Brought to you by popular demand (well, at least my friend Juliet asked for it), the complete summary of my entire European Adventure. This is great for those of you who are a bit curious about what I might have been up to for the last month, but not quite curious enough to read though 30 pages of terrible, typo-ridden, overly-and-yet-underly detailed descriptions of my adventure on a daily basis. I’m going to do my best to keep the entire thing under two pages; self-pity, bellyaching, regrets and all. So, here we go.
NY AND BUDAPEST Ben and I got off to a terrible start. Our buddy passes didn’t work, so not only did we waste a ton of money buying tickets at the last minute, we wasted more money and time in NY for a day. Why was NY City a waste? Because it was hot as hell, our hostel was terrible, and we didn’t really manage to see or do anything. The only good part was meeting up with my good friend Lisa and having a nice meal together. After flying all night to Budapest, Hungary, we tried to check in to our hostel, but couldn’t, because we had booked the wrong day. We forgot we were losing a day on the plane, and Cameron never checked over my bookings like I asked him too. Amy tells me she noticed it when she looked it over, but after I left. Oh well. We found another place. We had a very nice time in Budapest, explored the city, walked though some of the original city ruins, and felt our way though catacombs deep under the city that have been used by humans for thousands of years. After 6:30PM, they shut off all the lights, and we had nothing but one oil lamp to help get us out. Very cool. Also cool was the fact that I was finally able to sleep that night for the first time in four days. The night before the trip when I had to wake up at 3:30AM and couldn’t fall asleep, the night sweating in a large closet in the NY hostel, and the night on the plane, all virtually sleepless. That could be a record for me.
ROMANIA After a scary train ride that we first almost missed (got on the train two minutes before it left the station) and where out passports were taken from us buy someone who may have been a fake (we eventually got them back), we arrived. With some time to kill, we enjoyed our first super cheap and strong Romanian beers. I accidentally overindulged and became a bit inebriated, which was a bit scary, considering how potentially dangerous our environment was (Cameron warned us that people, especially foreigners, get robbed in places like that all the time), and the fact that the only toilet available cost money to use. But Cameron found us without incident, and the three of us caught up a bit and had a good time.
Over the next few days Cameron (our friend, and the reason for the trip in the first place, had been stationed in Timisoara, Romania, for the last year in the Peace Corps, and has another year to go) showed us around his great city and told us about it’s history, showed us where communism fell, and so much more. He told us so many great and bizarre stories about the people of Romania, how things were like under Communist rule, and how superstitious the older people are, if I were to share even a few, I would far exceed my two page promise. We hung out at his favorite Bar, ate at some good, authentic restaurants, and walked many miles. I was looking forward to the opportunity to teach some English, but my potential students cancelled because of the very important football game that night. It seems like the entire city gathers in the various plazas and watches Romanian football games on huge screens together. I thought the idea was awesome, and wished my own city could organize such communal festivities. During one night we hung out at a huge, fancy night club, partied at a college town, and watched the police almost break up a fight. What a night. Unfortunately, Ben had to leave after only a few days, because he could only get a week off of work. Cameron and I rested for a few days before heading off to Greece. I walked around the biggest, fanciest mall in the entire region of thousands of square miles, watched The Happening and The Hulk in the great movie theatre, and explored the city some more on my own.
GREECE Greece was where the vacation started for Cameron. The first island we visited was Mykonos, which is known as one of the party capitals of the world. Well, I don’t know about that. The dance club we danced at until 3AM wasn’t quite filled with the 5000 people my travel book said it would be, but it was still interesting. The nude beach connected to our huge hostel was certainly new to me. But by far the best part of the island was the architecture. I had seen pictures and paintings of hundreds of small white houses with blue doors and windows my entire life, always dreaming of my chance to see them in person, and I finally did. Walking through the complicated corridors of the village originally designed to confuse invading pirates was great. But our second island, Santorini, provided us with the best day of the vacation. An all day tour, which we stumbled up by chance, took us to a volcano we could hike, hot springs we could soak in, and two more villages on top of mountains we had to ascend hundreds of stairs to reach. We also met up with five woman who proved to be great travel companions, even well into the night, where we danced at a small club with the best music selection I’ve ever heard in my life. It was hot, and I sweated buckets, but I hardly noticed I was having so much fun. Cameron might have had even more fun them me, as he’s still single, and I made sure he got all the attention from the very flirty girls. To my great disappointment, however, we didn’t get to see the ruins of Athens, because our 8 hour ferry ride back to the mainland took 11 hours, and it was closed when we returned. We spent two nights in Athens, and didn’t get to see anything up close. That was some bad planning.
BULGARIA Greece was certainly hot, but it’s where we both had the most fun. I should have gone home after Greece. We walked around Sofia all day, but didn’t really do anything at all that day except eat at a cool restaurant called Happy’s. After a terrible train ride to Plodive, we hung out at the hostel the first day, missed our opportunity for a tour by a day and tried to tour the city on our own. We found an ancient monastery and hiked up into the mountains in extreme heat. It was pretty neat, but very taxing. The next day, after a train ride twice as long and just as bad, we arrived at Varna, the “resort” city of Bulgaria. During our full day there we took the party van to the beach, which was probably the best beach I’d seen since Jamaica, and the best waves since Daytona Beach, FL. Cameron doesn’t really do beaches, so he walked around as I walked up and down the topless beach and played in the waves, seeing amazingly attractive and unattractive people and feeling terribly lonely without my wife. At this point in the vacation, I was just about numb from the pain of missing my wife. I was thinking about her all the time. There is a very good chance that this might be the longest we are ever apart for the rest of our lives. I hope it is.
Getting home was very difficult. After Cameron and I parted ways in Budapest, my mind completely fried by mental and physical exhaustion, I almost flipped out more than once trying to figure out how to waste 20 hours at an airport, give up, then make my way to a hostel, which I never found. I eventually found a place to sleep, and made it to the airport without a problem. I almost missed two of my flights for numerous reasons that weren’t exactly my fault, but after much trial and error, took my three final flights home, and was greeted by my wife screaming for joy when I finally appeared from the sea of weary travelers.
All things considered, I did learn a number of things about myself, in addition to everything I learned about world travel and the four countries I visited. I have never before in my life purposefully put myself into a situation filled wish so much extreme discomfort for so long a time, and paid so much for the “privilege.” And I never intend to do anything like it ever again. But I’m grateful to be back, and I’m certainly grateful that I love my life so much at home that I was so desperate to get back to it. Thank God I’m home.
The End
