swiss stuff

arrived in geneva this past sunday night and threw our stuff down and headed for a night spot. it had been a stressful past couple of hours nearly missing planes and trying to get to the airport in barcelona via the metro. i notice a common trend of nearly missing our flights, something we are trying to get better at. anyway

we got to geneva and went to this pub flanagans that was pretty cool. we ended up staying for a while watching some soccer matches and drinking pints of 1664. it was a neat place.. lots of americans which was kind of funny. a sunday night, in switzerland, at an irish bar nonetheless.

next morning we walked around geneva trying to find something cool about this boring place. there are a lot of watches, shit tons of swiss army knives and lots of chocolate.. the latter being the only one i really cared about. let me say that not only did i manage to enjoy the chocolate, i completely overate it and managed to polish off two of those giant bars on wednesday.

everything is quite expensive in switzerland, and we knew we wanted to ski so we kind of cut corners in other areas. aka the only thing i ate whilst in geneva was granola and chocolate... and one croissant.

skiing in the alps was awesome, really had a great time iwth that. the conditions were excellent, fresh snow abundant. we skiied gyron, near villars. it did in fact cost an arm and a leg, but it was worth every penny. i will save the story for my arrival home about nate and i getting off the wrong stop on the way up the mountain and had to trek through the goddamn alps to get to the ski area. and the story about me stopping the entire chair lift only because i didnt put the stupid guard bar down on my chair wsa pretty funny. i had people yellng like hell at me in french... i had no clue.

we are now in rome, just really getting in to it. saw the coliseum-- only form the outside that is but it was brilliant. so enormous... and so old. so much history there. really cool.

our buddies jeff and nick from back home are now joining us for portions of the last leg of the trip. they should be meeting us here at the hostel pretty quick. will be good to hang out with them and get some new folks in the loop.

ill update more about rome, and what was our first night here (last nights expedition getting here) later.

the odd tales of christmas

lets recall the events of christmas so far:

beginning last night after we got home from the bar, while trying to cut up a christmas apple i nearly sliced my left pointer finger off. very festive.

whilst out for a christmas stroll in search of some ice this morning-- christmas morning, nate gets asked by a lovely woman on the corner of the streeet to ¨make one love.¨ she didnt even want to make love, she wanted ¨one love.¨ but lets review.... its christmas, at 11:45 in the morning nonetheless, and this hooker is trying to solicit some business out of two hungover, bed-headed, morning breath clad americans. that got a good laugh.

we went to a bar/lounge last night here in barcelona at the advice of some people we had met in a different bar earlier in the evening. we got there, it was cool, etc. it started getting real weird when one of the guys we had hung out with in madrid just happened to be at the same bar as we were. what are the chances? but just in case that wasnt enough, it was about an hour later when we started chatting with this american that said she was from a town in washington i would have never heard about. it was port angeles, washington... where THE CORSON is from. THE CORSON for all of you is one of the guys nate and i used to live with at MSU. if you are reading this steve, this girl knew you and played tennis with you. her name was bree, or brie perhaps? maybe thats the spelling for the cheese though. either way, that was freakish to the point of discomfort. a little merry christmas six degrees of seperation for you.

plans for the day include heavy reading and sitting. it is not very busy outside, although there are still quite a few people wandering. not a ton of stuff is open, but enough to keep us busy should we need something.

hope everyone has a grrreat christmas, feliz navidad!

christmas eve

have really been relaxing here in barcelona, it has been nice sleeping in and stuff. i went and saw the picasso museum while nate saw the barcelona zoo-- picasso was pretty sweet, tons of work and quite and extensive look at the history of his art.

saw la iglesia de la sagrada familia desgined by gaudi, but like everything else here in spain it was under construction. there is always some sort of jackhammer/loud bang going on everywhere. kind of funny really.

seeing the mediterranean was neat, tons of boats on the docks and stuff. the traffic circle just before the shore has a monument of colombus pointing towards america... it is really tall and pretty cool looking.

we fly out on sunday, pretty sure today is friday so that is coming up. amazing how the days become somewhat of a blur. the hostel we are in right now very closely resembles what nate likes to call ¨russian slave quarters.¨ it is dark, all stone and for the most part scary, although we do have a nice room that they screwed up on so that is pretty cool. there arent a ton of travellers which could be attributed to the shitty hostel or just the fact that the travel season is pretty low right now.

merry christmas to you and yours.

the train ride to barcelona

so we took a night train to barcelona and by the grace of sweet jeebus actually stepped off the train and got to barcelona. quite a funny story really...

for starters we damn near missed the train tuesday night. it departed at 10 pm, and we got the station about 5 minutes before racing with our packs and such to catch the train. we were trying to find our cabin in the railcar and someone was in our couchette.. i told them this was our area and they replied with something to the effect of, no this is ours, not yours, etc etc. you gotta understand the hallways on these trains are about 3 feet wide and with these packs on our backs what seems like a simple walk to the next car to find our couchette is quite hard... but we did. and it turns out when we got the next rail car, we were in fact right and that was our room. we ewnt all the way back and managed to get them out and put all of our shit in..

there were 6 bunked beds in a room half the size of my smallest dorm room in college.. thats right jeff, think less than half the size of 027 abbot. not cool, three beds bunked one on the other on each side of the room.. maybe total 6.5 feet deep by 7 feet wide, you get the point.

it got a bit more fun when the people riding with us in the car piled in along with nate and i. i would say we combined in our room for the oldest age in the entire place--- we were packing an 84 year old castillan spaniard with his lovely 83 year old wife who could barely move. then the french dude who was pretty cool im guessing rougly 45 years. the 60 year old snorer really threw us off balance though, she was the real piece of work.

i got settled writing a bit in my journal and reading some in my book. i conversed a bit with the 84 yr old guy who was cool, but his castillian spanish was really hard to understand and in trying to do so i must have looked like a complete idiot. the other lady, the 60 year old, i could speak with fine, but at this point there was nothing i wanted to say to her.

trying to sleep in this thing was hard enough, but as soon as about 2 am rolled around, the 60 yr old turned on her snorer and consistently roared through the entire evening. i am not talking about your standard snore here, it was like she had a motor to rattle this sound off. it was terrible.. i couldnt sleep at all. i would say i netted about 2 hours of sleep in increments of 20 minutes each for the 9 hour ride. goodness it was fun..

and for the final segment.. once i did finally fall asleep around 6 am i was pretty tired. nate had set his watch for 630 am so that we would awake when the train stopepd in barcelona. well, just as you expected, the watch didnt go off and i awoke to the french dude yelling amigo in my ear trying to tell me the train was stopped in barcelona now and if we didnt get off we were going to be going to france. i shook the hell out of nate and we booked out of that couchette in record time nearly missing barcelona. had we missed it, we would have ended in cerbera, france. close call.

it felt nice to be in barcelona.

¡picasso!

suitcase living is cool... ill tell you what though, this mornign i damn near knocked down the entire row of lockers as mine was stuck. i was so frustrated because i had just woken up and didnt really want to and i needed my shower shit. ohhh boy was i frustrated.. but i got past that and enjoyed (BRACE YOURSELF... please) my first shower and shave of the trip. ok thats gross i know, but you have to understand.

went to the reina sofia (Art museum) and saw guernica which was absolutely amazing. picasso is probably my favorite and actually seing the original full on guernica was super cool. i am not a huge art buff, but enjoy it here and there, but this was one of those moments.

we ate some jamon and tapas lsat night which was fun. spanish beer.. kinda tasty. but the paella.. woah amigo!! excellent.

and speaking spanish is the best. i have been rehashing the spaniish skills and enjoying it quite a bit in the process.

have yet to see the real madrid stadium like i said before, perhaps tomorrow.

i am reading an excellent book right now that comes highly reccomended from yours truly.. ¨devil in the white city¨is the title, by erik larson. all about the worlds fair in chicago and one of the key arhitects that designed it.. along with some interactions with this murderer that uses the fair to lure in his victims. really, really interesting.. its a true story, so its got a lot of good infromative stuff to learn and a lot of history about chicago (the location of the worlds fair) which i find interesting as i found that little gem of a city home this past summer. good stuff...

and there is a really cool spanish singer.... amaral is her name. listeeing to it lots in our current hostel and it is quite nice. maybe a sample online is in order for you.

hasta

au revoir and hola españa

paris ended up being just awesome, some trends we noticed 1)crepes are excellent 2)little kids speakign french is pretty funny 3)for some reason, drinking beer in the street outside didnt go over so well with some people 4)there are a lot of blind people in france 5)no fat people in france 6)tons of kebabs all over

the louvre was pretty sweet, mona lisa was nice. even cooler was the fact that there was no line to see it. saw winged victory and other popular pieces. arc di triomphe was excellent. the thing is massive. that whole area is so rich with history. really neat to see.. socre couere was beautiful up on the hill despite the pouring rain. this was after a few sodas mind you, we managed to get in to the actual church but were yelled at for something about taking pictures.. who would have known. moulin rouge was disgusting to be quite honest, plenty of door guys yelling for us to ocme in and see the girls. we managed to find this small ass piano bar tucked away near socre couere that proved to be pretty awesome despite the €20 for two beers. champs elysee had soem cool stores and neat bars earlier that day. overall, despite the rain and cold paris was a proclaimed winner. i just wish i could have snagged more food.. who would have guesssed.

getting in to madrid was pretty sweet because there was sunshine.. surprised the hell out of both nate and i as we awoke from our slumber on the plane. pulling out the spanish skills has been fun to be honest. i cant say i am spot on with a lot of stuff, but a good time giving it the old college try. our new hostel in madrid is smack dab in the middle of everything which is cool compared to the hells half acre we had to walk to get in to the good parts of paris from our last hostel. we tried to see real madrid play a match earlier today but the game was over by the time we landed and got situated in the hostel.

we just got back from a cool dinner, some spanish paella and wine. there is a shit ton of christmas celebration in the streets, im talking tons of people dancing all around and stuff. kind of neat to be honest. i am just happy it is warmer. tomorrow plan to see picasso´s guernica which is just around the corner at one of the museums and then snag a tour of the real madrid futbol stadium. we have 2 full days and part of another in madrid before we take a night train to barcelona and have a lot more time there.

paris

got to paris today, good times. this place is awesome. all the ill will you hear about i have seen nothing of. the people have been jsut incredibly nice. had anm interesting time at somsmall pub earlier this afternoon watching some old french guy do what we think was swear. he was tossing shit all over which was pretty good fun. nate and i laughed like we knew what was going on.

the eiffel tower was sweet. we saw it at the top iof the hour at night so the lights were twinkling like crazy which blew me away. notre dame was pretty extravagant. got some excellent pictures which was nice.

we m,anaged to get lost plenty of times which is always good. a trusty compass would be cool, but there is no time for that amidst the shoe repairs with rubber cement and jimmy rigs that were already thrown together with that go-to roll of duct tape.

planning to see old mona lisa tomorrow and drink some wine which seems to be quite cheap in the g20 supermarket. this place is excellent, at this point i wish we had more time to spend.

bags are packed

almost time to take off, paris is the first destination. heres the proposed schedule:

-dec 16-19: paris, france
-dec 19-22: madrid, spain
-dec 22-26: barcelona, spain
-dec 23-29: geneva, switzerland
-dec 20-jan 2: rome, italy
-jan 2-5: florence, italy
-jan 5-8: venice, italy
-jan 8-11: all over belgium
-jan 11-16: amsterdam, netherlands

i'm gonna keep this thing updated as i go along so check back as you please. comment as you like through the blog (i think you can do that..?) as i would love to hear from everyone. i think this thing is pretty cool. i got a backpack that is sparsely populated with clothes, but i think i have about all i will need. i wear about the same three things anyway. the camera is in order now, number 3 that is, and i hope to post some pictures as i progress.