I HATE mass transit!!!

Hey Bryce, so you've been away from home for over a month, what do you miss the most? Home cooked meals? NO...I don't cook so I never have them anyway. You're friends and family? No...that's what the blog is for. The awesome summer movies that you missing? The comfort of your own bed? Your roommates OC Season 1 DVDs? No no no, I miss but one thing and that is my CAR! And if you know me, you know I don't even like cars. I miss it not because I'm a car guy, or because of I have some great emotional attachment to my green Honda that I bought used, not even because I miss driving like last time I was out of the country for a long time. I'm just sick and tired of relying on other people's time schedules that will take me only relatively near where I want to go. If America is a land of liberty I am only just realizing why. Not because of freedom of religion and press and speech and all that crap, but because there I have the freedom to go where I want when I want and I MISS IT!!!

Ok, so I don't think the Monaco fiasco was ever fully explained on this board, but suffice it to say it was unpleasant. However, that story has now been rendered meaningless by my adventures over the last few days.

So we arrive in Venizia around 1:00pm to find that our hostel that is oh so convenient to the train station is not convenient to the actual Venice train station but to the Venice Mestre train station which is one stop out from the real Venice train station. I was more than a little disappointed to discover this, but no doubt we are saving lots of money and since trains run like every 15 minutes, this should be no big deal right? right! So we check in, I shower, Leo stuffs his face and we head to real Venice to see what its all about. Upon arrival we find each others moods to be sour and decide to split up and explore the labrynth that is Venice on our own (me with no map, but its not like they help anyway). So I wonder and wonder and I'm loving life and loving Venice and I'm seeing St. Mark's and I'm eating gelato and I'm searching for the library from Indiana Jones, you know typical Venice things that everyone does and loves cause you can't help but love Venice cause its one of the most perfect cities in the world (and contrary to popular belief it does not stink and believe you me, it was hot). Anywho, circe 6:30pm I'm relatively near the train station and I decide I'm pretty tired and I'm thinking, maybe I'll head home. But then I think, why? there's nothing at "home" for me, I'll just be heading back to a hot and crowded hostel room, why not stay and just soak up more Venice. Afterall having finished HPATHBP on our first night in Rome (though I still hesitate to open the board to full discussion out of respect for those who may still not have read it, but I will say this--WOW) I was no listening to Ender's Game on audiobook and I, of course was loving it. So why not just go sit down and listen to Ender's while I look out on the beauty that is Venizia? Reasonable thought right? NO, the worst decision of my life.

So I find a comfy little bench on the other side of San Marco, looking out on the large body of water (canal? bay? sea? i dunno) and I'm listening to my book and a cool wind is blowing and the sun is setting and Ender is kicking everyone's butts and life is nice! Around 8:00 I figure I'm ready to leave now and I start back, it is then that I'm struck with the brilliant idea to not go the way I came, but to "find a new way through Venice" (second worst decision I ever made). Well an hour and a half and about 10 miles of walking in circles (ie. passing the same point numerous times without meaning to!) I arrive at the train station around 9:30 to find that the trains are on strike! No trains til 9:00 the next night. Good GREAT GRAND! Now I have to take the bus back to Mestre. Which bus? I dunno. Which stop? I dunno. Where are the damn busses? I kinda know, but not really. So I follow the throngs of angry would-be train passengers to a huge bus parking lot and after my third attempt at talking to a bus driver and basically saying just "mestre?" I finally find one that is going there. After a 35 minute wait for a bus ticket and a 15 minute wait on the bus its pushing 10:30 and I'm on my way. To where? good question. The bus is soooooo crowded and the sun is now set and I have NO idea where I'm going. This becomes painfully obvious when about 25 minutes later I see out the window the old Mestre with an X through it sign that says we have left the city where I was supposed to get off, wonderful! At this point I assume/hope/pray that this bus route is a loop and that we will be going back to Mestre after a while. It is not for another hour when I'm the only person left from the soooooo crowded bus and the bus driver is pulling into a bus depot 18 km from Mestre that I realize it is NOT a loop and is stopping for the night way the freak out here and I am SCREWED. Now I'm looking at 11:45 and the bus driver is looking at an idiot. Thankfully the man is very very kind and offers to give me a ride to...somewhere, I don't know where because we don't speak the same language. But I figure anywhere is better than here and with reckless abandon I jump into the tiny tin can that he calls his car and he sets about a winding Italian path that is so incomprehensible to my feeble mind that I don't even try to follow the signs. As his speedometer needle hits 100 km/hr all I can think is I have no idea how fast that is, but can't you go faster? After about 20 minutes in silence (I don't know if he doesn't have a radio or if he was just trying to make it even more awkward) the bus drive (now, just a car driver) pulls over to the side of the road and tells me to wait here for 10 minutes and take the bus back to Venice. Well I don't want to go back to Venice, but again, anywhere is better than here. So I wait and wait...and wait and along comes a bus a good 23 minutes later. So I get on this bus, today having turned to tomorrow many minutes ago, but this time I ask the bus driver if he will be going near the Mestre train station, the only landmark I know in Mestre. He gives me an "ehh, kind of close" hand gesture and I feel relieved? no I think still just scared. So I find a seat on this bus, its easy today since there are only 5 of us on the bus and not two minutes pass before skeezy drunk Italian from the front has gotten up and decided to sit in the seat right next to me (why did I choose the window and not the aisle seat? why?) Skeezy, as I will now call him, speaks no English and I speak very poor "drunk italian" so everyword out of his mouth sounds like "I'm going to steal your money and stab you in the chest" and every word out of my mouth is "I don't understand you, I'm sorry, I don't..."

After a while, the driver announces that this is the closest to the the stazione as we're going to get and I get off. Skeezy comes with, talking to and touching me all the way down the long, dark street to the stazione. With every pat on the shoulder I all but feel his knife slicing my little american bones to bits. Skeezy is now in desperate need of a cigarrette and when I could not provide one he feels the need to ask every other person we see. I jump at each of these small pauses as a chance to lose him, but this proves easier said than done as he calls "amigo" everytime I get too far ahead (apparently he now speaks Spanish). As we get to the station I see a big pack of american looking kids and I contrive a plot to start talking to them as a way to get away from Skeezy, I'm now assuming/hoping/praying that they actually are american or at least speak english so my brilliant plan will work. As I walk toward them Skeezy lunges at the chance to ask like 15 more people for cigarrettes and I lunge at the chance to literally run through the empty train station to lose him.

Finally free of the scary Italiano I walk back to the hostel, where of course the reception desk is closed at just a little past 1:00 am and I have no way to get in, Leo having our only key. I walk down the block to where I think our room window would be and I start whisper yelling "leo, Leo, LEO" until the whisper is gone and only the yell remains, but there is no answer and I resign myself to the fact that I will sleep on the steps of my own hotel tonight. Only then an angel appears, oh wait, she's only some drunk Canadian thats staying at my hostel and has a key, close enough. I'm in and I'm alive! I go to the bathroom, only to come out in the hall and find Leo and some friends just coming back from some bar down the street and I forgive him for not answering my calls. With that I go to bed and Leo continues to party hard with the multitude of Canadians (and I think some Irish lasses, but I can't be sure).

So thats the greatest story I have from Venice. The next day I spent most of my time watching glass blowing on Murano, which was incredible, those guys are amazing, I also visited Burano, whose houses are really vivid and colorful, the islands had most of the charm of Venice without all the people and pollution, hard to beat, but not quite the excitement of Venice. All in all, I still love Venice, I just hate trains and busses.

If you need further proof of how much trains suck ask me about our overnight excursion from Venice to Munich last night. It made the last overnight with Bruce the babbling baboon seem like a night at the Ritz. The heat was enormous, the stench was suffocating and the seats were almost as comfortable as the beaches of Nice and almost as lovely as the Florence's Boboli desert (nice term Robin, thanks for the warning). I don't think either of us slept more than 30 combined minutes over the whole course of the trip. The one concillation was that part of the time we shared the cabin with one of the hottest girls I've ever seen (but no Mrs. Rohr, we didn't get any, unless Leo was very stealth during one of my 3 minute naps). I had been dreading this train ride and all of my nightmares proved true, save one. I assumed that the train ride would be so bad that it would ruin our one day in Munich. Afterall, I've been to Munich before and I didn't even really want to come again anyway. But I was so wrong.

Munich was nothing short of lovely. Hot, but lovely. Last time I was hear I was so engrossed in daytrips from Munich to castels and concentration camps and so obsessed with museums while I was actually in Munich that I pretty much missed the city for the sights. This time, following the same strict, no museum policy that served us well in Venice. We went on the Famous Mike's Bikes Tour. It was fun, not quite as spectacular as the brochures would have you believe, but fun. We watched the Glockenspiel (not fun). And after the tour I went swimming in a raging river of the coldest water I've every chosen to swim in--VERY fun. All in all, Munich far surpassed my expectations, so much so that I want to come back again, cause I've discovered that there is even more to be done. Tommorrow we head off to Wurzburg and then Berlin. I'm super-psyched about going to a couple of places I've never been before, really looking forward to Berlin.

Ok, I realize this blog is obscenely long, I hope you read it in two sittings, but I do want to add a few thoughts about Roma. Actually just one, I LOVE ROME! I always hear people say that "rome is too big" or "I prefer florence, it has more charm." (no, I'm not going to keep picking on Florence), but to all those people (Har-ho, were you one of them? I can't remember) I have to say that you are crazy loony idiots, what Rome lacks in charm it more than makes up for in grandeur and significance. Rome is a powerful place and you feel the power everywhere, from the Coloseum, huge Victor Emmanuel II memorial, to the Vatican, even the Trevi Fountain. Rome is awesome! And as Leo mentioned the gelato was superb! Having already spent a long time in Rome on my last European trip I made a real effort to see some stuff I missed before including the Borghese Gallery (which was cool, but not interesting to tell about) and this awesome crypt at a church whose name I forgot. The place was decorated with Bones and skeletons, not full of them like the catacombs in Paris, but decorated with them, like they had bone chandeliers and bone art on the walls, it was bonetastic (bonerific? bona fide?). Those two things along with Angels and Demons day, complete with a trip along the Passeto at Castel Sant Angelo, were the highlights of a pretty good stay in Rome. I think we were both tired the whole time and there is a lot of walking to be done in Rome, but it was great anyway.

Finally, I want to end this blog on a sad note. Several terrible things have happened to me lately for one I seem to have lost my Virginia Tech hat, though she was new for this trip, we had been through a lot together and I will miss her. Those of us who knew her will always remember how she never minded being stuffed in my bag when I didn't need her and of course how cute she was with that little Hokie bird head on her side, she is already missed but hopefully she will find a happy home at the bottom of some Venetian Canal, or where ever the heck she is. In even worst news, Venice will always be tarnished in my mind because it was the place where I finally was forced bow to the Italian authorities and pay to use the restroom. I swore I wouldn't do it, but that spicy little Kabab I had for lunch had other ideas. That kabab was delicious...but it was filling and when the time came it came hard and fast, alas, I lost a lot more than 50 cents on that trip to the bathroom, I lost a big old chunk of pride, ahhhh. I was thinking there was one other sad thing, but what can really compare to those two. Good night, thanks for reading and to Joe, good to know you're alive.

As always sorry for the typos, time pressure.