//Europa 2006//

We are in Venice. More personally, I am in the computer lab of a sleepy university in Venice using their internet connection. I don't think i'm supposed to be here but nobody has said anything. I reckon I'll keep it short for now but let me say that Venice is pretty much exactly what you've pictured all your life. Canals, Gondolas, maze-like streets. I keep saying that it would be the perfect place to be chased. By the law or some criminal warlord or zombies or women. whatever.

Yesterday we got off of an uncomfortable night train from Munich and found a good hostel and played with piegons in San Marcos square. The city exploration was great and sweaty (it's quite hot here) and we were mistaken for members of the Air Force on leave from Iraq. How? I don't know.

Will and I washed clothes. They dried quickly.

Our hostel has a kitchen so last night we made a huge Italian meal with lots of pasta and pesto and meat and bread and pesto and this great dish of tomatoes (pomadoros) and cheese and basil pesto. We came up with very profound theories about Basil Pesto, Butter, and Love.

After dinner we heard dueling orchestras and sampled the Italian Gelato. And an Italian Jazz Bar.

All in all a great place. Pity it's sinking into the sea.

Love to all,
Caleb

And so...

Here we are in the streamlined ½ mall, ½ train station in Zürich, Switzerland. Not a particularly charming place, but we've been a bit spoiled of late.

Just a note: the internet situation on the continent is not lending itself to web publication. Even if it was, the days are so full here that such endeavors might be considered too time consuming.

But today we've got layovers again and plenty of time to sit and run the laptop battery down. I don't know when this'll get posted but hopefully sooner than later.

Picking up where we left off in a nutshell sort of way, we:

(of june) Imperial War Museum was quite enjoyable. Tanks, Guns, Planes, you name it, all with intriguing stories behind them. The British Museum was somewhat overpowering. They pretty much took all the priceless artifacts from the entire commonwealth and stuck them in this museum. Lots of the usual clay pots, idols, mummies, sarcophagi, etc. highlighted by Tiki men and the occasional Thunderbird. That evening, we got standing room at the edge of the stage of Shakespeare's Globe theater. This was quite an experience that I wish I could expound on further. An excellent,excellent thespian production. (I'd never heard of the play: Coroilanus [spl?])
We crossed the English channel by ferry to Calais and had an interesting time making it to beautiful Brugge, Belgium. Our stop in Lille, France was fun, I went out to find supper and stumbled into a middle eastern kebab shack with a ton of dark-skinned fellows watching the Tunisia v. Saudi Arabia game. Though they were very quiet (unlike most European fans), the tension in that room was unlike anything else. I thought it was going to explode. It didn't, and I left with some pretty amazing frites (fries, I guess. French Fries even.) We met a potential Olympic athelete (plays with Club Lyon) on the train and a refreshing Canadian porter. (conductor really, but I call them porters so I can sing that Johnny Cash song [Hey Porter!]) Eventually, (i.e. 23:00) we made it to our hostel and it was hoppin' even then. We stumbled into our room, trying not to wake our bunkmates, and slept, with muffled German punk music reverberating softly up through the floor.
A day in Brugge was great. Good town, good breakfast, good belfry, good Indian students to share the ear-splitting top-of-belfry-at-12 0'clock experience, good fries for lunch, more good fries for dinner, good free walking tour that evening, good game, good courtyard to play guitar, good kitchen facilities, good etc. All those goods must be great.
This day began like any other, but changed dramatically. We got to see Brussels, Amsterdam, Hanover, Berlin (nice new station), and by midnight, we were on a Cologne-bound train. Lots of traveling, sleeping, reading, and writing. No lodging costs.
We got into Koln in the early morning and saw a bit of the city and checked out the Rhine ferry situation. We took an amazing train down to Koblenz. (you'd be surprised how refreshed you can get with just a toiletry kit and a shaking WC. (that would be the bathroom) We were in the last car and you could look out the back and see the rails flying out from under the wheels and the Rhine valley taking shape on either side and the sun rising, hot, over the rolling hills and I for one was just caught up with how wonderful (wanderful?) it all was and how good God is to little guys like me and how the day was going to be absolutely amazing. Graham was feeling pretty much exactly opposite, but after that he really couldn't do much to get me out of my good mood. I convinced him look out the back of the car. He even brushed his teeth.) We found the river and waited for our free ferry trip (covered by eurailpass) I got some breakfast in the town (bread and an apple. One apple because Graham doesn't eat fruit.) and some sleep on the dock. We boarded the boat for our scenic Rhine cruise and Graham fell immediately to sleep. Poor fellow. It was then that I realized that some people actually need sleep to function and don't like to spend the nights on trains. Imagine! It became quite obvious that our traveling styles are quite different and that our little deviation from the flight plan had Graham more than just out of sorts. I don't mind so much (that we have to stick to a plan); I'll follow the plan. But I'm still sticking to my guns when I say that Graham travels like an old woman. (though perhaps people will say this just means he is a normal person. You decide. I, of course, already have.) The cruise was long and afforded rest and scenery. Lots of castles and towns and some huge eagles and an amphibious land rover. We found a rail station in Mainz and headed into nearby Frankfurt, where we found a huge station. Graham was by now admitting that he was ceasing to function so I knew it was getting bad. I convinced him to leave the station and eat dinner on the street nearby. Now Germany is currently overcome and overpopulated with legions of football fans what with the world cup going on so it was a great experience eating out with everybody under a tent with a tiny TV broadcasting the game. And it was US v. Italy so we had some personal stock in the outcome. I was amazed that everybody there was decidedly pro US football. There was even an Iranian family in the front who couldn't get enough and argued with the official in the tube about all those red cards. Talking to many, uhh, open-minded Americans, I'd thought that everyone else in the world had some unbelievable grudge against the US but I'm finding out that it's just not true. As hard as it is to believe, people actually see you as a person around here. (unless they see you as a tourist, in which case it doesn't matter where you're from) Any sort of American stigma is easily smoothed by a simple attempt to be polite. A “danke” here, a “merci” there, a helping hand, an open door, throw in a “howdy” or two for good measure and, perhaps unbelievably, you can be both American and respected. But anyway...
Let's see, at 0:00, the beginning of the day, we we're in the Frankfurt station waiting for a 2:22 train. Graham was almost asleep, draped over our luggage, and I was playing guitar. I wrote most of a song before the train came and stopped me. We headed into Switzerland and, in the morning we changed trains for Interlaken, a rather touristic town in a beautiful valley between two lakes and in the arms of the Alps. A good Sunday morning train ride put us on the sleepy streets and we found our hostel. We checked our bags and had brunch on a little bench. Graham went back to the hostel and slept. I opted for another bench in a field. As I drifted off to sleep, I watched paragliders drift down from the mountains and touch down lightly on the far side of the grass. I awoke and did a little exploring and looked for a church but the services were over so I kept wandering and looking at the mountains and I thought “Man, with these absolutely majestic peaks to remind me so much of God's glory and power, a sermon just seems superfluous right now, especially since the sermon would be delivered in Swiss-German.” A mountain is one of those entities that needs no translation. So I walked a little further and came around to a knife store and was compelled to purchase a beautiful Swiss Army knife whose name “Tomahawk” I had engraved on the hilt. (This investment has already paid for itself 22 times since its purchase.) I checked back in at the hostel. Graham was asleep. Surprise, surprise. I asked him if he wanted to hike to the west lake (a good couple miles) but ended up going alone, Graham opting for sleep. 'Twas a priceless hike with a priceless view of the lake from atop a lonesome 13th century fortress. The rivers and lakes are amazing, glacial water features, intensely pure and intensely cold.
We fetched a wholesome bread and milk breakfast and hopped aboard a mountain train bound for a mountain bus stop bound for a crowded cable car bound for a tiny, Swiss-Alpine village. Gimmelwald. The hostel there was reserved for a group of 56 Arizona prep-school kids so we signed up to sleep in a barn owned by a lady named Esther. In the summer she moves the cows out and moves adventurous people in. We threw our stuff into a stall and sought a hiking map of the region. While we were seeking, we met a man at the lift station (cable car station) who'd received 3 free passes to the network of cable cars and trains in the area. He only needed two so he gladly offered one to us. Valued at 125 swiss francs, the card was unlimited and good 'til June 22. We took turns taking the lift to Shilthorn, a high peak above Gimmelwald and the neighboring village of Murren and home to a revolving restaurant that James Bond blew up somewhere along the line. The observation deck afforded views of countless Alps. Mountain goats and Ibex frolicked on the sheer cliffs below. We returned to Gimmelwald and had a nice dinner on an alpine bench and headed to the empty hostel. I sat there writing in the pool room with Johnny Cash playing on the stereo and the windows open, snow-capped mountains crowding in. I then proceeded to beat an Irish kid in a best-of-3 pool match and talked to a guy about Morocco and suddenly a flood of human beings came barging through the door and we retired to the barn. It was much less crowded. We met a Canadian fellow and some Singaporeans and ended up not hiking into Murren to see the game. Instead we played some music. The Canadian played guitar and an Irishman across the narrow street brought another guitar and some Dylan from his repertoire and we had a grand time swapping songs. Graham sang and played the spoons. A heavy-drinking Washingtonian with a Zoolanderesque voice came by and spouted intelligent theories on why 97% or rich girls are good looking. Somehow, we all got to bed (“hit the hay”). The hay was amazingly comfortable and only the hot Alpine sun was able to rouse me from slumber.


Now, this is not the end, but this much shall be published today. Let it be known that Will is now with us, safe and sound, and we are currently in Salzburg, Austria and are leaving on a night train for Venice.

We dearly love you all and hope to find communication much easier down south.
Until the next unscheduled check-in, Caleb

1.) Graham at Trafalgar Square (Renovations regretfully in progress, but how many times will that obelisk be covered with a huge print depicting itself underwater? Yes that is a giant squid in the background.
2.) Myself on Baker Street.
3.) Some clock tower.

-Caleb

 

London's quite balmy in the evenings, especially on the terrace outside our room at the Albert Hotel. (I've started calling it the Fat Albert)

Yes, we've switched countries.

But now, Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday morning, Dr. Hylton took us on a bike ride up a hill whose name I've already forgotten. Kill-something. And no, the picture does not lie, I was wearing linen shorts and leather shoes on that bike ride. The top of the hill afforded amazing views of the coast from Dublin city all the way down to Greystones. Dr. Hylton beat us up the hill. And pointed out some important places we could see from up there.

We returned to the house and, after getting caught up in a Hylton family photo-screensaver-archive viewing, Graham and I headed into Dublin to do every free everything that the city would give us: the National Natural History Museum (a bunch of dead Irish animals: foxes, ducks, squids from 1908, and Tapeworms from 1873, tenderly preserved in formaldehyde. Mmm mmm.), St. Steven's Green (big park in the city; lots of very white Irish bodies turning very red), National Archeological Blah Blah Blah Museum (Old stuff. Lots of old stuff predominantly drawn from the many bogs of Ireland. Some cool swords and skeletons but mostly just pots and shoes and looms), and a few other places. We split a bagel for lunch. A bagel and Coke.

After our trip into the city, we headed south towards Greystones. After a while, we got to the lovely little Irish town and were met by a lovely little Irish girl (whom we've met before). Hannah introduced us to the other interns and we ate dinner and played futbol and guitar and they showed us the pier and we skipped stones (Grey Stones) and tried to hit the boats in the quay. 'Twas great fun and we nearly missed our train back to the Hyltons. When we got back, Abby warmed us up some taco things and Giz made some very gooey cookies and we sat and argued the most absurd things, which is always wonderful. As far as I know, both Graham and myself got to sleep.

Sunday, we arose and went to Hylton's church in Dun Laoghaire (Dun LEERY) and it was enjoyable and somehow humbling to have such fellowship all this way across the sea. We napped and watched the world cup matches and washed clothes and tried to dry them and got to talk to James and Kate via the www. And Graham decided to stay home for the evening but I went to the pier in Dun Laoghaire and walked along as the sun set. Graham was at home darning his socks or something, I don't know. Eventually I got back and did some housekeeping and had some midnight chili and a great Caesar salad.

We woke at 4:29am and Mrs. Hylton took us to the Aircoach station on the way to take Abby to swim practice. We said goodbye and thank you and headed to the airport. Without incident, we got into London and found the hostel and they only took cash so we checked our bags and went out to see the city (it was a little before noon) parliament, Big Ben, Westminster, Buckingham, many parks, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, the works.

A note on the Gallery: I enjoy art. Not as much as the next guy. But still. But the gallery pieces were all the same thing over and over. And it all pretty much followed a formula: 1)Take a biblical character or rich person or possibly a god from mythology. Bible folks must be naked with cloth draped randomly about their bodies, not necessarily lending to any kind of modesty. Rich people must be painted much larger than life and probably in armor. Horses help. Mythological figures also need no clothes and they pretty much look like bible characters. 2.)Add small, naked cupids liberally 3.) Perhaps consider putting an old man dying somewhere. That's a nice touch. 4.) Someone needs a phony expression of surprise or agony. 5.) Add more cupids.

Anyway...

US lost their 1^st match. That's disappointing. They played sloppy football.

By the way, I saw Orlando Bloom (elvish actor from LOTR) in the park while Graham rested. I couldn't get that excited about it but a realize the odds of the event are pretty slim so I figured I'd share it.

Until We Write Again,

Caleb

Well, we made it back in time last night at half five, and sat down to a wonderful bowl of chili and rice with the Hyltons. These pictures are;Bike trip this morning with Dr. Hylton,The view from the roof gardens at Beatty Library in downtown Dublin, and our evening with some of the inters down to Greystones this afternoon.

--gb 

Well Then...

So begins our Euro-Trip experience.

So begins our unfrantic struggle to use the train.

So begins our love for this Ireland place.

And so begins the gradual thinning of our pocketbooks.

(We're not really carrying pocket books)

Currently, we're on a train to Dublin on this our third day of travel. I believe I'll start at the beginning though, and work forward. Perhaps not all on one post.

We left Asheville and got to Dublin quite seamlessly, with a few luxuries thrown in for good measure. On the morning of June 7th, we arrived and found some bus tickets into the city. We soon discovered that the guys that drive those buses don't really care how close they get to light poles, low stone walls, bicylists, or any number of small European cars. Graham, ever the backseat driver, took it hard. It's bad enough for me to come within a yard of a mailbox, imagine the look on his face as we scraped the paint off a Peugeot. Anyway, we made it downtown and easily found a train station. But said station didn't validate Eurail passes so we searched and eventually found the big daddy station in Dublin. We were trying to get to the Hylton house (south of the city) but didn't have directions. Graham utilized an internet portal to check his email and "wrote down" the directions. Our newly validated Eurailpasses served us well and got us on the Dart (ever notice how a bunch of public transit systems have art in them? Atlanta: Marta, Charleston: Chart-something, Dublin: Dart... Makes you feel sorry for Warsaw)

Anyway, we got off at the correct stop and consulted the "directions". Here in their entirety: "go into the village/ left at light / 4lr / tl / stonewall / right after park" In retrospect they kinda make sense but it took a local pet store owner and a doctor's receptionist to help us get our bearings and we were warmly welcomed by three old friends. Abby made tea and everybody was involved in some pretzel making and we all sat down to a fine, umm, tea? early tea? no idea. 'Twas grand though. Emily walked us as far as the train station and Graham and I headed north to Dublin and west to Galway, feeling the power of unlimited rail. The countryside was amazing. Fragrant too. We eased into the Galway station and found our hostel. Sleepzone was an exceedingly nice place to be, I'm already lamenting over leaving. Nice people, nice beds, great city. We headed to the supermarket for dinner and feasted on: Potted meat, cream crackers, mature cheddar cheese, and orange juice. We ate at a park with an Asheville-esque drum circle going on. Back at the hostel, Graham decided to sleep (predictable?) and I decided to try out open mike night at a local pub I'd heard about. (even more predictable?) I gave myself a little tour of the city (it was after 10:00 and still quite light outside) and it definitely endeared itself to me. Eventually I made my way back to "The Cellar" and signed my name onto the short open mike list. They provided a guitar and the entire pub absolutely went wild over Folsom Prison. That was fun. I got 2 coupons for free beer. I used neither.

We decided to go to the Cliffs of Moher on the morning of June 8th and soon made that decision a reality. The bus ride to the cliffs showed off some of the very best of Ireland and also the neurotic tendency of the Irish to build stone walls. I shudder to think how many tons of stone lie on the rolling hills near Doolin. They just love rocks. Of course it's really all they've got 'cause it's not advisable to build a fence out of grass. Or sheep.

The cliffs, though a touristy place, were majestic. The ocean always reminds me of God's glory and power but those cliffs (with the sea at the base) sort of took it to the next level. We walked out farther than 96% of the tourists and found some solitude. We payed by missing our bus.

The walk to Doolin was great. We've got pristine weather here which, according to all the locals, is the best they've seen in years. We soaked it in on the 4.5 mile path along the cliff-lined shore through cattle fields and plastic-wrapped hay bales, dodging the leading John Deere imitators plugging along the road.

We reached to town of Doolin and, parched, wandered into the local pub for some Coke. We paid dearly for our two 200mL drinks and sat awhile. We had a while. The bus was about four hours out. So, it being late afternoon, I decided to try for some food somewhere. Nobody took a credit card unless your purchase was over 20 Euros. Eventually we found a campstore and I got a loan from Graham and bought a can of corned beef. That's Irish, right? Graham didn't eat any. He said he was a “fine tuned machine” whatever that meant. We found a spot on the seashore nearby and stuck around there napping and reading until the bus came at 19:25. A sleep-filled bus ride later, we were back in Galway and Graham announced that he was willing to go out and actually buy food at a restaurant so we asked around for a good, cheap place and were pointed to a place specializing in fish and chips. Best cod I ever had in my life. Graham stayed at the restaurant a little to here a next-door jazz band and I headed to find Galway Bay, a place out of a Johnny Cash song. Found it. Came home after a while but not before playing a couple songs with some guys on the street. First eagles I've sung over here. Good times. Graham and I reconvened and went to sleep.

This afternoon (June 9) we left Galway, a lovely, lovely town, and high tailed it to Dublin. I almost lost all my work on the blog but the situation was rectified. We got to Black Rock and Dr. Hylton, a passenger on our train, found us and walked back to the house (his house) with us. We had an amazing meal prepared by Mrs. Hylton. I think she kind of spoiled us because I doubt we'll do any better than we did tonight as far as food goes. We had a bike repair session and, even if we didn't do much, it was enjoyable to fiddle around a little. Later Abby and Giz and Graham and I had a terribly thoughtful discussion of X-Men 3. There's quite a bit to mull over. Like what about that kid whose superpower was disabling other mutants superpowers? Wouldn't his power act on himself thus voiding itself? Like I said, thoughtful.

Well that didn't work the first time. Blogger is slow tonight. But here are some pictures, I had something writen but it seems to be lost. I'll have Caleb write something when he gets time.
Here are some pictures from The Cliffs of Mohur and our room in Galway.
'night.