Still Jetlagged

It’s SO weird knowing that yesterday morning I was in Dublin and right now I’m eating a burrito from Super Taqueria in Gilroy, California. I can’t get over it. I’m still tired as all hell. For some reason I’ve never been able to sleep on airplanes and yesterday was no exception.

Upon arriving back at the San Francisco airport, I was called aside from the rest of my flight for a “random inspection” of my bags. The funny thing about this is that during all my travels I’ve neglected to shave in attempt to see how burly I could get - or as Muslim as I could look. Of course, they never said anything about this, but I’ve got a hunch that could have been a prime factor in my getting “randomly” searched in the airport’s room without cameras. Maybe I was a bit rude when I made the comment “come on, man. I know I’ve got a beard, but seriously you’re not going to find anything.” Needless to say, this didn’t stop him and in my own private room, my bags were extensively searched. All of the souvenirs I brought home were taken out of their bags, all my socks turned inside out, my San Francisco Airport blueprints thrown in the trash, and my favorite clock was torn from its package and dewired.

Anyways. I’m here now. Watched six hours of the NFL draft today (which was AWESOME), and I’m probably going to be in bed here before nine on account that I can’t keep my jetlagged eyes open any longer. I posted an ad for housing wanted in all San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle Craigslist today. We’ll see what comes of those. I’ve also been doing a lot of looking into volunteering for a summer camp. I found a Nike Baseball summer camp in southern California that provides free living and meals to their staff. I’ve been playing since I was five and have even got experience coaching, so that would be right up my alley if I managed to pull that one off. There’s going to be a lot of decisions to be made in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll just be taking it easy. Gonna be seeing Colin Meloy of the Decemberists play an acoustic show in Santa Cruz on Tuesday, then taking a bus to LA to meet up with some buddies (Chiz, do you still read this? Can I stay at your house?)

I miss Europe. I can’t wait to go back. Hopefully with a better plan next time.

 

Yikes

Wow. I’m going home tomorrow….Wow. Totally not ready for that one.

I met a girl that was working at my hostel in London. She was originally from Tennessee and was just working out in the UK for a number of months. She apparently applied for her work visa and had it two days later. She got on the next flight to London and asked for a job at said hostel - she’s been working there ever since and living for free. Wouldn’t that be a bitchin experience?

Of course, I’d rather it be in Sweden - but I’m not picky.

4/17

eck. i dont want to come home. Im supposed to be back in 8 days and Im starting to get really depressed about it. The thought of having to end all this is truly disheartening. Stockholm has been the best place on Earth. It’s seriously, without a doubt the only place that i haven’t had a single complaint about. Not a single one. It’s ridiculously clean, lots to do, the women are GORGEOUS, the people friendly, extremely safe, no homeless people whatsoever…seriously guys. Come here. I promise that you wont regret it.

I still havent seen Barcelona, Paris, OR London - the three places that everybody is expected to go see on a trek through Europe. Ive got 8 days before I need to be back home and 6 days before I need to be back in Ireland. I need more time. I need more money. All this charging on my credit card is really going to come back and haunt me sometime in the not-too-distant future and I get so incredibly depressed when I think of having to go back, get a hundred jobs, and work forever to pay off all this. Furthermore, the only realistic place I know that I would be able to even dream of getting ahead financially is back in Reno…blegh. Not what I want to do in the least bit. I miss California. I miss Portland. I miss Seattle. I really want to see Chicago, Boston, and New York. I want to see Michigan and Ohio. I hate feeling like this.

I want to stay here. I want to go to the American embassy and ask them for an extension on my passport, get a job at a pub or a hostel and stay here. Maybe even teach English to Swedish kids. I’ve heard that there is a big industry for that sort of thing in Europe. I met a girl in Amsterdam who is getting free room and board at the Flying Pig Hostel in exchange for cleaning rooms - I wonder what I’d need to do to get that.

4/13

Sorry I haven’t been updating. Been reeeeaaallly busy lately, but having a blast nevertheless. Switzerland is the most beautiful place on Earth. I’m the most sad about leaving here. Going to Frankfurt in 20 minutes, then flying to Sweden tomorrow morning for three days. Not sure about after that. Probably England. I want to go to Liverpool to see the Beatles stuff.

Yeah…come to Switzerland with me next summer. Im going to start saving as soon as I get back.

Whimsical German Keyböärds.

hey, check out what I can do on this keyboard: ö ä ü ß µ

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS! only problem is that every time I go to type in the letter Y, it comes out as a Z and I feel retarted.

okay, that was my excitement…back to blogging.

Long story short, I didn’t want to spend another night in Prague on account that I had already been there 8 and I felt like I was wasting valuable time. Since I missed my flight to Paris the other day on behalf of that food poisoning, which I am thankfully over, I had four days of unplannedness…so what does one do in that kind of a situation you ask? You go to the nearest train station and take the next train to Berlin!

That’s right. I’m in Germany and I had wiener schnitzel and a dark German beer last night. I haven’t seen much of the city yet, but I’m super glad I’m here. I’m booked at this hostel until the 7th, but lord knows I could always stay longer if I’d like. I heard that Against Me! and Dropkick Murphy’s are gonna be playing together in Amsterdam on the 12th…I’d like to check that out if I can’t think of anything else to do.

Umm…but yeah, I’m safe and this keyboard is driving me insane. I have had to push the backspace key at least forty times in the last two minutes. I’ll update later.

Cheers!

Justin

glugh glugh glugh

Gah. I feel like shit. I got food poisoning yesterday and was up all night puking like a wildabeast. I missed my 6am flight to Paris this morning. I’m still in Prague and I don’t know when I’m going to be able to leave - I certainly don’t feel able to be traveling right now. I slept all day. It’s 7pm now and I’m just now getting the chance to get out of my room. I’m starving and poor and I feel dehydrated.

Yuck.

This is the first time I’ve been homesick. I just want to be back at home on my parents couch right now. =(

3/28

I made it safely to Prague. I’m staying at the Plus Prague Hostel. It seems a pretty cool place. It’s waaay bigger than any of the hostels I’ve seen before, but the free breakfast kicked ass. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing for the next week. I’m going to try and take a train to Cracow,Poland to see Aushwitz sometime in the next couple of days. Maybe I’ll make a day trip to Vienna. There are tons of tours around Prague and some of the museums I looked up sound pretty neat. They’ve even got a museum of Communism. It seems a really touristy place so far, but we’ll see how it goes.

The Czech language is ridiculous. I have been trying to figure stuff out, but I can barely even pronounce the words they teach you in my phrase book. Also, the Czech Krown is really weird. The smallest bill I’ve seen is 100 krowns. I’ve currently got in my wallet bills ranging from 100 to 5000. I feel rich, but at the same time I don’t know what the hell to do with it. I got a badass chinese meal yesterday for 80 krowns, the equivalent of 3 euro…yeah. I feel rich.

I picked up this travel magazine yesterday called “Packed” and it was probably the best thing that could happen to me so far. It told me a whole bunch of cool events and festivals going on around Europe for the next month. I’m totally going to try and make it to Finland for the Helsinki International Beer festival on the 11th. That would mean only being in Amsterdam for three days, but it sounds worth it. Apparently it’s like the Scandinavian Oktoberfest. Updates to come.

3/26

Phew! My head hurts. I’ve been here in Temple’s computer lab for the past two hours trying to get this trip as planned out as it’s going to be.

Here’s what is for sure:

Tomorrow morning I am flying alone into Prague for the next week. I booked a hostel called Plus Prague and it’s supposed to be amazing. I got it for only 10 euro a night and I’m booked all the way up until April 3rd. On April 3rd I will be flying into Paris at 6 in the morning to meet up with Fei Fei and our friends from Rome for four days. On April 7th I will be flying from Paris to Amsterdam and that is all that I know for sure.. I’m doing my best to get in touch with Ollie, my old foreign exchange friend from High School to see if we could meet up in Germany for a couple days. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one. I’m really happy I’ve got all this taken care of now. Yesterday, I happened to stumble upon an American bookstore here in Rome. Crazy, huh? I nabbed a couple of pocket translator books for English to Czech, English to Dutch, English to German, and English to French. I’m pretty excited about all that.

Considering I’ve still got nearly two weeks after what I have already planned, I’ve got a lot more to check out. I’m considering going to stay in Amerstam all the way up until the end, but we’ll see how much I end up liking it. In the event that I feel like traveling still and have the money left for it, I’m going to try and see Geneva, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Athens, Liverpool, AND London…that might be a lot for two weeks - but I’m just seeing where the wind takes me. That’s what backpacking is all about, right?

My hostel in Prague apparently has internet, so expect to hear from me soon.

Ciao!

3/23

So a quick update. I’m pressed for time, unfortunately. I’m in Rome at the moment. Happy Easter everyone. Going to Florence in two days. I saw the Pope give Easter Mass today. It was awesome.

 Culture shock finally set in for the first time since I’ve been here. Getting by in English is very hard in Italy, I’ve found. It makes me feel sorry for the immigrants I run into in America because I’ve now experienced first hand how hard it is to communicate by a game of charades.

Gotta run. I’m hoping to be on the computer as much as possible, but I can’t make any promises what tomorrow brings. Hope all is well.

3/20

I’m 21 now. It feels weird. Awesome, but weird. I’ve been really busy lately and my body is just flat out exhausted. I’ve acquired quite the dislike for buses. 5 hour bus ride to and from Dublin, 2 hour ride to and from Killarney, then a 7 hour bus tour around the Ring of Kerry all in the past five days. It’s been crazy and I really need a massage.

 Other than that, though, I’ve been having a great time. Dublin is a beautiful city and probably the only one I could seriously see myself living in one day that I’ve encountered this far into my trip. It’s far from the traditional Irish towns I’ve gotten used to in the past four weeks. I can see what the Cork locals meant when they said that it was a tourist’s town. But oh well, that’s any big city for you. St. Patrick’s Day there had the entire place in an excited uproar of a party and the town’s excitement rubbed off on me. Everybody was just hanging out in the streets dancing and drinking and having a great time - it was almost nostalgic. I would love to find a way to come back next year.

My parents wired me $200 for my birthday and told me to take my friends out to a fancy dinner for my present. We found this Italian restaurant in Cork called Il Padrino. Seriously the best dinner I’ve ever had. It made me really excited to be in Italy tomorrow. Speaking of Italy tomorrow, I think it’s the coolest thing ever that I’m going to be at the Vatican for Easter Sunday. Isn’t that awesome? First St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, then Easter at the Vatican. I picked a good time to come here.

I’m not sure how often I’m going to be able to get on the internet to update this blog, but I promise I’ll be on it whenever I can even if it’s only for a short update. As of right now, the tentative schedule goes like this:

5 days in Rome, 2 in Prague, 3 in Athens, 4 in Freiburg/Berlin, 3 in Paris, 3 in Amsterdam, 4 in Barcelona/Seville, 3 in Portugal (gonna see the family heritage at the Azores Islands), 3 in London, then back to Cork for a couple days til I fly back into San Francisco to meet my family. Since my car is already parked there, if I’ve got any money left over in my bank account I’m going to make a trip down to LA to visit Anton and Chi-Z. Right now all signs point to me moving back to Portland, but we’ll see. My mind seems to change a lot.

Wish me luck. Should be a fun trip.

PS. All of my Dublin pictures are on my personal laptop which has since taken a shit. I don’t know what happened, but right now my laptop is out of commission. Hopefully I’ll be able to retrieve those pictures from my hard drive. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed. I’ve got a good buddy of mine back in Reno who seems to do a lot of magic with computers and he’ll be able to bail me out again for when I have to buy another computer. Here is a good one to tide you over.