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.