I went on this trip 18 months ago. 18 fucking months. I'm generally lazy about writing these things, but I've never come close to being this bad. Ever since I got a writing job (BE represent!) last May I've been slacking majorly with my blogs and the only time I ever get inspired to write them is - go figure - when I'm traveling again. Well, I'm in the Fort Lauderdale airport right now waiting to board my way-too-early flight to New Orleans (via Tampa), so I'm gonna finish this sumbitch up. And then try to catch up on the 4 or 5 other trips I've been on since then. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it too.
The last you heard from us, I woke up still drunk on January 2nd in Jerusalem. Jess was pretty hungover as well. We had a very late flight (1:30am) to Stockholm through Riga, and no hotel room to sleep off our hangovers in. We did still have a rental car though, which we decided to keep for an extra day and head back to Tel Aviv to hang out for the day. I hit a wall a couple of hours after I woke up and spend the rest of the day hurtin' for certain. Nothing eventful happened all day, we just hung out in bars or on the beach with my trying to put the boots to a massive hangover with all sorts of shit (and failing miserably). The trip to Sweden WAS eventful though.
On the way to the airport, we had to fill up the car with gas. We finally found a gas station, where the guy kept telling Jess he "love love loved him" as he filled up. Apparently it was the only thing he knew in English. Then we got to the craziness known as Ben Gurion Airport.
First off, everyone has all their bags scanned and searched before you can even check in. The chicks doing it were really frustrating, just picking people out of a line who seemed like the least work. Even though I was at the front of the line, the girls picked a person behind me four times before begrudgingly letting me come forward. After a 10-minute search, I was actually escorted to drop my checked bag off, then escorted to the check-in counter. Next was security. The "immigrant" line (gooo racial profiling) was long and right when Jess and I got near the front, the machine broke. But they wouldn't let us out of that line to join another, we had to stay in that one because it was the immigrant line. When one guy flipped out and tried to go to another line, everyone with guns went bonkers and he was forcibly returned to the back of the bus with us.
It took over an hour for them to fix the machine, then we had to actually go through. They screened my bag (which had already been searched before) and took every single thing out of it to screen in a smaller machine. It took about 15 minutes per passenger. Two and a half hours after we arrived at the airport, we were finally allowed to go to our gate. Thank fuck we got there early. To top that off, I was somehow issued a window seat for our five hour flight, which was not happening. I tried to sit in it but fuck that, there was no room at all. I was quickly moved to a comfy aisle seat next to a cute girl, which made things better. So did the double screwdriver I ordered from the flight attendant, who actually laughed at my request since almost everyone else was already asleep and I was the only one who asked for anything at all on the entire flight.
Our day in Sweden was mostly uneventful other than the usual - cold weather and really hot women. And a huge stuffed Swedish moose, which made us laugh for some reason. We ate in a Boston-themed bar and watched a Canucks/Avs game on tape delay, even though we wanted to watch the Sweden/US world juniors game. It just wasn't on anywhere. Other than that we just checked out the old town for most of the day. Jess was flying home the next morning, so I grabbed as many pics as possible from him at the airport before he left. I still had four more days, which I was using to take a jaunt to Austria. After laughing at the pics on the flight while downing some 2 euro beers (Air Berlin bitches), I arrived in Vienna.
Vienna was a trip. I had always avoided it because I didn't think it was all that great. I was totally wrong. The city has always been rich as hell (the center of the Habsburg Empire) and it's a beautiful place, full of amazing architecture and huge buildings. I was staying right on the edge of the Innere Stadt, or center of the city where all the cool shit was. It had food stands all along the river near my hotel, and they sold beer! I was kinda disappointed at the lack of pubs since it's more of a coffee culture, but I still definitely enjoyed my two days of exploration. I had one more full day to kill and figured I had seen everything, so I thought I'd go to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, which was about an hour away. My hotel concierge dissuaded me from that though.
"You don't want to go there. Slovakia is not a nice place. Bratislava is the biggest not nice place there. If you want nice, go to Brno. It's in the Czech Republic, about two hours by train. Very nice. Many cheap beers!"
Sold!
Vienna has the best metro system I've come across in Europe so far. It's super efficient, comfy, and cheap. After taking it to the train station and typically getting lost trying to find the damn thing (it was on the floor above the metro station dammit - that was a 10 block walk for nothing), I was headed for(the backwaters of) a new country. The train was empty, and the skirts of Brno looked pretty shitty. Once we arrived though, I was impressed. Walking around and checking out the cool architecture only enhanced that. After a pub stop where beers were a stupendous 1.20 Canadian for a 20 ounce pint, I was pretty much ready to move there. I had taken out around 50 dollars in Czech currency for my 6 hours there, and struggled to spend 9 dollars. Seriously. I went to 3 bars, had lunch, bought a tourist book, and got a red bull at the train station. 9 dollars. Total. If there were more than 3 people in the city that spoke English, I never would have left. I still have 41 dollars in Czech Korunas at home though because I can't fucking exchange them anywhere. And I've been back to the Czech Republic since then too, I just forgot to take them. Go Tim.
My train back was delayed and I was a bit worried since I couldn't read the big board and none of the announcements were in English, but I figured it out. After returning to the hotel, the concierge was shocked that I walked a whole 1km back from the metro. He told me I could have changed lines and come out right beside the hotel. I told him I didn't mind the walk. He said I was "Canadian crazy". Uh, okay.
*side note - I'm in the Tampa airport right now. They have Yeungling on tap here. That's all sorts of cool.*
The next day I took the train to the Alpine city of Salzburg. The train station was hilarious - as I sat waiting to leave, I watched an old man waiting beside the next track with a kid running around up the way a bit. I couldn't figure out what the kid was doing at first, but it because obvious quickly - he was chasing pigeons. He managed to scare one enough for it to fly directly into the back of the old man's head, which scared the bejesus out of him and led to him yelling at either the bird or the kid. Or both. I couldn't really tell which one because I was laughing so hard. The lady sitting across from me saw it too and was laughing. Everyone else on the train thought we were crazy.
The train ride was amazing though. Cruising through the center of Austrian mountains in winter is highly recommended, even if I was a bit snowblind by the end. I was staying about a half hour walk from the Old Town, which was great going downhill but sucked coming back uphill. It's compact, but definitely one of the nicest Old Towns I've seen in Europe. It's basically set right at the bottom of a massive mountain, and full of character. I really liked it.
Aaaaand that was pretty much it. I had one more night back in Stockholm, where I stayed in the airport hotel. It's like, IN the airport. You come down the stairs and blam, you're standing in the middle of terminal 4. It was typically pricey, but I liked it. Blondes everywhere. I watched the Seahawks playoff game until like 4am, then passed out a happy man. This was one of the best trips of my life. I really fell into road life on this one, and it was very, very hard to adjust back to the real world when I got home. I did though, and have gone on a bunch of trips since. Perhaps I'll write about them someday. If I had a longer connection and more Yeungling, I could probably write about them all right now. But the insanity of New Orleans awaits.
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