It is all about the people you meet in the places you go

I Amsterdam. Checked off my list. It was beautiful. I loved being in a canal city and all the bikes scurrying about. But what made Amsterdam really fun was not the coffeeshops or the red light district. It was not the Anne Frank House (even though it was really well done and a great experience) or the tourist sights. It was, hands down, the people in the hostel.


But for good measure, this is what Amsterdam looks like:

On morning 1 we met two Kiwis. That night we met a girl from Australia. And after that, a friend of the Kiwis. We were quite the bunch and shared many laughs, stories, drinks, photos, cards and travel advice. Steph and I may go visit Alex (New Zealand) in Austria next week.


While I feel like we didnt cram our days with things to do, I feel the most connected to Amsterdam and the Flying Pig Uptown Hostel. It has been proven again how much I thrive in the hostel world. I am absolutely infatuated by it. Even though we may never see the people again, they become close friends, and fast. We share the same mindset and similar desires. Hostel friends maz be more similar to me than my friends at home. They may even understand me better as they share the same passion of really seeing the world. As Alex watched Steph and I consider throwing our itinerary out the door, he said he knew exactly how we felt. He understood the Athens Airport experience I had. 

Hostel goers form such a specific and permeable community. The ebb and flow ensures no continuity between the people there, but ensures a foundation, a society in which one feels more at home in a foreign country than anywhere else.


So we left Amsterdam in high spirits and renewed perspectives. We are now in Berlin for 5 days and are already impressed. More later!

I'll meet you at the Rosetta Stone

So my last night in Ireland was pretty fun: I ended up hanging out with people from Portugal, Canada and the US and had a great time out and drinking Guinness with them.

I then headed to London and could not be more stoked to see Stephanie and Sandy. The first day, we walked the city and saw the regular sights.

 First picture of us on the trip..haha

The next morning, Stephanie was feeling a little under the weather but pushed through and came to the British Museum with Sandy and I. It was kind of cool to be able to tell Sandy to meet us at the Rosetta Stone. Probably will never say that again!

That night we headed to the Shakespeare Globe theater to try and get returned tickets to As You Like It. We were about to give up, when the worker brought us 3 standing tickets 10 mins into the show. What luck! It was a fantastic show and we laughed so hard we cried a little.

The next day, Stephanie and I moved to the Generator Hostel (where Sandy already was) and it was HUGE! We dubbed it as the Generator City because it had a 700 person capacity.

We strolled Hyde Park, Harrods and saw the changing of the guard. Our lunch that day consisted of us eating some plain rice out of a tupperware container, with baby forks, in front of Buckingham Palace. Lots of funny stares and I am sure we will get more when we do it again!

We met up with Alizee and her friend for drinks that night. It was sad because I think that might have been the last time I will get to see her this trip. (She will be in Greece and Australia when I go back to the Portiers in June).

I saw Liffy, my brothers friend from New Zealand the next morning at the Camden market. It was such a cool place and I wish I could have spent more time there. Talking to Liffy was really fun as well. She is going to Nepal this week for 3 months to work with a prison and children. She is really, very inspiring. I can only hope I can do some of the cool things she is doing sometime.

We caught our plane to Amsterdam, not knowing what to expect, but completely mindboggled that we were going to be in a different country after a 45 min flight.

So this person called the Queen took over Ireland

This is a week late, but Ireland was an adventure. I met up with Bridget and Monica (her sister) on the way to the center and learned that the queen was in town and the city was in a mess because of it. There were barriers everywhere and the Garda (Irish police) were running security. The pubs were luckily still open and we were able to eat some traditional food.

 Queen Security

 Closest I got to the Guinness Factory

At least I saw her!

We stayed with Bridget and Monica's distant cousins a little outside of Dublin. They were so accommodating and we shared many good conversations about the tension Ireland felt about an English monarch being in the country. I was completely in the dark about the deep controversy and found it fascinating to talk to some locals about what they thought.

The sad thing was that the Queen had shut down all the major attractions like Trinity College and yes, the Guinness factory. We were able to make the most of it, but it was still a shame to miss some of the things I really wanted to see. Oh well, I got an official whiskey taster certificate at the Jameson factory and was able to spend some good time with Bridget.

 Whiskey-Ginger Ale

A few days in, I ventured down south to Cork to experience solo travelling. It started out ridiculously stressful, as I found out my debit card had been cancelled and therefore had no access to cash. This is where Irish angel of the trip #2 came into play (angel #1 was a guy in a grocery story that waved the 10 euro minimum for cards for me in order to buy dinner). Angel #2 was the manager at my hostel. He acted as an ATM and refunded me 30 euro for the hostel in cash. I am proud to say that I was able to spend 3 days in Cork on 30e cash.

 View from my hostel

I took a day trip to Bandon for a few hours to see the country side. This is where I realized what Ireland was for me:

Ireland, the place I want to leave, but also stay. It is a cool place to visit, sure, but I either need less time for a WOOFing job. The south is better than the north and the tiny towns in the countryside are charming. I can see myself coming back here, only to hike and WOOF. Bandon is a town one can easily become a local-- the people are super sweet and are constantly running into people they know. I could get comfortable here. I love the multi-colored houses, the fact I could not find the tourist office and the river.

So thank you Mitch, for energizing me about Ireland. I enjoyed the country and may return, but now, onto the next grand adventure: 4 weeks travelling with Stephanie and Sandy.

To Paris, and Beyond

     Well here we are, I'm leaving Bordeaux in an hour and a half. I can't believe it. This last week was certifiably perfect. Many things on my bucket list were checked off, many friends were seen and many more memories were made.

End of the Year picnic chez Marisol

These people

Adrianna, me and Lea on top of Le Tour Pey Berland

Matthis: the aspiring chef

Oh no Justin, you look too American to be hanging out with us

Les filles

La Bourse: favorite building at night, period.

      I am completely upset that my experience here is over but at the same time utterly stoked to go traveling with Stephanie for 4 weeks.  Its a weird mix of emotion, but I know I am sad only because this meant so much more to me than I thought it would. I feel at home in Europe.

     As for the next adventures, I'm headed to Paris/Andeville today to see Alizee and the Portiers. Then to Ireland (Dublin and Cork) tomorrow to see Bridget Scruggs in Dublin and then Cork to taste some solo-traveling.

    Saturday the 21st, I go to London to meet up with Steph and Sandy to begin the crazy adventure of hitting 5 countries in 4 weeks. Go us.

   So, I will probably write again from a different country, after leaving all what has becoming familiar to me in Bordeaux behind. When I return, none of my CA friends will be here. The vibe will be different. But that is what life is like, right? Readjustment and continuation.

    A bientot!

Reflections.

    Wow, less than 1 week to go for actual study abroad. I know I have many more adventures ahead of me in the next 5 weeks, but it still makes me sad that the core of my being here--studying abroad and being in a program--is rapidly coming to an end.
    I feel sort of how I felt on the Mykonos ferry ride home--like I want to freeze frame time right now. I don't want to leave and although there are things I miss about home and many things to look forward to, I can't shake the feeling that my time here is not done.
    And maybe it's not. I know I will be back. I know my journey to fluency is not over and I know that this is a place that has really made me happy and fulfilled. Sure, there are things that I wanted to happen that didnt--but maybe the sappy dream of going on a date with an attractive French man that carries either a messenger bag or a Longchamp Homme bag, walking by the Grand Théàtre with him and then walking along the river, sharing a bottle of wine and laughing was a bit lofty.
     And there are plenty of things that did happen that I wanted. I gained a certain level of fluency, I did well in classes, I have a French friends, I integrated into my host family, and maybe most importantly, I figured out what some of my passions are and how to turn that into a career path (hello world development!).
     And of course, there were things that happened I didn't expect--not traveling as much as I thought I was going to, but really getting to know Bordeaux, finding a group of California friends that I would not be able to live without, and much more.
    I gotta say, I learned a ton this trip (academically and socially) that I want to hold on to. Things like the language, the knowledge of a good bottle of wine, closeness with my host family, french bread and wine, who I am and what I don't want to hold onto about my personality, the essential qualities that a guy has to have. I learned life--and an entirely different one at that. One of groundlessness, of fear, of excitement, and of anxiety. A life I knew I wanted to find, and a life I have lived.
    So thank you, Bordeaux, thank you France, thank you experience.
    But what am I doing? I still have 3 days here--gotta life it up and squeeze it for all it's worth. What up sunrise over the river?

See those flags over there? They signify our victory.

      So, because classes are over and I only have one actual final (the other is a 5 page paper on the Sociologist Bourdieu urg), Lea and I decided to cross another thing off our bucket list: bike ride through Bordeaux wine country.

      Adrianna and Sandy looked at us like we were crazy when we suggested we do this, so it ended up just being the (true) Davis gals, without a map, without a destination, and rented bikes. Recipe for disaster? You'd think.

      We set out following signs to the Médoc, the wine region my parents and I visited, just because we knew there was countryside out there. About an hour in, we realized we were still in the semi-city, but were so excited to be on bikes again, we didn't care. As we continued, we started getting a little cocky with our biking skills (note: we are good at biking in Davis, we have been out of practice for almost 5 months now), and, going up a curb, Lea fell. Now, Lea's fall was in slow-mo for me and to this day, I have no idea how she managed to get scrapped up on her right knee, left calf, right thigh, left foot. Alas, she survived like a trooper. We bandaged her up with some purell and band-aids and continued down the road.

      We found a cute little unnamed town to have lunch in. Our lunch consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, fruit snacks, bad oranges, and 1.09€ wine. Yes, 1.09€. It was gross and just got worse with time to breathe. So it was realllly bad. We only finished an eighth of it, together.

      We were going to take the train home from this little town as Lea's knee was swelling and bruising up, but the next train wasn't for 2 hours, so we effectively went train station hopping until we found a train that was coming in a half hour or so. Which put us 3 towns up, sore, tired, and bruised. The stretch between nameless town #2 and Margaux, what ended up being our final stop, took forever and we kept going through other nameless towns until we saw "the flags of victory" which Lea claimed marked Margaux (she had no idea)...and re-claimed every time she saw any flag on a building. Hence the title.

    Finally, the flags did signify victory and we rolled up to the Margaux station 20 mins before the train. The train was far from the TGV and far from delux. It was red, one car, and crusty. Alas, we did not care and crashed on it for the hour ride back.

     Back in Bordeaux centre, we returned our bikes and sought out the most desired thing of the day: ice cold cokes. So, after 28.5 km of riding, this day may have not been the most planned out, or the most efficient, or the most adventurous, but it was a day that I will remember, at least for how good that coke tasted at the end of it.

Snippits of Inspiration

Ok so the last 36 hours of Greece were completely different, completely amazing, and completely not what I was expecting.

So after a night of music, memories and stories, we let ourselves sleep in. Then I met up with Lia D'angelo's cousins, Mary and Murphy, who are travelling around the world. I met them both last summer during the D'angelo family vacation to Pinecrest, which is also where they hatched their master plan. We just happened to overlap in Athens and met for coffee. The stories they told, the changes they've made and the things they've seen were a complete inspiration to me. They literally booked 3 flights: San Francisco-New Zealand, Thailand-Greece and London-San Francisco. Unreal how cool that is. They both quit jobs, packed up and left. They are ultimately living the romantic dream I've always had--and teaching me how to do it.

As if that wasn't enough inspiration for that day, we met up with Chris, the guy who had travelled around India by himself for 3 months. We ended up talking for a few hours on the beach about the definition of education, what we are both going to do with our lives and what travel is. It was so cool to hear his stories and to get a totally fresh perspective on life. He didn't go to college, he moved to Oregon to be in a band, he was simply not satisfied with his life so he packed up and left to India. Wow. It was so neat, so out there and so what I want to do now.

As I killed a night in the airport later that day (my flight was at some ungodly hour like 4am), I became completely overwhelmed. I wanted to go to every country in the world, all at once. I did not want to go back to Bordeaux. A crazy little part of me wanted to walk out of the airport and hop onto Mary and Murphy's next leg: Istanbul. I wanted to pack up and leave. No thoughts, no regrets, no money.

It was the biggest moment of clarity I've ever had. I am going to travel when I graduate from college--and hopefully for an undetermined amount of time. I want to live that spontaneous life that I have always dreamed about but never knew if it would happen or not. I was overwhelmed, awestruck and scared. I was mad, sad, excited and nervous. In the slightly cheesy but totally appropriate words of Alanis Morissette: The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more than I could handle. The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down.

So basically, it comes down to this: I love hearing travel stories--and not just abroad stories (although those are pretty great as well), but real, roughing it, not Western-Europe stories. Tales of India, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand. I cannot wait to make some stories of my own. It is exactly how Adrianna put it--there is a flame in my eye now. I don't want to go home. I want to travel and see parts of Europe I said I wanted to visit--Istanbul, Lisbon and Budapest. I don't want to leave France without doing what I was going to do: become fluent, see the non-typical destinations, travel on a minimal budget. Live.

Maybe I will. No, scratch that. I WILL do this. I WILL experience what I set off to experience. I want to stay, I want to have wonder in my eyes always. I need it. There is so much world to see and I have seen the countries that are the most similar. I want to be in awe, I want to have my eyes opened by places in India where people are still burned to clean their souls, where you take 48 hour train rides and find comradery with people who don't speak the same languages, where 7 year old Cambodian girls tell you off in minimal English. Where right is not right and left is not left; where whosits and whatsits live together. Where awe and bewilderment are comment. Where life truly exists. Take me there.

Gyros, Spanikopita, Moussaka and Mythos: Greece 2011

So I went to this country. It is called Greece, and it is pretty cool. You should visit it sometime.

Spring Break 2011 started out as any other spring break--spending the night in the Paris airport with Sandy and Adrianna for a 7am flight, getting to Greece with no means of communication with Lea, and staying in an apartment in the middle of Athens. Typical times. No, I kid. I know that this spring break started and ended unlike any other break I've had in my life.

We spent the first 4 days in Athens, seeing some really old stuff like the Parthenon and Zeus' temple, drinking Ouzo and doing some shopping in the flea markets. It was wonderful having an apartment free of charge thanks to Lea, and not to mention having someone who is fluent in Greek to help us out. Lea, we owe the success of this vacation to you! We were able to make many meals, drink lots of wine, and eat a ton of spanikopita (a spinach-feta cheese-filo dough pastery) together.

Athens is unlike any city I've ever seen. It looks like someone was playing the Sims and went crazy on making houses that look the same. I've never experienced such urban sprawl. My favorite part was going up the telephonique to see a church and a panoramic view of the whole city...at sunset. It was such a highlight and was only made better when we went back to the apartment to reheat some traditional Greek food that Lea's grandma bought us--complete with moussaka, Greek salad and sirfried beans. Yum!

 Urban. Sprawl. (Made better by the sun)

Lea, Coral, Sandy, Me, Adrianna

Thursday morning we boarded a ferry to Mykonos at 7h15 am, not knowing that it was going to be the roughest 6 hour ferry ride known to man. We luckily got first class tickets because the rest was sold out and were able to have couches the whole time. Without those couches and that carpeted floor, I don't know what we would've done. It was an orchestra of people getting sick, crying and waves splashing up on the bow of the ship. A baby was being passed between family members as everyone started getting sick, and eventually had to be passed to a stranger because there was no one left. The baby was as happy as can be. About 3 hours into this, the announcement was made that the "ship was experiencing bad weather and that the sun deck was now closed". Thanks for the warning, I really wanted to be up on the top of the ship getting pummeled by waves.

The sea finally did calm down and we made it to Mykonos to find our "hostel". Now, as a back story, I had no idea what I was booking when we left for Mykonos. On Hostelworld, it was called "Paradise Beach Resort Camping". Huh? It turns out that it is a resort, it does have camping but it also has resort-esque rooms. For 15€ a night each, we got one of those said rooms and a free breakfast and couldn't be happier. Made the whole ferry-ride fiasco worth it--and more.

The resort rented 2-person ATV's for only 15€ per 24 hours. It was a no-brainer! What better way to explore a Greek island than bad-assing your way around it on an ATV? We went pretty much around Mykonos. We climbed a mountain to a light house and some crazy rock structures, we saw bright blue waters contrasted against crisp white houses, we herded sheep with our vehicles.

One of the ATV's ran out of gas. We went to the gas station and the guy gave us gas from a plastic water bottle. Ohhhhh Mykonos. He was also laughing at us.

After a lunch and a beer on the beach, we got ready to hit the town. But, it was Good Friday and everyone was going to midnight mass. But don't worry, our taxi driver reassured us that after church was over, everyone would be out. Sure enough, around 2am, the bars and clubs were PACKED. That didn't stop us though, from hanging out with only Americans (2 from Los Gatos...weird) and successfully not meeting any Greeks. Oh well. We had fun.

The people who live on the island are more touchy than in Athens or France. Men will grab your arm as you talk to them or ask them for directions, and it is not creepy. That is just they way they act. Such a contrast to what we are all used to.

The next morning, Lea surprised us and island jumped to see us for 4 hours. What a sweetheart! We spent the day getting our stuff packed, eating breakfast and trying to show Lea the town, even though our ferry was in the morning. Sad goodbyes were said to Lea as she got off the first ferry stop to reunite with her family. Our ferry continued and we headed to Zeus hostel (appropriate name, right?) for the night.

The rest of the Greece trip (all 36 hours of it) had a completely different vibe from the first 6 days, so I'm going to do a different post about it.