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| My trip to Europe may have been the best month of my life. For
six months I eagerly waited for this trip, knowing it would be a life
defining experience. Originally, I hoped to find a friend to
travel around Europe with, but as June approached, I no luck finding
anyone with similar ambitions. Although at first I was
slightly worried about traveling alone, I wouldn't let that stop me
from taking the trip of a lifetime. At Easter my parents
announced that my sister Erin would be joining me in Ireland for the
first week of my trip. The plan would be that I would fly into
Dublin with my sister and stay with my cousin the first couple nights.
My flight left O'Hare on Wednesday June 14th at 9 pm CST and would
arrive in Dublin at 6 am CST (noon Irish time) after a connection
flight in Glasgow, Scottland. I tried my best to sleep on the
plane, but couldn't if my life depended on it. The combination of
a toddler sitting behind me kicking my seat, the fact that I was going
to sleep after 2 am regularly, and the excitement of going overseas for
the first time prevented me from getting any sleep whatsoever.
Since we were flying to Glasgow the guy sitting next to me on the plane
was Scottish. On this trip I learned that Scottish people can be
really scary. When he sat down next to me I asked him "Hows it
going" and he responded to me "EEEEEHHKK IM DOIN OK!!!!!!!!!", for the
next three hours I was afraid of him because of his ridiculously
intense response to my greeting. After trying to sleep for a
while more I started talking to him, though because of his thick
accent, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. A little
after midnight I watched the in flight movie King Kong, which would be
the last English-speaking movie I would watch for an entire
month. By the time we arrived in Glasgow, I realized I was
ridiculously exhausted.
Dublin -
After finally arriving in Dublin, it hit me: I was in a different
country finally. I forgot I hadn't slept that night. The
plan was to meet my cousin on the Trinity College campus and go back to
his apartment to drop off our bags. We found him sitting in the
middle of a plaza filled with tourists. Immediately we went to
get coffee, which I may have drank ten cups of that day. After
that he offered to take us to see the Book of Kells, which supposedly
is Ireland's most famous historical artifact. We got in for free,
but although the book was beautiful, it was relatively
underwhelming. The Trinity College library which contained the
book was cool though, because it looked like something from Harry
Potter.
After we dropped our stuff off we walked around
for a while. I was blown away by Ireland in general, but
especially Dublin. It was amazing to walk around and see
buildings that are older than our entire nation. Even more
amazing though were the people. Everyone in Dublin resembled
someone I knew. Many people I saw people resembled myself or
someone from my family. Everyone was fair skinned and relatively
short. My family had always told me in Ireland I would discover
why I am who I am. In part this was true, because I realized why
I look the way I look. For once in my life I felt completely
comfortable in my own skin.
For dinner we went for fish and
chips, which was probably the best food I had in Ireland, a country
known for food of dubious quality. Erin passed out immediately
after we got back from dinner and me and Brendan went to go see the
real attractions in Dublin: pubs. At the pub I hung out with my
cousins friends. The place was real cool, local non touristy
place.
Killarney - The town of
Killarney sucked. The place is a tourist trap beyond tourist
traps. I had Americans asking me directions to things left and
right, thinking I was a local. Though the town was shit, the area
surrounding it was beautiful, which justifies the busloads of American
tourists who infect the place. I had my first hostel experience
here. Hostel beds suck, and I learned that fast. I also
learned what weird people can frequent hostels. As me and my
sister walked into the room, we heard snoring, but the lights were
on. I investigated and found an obese old guy who looked like
Santa Claus sleeping with in a man thong. Erin refused to sleep
in there because she thought the guy would rape her. We walked
around Killarney national park our first day, and on the second day we
took a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry. Along the way of the bus
tour I stopped in a record store and located Lannigans Ball - the best
Irish song ever.
Cork
London
Istanbul
Ayvalik (briefly)
Lesbos Island
- I was only planning on staying in Lesvos for a day, but somehow got
stuck there for four days. Every boat off the island was
completely booked, because less boats run on weekends (I don't know
why). I arrived on Thursday night and finally got out Sunday
night. Originally I had planned to move on to Santorini and Ios,
but I ended up having to abandon that plan in order to have time for
Paris. Being the third largest Greek Island, the island itself
ranged from beautifully boring, to just plain boring.
Apparently
high season starts in early July, about a week after I arrived there,
so the resorts were empty and I was able to get a nice hotel room in
the resort town of Molivos cheaply. Unfortunately, there were no
hostels and not many travellers, so being social was a problem.
Pretty much everyone in Molivos was either a local or on their
honeymoon/anniversary. Sure I was in this romantic old hilly
mediterranean resort town, but that kind of thing can be pretty dull
when you're completely alone. At this point I been completely
alone for full days (mainly because I was on my own in Turkey, where
nobody speaks any English) and I felt the familiar feelings of
loneliness looming. To fight this, my mission became to make
friends or companions. I spent my first full day sitting on the
beach and then by the pool because the sea turned out to be freezing
cold reading books I stole from my hotel. From years of
lifeguarding I learned that pools are the best place to be outwardly
social so eventually I started talking to some Irish guy and a weird
woman from New York. They told me they saw me (because I was one
of the few people at the resort) and thought I was from Ireland
(basically every European I talked to on the trip thought I was
Irish). The irish guy worked in television for RTE (I ran into a
lot of those in Europe). The girl was just weird, she talked about her
boyfriend a lot, and how she left New York because she had a bad coke
problem, I was a little freaked out by her openness to someone she just
met. But on the bright side she told me of the one bar in town
which people our age went to.
That night I had possibly the best
dinner of my life. At the towns harbor, I ate at a well known
local seafood restaurant. For 15 dollars I had the biggest plate
of fresh grilled fish I'd ever seen in my life. Seriously about
14 different types of fish were killed for my dinner and it was
delish. The waitress wouldn't leave me alone that I was eating a
nice dinner completely alone. Maybe it was the fact that I was
surrounded by romantic couples, but the waitress I think was trying to
set me up with her 35 year old nanny. I declined, being half
weirded out and half just plain shy. By the end of the meal I was
practically drunk (wine is really cheap!!), and headed to the bar I was
told about.
At the bar I accidently dropped a bunch of
change trying to buy a drink and the girl standing next to me at the
bar picked it up. I struck up a conversation with her and her
friend, both of whom were from Athens and were in town visiting a
friend of theirs. As soon as I knew it I had made my friends for
the night. When I told them I was from Chicago and was travelling
alone they were surprised. They asked me what I was doing in this
part of the world, and called me brave. Quickly this became one
of the best nights of the my trip. On a whim we went behind the
bar and swam in the sea. People at the bar were all looking at us
and taking pictures of us, as we were swimming in the absolute dark in
the middle of the night. After we swam me and one of the girls,
sat on the beach and talked one on one for what seemed like
hours. I thought to myself, "wow this is finally it", but when it
came time to leave, I realized that she wasnt that kind of girl, and
for the matter I'm not that kind of guy and we parted ways. I
woke up the next morning with mixed feelings, and felt kind of bad.
The
next day was fairly underwhelming. I took a seven hour walk along
the countryside of the island to see what else there was to see.
The highlight of the day was as I was walking on a country road by an
abandoned old shack, about 10 wild dogs ran out and started barking at
me, two started running at me, and I sprinted what seemed like a mile
without turning around.
On the day I was supposed to leave
Lesvos, I was walking around the port town and heard my name. I
looked over and saw the two girls were sitting at a cafe and I joined
them. I spent the next four hours hanging out with them before I
left on my boat. Before I left we exchanged information and I'm
supposed to email them sometime soon about my trip. They were
among the coolest people I met in Europe and I wished I wouldve been
able to spend more time with them.
The boat to Athens sucked, it
was an overnight 12 hour boat ride on what was basically a cruise
ship. I did not have a bed so I had to fend for myself. The
boat was mostly full of old people. I stayed up until about
midnight while most of the old people went to sleep at eight.
When I came looking for a place to sleep I couldnt find anything.
I ended up sleeping on the floor and when i woke up some old womans
head was near my foot and I accidnetly kicked her a little. SHE
PUNCHED ME!!!! I went back to sleep, and woke up to a lot of
chatter. I thought we had arrived in Athens and looked at my
watch, actually it was just 5 am and all the old people were waking up
for the day. It was the second worst night of sleep I had the
entire trip.
Athens - I
HATED ATHENS. If there is any place that is hell on earth, for me
it would be Athens. Most guidebooks I encountered gave Athens
poor reviews. I arrived at 7 am and stumbled to my hostel.
The entire time I was walking along the foot of the Acropolis, thinking
to myself, this is actually pretty pleasant. The streets were
empty and I was in the nicest part of town. I begged my way into
taking a long morning nap, my roommates were two girls who arrived on a
boat from Ios and had the same sleeping problem.
5 hours
later I woke up and walked around the Acropolis for a long time.
It was interesting, and was surprisingly not too crowded. From
the top of the Acropolis I could see out over the entire city, which
looked endless and decrepid. Out in the distance was the
coastline and large green hills, which were covered in military
bases. Naturally Athens could be one of the most beautiful cities
on the planet (and it probably was thousands of years ago), instead its
a shithole that looks like it belongs somewhere in the worst parts of
Mexico. When I descended from the Acropolis, Athens
suddenly became hell. Everywhere I went I got yelled at in
Greek. I sat on a bench in a park the wrong way and some guy
yelled at me. I crossed the street and some driver yelled at
me. Speaking of which, the streets were ridiculously narrow and
everyone was driving the loudest mopeds and cars imaginable. When
the Greeks werent yelling at me, they were yelling at each other.
I got to see a driver rear end another driver, and then get out of his
car and scream at the guy he just hit.
At one point I
was walking down the street and some old guy started yelling at me, and
as usual, I ignored him and kept walking across the street. Then
he grabbed me and yelled at me more. Then he accused me of being
American. He pointed at some sign that said "New York
College". He kept yelling at me and pointing at that sign.
And then he hit me with his umbrella!
By then end of the day I
was so frustrated with Athens I had a moment of crises. I was in
a city that was mostly hostle to me, where I didn't know anyone.
I called my sister freaking out, just wanting to talk to someone
friendly, who wasn't yelling at me. After that I went and sat at
a McDonalds for an hour, pretending I was comfortable at home. I
left early the next morning, just wanting to get the hell out of
Greece. At the train station I almost missed my train because I
couldnt understand what the guy at the ticket booth was saying because
some Greek guy was screaming in the background.
Patras
(briefly) - On the train I met a Canadian girl and an Australian guy
who were going on the same boat to Italy as I was. I hadn't
really hung out with anyone since the girls in Lesvos, so I kind of
latched on to them, whether they liked it or not. The boat ride
was actually fun, even thought it was 15 hours long. Since we had
the Eurailpass, they gave us the homeless treatment, we didn't even
have a chair. Instead we were forced to sleep on extremely
brightly lit deck. Since I had friends for the night we had a few
beers, which made sleeping easier. I ended up sleeping on
the top of a table with a black shirt over my face. Surprisingly
I slept pretty well.
Naples
Rome
Florence
Venice
Brussels (briefly)
Paris
I have plenty of stories from my trip, and I guess I'll write some of them here in the next week or so.
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| I had a dream last night where I went golfing for a family event.
We woke up at 7 am to golf at the nicest golf course in the
suburbs. To get in, I had to pay $300. Best part is I don't
know how to golf. The entire dream I would swing the club and
miss the ball, or the ball wouldn't go anywhere. The dream was
really frustrating, and felt like it lasted forever.
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| I got my hair cut today. First haircut since December.
Right now its neither long nor short. the barber styled it to make me
look like a metrosexual. Right now I think I'm gonna go wax my
eyebrows.
Today I found out an old friend of mine has developed severe drug
problems and overdosed a few weeks ago. He survived, but is back
doing drugs again. Its really sad, because he was always a really
good kid with a few major unrelated problems, and I always tried to do
whatever I could to encourage him to pull his life together. I
don't know if I could ever bring myself to see him again and see him in
his current state.
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| I cleaned my half of the room two days ago. You can't really tell
anymore, but it does make me a member of the cleaned room club.
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