like all the other seats on the previous trains we have taken. As one by one started to fall asleep, one of the boys (name unknown) took it upon himself to use Carlas leg as his very own pillow and proceeded to pick his nose, stretch his arms, and snuggle onto Carla's lap as if he was in his own bed. Carla did not feel like arguing so she just let it happen...whatever.
These boys were in a group of about 15 probably on some highschool field trip so their teacher or coach or whoever came into our train room and started screaming at all the boys to get their asses up. One refused who was on Katie's shoulder..his name was Petey. So, now we hate that name. Their teacher or whoever screamed in German for about 20 minutes until Petey got his fucking ass up and out of the train. We were so happy. We shut the curtains to the max and slept the rest of the time to Berlin.
On the second 7 hour ride from Berlin to Amsterdam there were rare technical difficulties and they kicked everyone off at this stop that was in the middle of nowhere. We sat in the drizzling rain for an hour until they sent a new train. Carla realized that the train did smell kinda smokey but, didn't think anything of it. Good that we got off that caboose.
We finally arrived in Amsterdam around 730 and were greeted by Carlas uncle who owns the 420 cafe. We walk to his place which is directly above it and before we enter he says, "Do you want a spliff first? or freshen up?" This was awkward for Carla.
We showered, had dinner, then took the tram to Carla's aunts place. We met up with Alex and two of his friends from ND and had a really fun first night at a couple of bars. Not sure what we're going to do tonight or the rest of the week except for THE BRIDGE on wednesday which shall be grand.
Holland is doing really well in the European Cup so, we're going to stay for the Quarter final match on Saturday. Apparently it is going to be more insane than it already is here...so that will be fun. Well, thats all I suppose!
P.S. Katie can finally walk on her foot, it is still bruised but, all is well on the footfront. Once again, we're big fucking losers. BYEBYE.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Prahaha
So, we never made it to a strip club...but we did make it to a gay bar tonight, but we will talk about that later.
After our last entry, we finally got to check into our hostel called Chili Hostel. We went up to our room and started to get settled in...by the way, there were only top bunks left, which with katies ankle was quite a nuisance, to say the least. We were in there for about 20 minutes when this hooligan stumbles into our room, still obviously drunk from the night before. This was 230 in the afternoon...he starts talking to us about all sorts of stuff and was really funny. His name is Nick and he is from Houston...anyway we show him katies ankle and he says that he is an assistant lacrosse coach and knows how to fix her up. He says, Go take a shower, and when you come out, we will have something ready. Katie goes and takes a shower, which was extremely difficult...while at the same time he and Carla cut and rip into strips a small raggedy towel that was in our room. Katie gets out of the shower and comes into the room and he is standing there with a grin on his face, and proceeds to wrap her ankle with strips of towel, finished off with black duct tape. Although makeshift, it definitely helped keep the swelling down. ¨
After all this, we took a nap, woke up, showered, and decided it was time to rage, despite the fact that Katie basically couldnt walk. Carla and Nick went to get beers and Katie stayed behind, and we made friends with these two kids that ended up being from Vandy...Brian and Jeff. They were really nice, and the 5 of us played cards and stuff for awhile before venturing out on the town. Katie didnt want to walk far, so of course that is exactly what we ended up doing. We walked for about 45 minutes before finally ending up back where our first hostel was, going to a club that played all American rap from about 15 years ago. Katie spilled a drink on a Norwegian kids lap and he said...I have 2 words for you...FUCK YOU. She tried to buy him a drink and apologized profusely, but he was having none of it. Brian and Jeff thought we left so they went home, and we took a cab back.
Today we slept until 3 because we all felt like shit, then we went with Nick on a walk around town, to the Communism Museum which turned out to be a bust because it was too expensive...so we went to the old square where they had huge screens set up for the European Cup, and ate really good kabobs and drank a beer...then came back and napped. Tonight we went bowling with Brian and Jeff which was fun except Katie sucked because she was crippled, but also sucks at bowling..then we wandered around. Some guy approached us on the street with the promise of a really fun karaoke bar, so Carla and Jeff jumped at the chance to sing, and Brian and Katie reluctantly tagged along. They turned out to be right, because when we went in, it was clearly a gay bar, although they advertised it as a sports bar with karaoke. The guy who lured us in spoke very little english, but the one thing he said was...There are a lot of people there, i think....umm...singing is niceee! We got one beer and promptly left.
We walked really far home, and on our way back stopped to get some pizza. This really cute middle aged man was in his shop alone, and got really excited when we came in. We ordered a pizza and he made it fresh for us, and was singing to American pop songs. We were laughing, ate the pizza which was really good, then when we went to pay for it he insisted it was free. We told him of course not, and so he said ok...5 cents. We ended up giving him like double the price of the pizza since we are leaving early tomorrow morning and need to get rid of our czech money.
Tomorrow...well really today...we are taking a 14 hour train ride to Amsterdam. We will be there for around a week...and Im sure we will have lots to share.
Love you guys!
PS. Blast from the past....we were walking in a random square on our way to the bowling place and who do we see watching soccer on the big screen but Dave Baker! We talked to him for a little bit, it was so random. doot doot.
After our last entry, we finally got to check into our hostel called Chili Hostel. We went up to our room and started to get settled in...by the way, there were only top bunks left, which with katies ankle was quite a nuisance, to say the least. We were in there for about 20 minutes when this hooligan stumbles into our room, still obviously drunk from the night before. This was 230 in the afternoon...he starts talking to us about all sorts of stuff and was really funny. His name is Nick and he is from Houston...anyway we show him katies ankle and he says that he is an assistant lacrosse coach and knows how to fix her up. He says, Go take a shower, and when you come out, we will have something ready. Katie goes and takes a shower, which was extremely difficult...while at the same time he and Carla cut and rip into strips a small raggedy towel that was in our room. Katie gets out of the shower and comes into the room and he is standing there with a grin on his face, and proceeds to wrap her ankle with strips of towel, finished off with black duct tape. Although makeshift, it definitely helped keep the swelling down. ¨
After all this, we took a nap, woke up, showered, and decided it was time to rage, despite the fact that Katie basically couldnt walk. Carla and Nick went to get beers and Katie stayed behind, and we made friends with these two kids that ended up being from Vandy...Brian and Jeff. They were really nice, and the 5 of us played cards and stuff for awhile before venturing out on the town. Katie didnt want to walk far, so of course that is exactly what we ended up doing. We walked for about 45 minutes before finally ending up back where our first hostel was, going to a club that played all American rap from about 15 years ago. Katie spilled a drink on a Norwegian kids lap and he said...I have 2 words for you...FUCK YOU. She tried to buy him a drink and apologized profusely, but he was having none of it. Brian and Jeff thought we left so they went home, and we took a cab back.
Today we slept until 3 because we all felt like shit, then we went with Nick on a walk around town, to the Communism Museum which turned out to be a bust because it was too expensive...so we went to the old square where they had huge screens set up for the European Cup, and ate really good kabobs and drank a beer...then came back and napped. Tonight we went bowling with Brian and Jeff which was fun except Katie sucked because she was crippled, but also sucks at bowling..then we wandered around. Some guy approached us on the street with the promise of a really fun karaoke bar, so Carla and Jeff jumped at the chance to sing, and Brian and Katie reluctantly tagged along. They turned out to be right, because when we went in, it was clearly a gay bar, although they advertised it as a sports bar with karaoke. The guy who lured us in spoke very little english, but the one thing he said was...There are a lot of people there, i think....umm...singing is niceee! We got one beer and promptly left.
We walked really far home, and on our way back stopped to get some pizza. This really cute middle aged man was in his shop alone, and got really excited when we came in. We ordered a pizza and he made it fresh for us, and was singing to American pop songs. We were laughing, ate the pizza which was really good, then when we went to pay for it he insisted it was free. We told him of course not, and so he said ok...5 cents. We ended up giving him like double the price of the pizza since we are leaving early tomorrow morning and need to get rid of our czech money.
Tomorrow...well really today...we are taking a 14 hour train ride to Amsterdam. We will be there for around a week...and Im sure we will have lots to share.
Love you guys!
PS. Blast from the past....we were walking in a random square on our way to the bowling place and who do we see watching soccer on the big screen but Dave Baker! We talked to him for a little bit, it was so random. doot doot.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Strip Clubs, broken ankles, and Communism OH MY!
Hello everyone! So, Prague is really awesome. There is this sweet place that is the Prague version of bagel place called Bohemian Cafe. Clearly, Katie orders the bagel club toasted on an everything bagel except here it is called a supreme bagel. We finally went to a mall where we bought some nice clothing at H&M haha...we went to a sushi place later which was really nice as well. The night before we met these boys from Chico State which is located in California in the common room of our hostel. They had already drank a huge bottle of Jager and were getting pretty rowdy. They proceeded to tell us that their school was ranked #1 party school 3 years in a row so we knew they were ready to rage. Ofcourse we forgot to get their contact information but they were really fun to hang out with. One of them was named Mike Ramsey and looked and acted and talked like Diamond which was really weird but, we love Diamond so it was really entertaining and fun.
So, we went out the first night with Ramsey and Co. and reminised about Nickelodeon shows like Salute Your Shorts, Pete&Pete and ALL THAT with Lori Beth Dinburg...it was really entertaining. Then everyone randomly got the hiccups except for Carla. She just started trying to scare everyone as best as she could and it really did not help. It was rediculously entertaining for her though. We got back to our hostel and continued to party in the boys room where Katie decided to lean out this huge open window when we were on the 5th floor. Not the time or place Katie.
The next night we went out and this is where Katie might have broken her ankle. We havent gone to the hospital yet because we a. dont want to pay for a taxi and b. are confused about how hospitals work here...eventhough Katie has been through the whole Kirkbride broken arm scare in Italy. We were all out at this awesome bar that looked like a metro stop. Zach- someone already stole our idea about making a metro stop a bar! Anyway, it was this really really cool bar and we were all dancing when Katie fell off this stoop and crashed to the ground. Carla just thought that she had fallen like usual so she just kept dancing. Soon she found Katie pointing to her baseball-sized ankle and tears ROLLING down her face. Carla immediately started crying as well. The Chico boys were really nice and carried Katie up the stairs and we got a taxi home. When we got back to our hostel, Katie called Nicole, Michele, Notzon, and her mom...which probably cost an arm and a leg and all those conversations consisted of her saying HELP WHAT DO I DO I BROKE MY ANKLE OW SHIT. Carla had no clue what to do...plus the other people sharing our room were awoken to all of this and started yelling at us. Huge rediculous mess.
This morning, Carla had to carry two huge backpacks around and looked like a damn fool. Katie was hobbling behind her and Im pretty sure people thought we were out of our minds. Alas, I think we may be venturing to a strip club tonight to drown our sorrows away and then end our stay here in Prague by visiting the Museum of Communism. That shall be a real treat especially if we take Pams advice and get Katie a wheelchair.
The Internet is free in our hostel thank god so well update you all tomorrow on our last couple days in Prague soon.
Hope all is well!
So, we went out the first night with Ramsey and Co. and reminised about Nickelodeon shows like Salute Your Shorts, Pete&Pete and ALL THAT with Lori Beth Dinburg...it was really entertaining. Then everyone randomly got the hiccups except for Carla. She just started trying to scare everyone as best as she could and it really did not help. It was rediculously entertaining for her though. We got back to our hostel and continued to party in the boys room where Katie decided to lean out this huge open window when we were on the 5th floor. Not the time or place Katie.
The next night we went out and this is where Katie might have broken her ankle. We havent gone to the hospital yet because we a. dont want to pay for a taxi and b. are confused about how hospitals work here...eventhough Katie has been through the whole Kirkbride broken arm scare in Italy. We were all out at this awesome bar that looked like a metro stop. Zach- someone already stole our idea about making a metro stop a bar! Anyway, it was this really really cool bar and we were all dancing when Katie fell off this stoop and crashed to the ground. Carla just thought that she had fallen like usual so she just kept dancing. Soon she found Katie pointing to her baseball-sized ankle and tears ROLLING down her face. Carla immediately started crying as well. The Chico boys were really nice and carried Katie up the stairs and we got a taxi home. When we got back to our hostel, Katie called Nicole, Michele, Notzon, and her mom...which probably cost an arm and a leg and all those conversations consisted of her saying HELP WHAT DO I DO I BROKE MY ANKLE OW SHIT. Carla had no clue what to do...plus the other people sharing our room were awoken to all of this and started yelling at us. Huge rediculous mess.
This morning, Carla had to carry two huge backpacks around and looked like a damn fool. Katie was hobbling behind her and Im pretty sure people thought we were out of our minds. Alas, I think we may be venturing to a strip club tonight to drown our sorrows away and then end our stay here in Prague by visiting the Museum of Communism. That shall be a real treat especially if we take Pams advice and get Katie a wheelchair.
The Internet is free in our hostel thank god so well update you all tomorrow on our last couple days in Prague soon.
Hope all is well!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Vital Things We Thought We Lost
1. Katlins Under Armour
Katlin so kindly loaned Carla her under armour which she wears everyday and basically wont take off. You will see when we upload pictures. The only time the entire trip she has taken it off was during the sound of music tour. The other morning in Frankfurt she realized in the shower that she didnt know where it was and freaked out...came running out and said she had left it. Katie was skeptical because she checked the seats before leaving the bus. Carla found it in her backpack.
2. Katies iPhone
For anyone that knows Katie, they know that this is her most valued belonging. It has been an integral part of the trip, used for texting nana and others, looking up dates, recording important information, quotes, etc. Today we were in an internet cafe and Katie removed it from her bag to check her calendar, and when we came back to the hostel to book another hostel, she went to her bag to check the calendar again and it was GONE. She freaked out, we ran back through the fucking maze that they call Prague city streets and back to the internet cafe. We thought it was gone....but had one hope. Most people know that Katies iPhone has a rather large crack in it. We thought that maybe, just maybe, someone who saw it who would want to steal it would see the crack and leave it where they found it. Well, we walked into the internet cafe and there it was, sitting right where she left it.
3. Each other
This was perhaps the most horrifying experience of the trip so far. Our last night in Barcelona we were at a bar near Las Ramblas, and Katie was getting a drink and Carla went to the bathroom. When she returned, Katie was MIA. Carla hyperventilated and became completely sober. This was approximately 3am, and we had an 8am train to catch, and still had to go back to the hostel to get our bags. Meanwhile, Katie was in the middle of a large street wandering around with a large Namibian man...identity unknown... screaming CARLAAAAAAA. This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally Carla decided to venture out of the bar in search of Katie, and at that very moment, Katie decided to venture down a random street in search of Carla. Our eyes met and we have never been so happy in our entire lives...besides on the sound of music tour, of course. The Namibian man went up to Carla and said We have been looking for you everywhere! Then proceeded to tell us we had to visit him in Namibia. Righttttt. But we found each other and that was a very niiiiiiiiiiice.
We are now in Prague, and stumbled upon some fellow ragers. More on that tomorrow, a byebye!
Katlin so kindly loaned Carla her under armour which she wears everyday and basically wont take off. You will see when we upload pictures. The only time the entire trip she has taken it off was during the sound of music tour. The other morning in Frankfurt she realized in the shower that she didnt know where it was and freaked out...came running out and said she had left it. Katie was skeptical because she checked the seats before leaving the bus. Carla found it in her backpack.
2. Katies iPhone
For anyone that knows Katie, they know that this is her most valued belonging. It has been an integral part of the trip, used for texting nana and others, looking up dates, recording important information, quotes, etc. Today we were in an internet cafe and Katie removed it from her bag to check her calendar, and when we came back to the hostel to book another hostel, she went to her bag to check the calendar again and it was GONE. She freaked out, we ran back through the fucking maze that they call Prague city streets and back to the internet cafe. We thought it was gone....but had one hope. Most people know that Katies iPhone has a rather large crack in it. We thought that maybe, just maybe, someone who saw it who would want to steal it would see the crack and leave it where they found it. Well, we walked into the internet cafe and there it was, sitting right where she left it.
3. Each other
This was perhaps the most horrifying experience of the trip so far. Our last night in Barcelona we were at a bar near Las Ramblas, and Katie was getting a drink and Carla went to the bathroom. When she returned, Katie was MIA. Carla hyperventilated and became completely sober. This was approximately 3am, and we had an 8am train to catch, and still had to go back to the hostel to get our bags. Meanwhile, Katie was in the middle of a large street wandering around with a large Namibian man...identity unknown... screaming CARLAAAAAAA. This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally Carla decided to venture out of the bar in search of Katie, and at that very moment, Katie decided to venture down a random street in search of Carla. Our eyes met and we have never been so happy in our entire lives...besides on the sound of music tour, of course. The Namibian man went up to Carla and said We have been looking for you everywhere! Then proceeded to tell us we had to visit him in Namibia. Righttttt. But we found each other and that was a very niiiiiiiiiiice.
We are now in Prague, and stumbled upon some fellow ragers. More on that tomorrow, a byebye!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
5 countries in 5 days= stupid but highly entertaining
Where do we even begin on the past few days....I suppose we will carry on where we left off, from the internet cafe in Nice.
We went to the beach which was really nice besides the fact there is no sand just rocks. Before we arrived at the beach we used the public restrooms. This entailed paying a fat, naked (except for a small, hidden speedo), hairy french man 35 cents to use the bathrooms. He handed us a single ply square of toilet paper each, and when Carla reached for more, he started screaming in French...and lets be honest, everyone knows Carla needs more than a single square. We were baffled how someone who sits in a public toilet for a living could be so rude and not understand people may need more than one piece of toilet paper, but then again, he is a man who sits in a public toilet for a living. Back to the beach. Katie, like the idiot she is, forgot to wear her bathing suit so was baking in her clothes and absolutely miserable. Carla, for the good of the polis (throwback to Ms. Reillys 8th grade history class for those of you Roland Parkers reading), agreed to leave after about 20 minutes. After that we hiked back to the tram stop and took the tram back up this huge ass hill to where our hostel is.
We thought we would be able to catch the sketchy van "shuttle" we spoke of before, but when we walked up to where it usually is, we saw a large group of American kids that said they had been waiting over an hour. We started talking to them for about 15 minutes and they were really nice, but we didnt want to wait anymore so we decided to walk. BIG MISTAKE. Our hostel is on top of this huge hill, no, make that a mountain, and it was about 99 degrees outside. We were already hungover and miserable from our beach experience, not to mention our stomachs did not feel good from the Asia Fast Food, no matter how delicious it was....so this hellish hike was horrible. By the time we got back and checked our email 30 minutes later, the kids that were waiting had just arrived.
It was at this point that we came to the conclusion that Villa St. Exupery is really a cult in disguise. Everyone that works there does absolutely nothing all day as far as we can tell, and we think that very weird things go on there. We think that initiation rituals take place and that people pose as travelers....I dont know its hard to explain but we wanted to get out of there ASAP.
Like we said before, we had made reservations for a night train to Venice. We decided that the only logical thing to do was to drink before so we could pass out on the train overnight. This is when we made our first actual friends of the trip...two of the boys that had been waiting for the shuttle...dan and steve from connecticut. Steve looks exactly like Prince Harry if you can believe that and Dan was really awesome too. We ended up drinking and sharing dinner with them at the cult, and then getting a ride (thank god) down to the tram stop.
In addition, we met this 50 year old woman from Australia that had been in the hostel with Dan and Steve in Barcelona. She just found out her husband had cheated on her and was going on some sort of drunken gallavant around Europe it seemed, because according to the boys she was the drunkest one in the hostel every night, which we witnessed firsthand for the 30 minutes we knew her in Nice. She was absolutely hysterical, cursed like a sailor and had the funniest stories ever. We wish she was with us now.
It was here that we met Melvin, probably our closest friend we will have the whole trip. He was a Swedish lad of 21 and asked if we knew where the train station was. We told him to follow us and found out his plan was to go to Salzburg via Venice as well. We basically had to end up running for our train and just made it in time.
It was a sleeper train so we were in a little room with 4 bunkbeds, and it ended up that we were with these two sisters from Minnesota that had been in the cult with us. They were really nice, and one of their names was Carla which was funny. We had a pretty good nights sleep and arrived around 730am in Venice.
We got off the train and got in line to buy our ticket to Salzburg, and who did we see ahead of us but Melvin! After we got our ticket he came up to us and asked us if he could go around with us for the day until our train to Salzburg and of course we said yes. This provided for a delightful, but really expensive day in Venice. We got food, walked around all the main areas, people watched, ate ice cream, smoked cigs...all in all pretty good. This is where the fun really started. After this we had probably the two most entertaining train rides of our entire life.
The first train ride was to a place in Austria called Villach. We slept for a little but then we stopped at some random town, and when we didnt move for about 15 minutes we woke up and wondered what was going on. Melvin came over and sat with us with some guy named Simon he had met while smoking a cig outside. This was a horrible mistake on Melvins part. This Simon turned out to be a border control officer from Northern Italy (as far as we could make out by looking at his ID card) who was drunk and didnt speak one word of English. Melvin charmed some woman in the shop and got us two free packs of cards, so we thought it would be nice to include Simon in the game. First we tried teaching him BS. We explained as best we could, and he nodded and smiled as if he understood us completely. When it got to his turn we said "Simon, do you have any 10s? If you do, put them down." Simon just shook his head and grinned and said "No!". We knew it was time to politely exclude Simon from our game. He kept running off the train and yelling at people, then he would run back on and be grinning like a mad man. At one point Carla caught him smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, clearly illegal, and he just grinned and said " Its ok! I am police!" He ran back on the train with a bottle of wine and cups...but we soon came to realize his alterior motives. He had a MAJOR crush on Melvin. Our train was delayed two hours, and the rest of the trip entailed Simon touching Melvin on the arm, grinning at him, and forcing Melvin to give him his phone number, address and email. Simon finally got off at a stop along the way and Melvin was more than overjoyed.
At this point, another friend had joined what came to be called the "train party." Her name was Angelica and she was from Vienna and was sooo nice. The four of us played cards, drank two more bottles of wine and were laughing hysterically at Simon waving and gazing lovingly at Melvin from outside the train, while Simon waited the full 20 minutes until our train departed because he was so enamored with Melvin. It was so fucking funny. We switched trains in Villach with Melvin and FINALLY got to Salzburg around 11pm. He left with his friends from Sweden because there is this huge European Cup soccer thing going on in switzerland and austria and his friends were there for the sweden greece game. We were going to meet up with him at Camp Sweden (hahahahah) but we were exhausted so we just went to our hotel.
HERD MEMBERS (and Alan)- Read Carefully!! Today we woke up and went on the official sound of music tour. I know it sounds lame, but it was probably the most joyous 4 hours of our life. We went to all these different places where they filmed the movie...like the Von Trapp house, the road where the kids hang from the trees, the lake they fell in behind the house, the gazebo, the fountain and stairs where they sing Do Ray Mi, and the bridge they ran over. It was so awesome. THEN the best part...we drove on the bus out into the country to the most beautiful places we have ever seen....the real HILLS, while listening to the soundtrack. It was so sweet we couldnt believe it. Wait til you guys see pictures it was so pretty.
After that, we got dropped off back near our hotel, and we saw like 8494859403 swedish people, all so drunk, covered in sweden gear and painted etc on their way to Camp Sweden, the headquarters for all the swedish fans for the game. We desperately wanted to stay in Salzburg, but had nowhere to stay since there were about 20,000 fans pouring into the city, so reluctantly we got on the only train we could to Frankfurt. Of course, on the train, Melvin texted us and told us that he had an extra tent and that we shouldnt miss the party because it would be a once in a lifetime experience. Great. Now we are in Frankfurt, well, outside Frankfurt, at this weird little hotel. Sweden won the game so Im sure that somewhere Melvin is celebrating with his fellow fans, so we are happy for him.
As we said before, we have been to 5 countries in 5 days. We are exhausted, have no idea what day it is, have no money, and our next place we were going to go fell through....so our new plan is to get a train tomorrow morning to Prague. That makes it 6 countries in 6 days....jesus christ. We are probably going to stay in Prague for 2 or 3 days before going through Berlin (maybe) on our way to Amsterdam where we will be for at least 4 or 5 days. Sorry that was like a novel but we have so much we didnt even write that we will fill you all in on at some point. We are having a blast, have met really nice and funny people and I am sure there will be wayyyyyy more to come.
Deet deet miss you all.
We went to the beach which was really nice besides the fact there is no sand just rocks. Before we arrived at the beach we used the public restrooms. This entailed paying a fat, naked (except for a small, hidden speedo), hairy french man 35 cents to use the bathrooms. He handed us a single ply square of toilet paper each, and when Carla reached for more, he started screaming in French...and lets be honest, everyone knows Carla needs more than a single square. We were baffled how someone who sits in a public toilet for a living could be so rude and not understand people may need more than one piece of toilet paper, but then again, he is a man who sits in a public toilet for a living. Back to the beach. Katie, like the idiot she is, forgot to wear her bathing suit so was baking in her clothes and absolutely miserable. Carla, for the good of the polis (throwback to Ms. Reillys 8th grade history class for those of you Roland Parkers reading), agreed to leave after about 20 minutes. After that we hiked back to the tram stop and took the tram back up this huge ass hill to where our hostel is.
We thought we would be able to catch the sketchy van "shuttle" we spoke of before, but when we walked up to where it usually is, we saw a large group of American kids that said they had been waiting over an hour. We started talking to them for about 15 minutes and they were really nice, but we didnt want to wait anymore so we decided to walk. BIG MISTAKE. Our hostel is on top of this huge hill, no, make that a mountain, and it was about 99 degrees outside. We were already hungover and miserable from our beach experience, not to mention our stomachs did not feel good from the Asia Fast Food, no matter how delicious it was....so this hellish hike was horrible. By the time we got back and checked our email 30 minutes later, the kids that were waiting had just arrived.
It was at this point that we came to the conclusion that Villa St. Exupery is really a cult in disguise. Everyone that works there does absolutely nothing all day as far as we can tell, and we think that very weird things go on there. We think that initiation rituals take place and that people pose as travelers....I dont know its hard to explain but we wanted to get out of there ASAP.
Like we said before, we had made reservations for a night train to Venice. We decided that the only logical thing to do was to drink before so we could pass out on the train overnight. This is when we made our first actual friends of the trip...two of the boys that had been waiting for the shuttle...dan and steve from connecticut. Steve looks exactly like Prince Harry if you can believe that and Dan was really awesome too. We ended up drinking and sharing dinner with them at the cult, and then getting a ride (thank god) down to the tram stop.
In addition, we met this 50 year old woman from Australia that had been in the hostel with Dan and Steve in Barcelona. She just found out her husband had cheated on her and was going on some sort of drunken gallavant around Europe it seemed, because according to the boys she was the drunkest one in the hostel every night, which we witnessed firsthand for the 30 minutes we knew her in Nice. She was absolutely hysterical, cursed like a sailor and had the funniest stories ever. We wish she was with us now.
It was here that we met Melvin, probably our closest friend we will have the whole trip. He was a Swedish lad of 21 and asked if we knew where the train station was. We told him to follow us and found out his plan was to go to Salzburg via Venice as well. We basically had to end up running for our train and just made it in time.
It was a sleeper train so we were in a little room with 4 bunkbeds, and it ended up that we were with these two sisters from Minnesota that had been in the cult with us. They were really nice, and one of their names was Carla which was funny. We had a pretty good nights sleep and arrived around 730am in Venice.
We got off the train and got in line to buy our ticket to Salzburg, and who did we see ahead of us but Melvin! After we got our ticket he came up to us and asked us if he could go around with us for the day until our train to Salzburg and of course we said yes. This provided for a delightful, but really expensive day in Venice. We got food, walked around all the main areas, people watched, ate ice cream, smoked cigs...all in all pretty good. This is where the fun really started. After this we had probably the two most entertaining train rides of our entire life.
The first train ride was to a place in Austria called Villach. We slept for a little but then we stopped at some random town, and when we didnt move for about 15 minutes we woke up and wondered what was going on. Melvin came over and sat with us with some guy named Simon he had met while smoking a cig outside. This was a horrible mistake on Melvins part. This Simon turned out to be a border control officer from Northern Italy (as far as we could make out by looking at his ID card) who was drunk and didnt speak one word of English. Melvin charmed some woman in the shop and got us two free packs of cards, so we thought it would be nice to include Simon in the game. First we tried teaching him BS. We explained as best we could, and he nodded and smiled as if he understood us completely. When it got to his turn we said "Simon, do you have any 10s? If you do, put them down." Simon just shook his head and grinned and said "No!". We knew it was time to politely exclude Simon from our game. He kept running off the train and yelling at people, then he would run back on and be grinning like a mad man. At one point Carla caught him smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, clearly illegal, and he just grinned and said " Its ok! I am police!" He ran back on the train with a bottle of wine and cups...but we soon came to realize his alterior motives. He had a MAJOR crush on Melvin. Our train was delayed two hours, and the rest of the trip entailed Simon touching Melvin on the arm, grinning at him, and forcing Melvin to give him his phone number, address and email. Simon finally got off at a stop along the way and Melvin was more than overjoyed.
At this point, another friend had joined what came to be called the "train party." Her name was Angelica and she was from Vienna and was sooo nice. The four of us played cards, drank two more bottles of wine and were laughing hysterically at Simon waving and gazing lovingly at Melvin from outside the train, while Simon waited the full 20 minutes until our train departed because he was so enamored with Melvin. It was so fucking funny. We switched trains in Villach with Melvin and FINALLY got to Salzburg around 11pm. He left with his friends from Sweden because there is this huge European Cup soccer thing going on in switzerland and austria and his friends were there for the sweden greece game. We were going to meet up with him at Camp Sweden (hahahahah) but we were exhausted so we just went to our hotel.
HERD MEMBERS (and Alan)- Read Carefully!! Today we woke up and went on the official sound of music tour. I know it sounds lame, but it was probably the most joyous 4 hours of our life. We went to all these different places where they filmed the movie...like the Von Trapp house, the road where the kids hang from the trees, the lake they fell in behind the house, the gazebo, the fountain and stairs where they sing Do Ray Mi, and the bridge they ran over. It was so awesome. THEN the best part...we drove on the bus out into the country to the most beautiful places we have ever seen....the real HILLS, while listening to the soundtrack. It was so sweet we couldnt believe it. Wait til you guys see pictures it was so pretty.
After that, we got dropped off back near our hotel, and we saw like 8494859403 swedish people, all so drunk, covered in sweden gear and painted etc on their way to Camp Sweden, the headquarters for all the swedish fans for the game. We desperately wanted to stay in Salzburg, but had nowhere to stay since there were about 20,000 fans pouring into the city, so reluctantly we got on the only train we could to Frankfurt. Of course, on the train, Melvin texted us and told us that he had an extra tent and that we shouldnt miss the party because it would be a once in a lifetime experience. Great. Now we are in Frankfurt, well, outside Frankfurt, at this weird little hotel. Sweden won the game so Im sure that somewhere Melvin is celebrating with his fellow fans, so we are happy for him.
As we said before, we have been to 5 countries in 5 days. We are exhausted, have no idea what day it is, have no money, and our next place we were going to go fell through....so our new plan is to get a train tomorrow morning to Prague. That makes it 6 countries in 6 days....jesus christ. We are probably going to stay in Prague for 2 or 3 days before going through Berlin (maybe) on our way to Amsterdam where we will be for at least 4 or 5 days. Sorry that was like a novel but we have so much we didnt even write that we will fill you all in on at some point. We are having a blast, have met really nice and funny people and I am sure there will be wayyyyyy more to come.
Deet deet miss you all.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Trapped in France
We have a lot to catch all you avid readers up on.
Beginning where we left off...the morning after the Irish Rock Cafe we had to check out of our hostel around 10am. Our plan was to take a night train to Geneva Friday night and then on Saturday morning continue on to Bern. The hostel was pretty nice and let us keep our stuff there all day, so we went to the train station thinking we would get our tickets, go around Barcelona for the day sightseeing and then catch the train at night. Wrongggggg. We got to the train station and literally waited in the same two lines about 5 times each. Apparently the timetable we had was wrong and there was no night train to Geneva, although they told us yes and no back and forth multiple times. All in all we spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out how the hell to get out of Barcelona, and came to the conclusion that we had to stay another night. We finally decided to take the 845 am train to Geneva the next day, by way of Montpellier (probably our most hated place on the earth). Problem was, we had nowhere to stay because our hostel was booked. We finally got out of the train station and did a bit of sightseeing- we saw Sagrada Familia, Park Guell which was awesome and some other stuff. Then we went to a restaurant near our hostel, had a really shitty hamburguesa and frankfurt with no buns or cheese like we asked, and then went back to our hostel to try to find somewhere for the night.
There was literally one place open in all of Barcelona, so we booked it and took the metro over there. It was a hike from the metro station and because we are pussies we had to take like 5 breaks on the way. We got there and it was pretty nice and really big-- we were in a room with all these girls from Buffalo and Florida that were really funny so that was good. Although we knew we had an early train, we couldn't not go out on a Friday night in Barcelona. So we took a nap, showered (ps. katie slipped on the floor and fell coming out of the shower and her towel completely dropped off so she was basically lying naked on the floor in front of all these strange girls, so that was not sweet), and went out to the gothic quarter. We went to this bar and met 5 british dudes that were nice, and we went around with them the rest of the night...Carla then became part of a bachelor party while Katie was lost on the street for a long time. We were both very scared that we would never find each other again, but we did so yay. We somehow got a cab home (no idea how) at around 4 or 5am, by the grace of god happened to wake up at 7 and pack our shit (but katie left her towel there so that sucks) and make it to the train station on time.
Now begins our hellish day of travel. We slept the whole 4 hour train ride to Montpellier in southern France, and were supposed to switch trains there to Geneva. The ticket man in Barca told us that there would be no problem-we just had to go to the counter and get our ticket from Montpellier to Geneva. Nope, didn't happen. We got this bitch who told us it was full (although we suspect it wasn't)....and it was almost as if she was gleaming with delight that we couldn't get on it. She told us with a huge grin on her face that the only other train out of Montpellier was to Paris, but we had already missed the connection. Luckily we are smarter than that slut and consulted our handy timetable and realized that there was a train leaving in an hour for NICE. We had originally planned to go there, but liar number 2 aka weather.com told us that it would be raining all weekend so we had bagged that. But now, back to Nice. So we got our tickets and went and stood on the platform for about 30 minutes. We were about to get on board when Katie noticed that everyone else had seat assignments and we didn't, so we asked the station dude why and he was like "oh no! you are on platform C, not A!" Meanwhile, our train was arriving on platform C. So we ran our asses off with our huge backpacks and made it just in time to hop on our train to Nice, via Marseille.
We finally arrived in Nice at around 830...and it is sooooooo pretty. We got out of the train station, went to an internet cafe and booked a hostel called Villa Saint Exupery aka a Little Prince themed hostel way the fuck up on this hill outside of the center of city. We didn't know how to get there, so the website told us to take the tram to the "casino supermarket", then call a number and a white or silver van would come pick us up. How sketchy does that sound...but we had no other option. It turned out to be awesome...this hot dude from New Zealand picked us up, and took us to this place that was really big, really nice, had 1 euro beers and really good food, and tons of people. We took showers really quickly and went out with like 30 people from our hostel and some of the staff. We don't know where we went but we went to some bar with a band that played semi-ok covers of American rock songs (Jess- they played Green Day and we thought of you!!) and then some small "club" where beers were like 8 euros each which was really not sweet. We took a cab back with some staff dude at like 3am and had to wake up this morning and be out of our rooms by 10 which was pretty painful.
Important sidenote: there is a "girl" that stayed in our room that is DEFINITELY a dude. We were at reception and we heard this shman talking and we thought it was a boy and then we looked and they had long hair and makeup on. Then we were up in our room and he/she was in there too....and definitely looked like a boy or a person in some sort of sex transition. Further evidence of our theory included the presence of male shower gel in our shower which was in a room of all girls (besides the imposter) and an adams apple of questionable size. We will never know, but it was sick.
Now we are sitting in an internet cafe, about to go to the beach (we think), after just eating a delightful meal from a place called Asia Fast Food. We just booked a night train (with beds and everything!!) to Venice, so we leave tonight at 10pm and get into Venice at around 730 tomorrow morning. Right now our plan is to spend the morning-mid day in Venice and then take an afternoon train to Salzburg in Austria. However judging by past events, that could clearly change so we'll keep you guys posted.
Hope all is well at home...we miss you guys! byebye
Beginning where we left off...the morning after the Irish Rock Cafe we had to check out of our hostel around 10am. Our plan was to take a night train to Geneva Friday night and then on Saturday morning continue on to Bern. The hostel was pretty nice and let us keep our stuff there all day, so we went to the train station thinking we would get our tickets, go around Barcelona for the day sightseeing and then catch the train at night. Wrongggggg. We got to the train station and literally waited in the same two lines about 5 times each. Apparently the timetable we had was wrong and there was no night train to Geneva, although they told us yes and no back and forth multiple times. All in all we spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out how the hell to get out of Barcelona, and came to the conclusion that we had to stay another night. We finally decided to take the 845 am train to Geneva the next day, by way of Montpellier (probably our most hated place on the earth). Problem was, we had nowhere to stay because our hostel was booked. We finally got out of the train station and did a bit of sightseeing- we saw Sagrada Familia, Park Guell which was awesome and some other stuff. Then we went to a restaurant near our hostel, had a really shitty hamburguesa and frankfurt with no buns or cheese like we asked, and then went back to our hostel to try to find somewhere for the night.
There was literally one place open in all of Barcelona, so we booked it and took the metro over there. It was a hike from the metro station and because we are pussies we had to take like 5 breaks on the way. We got there and it was pretty nice and really big-- we were in a room with all these girls from Buffalo and Florida that were really funny so that was good. Although we knew we had an early train, we couldn't not go out on a Friday night in Barcelona. So we took a nap, showered (ps. katie slipped on the floor and fell coming out of the shower and her towel completely dropped off so she was basically lying naked on the floor in front of all these strange girls, so that was not sweet), and went out to the gothic quarter. We went to this bar and met 5 british dudes that were nice, and we went around with them the rest of the night...Carla then became part of a bachelor party while Katie was lost on the street for a long time. We were both very scared that we would never find each other again, but we did so yay. We somehow got a cab home (no idea how) at around 4 or 5am, by the grace of god happened to wake up at 7 and pack our shit (but katie left her towel there so that sucks) and make it to the train station on time.
Now begins our hellish day of travel. We slept the whole 4 hour train ride to Montpellier in southern France, and were supposed to switch trains there to Geneva. The ticket man in Barca told us that there would be no problem-we just had to go to the counter and get our ticket from Montpellier to Geneva. Nope, didn't happen. We got this bitch who told us it was full (although we suspect it wasn't)....and it was almost as if she was gleaming with delight that we couldn't get on it. She told us with a huge grin on her face that the only other train out of Montpellier was to Paris, but we had already missed the connection. Luckily we are smarter than that slut and consulted our handy timetable and realized that there was a train leaving in an hour for NICE. We had originally planned to go there, but liar number 2 aka weather.com told us that it would be raining all weekend so we had bagged that. But now, back to Nice. So we got our tickets and went and stood on the platform for about 30 minutes. We were about to get on board when Katie noticed that everyone else had seat assignments and we didn't, so we asked the station dude why and he was like "oh no! you are on platform C, not A!" Meanwhile, our train was arriving on platform C. So we ran our asses off with our huge backpacks and made it just in time to hop on our train to Nice, via Marseille.
We finally arrived in Nice at around 830...and it is sooooooo pretty. We got out of the train station, went to an internet cafe and booked a hostel called Villa Saint Exupery aka a Little Prince themed hostel way the fuck up on this hill outside of the center of city. We didn't know how to get there, so the website told us to take the tram to the "casino supermarket", then call a number and a white or silver van would come pick us up. How sketchy does that sound...but we had no other option. It turned out to be awesome...this hot dude from New Zealand picked us up, and took us to this place that was really big, really nice, had 1 euro beers and really good food, and tons of people. We took showers really quickly and went out with like 30 people from our hostel and some of the staff. We don't know where we went but we went to some bar with a band that played semi-ok covers of American rock songs (Jess- they played Green Day and we thought of you!!) and then some small "club" where beers were like 8 euros each which was really not sweet. We took a cab back with some staff dude at like 3am and had to wake up this morning and be out of our rooms by 10 which was pretty painful.
Important sidenote: there is a "girl" that stayed in our room that is DEFINITELY a dude. We were at reception and we heard this shman talking and we thought it was a boy and then we looked and they had long hair and makeup on. Then we were up in our room and he/she was in there too....and definitely looked like a boy or a person in some sort of sex transition. Further evidence of our theory included the presence of male shower gel in our shower which was in a room of all girls (besides the imposter) and an adams apple of questionable size. We will never know, but it was sick.
Now we are sitting in an internet cafe, about to go to the beach (we think), after just eating a delightful meal from a place called Asia Fast Food. We just booked a night train (with beds and everything!!) to Venice, so we leave tonight at 10pm and get into Venice at around 730 tomorrow morning. Right now our plan is to spend the morning-mid day in Venice and then take an afternoon train to Salzburg in Austria. However judging by past events, that could clearly change so we'll keep you guys posted.
Hope all is well at home...we miss you guys! byebye
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Addendum: Irish Rock Cafe
We decided that after last night we needed a low key night, so we saw an ad for an Irish Rock Cafe and thought it would be a good idea to go, have some dinner, see some ´live music´etc. Of course, it was pouring out so we both huddled under a mini travel umbrella, got completely soaked, and took the metro to some place we can´t pronouce. We arrived safely at George Payne´s Irish Rock Cafe, which was quite cozy and nice inside. We ordered a knockoff of the Applebee´s appetizer sampler, but it definitely didn´t measure up. Basically, it was like 5 forms of french fries, and McDonalds chicken nuggets for 16 euro...essentially like 25 bucks. Awesome. It was pretty tasty, but overload on the potatoes. We then sat at our table for another 3 hours sipping on some beer and smoking cigs from this machine that took a rocket scientist to figure out. Carla took a sidetrip to the bathroom and went into the boys bathroom and only figured it out when she received disapproving nods from the men in the bathroom. Note: she was completely sober and thought it was a unisex bathroom (??) The live music was basically a bad spanish elvis cover band with other random johnny cash and shit thrown in, but it was a little taste of home and kind of nice. One hot guy talked to us, and then some old, married english dude bought us beers and talked to us about spanish motocross for about 30 minutes and how we are going to have a black president. we were like hell yeah and he was like ew, which was very rude.
Once we finished our beers we went outside to catch the metro home and to our shock it was CLOSED. Mind you it is still pouring out, so we stood bewildered in front of the closed metro station hugging each other for about 5 minutes, when we looked down the stairs to the metro and saw a dark figure hovering behind the gate staring at us. We were terrified and ran to the safety of our good old George Payne, where two REALLY hot dudes laughed at us and told us we either had to walk in the pouring rain or shell out mad dough for a cab. We chose the latter of course, because we had no idea where we were and all Katie had in her bag was a map of Paris. Not very helpful. We took a cab back to our hostel and have been sitting here on the internet wasting time because we napped today and aren´t tired. We planned on staying in Barcelona for another night, but we found out our hostel is booked so either we have to find a new place for one night or we are just going to take a train to switzerland tomorrow night.
Alright well nothing much else to tell but hopefully tomorrow we will see a few sights, perhaps go to the beach in the morning if its nice, and maybe we´ll be here tomorrow night but maybe not. Wherever the spanish wind may take us.
Once we finished our beers we went outside to catch the metro home and to our shock it was CLOSED. Mind you it is still pouring out, so we stood bewildered in front of the closed metro station hugging each other for about 5 minutes, when we looked down the stairs to the metro and saw a dark figure hovering behind the gate staring at us. We were terrified and ran to the safety of our good old George Payne, where two REALLY hot dudes laughed at us and told us we either had to walk in the pouring rain or shell out mad dough for a cab. We chose the latter of course, because we had no idea where we were and all Katie had in her bag was a map of Paris. Not very helpful. We took a cab back to our hostel and have been sitting here on the internet wasting time because we napped today and aren´t tired. We planned on staying in Barcelona for another night, but we found out our hostel is booked so either we have to find a new place for one night or we are just going to take a train to switzerland tomorrow night.
Alright well nothing much else to tell but hopefully tomorrow we will see a few sights, perhaps go to the beach in the morning if its nice, and maybe we´ll be here tomorrow night but maybe not. Wherever the spanish wind may take us.
BARCA part 2
hola! yesterday we woke up and took the metro to the beach near Port Olympico. We were only out there for like an hour and a half, surrounded by small teenagers once again. Although 2 of the guys next to us were very attractive so it was okay that they were underage. It was also pretty depressing because all the girls weighed like 4 lbs since they were like 12 so that made us feel old and fat and stupid. We somehow thought it was a good idea to not bring towels, so we laid on the sand which wasn´t very comfortable...Carla was smart and put a shirt over her face...Katie wasn´t and now looks rather like a lobster with a sunglass tan. Sweeeeeet. After we got sick of the beach we took the metro into the center of the city and walked around a bunch. We were followed by a flock of boys with some sort of whistle device in their mouth that made them sound exactly like seagulls...and they walked behind us and cawwed (???) at us and it made us very confused. When we finally realized it was them and not actual seagulls, we briskly walked away. We walked down to Port Vell which was really nice and then took the metro home. We took naps and then decided to hit the town.
Well, lets begin by talking about our delightful pregame at the hostel. Katie was staying in a room with 3 girls from Texas. They seemed really nice but when we asked what they were doing they did the classic ´´ummm we´re not sure yet, hanging out with our friends i think´...by friends they meant some of the boys downstairs so that was sketchy. So we took matters into our own hands, went down the street and bought a Rikaloff knockoff bottle of vodka and pineapple juice and settled down on the upstairs terrace with Katie´s iPhone as a source of music. We were having a lovely time by ourselves when our ´friends´decided to ´join´us. They came upstairs with boys in tow, and sat down at the table next to us and pulled out cards AND catch phrase (yes MK, CATCH PHRASE). However, were we invited to play along? No. Did we know all the answers to the questions that the dumb Texas girls didnt? Of course. But noooo, we just had to sit there in agonizing silence as we watched them play our favorite game with no invitation. In the words of Stephanie Tanner...HOW RUDE!
Katie´s iPhone died so we used Carlas ipod and weird headphones turned up all the way to listen to music, although it was drowned out for the most part by the stupid table next to us. Finally the guy from the front desk who seemed nice asked us if we were going out and we said sure. They were having some sort of thing where if we all went together we could get into some place for free. So we went along with everyone, met 2 kids from VA beach who were actually nice and talked to us, and followed everyone to some unknown destination on the metro.
We got to this bar that seemed pretty cool but it was clearly where all the hostels brought their American kids to all get together, so basically everyone there was from the US. It was pretty fun but the drinks were ridiculous...a vodka cranberry was like 11 bucks. Not sweet. We met some really nice kids from Chicago and Argentina, and went with them to this other club. This is when things turned sketch. The ¨nice¨guy from the front desk turned out to be super creepy and was like molesting Katie, so she asked one of the guys from Chicago to pretend to be with her so he would leave her alone. Didn´t work. She had to dodge front desk man all night and it was really gross and sketchy. We walked to some other club, we had absolutely no fucking clue where in Barcelona we were. The club was semi trashy and not very crowded, so we stayed there for a bit and then went and hung out with our Chicago friends at their hostel until wee hours of the morn. Some random asian kid just came back from amsterdam and had a nice selection of nug so that was rather lovely.
Since we got essentially no sleep last night, we slept all day today which was good because it was pouring out anyway. We just woke up and are trying to figure out when we are leaving barcelona, where we are going next, and what the hell we are doing with our lives for the next month. Suggestions welcome. We suppose we shall go out again tonight, why the hell not. We may skip Nice because the weather is supposed to be crappy, and might just go straight to Germany, or to Switzerland, or Austria. Sidenote to herd members, you know who you are... we are doing the SOUND OF MUSIC OFFICIAL TOUR. It is probably the thing we are most excited for on our entire trip. It consists of taking a bus around to all the places from the movie while LISTENING TO THE WHOLE SOUNDTRACK. What could possibly be better!!! We wish you guys were here...we´ll definitely take some videos.
Okay we´ll write more tomorrow...tata!
P.S. GO OBAMA!!!!
Well, lets begin by talking about our delightful pregame at the hostel. Katie was staying in a room with 3 girls from Texas. They seemed really nice but when we asked what they were doing they did the classic ´´ummm we´re not sure yet, hanging out with our friends i think´...by friends they meant some of the boys downstairs so that was sketchy. So we took matters into our own hands, went down the street and bought a Rikaloff knockoff bottle of vodka and pineapple juice and settled down on the upstairs terrace with Katie´s iPhone as a source of music. We were having a lovely time by ourselves when our ´friends´decided to ´join´us. They came upstairs with boys in tow, and sat down at the table next to us and pulled out cards AND catch phrase (yes MK, CATCH PHRASE). However, were we invited to play along? No. Did we know all the answers to the questions that the dumb Texas girls didnt? Of course. But noooo, we just had to sit there in agonizing silence as we watched them play our favorite game with no invitation. In the words of Stephanie Tanner...HOW RUDE!
Katie´s iPhone died so we used Carlas ipod and weird headphones turned up all the way to listen to music, although it was drowned out for the most part by the stupid table next to us. Finally the guy from the front desk who seemed nice asked us if we were going out and we said sure. They were having some sort of thing where if we all went together we could get into some place for free. So we went along with everyone, met 2 kids from VA beach who were actually nice and talked to us, and followed everyone to some unknown destination on the metro.
We got to this bar that seemed pretty cool but it was clearly where all the hostels brought their American kids to all get together, so basically everyone there was from the US. It was pretty fun but the drinks were ridiculous...a vodka cranberry was like 11 bucks. Not sweet. We met some really nice kids from Chicago and Argentina, and went with them to this other club. This is when things turned sketch. The ¨nice¨guy from the front desk turned out to be super creepy and was like molesting Katie, so she asked one of the guys from Chicago to pretend to be with her so he would leave her alone. Didn´t work. She had to dodge front desk man all night and it was really gross and sketchy. We walked to some other club, we had absolutely no fucking clue where in Barcelona we were. The club was semi trashy and not very crowded, so we stayed there for a bit and then went and hung out with our Chicago friends at their hostel until wee hours of the morn. Some random asian kid just came back from amsterdam and had a nice selection of nug so that was rather lovely.
Since we got essentially no sleep last night, we slept all day today which was good because it was pouring out anyway. We just woke up and are trying to figure out when we are leaving barcelona, where we are going next, and what the hell we are doing with our lives for the next month. Suggestions welcome. We suppose we shall go out again tonight, why the hell not. We may skip Nice because the weather is supposed to be crappy, and might just go straight to Germany, or to Switzerland, or Austria. Sidenote to herd members, you know who you are... we are doing the SOUND OF MUSIC OFFICIAL TOUR. It is probably the thing we are most excited for on our entire trip. It consists of taking a bus around to all the places from the movie while LISTENING TO THE WHOLE SOUNDTRACK. What could possibly be better!!! We wish you guys were here...we´ll definitely take some videos.
Okay we´ll write more tomorrow...tata!
P.S. GO OBAMA!!!!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Hostal Situation
HELLO ALLLLL!
So raging through Europe continues. Yesterday we had a wakeup call for 8am and didn´t wake up until 1pm..woo. Clearly using our time in Paris well. When we finally dragged our lazy asses out of bed we went up to Montmartre where Sacre Coeur and the Dali museum are, and walked around a bit. Then we went to the Musee d orsay but it was closed cause it was monday, so we just walked up to Notre Dame and then went back to the hotel. We thought were were going to go out so we bought a 12 pack of Carlsburg, except we came to discover we had no bottle opener. Thinking we were tricky, we tried opening the bottles on every surface in the room...Katie even tried prying them open with tweezers which resulted in a nasty gash in two of her fingers. Finally we used Carla´s travel toothbrush lighter- style and opened them easily. Our plan was to nap then go out, but we never made it out of our room. HOWEVER we did stay up and watch our favorite program we described earlier which we found out was called ¨Fist of Zen¨ and then watched South Park, Greys Anatomy and Armaggedon all in French. WOOOO raging last night in Paris.
This morning we woke up and traveled all day to BARCELONA!! We are here now in our hostel which brings us to....the HOSTEL situation.
We arrived at a different train station than originally expected so we wandered around for about half an hour, asking about 4 different people where a metro station was. We finally found one and made our way to our hostel, where the woman at the front desk told us we had beds in separate rooms. No big deal we thought, we can handle this. Katie went jollily (is that a word? now it is) to her room where she found out she is staying with a bunch of nice girls from Texas...and Carla went to hers. She went in and knew immediately by the piles of dirty boxers and Men´s shaving cream that she was in a room with ALL DUDES. Original thought- sweet. Afterthought-not so sweet (post script.... katie tells carla that last night in her sleep she was talking and said things about her ass being cold, anthony telling her to fall asleep (who anthony is, we have no idea), etc..) . Carla is now quite concerned she may talk in her sleep in a room full of strange boys which would not be the ideal way to introduce herself. However, when we went to inquire whether Carla could sleep in the empty bunk beneath Katie, the woman at the front desk replied ¨It is not possible.¨Hmmmm oh well. Boys are currently MIA and Carla is very apprehensive for their return.
Since we got in so late tonight, we just went to this restaurant/bar place around the corner where we got some yummy food and a few beers. Tomorrow we plan on doing a little sightseeing and hopefully hitting the beach. We´ll write more tomorrow and let yall know how the sleeping arrangements turn out. A BYEBYE.
So raging through Europe continues. Yesterday we had a wakeup call for 8am and didn´t wake up until 1pm..woo. Clearly using our time in Paris well. When we finally dragged our lazy asses out of bed we went up to Montmartre where Sacre Coeur and the Dali museum are, and walked around a bit. Then we went to the Musee d orsay but it was closed cause it was monday, so we just walked up to Notre Dame and then went back to the hotel. We thought were were going to go out so we bought a 12 pack of Carlsburg, except we came to discover we had no bottle opener. Thinking we were tricky, we tried opening the bottles on every surface in the room...Katie even tried prying them open with tweezers which resulted in a nasty gash in two of her fingers. Finally we used Carla´s travel toothbrush lighter- style and opened them easily. Our plan was to nap then go out, but we never made it out of our room. HOWEVER we did stay up and watch our favorite program we described earlier which we found out was called ¨Fist of Zen¨ and then watched South Park, Greys Anatomy and Armaggedon all in French. WOOOO raging last night in Paris.
This morning we woke up and traveled all day to BARCELONA!! We are here now in our hostel which brings us to....the HOSTEL situation.
We arrived at a different train station than originally expected so we wandered around for about half an hour, asking about 4 different people where a metro station was. We finally found one and made our way to our hostel, where the woman at the front desk told us we had beds in separate rooms. No big deal we thought, we can handle this. Katie went jollily (is that a word? now it is) to her room where she found out she is staying with a bunch of nice girls from Texas...and Carla went to hers. She went in and knew immediately by the piles of dirty boxers and Men´s shaving cream that she was in a room with ALL DUDES. Original thought- sweet. Afterthought-not so sweet (post script.... katie tells carla that last night in her sleep she was talking and said things about her ass being cold, anthony telling her to fall asleep (who anthony is, we have no idea), etc..) . Carla is now quite concerned she may talk in her sleep in a room full of strange boys which would not be the ideal way to introduce herself. However, when we went to inquire whether Carla could sleep in the empty bunk beneath Katie, the woman at the front desk replied ¨It is not possible.¨Hmmmm oh well. Boys are currently MIA and Carla is very apprehensive for their return.
Since we got in so late tonight, we just went to this restaurant/bar place around the corner where we got some yummy food and a few beers. Tomorrow we plan on doing a little sightseeing and hopefully hitting the beach. We´ll write more tomorrow and let yall know how the sleeping arrangements turn out. A BYEBYE.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
HAHAHA
So, there were 100 commercials before the Sex and the City Movie and one was of these pads for women and at the end they put the name of them and the website and they were called NANAs HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Katie and I laughed and people might have thought we were laughing at the commercial itself, but no just the name. Chew on that one NANA hahahaha BYEBYE.
OUI OUI PARIS!
So, We are in an internet cafe right now and the keyboard is all jacked up and letters are not in their rightful places so this is going to be a short one. The . has to be typed with the capslock on hahaha! We just got out of the sex and the city movie and we were so very happy it was in english not french...so we booked our flight but was not sure where we were staying so roy helped us out and got us basically a 5 star hotel for three nights in the left bank for free...thank god. We took this bus to Belfast and then we had to take another bus to the airport but we didnt have pounds so the bus driver let us on for free which was nice. There were two adorable kids sitting infront of us that refused to stop laughing but they were so cute we didnt really mind. wow, this keyboard fucking SUCKS.
Last night we got two bottles of wine and drank them before we went out....needless to say we both were drunk and not sure where we were headed. We started watching this european version of boiling points and laughed our asses off. It consisted of 5 boys in a library taking turns doing gross or painful things and the other 4 trying not to laugh. Trust me, it was hilarious. It turned out to be a pretty standard night with Katie getting emotional and deep, smoking hookah and forgetting to pay the tab, and drinking beers the size of our heads. (katie stole one of the glasses to prove it)
Today we slept til 3 because we were really hungover and katie refused to get up from the bathroom floor because it was a cold surface. However, once we did get up we walked around Paris and Carla got to see the Eiffel tower yay!! We saw about 100 rollerbladers on the street today which was a peculiar sight to see, but one talked to us and he may be telling us where to rage tomorrow night which will be nice.
Carla does not like French people because of many reasons...here are a few:
1. They are mean
2. They only wear neutral colors
3. They think they are gods gift to the world
4. They have sticks up their asses
5. She does not like the way they smell
Katie on the other hand loves Paris and the people.
We think we are leaving for Barcelona on Tuesday but, might stay an extra night in Paris with a French couchsurfer named Jose...we will tell you if that turns out ok question mark
6. The keyboards are really hard to use and dont contain question marks.
Okay well it is like 2 in the morning and we have got a full day ahead of us so, we will write more later!
Au Revoir!!
Last night we got two bottles of wine and drank them before we went out....needless to say we both were drunk and not sure where we were headed. We started watching this european version of boiling points and laughed our asses off. It consisted of 5 boys in a library taking turns doing gross or painful things and the other 4 trying not to laugh. Trust me, it was hilarious. It turned out to be a pretty standard night with Katie getting emotional and deep, smoking hookah and forgetting to pay the tab, and drinking beers the size of our heads. (katie stole one of the glasses to prove it)
Today we slept til 3 because we were really hungover and katie refused to get up from the bathroom floor because it was a cold surface. However, once we did get up we walked around Paris and Carla got to see the Eiffel tower yay!! We saw about 100 rollerbladers on the street today which was a peculiar sight to see, but one talked to us and he may be telling us where to rage tomorrow night which will be nice.
Carla does not like French people because of many reasons...here are a few:
1. They are mean
2. They only wear neutral colors
3. They think they are gods gift to the world
4. They have sticks up their asses
5. She does not like the way they smell
Katie on the other hand loves Paris and the people.
We think we are leaving for Barcelona on Tuesday but, might stay an extra night in Paris with a French couchsurfer named Jose...we will tell you if that turns out ok question mark
6. The keyboards are really hard to use and dont contain question marks.
Okay well it is like 2 in the morning and we have got a full day ahead of us so, we will write more later!
Au Revoir!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
