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.

4/13

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. =(

3/23

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.

3/11

I’m finding it harder and harder to get the time to write in this thing. I apologize for my lack of action on the blogging field. Scotland was an incredible adventure. Freezing cold, but incredible nonetheless. I didn’t get to see much of Glasgow on account that we flew into Glasgow-Prestwick and immediately hopped on the train to the city centre and only hung out around there while waiting for our oncoming train to Edinburgh. I’ve since discovered that while it is spelled Edinburgh, it is pronounced “ed-in-burr-ah.” Don’t ask me why. I still haven’t figured that one out. Nevertheless, it was one of the nicest cities I’ve ever been in, if not THE nicest I’ve ever been in. Only thing holding me back from saying that was the ridiculous temperature/incedible winds. I told Fei Fei that it felt like we were in the damn arctic. The architecture was amazingly old, huge, and gothic to the extreme. All of the old stone has since been turned black from years of burning coal (they stopped and the air quality is incredible.) Tons of old, towering cathedrals and royal castles everywhere. Tons of history of the Scots fighting for their castle with the English, power being shifted back and forth over the generations and even a story of when the English had control over Edinburgh Castle - the Scottish scaled a gigantic, western wall secretly in the middle of the night to fight for their castle back. I learned at least 10 different ghost stories and walked the very same streets they used to hang grave robbers. Did you know that the reason we’re so advanced in anatomy now is because of two particular Scottish grave robbers who would sell the bodies to the medical students?

We happened to be in town on the same exact day that Scotland was playing England in the Six Nations Rugby match. A brief lesson here. Rugby is HUGE over here. Bigger than American football, if you can believe it. The Six Nations is a tournament held once a year between Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, France, and Italy. Scotland happens to be in last place at the moment while England is tied for second place with Ireland and France - Wales is undefeated. Well, as luck would have it - Scotland won that game and the whole city was in the best mood that night. Made for a great time walking around the streets/pubs/clubs of downtown Edinburgh. I’ve never seen so many kilts in my life or a group of people so happy all at the same time. It was incredible.

We also took a 12 hour bus tour (we stopped a lot for pictures) and had the opportunity to visit Loch Ness and sail across it. That was probably a bit overrated, but it still made for a good story to say that I once sailed Loch Ness. For the record, I didn’t see any monsters. My theory on that is, even if there was a monster there at one time (there’s no reason there couldn’t have been), it’s probably dead by now. It’s been hundreds of years and the thing probably croaked a long time ago and has since decayed and given food to millions of fish. That’s my take on it at least.

I’ve got two more days back here in Cork until we head to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. It should be a blast. The plan as of right now is that when we get back from Dublin, we’re to pack our backpacks (i’ve still got to go buy one) and head off on our month long trip to continental Europe. We’ve for sure got a free place to stay in all Rome, Paris, London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Freiburg (Germany.) If I have the opportunity, I’d kill to see Athens, Lisbon, and Prague while I’m there. If I can’t - I guess that’s just one more reason to come back next time.

A love for fancy cheeses

There is this place here in Cork called the English Market. I need to take pictures of the place because it is totally, without a doubt the best grocery shop I’ve ever encountered in my life. It’s a little semi-outdoor (it’s got a roof, but the only doors are gates.) All the little shops are divided in squares smaller than my bedroom with shelves to the roof, fruit in old wooden barrels, and uncooked meats of all varieties hanging out on ice right where you can pick it up if you want to. Today I saw a beheaded pig sitting on a table and some of the biggest eels of my life - they were terrifying.

I was beyond excited (and still am) about finding this cheese place within the market. A guy cut me off samples of four different gigantic cheese wedges and they were all super fancy. I ended up splurging on three hearty slices of this cheese that I didn’t know the name of today and it cost me near 7 euro.  Totally well worth it in my opinion. I went to take a nap earlier but couldn’t stop thinking about my new found love in the refrigerator.

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what I want to do when I get back to the United States. Where I want to live. The places I want to work. Do I want to go back to school? Really, as of right now nothing is definite. I’m really open to moving anywhere. I really want to live in NYC and Boston one day. Seattle and Portland are very easy to move to again. I miss them both terribly and I’m thinking that may just be the easy route to go. I’d love to move to the Bay Area, but that’s going to require I find a number of people who want to share a small space with me and lord knows most of my friends back in Reno aren’t going to do that. I want to go back to Starbucks - find a second job dealing in fine cheeses or something. I’d really love to learn about fancy cheese…really. I want to get in super good shape. Go hiking a lot. Write a lot. I’d love to take some fun classes at the community college. I want to learn Spanish. Maybe take a photography class or a cooking class. I need to learn to cook. I like it when I do it. I guess that’s all easy. It’s just seeing where the wind’s gonna take me.  We can only wait and see.

Also

I was just sitting here, it’s only been maybe five minutes since my last post. But a giant security guard with a scary, vicious, sniffy police dog came around searching for bombs…I know I don’t have anything suspicious on or about me, but I still felt really threatened and scared. It was a scary dog.

Sitting at the airport

I’m here at the San Francisco airport, SFO if you will. I found my way past all the check ins and security quite easily. Didn’t set off any buzzers, which is always good news.

Weird thing is that they asked me to be here 3 hours early. My flight boards at 1:30 and I’m sitting here ALL BY MYSELF in the terminal. I’m sure I’m at the correct gate. It says gate A5, flight EI146 to Dublin “on-time” but I’m seriously the ONLY person down here. It’s all quiet and I’m listening to myself rattle on the keyboard as quietly as if I were back at home…in the dark. Hopefully people start coming to this gate or I’m going to start to worry. There’s not even a person behind the counter at the gate. I seriously think I’m in the only isolated place in all of San Francisco right now.

Funny note: Upon coming down the escalator to this section of the airport, my eyes were met by what looked like at least a hundred asian guys. It was funny. I didn’t quite know what to think when they announced that a flight to Japan was now boarding and they all stood up. I’ve never felt so tall in my life. Maybe I’ll go to Japan one day. I could join a track and field team and kick ass in all of the jumping categories.

2/23

I made it to California. I’m at my grandparent’s house in Gilroy right now. It’s raining and pretty outside. I miss the rain. They say that if you spend time in the Pacific Northwest, it’s going to be one of the wettest times of your life. Granted, I spent only the summer and fall months there - it was never anything like a late February/early March in Northern California.

I’m not going to be able to meet with the Irish Consulate in San Francisco until Monday when they reopen. I volunteered to help St. Mary’s Catholic Church here in Gilroy tonight with their annual Crab Feed. I’m gonna be working as a host/bouncer for homeless people without a ticket (apparently it was $35 for a ticket into the dinner. yikes!) I’m getting free dinner out of the deal and I’m helping a church - that’s always a just cause, right? I’m not quite sure how I feel about crab on account that I’ve only ever had it in sushi, and in my opinion all seafood tastes exactly the way that the Monterey Bay smells (reminds me of seagull poop and mossy salt water) only with more texture. But, nevertheless, I was told there would also be french bread and pasta for those too picky to enjoy their $35 main course.  I’m just praying they have Pepsi.