Homeward Bound

Due to some stuff at home I am leaving Europe. It has been great but with all that stuff on my mind it was kind of clouding the experience... Europe will stay here.

So today I took a train ride from Budapest to Dresden. It was 550am to 245pm. Now I had the bright idea that since it was Thursday I should still go out. And I did. And since I went out... why go to sleep? It actually worked out well. I got back at like 4am which gave me enough time to pack, make sure everything was in place, and get to the train station and figure out what was up. When I got to Dresden I headed straight for Jeff's apartment. Now he is in Heidelberg so I thought I would be camping in the hallway til 11pm for his roomate to get home. But both Jeff and Rene were awesome and talked to the building manager so he let me in to Jeff's room.

Now, Saturday morning I have plans to catch a train to Berlin around 7am so I can arrive around 1030am. But it is already 215am. I think I am going to stay up and take the 5am. That will give me an extra two hours to get from the Berlin Hauptbahnof to the Berlin-Tegel Airport. Cause I have a flight to Heathrow at 445pm. I need to box my bike so I want to get there early so I can get all my shit packed in case they do not have the box for me to buy.

Once I get to Heathrow I get to spend 2 whole nights in the terminal waiting to fly back to Dulles... Monday night 530pm to 850pm. (7 hour flight, flying back in time zones though). So yeah, I am going to be that bum who shaves in the airport terminal and lives there for 2 days. Unless I can somehow get bumped up which would be amazinggggggggg!

Wish me luck.

See you all soon.

Thanks to everyone in Europe who has been amazing.


Love
Frank

Leaving for Budapest tomorrow

So tomorrow I leave for Budapest. A nice long 12 hour train ride.

Krakow
Krakow has been an amazing city. I think I like it more than Prague. It rivals it in beauty and gains points in the fact that there are less tourists. The first night I was here I met some people from the states, Australia, and Canada and headed out for some drinks. We met two local Polish guys in the bar and they told us they were going to take us out for a good time. They took us to one of the underground bars/dance clubs. What is interesting is that in Krakow, and other cities in Poland, during WWII whole underground networks were built for the resistance. These places were used as places of planning and discussion and what not. The layouts are neat in that the walls are completely rock and you get the feel that you ARE in a top secret bar. So that was really cool. Then we headed out to get some Doners. Not as good as in Germany, but cheaper. Yeah, Krakow is also a lot cheaper than all of the other places I have been. We called it a night after taking shots to the Aussies 24th birthday. The next day I spent all day touristing. I checked out all the monuments and Krakow castle. They were extraordinary. When I was walking through Old Town Square I saw two guys sitting down drinking with maps next to their touring bikes. I stopped and asked what they were up to and about their tour. I wound up sitting with them for an hour and a half drinking beer and talking about their crazy biking experiences. The older gentleman has biked in 45 countries throughout Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Asia. He gave me some suggestions for places to see, about teaching abroad programs, and even bought my beers. It was a good talk. I got back to the hostel and a bunch of us decided to go out to the Jewish Quarters and get food. We wound up getting some typical Polish meal and Polish beer. It was a semi-nice restaurant and surprisingly my portion of the bill including beer was only 20 zloty (about $7.25). A guy got a beer with red syrup/juice in it so I asked him what it was. He only spoke Polish but was very eager to communicate so started yelling across the restaurant to get his girlfriend to come over. She told me it was in fact a juice and grenadine with the Lech beer. The point here is how helpful people are - and thats a theme. Next we decided to bar hop. We started out at a bar with cool music icons and lyrics over the wall. This inspired the ladies to want to find karaoke. They stopped and asked a man in the bar if he knew where one was. He, also, only spoke Polish. But eagerly he ran around asking people in Polish. Even though he was unsuccessful, again someone went out of their way to help. We went to a Hoola bar. We ordered a bucket of vodka and fruit juices (orange, pineapple, grenadine). It was delicious and the bar was chill. The DJ let one of the girls in our group choose all the music so it was fun. There was also a stag party there so they were goin kind of crazy and the bachelor was dancing provocatively. Hah! Again we decided to bar hop and found our next destination at some Spanish bar. They played a lot of spanish music obviously and included the bartender dancing on the bar. He was quite humorous. There was also an old man who was really fond of one of the girls in the group. Also very humorous. We left again and at this point the group split. Two went home and me and one of the girls kept going. It was only 2 am! So we found a club and danced and drank more and eventually got home. The walk wasn't bad and the club was fun. Went to bed around 3 or 330 cause we had big plans for the next day.

"Work Will Set You Free"
Or "Work Brings Freedom" or "Work Liberates" or whatever ironic statement they wanted to choose. We took a tour of Auschwitz, today. It had to be one of the most appalling shocking things I have ever seen. We read about it in school. We hear about it a lot. But to see the grand scale of the operation is amazing. You really do not grasp how large it is until you go there. And the conditions. Just wow. This day really made me question humanity. I have thought of it before... but to run an operation like this how did people not know? And how do so many people get convinced to treat people like animals? Killing and genocide is one thing. Killing and genocide and systematic torture is another. You can see the ruins from when the Nazis were evacuating. The stables (they lived in wooden horse stables essentially) all burned down and what was left remainaing were the brick fireplaces. So a large percentage burned down but when you look out into the camp (as far as the eyes can see) you just see a bunch of chimneys. We walked through the gas chambers and crematoriums and its just hard to imagine what was going through either parties minds. Another thing that surprised me was how bad the Polish citizens were treated. Krakow got lucky because it was treated as a vacation spot for the Nazis in Auschwitz... but Warsaw got leveled. Polish people were also systematically dehumanized. If ever in the vicinity of Central Europe I suggest going.

Moving Away from that Depressing Bit....
I leave for Budapest tomorrow. Its a 12 hour overnight train. I read in a travel tip book much like frommers that they highly discourage night trains from Krakow or Warsaw to Prague or Budapest. Why? Oh because of the gangs of theives who come on the trains with sleeping gas cannisters to mug you OF COURSE! Well, wish me luck. If I don't get sleep cannistered hopefully I will at least get a gay Italian man with a moustaches to accost me like in EuroTrip. Hah!

Peaceeeeeeeeee!
Frank

To Krakow, Poland

Tomorrow I leave all normalcy. But I am getting ahead of myself!

Happy July 4th
We just wound up drinking a lot. We boiled hot dogs, ate nacho tortilla chips, and watched youtube videos of the star spangled banner, America the beautiful, and Team America World Police. It was amazingly American. We then headed out to an Indy club. It was called Katy's Garage. They had good music (played Muse, Forward Russia!, Nirvana, etc). We made a German friend named Patrick and got his information. We played foosball a lot and lost a lot. All in all good times, as we got kicked out at bar closing... at 4am. Everyone wanted Doners and they got them, we walked home and eventually got to bed around 5am. Alex had to leave early... sucks.

I dont feel like updating
I leave Dresden tomorrow for Krakow, Poland. I guess that fulfills my obligation to let people know where I am in case of accidental death. I changed my mind from Prague cause I have already been there. So we will see how this goes. I might let you all know.


Peace. Hope you are all having a great summer, by the way.

Dresden and Praha

We last left off with our main characters arriving in Dresden and getting escorted to the International Guest House.

First Night in Dresden
Jeff decided that it would be a good idea for us to all try Heroine. Sort of. It is like heroine... but it is called "Doner." Now as I found out German's don't really have much of a special delicacy. Enter the Turks. Now there are Doner shops everywhere. It is kind of like a gyro, but much better. It's hard to explain the amazingness... I suggest you wikipedia it to get a better idea. Jeff and Jess took us to Neustadt for this German specialty, which is like the young person hip part of town. There were a punch of punks throwing beer over each other singing happy birthday in english (because english is hip) in the middle of the street. It was a funny sight. The night commenced with us sitting on the Elbe looking across at Alstadt (I think) drinking some "good" German beer. It's alright. But the view was pretty!

Arrival of Alex
Jeff's brother Alex came to hang out with us. Before his arrival me, Greg, and Jeff took a 20 mile bike ride to Pirna to get a Doner. And then came immediately back. We met up with Alex. This called for Chinese food. Jeff doesn't know of any places.... We got Indian. We also made plans to meet up with Emily. So me, Jeff, Alex, Greg, and Jess departed on our 45 minute walk to the Indian place in Neustadt. We met up with Emily. I got chicken biryani which was delicious. Dinner was fun because as Americans we laugh hearty and enjoy ourselves. A quick look around the room reminded us we were in Germany... everyone was quiet and serious... boring. After Indian we all went back home and crashed.

The Weekdays Mean Jeff Works
Our first Monday. Me, Greg, and Alex slept til like noon. There is something awesome about going to another country and just doing what you would have done at home. Change of scenery, ya know. Jeff came back and took us to the Mensa, where we would meet his Canadian (read: American) friend Terry. The mensa is interesting... its a cheap cafeteria where you get 5 preset options to choose from along with a few a la carte items. BUT part of the payment process involves the language barrier showdown. The language barrier showdown is when one person who is entitled to the discount brings 3 friends to also get the discount. These four people only speak english and the cash register person only speaks German. You cross your fingers and hope for the best. We got through! Score: 1-0. The next day, we were in a deadlock. She spoke German at us, we kept shoving student cards in her face until she caved. We won again! 2-0. As far as what we did in Dresden, we got drunk in hallways of socialist buildings. We went into socialist construction sites and climbed to the top of buildings. We got ice cream. We got doners. We drank German beer in massive quantities. We got cheap wine. I mean that pretty much sums up the week without going into boring details. We also listened to German metal in Saturn, the electronics store. That was awesome.

Skipping to the best part... the best city in America: Prague
We, as good Americans, got drunk on the train to Prague. Greg had some very alcoholic rum with his coke. Me and Jeff had some knock off jager with OJ. We arrived in great shape. After some minor confusion in the city some Brits pointed us towards our hostel. We got there and had just enough time to meet Alex at his hostel. The first night we went out to "Nebe" which was a neat little dance club/bar. It was fun. Time flies when you are having fun. The next day we of course touristed. Alex found out about some Indy show for like 90 kroner (22kroner = $1). The Prostitutes headlined and they are good. Look them up on Myspace Music or something. Road Side Mary also played... they were decent. The show was good. The beers semi-cheap with a good taste of American Lager (yes, I like American beer over German beer. I must be defected). A good night overall. The next day we touristed more and read in a park that was an island in the middle of the river. Twas cool again. Jeff introduced me more thoroughly to Forward Russia!, they are awesome. We got Bohemia Bagel, which is an awesome food place in Prague. It screams American. That night we followed our guide (Alex) to the outskirts of town to go to a "grungy expat bar" called Blind Eye. It was relaxed. We met an awesome guy named Big Rock. Ask me about him typed words can not do him justice. People in other countries are weird... they do not get started til like 2am. Well eventually someone brought up the fact that it was 4am so we headed home. It was already getting light out. We decided to stay an extra day cause we never got to go the spots in the mostly touristy areas. So we went to M1 and Chateau. They were meh... it WAS a Sunday. They were also more expensive which sucked! Anyways... that was pretty much it. We picked up some wine for our train ride home on Monday and got tipsy for the ride back.

Back to Dresden
Well I got back and took a nap around 1pm ish. Woke up with a massive headache. We grabbed Jess and got some beers and headed out to the Aquarium. We also grabbed Jeffs friend Navin. They had some cool live jazz music that really helped the setting. We just drank casually and talked and headed back for the night. Surprisingly, we did not get a Doner that night. Possibly because we got one as soon as we arrived in Dresden. Oh yeah... they recognize us. We got high fives upon entering. Tuesday meant Alex's arrival. He got here, Terry, Jess, Emily and her friend Steve all came over. We listened to some music, drank some beers, and headed out to Neustadt. The goal was to show Alex a good part of Dresden before he left... on a Tuesday night... during exam week. We got chinese food/doners and headed into a place called "Katy's Garage." One of the first songs we heard was by Forward Russia!, so needless to say Jeff was excited. They continued to play good music by Muse, Nirvana, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Overall it was a good night full of beer, dancing, foosball, and meeting cool people. Once again... we realized it was 4am and got home around 430am.

Best Day in the World
It is now the 4th of July. I have finally caught up on the blog by cutting it really short. We plan to be very American today. I plan to head back to Prague on Friday I think. I think I am starting to see that much of Europe is similar so the travel effect is losing its effect on me... hence me reading news back home, talking on AIM, etc. Maybe 3 months was overzealous. We will see.