Who We Are Tomorrow

HOME AT LAST

I touched down in BWI yesterday afternoon and am now sitting home in Falls Church. I’m sad the trip is over, but as it turns out 47 days is exactly the right amount of time to be abroad.  This was my first true adult travel experience and I’ve grown in ways I may or may not write about later (I have several more rough drafts for posts sketched out - they’ll be put up in the next two weeks as I find time to write them).  In the meantime, here are some statistics about the trip:

Basics:

• Number of days on the road: 47
• Countries visited: 10 (passed through another 2)
  • UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, (Slovakia), Hungary, Croatia, (Slovenia), Italy, France, Spain
• Cities visited: 13 (passed through another 3)
  • London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Zadar, Molat, (Rijeka), (Trieste), (Venice), Florence, Grasse, Marseille, Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla
• Tours taken: 7
• Churches visited: 9
• Museums visited: 2.  Whoops.

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A sampling of the interesting people we’ve met

• The fourteen year old clown hooker I sat next to in a Berlin U-Bahn station. I say “clown hooker” not in a derogatory way but more to evoke the image of a five year old daughter shortly after she’s discovered her mom’s makeup drawer.  She stared at me like Charlie Sheen stared at Ferris Beuhler’s sister, and we talked about street fights

• The gorgeous 24 year old structural engineer who hated her job in spite of her success; when we met she was mustering up the courage to open a pole dancing studio instead

• Dean, our host in London and whose work gave him a unique perspective on how cultural differences affected work attitudes.  In Ireland, for example, negotiations apparently take four times as long because in a small country where everyone knows someone from each part of the country, small talk and relationship building is vastly more important

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The Berlin Radar Tower Sound Chamber Story

Christoph has taken Graham, myself, and his sister to his favorite lake in Berlin.  After a nice swim, we’re sitting out on a floating platform - myself in my board shorts; Christoph butt naked, legs spread, and without a care in the world; and Graham, somewhat uncomfortable and standing nearby - when Christoph points up to a strange tower buried in a forest on a hill, about a mile away.  “That is the radar tower,” he explains, “It’s fun to explore.”  Keen for adventure, we agree to go.

We change and head off into the forest.  There is no path to the tower, he says - you just walk uphill until you find a fence, then you follow that fence until you find an opening, and then you wander around in the dense forest until you find the radar tower.  Very few people know about it or visit, even though it’s plainly visible from the lake.  The whole expedition felt very Lord of the Rings.

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The hen party pub crawl and the worst case scenario

It blows my mind that we’ve only been abroad for a little over two weeks, because so many story-worthy events have already happened. Here is one of several nights that I will probably tell people about for the rest of my life:

We’ve just arrived at Christoph’s Garden House in Berlin, and Graham and I have just enough time to drop our bags off, massage our sore shoulders, change shirts, and go downtown for the “666 Anti Pub Crawl”.  Dumb name aside, it includes free shots and crawls are a great preliminary tour of a city’s nightlife.

After traveling for about 45 minutes (walking three blocks to the 741 bus stop, taking that five stops south to the S-Bahn Sonnallee station, changing for the S-Bahn in the Ruda direction to Hermannplatz and then again to the U-Bahn to Hermannstrasse. So easy to remember, right?) we catch the group just as it’s leaving the first bar and I can already tell this is the greatest pub crawl ever. The crowd that has formed is Graham, myself, two older dudes from Montreal, a brother and his two sisters from Australia and a 15-girl bachelorette party for a fashion designer from England named Charlotte.

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Our experiences with CouchSurfing

Before we came to Europe, Graham sent out several requests for accommodation with locals through the website CouchSurfing.org.  Tens of thousands of people from literally every country host travelers for free there, and then review each other afterwards - those people with many positive reviews will more easily find free accommodation in whatever cities they’re traveling to.  On this trip, Graham managed to find free places for us to stay in Amsterdam, with a 29 year-old guy in middle management at an IT firm named Bram; and Berlin, with a 24 year-old researcher/tutor named Christoph; no small feat given that we didn’t yet have any reviews.

Bram

When I first met Bram, I told him that he was “the first person I’ve met from the Internet!”, and that pretty succinctly summarizes his personality.  He’s a Jewish Trekkie living alone in (no joke) a Surinamese ghetto on the outskirts of Amsterdam.  He was also laid off from his job DURING our stay there. He didn’t seem terribly surprised and was remarkably cheerful about it, actually. According to him, “Now I get to move to Beirut!”

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Quick update from Prague

Hello there, and it feels good to return to the civilized world!  Graham and I have just been couchsurfing through Amsterdam and Berlin and Internet access has been spotty, so I haven’t been able to write. Also scarce as of late: laundry opportunities, electrical outlets, warm showers, and toilets of any kind.

This was the place our CouchSurfing.com host in Berlin gave us for the week - he bought it on a whim for $2000 USD because he wanted a garden on the outskirts of the city.  We had it entirely to ourselves for free and all he asked is that we water his plants every day.

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Everyone here looks rich and famous

First of all, Graham is an excellent travel buddy.  He is very classy and my crude, direct conversational style looks somewhat Neanderthal by comparison.  To wit: when we first touched down in Gatwick and noticed that EVERYONE in London is EXTREMELY well dressed and runway-beautiful, Graham merely said: “Wow, there’s a lot of talent here,” and continued going about his business.  For comparison, this is how I put it: “Huuurrr durr these girls are hot”.

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Kew Gardens and pub culture

Our excellent and extraordinarily generous host Dean took us around the city on Saturday and showed us his two favorite walking spots: Kew Gardens and the Thames River, both ostensibly nearby.  Now, Dean is the CEO and president of not one but THREE international corporations and thus his time is very valuable.  As a result, he doesn’t “walk” so much as ferociously death march.  Further compounding the situation was the fact that I would have felt absolutely ridiculous asking him to slow down because we had just finished a long, genuinely touching conversation about his recent 35 pound weight loss and crippling 5 years in a wheelchair; here I am in (relatively) great shape and I’m totally beaten and dying after one hour with this guy. 

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London…

…Is awesome.  I love it here.  It’s like a flat Sydney with cloudy weather and a better nightlife.  It’s only been three or four days and Graham and I have already learned so much and had so much fun.

Graham and I leaving BWI:

First of all, a pub crawl and a bike tour are an EXCELLENT introduction to a city.  On our first night we signed up for the Camden Pub Crawl and it was fantastic.  For £12, we got free entry into four bars and an extravagant club (normal cover: £25!!), five free shots, and an instant bond with about 20 fellow travelers and several Londoners.  We managed to fight back the intense jet lag and stayed out until 5am to properly christen our young Europe Trip, and as a result we returned with two “colorful” stories I’ll save for later.

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T-minus 36 hours

This is where I’ll post updates about my adventures in Europe! It will be similar to the blog I updated last January from Southeast Asia— updates will be relatively short and hopefully entertaining.  I also don’t use big words very often, so it will be easy to read!  This is especially important when so many of your friends are troglodytes. (That means, veeeerrrrryy smart.)

Graham Downey (my awesome friend and travel buddy) and I expect the trip to proceed roughly as follows:

• May 27-30: London
• May 31-Jun 3: Amsterdam
• Jun 3-8: Berlin
• Jun 8-12: Prague
• Jun 13-17: Budapest
• Jun 18-19: Venice
• Jun 19-23: Florence
• Jun 23-29: Cinque Terre, Graham’s relatives’ place out in the French countryside, Nice, and Cannes. I also already know what my 22nd birthday present is, it’s being in France
• Jun 30-Jul 5: Barcelona
• Jul 6-Jul 10: Madrid and Pamplona
• Jul 10-13: Sevilla
• July 14: Travel to London to fly home to D.C.

Before I go, I’d just like to thank my wonderful parents and grandmother; without whom this trip would have ended shortly after buying my first meal in London or hopelessly lost and without a passport in Siberia, respectively.  I’m very lucky and have a lot of people to thank, but you three were just awesome.

I love you all, and see you when we get back!

-Jason