Crazy European Adventure Part 8: Gallivanting in Paris 1...

I tried to fit all of the touristy bits of Paris into one entry, but it was impossible. The city of Paris is teeming with amazingly awesome things to photograph, it's impossible to fit it all into one, so here is part one of our walking around the city...

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I don't even know where to begin with this, so I'll just start posting pictures...

Our room was on the top floor of the hotel. That means that every day we had to walk down five stories of spiral staircases, then back up after a long day of trekking across the monstrous city of Paris...
Remember how I said that we ran out of money? Well, I'd like to present you with what we ate three times a day for ten days. The cheese and peanut butter were stolen, but we bought the baguette for €0.75. This allowed us to spend as little as €4 a day and still eat three times a day. We had enough to spend €9 a day, but we wanted to save a bunch of money for the end when we could have a huge celebratory meal to finish off the adventure. Unfortunately, this plan was ruined by Simon..twice, but I'll explain all of that later...
This is the cathedral at the top of Monmarte, the most brilliant place in Paris and where we spent four of our seven days. There are no photos allowed inside the cathedral, but, it's French, so you can imagine how opulent and grandiose it is...
This is the view from Monmarte. It is the most beautiful place that I have ever seen, this photo doesn't do justice in the least. We were so in awe that we spent hours just standing around staring into the distance...


Other people were spontaneously making out. I've never seen so many couples just going at it in public before. I think they put some kind of pathogen in the air. All I could think about was how much I missed HBoO..:-(
There it is. We spent a day trekking the five miles to the Eiffel Tower. When we got there, we couldn't afford to take THE STAIRS to the top, let alone the elevator. It's okay, though, we had a better plan...
We sat on a bench right next to the tower, eating French baguette and drinking French wine. How much more French can you get..?
Part 2 of 3 of our Paris adventure coming soon..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 7: Wintering Paris...

After our much needed night of rest in the one star hotel, we set off to Breda for a few photographs before beginning our journey to Paris...
Then, we hit the road. Well, the railroad...
After lots and lots of getting kicked off trains, we arrived in Paris at 11 PM. After getting lost for about half an hour, we got on track to finding our hotel. At midnight, we found it...
That is not what it looked like when we arrived, though. Darken everything and make it so you can't even see the building because it's covered in snow, and you have a semi-accurate representation of what we saw on the night of April 6th. Yes, as we were walking to the hotel, it started snowing in Paris. Snowing may be an understatement. The temperature dropped to about ten degrees, the winds picked up, and blankets of powder began descending from the heavens. We were FREEZING...

When we walked into the hotel, we were immediately turned away because our booking was scheduled for the next day and check-in wasn't until 8 AM. Oh shit, we were screwed...

Eight hours in a blizzard. That spells death, so we needed to find a place to go. There was a McDonald's across the street that was open until 2 AM, so we sat at a booth in a corner and waited, hoping the storm would pass. At 1:45 AM, it hadn't, and we were kicked out, so it was back to the streets. On our way out, a girl who had just ended her shift asked us for a lighter. She only spoke French, but, with my extremely basic French skills, we were able to communicate to her that we needed a place to stay. She brought us to a hotel down the street and helped us negotiate a price with the guy at reception. When we realized that we couldn't afford even a single room for the night, we asked if we could sit in the lobby for a few hours to stay warm. The guy allowed us, and even made us coffee for free. All my life, I've been told that Parisians are assholes and that they hate Americans, but alls it takes is an attempt at speaking broken French, and they open right up. They let us stay there until 6 AM, but then told us to leave. We thanked them kindly, and ventured outside to find another warm place to kill the time...

The next two hours were spent huddled in a corner in the subway. It was still snowing hard, so being underground protected us from being covered in frozen water. However, it didn't protect us from the biting cold, which crept into our bodies and stung our morale as we crouched into the fetal position to maintain body heat...
To pass the time, we read the Parisian metro maps over and over, which resulted in a lot of unexpected laughter...
Yes, the ORLY Owl brought us moments of joy in such a tremendously depressing situation. In the end, we made it out okay. At 8 AM, we rose from the depths of the Paris Metro and checked into our hotel, where we slept like babies for hours and hours. When we awoke, a shower awaited us, along with a meal of bread and cheese that we stole from the market across the street. Our week in Paris was only just beginning, but it had already been the most adventurous night of the trip...

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Today, I got PUNCHED IN THE FACE...

Sorry for this not being a Crazy European Adventure installment, but what happened to me today needs to be bloggified ASAP...

Okay. Today, I went to York with Flower and his girlfriend Layla to hang out in this place called The Gardens, which is this big open field littered with thousand year old ruins next to a six hundred year old cathedral. Guess what I forgot to do. If you said charge my camera battery, you are correct. I will probably go back one more time, though, that place is my favorite in all of England...

Anyways, back to the story at hand...

Flower stayed in York because there was some drama between two friends and a girl, and also, he wanted to hang out with his York friends. Layla had to be back home, so I left for Newcastle when she decided to go. I got back to Newcastle and started walking back towards Knoll Court. About fifty feet from the main entrance to the train station, this random asshole blindsided me, knocking my glasses to the pavement. I picked up my glasses and kept walking, not wanting to start trouble with some coked up douche bag who was probably wielding a shank or something. I don't know, I heard that term in a movie once...

Anyway, I realized quite suddenly that I was bleeding profusely from the lip like..Bruce Willis in Die Hard after the main fight scene bleeding from the mouth. Nobody gets away with that, especially some chav outside of the train station in broad daylight. I walked back to the train station and told one of the guards there, who phoned the police. We stood outside and made sure the guy didn't run off anywhere, and the cops showed up about five minutes later. I pointed the guy out, and he was promptly arrested. Now that guy is stuck in a jail cell for two days on assault charges, and I got free medical attention and a glass of water at the station...

I win..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 6: A Hippy's Plight...

We train hopped to Breda, a city much smaller and less touristy than Amsterdam. When we arrived, we were in pretty bad condition. None of us had showered for six days because the showers at the cabin were cold and had no towels. It had been cold every day, so we had layered on all of our clothing, which was now getting dirty and crusty. We had gone to a rave and danced for twelve hours in a sea of bodies, so we were covered in stale sweat that wasn't wholly our own. We hadn't eaten or slept in thirty six hours...
Needless to say, shop owners, taxi drivers, and restaurants weren't jumping to accommodate our needs. None of us could speak Dutch, and few citizens of Breda could speak English. We wearily wondered around the city for eight hours, searching for a place to buy cheap food and a place to sleep. We found neither. To call ourselves demoralized at this point in the trip would be an understatement. Especially considering the fact that we were keeping company with Simon, who stopped at nothing to complain about his drug dealing situation while simultaneously suggesting ludicrous ideas that ranged from immature to downright stupid. A lot of bickering happened. Under normal circumstances, Flower and I are scathing critics of anything and everything. In these conditions, we became tag-team assholes with fixed expressions of hate, yelling out insults, muttering under our breath, and being incredibly unpleasant...

It was 10 PM, and we were faced with the option of sleeping rough in a park. It was cold and we were starving, I could see that sleep would not happen and the next day would be even worse, so I made an executive decision. I have a credit card for emergencies that I never use, especially when my parents tell me that I can. This instance was the only in which I had ever used it for an actual emergency. I walked into an internet cafe, logged on, found the cheapest one star hotel in the city limits and booked a triple room for the night. Then, I used the cafe's phone to call a taxi to bring us there. The room cost 71 Euros and the taxi driver ripped us off, charging 13.50 to travel something like four miles. I didn't care, because when we arrived, we were presented with something more amazing than thirteen Euros and change could ever buy...
I have never been more happy to see a bathtub in my life. We literally danced for joy at the prospect of sleeping in a bed with sheets and taking a warm bath. This may have been the highlight of the ENTIRE trip. I wish I was joking. In those seventeen days, I had been in awe at marvelous works of architecture, I had been curious about cultural peculiarities, and I had been pleasantly surprised by my body's ability to cope under the stress of hiking many miles per day. But...

At no point was I happier than when I was laying in that bath tub, soaking off six days of dirt and grime, a huge grin plastered on my soapy face...

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 5: How to Travel in Europe for Free, a Guide...

I took a moment to look at my remaining funds. I had ninety Euros left for the rest of the trip. Simon hadn't had money for days, and Flower had eight Euros in change. We needed to get from southern Holland to Paris in less than twenty four hours. A ticket, that day, would have cost upwards of 150 Euros, but we had knowledge and a plan to get to Paris for free...

We stepped on a train from Dordrecht to Antwerp. The only train that went to Brussels and then to Paris. There were three stops before Antwerp. We took the backseat of the train, the one furthest from the ticket collectors and pretended to go to sleep. Well, I pretended to go to sleep...
We made it past the first stop before the ticket collectors were upon us. An older woman and a man, both with looks on their face of contempt...

"Tickets?"

"Sure thing..."

I reached into the pocket of my hoody. What? There was nothing there. I checked my front pockets, nothing there either. What's going on here? I woke the others...

"Guys, did you take the tickets out of the hotel room?"

"No, you were supposed to grab them..."

"Shit..!"

I searched frantically in my pockets several more times before turning to my bag. I undid all of the zippers, rummaging through clothing, souvenirs, and food...

"I can't find them. I must have left them in the hotel. Shit, I did leave them on the sink. We were in a rush because we woke up late. Damnit! We bought those in advance..."

"Do you have money?"

"No, our holiday is at it's end. We were just returning to Paris before making our way back to the UK. All of our travel is booked..."

"A credit card?"

"No, I don't have a credit card. We use all cash..."

"Passports, please."

We handed him our passports. After looking through them, he pulled out his computer fining machine and began typing in our information. When he got the address portion, he turned to me with a confused face...

"I need an address from you."

"It's not on there?"

"No, it only says New Jersey, USA."

"Oh, well, I can give you an address..."

I gave him a nonexistent house number on a real New Jersey street, and a real zip code. He typed in some letters and numbers, printed out a receipt, and handed me the bill...

62.28 to Matthew Brinn
1120 North Ave. 08037 Blue
New Jersey, United States

"You might be lucky. Our address system doesn't match up with yours. Get off at the next stop and buy yourself a ticket..."

"Not a problem. Sorry for the mistake..."

We got kicked off at the next stop, where we threw away our faulty receipts and waited for the next train. Rinse, wash and repeat. All the way to Paris, then from Paris to Lille, then from Lille to Calais. Not a dime was spent, no bills were sent, and we traveled over a thousand miles for free. If you don't live in a mainland European country, you too can travel there for free..:-)

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 4: Raving Outside of Amsterdam...

It was time to leave Amsterdam. We made our way to the huge train station at the city center. More interesting than the train station, though, was the parking deck...
When I said that there were a lot of bikes in Amsterdam, this is what I meant. How does one find their generic ten speed among eighty thousand other generic ten speeds? I think I'll never know...

We bought train tickets and boarded a train to Dordrecht, a small town in southern Holland. The plan was to go to a rave there all night (a free place to stay), then take a train to Breda and sleep for a day. We arrived in Dordrecht at 8 PM and went to a supermarket to get some pre-rave foodstuffs (Some bread and jam). While walking around, I found a curious advertisement stuck to the wall...
Okay, so we have some balls of clay that vaguely resemble human beings dancing. Presumably, they are dancing because they love some product. This ball of clay, however, takes it a step further. I don't know why hard clay nipples would be necessary in this particular advertisement, or any even, but it is Holland, so who knows. At least they aren't as bad as the French who take sexy anthropomorphizations to a whole new level of creepy...

After some walking around and searching, we found the location of the rave, an old abandoned building that was being used for a squat. For those that don't know, a squat is a place where a bunch of hippies live for free thanks to a loophole in the law called "Squatter's Rights". What happens is, the owner of a building falls on hard times and leaves the place in disrepair for a long period of time. At some point, the building is officially abandoned. Once this happens, people can move into the abandoned building and live there for free. They stick a note on the door with the words "Squatter's Rights", which means that the owner of the building can't kick them out until it goes through due process, which takes upwards of a month. During that time, the squatters maintain an open door policy. This means that anybody is allowed to come and live there, provided that they contribute to the restoration or general well being of the place. Most squats throw underground parties, raves, and shows to help raise money to fix it up a bit and make it more livable. The squat in which this rave took place was in pretty decent condition. It had running water and electricity, separate rooms for parties and living space, and a population of about 20 squatters. When we showed up, the party was just getting started...

Raves are an interesting experience. A series of DJs play loud ambient electronica music while people consume copious amounts of drugs and dance for upwards of twelve hours. You can usually figure out which drug somebody has taken by the way they are dancing. People on MDMA or Ecstasy Pills will be doing the "rave dance", which is moving your arms really fast with glow sticks and generally looking really acrobatic and cool. People on Ketamine stay much more still, but sway back and forth to the music while staring at the lights. My favorite, the people on LSD, generally stand next to the speakers and hold their arms out like zombies, shuffling their feet in place. People also take various combinations of these drugs and their dancing style reflects it. All in all, really fun to watch when sober, but even more fun to dance along. Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I suck at dancing, but everybody is so off their face that it doesn't matter. Raves are all about acceptance...

Outside of the main dancing room is the chill out room. This place consists of tables, chairs, and couches where people go to stop dancing and focus on the trippy affects that the drugs are giving them. Lots of cool stuff was painted on the walls and there was some interesting lighting effects that probably contributed to the experience. I spent a lot of my time here talking to randomers and learning people's life stories...

At one point, I met a Couchsurfer. His name was Mark and he was a frequent raver. We talked for a bit and he learned of our lack of a place to stay and offered up his couch. I talked it over with Flower and Simon and they were happy to hear it, so, after the rave started winding down at 8 AM, we left with Mark and rode a train (for free) to Schiedam and stayed at his house until 2 PM. At that point, he had to leave for work, so he brought us to the train station giving us knowledge of how to ride trains for free, then departed. Both he and his roommate were cool people who gave us a place to stay and very valuable information. If they are ever in the UK or the US, I'd be glad to let them stay wherever I'm staying...

Next entry is the one where we travel for free. Promise..:-)

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 3: Museums and Touristy Bits...

It was our last day in Amsterdam, and I was absolutely determined to go to the Van Gogh Museum, because, if I didn't, HBoO would have murdered me for missing an opportunity to see Starry Night, her mostest favoritest painting in the world...

So we did go to the Van Gogh Museum, but it cost 10 Euros to get in, a cost which neither Flower nor Simon could afford. So I went in by myself and searched every square inch of the four story building for Starry Night. Ironically, it's in New York City right now and will continue to be until July 2009. Good. It's okay, though, I really like Van Gogh. Impressionism is my favorite art movement, mostly because of my easy access to Monet's Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lillies at the Philadelphia Museum of Art...

Even though I didn't get to see Starry Night, I still saw a ton of really cool stuff. For instance...
These three were taken just moments before I was tackled by a large security guard and then escorted off the premises. Well, not really, but I was surrounded by them and told to put my camera away or else bad things would happen. I could have argued and said that my camera does not emit a flash and therefore does no damage to the paintings when I take a photo, but that would probably have given me a broken leg or two, so I opted for the "putting my camera back in my pocket and begrudgingly stamping my feet and walking off" path of action. Minutes later, I left the museum and rejoined Flower and Simon. It was time to leave Amsterdam and go to Dordrecht...

It being the first time we took a train in mainland Europe, we bought tickets before boarding thinking that the train costs money. I know, it seems silly, but we actually thought that we had to pay for trains at the time. That night, we would learn otherwise, and traveling in Europe would go from being very expensive to free. How we did this will be revealed in the next entry..:-)

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 2: Amsterdam, the World's Biggest Tourist Trap...

Once the bus debacle was over, we had a choice to make. We could go straight to our cabin and rest up for the next day, or go to the city center and gallivant for hours. I think the choice we made was obvious. Amsterdam is exactly what I expected. We took the Metro from the bus station to the city center and, upon walking up to the street, I was met with a stunning view of the streets of Amsterdam. Narrow cobbled streets, three story brick buildings crammed together, canals splitting the streets every couple of blocks, countless bicycles, and an eerie silence that only a European city can have at 8 PM on a Tuesday. This was really it. I was backpacking in mainland Europe for real...
The first order of business in the city center was to sit in a coffee shop so that Flower and Simon could legally smoke weed. Our entire time spent in Holland felt just slightly odd, what with Flower walking around with a huge joint in his mouth, walking past little kids, old ladies, and police officers alike. Once we started hitting the coffee shops, Flower and I noticed two things-

1. Amsterdam is the most effective tourist trap for stoners in the world. It's perfect in its ability to make you spend all of your money and be 100% content with that. Every street in Amsterdam looks something like this...
You have the largest concentration of coffee shops in the entire country. There are at least two on every street. So, stoners go into the coffee shops, buy weed that is more expensive than in other cities in Holland, then smoke until they can't see straight. They stumble out of the coffee shop only to be met with a bakery with smells of chocolate waffles and pancakes wafting into the street. Of course they are going in to appease their munchies with a 6 Euro dessert. Scarfing all of that food has left them in a food coma, but, low and behold, across the street is an erotic massage parlor, so they can lay on a table and be massaged until they are broke. After the first day, Flower and I realized that we needed to be careful with our spending, but that brings me to number two...

2. Simon. It was a mistake to bring Simon to Europe with us. I won't get in to all of the things that made him a huge burden quite yet, but the first things that pissed us off happened on the first night. Simon is 17, and the legal smoking age in Holland is 18. Most coffee shops are pretty lax about the law if you walk in and buy something before sitting down. The most logical thing to do was have me or Flower walk up to the bar to order something while Simon sat at a table to avoid his ID being checked. Instead, most of the time, he'd walk right up to the bar despite our telling him not to. He'd inevitably be asked for his passport, at which point he would just walk straight out of the coffee shop, leaving Flower and I to chase after him.

On the first night, as we were prowling around the city center, we decided to find a supermarket to buy some food for the cabin. Walking around with a map and rucksacks makes it pretty obvious that we were tourists. Therefore, it's always a good idea for local drug dealers to scam people like us. A guy approached us while we were walking around, he OBVIOUSLY was a dubious character, what with his washed out complexion, saggy eye sockets and burning desire to help us find a supermarket. Flower and I immediately started walking away while Simon started talking to him and walking in the opposite direction. Good. Now we are following a smack head (most likely wielding a knife or something) down the street, probably into some back alley to be stabbed and robbed. Eventually, the guy and Simon drop back to do some sort of dealing and then he runs off.

"What'd you get Simon?"

"I gave him 30 Euros, he said he had some really good pills."

"Um..we don't need pills, but let's see them..."

Oh look, Simon just spent 30 of his 115 Euros on a used piece of tissue. Good. Nice going Simon...

After this, we decided to head back to the cabin and rest up for the next day. Our cabin was pretty cool. Located just outside the city, it was on a campsite that had an explorable forest attached. For only 8 Euros each a night, who could complain..?

After a cold and uncomfortable night's sleep (we had no blankets or sleeping bags, and the heat was pretty shoddy), we headed back into town to explore some more. We spent most of the day in coffee shops and at a really cool outdoor market...
Of course, now that we had a full day ahead of us and nowhere to be, it was a perfect opportunity for Flower and Simon to eat some magic mushrooms which are also legal in Holland. We walked into the shop and bought them, then they decided to eat them at our train stop in full view of the public, which was pretty hilarious. We walked back to the cabin, which took twenty minutes. A bit later, they started to come up. While they were tripping, we met the people staying at the cabin across from us, a group of Australians who had run out of money and needed to get a job in Amsterdam to raise funds to return home. They were a bunch of really cool people who had been traveling for months. Suddenly, Flower and Simon thought it'd be an awesome idea to explore the forest, which we then did. We spent about an hour out there before returning to the cabin for warmth. By this time, the Australians had made a fire, so we all sat outside with them as Flower and Simon came down. Overall, they said it was an awesome experience, one that I know all too well...

After the trip, there was some more talking and then everybody went off to bed. We were halfway through the Amsterdam portion of our journey, and already we had tons of stories to tell when we returned...

More to come..:-)

-Matt

Crazy European Adventure Part 1: Prologue and Travel...

If I was in a progressive rock band, that's what I would name the first track, a 26 minute symphonic rock opera with themes in Eb and G, played as a Tabla and Bassoon duet in 26/32...

*Realizes only two people will get that joke*

*...*

*...*

*Doesn't care...*

The week prior to our leaving was one of horror, dismay, and a huge amount of drugs. It was originally me, Flower, and Oliver going to France, but Oliver had to drop out for one reason or another, and I had an extra train and ferry ticket. Around the same time, Flower's friend from York, Simon, had showed up in Knoll Court with 5 ounces of Marijuana after having pushed a Kilo for some crazy guy in York. I'm used to being around it at this point, but that week, the amount of weed being passed around was obscene...

During the binge, Simon got a phone call from the crazy dealer guy, and learned that everybody in York thought that he had stolen 3000 pounds from the guy and that people were out to kill him. Yes, kill him. Like..with a gun. This is a kid who has been living homeless since his parents called the cops on him for selling weed. I felt kind of bad for him, and I had the means, so I invited him to come to Europe...

Two days before we left, I went to the station to get the train tickets. It was then that I realized that the trains would have us arrive in Dover hours after our ferry would leave, so I had messed up pretty big. We all came together and found that the cheapest thing to do was take a bus from Newcastle to Amsterdam, then visit towns between Amsterdam and Paris before returning to the ferry in Calais and riding the train to Newcastle. So, at midnight on April 1st, we hopped on a bus with our backpacks and were on our way...

The first leg of the trip, from Newcastle to London, was uneventful, though I did see some stereotypical London-y things like...


We mostly slept and listened to Symphony X on the iPod, an epic band for an epic journey...
We had a couple of hours in London before leaving on the next bus, so we took the opportunity to walk around the city at 5 AM, a time when only smack heads and joggers prowl the city. Oh, and we were there, too...

We ate some sandwiches and prepared to board the next bus. The driver was at the side ushering people to put their bags underneath in the storage area, we only had backpacks, so we were about to board the bus when-

"Hey you, put your bags under de bus!"

"But..we only have rucksacks..."

"Under de bus!"

"Our food and water are in these backpacks..."

"UNDER DE BUS!!!"

So we put our backpacks under the bus. After boarding the bus, we took a look around and found that everybody else had kept their backpacks without issue. You know what that means. Three young kids traveling alone, two of them with long hair, all with facial hair..they must be drugged up hippies so let's make their life a living hell..MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

At one point we stopped and got off the bus for a quick rest. As we were getting back on, Flower started a dialogue with the driver. It went something like this...

"Hey, we noticed that everybody else on the bus has their rucksacks. Our food, water, and medicine are in those packs, can we get them from under the bus?"

"No. Eets impossible..."

"Um..no it isn't. We are on a bus, it's stopped, and you have a key. Can you open the side so that I can get my water, please."

"On plane, you put luggage under plane and can not reach it. Eet is same on bus."

"*blank stare*"

"You speak English?"

"..."

"No, you no speak English. I no understand you. I no talk to you."

For real. A Dutch bus driver who could only form very basic, grammatically incorrect English sentences presumed that Flower, a native English speaker, did not comprehend what he was saying because, apparently, Flower now doesn't speak any English. Good, that makes sense...

A couple of hours later, we were at the ferry station in Dover where Flower was "randomly" selected to have his bag checked. After passing through security without a problem, he boarded the bus with his bag, but had accidentally forgot his cell phone at the security station. The driver grabbed it and brought it on the bus. Flower walked up front to reclaim it and, in front of everybody, the driver exclaimed...

"You forgot phone! You are stupid man. Stupid, stupid man."

Yeah, it was time to have a go at this guy. We decided to wait until we got to Amsterdam, though, we didn't want to be kicked off a bus and be stranded in mainland Europe. It rained while we were on the ferry, but we were determined to get good photos of the cliffs there. They are truly stunning...

We drove through France and Belgium to get to Holland, swerving this way and that, barely avoiding cars while driving at breakneck speeds on a huge bus. My sleep was interrupted four times by the driver slamming on the breaks and swerving into another lane to avoid smashing into other vehicles. I counted...

At one point, we stopped at a rest stop. Rest stops in Holland are WAY cooler than in America. You walk into a rest stop in America, you see a dirty bathroom, lots of dirty people, McDonald's, Burger King, and some greasy chicken place. We walked in and saw this...
Yes, that is fresh meat and fish from a butcher, along with a section with fresh vegetables. There was a pizza station as well with a brick oven and, for dessert, there was a smoothie bar with all fresh fruits. Flower had a slightly different experience upon entering the rest stop...
If you think Ronald McDonald is creepy now, though, you should check this out. It appears that McDonald's has a legacy of pedophilia as well as making people unhealthily large. Who would have thought? (Answer: I and several others would have)...

After boarding the bus, Flower decided to use the bathroom prior to leaving. The driver came back and banged on the door loudly while he was in there...

"You! What you doing! Not allowed! Not allowed! You smoking!? Get out!!"

"Um..I'm using the toilet. Is that not allowed?"

"We have problem. You are stupid crazy person, you understand?"

"..."

Then, suddenly, we were in Amsterdam. Twenty hours on a bus with a crazy driver that nearly killed us while insulting us simultaneously. It was the beginning of the trip, though, nothing could dampen the excited and nervous feeling we all had about arriving safely at our destination...

In true American fashion, the first thing we did in Amsterdam was complain to the bus company. I pulled out the mechanical pencil that I had taken along for journal entries and wrote a strongly worded letter laying out all of the injustices we faced during the journey thanks to our driver. We requested that his position be revoked, but if that wasn't possible, reviewed. Yeah, that'll show him. All three of us signed the letter and gave it to the manager guy. I suspect that piece of paper is in a bin somewhere now, gathering dust with all of other Brits and Americans who were unhappy with the service. Oh well, we were in Amsterdam, one of the most interesting and beautiful cities in the world. Who could be angry for long? (Answer: Not us)...

So we made it, it was time to begin the full on adventuring. The next seventeen days would be some of the craziest any of us would ever experience and, looking back on it now, every positive and every negative made the trip that much better...

More to come shortly..:-)

-Matt

An epic return...

UPDATE: Blogger is being really dumb and won't let me add pictures for some reason. I'm getting some crazy error and, at the same time, the internet is really lagging and causing problems. I have the first entry of the trip written, but I'll have to post it tomorrow when I wake up. Sorry..:-(


Here I am, back in Newcastle. I'm five pounds thinner, I have a sprained left foot, conjunctivitis in both eyes, an ear infection in my right ear, and a sinus infection that tore up my throat to the point where I can only talk in high pitched whispers (think puberty) and makes it a bit tricky to breathe. However, I'd be lying if I said that any of that slowed us down or made the adventure across Holland, Belgium, and France any less..what's the word..RIDICULOUSLY AWESOMELY AMAZINGLY COOL..!!!

So, the reader(s) out there are probably a bit curious as to the nitty gritty details of my whereabouts for the past eighteen days. Well, let's just say that I need to buy a new external hard drive for my compy because putting all of the pictures on this outdated piece of machinery would probably make it's head a splode. Also, I should probably go to the hospital to fix all of these ailments...

So, yeah, expect a fo' reelz blog entry by the end of the day..:-)

-Matt