I'm a nerd: Part II

With my unsurmountable expertiese in Microsoft Paint, I created this as an account of my journies in the past two weeks:

Portugese Mornings, Spanish Afternoons, and Moroccian Nights

Wow, certaintly a lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to provide a brief digest of what has happened in the past week.

Traveling to Lisbon was not too bad. Skipping the boring details, I was stuck in Munich at 10 pm until my flight that next morning at 6 to Lisbon. It was a Sunday night and so all of Munich's famous beer halls had closed early, so I uncerimoniously popped back a can of beer I had bought at a convience store at the metro station as I waited for the train to the airport. Sleeping in Munich's airport was about as uneventful as sleeping in an airport could be, I woke up at 4 am totally disoriented, and the whole flight to Lisbon is now kind of a haze.

When I arrived to Lisbon, I had only one night at the hostel booked, planning on spending one, maybe two days in Lisbon and head down south to the coast and explore southern Portugal/Spain until I had to meet Aaron, Hayley and Mariel in Madrid in three days. When I arrived, I was so exhausted from the flight and from Egypt I just decided to stay there and relax, rather than just check cities off a checklist. Best decision of my life. Lisbon may be one of my favorite eurpean cities I've visited this year. Part of it may have just been the amazing hostel I stayed at. Its called 'Traveler's House" and it is worth going to Lisbon just to stay there. They made us the best free scrambled egg breakfasts, had knit sheets, an amazing lounge with bean bag chairs (makes all the difference), a comfy TV room, and nightly activites including a pub crawl that lasted until 6 am. The city itself is amazing. Between some of the most beautiful, unique archetecture I've seen in Europe and pastry shops selling the best custard pastries EVER (fresh out of the oven with cinnamon and sugar) are old women hanging out the window yelling conversations to each other between hanging laundry amongst a labyrinth of ancient structures. The other amazing thing about the hostel was that it was perfect for me as a single traveler. Since the place only had about 40 beds and the common space was so condusive to chilling and conversation, everyone knew each other. Also rather than the wasted girls from some state school studying in Florence for the semester, my hostelmates were an interesting mix of Europeans on holiday in Lisbon for a week. I guess Lisbon is not exactly the list of the average student in Europe who has a week break off to travel. I ended up making many good friends ranging from Brits, Canadians, Austrailians, Germans, and Austrians. I spoke more German in Lisbon than some days in Innsbruck. On my last day, when I left, a group of my new friends actually walked me to the metro station. It was really sweet and sad that my time in Lisbon was over.

I took the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid and decided to splurge on a couchette since we had such a sarcastically awesome experience in Egypt. It allowed me to randomly meet an Austrailian on month six of his year long around the world trip, something I can only dream of doing.


Madrid was lots of fun, like Lisbon I took it easy, a new travel philosopy which after trying it out in Lisbon I am really starting to enjoy. I love traveling alone since it allows one to meet new people so easily, it was nice traveling with friends again. Since the city is so much of a metropolis, we found ourselves spending most of our time in the large Retiro park, picnicing, boating, and wandering around. I overall found the city to be kind of forgettable; I enjoyed it but it seemed to me to be like any other large capital but without any specific character. After hearing of the 15 euro cover charges and 8 euro beers, we decided to opt out of trying the city's infamous clubs. But we did see an awesome Spanish cover band in the bar under our hostel.


After 2 relaxing days in Madrid, I boarded the plane for my second trip to Africa in the past week. Expecting the relentless touting and untrustworthy people I came across in Egypt, I was pleasantly suprised. When we first got here, it was a little stressful since our hostel is in the maze of the old city and small children kept trying to show us the way but we didn't have any money and didn't want to pay them so we spent most of our time swatting them away like annoying flies (who would then scream "Fuck you, sex!" at us and run away). Other than those first frantic minutes in the city, I've found the people here are always smiling, even when you decide not to go into their shop, they will smile and wish you a good day or joke with you. I still have the feeling like I am a walking wallet a little bit, but I am much more comfortable and I feel less like I am sticking out like a clown at a funeral. My favorite thing here that Egypt, in my opinion, was lacking is the food. It is unbelievable, I could just sit here and eat all day. Marrakesh is centered around a large square called "La Place" french for "the square" and there is always activity there. Marrakesh is proud of the fact that it is the largest African square. During the day its filled with snake charmers, acrobats, belly dancers, men with monkeys that will throw them on you if you get too close, musicians, and other street performers. On the outskirts are men selling nuts and dried fruit (I'm obsessed with dates now) as well as other carts selling glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice for the equivalent of 40 cents in large carts that will frantically try to get you to go buy their juice if you go within a 30 foot radius of their cart and since there are often 5 carts next to each other, it results in a quite amusing display of gestures and cat calls that we would either split up to multiple or pick our favorite performance and patron him. At, around dusk, the entire square turns into the most amazing food court ever. Entire open air restraunts are wheeled in and seem to pop up with the delicious smelling smoke that starts to rise around dusk. Between the smaller stalls selling Moroccan delacacies such as snail soup and boiled sheep head, giant displays of raw skewered chicken, beef and other meats lie atop a colorful selection of greens. Walking through the place is wonderful amusement as the waiters try everything to get you to eat there from highly amusing American and British catch phrases to tempting offers such as free mint tea (berber whiskey). Once we pick a place no sooner do we order is our food served, freshly cooked and all enfused with the wonderful rich yellow color of saffron. We feast and wobble away as our stomachs are uncomfortably full on only 5 euros. After dinner, I enjoyed walking around the square stopping at various storytellers or musicians, understanding nothing but just as amused as the locals at the crazy antics the man is performing. I also enjoy a post dinner spiced tea, so spicy with cinnamon and cloves that it hurt to swallow.


Our days here have been a mixture of wandering around lavish palaces of Marrakesh's glory days of being the capital of Morocco and their beautiful gardens, as well as walking and barganing at the many souqs here. Just steps from our very comfortable palace-turned-hostel are the many wonderful souqs, arabic for markets. They have everything here from tea to hookas to chickens to giant barrels full of colorful spices. Wandering around I was really wishing I had a lot of money, a need for half the things in the market, and room in my backpack to bring it back to IBK since I am seriously addicted to barganing. My favorite was when the guys would bargain with themselves. A great example that happened to me was that I just wanted to know the starting price for a pair of sweet linen pants an man had in his shop, here's how it went:


I was just looking at them, not even interested in buying them and the man swoops over and starts telling me about the amazing things about these pants. Not remotely interested in buying them, I ask him how much he wants for them
-300 dirham!
-okay, thanks, I'm not interested...
-Wait wait wait, 280 dirham! Special student price!
-Um, I dont even want them
-Gimme a starting price for you!
-I said I dont want them
-Just tell me how much you want for them
-Um, okay I probably wouldn't pay more than 80 for them, but I dont want them
-No no no! way too much, you need to be serious!
-Okay, bye!
-okay okay okay! 250!
-I said I dont want them!
-230!
-Look crazy man, stop bothering me with the stupid pants!

The conversation pretty much went on until finally he's bargained himself down to 100 dirham already has them wrapped up and handing them to me.

-I said I don't want them!
-Okay, 100 final price!
-No (and I walk away, after which he chases me down)
-Fine, 80!

And before I know it I have given him the money and am walking away with these pants I didnt really want in the first place. Half of me is like "shazam! I just unintentionally bargained these pants for a great price!" while the other half is kicking myself for even paying for the dumb things.


I could spend a month wandering the souqs and markets watching the people or coming across random ones such as the olive souq, where there are 10 different stands selling amazing looking olives after which I accidentally discovered that I could get about a pound of olives for the equivalent of 30 cents (wanting a small snack, I gave the man the change in my pocket and said this much worth of olives, expecting 10 or 20, he gave me a giant bag full of them). Or getting lost in the old, labyrintine, residential part of town during which the children kept following us trying to show us the right direction back. But since we didnt want to go back, we just kept ignoring them. Every dead end we hit, we would turn around and there would be one or two more in their gang, until about 10 were trying to lead us the way. Then one pushed the other one into Betsy, and it distracted them long enough for us to run away.


I am sad that I have to leave this wonderful country tomorrow, but I am excited since I have heard so many wonderful things about Barcelona, my final stop before Innsbruck. Since I have a late plane tomorrow, I think I am going to try out one of the traditional Hammams, a Moroccian bath. It involves a lot of abrasive soap and painful scrubbing but I have heard it leaves one feeling unbelievably clean and relaxed. Like an expensive spa treatment but at one tenth the price.


Time to pack it in for my final Arabian Night.

And he's off! ...again

I apologize for that post, it was kind of an unfair outlook on an interesting country. We somehow managed to get back to Cairo again even with the shady dealings of the travel agency we were dealing with. I really think its a front for some kind of mafia. Our train tickets back were actually crumbled pieces of blue paper with scribbles all over it (I dont understand how people can communicate through writing in that language) that we never actually ever had in our possession. Two other egyptians on the same 'ticket' carried it the entire time and actually moved to a different compartment than us but I think the police didnt give us any trouble since we were caucasian or something. The rest of the trip was amazing and I really enjoyed myself and am glad I went. I have some thoughts on the country in general that I would like to write down so maybe you'll see them in the future.

We got in at 5 am in Munich yesterday and I've had about 30 hours to recoup until now I leave for a huge 2 week trip to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. I have an early flight from Munich tomorrow so I need to take the train in a few minutes and am going to spend an interesting night at the airport. www.sleepinginairports.net says its a pretty decent airport to sleep in, so that should be good.

I'm excited for this trip because much of it is going to be alone. I'll keep you updated as I go and as I find internet. I get back to IBK on March first.

Adios!

Egyptian Mistakes

I am sitting here in a tiny interntet cafe in the middle of Luxor, southern Egypt. Outside there is an endless chorus of car horns due to a mixture of the Egyptian's already high propensity to honking horns and a local wedding that is occuring this evening. What can I say about my experience here in the past 3 days that would not bore you in its length?

We arrived to our hostel in Cairo at 2am after a long day of traveling. Outside, there was a military officer with an AK47 hiding behind a bulletproof panel. The entry way to the building was a tiny alley, covered in dirt with old plastic bags and other assorted trash in small piles against the wall. We stepped up into the lobby of this almost derelect building and entered an elevator that has been miraculously working since the 1800s; a cage on a string. As we ascended the building we could see the years of age as the concrete was severely cracked and there was plaster chipped out of the walls and trash strewn about. "what have we gotten ourselves into for the next four days?" I asked myself. However when we arrived onto our floor, turned the corner, we entered into an oasis within this building of comfortable furniture, friendly lighting, and comfortable beds.

I really wanted to head down to Luxor at some point during our trip (an 8 hour train ride from Cairo). This is where the Valley of the kings is and some of Egypt's really cool temples lie. By the time I had everyone convinced, we found it nearly impossible to get any of the night trains from Cairo while we were there both because Egypt's train system is unbelievably difficult and we were told that they were all sold out. It looked like we were going to have to spend all 4 days in Cairo. When we arrived at our hostel at 2am, the man there said he could get us tickets down to Luxor no problem because he has "connections." Also for a relatively good price (considering the fact that we didnt speak a word of Arabic and it would lead to less stress to us) he said he could also hook us up with a driver and an english speaking guide for a day in Cairo (to show us the pyramids) and in Luxor. I was wary of this since one thing I had read in my tour book was "Do NOT book travel arrangements through your hotel, we cannot emphasize this enough." If only we had listened... In our exhaustion and naivette, we signed on for everything.

After an amazing night's sleep, we got up to meet our driver and tour guide. It started out being really awesome. They were able to drive us around and see the smaller pyramids (step, hanging, and red) pyramids at which some of the 'nicer' kids in our group, okay mostly Christian, got swindeled into riding donkeys and camels at unbelievably steep prices. These guys are professionals at even forcing tourists to take a picture of them after which you're obligated to give them something (and they will yell at you if its not enough). I started getting a little wary when they took us to a carpet school to see how egyptian carpets are made. It was actually kind of interesting but I felt it was wasting good pyramid seeing time. I also was waiting for them to take us to the back room so we could unload our wallets on them for some carpets. They did and they were very good salesmen. I refused to purchase anything, but it was really annoying because as I waited for the rest of the kids in our group to finalize their purchases, other salesmen kept coming up to me trying to get me to buy something. It was like being in the market but in a closed room so I couldn't walk away or be rude. One guy was trying to show me that their carpets are fireproof as he lit his lighter on it, then quickly smudged his finger over with his finger as the pungent smell of burning wool wafted into the air. Then they distracted us by taking a group picture as out of the corner of my eye, I could see our tour guide collecting her commission.

When we went to the Pyramids at Giza, she took us to a stable so we could see them on a camel ride. It was definately something on my list but due to our horrible group haggling skills (Christian's niceness) and the fact that the Pyramids themselves were closing and camels at this point were our only option, we ended up paying what I later red at least 3x as much as we should've. Albeit a tad uncomfortable when they ran, and once I got over the sinking sensation that I had just been swindled out of my mind, the ride was really fun and awesome as we got to see the Pyramids at sunset and actually go up to and touch some of them.

That night, a man from our hostel escorted us to the train station and gave us our 'tickets.' They were small pieces of cardboard with arabic writing on one side and "Cairo-Luxor" printed on the other; there was nothing official about them. Well they ended up passing and we got on the train for a very long night. We had no beds, just the ancient train chairs and the jerky rocking to lull us into a wakeful sleep. Arriving in Luxor, we were bombarded with hotel touts and taxi drivers, that were begging us to come along with them. We managed to find our contact in the chaos but it was difficult (as he was one of the sleeziest men I have ever come across). Without telling us what we were doing, he popped us into a van and we went to meet our tour guide. They took us to valley of the kings and a combination of all the tourists also there and him rushing us through a few tombs (amazing - wouldve liked to spend more time there) I felt like I was on a tourist conver belt: get off the bus enter the ever moving que of tourists through the sight, get back on and repeat. He said we had a lot to do so we raced out of the valley (with some new random tourists, half arabic speaking, we seemed to pick up in the valley). And he takes us to an alabaster factory. We were all sick of the whole thing and it felt like a waste of time and as soon as they were done with their lame demonstration, the 6 of us waited outside for the other randos to finalize their purchases. We were tired, we weren't doing what we wanted to do at our pace, and nobody was telling us anything as to what we were doing next. I felt like I was seeing Egypt through a window. At this point we decided to ditch the losers and asked him to just drop us off at our hotel before he could take us to a horrible and expensive restraunt with bus boys wearing king tut headdresses.

Once we broke free, it was as if an immense weight had lifted off, we could relax and do what we wanted, it was amazing. The rest of the day we walked around the city, enjoying saying 'no' to the street hawkers (Me: "Oh crap, this buggy driver is following us" Hayley: "Good! Waste his time!"), watched the sunset on the nile, and enjoyed the mystical Luxor temple in its nighttime dramatic lighting.

Aaron, Mariel, and Hayley left that night (more shady dealings with train tickets and meeting the proper people) because they wanted to spend more time in Cairo, but Christian, Anthony and I stayed behind for one more relaxing day here. After an amazing nights sleep, we lazily got up and spent most of the day at Karmak temple, one of the largest temple ruins in Egypt and we walked around the city, enjoying ourselves. I was really enjoying Egypt all day today; we had thought that having someone else worry about transportation and touring, it would give us less stress but it was quite the opposite, no one was hurring us along so that they get us to a Papyrus factory and collect our commission.

We jump on the long trainride back to Cairo tonight, spend all day there, probably visiting the Egyptian Museum and walking around downtown, then take a late night out of Cairo back to Munich. Its going to be a long, long next two days.

I apologize for this post if I seemed a little negative, but I just needed to vent my frustrations, even though they were all our own fault. I am having an amazing time here, and it will be sad to leave tomorrow evening.

Oh and Happy Valentines day everyone!

Egypt

I have safely arrived in Africa! Its about 3 am and we are getting up early tomorrow to tour the great Pyramids in Giza. It is such a cool feeling to be here. Maybe its the massive amounts of smog, but there was definately a different feeling in the air I could sense the moment I got off the plane. We've been here for 2 hours and already we've been attacked by hotel peddlers, gotten stuck in the sketchiest elevator in existence, gotten locked in the hostel bathroom (during which an amusing conversation taken out of context about how to use the key to get out of the bathroom took place), and nearly died on the white knuckle race on the drive from the airport to our hostel.

It's been already an amazing introduction to this interesting country.

France in my Pants

So I am a huge nerd and created this handy little map with my excellent skills in Microsoft Paint:

As you can see by the handy route key, after sadly saying goodbye to all of my friends in London (I miss them much already and they had better come visit me here at some point...), I took the Chunnel to meet Christian (from the IBK program too) in Paris. The whole chunnel experience was interesting but stressful since I almost missed the train due to a series of events including confused clerks at British Grocery stores and half of London's Underground Lines deciding not to work Monday morning. The whole process was like getting on an airplane, but in a train station, including seperate terminals and people checking tickets before you get on, I was overall disoriented by the whole process. The ride itself was quick and easy and I didnt realize we had even gone under the channel until I looked outside and everything was in French.

In Paris, I met Christian at our budget hotel in Montmartre, the old hangout of the Bohemians in the last turn of the century, known for the Moulin Rouge and sketch artists that will hunt you down and attack you with their rediculous requests to draw you:

"profile?"

"no"

"Portrait?"

"no, go away"

"Characature?"

"No. Please stop bothering me"

"Sketch?"

"Look! Someone else in desperate need of a rediculous Paris souvineer!"

After walking the 10 miles between every major landmark in the city: Notre Dame, Louvre, Arch de Triumph, we ended at the Eiffel Tower, to witness it's hourly ten minute "sparkle," a pretty spectacualr remnant of that giant Y2K thing everyone made a big deal about 8 years ago.

Christian and I decided that the McDonald's corporation deliberately funded these in order to subliminally encourage Parisians and tourists to frequent their locations at every hour since we both randomly had a craving for some McFastfood for the first time in a long time. Since we weren't in Rome, we didn't feel obligated to do as the Parisians did and succumbed to what in retrospect is one of the cheapest meals one could get in the city of lights. We then retreated back to the hotel to share a rediculously tiny "two person" bed.

The next morning, we conqured Versailles, as the French Revolutionists did 200 years ago and we got a fairly good impression of the wonderful Train-station-turned-art-museum, Orsay. In the evening we met up with my friend, Alicia, for dinner. She is an ND student I know from band who is studying for the year in Paris. She unfortunately had finals that week but she made it out to see us.

On Wednesday, we hit a lot including the correctly pronnounced ND cathedrial:

As well as the inside-out Pompidou modern art museum that I thought was an interesting break from all of the Madonnas I've seen in the past few months but I questioned the validity of all the work once I came across 3 blank canvasses. The thing next to it said was "an experiment in colors." The only experimentation the artist needed was to decide whether to use "snow white" or "cotton" paint color. We conquered Napolean's tomb which in my opinion was a little gawdy for the guy who used the Sphynx for target practice. Then Eiffel's Tower (up it this time), for a sunset view of the city, then finally off to the Louvre for their nighttime hours (open till 10 on wednesdays). It was really relaxing being there at night because since it was the end of the day, I didnt have that museum stress I always have that I need to be somewhere else, or at least outside where its warm and sunny. But we were exhausted from the long day and attempted to see most of the Louvre in 3 hours which resulted in "Louvre Sickness": the internal battle between body and mind, when one wants to run around and see as many masterpieces possible but has not the stamina to do so. It results in a semi-epileptic state as one sits on the increasinlgy comfy couches in the museum staring into nothingness.

At the end of the day, we had done so much I went a little "In-Seine"

I'm really sorry about that one...

Thursday, Christian and I split ways as he went north up to Bruges, and I started the land treck back home to Innsbruck. My goal for the evening was Strasbourg, a cute canal city on the French/German border. On the way I stopped in Nancy for a few hours for the sole reason that I heard they had a good Art Neuvo Museum there. The museum ended up being like 4 rooms in an old house full of cool looking furniture but it kind of wasn't worth the trouble and I was the only person in the museum and there was a highly unnecessary number of museum docents that would awkwarly stare at me the entire time. The redeeming quality of Nancy though was that there was a free zoo in the park with goats, rabbits, ducks, and, what? monkeys? Plus the place was overrun by a large number of peacocks that were no doubt scheming on taking over the world, starting with the rabbit/ginuea pig pen:

Strasbourg was a really cool town; half-timbered houses lining canals, with a skeletony gothic cathedral domineering the entire city. Its also a university town which gave it a refreshing lively feel. It was a great town to just wander around in; I rented a bike for half a day and enjoyed just riding around. Strasbourg was also interesting for me because it was the first time I had ever traveled alone. It was kind of daunting but at the same time allowed for more people to approach you and meet you. For example the random spanish lady I met in the cathedral who didnt speak a word of english or german and somehow managed to communicate with me. She apparently lived in the area and offered to buy me a cup of tea. A little skeptical, I accepted her request but it was strange since we really had limited means of communication. I think she thought I was married because of a ring on my hand. I also think she invited me to her house at one point, but I awkwarly told her I had to meet some friends soon or something. I wonder what wouldve happened if I had taken her up on her offer, she was nice but from her mismatched and dirty clothes she seemed a little strange to me.

On the way back to Innsbruck from Strasbourg, I had a layover in Stuttgart for a few hours. It was really a nice city in my opinion: perfect mix of old and new. There were some old classical buildings sprinkled among modern ones so that it didnt have the stuffy museumness of some older cities but it still had a little charm. Plus everyone was walking around and the city was abound with street performers, young kids, old couples, and lovers, all walking down the same main street.

Now I'm back in Innsbruck for a few days before heading off to Egypt on Monday.

A Banger in the Mouth

I'm really sad to leave London tomorrow, its been amazing to catch up with everyone and just hang out like last year, but in one of the world's largest cities.

On Friday, after running into the wonderfully free National Gallery to visit a Caravaggio painting I did a report on in Art History this semester, K. Swiss and I wandered east to the Tower of London. We spent the rest of the day just kind of walking around markets and the river and parks, basically the free stuff. That evening four of us attempted to get the supposedly cheap student tickets sold an hour before performances for 'Billy Elliot, the Musical!' They weren't as cheap as we were expecting but it was worth it since it was such a fun show. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the show stopping, finger snapping, rockin' show I would expect to come from Sir Elton John (i.e. Aida & Lion King) since the story has its depressing aspects. Otherwise the music was good and the lead kid was an amazing dancer (as well as actor, singer, and person with the ability to speak in the difficult northern English accent). After going to the show, we all decided that after seeing what this kid could do, we have had nothing accomplished in our life.

The next morning, we ran off to Notting Hill to relive our favorite moments from the Hugh Grant movie as well as Bednobs and Broomsticks in Portebello Road. We were able to find the Travel Bookstore, and ran inside all excited until we were forced to leave after the woman at the desk realized we weren't actually going to buy anything. We unfortunately were not able to find the second half of a spell book I had used to start a home witching course amongst the antique gazelle magnifying glasses and "The Ladies Guide to Household Life." When we were tired of the crouds, I convinced Jillian to come with me to see if we could get cheap tickets to a matinee of "We Will Rock You," the Queen musical since I am a closet Queen fan. I will admit that I had a really good time, although the cultured side of me was looking at how idiotic the entire premise was. It was essentually a really good Queen coverband with excellent singers and good visuals all barely held together with strange dialouge that was mostly blatant British sexual innuendos. I didn't really realize how hilariously rediculous the story was until we tried explaining it to others after we got back. "Galileo Figero" is a rebel bohemian in a futuristic Orwellian society run by "The Killer Queen" and he must free the world with rock music by finding a guitar the band, Queen, had hid in a rock 300 years prior, all while having a budding relationship with his fellow bohemian girlfriend, "Saramouche." It was amusing just watching how they would try to force the songs onto us: Galileo complaining about how restricting the society is, then looking off into space as a key-note rings and he starts to belt "I want to break freee!" On a side note, "Lord of the Rings, the Musical!" is playing here, but unfortunately I heard it is both really expensive and really long and boring. That evening, we sat around and it strangely felt like I was back in Zahm as people were just wandering in and out of rooms, especially when a group of boys in the room next door came into the room because there was a small cooking fire in their flat and someone freaked out with the fire extinguisher until there was a rather pleasant layer of choking dust settled over everthing. The evening ended in a failed attempt to go to a pub with supposedly cheap drinks but there was a long line to get in and we weren't privy to waiting.


Today was really fun. We started at the east end where Jack the Ripper did his ripping. This is also were Brick Road is, the center of Hugonaut, Jewish, and Bangledeshian cultures, incuding a multitude of funky markets, the best I've seen in Europe so far. After a delicious lunch of curry in one of the famous indian restraunts there, we headed off to Kings Cross Station to visit probably the one real Harry Potter setting...okay, well the only HP setting that Muggles can actually visit. On the way, we obviously had to stop in the Angel Tube station since Laura informed us it was home to the world's longest escalator. It was quite impressive. Then on to platform 9 3/4. We had lots of fun running back and fourth between the barrier there with our carts, but it was kind of unexciting as the Hogwarts Express had left months ago. We ended the afternoon with a nice and free organ concert in Wesminster Abbey which also gave me a free view into the abbey itself. Tonight I think is going to be an early one as I have fairly early train train to catch through the Chunnel to Paris tomorrow morning.

Londoning

Yay, I am in London! I ran to the airport, an hour or two after my last Theo final. During my really painless flight from the IBK airport to Gatwick (which cost less than the transportation from the airport to the city), I could barely contain myself, I was just so excited to see all my friends here.

When I arrived, it was like a mini reunion with all of my friends, some of which I hadn't seen since last June. After seeing everyone and getting settled in my old roommate's flat where I am staying, we went out to experience a little bit of British nightlife.

First we went to a small corner pub and had a couple of beers, catching up with a couple friends, then they took me to O'neil's irish pub which is supposedly THE place to go on Thursday nights. I was expecting a quaint little pub with some drink special that night. It was in fact a huge dance bar with a cover band. Apparently on Thursday nights, all 130 of the ND Londoners congrigate there and kind of take over the bar. I felt like I was in America, aside from the creepy old british men dance-attacking the girls from behind, to which they would run to me or some other ND guy and pretend to be their girlfriend. I think I had about 5 different girlfriends last night.

Being here is such a different mentality than Innsbruck. They seem to go out almost every night, they travel every spare weekend that they have, they need to walk two and a half miles to class one way, its really interesting to see how much of a different experience studying here would be.

I'm not really sure what I am going to do until I meet Christian in Paris on Monday. Hopefully a show or two, maybe visiting the Caravaggio painting I did a report on this semester in the National Gallery, a swing club. I honestly dont care what I do here, as long as I am just hanging out with everyone.