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.

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!

3/20

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.

3/14

I’ve tackled this obstacle about a hundred times since I got here, and I’m getting used to answering this question smoothly nowadays. When somebody here from America asks me what part of the States that I’m from, I’ll tell them simply that I’ve lived all over the west coast: California, Nevada, Washington State, and Oregon. When someone from Ireland or any other European country asks me where I’m from, I always tell them that I live San Francisco, California just for the simple reason that it’s a big enough place and most everybody knows it. It avoids having to explain where Reno, Nevada is and it keeps all the Reno 911 jokes at bay. Most times when I tell somebody that I am from the Bay Area, a typical response would be “oh, I love San Francisco. The weather is beautiful” or “I’ve never been, but when I do go to the States, it’s the first place that I’m going to see.” Today, while getting my haircut at the local barber shop, was the first time that I actually regretted telling someone that I was indeed from there. Never before have I gotten the response “oh…so you’re one of the gay people, then.”  Coming from most other people this comment would sound offensive, but this barber’s expression never changed as if it was just something they openly ask about here in Ireland. On account that I am not gay, my instinct told me to become offended. Had I been a much more snide of a person and less afraid of a bad haircut, this would have been the perfect opportunity to retort with a snappy retort of a question. I think something along the lines of what I would have liked to have said was “are you from Ireland? does that mean you’re a drunk with no long term goals?” It took only about ten seconds for my temper to subside when I told myself “what have I got to worry about? He’s the one in the hairstyle business.”

I politely told the man that no, I was not a homosexual but that if he were to ever go there to not start accusing people of being so as most people wouldn’t take kindly to it.  I then told him that I’m not actually FROM San Francisco, but rather a place nearby that most people here in Ireland wouldn’t know about so I opted for something a little more internationally known to avoid conflict.

Something small, I know. But I thought it would make for an interesting story while walking back to my apartment. I guess from now on I’ll have to be more careful with where I say that I’m from. Maybe I’ll stick to the truth and tell them that I’m from rural, small-town Fernley, Nevada or maybe I’ll just make up a new, funny place from now on. We’ll just have to see whatever kind of mood I’m in.

3/7

I’m going to Scotland tomorrow. We fly out in the early morning. I’m excited. The plan is to fly into Glasgow and immediately thereafter take the train to Edinburgh. After we leave the train station, find and check into a hostel for a couple of nights - leave our stuff there with time to make it to the big castle there (the name is failing me right now.) A lot of our roommates just happen to be in Scotland at the time. We’re only going to be there for three days, but I would be the happiest little boy if we could somehow manage to see all Loch Ness, JK Rowling’s house, Sean Connery/Craig Ferguson having breakfast, and the place that golf was invented. Boy, I’d kill to play a game on that course.

It just dawned on me how long it’s been since I’ve been golfing. That’s one thing I’m going to be doing a lot of this summer. You can count on that. There’s a good chance I won’t find a way back on the internet until Monday. So in the meantime, Cheers!

3/1

So finding a comfortable place to sleep has been a problem thus far into my trip. The plane was the most uncomfortable place ever and I got a sore neck from the only hour I actually managed. First night here, the guy we were borrowing the air mattress from was out of town and I had to try to stick with tiny couch cushions. Last night, we got the air mattress only to find that it had a small leak. I woke up pretty much on the floor on top of a deflated air mattress and my back is really stiff. Hopefully I can figure something out today. Maybe I’ll look for a sleeping bag.

Went to Blarney Castle yesterday and kissed the Blarney stone. It’s funny about this because when you kiss it, there is a camera thing there that takes a picture of you kissing it - the guys working there (what a job) give you a hand when it comes to kissing it because it’s really dangerous to get to. You have to dangle backward over a spooky castle ledge holding on to two metal bars built to give you a grip. Whoever designed it was a real jokester. Anyways, the guys who work there, after you kiss the stone, they give you a redemption tag that you bring to the front sales desk where you can preview the pictures they took of you and it is supposed to cost you 10 Euros to get an actual printout of the picture…10 euros? seriously? So…our natural solution was to use my digital camera and take a picture of the tv screen that my picture was demonstrating. We’re proud of that one. It officially marked my first touristy thing that I’ve done here. Afterward I went to my first Irish Pub and had my first Guinness in Ireland…TASTY!

I’m not quite sure what the plans are for today. I’m exhausted from all this running around and not sleeping well, but I’m excited to do all this cool stuff at the same time. We got our tickets to Scotland yesterday. We fly into Glasgow next Saturday and plan on taking the train to Edinburgh. We’re only gonna be there like three days, but we’re probably just going to walk around the city and take pictures - I don’t know what we’d do there for longer than that. Nonetheless, before I left America I told myself that I was going to do everything in my power to see Scotland, Greece, and Prague…so far, that’s one down and I’ve still got over a month left. Fei Fei and I are going to be traveling a lot when her spring break rolls around on the 13th of March. We’re doing St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, and for sure going to be in Rome and Spain for a little bit - where else, I’m not quite sure. But Hopefully I’ve still got enough money in my account by then.

I’ve been taking pictures like crazy, however haven’t had a chance to load them onto my computer. I’ll be sure to post them soon.

2/29

Alas, I’m here. I woke up at 13:45 today (hehe…1:45pm)

The flight was long and uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep and my personal tv didn’t work so I couldn’t enjoy the lovely Ben Stiller movies on the plane. I made it into Cork and have already been hit on by four random girls. FOUR! It’s awesome being “that foreign guy.” I’m new and I have things to talk about and opinions to share that nobody has heard before. It’s neat. I can see why people love moving to foreign lands. Nobody has said anything about an accent yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s obvious that I’m not from around here.

I’m sleeping on Fei Fei’s floor in her dorm room and her roommates are all cool. We’re all the same age and get along fine (at least I think so.) I didn’t spend a lot of time yesterday venturing around Cork city much on account that I was so sleepy and my head was spinning. I calculated it out, and aside from the hour of sleep that I got on the plane, I was up for a good 36 hours. When I flew out of San Francisco, it was 2pm, broad daylight. It quickly got dark as we flew over Canada and then as soon as we all started to get comfy, it was bright and sunny again. That sucked.

I’ve already noticed an abundance of cultural differences, but I think my favorite one was a newspaper headline in regards to a local man protecting his children by “beating off a bad guy.” I chuckled to myself literally for about five minutes. It was on the front page in big, bold print even.

Last night I followed Fei Fei’s friends to this public underground parking garage where they were having this rave of sorts. It was a big party in a parking garage full of people relatively my age. Met a lot of people. Shook a lot of hands. I had a good conversation with a German, 3 French kids, and a bunch of Americans. One girl who lives here in Fei Fei’s hall even used to live in Seattle. It’s crazy how the world can be so small. Get this: her boyfriend back home literally lives down the same street I used to. Literally. She knew the exact location when I told her 45th and Stone was my old house. Yeah, nuts. Apparently there’s a guy who lives here from Reno. I haven’t met him…but I’m just befuddled.

I haven’t taken any pictures yet. My head was hurting really badly yesterday and was in no mood to slow down foot traffic by stopping to take pictures. I’ll get to it soon. We’re going to see the Blarney Stone today and I’m really debating on whether or not I wanted to kiss it. I could only imagine some dumb teenager peeing on it trying to be funny.

“the last time you leave the USA for the first time”

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I kept waking up every hour or so. It was cold and my pajamas were in the washing machine. Consequently, I had to sleep in my underwear. Which is fine on warm days, but it was much uncomfortable last night. Top coldness off with an overwhelming sense of nervousness and it’s a proven way to be sure you’re tired the entire next day. It might be a good thing considering that I’ve got an 11 hour flight ahead of me (that’s right, I said 11. It was 17, but I was able to change plans and now I’ve got a direct  flight to Dublin - then a half hour scoot on over to Cork.) I’ve also had some gnarly diarreah which seems to have followed me into the morning. Do you think nerves has anything to do with that? Or is that strictly the fact that I’ve been loading myself up on Mexican food this past week on account that I’ve been told there is none in Ireland.

I still haven’t finished packing. I need to be in San Francisco by 11:15, meaning that I’d need to leave Gilroy by 9:30…meaning that I’ve got about 45 minutes to pack and shower and get out of here.

I think that once I get there, I’ll be fine. The only Irish related worry that I have is meeting Fei Fei at the airport. She will be in a class when I’m scheduled to arrive at 11:30am. She gets out at noon and will be taking the bus to the airport. I guess I can just find a bench to sit on for the time being. I’m just worried we’re not going to be able to find each other once at the airport. Neither will have phones (how did they ever find people in the old days?) I guess I’m just gonna have to wait and hope. Maybe she’ll page me.

I don’t really feel like it’s going to happen. Right now I’m just kind of apathetic. I feel like for some reason, something is going to go wrong and I’m just going to end up back here on my grandparents computer talking about why I couldn’t go to Ireland. My passport wasn’t valid, my ticket didn’t work, the airport’s workers were on strike…something like that.

Thank you to everybody who helped me out here. Grandparents, Parents, Friends. It was a big collaborative effort  and I’m glad I’ve got you all in my life. (I’m just saying that in case that my plane crashes and those were my last words. I wanted you to know I was grateful.)

 Wish me luck!

2/24, technically 2/25

I’m in San Francisco right now at Tim’s house. It’s a nice place up on the opposite end of downtown Market Street. I like the house a lot. It’s kind of a bummer knowing that Tim sleeps behind a curtain in exchange for 500 dollars a month, but I guess that’s life here in the big city. Another bummer about it here is the fact that it took me over an hour to find parking earlier. I got lost well over ten times and the only spots that I DID find wer red zones. I was in no hurry, which made things less stressful - but it still sucked. Lori dropped Dylan off where he and she met me in some random dark alleyway next to a sleeping homeless man. Dylan got in with me to help me navigate my way to Tim’s work where we picked him up and continued on to meet Brandon and Tamara at Zachary’s Pizza in Berkeley.

It’s funny how I learned about Zachary’s: I read about it in the NY Times a number of weeks ago. Then when I mentioned to an old coworker that I was going to be in San Francisco this week, his response was “dude, you really need to check out Zachary’s Pizza in Berkeley.” So basically, I’ve had this pizza on my mind for the last three days and we finally made it there tonight. It super did not disappoint. It was amazing beyond pizza belief. I loved it. It was Chicago style deep dish. The thing that made it most different, I think was that while it had a really deep crust, the sauce was on top of all the cheese and toppings. It was neat. It was saucy on top and gooey underneath. Quite the concept. When I open Borgey’s Pizza, I’m definitely going to keep that in mind.

Tomorrow’s the big day at the Irish Consulate. Tim is taking me downtown and showing me where the place is. I don’t quite know what I’m expecting. I’m pretty much going to walk in and ask “how do I get a work visa?” I doubt they’re just going to write me up one there, but I really don’t know what is supposed to happen. Hopefully you don’t need an appointment. The way I’m looking at it is this: if I CAN get a work visa - then I’m going to move there and get a job and an apartment. Stay for a while and just say I lived in Ireland for a part of my life. If I CAN’T get a work visa, then I’m just going to fly to Ireland and hop around Europe with Fei Fei until my money runs out and I’ve got to come hoome. Either way, I can’t lose. It’s gonna be an adventure.