Pictures are up on facebook! I lost all the ones from Venice onwards when my camera got stolen, but Ashley has awesome pictures from the whole trip. She'll post them eventually.

It's funny the things you miss: obviously I really miss my passport and camera with pictures, but I'm REALLY bummed about the loss of my dental floss, coins from all the countries, and my Slovenian and Dutch ketchup. Where else am I going to get Slovenian ketchup??

The Barcelona hiding stuff gets much funnier...for instance, there was the day we went to bed at 3 a.m. and got woken up at 9:15 a.m. by the landlady buzzing in. We didn't know if the landlady was going to enter, so we flew out of bed and shoved the pull-out bed back in really fast and threw all our stuff out of sight and E. started making coffee so she could be convincing when she told the landlady that we were just over for breakfast. We changed our pajama pants and everything and sat, dying, on the couch. Naturally the landlady never came up.

Anyway, Ash says I'm not allowed to refute anything in her post below. Not that what she said isn't accurate. I will say, however, that "rock collection" is a bit of an exaggeration--it's only like ten rocks! And they're all from Ireland!

Flying home tomorrowwwwwwwwwww
X

Europe details...

So I haven't posted on this blog in awhile, so I decided it was time. I tried posting last weekend, but for some reason it didn't work. Then I was going to post when we got to Madrid (prior to May's purse being stolen) and the things I wanted to post were things I thought were a bit comical. AND, in light of the whole stolen purse incident, I felt the need to wait a few days for the humor.

Also a quick recap...
We flew from Madrid to Frankfurt yesterday and then took a train to Dusseldorf to spend the next two nights. My mom is in Dusseldorf right now, so we're visiting/staying with her. Tomorrow we take a train back to Frankfurt and then fly from Frankfurt to Chicago, I'm not looking forward to the long flight! But it will be nice to be home.

Okay, the humor...

#1. The Beach in Venice: So we were in Venice about 10 days ago and we decided to spend one of the days at the beach. So we wake up on the decided day and it is just POORING RAIN...it seemed like we didn't pick the right day. BUT, it cleared up in the afternoon and so we decided to head to the beach. First, it took us forever to get there, because we needed to take a boat to get to the beach island, Lido. Finally we got there and I have a towel (the one I'd been using for showering), but May had no towel (since she uses a tiny hand towel for showering). After we went in the water I came back and layed on my towel...May got out plastic bags, lol!!! She got out 2 plastic bags (from her purse) one of which she kept all her coins in. So May was trying to lay in the sun and dry off while balancing on 2 plastic bags and trying to avoid getting sand on herself...I took pictures, don't worry. LOL, this did not end up working out well, but the beach was fun!

#2. Also in Venice: We were getting ready for bed and May was getting something when she spilled one of her bags and it sounded as if something glass had broken...the people around us seemed concerned. Really, it was May's rock collection spilling everywhere and making lots of noise, lol...she quietly told the people around us it what it really was...haha.

#3. Barcelona friend's Apt: So May and I stayed with one of her future MIT classemates in Barcelona. She and her boyfriend had an apt. rented for 3 weeks in Barcelona and she invited us to stay with her. They weren't supposed to have guests sleep over (well guests were supposed to pay) so she said we should just lay low while we were there. When we arrived she had us put our backpacks in the closet (so the landlady wouldn't see) and when the landlady came to the door we hide in the bedroom, lol. So...May and I took this as we shouldn't really be seen in the apt. We went around Barcelona and when we got back (around 9pm) it was just May and I in the apt. Someone needed to come in and fix something, but May said she was using the bathroom, because we wanted this person to leave. After he left, we proceeded to eat our dinner in the dark and run to the peep hole every time we heard a noise to see if he was coming back, lol. We did this for almost 2 hours!!! LOL...Then when the guy finally did come back we decided it would be better just to hide in the bedroom so he could fix it. May's friends ended up coming back, as the guy was coming in and just asked him to come back tomorrow...then they found us hiding in the bedroom, LOL! They informed us that we really didn't need to hide, haha. The next few nights were fine.

#4. Beach in Marseille: I got burnt to a crisp...I put sunscreen on, multiple times, but it wasn't enough :( This is only funny because since the burn I have been leaving pieces of myself, in the way of skin peeling, throughout Europe.

#5. Sleeping in Milan: May and I had a bunkbed in our Milan hostel...I slept on the top, May on the bottom. At this point May had a lot of bug bites. One of the nights I woke up to May hitting and scratching herself, because the enitre bed was shaking, lol. She was trying to ward off the bugs with a lot of authority! It didn't really work as the next day she counted her total amount of bug bites and it was at 98!

That's all I got for now, we leave tomorrow!

Ashley

In Which Stuff Just Sucks

Okay...so I can't believe it's only five thirty here. SO MUCH has happened today, and almost all of it has been really bad.

Our train to Madrid was supposed to leave at nine thirty this morning, so we got to the train station at around 9:00 and Ash needed some coffee. So we went and sat in the chairs by the shops, and she went and got coffee, and we sat there for a couple of minutes while she sipped it. Our backpacks and plastic bags were on the floor in front of us, and my purse was next to me on the right. I was watching it the whole time.

Then suddenly we feel these insistent taps on our shoulders and we turn to our left, where the taps were coming from. This woman says something totally incomprehensible, and I thought she needed help, so I said Como? and she repeated whatever, and finally I said, lo siento, no lo entiendo, because I had no idea what she was saying and figured it was Catalan.

She gave this like really small smile and scuttled away kind of abruptly, and we're like, okay, that was weird, why did she ask us, out of the entire crowded station? A minute later, I reach for my purse on my right, and it is of course gone. This team was working together--the woman would distract, and someone would slip by completely silently and inconspicuously and take your purse.

Obviously this was probably the worst thing I could imagine, apart from physical injury. My passport, camera, all my identification, voice recorder, state ID, UW ID, Hostelling International card, money, credit and debit cards, everything was in there. My floss was in there! By some amazing luck I had just taken out my plane tickets and Eurail pass to look at them, so I still had that. We looked everywhere in the area, and I asked people if they had seen anything, and of course they hadn't.

So then I went to the police station in the train station and it took two hours just to file the report, because it turned out they had hit at least six other people before me! Some spaniards, some british, some canadian, some american. It was terrible. Luckily, I am pretty much fluent in Spanish, because none of the police officers at that station spoke english. It took the other people who couldn't speak the language twice as long to file the report.

Ashley helpfully contacted my parents for me and asked to cancel my cards, and is lending me money for the rest of the trip. But the fun didn't end there! Obviously, I had to get a new passport, so we called the Embassy and got the address, and it turns out it closes at 1 pm on Fridays and you have to prove it is an emergency. Luckily, I had my plane tickets, showing that we needed to fly home in three days. Also luckily, I had a copy of my passport from when I tried to get an MIT Federal Credit Union card from England (thank you Mahalia!!). So we went all the way to the consulate, which involved a metro and a train, and then I had to fill out all these forms. I had found a passport photo machine in the train station adn gotten photos taken, so it took about an hour plus a bit to get the new passport. Fortunately, that went reasonably smoothly.

We got back to the station around 2 pm, and tried to get our train tix to Madrid. Naturally, though, there was a strike today, and the windows for tickets for trains leaving today were closed until 4:30. Also, there was a HUGE mass of people all clotted up in front of the cordoned off line zone, waiting for 4:30 to come. So, we join this clot and wait for 4:30.

But then it seemed like EVERYONE was going to Madrid, and all the trains kept getting full, or they would only have first class available, which we couldn't do because our Eurail passes were second class only, and more and more people appeared until there were like three huge lines extending in every direction, and there kept being all these false alarms, and some Spanish people got REALLY angry and started intensely yelling at the train station workers (and I mean INTENSELY, this one woman was going so crazy they called in two policemen...in the US she would've been thrown out or sedated, but naturally here she got what she wanted), and every time they'd open the cordoned area a little bit, this GIANT swarm of people would push forward, including us by this time, and only like ten people would get through before it got closed again... this lasted for about three hours. The rest of the station was nicely air-conditioned but it was like eighty some degrees where we were just from all the bodies. It also smelled pretty bad.

FINALLY we got into line in front of an actual ticket window. By this point I had gone to a zillion service areas and explained my situation in detail in Spanish, and begged them to let us on a train because we had a ticket for this morning, and it wasn't our fault at all that we didn't get to use it, to no avail. So we were really worried there wouldn't be space. The people in front of us took forever, too, and then, three people before us, they closed our window and made us shift to the right, which meant of course that people tried to cut like crazy. FINALLY we got to an actual ticket person, and I made the reservations and everything, and he said the earliest train they had available for second class was nine pm (it was a bit before five pm at that time), so we were like, well, okay, and then he said 20.70 euro please, and Ash handed him her card (of course I have no money anymore), and naturally he says, "Oh, only cash accepted."

Thankfully he let us stand off to the side while she dashed to an ATM, because there were throngs of murderous people behind us and if we had had to go to the back of the line I would NOT have been pleased. Oh, I forgot to mention, at one point while we were waiting in the giant mass, someone jostled and a HUGE HARD suitcase crashed into the back of my head. I literally saw stars. There's a bump now. It probably killed all the brain cells I need for MIT, which maybe explains why I accidentally wrote that the issue date of my stolen passport was October 2008 at first. Ooops.

So now we're at an internet cafe, trying to facebook the pain away. I knew my year had been too good to be true! Barcelona had been so much fun as well--we had the most amazing tapas at a place called El Reloj yesterday. It was reasonably priced and delicious, I really recommend it. But I warn you, Barcelona has REALLY bad crime problems. About ten people had also had their passports stolen just today, and they were all at the consulate. I'm sure there were more, but those were the ones I met. One woman actually physically struggled with the thief. I heard about another woman who was dragged across the floor before her purse strap snapped. These thieves are professional and do NOT give up. The police are pretty useless, too.

So, I liked Barcelona a lot until today. Today was absolutely horrible. The only redeeming part was that Ashley got me a Snickers as a consolation present. Both of us are just sweaty and gross and exhausted, and I am also broke and lost a lot of great memories (pictures, passport stamps), not to mention money.

Oh well. I guess I've got unique souvenirs--no one else I know has a genuine Barcelona police report!

We leave for Madrid in about three hours...fly to Frankfurt tomorrow, and fly home on Monday. That will be sooo nice.

Boo thieves!

Hasta luego
X

Barcelona!

Huge shout-out to our awesome host and hostess, E. and N., in Barcelona! They are sharing their wonderful apt. in a sweet nbd. with us even though they don't even know us that well! Yet! And they said I could play Mariokart on their Wii with them next year at MIT! This is pretty awesome if you ask me.

Barcelona is beautiful--we visited the Palau de Musica Catalan (Palace of Traditional Catalan Music) yesterday, which is AMAZING. Catalan is also way more French and Italian than Spanish, if you ask me. We visited the Park Guell today, which features the work of the architect Gaudi--this was also great. and the weather is beautiful here--a nice breeze and sun. Lots of palm trees as well, which I didn't expect. Been speaking a lot of Spanish--actually, been speaking a lot of spanish all trip, which has been great. Also Chinese.

We leave for Madrid on Friday, and fly to Frankfurt on Saturday. Then off to dusseldorf for a couple of days, and then we fly home on Monday! I can't believe it.

We are both pretty ready to go home. Europe has been amazing, but travel is pretty tiring and we're looking forward to being able to eat and sleep like normal people, and not carry all our worldly possessions on our sweaty backs. Plus it is SO expensive here. Checking our bank accounts is very depressing.

In the meantime, though, Barcelona has been wonderful! Our combined pictures number almost a thousand, and with our photographic talent all I can say is you're in for a treat.

Hasta luego,
X

In Which I Post an Old Haiku and Inform People We Are In Barcelona

*disclaimer: I think haikus in English are pretty silly, because haikus are a pretty inherently Japanese thing and are just random conglomerations of five words when they're written in English, but hey, I was bored on the train and was too hot and tired for an ode. So.


HAIKU FOR THE ZIT ON MY NOSE**

Red and so painful
Glasses nose tab rubs against
Wow this really sucks.



**this zit has since subsided.

Meditations

It is natural, when one does something for a long period of time, to begin to question why the thing is being done. And so we have today's question: Why do we travel??

Well, one reason is certainly the Stuff. We all love stuff, even those of us who deny it. "See, I shop at thrift stores," is something you will routinely hear these people say, but this does not mean that they do not love stuff. We go to great pains to cart a bunch of stuff to our destinations, we spend hours searching for a suitable container for all of our stuff, and the first thing we say upon our return is, "Hey, look at all the stuff I got!" So, stuff is of course a great motivator.

But stuff cannot be the only reason. After all, it costs thousands of dollars and hours of vacation time, not to mention the headaches and the bug bites and the sweat and tears and public restrooms that travel naturally entails. With the advent of google images, travel channels, and the perpetually increasing amount of stuff you can buy in the United States (glasses windshield wipers being one example of the awesome variety), international travel falls more and more readily within the scope of our desktops and homes. We can visit Stonehenge, the Great Wall, Easter Island, all from the confines of our airconditioned homes, where we avoid the rain, the exorbitant expense, the queues, the sheer general discomfort, inconvenience, and embarrassment of being a foreigner.

Yet we still travel. Why? What is it that pushes us out of our neighborhoods, across oceans, into heat and crowded trains and breakfastless hostels?

I suppose for most of us it is about seeing something different, being somewhere new. This is not such a profound observation. Everyone loves to "discover" things. "Look what I discovered!" people will exclaim about things that have withstood millions of tourists and thousands of years. Tourists are always eager to note the differences. We make huge lists and pride ourselves on the addition of each new item. "In Munich, the traffic lights go green-yellow-red AND red-yellow-green," we might announce importantly, upon our return, and our audience will nod, awed. "Wow," they might say. "That's so different." Needless to say, from then on, you are the Germany Expert. Everyone defers to you, because, well, you've actually Been There, even it was for two days only. There, they do this, over there, they do that-we reduce countries to bullet points of differences. After all, we have to be ready to answer that inevitable question when we come home: "What was it like?"

Travel is one of those things that is sometimes best in retrospect. After all, it is not the actual act of traveling that most of us love, but the arriving. We do not miss the smelly stations, the crabby ticket masters, the rickety metros that screech like banshees along questionable rails. It is not even (for the most part) the moments we stood outside something famous, squished among throngs of people, thinking to ourselves, "Boy, I am standing outside something famous." Rather, the moment we remember sometimes surprise us-buying stamps at a post office, wading among trout in deliciously cool lakes at the foot of mountains so high they seem ghostly and nebulous at their peaks. Punting in circles. Eating breakfast in Prague and singing to Dido, singing the Barbie song in a Czech bar. Speeding past several countrysides with the wind rushing through the windows and lifting your hair. Memory streams out the bad and enhances the good. Prehaps, then, we travel to remember, to have something to tell, to prove to ourselves that we were up to the challenge.

Me, I take out a map every so often, jab my pen at the mass that is Europe, and marvel that I am an ocean away from home. I am here, and everyone else is there. How incredible that such an unbelievable thing can be, in a way, so insignificant. Imagine a movie, a camera panning your face, and then your upper body, and then the top of your head, and then the tops of the heads of hte people around you. Within four frames you are already lost.

Every day we see thousands of people we will probably never see again. We will lead thousands of lives, none of which will ever cross again. Yet at a single moment, say, 1:55 pm in Barcelona, we all chose ot be on the same Calle. That we can cross oceans. That lava bubbles at the center of the earth and simmers beneath our feet, that massive creatures of the deep lumber slowly in the silent depths of the ocean adn we bob unknowingly above them, thousands of miles from their realms. That they live in their own world, that everyone lives in her own world, that our world holds billions of worlds yet is made up of none of them. How incredible.

When we travel, we return to childhood. Everything is unfamiliar, unknown. We try to contextualize the things we do not know with the things we do. We are adults, after all. We are supposed to Have Information, to be Holders of Knowledge. Travel is hard, but perhaps it is hardest in this way. And this, possibly, is why we ultimately do it-to return to the emotions of our childhood. To once again feel wonder.