Eurotrip: AO Style

Why, hello again. Greeted Monday afternoon by tenacious plane-induced nausea, hyperactive orange kittens, a boring stack of bills, and over four hundred blog posts in Google Reader, I have returned from three weeks of backpacking bliss. I've written dozens of blog posts in my head in this time (abandoning my "travel journal" after two entries...), but I don't want to bore anyone with what might amount to a slideshow by your unfavorite Uncle Morty. Here are some trip snippets. If you're interested in hearing more, please do e-mail me, as I have more details and pictures.

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Backpacking has taught me something about myself: I am not even half as uptight as I thought. No joke, you should have seen some of the places I slept/ate/used the restroom. To give you some indication of how grotty our hostels were, in Berlin we only paid nine euros each per night. I was really proud of myself for not being a total priss, but by the end of the trip the disgusting conditions started to wear on me. Is there not a SINGLE restaurant in Italy that does not include swarms of flies as part of its ambiance?

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I made a new Spanish friend, Hector. Hector haggles with a street vendor and gets me a fake pair of D&G sunglasses for six euros. He also informs me that Americans are no-nonsense people who love guns, hotdogs, and hamburgers. I tell him that I sometimes make microwaved Spanish rice. We sit in a bar in Genova, drinking the most expensive Heinekens and watching Italian car racing. We stare at each other and smile every so often; we've already made all the small talk (ever) in the past six hours. I remember thinking that it was the strangest Sunday afternoon I'd passed in awhile.

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In Rome, professionals (young and old alike) ride mopeds to the office. Noah and I were fascinated by this, so naturally he takes fourteen blurry pictures while I finish Eat Pray Love (while sitting on a Roman fountain). That's right, Elizabeth Gilbert went to Rome to discover pleasure, and I read about it while ignoring my boyfriend and also my new city.

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This is the largest Gothic cathedral in all of Europe; it's located in Milan. We had a strategy, you see. Get off the train, find our hostel, drop off our backpacks, eat, stare out at the skyline and find a cathedral. We would just walk until we were right up on one and then usually enter it, if it was open. I carried a pashmina to cover my unholy bare shoulders. I think we visited, like, twelve of these babies.

St. Peter's

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I was expecting to enjoy France the most, but then Switzerland just stole the show. We rented bikes and rode to a nearby lake. My legs loved the motion of cycling, even as I pedaled (and pedaled and pedaled) my way up a huge highway hill. The view of the lake was breathtaking, but I still applied my brakes on the way down, careful not to let the Swiss air go to my head. On the way back, though, I just let myself coast down the highway. I was in Switzerland! On a bike! By a lake! With Noah! It felt wonderful. 

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Now we're in Munich, and this charming "lady" is performing Diana Ross. It appears we have stumbled upon a gay pride festival; this is confirmed when I see a legion of middle school-aged lesbians. I must say, Munich does drag up right.

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Do you recognize this hotel? Because you should. It is out of one of these windows that Blanket Jackson was shown to the world. (Hey, I also went to the Louvre and many other prestigious museums, but c'mon, BLANKET JACKSON'S WINDOW!)

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This is one of the last pictures of our trip, which was taken before my camera's battery died. I didn't have the right electrical plugs for Germany or the Netherlands, and I'm not officially admitting this or anything, but I probably didn't need to look at all those pictures of my cats that were stored on my phone so often. My bad. Anyway, this charming duo was stationed behind the bar in a pub in Cologne. They could play "Billie Jean", you know.