These past few days have been extremely eventful. I feel like I’ve been here for ages although it’s only been a couple of days. Here’s a quick rundown of my adventures so far:
20 Dec.: I packed all of my belongings and Mel and I took the NJ Transit to Newark Int’l. We had some pretty amazing egg rolls at Chili’s, a couple of enormous Chambord margaritas, and we said our “so-longs.” I met a sweet guy from West-Point who was on my flight to Chicago, and he asked if he could sit by me on the plane. We had a nice time during the flight and he walked me to my gate to catch my flight to London.
My flight into London was alright. I had a great seat next to some foreign guy with appropriately european fashion sense. He reminded me of Brandon Klementzos if he were German and had a higher pitched voice and a mild goofy Swedish/German/Italian accent. He didn’t say much, so I’ve elected his culture to be the melting pot of Europe. I slept for about two hours on the seven hour flight and watched the last four hours slip by minute by minute.
21 Dec.: I arrived in London around noon and bought a Vanilla Latte in the airport. Customs was a breeze and I began my three day luggage-hauling extravaganza. I met a really sweet grad student from Arizona who has an apartment about an hour north of London. He helped me figure out where to go to buy a cell phone and catch a train to Paris. We parted in Euston and I made my way to Kings Cross alone on the subway sitting beside two Romanian girls who couldn’t tell that their jeans were six sizes too small. I bought my phone (which is not really working at he moment (apparently I’m still horrible at this thing called life while abroad - it’s not just an America thing)) and headed back to Kings Cross to find the Chunnel and wait for the next train.
After about two hours of sleep on the train, we arrived in Paris Nord where it was bitterly cold and absurdly busy for 21:00. I shuffled, shivering over to the ticket line in hopes of catching the night train to Munich, but all tickets were gone and my reservation had been given away. I decided to go to the Airport to see if I could catch a flight, so I jumped on the subway and rode to Charles de Gaulle. It was 0:00 and the airport was barren so I decided to just get a hotel room near the airport since the shuttles were free and it was close - in hopes of catching a plane in the morning. I solicited a shuttle driver for room rates at various hotels around the area, and he told me that the next shuttle to arrive would take me to a hotel that only cost about 30 euros. I figured I’d pay about three times that much if I grabbed a taxi and took it to and from a 20 euro hostel in the area, so I said that would be fine. He barely spoke English, and my French has been slowly decaying since I haven’t had much time to practice, but the driver wanted to talk to me anyway so he gave me his phone number and told me that he’d be off around 1:30 am.
I arrived at the hotel, got my room, and realized that I could see my breath. I was too afraid that I’d either sleep through my alarm or die of hypothermia in my sleep, so I stayed awake re-packing my suitcase until 5:00 when I went down to the shuttle stop.
22 Dec.: I went to the airport and found that all tickets were about 500 euros, threw-up in my mouth, and decided to take a train even if it took the rest of my life to get to München. There were no trains to anywhere near where I needed to be for the next three days, but I finally decided to jump on a train that took me to Bruxelles and then to Köln. I tried to get ahold of Matt and Pat, but I was having horrible luck with their phone numbers and finally reached them after they had left for the train station. I regretfully left a message and went to find a heat kiosk. I froze to death in the train station waiting for the 10:25 to Bruxelles, slept on the train, and arrived at the station 10 minutes after my Köln connection had left.
At this point, I needed coffee and a pick-me-up. I decided that decadent coffee would serve both purposes and would warm me up a little, so I went to Sam’s Cafe in the Bruxelles train station and had a Belgian Cappuccino with double cream. It was amazing and made my troubles and back pain melt away for about five minutes which was a refreshing break. I waited for the next train to Köln for about two hours and finally found a fold-down seat on the extremely over-crowded train. The conductor scolded me for missing my train and then apologized that I was lodged in the luggage compartment. Then he ran into a slow-moving door, so I decided to accept his apology after giggling a little.
I arrived in Köln and hopped on a train to München. I didn’t realize how much French I understand until I realized how little (read: not a word) German I understand. I had a hard time finding a seat since I didn’t have a reservation, but a couple of darling German women in my car took my hand and lead me to a seat since I had no idea what they were saying. I thanked them and fell asleep next to the window.
I woke in a panic realizing that I couldn’t tell when the lady on the intercom was saying the city names and also that my watch had been re-set so many times that I had, after one re-setting, forgotten to press the winding knob back in, leaving me in the dark about where I was and when I was there other than the fact that I was on a train and it was blatantly nighttime. I heard someone say Nurnberg on the intercom and knew that I had about an hour and a half before I would arrive in München, so gave in to my sleepy eyes once again.
23 Dec.: In the München train station, I was hesitant about calling Matt and Pat since it was about 12:30 in the morning,so I decided to wait in the station until morning. I went into a coffee shop and ordered an espresso. This random Russian guy came and paid for it and brought his old weird Russian friends over to talk to me although I know no Russian and they knew about four words in English (and by English, I mean that they knew Deutsch and some English words happen to sound similar to their Deutsch pronunciations). There was a guy that I could tell was looking out for me in the corner, so I slipped away from the creepy Russian guys and asked if he knew any English. Thankfully, he did and he helped my figure out which numbers I needed to omit from the numbers I was dialing since I was in Germany and they were Germany numbers (I had no clue what the operator was saying other than “area code not found” and realized that I’m not civilized enough to use a European phone without assistance.)
He and I went back to the coffee shop, careful to avoid the Russian guys, and some 20 somethings from München came over and started talking to me. I talked to the one (out of seven) of them who knew some English and she told me a few stories about her drunken friends who were from outside of the city.
After they left, the gentleman who saved me from the Russians offered to buy me some coffee at Burger King, so, since it was much warmer in the restaurant, I agreed. After our coffee, he asked me to wake him up after an hour. I said “sure” since I wanted to finish my book anyway. After he awoke, he got on his train to Frankfurt and asked me to e-mail him when I made it to my destination.
I went back to Burger King to warm-up yet again and I met some guys who were visiting München from Mannheim. Two of them were extremely drunk but still fairly charming and the other two were just charming without being any more than swimmy-eyed. We talked for about 2 hours and three of them decided to head back to their hostel to get some sleep since they were leaving in the morning. One of the swimmy-eyed charming fellows decided that I shouldn’t be in the station alone and said that he’d stay with me until Matt and Pat arrived. He and I talked about various things and I must say that he was quite adorable. He was also very conscious about his conjugation of English verbs - which was even more adorable. We talked for about three hours and then Pat arrived to pick me up.
We drove on the Autobahn back to Oberammergau and then took off to go skiing in the Alps. I’m rubbish at skiing, and we’ll leave it at that.
I’m in love with Europe so far. It’s absolutely beautiful - a little cold for my liking, but beautiful. We’re going to Italy later this week and possibly Austria and who knows where else. I wish this part didn’t have to end. I’m really not looking forward to getting stuck in Paris on my way back to London, though. It’s far less romantic when you’re freezing and wanting to be elsewhere.
