Owing Someone an Apology...

Dear Liver,

I'm sorry. I truly am. I promised you this would never happen again after college, but over these last 2 weeks--and more specifically Oktoberfest the last 2 days--I broke that promise. I didn't mean for this to happen, but hey, we've been having some great times together, right?

Someday I'll make it up to you. Actually, I'll probably just end up replacing you at some point. No hard feelings.

Sincerely,

Ross

(That's all I could muster up for a post today. Leaving Munich in 6 hours for my next destination. See pictures below for some Oktoberfest insight.)

Solo Journey Begins

NOTE: I tried to post this 2 days ago but had some technical difficulties. So this is what I actually wrote 2 days ago.

After 9 days of being “eased into Europe,” I’m starting the solo
journey today(yesterday by the time I post this). Werner was a great
host & as expected we had a great time. Some days were all about
sightseeing, and others were more relaxed with just walking around,
grabbing food & drinks, etc. I think I might have lost an entire day
when you add up all the time spent turning on & off light switches
just to get one thing to work in his apartment. I can already see how
there will be plenty of days where I do NOT want to do all the
touristy things; that gets tiring quickly.

To catch you up on the last bunch of days since my previous post,
here’s a quick recap:

Last Saturday was the laziest day we had due to the inevitable
Amsterdam hangover. It didn’t seem like Werner & I had the energy to
even talk to each other so we decided to go see a movie. Before making
that decision, we checked with his Dutch roommate on whether the
theaters would be playing the movies in English or not. He said they
would be in English, but with Dutch subtitles. No big deal we
thought…except that we decided to see Inglourious Basterds. For anyone
who hasn’t seen it, the movie jumps between 3 different languages,
meaning the movie naturally has subtitles in English for the
non-English speaking parts. Just not in foreign countries where
another language for subtitles trumps English. I’d estimate I
understood roughly 55% of the movie; Werner probably understood 75%
since he speaks French, which is one of the languages they jumped into
during the movie. It was obviously a slight oversight on our part, but
it still seemed like a good movie. I’ll have to catch it in English
some time to fill in the gaps.

Sunday was a quick daytrip to a couple cities near Rotterdam: The
Hague & Delft. Not a ton to say here because they were interesting
cities, but not so much to do besides walk around & look at the
buildings. In The Hague, there was one particular building we wanted
to check out: the International Court of Justice (basically a palace).
We spent about 10 minutes in front of a building we thought was the
palace taking pictures of each other only to find out it was the wrong
building & the correct one was over a mile away.

This past Monday was a daytrip for me back to Amsterdam. I went solo
this time because Werner had class. Somehow I made the roundtrip to
Amsterdam & back to Rotterdam without a single issue on the trains or
communicating with people. I was surprised by that. Finally did my
first European museum: the Van Gogh Museum. For someone who has
minimal (read: none) interest in art, I was amazed by it. I guess I’d
convince myself it was cool no matter what so I wouldn’t feel like it
was a waste of time & money, but I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it. We’ll
see how other museums go. For art beginners like myself, I’d totally
suggest doing the audio tour because it gives some good info on Van
Gogh’s life & the paintings themselves. I eventually made my way over
to Anne Frank’s House because my mom told me to, and if I have learned
one thing over the years, it’s always do what mom tells me to
do--she’s rarely been wrong (how 'bout that for locking myself into a
better Xmas gift this year). Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) I
didn’t have time to wait in the long line because I had a train to
catch. So yeah I saw the outside of her house. I’ll pretend that
counts.

For those of you who took a stab at the last, “Where in the World is
Ross,” thanks for trying, but you were all wrong . I guess I don’t
have to give a keychain bottle opener with a picture of Bruges on it
to anyone! Bruges…Bruges was the answer people (I wrote that before
Neil came in with a late but correct guess). Congrats Neil. Now I
don't have to think about a gift to get you. Anyway, Wednesday was my
last day with Werner & we decided we were so sick of each other I’d go
to Bruges while he stayed in Brussels. Actually, I think he had some
school work that surprised him & he needed to do it all day. So once
again I was solo. I pretty much felt like a pro on the trains by the
time I got back from Bruges.

Some thoughts on my trip to Bruges:

-I’ve gotten in the habit of looking in my travel book at the city I’m
visiting when on the train, finding some must-do sights & writing down
some rough directions for them. Note to self: you don’t need to write
down directions to the 2 buildings in a city that are 5x taller than
any other building. Just look up & you’ll get it.

-Walking up 366 stairs in a normal staircase would be hard enough, but
the Belfort in Bruges adds several degrees of difficulty to this.
Every two steps is the equivalent of a 90-degree turn all the way up;
the staircase isn’t quite wide enough for two grown humans to fit in
it at the same time; and finally, not much in the way of railings to
hold on to through a lot of it. Good times.

-I’ve started to realize that most of the “public bathrooms” & some
bathrooms in certain buildings have people collecting money for use of
said bathrooms--usually 20-50 euros. I’m suspicious. Not sure if these
people are actually sanctioned by the city to do this, or if they
happen to be the world’s smartest panhandlers. Either way, if I can’t
find a job when I get back to the US, you can bet your ass I’ll be
standing in front of bathrooms trying to make some money.

-I’ve also come to realize that the major tourist areas naturally have
the highest priced food. What I’ve been doing lately is walking far
away from these areas, stalking some local folk, and following them to
the places they eat. Bonus points if I find kids or teenagers because
they most likely are eating really cheap.

-I finally ate my first Belgian Waffle…2 enthusiastic thumbs up.

Two quick notes from the stop I had in Cologne, Germany, today. I had
to stop here anyway on my way to the next destination, and it sounded
like there were a couple sights to check out. I figured I’d spend a
couple hours checking them out, and then be on my way. I spent 20
minutes at “Germany’s greatest cathedral,” the Dom, and it was
definitely worth it. But then I grabbed a beer from some bar & asked
the bartender what else there is to do in the city. Her response: “We
have 4 churches here. So you might want to check out the other 3.”
Pass. I was back on the train 30 minutes later. The other note is
about the Dom itself. There’s no experience like walking into a church
as a tourist in the middle of a Mass/Service. That’s how you make
friends quickly. I think they make the doors slam behind you on
purpose so you can feel awful by having 300 people staring at you at
once.

This obviously turned out to be a long recap; sorry for that.

I have reached my next destination & already have plenty to say about
my first night here, but I'll save it for another time.

Where in the World is Ross?

Ok, number two of "Where in the World is Ross?" should be harder than number one.

Look at the picture below & leave a guess in the comment section.

Winner (first person to guess right either in comment section or via email) gets a nice souvenir from this town/city when I get home, I promise.

Finally checking in from abroad... been a fun 5 days & really easy adjustment to Europe since I've been with Werner the whole time. In Belgium, where Werner speaks "the language" (French I think), it's quite convenient to allow him to speak with all the locals. Werner is my crutch in Belgium. In the Netherlands, however, where Dutch is the common language, Werner's as inept as me. That led to a 7-minute back-n-forth between me & a cashier today when I was trying to purchase a Diet Coke. That was my toughest "foreigner" moment so far.

Some other things of note over these last 5 days:

-A shout out goes to Matt (I'm guessing Matt P. even though he didn't specify) for being the first to guess my whereabouts of the "Grand Place in Brussels" a couple days ago. I knew these first few rounds would be easy considering everyone knew where I was starting my trip. I'll make it a challenge eventually. Just warming up.

-The flight to Brussels was the first time in my life that a flight attendant made every announcement in 2 languages.

-Departing the airport in Brussels, it took me all of 10 seconds to stand in an incorrect line due to the language barrier. I was standing in the EU only customs line for about 2 minutes before I realized.

-For some reason I have trouble sleeping on planes lately. I hardly slept at all on the 7 hour flight over, and when realizing that I have flights of roughly 18 hours (Paris to Syndey) & 14 hours (Sydney to San Francisco) left on this trip, I figured out that Ambien (or a stronger drug) will be necessary. Either way I was able to power through Day 1 as Werner & I walked around Brussels for hours. I'm not really disturbed at all by the famous peeing boy statue (Mannekin Pis), but I am beyond disturbed by the copy cat peeing girl statue (Jeanneken Pis). I felt dirty just trying to take a picture of it, but still did of course.

-I gotta say, if beer in the U.S. was both as cheap & as strong as Belgian beer, I may have died years ago. As a matter of fact, I've discovered a whole new meaning to happy hours over the last few days. Alot of happy hours don't begin until 9 or 10 at night, and many have been 2 for 1 drinks of any kind. That probably contributes to my average wake up time being close to 11AM so far.

-Werner's parents' apartment in Brussels is a bit unique (read: quirky). This actual conversation took place when I first got there:

-Ross: "Hey, can I use your bathroom?"

-Werner: "Yep, it's right there. Just don't turn the lights on or else the internet will go out?"

-Ross: "Huh?"

-Werner: "The wiring's all messed up somehow so some of the switches control the wrong things in the place."

(I believe when I finally did need to take a shower & have bathroom lights on, Werner just had to make sure the dish washer wasn't on and he shut all other lights off.)

-By not sleeping on the plane ride over & powering through all of day 1, I was rewarded with 15 hours of uninterrupted sleep on night 1 (OK, can't say uninterrupted considering Werner tells me I basically sleepwalked (sleptwalked?) an hour into my rest). I've never been out cold for that many hours. I took that as a sign that I was fully caught up on sleep for the trip.

-On day 2, I experienced another first of what will likely happen several times on this trip: Werner & I missed the train to Rotterdam by 10 seconds, 12 seconds at most. The whistle was blowing as we were running on to the track. It was pretty disheartening. On the bright side, it provided us with an hour in the train station so Werner was kind enough to teach me how to read the train schedules (easy) & he gave me some basic French lessons (hard).

-I also had first experiences with someone trying to communicate with me in another language with me standing there dumbfounded, and with someone talking to me in English, only me thinking they were speaking a different language so I still stood there dumbfounded.

-It's been easy connecting to the web since I'm staying at an apartment where there's wireless internet connection, but I've been tempted to throw my computer out a window several times whenever Google or another site decides to change into the Dutch language randomly. Imagine a situation where you're trying to bet on american football, but the computer keeps taking you to soccer since your IP address is from Europe.

And now for my "clean for the family" version of yesterday's Amsterdam trip:

-Werner & I had lots of...fun. It was a great place, and everyone was really...nice. I hope to go back some time soon.

-In the span of 30 minutes, we saw a head on, bike-on-bike collision (no injuries), and an ambulance picking a guy up off the street in a stretcher (probable injury).

-Finally, I think I made at least 1 enemy in Amsterdam when I had this interaction with a bartender:

-Werner (pointing at some weird & really slow, bad looking derby race on TV): "What is that?"

-Ross: "That's Europe's version of NASCAR."

-Bartender (in a heavy Dutch-ish accent): "Oh don't make fun of us. You need us much more than we need you right now."

-Ross (doing that uncomfortable, fake laughing...trying to figure out if he's messing with me or not): Well, c'mon, it was funny."

-Bartender slowly walks away while staring me down.

I think that's all the exciting stuff for now. Below are some pictures I've taken over the 5 days. Stay tuned for more.

The Traveling Finally Begins

Just a quick hit today as I don't want to hold up tonight's adventures by blogging. I should have more interesting things tomorrow.

First, I made it to Europe just fine. Easy flights, only problem was that I couldn't sleep very well on the plane, will have more on that tomorrow.

So Neil had a great idea when I first set up this blog. Throughout my trip, I will likely post a picture of myself & you, the readers, will try to guess what City & Country I'm in. I'll probably make it a little obscure, so no, you won't see me standing in front of the Eiffel Tower asking "Where in the World is Ross?"

Also, people who I've talked to & told where I was on a particular day shouldn't ruin it for others.

Anyway, see below for the first picture. Feel free to take a stab at it in the Comments section below. This is where I was yesterday ( I know this first one should be easy based on the itinerary I told everyone, but you might be surprised).

Again, I'll update tomorrow & the first person who guessed the right place will win something nice (likely a "Good Job" shout out from me in the blog...still it's something).

Counting down 'til Europe...final weekend in Boston

There will be times when I really don’t have much to write on this blog; this isn’t one of them.

After a great weekend in Boston, I’ll try to recap some highlights in chronological order:

I discovered a small snag in a part of my plans for the trip to Europe. On Friday morning, I went to Bank of America looking to exchange some US Dollars for Euros. I found out that most of the local BofA’s need to order Euros, and it would take at least one business day for me to procure my requested money. Since I’m flying out Monday afternoon, I don’t have a full business day to wait for a bank to exchange my money for a different kind of money. Anyway, I was forced to drive to Concord, MA, where there was a BofA that could exchange USDs for Euros on the spot.

This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but whenever anyone says, “Sir, I have a 500 note in that currency. Would you like that and then smaller denominations?” You always answer, “Yes, please!”

With my Euros on board, I went to Boston Friday night to spend some time with friends who I wouldn’t see back in Fitchburg. Before I got to Eamon’s apartment in Brighton, I had to ride the train through the BU campus; something I hadn’t done in 3+ years.

A few observations:

-Charlie Cards??? I’m supposed to buy Charlie Cards when I want to ride the train? Get the fuck out. If I want to ride the train, I’ll give you $2 and you’ll like it.

-The McDonald’s near west campus at BU is gone? That’s the first place where I became “a regular.” Seriously, at one point junior year of college, I’d walk into this MickeyD’s and an employee would say, “the #5 today, Ross?” Is it more sad that I’m telling a true story, or that I’m upset the McDonald’s is gone?

-T’s Pub appears to no longer be called T’s Pub. Instead it’s called something like 973 Commonwealth Ave. Totally has a nice ring to it.

-Marty’s liquor store on the corner of Harvard & Comm Ave is gone? The place where I once got my fake ID confiscated is no longer? Unfortunate.

(Quick side story: the summer between sophomore & junior year at BU, my buddy Werner had to come up to Boston for a hearing regarding his fake ID that was confiscated at the Wine Press. The night before the hearing, he stayed with me, and we weren’t really in the mood to drink at all--I had to work in the morning & he had the aforementioned hearing--but because we were college kids, we felt obligated to drink something alcoholic. So I strolled into Marty’s, grabbed two 40’s, and went to the cashier. Obviously that worked out poorly as they gave me the option to either walk out the door without my ID or wait for the Cops to arrive if I wanted to fight them on it. So yes, I got my fake ID taken away on the eve of Werner’s hearing regarding his fake ID getting taken away. Sweet irony.)

-Finally, Tonic has turned into something called “Joshua Tree.” Wait, I always hated Tonic anyway; what do I care?

Back to the weekend… I’d like to give a big F U to mother nature because after a solid week of weather in Mass. leading up to this weekend, she decided to mess with all potential plans by pissing rain on Boston for 30 hours. Friday turned into pizza & beer at Eamon’s, and the night ended with me sleeping on the world’s largest air mattress. Seriously, it was 3x the height of a normal mattress & took up an entire living room.

After drinks & cigars with more friends on Saturday afternoon, me, Eamon & our Dads were off to the Sox game. The weather didn’t screw us on Saturday night as much as the Red Sox did. At the expected start time (7:10PM), there wasn’t a hint of rain in the sky, but for some reason the Sox decided to delay the game for over 2 hours. Long story short, we got bored at 8:15 and decided bowling would be a much better option. Even though the Sox went on to crush the Rays 9-1 in a rain-shortened game, we clearly made the right choice. If we had gone to the game, I never would have gotten to see my Dad beating all of us in bowling while falling down & being completely sprawled out on the lane (twice). And at the Sox game, there would have been no watching Eamon throw the bowling ball from between his legs religiously regardless of the amount of ridicule we gave him.

So while under normal circumstances it would have been sacrilegious for me to leave a Sox game without seeing a single pitch, it was worth it in every way. Just a great weekend even without doing much.

And now, I will watch 10 straight hours of football as my final act before leaving the country.

So long, San Fran

I should have known a lot of you greedy bastards would be complaining already about my lack of blog updates. Yes, I admit I've been a bit negligent over the last 2 weeks, but I promise you haven't missed anything exciting. What am I supposed to write when I'm sitting on my ass waiting to start my trip? "Today I had to make a tough decision between ordering a meat lovers' omelette or a stack of pancakes for breakfast." Or maybe, "A few hours ago I wanted a glass of water, but instead I just turned on the faucet, forgot why I was in the kitchen, and then went back to watching daytime TV." (I did eventually turn the water off, but not until my show ended.)

Seriously, there's nothing too exciting going on...oh wait, I'm in Fitchburg now!!! Nevermind, not even 3 exclamation points can make that seem interesting.

In exactly one week, I'll be halfway through my flight from Boston to Brussels. I flew to Boston from SF on Saturday night so I could spend some time at home before my trip. So basically I had a dry run of saying my good byes to family & friends, packing for my trip, going to the airport, and getting on a plane. So when I have to do all that for real here in Mass. I'll be a pro at it.

Over my last week in SF, I basically did 2 things: final prep for the trip, and eating my last meals at a variety of favorite food spots. In case you're interested, here's where I ate: Ike's Place (new favorite sandwich shop), Mr. Pickle's (old favorite sandwich shop), Sally's (favorite breakfast place), Taqueria Cancun (favorite Mexican/burrito spot), Chipotle (favorite fast-foodish Mexican place), and last but certainly not least, In-N-Out Burger (no explanation needed). Obviously it was a very healthy final week for me in the Bay Area.

My favorite part of the week was going out to dinner at Cha Cha Cha (tapas & sangria) on my final night w/ most of my closest friends in SF. I even got a dessert with a candle in it as if it was my Birthday. Mike led the group in song with what I can only imagine was an original composition called "Bon Voyage (pronounced voy-a-jey) Ross." I believe it was sung to the tune of Happy Birthday.

Wait, when I said that was my favorite part of the weekend, I totally forgot the next day I went to a BBQ in Golden Gate Park where I got to see several people--including Mat, the artist from my 2nd blog post--dressed like repulsive Teletubbies. See for yourself below.

I would apologize to Mat for the embarrassment, but first of all, he's probably not embarrassed at all since he's kind of a weirdo, and second, he was the only one to pretend to be angry with me when I was saying my good byes. So this is what he gets in return.

That's it for now. I promise to update the blog more often when I actually start traveling to interesting places.