Catching up, end of Europe

I'm in a bar, in nowhere Bavaria. There is a pint of Augustiner to my right. The girl who invited me here is off to have her dance class. I met her in Barcelona, what feels like years ago. I have not kept up on my writing recently. This is because I have not been traveling alone. When you travel alone you feel the need to share your story or you feel like it almost did not happen. When you are with someone else then you don't. And you have less time.

We last left our hero on a flight to Bucharest. I was excited about seeing Transylvania and I didn't at all. My first night there I met 2 German guys. After I told them my story about missing a flight to Berlin they told me that they are from Berlin, and driving back there. The next morning I was in a car going to Serbia.

Before we continue allow me to mention that under no circumstance, ever should you say that you "purchased the cheapest and quickest ticket out of Israel" Not unless you want people going through everything you have and touching you for a while. I mean I was totally into it, but you may not be. Did I mention this? I don't remember.

With the Germans I went to Serbia where the bars were so thick with smoke that it stung your eyes and killed any desire to do anything. Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, every place we would hit the Christmas market, get some hot wine, some food, never stayed too long anywhere. I got to Berlin from Prague on a train. Everyone likes Berlin, it's hard not to. Great public transport, good food, decent prices. "They invented Kebabs here you have to try one" "Where should I go?" "It doesn't matter they are all great." So is the currywurst. "Only one?" I'm asked as I pay 1.50 for it at the most famous place for them.

From Berlin I try the preplanned hitch-hiking to the Netherlands. It's not free but a hell of a lot cheaper than the train. "Everyone in the Netherlands speaks English." But not everyone has a sense of humor while speaking it. My driver didn't. I did learn there is a country in South America who's main language is Dutch though as the black man in the car who reminded me of (and was named) Greg informed me. Bonus points if you know what it's called. As the concept of seeing all of my friends in one place goes from highly improbable to essentially impossible I wonder if I'm happy about this. At what point do we go from collecting contacts to spreading our cares too thin?

Christmas was in Luxembourg. Warm in every way. If our closest friends are our family, is their family our family too? We have tiny families in the US, but there are cultures where family is hundreds of people some of which they barely know and it does not make them any less family. Why can't friends work the same way?

Back to Prague. The Luxembourg airport took the knife I've been carrying in my carry-on luggage since Florida. It was about 4-5 inches long. How many flights has it been since then? I complimented the security on their find. They were very proud, the man behind the xray even bowed, I hope I made their day a little better. Killa met me in Prague. Traveling alone is wonderful but sometimes you wonder why you do it. It has potential to be the best form of travel but sometimes it's good when you don't have to constantly search for someone to do cool things with. Maybe it's part of research, where and what are never as important as who and you can't leave everything up to chance, even if you have hit the jackpot many times before. But that's the gambler's problem. Every time you win you think you can win bigger again and again and again.

The CS Winter Camp was held this year in Budapest. I don't know if it is because of the winter camp or because Budapest is just awesome but since then I really like Budapest. The winter camp involves about 1000 couch surfers sleeping in a factory in a shit part of Budapest on FEMA mattresses. Calling them mattresses is an overstatement. They are foam pads at best. I slept in a giant room with maybe 200 other people. 4 of them snored heavily. How they are still alive is beyond me. I think when you enter into a 6 day long party you don't go with high hopes of sleeping. Essentially it did not happen. However between the forces of fatigue and inebriation sleep is located fairly easily. I know there were fireworks on New Years. I heard them. Seeing them was impossible through the very thick fog that enshrouds Budapest when snow is melting. The 6 days had alternating times of heavy drinking, and natural thermal bath relaxation. The best part is that it was all couch surfers. I'm not fanatical about anything but from my experience they tend to be a very social group. You can talk to anyone there and have something to talk about. As I say all the time, the place is always second to the people you meet. Budapest for me is filled with great memories. It was wonderful and cheap. Especially compared to Prague.

I feel Budapest ruined Prague for me. You suddenly arrive in a place where everything is easily twice as expensive and it''s difficult to get over right away. In Prague however I was able to put into words what really touched me about European cities. The buildings don''t look like they've been stamped out in a factory and dropped wherever they are. They have character, someone paid attention to detail someone cared what they looked like someone wanted them to have a soul. The center of Munich lacks this. The style is there but the soul is dead, crushed to death beneath the stamp of modular building. I can't care all that much about architecture but there is a reason why people do it right? It makes us feel something even if we can't put it into words. I don't get it from castles and famous buildings. I get it from streets where the buildings every day people live in show it.

I got body checked in Saltzburg. We went to a Brewery and in the corner was a group of about 8 guys singing and banging on tables the whole time. One of the guys who worked there disapproved of such behavior and kept telling them to shut up. I wanted to show them how I feel about such things, so while they were banging a beat that sounded very similar to "We Will Rock You" I stood up, puffed up my chest and walked over to their table. They got noticeably quieter as I approached and after standing there for a moment just to create an uncertain atmosphere I yelled at the top of my lungs "BUDDY YOU'RE AN OLD MAN POOR MAN... WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU..." Making friends, that's all it takes, really. When I finished I walked away from the table and halfway to my table the guy who worked there appeared out of nowhere, body checked me into another group of people, grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me over to the guys making the noise. "german, german, german..." I stood around uncertain for a few minutes, and then walked away before he was finished. Sometimes not knowing the language is not a bad thing.

By that point Igor had already arrived with Anna and the four of us headed down to the Alps for the ski trip. This was tourist land. Everything about it screamed tourist place. The place we stayed had an interesting separation, The English speaking people were all by the bar. They weren't really drinking, the place was kinda posh, they were more the “talking about how wonderful our children are over a glass of wine” type. The rest of the evening population, mainly Polish but also some Russians and other eastern Europeans were all gathered at the Sauna. We were the only people speaking English at the sauna, every night. After the first half of the week we actually started to interact. Between our Russian and Becky's German we were able to kind of understand their Russian/Polish/German mix that they were talking. It was some good ol naked sweaty small talk. Hot.

The skiing was cool. There are a lot of myths about skiing in the alps that we hear as Americans. First one I hear often is“you take a gondola up and spend half the day going down.” Not where I was certainly. We wet to 5 different resorts, and like 10 different peaks, I never had a run that too more than 1.5 hours to complete with a beginner in the group. The mountains are much taller though. Somewhere around 2km on average. I'm not sure how high the base is though. It is a much larger vertical drop than the northeast. “There is no ice and lots of powder” Also false, certainly on most of the days the conditions were better than we normally see in Vermont. We were also told that it's been much worse this year than it normally is. However the last day was pure ice for us. Well not pure ice, more like very annoying patches of ice, then powder and then more ice and then packed snow and you never now how hard to dig because it changes every 2 meters. Also, the trail rating system in Europe is different. It goes Blue, Red, Black and all three mean absolutely nothing. The hardest trails I took were the blue ones (beginner) they were just as steep as the blacks in some places but since they are made for beginners all the snow had been scraped off of them. So while you could stop on the blacks, stopping on the blues was damn near impossible. The reds were usually the best way to go. Also, they love T bar lifts here. They are everywhere. Strangely though the uphill capacity of everywhere we have been was enormous. We were not there at the most popular time but we also never spent more than 5 min in line anywhere. They do this really cool thing with the chair lifts here. They have a cover. After you drop the bar you can also drop this plastic bubble that protects you from the wind and snow and whatever. That is AWESOME. However I did not see a single bra tree. “While in the alps you have to ski a glacier” someone told Becky. No argument there. The glacier was interesting. Long, wide. straight runs at an optimal steepness with good snow, no ice or rocks. At around 3km of elevation it was a cool experience.

On our last night we decided to go out and party with the locals. We were taught a local game where one needs to hammer a nail into a block of wood with the thin part of the hammer. This is not done with one hit. Everyone takes a turn at their nail and passes the hammer to the left. The last person to get his nail in buys a round of drinks for everyone who played. It's an expensive game to lose. I... sucked at it.... and couldn't afford to play more than once. We played against the local firefighters. Fun guys. Knew some English. Tried their hardest to teach me not to suck but it was too late for me. Id like to emphasise the fact that the head of the nail was larger than the part of the hammer that you're trying to hit it with. They advocated a drunkness curve similar to that of most things in life. You suck sober, you rock after a few beers and suck even more after too many. I wasn't sure where I was on that but wherever it was, I was in the wrong place.

Next morning, a few hours after going to sleep we lurched out of bed and made our way back to Germany. As I said goodbye to Igor in the airport I stopped by the “last minute ticket” desk to pick up some fresh ones to Thailand. They came with a nice stop in Dubai and I look forward to the whole thing. For legal purposes I needed a return ticket back to Munich. I laughed when the travel agent said when it was April 26th, the day I left home for Florida, day 1 of part 2. I'm thinking I'll go home after that. But just as a meteorologist I have absolutely no chance of predicting anything 3 months in advance.