Roamin' Numerals

The European leg of my journey, by the numbers:

15748: distance travelled, in km, by vehicle since leaving Ottawa

4032: pageviews on this blog

126: days

29.98: weight, in lbs, of my gear

28: hostels

22: new facebook friends

21: blog posts, including this one

18: coach bus trips

15: train trips

12: countries

4: currencies spent

4: pro sporting events attended

3: flights

3: live music shows attended

1: anti-celibacy old British lady who fed me homemade curry and Guinness

0: regrets

Family Matters

The last couple weeks have been a nice break and change of pace. I went to Bayreuth (pronounced Bye-roit) to visit family as planned. What didn't go to plan is that I ended up staying way longer than I had been planning. First of all, my new cousin Lexy is pretty much the cutest baby you'll ever see...and I'm not even a baby guy. My apologies to any readers with babies...I'm sure yours is just as cute. She's got huge brown eyes and a great smile. I've never seen so many people stop and look at a baby like they do with her. Lisa and Rinaldo informed me that my mom gave them a mission on Christmas to get me to want to provide her grand kids. That won't be happening any time soon if I have anything to say about it, but Lexy's definitely a good baby representative.

The other new family member I was grateful to meet was Osvaldo, Rinaldo's brother. I didn't make it to their wedding in the summer, so I never had the chance to meet him. I can't say enough good things about Osvaldo as a host or as a person. This is despite Rinaldo's repeated pleas to “destroy him” in this blog – I've never seen two siblings break eachothers balls as much as these two do. He went out of his way to make me feel at home, which was more than appreciated. Having been on the road for 4 months, this was one of the few times where I truly felt anything close to being at home. That, combined with his great cooking led me to extending my stay from a couple days to nearly a week and a half.

On my second day there we went to watch Osvaldo's team play. He plays pro basketball in Germany and has been over here for 3 years. In the first city he played in, Osvaldo met a family that took him in as one of their own, teaching him how to speak German, and providing some of the comforts that only family can provide. They came out to watch the game too, and I could see why Osvaldo loved them... they were very warm and sweet people. By the end of the night they even insisted I come visit them on the weekend with the rest of the gang, which is what twisted my rubber arm into extending my visit. The game itself was lots of fun. Unfortunately Osvaldo's got a shoulder injury so he wasn't able to play. His team clearly missed his absence since they ended up giving up a 15 point lead and losing the game. The atmosphere in the gym was crazy though. There were about 2000 fans there and it was louder than most Sens games. I'm sure the smaller room contributed to the acoustics, but still... Ottawa fans could learn something from European sports fans! So now I can add professional basketball to my ever-growing list of sports I've seen on this trip.

The following day, Elke and Kui, the mother and father of the family, gave Lisa and I a tour of Bayreuth, which turned out to be quite the cool little town. Afterwords we stopped in at the opera house's cafe. It was fancy in and old lady/doiley kinda way. It really reminded me of my grandmother, as that's the sort of thing she would have enjoyed.

The rest of the week was spent relaxing, with the occasional stroll through town. The baby was still getting adjusted to her new surroundings and the time change, so Lisa and Rinaldo were also pretty tired from that. That was fine by me, to sit down, relax, watch some Sons of Anarchy (or SOA as Lisa liked to call it), or play some playstation.

Finally on Friday we left to visit Elke, Kui, and the rest of the family in Nordlingen, which was about 2 hours away. This was the first town where Osvaldo played basketball and it was beautiful. I mentioned in my previous post about how WWII wiped out most buildings in the big German cities. Luckily Nordlingen was mostly untouched by the bombs since it was so small, and so the medieval town has largely remained the same. The town is over 1000 years old, and nearly every building in the centre is a few hundred years old.

All in all, I am so glad I got to meet everybody I did over the past couple weeks. If you're reading this, thanks Lisa, Rinaldo, Osvaldo, the Molls, and Lexy...although Lexy probably isn't reading this.

I've received a few enquiries as to my cliffhanger from the last post. So here it is: next Friday, I'll be flying to Thailand. As much as I've enjoyed Europe, it's time to move on to the next part of this journey. I'm thinking I'll be travelling South East Asia for a few months, but as I, and probably you, have learned, plans on this trip tend to change pretty easily. I'm looking forward to the change. And not to mention the warmth! I'm also a little nervous which I haven't really felt since I booked my flight to Dublin back in September. If you've been over that way and have any tips, I'm all ears because this is completely new territory for me. I'll be keeping up with the blog as much as internet access will allow, so if you're still interested, you're welcome to continue down this strange and winding road with me. Wish me luck!

As for pictures, I was just as lazy with my camera as I was with everything else the last few days. So no pictures except this one with a cute girl I met:

I swear she's not terrified...that's just how big her eyes are. Ok, maybe she's a little terrified.

Grizzly Adams did have a playoff beard

First of all, a big thanks to those who sent their Xmas wishes my way. It was really appreciated, and made the holidays away a lot easier to handle. A lot of people reminded me that even though I was away from family and friends, I was still on the trip of the lifetime, so that cheered me up. After having been on the road for this long and travel becomes the norm, I tend to forget how lucky I am to be doing this. So thanks everybody! I also received a few recurring questions, so I'll answer them for everybody else who may be wondering:

• I was in Frankfurt for Christmas and new years, but I'll be talking about that more later
• No, I'm not an alcoholic. I know I mention drinking a fair amount in my posts, but it's not like that (stage one: denial). You gotta believe me man! Nah, it's just that going out for a beer or two is a great way to meet friends and get to know people. It very rarely gets to a level of excess – Prague was an exception, not a rule. Besides, I really can't afford to drink all that much. I'd rather see more cities and countries than spend all my money in the bars. All I ask is that if you stage an intervention for me upon my return, please don't make it at the airport.
• I seriously don't know how I got to be this handsome, so please stop emailing me about it Matt.
• The beard. Some love it, some hate it. I don't have plans to shave it, but I don't have plans to not shave it either. I dunno, I just didn't bother packing a razor, and that's more money I could be spending to extend my trip. It has its pros and cons. The pro is that it makes me look poor and homeless (not exactly an inaccurate assessment), so I tend to get harassed less than most tourists for money. The con is that it makes me look poor and homeless so I actually get some pretty dirty looks on the streets sometimes from people. It's sticking around for at least the time being, so get used to it!

I think I responded to everybody who wrote to me, so I'm sorry if I didn't...it must have slipped through the cracks. K, back to the travel update.

Dammit I gotta quit leaving such big gaps between updates...I've got lots to write about. I ended up staying in Berlin for a few more days after the last post. I did a second walking tour which focused on the Third Reich in Berlin and how one of the greatest human atrocities ever committed came to be. I consider myself well-versed in WWII info, but I still managed to learn plenty on the tour. Worth checking out if you swing by Berlin. After that, I didn't get up to too much crazy stuff. Went to a couple last Christmas markets and explored the city on foot a lot. One night was an interesting juxtaposition of events... I went from skyping home and talking to nuns (happy birthday Vicki) to going out with a couple people from the hostel and stumbling upon a really dodgy part of town, walking past hookers on our way to a terrible bar playing terrible techno. The bar had a flamethrower that shot 4 foot flames out to some sort of rhythm with the techno. How do I know they were hookers? They were standing on the street and had written on the car windows next to them in the snow “Sex – 70€”. Ingenious marketing really. So let's recap...I've managed to talk about Christmas, Hitler, nuns, and hookers all in the same paragraph. I'm kind of impressed with myself.

A couple days before Christmas I took off for Frankfurt. I'd been seeing weather reports for the past few days that were more or less implying it was the end of days in Europe with the amount of snow that had fallen. It was snowy to be sure, but nothing too crazy. These reports made me nervous about getting down there, but aside from some traffic back-up on the Autobahn, it wasn't too bad.

I laid pretty low my first couple days in Frankfurt, replying to my Christmas emails, hanging out and generally being pretty lazy. I was productive on Christmas day and did a couple loads of laundry. Despite spending Christmas itself alone, I had some great company on boxing day and the week after. Tor flew out from home to visit me for the week, and we had a great time. It turns out Frankfurt isn't the most exciting of cities to visit, especially for an entire week, but we made the most of it. It's a very financial/businessy city, with lots of skyscrapers and office buildings. There are some things to do there though and we did as much as possible when they weren't closed. We took several walks through the Romerplatz, which has a lot of old buildings. Well they were re-built to look old. There are very few buildings in Germany that are more than 70 years old due to the massive bombing campaigns in WWII, so if you're looking at something that looks very old, it was probably built recently to look that way. We went to the history museum which had an impressive exhibit of photographs from a German photographer whose name escapes me. We went to the Kleinmarkethall which is market hall (duh) that has a little bit of everything for sale. Its main selling point for me was the many butcher stands in there, which all sold a variety of sausages. Delicious! We checked out a couple obligatory churches, as well as saw the memorial for Frankfurt Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. That was a very moving display, as there are several walls covered in little 3x2x2 inch rectangles with each person's name on them, their date of birth, their date of death (if it was actually known – many were murdered without any records), and where they died. The columns are about 5 high and go all the way across the walls... there are over 11000 names in total which is just an overwhelming sight. I took a few pictures, but that is just one of the walls....I'd say there were 4 or 5 more walls with just as many names.

Not sure how to transition from that, so uh...new years! We had an interesting new year's eve. We were told the Main River was the place to be for fireworks on new year's eve so that's where we went. Tor had read somewhere online that it was a little disorganized and unprofessional. We had no idea what we were in for. We got off the metro at our stop and got a sneak preview of what we were in for as people were setting cherry bombs off inside the train station. When we got out to the square, there was more of the same, with a couple roman candles to boot. Then as we approached the Main river at 11 we started hearing quite a few fireworks going off. We were worried we had missed the show and that Germans do the fireworks earlier or something. We discovered when we got to the Main that there's no actual firework show, it's just hundreds of locals setting off their own store-bought fireworks. It started off with one going off every 10 seconds or so, then 5 seconds or so, and then by the time it was midnight, it was just chaos.... dozens were exploding every second up and down the river. It was quite the show. We even met a German couple standing next to us who had the red Vancouver Olympic mitts on...they seemed to enjoy our bewilderment at the show. One thing I failed to mention is that Tor had a negative experience with fireworks when she was younger, so she doesn't like them being set off around her. So this was pretty much the worst place for her to be. She was a trooper (ha...unintentional inside joke) though and stuck it out like a champ. She even managed to get some impressive video of it when she wasn't screaming and jumping. I guess I'm just lucky to have responsible friends and never have had a negative experience with fireworks take place....

Tor had to head back home unfortunately on the 1^st due to having “a job” and “responsibilities”.. whatever those are. Anyways, after seeing her off at the airport I jumped on a train and headed for Munich. Munich was definitely one of my favourite cities so far. It's a bit smaller than Berlin so it's manageable on foot, and it's got a lot more going on culturally and historically than Frankfurt. I explored on foot my first couple days there, taking in the different sites and buildings, and yes...beer halls. Berlin is a modern city because after the war they decided to build everything new and fresh. Munich is the opposite. Hitler really liked the old feel of the city, so they documented how everything looked and was designed, and then it was rebuilt to look exactly the same. My Kiwi friend Alice came out to Munich for a couple days and we went on a walking tour. This was probably one of the best tours I've done, as the guide knew a lot of history and was very passionate about the city. Among others, we saw the famed Glockenspiel in Marienplatz, whose performance was underwhelming. We got sausages and beer, we saw the infamous Hofbrauhaus (gigantic beer hall where the first ever Nazi party took place). We retraced the path of the bierhall putsch, and saw lots of other cool stuff and learned a lot about Bavarian history. Alice had to head back home after that, so she took off to catch her flight from Frankfurt. I made some friends, Andrea and Michelle, on the tour and we decided to head to Dachau the following day. Dachau was the first concentration camp the Nazis built, and was used as a model for all of the others they would build. To say this was a heavy day would be an understatement. It's just incomprehensible to think about what these people went through... there is no way I could ever understand a fraction of it just by reading the plaques and listening to the audio guide. That's not to say I didn't learn a lot though. The site is very well set up with great and moving information at every turn. You can tour the grounds outside as well as go into one of the original former maintenance buildings where there is very thorough museum. One touch that really made it moving was on the audioguide were several first person accounts from camp survivors and liberators... it was chilling to listen to as you walked the grounds. I've made a separate photo album from my trip to Dachau, and will try to caption it as best as possible to give you an idea as to what you're looking at.

That night I needed some cheering up, so I decided to take in the Munich hockey game. I met a couple American guys at the hostel, Nick and Brandon, who wanted to come out too, so we went together. Brandon had never been to a game, so I had fun explaining some of the finer points, whether he wanted to hear them or not. EHC Munich plays its games on the site of where the Olympics took place back in the 70's, so that was cool to see. We got the cheapest tickets possible and went into the arena to discover that in Germany, there is standing room sections for hockey. We had a blast nonetheless. The game was back and forth, and ended up going to a shootout again. The ending was anticlimactic as a player the opposing team took a shot for the 5^th or 6^th round of the shootout, and the goalie clearly saved it (we were right behind the net in question) but it was ruled a goal anyways. There was a lot of booing and whistling (which, if you've been paying attention, means the same thing as booing over here). The best explanation we could get in broken English was either that the goalie kicked the net off its moorings while making the save (I didn't notice it, but I wasn't looking for it either) or that after he made the save, the goalie kicked the puck in. I didn't see either of these things happen, but it was a weird ending to a weird day. One of my favourite parts of the game was the opposing team's name. Munich was EHC (Eis Hockey Club) Munich, which made sense. The other team was the Wolfsburg Grizzly Adams. Their logo was a bear, but their name was the grizzly adams. I like to imagine they were trying to google grizzly bears and halfway through, it auto-recommended Adams, and they just went with that.

My last night in Munich I met up with the Americans again and had a couple beers at the hostel bar. I had my first full litre of beer (seriously, at least let me get some tim hortons and have a nap before the intervention) which is a lot for one glass. Milk is sold in Litres. Beer should not be. We ended up meeting a couple from Australia who were loads of fun, so we all grabbed some dinner and had a couple more beverages with them. Up next is Bayreuth, which is just outside of Nuremberg. My cousin Lisa and her husband Rinaldo just had their first baby, Lexy, and they're out to visit Rinaldo's brother Osvaldo. So I'm going to crash the party (and Osvaldo's couch) and meet my new cousin. I'm really looking forward to it!

Picture time. Here is an album from Frankfurt and Munich, and here is a separate album from Dachau.

Thanks for reading all this way if you've stuck with it. My longest post so far I think! Here's a bit of a cliffhanger to award your patience... stay tuned for the next post, cause there may be some major new developments occurring that will affect my trip as well as this blog. No, I'm not pregnant.

Dingaling, hear them ring. Soon it will be Christmas day

Sorry for the delay between posts...been a busy couple weeks. Sorry, ladies of Sir Wil (I'm told I have a fanbase there).

Budapest was great. It's a very big city, so getting around is slightly trickier than some of the smaller cities I'd just been to, but I managed. I'd heard really good things about a hostel in Budapest (from a guy who had tattooed its name on his ass – I had to at least check it out), so I gave it a try. It was definitely the friendliest hostel I've ever stayed at, with everybody knowing eachother's name, and a very social atmosphere. We went out on small pub crawl every night, which was a good way to see the nightlife, even if some of the bars were kinda crappy. The only downside was that about 95% of the hostel guests were Aussies (I'm telling you, there's none left in Australia) and younger than me, so I felt like a bit of an outsider. Nonetheless, it was a great time. One night at the pubs, I was wearing my Oakland A's ball cap and a couple Hungarian guys game up to me and told me they were the “Hungarian Baseball Freaks”. I quickly discerned this meant they just really liked baseball and wanted to talk to me about it. I haven't followed pro ball in years, but I gave it my best since they were buying the beers. I think they appreciated it. At some point on this night I also met Alice the Kiwi, another backpacker staying at a sister hostel. She said she was heading to Prague on Sunday, and that had been my rough plan too, so we decided to head there together. I met some really cool people in Budapest, and I'm very glad I went.

So, Sunday morning Alice and I met up and caught the bus to Prague, which was long but pretty comfortable. We explored the city by foot the first couple days, taking in the Christmas markets, their elaborate bridge (name escapes me), the castle, and pretty much everything in between. Our second night there we met up with my South African friends, Marcel and Anton for a pub crawl along with a couple other people from our hostel. I'd been hearing whispers of this particular pub crawl since getting to Eastern Europe. This pub crawl's claim to fame is that for the first two hours, you have unlimited access to beer, vodka, and absinthe. Yeah. Shit got messy. We weren't even in the second bar for 10 minutes before Alice said she wasn't feeling well, so I went upstairs with her for some air. As she was redecorating the side of the bar, I saw another of the girls from the hostel being thrown into a cab too, unconscious. I was feeling fine and wanted to keep pub crawling, but unfortunately responsible me took over and put Alice in the same cab and off we went back to the hostel. The cab driver dropped us off pretty far from our hostel, so I had to carry the passed-out one over my shoulder as her friend was freaking out and Alice was drunkenly screaming for an ambulance. Fun times! I had originally planned on going back to join the pub crawl once everybody was back home safe, but I was so worn out from lugging the girl around (she was dead weight...completely unconscious), that I decided I'd just call it a night. Unfortunately the next day the girls, who had left their jackets out in the common room overnight, both discovered large sums of cash missing from their pockets. It was a good reminder to be careful with your things in hostels, cause you never know.

Our final full day in Prague was fun, but chilly. We met up with the South Africans along with an Aussie (see?) from our hostel for a walking tour. This was a bit of a challenge since it was snowing hard – you've probably heard of the blizzards rocking Europe the last few days – and it was pretty cold out. To boot, the normal tour guide was sick so it was an office manager doing the tour, who was very rushed and didn't have the best grasp of English. He still had lots of interesting info to offer though, and it was cool to learn of all the different empires that have ruled Prague. Afterwords we made some dinner at the hostel and found the prague beer museum, which was really just a pub with a bunch of different beers. They weren't quite as good as the Belgian beers, but I'm now definitely a fan of the Czech beers.

The following day Alice and I parted ways and I headed for Berlin. Now there's a city for history buffs! I did another walking tour of Berlin and saw a bit of everything from the Brandenburg gate, to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the old Luftwaffe headquarters, and the hotel where MJ dangled his baby by its leg over the balcony. On the tour I met a couple cool people so we decided to meet up later for drinks. Unfortunately when we met up later I realised too late that they had a dance club in mind, not a pub. Fack! I went along with it, and actually had a decent time. It was a huge old warehouse that had been converted into a club with different styles of music on each floor. They had a rock floor, an electro floor (I'll never understand why they love techno so much), and a “blackmusic” floor. This turned out to be r&b and hip hop, but the name came off as a little politically incorrect. I mean I'm white (sorry for the shocker), and I enjoyed that floor more than the others...as did most people there from what I could tell. I dunno, just one of those cultural things I suppose.

The following day was awesome...I went to a hockey game! The Berlin Eisbaren (polar bears, but doesn't that sound cooler?) were playing Sunday afternoon, and I decided I'd been away from hockey too long. So I finally figured out how to get there (turns out it was literally right behind the club I'd been to the night before) and took off. While waiting in line at the box office, somebody came up to me and offered me a free ticket cause their friend had to cancel, so that was a bonus! I made sure to buy him a beer with some of my money saved. It was really fun being there. The quality of the hockey on the ice itself was kinda crappy compared to the NHL (or even OHL...but not Delage), but they make it lots of fun for everybody to draw the crowds. I was surprised to learn that the arena seats 15000 people, and they were just shy of being a capacity crowd – not bad for a Sunday afternoon. There were fireworks, lots of chanting, and singing. One thing I thought was really cool was when the announcer was announcing the home team line up, he would only say the player's first name and the entire crowd would should his last name back. There was even a Canadian in the line-up. Go Steve Walker! The Eisbaren ended up losing 2-1 in a shootout if you missed SportsCentre.

Ok, so I've been really slack on taking pictures (gimme a break, it's freezing out), and just as slack at posting them. So, here are some pictures from Amalfi, Venice, Prague, Budapest, and Berlin.

My Christmas plea:

I hope everybody has a very merry Christmas and get to spend it with the people they love. Being away from everybody I care about is going to be tough for me. It really makes me realise how much family and friends mean over the holidays, and how little everything else (gifts, money, etc) does. So I've got a favour to ask from you. Send me a Christmas email. Let me know how things are going with you. Do you have any questions about my trip? I'll write you back. How desperate does that all sound? I dunno, I'd just love to hear from everybody, so if you're reading this, drop me a line!

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

I've been up to lots since last checking in, so I may as well get right to it. Venice was beautiful when it wasn't raining. It's a very cool town to explore, and very easy to get lost in since the streets are very windy and confusing. When I say streets, I of course mean walkways, because Venice has zero streets and cars. The canals are beautiful, but because I was there during the rainy season, they would flood some of the sidewalks during high tide, so people would have to walk on elevated platforms along some routes. Definitely makes it tricky to get around! I didn't do much besides walk and explore since Venice is a very expensive city, and doesn't have much of a nightlife. But I'm really glad I stopped by...really cool town.

After a few days in Venice, I trained over to Ljubljana, Slovenia. This was my first time in Eastern Europe, and it was another beautiful city. The only train going into Ljubljana from Venice though was a night train, so imagine my surprise when I woke up from a nap on the train to look outside in the dark and see everything covered in nearly a foot of snow! This did not make finding my hostel at 2:00 am more enjoyable. I've got nothing but great things to say about Ljubljana though. The hostel I stayed at was great, the town is beautiful, the people there are really friendly, and everything was cheap! What more could you ask for? My first day there was pretty quiet as I did some much needed laundry and caught up on sleep. After that though I had fun walking the city for hours, exploring the different parts of town. Ljubljana is a very young town, and this is reflected in the culture, art, shops, etc. I also bought myself a winter jacket since my sweater/rain jacket combo would clearly no longer cut it. On my second night there I joined the hostel's get together party in order to meet some people. It ended up being pretty fun...we had a few drinks, and I met some cool people from different parts of the world. Over a shared bucket of mojitos (don't ask), I agreed with a couple of South African guys and an American to go find a certain restaurant, the hot horse, the following day. So the next day, we trekked out in the freezing rain and ate at the hot horse. This isn't so much a restaurant as it is a shack in the park. And their claim to fame is their burgers, which are not made of beef, but rather...horse. It was rather tasty...very big bun with lots of fixins...all in all, not a bad meal! So now if anybody ever tells me they're so hungry they could eat a horse, I can tell them what they're in for. That night we ended up going out for some drinks, which was an interesting experience. I tried absinthe for the first time, which I enjoyed. We also got a random bricolage of multiculturalism, as we went to an irish pub, listening to a kilt-clad slovenian band that was playing irish folk music. Met lots of the locals there, which was a great time since they're so friendly. One lady grabbed me from the bar and insisted I waltz with her...it didn't seem to matter to her that I had no idea how. Ah well, I got a crash course in the Vienna waltz, and everybody had fun.

I took off on Friday to Vienna, which was a long train ride. I was disappointed to learn that there were no hostels available for the Saturday night for some reason, so I only stayed in Vienna one night. I got some schnitzel, which was very tasty.

On saturday I took off to Bratislava, Slovakia. Its claim to backpacker fame is that it is the location where the torture-porn flick Hostel takes place. My hostel has even photoshopped their name into a couple movie posters and had them professionally printed, so at least they've got a sense of humour about it. Well I'm glad to say I've been here 4 days and have yet to be dismembered, so that's good. I think that if you really wanted to make a movie about hostels that scares people, make a documentary! Bratislava's kinda small, so there are only so many things to do, especially in the offseason. My favourite part (besides the beautiful women) is the christmas markets in the old part of town. It's kind of got a Winterlude vibe to it, except instead of skating and activities, it's all just eating fantastically unhealthy fried foods from different stands and drinking gluwine, which is wine that has been sweetened and spiced, and then served hot. Great for clearing up the sinuses on a cool day! My South African friends ended up arriving a couple days after me, so we met up again for some food and drinks, which was good times as always. One interesting anecdote... I had a crazy lady in my room the first night. Not just kinda weird, she was legit crazy. She couldn't sleep because of the noise from outside of the room, so every hour or so she would scream that she couldn't sleep, which I thought was really thoughtful. Other highlights included her trying to sell her passport to me for 200 euros, her asking me to stay in the room for the whole day to watch her clothes so that they didn't get stolen, and my personal favourite - her saying the hostel was just like a concentration camp because there was a draft from the window by her bed. Luckily she moved to a different room the following night, and then got kicked out altogether the followind day.

So, next up is Budapest. I'm just killing time for the moment, waiting for my train there. I hear great things about that too, so I'm looking forward to exploring what it has to offer. Til next time.

Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

I'm back on my own again. It's an odd feeling, because I've been travelling with others for pretty much the entire past month. On the one hand I'm looking forward to the solitude and the autonomy, but on the other hand I've definitely gotten used to going with the flow (aka letting other people worry about the details). It takes a lot of self-motivation to leave a city you've just gotten familiar with in order to move onto a completely new place where you're starting from scratch again. Ah well, this is what I signed up for, right?

Sorrento turned out to be quite the pretty town, if not a little touristy. Its main draw is the isle of Capri which is just a short ferry ride away. My dad and I visited the island on our second day there and it was beautiful. There isn't a whole lot to do there besides enjoy the scenery, which is what I did. My dad got more adventurous and wandered off to the other side of the island, but I was still feeling pretty weak from the food poisoning, so I just kinda chilled for a while on a bench overlooking the sea. We ended up bussing around the island, which was a great way to see the sights. The roads there reminded me of pretty much every James Bond car chase scene I've ever seen, with sharp turns, roads built into the cliff, the Mediterranean right next to you.

The following day we left for Amalfi. If you've heard about the Amalfi Coast, it's all true. If you haven't, it's stunning. The drive there is the main attraction. I'm definitely not eloquent enough to describe the scenery along the way. Go get a thesaurus, look up beautiful, imagine a comma in between each of those words, and add “super” in front of all of them...that'll give you a small idea. The towns along the way are all built into the cliffs, which are several hundred feet high. The narrow road was built along the cliff, so again, you drive with the Mediterranean to your right, several hundred feet down. And above and below you are houses that leave you wondering how they ever got built in the first place. The road itself is very old, so it is very narrow. The bus honks as it goes around every corner to let oncoming cars know it's coming, since there's only room for one of them. If two oncoming cars meet and it's too narrow, one of them (and all the cars behind it) has to back up until there's enough room to pass. The curves are the best part, because it gives you a great view of the next set of cliffs jutting out over the turquoise water, a few miles away. If you're going to be heading to Southern Italy, it's a must see. Amalfi itself is one of the towns built into the hill, so as you can guess, it's a lot of climbing. Luckily this was the first day I was feeling like I had most of my strength back (I'm back to normal now if you're worried), so this was good timing. Again, aside from admiring the views, there's not a whole lot going on in Amalfi. There's a couple things to check out, but in the off season, there's not too much to do other than wander around. Well there's the lemoncello. Since it's so warm there, they have orange and lemon trees growing everywhere. So what a lot of people do is turn their lemons into the liqueur and sell it in bottles of all shapes and sizes. And thankfully, due to the wonders of supply and demand, it's usually pretty cheap. Very tasty stuff.

We took off from Amalfi to Salerno in order to catch a train up to Florence. The original plan had been to keep moving south to Sicily, but we had been enjoying ourselves too much along the way and kept booking extra nights in the different places where we stayed. Ah well. Aside from the drastic drop in temperature, I'm really glad we ended up in Florence. It's the perfect sized town for a backpacker... small enough where you can pretty much walk everywhere, but big enough that there's plenty to do and see to keep you busy for days. Plus, it's got butt-loads of culture. Sorry for the vulgarity, I just figured that phrase had never been written before, and I wanted to be the first. But it's true...lots of history as the former unofficial capital of art, philosophy, and wealth in old Europe. We did another bus tour of the city which was a good way to get acquainted with it. We saw and did most of the major sites, such as Ponte Vecchio, the Piazza del Michelangelo, the Uffizi art gallery, Il Duomo, and the Galleria Academia (most famously known for housing Michelangelo's David). Our second night in Florence, I did a bit of research online and found a good restaurant to eat at. Il Latino is an interesting spot...most people make reservations, but still “line up” (I use this term loosely...Italians don't so much line up as try to get in front of as many people as possible by any means necessary) at 7:30 when it opens. We showed up without a reservation, so after waiting a few extra minutes, we were seated at a table for 4 with an elderly Italian couple. There's a small chance they were from Naples. I don't know what I was doing wrong while eating my appetizer, but I do know the lady sitting next to me did. Every minute or so she'd mutter something in Italian, look over at me or my plate (not subtly) and give me a dirty look. I didn't help my cause when I went to take a slice of the bread from our shared basket and had to maul it because it hadn't been sliced all the way through. Surprisingly, they didn't take any bread after. My dad was having a good laugh at all this, because for once it was me screwing up and looking like a dork. This lasted for about 2 minutes until he went to uncork the bottle of wine and the cork went flying onto the floor, hitting the man on its way down. What can I say, we Wright men are some classy folk. The meal itself was great...we stuffed ourselves silly, as they brought out course after course. Even the after-dinner drink had an after-drink drink. My favourite part of the meal was when the old couple ordered a couple of steak florentines. The looks on their faces were priceless when the waiter brought out what must have been at least 40 oz of meat. It was Fred Flintstone size. Our turn to laugh at them!

My Canadian friend Liz had dropped me a line earlier in the day saying she was in town, so we ended up meeting after dinner for some wine and beer. It was great catching up with her and hanging out a bit more, since this will probably our last time seeing each other on this trip. All in all Florence was great.

I'm currently on a train, heading for Venice. Not sure when I'll be able to post this, since my hostel doesn't have wifi apparently (this was written on Saturday afternoon). I saw my dad off yesterday in the evening. It was harder saying goodbye than I thought. 2 weeks was definitely the right length for his visit, but it was hard seeing him go, knowing that's the last time I'll likely see family for quite a while.

A few words about my dad. Normally I wouldn't write about somebody like this specifically, but I'm pretty sure he wants to read about himself (because he told me so), so here it is. Travelling with him was great and lots of fun. It wasn't all roses though, and we both knew that would be the case coming into this. We've got similar personalities (including hard-headedness), but our travelling styles are very different. I'm all about trying to blend in as much as possible (as much as a 6-2, heavyset, pale guy with a 2 month ginger beard can blend in), whereas my dad...not so much. He has no problems walking around with a map in his hand, looking around to admire the sites while at the same time gazing for the next street name, looking confused. He's kind of a dorky tourist, but he knows it, and to his full credit, he simply doesn't give a shit what other people think of it. I'm being completely sincere when I say I admire that about him. Haha what I didn't admire was the travel pouch. This is one of those strapped pouches with a couple zippable pockets for stuff like your passport and wallet, to defend against pickpockets (Rome and other parts of Italy are notorious for pickpockets in his defence). He would wear it around his neck, under his tshirt, which made for a nice obvious square bulge. This quickly became known as the purse, and again to his credit, he took my ribbing with good humour. The most admirable part of his attitude is that he would always see the upside of everything. This is another way of saying he was easily impressed. Every other meal, he would declare the sandwich or pasta he was eating to be the best he's ever had in his life. Imagine taking a vacation where everything you experience is the best ever....that would be awesome! Me, I'm not so enthusiastic all the time...something I should probably work on.

So our differences in personality led to a bit of friction at times, but nothing more than any 2 people who travel together for 2 weeks would experience, and quite frankly much less than I was expecting. Dad, thanks for letting me join you on your vacation, I'm so glad we got to do it together. I appreciate everything you did for me. Love you pop, see you in the summer!

Here are some pictures from the rest of our trip. Again, they're off my dad's camera (I didn't even see some of this stuff because I was sick). Sorry if a bunch of them are sideways, I'll fix them as soon as I can.

Spoiler alert: It's Tuesday now and I'm already in Eastern Europe. But I'll bore you with those details another time. Also, ironically, I had the best gellato I've ever had yesterday...no joke

When in Rome

I hate to brag, but I'm pretty much at the peak of awesomeness on this trip. How, you may be asking, could I possibly reach such a peak? Well, it's 8:30 PM and I just left my dad to come back to the hotel room so I could blog and watch a Kid Rock concert on MTV Europe while he went to find a bar to have drinks and meet people. That awesome. Let me start from the beginning.

I flew into Rome from Amsterdam last Saturday and had a night to kill before meeting up with my dad. My intention was to find some cheap food and get an early night's sleep. However, that didn't happen - as it rarely seems to over here. I met a few Americans in my hostel room who were on their way out to dinner, so I figured I'd join them. They were a few years younger, all college kids studying a semester abroad in Holland. They were just visiting Rome for the weekend. They were all pretty fun, so after dinner we went out for drinks. Then a bunch of drama went down like you only see in bad sitcoms. The guy there had a bad combination of too much wine and an unrequited crush on one of the girls. Somehow it ended up being just the 3 of us at the table when it went down, and it just got messy. Gotta hand it to the guy for laying it out there, because he definitely made his feelings be known. He just wasn't doing such a good job at hearing that the feelings were not being returned. This conversation went on for about 30 minutes, him telling her how much he liked her, etc and her saying how much she didn't. With me there. He even tried pulling me into it a couple times, which I just refused to allow to happen. I excused myself to go to the bar and get the hell out of the convo and when I came back all I saw was him storming off towards the hostel with his glass of wine in hand. Ah well. We had a few more drinks, awkwardly laughed off what had just transpired, and eventually made it back to the hostel. I was kinda thankful that group had to take off early the next morning, so I didn't have to see any more of the awkwardness.

So on Sunday I killed a couple hours and went to the hotel my dad had booked. Note the lack of “s” in hotel. A real hotel. As in no sharing the bathroom or room itself with anybody else. As in other people make the beds. As in they provide you with soap and towels. As in the room was actually at a respectable level of cleanliness. I felt like royalty! After 2 straight months in hostels, I had definitely forgotten how the other half lives. I took a quick nap (without having to hide all my valuable shit!) and waited for my dad to arrive. It was great seeing him when he got there....that's probably the longest I've gone without seeing any family, so it was very refreshing. We quickly caught up and then hit the road in Rome. It is a beautiful city. We walked to the Coliseum, which is incredibly impressive in person. Pictures don't do it justice, especially when you consider how long ago it was built. But then again everything in Rome seems to have been built a couple thousand years ago. It's pretty safe to say Romans took their churches seriously back in the day. You can walk by any old looking church on the street, and pop your head in, and they are usually breathtaking on the inside. Later, after dinner, we went out for a drink and found a bar that happened to be attached to a hostel. My dad just loved this, chatting with everybody, asking all sorts of questions like where they were from, etc. I think that interaction gave him a bit of a glimpse as to the type of people I've been meeting and how I've been socializing. And I'm pretty sure I did my best to not act embarrassed, which was admittedly a little tough at times, like when he asked about 3 or 4 Americans in a row why their English was so good. This was after a couple bottles of vino, to his credit.

The following day we did a hop on hop off bus tour of Rome which was cool. I often see the tours in the cities I visit, but don't usually do them for budgetary reasons. So it was nice to see the city from a different perspective, and get taken to all the different sites. We did some more site seeing, and then had another nice night of dinner and a couple bottles of wine. The following day we did the Vatican. Talk about your impressive churches. St Peter's Basilica is jaw-dropping. We went in the morning and luckily it wasn't too busy. We took our time exploring the Basilica, and then visited the tombs of all the popes, which is slightly less creepy than it sounds. Then we did the Scavi tour, which I recommend for anybody who is visiting the Vatican. I had never heard of it, but my dad had booked it a few weeks in advance. Apparently they only let 200 people in per day, so it's kind of a big deal I suppose. Basically, the Basilica is built above ancient tombs. The rumour was that St Peter's bones were buried beneath the alter of the Basilica, but nobody really wanted to try digging them up. Eventually an excavation was commissioned in secret, and sure enough, St Peter's bones were found. So you go underground through these very narrow streets that are thousands of years old, and you see lots of tombs, and eventually at the end of the tour you actually see St Peter's bones...so they say anyways. Our guide said that whenever Pope JP II would come back from travelling, the first thing he would always do is come down to pray with St Peter's remains. Like I said, it was a very cool tour, and if you get the chance, take the tour. If for no other reason that you can act snooty and say you did the exclusive tour.

So the next day we figured we'd move on to our next destination and head to Naples. I'm sure most backpackers can relate to this problem... when I tell people of my journey, they often ask “what's your favourite place”? This is such a difficult question to answer since so many cities have so many different things going for them. One may have great history and museums, but the people leave something to be desired. Some may have great culture, but the prices can be prohibitive. Well it hasn't happened yet, but if ever I get asked what my least favourite place is, I'll be able to say Naples without hesitation. I'll admit part of my reason isn't Naples' fault, but I have nothing good to say about my time there. My main 2 reasons for this are: 1) I was struck with food poisoning within about 3 hours of being there and 2) Naples was kind of a hole. No offense.

I'll start with the latter. When we were there, there was a garbage strike on. Not a great way for a city to endear itself to any visitor. Our hotel was in kind of a dumpy area, and the piles of garbage certainly didn't improve anything. My dad would say this next point a lot more diplomatically than I would. He would say that “Naples is a city that hides its charms well”. Here's how I'd say it if I was talking to you straight - everybody we encountered in Naples kind of seemed like a dick. I'm not generalizing and saying everybody from Naples is a dick. I'm not even saying we encountered enough people to represent a legitimate sample size of dickishness. I'm just saying that the people who we crossed paths with in our particular journey were, with very few exceptions, dicks.

Onto the former. I'm not sure what I ate (we've got it narrowed down to a few suspects), but by our first evening in Naples, I was feeling ill. I couldn't even make it through dinner without being sick. I'll spare you all the gritty details, but I spent the majority of the night assisting my stomach in making sure it was rid of whatever it was that it didn't agree with. I was very thankful to have my dad there to help me out, as he made a couple trips to the pharmacy for me, and grabbed me a few bottles of water, etc too. I was also very thankful to be in a hotel room rather than a hostel, the biggest reason being an en suite bathroom. I slowly started to feel better the following afternoon, finally able to keep water down. By the next morning dry toast was doable, so I definitely made strides. I stayed in for the most part, and my dad did a lot of site-seeing on his own. I think he found some nice parts of the city, despite the dicks (those are my words, not his – he'd never say something like that about people, no matter how many dicks there were). He'd probably have nicer things to say about the city since he had more exposure to it, but I'm pretty sure he'd agree that he enjoyed Rome more too.

So finally, today (Saturday), we left for Sorrento. We probably would have left a day or two earlier, but I just wasn't physically up for it unfortunately. Tomorrow we'll likely try to catch a ferry out to Capri, which is supposed to be a cool scenic island. I'm looking forward to the next week with my dad, where we'll both hopefully be healthy and able to do this trip all-out for the rest of the way! That's why I'm back in the room early. I'm still feeling pretty fragile from the food poisoning, so I'll rest up for one more night and hopefully be back to my old self.

Here are some pics of Rome, taken by my dad for the most part.

Amsterdam

It was nice. There was a park. It was also nice. Met up with Courtenay, who is the friend of a friend from back home and went to a hip hop show (Jedi Mind Tricks). It was nice.

Next up, Italy! I'll be flying to Rome this afternoon and my dad will be meeting me there tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to catching up with my old man over the next two weeks as we travel the south of the country. Should be fun!

Remembrance Day

One of the most important days on the Canadian calendar in my opinion. If there's any vets out there, thanks!
Two proud Canadians at the Canadian War Memorial in London

Time flies

Well it's been a while since my last post. That's cause I've just been having too much fun to stop and write to be honest. A lot's happened in the last while, so it'll unfortunately have to be a bulletted list update

• Left Bath for Bristol and stayed with Mandy's friends who were good people and great hosts. They showed us around Bristol, including some cool graffiti (Bristol is Banksy's hometown). That night we went to a house party. Apparently it was nothing out of the ordinary for there...but it's definitely unlike any houseparty I've been to. Hard to really describe it...so I won't. Just kinda crazy.
• The following day I left for London to meet up with the rest of the Core Four as we had taken to calling ourselves. London consisted of strolls through many beautiful parks (Hyde, Regents, Kensington, and probably more that I'm not thinking of), Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Thames, trying to comprehend the Australian fascination with Squirrels, the British Museum, getting shut out of pubs way too early, Trafalgar Square, etc.
• After a few days of London shenanigans, Liz, Dan, and I decided to cross the Channel and head for Belgium. Hayley stayed behind in London for a friend, which is too bad, but understandable. We'll hopefully cross paths again! The 3 of us started in Brussels (lost and confused), but eventually found our way to the hostel as well as plenty of fun. We hit up a bar the first night and must have enjoyed some of Belgium's finest beers a little too much, because we only ended up back at the hostel after sunrise. Brussels is a busy town with some beautiful architecture. We did lots of exploring in between stops for chocolates, waffles, and of course more beers.
• Bruges. Got here yesterday and explored the town. Liz was brave enough to climb the high tower and got a great view of the city. Dan and I climbed into the nearest pub. Later we took a boat tour of the canals of Bruges. And generally just walked around and discovered the beautiful town. Very picturesque. Don't believe Collin Ferrell, it's not a shithole.

So now you're caught up. Liz the Leader is leaving us today for France (despite our begging), so Dan and I will be heading to Amsterdam for a boy's trip today. I'm not sure how we'll have fun there on our own, but I'm sure we'll manage. Until next time!

Oh and I actually managed to take some pictures. Here you go!