Dave’s Euro Trip!

Following more advice from my new Spanish friend Anna, I have been happily hopping along the north coast of Spain.  Two days ago, I arrived in a small town called Ondarroa, situated right on the coast with a beautiful harbor and sweeping beaches (starting to become a familiar sight up here!)  They were in the middle of a crazy festival, as are many cities, so there were no hotels or hostels free.  No problem, I thought.  I will just sleep on the beach!  I relaxed with a book and stretched out, only to notice some ominous looking storm clouds moving in.  Luckily, just before it started pouring, I met a fellow CouchSurfer named Sara on the beach.  Originally from Austria, she had been living in Spain for the past year and was traveling around solo just as I was.  She had a tent at a nearby campsite so she invited me to take shelter for the night.  What a lifesaver.  The next day I bought her breakfast, and we had a great day of walking around town enjoying the festivites. 

Everyone in Ondarroa is extremely patriotic, but not to Spain.  They are all part of the “Pais Vasco” (Basque Country) and they are very enthusiastic about wanting independence from Spain.  They all speak Spanish but their primary language is Basque, which has no known origins and is definitely not Latin-based.  All the words have an X in them, and usually look something like PINCXHOZ.  So generally I would have no idea what any signs or menus would say, unless they also provided the Spanish which is somewhat rare.  I will have to do some research as well, because a lot of people were chanting things about “amnesty” and wearing shirts with peoples faces on them.  Perhaps there are some Basque political prisoners being held somewhere… I really wish I had talked to someone and asked, but I was enjoying just observing like a fly on the wall.

Last night, I took a train further northwest to a town called Mundaka, which is famous for a wave that surfers come from all over the world to ride.  It is called the “ola izquierda” and supposedly you can ride it for 300 meters straight in ideal conditions.   Going to check that out, and probably enjoy some local seafood before heading to Bilbao tomorrow.  There is yet another big festival there, as well as the Guggenheim museum. 

Another note… everyone in these little towns is SO NICE.  I had to take 3 different buses and a train to get to Mundaka, and every time I made a connection, I had at least 2 or 3 people come up to me and offer to help guide me in the right direction.  One guy went out of his way to walk me to the train station, and the bus driver one time actually strayed from his normal route to drop me off in a more convenient place.  I couldn’t believe it.  In Mundaka, I wandered around forever looking for a cheap hotel, only to find everything was either full or very expensive.  Around 11pm, some guy with very good vision must have noticed the frustrated look on my face, because he shouted at me from a block away.  At first my instinct was to ignore him (thinking back to crazy crackheads in SF shouting at me from a block away) but I soon realized that he was actually offering help.  Taking my map in his hands, he guided me to a cheap youth hostel run by a very friendly man who is actually letting me use his laptop to write this right now!

Internet has been scarce, so this might be my last update before I head back.  Thanks to everyone who has been sending me mail, and sorry for not being able to write more personal messages back.  I promise to have lots more time to talk when I get back.

-d

I’ve spent the last three nights in a small city called San Sebastian, on the northern coast of Spain.  I came here on the advice of Helena, my short-term sister in Barcelona, who informed me that it would be a festival week.  What good advice that was.  This week is called Semana Grande (The Great Week) and the whole city goes completely nuts, exploding with food, music, and sangria flowing like a river.

They have a traditional way of eating here which is a food-lover’s dream.  Every bar in town has its counter completely filled with various bite-sized snacks called Pinchos.  Some examples of things I tried:

• Skewer of sauteed octopus tentacles
• Gazpacho in a shot glass with small square of quail egg cooked in a tortilla
• Bruschetta with goat cheese, spicy roasted pepper, and anchovies

You just eat what you want, right off of the counter, and wash it down with some beer or sangria.  When you are done, you just tell the bartender what you ate, pay up, and move on to the next bar.  It’s such a great idea for those of us who are constantly grazing; I wish it existed elsewhere.

The city itself is so beautiful.  There are giant sweeping beaches, with tall hills on either side that offer amazing panoramic views of everything.  I can’t post pictures from here, so you will have to use your imagination for now.

Last night, I wandered around the beach with my drum and a backpack full of beer.  I ended up wandering into an open-air dance club right on the beach.  After dancing a bit, I decided to pull out my drum and play along with the music.  Someone from the club noticed, and instead of asking me to desist, he actually put a microphone on my drum, piping my tiny aluminum djembe’s beat into the giant sound system.  Pretty soon, there was a conga line of drunken Spaniards snaking around me like some ritualistic Amazonian dance.  My hands and fingers are quite bruised today, but it was certainly worth it.

I have four more days until I have to be in Bilbao to catch a connecting flight to London.  Currently trying to decide how to spend that time… considering hopping on a random train to some small town in between.

So originally I was only going to stay 3 days here, but it has turned into over a week.  I found a really amazing person named Anna to be my couchsurfing host, and I’ve been spending lots of time with her and her friends this week.  As usual, we cooked a lot of meals together and I taught Anna and her sister Helena how to make my famous “pyrotechnic pineapple” dessert.

We are off tonight to some place further south to meet up wtih a group of friends and go for a day hike.  Then I am off to the northern coast to indulge in the gastronomic delights of San Sebastian.  I decided to stay in Spain as long as possible, because I am enjoying speaking Spanish so much.  I booked a flight back to London on the 20th, then I fly back to the states on the 21st.

Here are some pics of Barcelona, including Gaudi’s masterpiece “La Sagrada Familia”, a beach couchsurfing party (my host Anna is to my right in the picture), a lot of dinner pictures, drinking Sangria on the beach, etc.

http://picasaweb.google.com/eurodave2008

No matter how many trips one has taken, or how many travel books one has read, there are always lessons to be learned on the road.  I’d like to take a brief intermission from my usual narriative to share some lessons I’ve learned so far, and some stories to go with them.

Lesson 1: Swiss Chocolate melts just as easily as any other.  Especially when left inside one’s backpack in direct sunlight on a hot day in Southern France.  While it was certainly a new and exciting experience to eat chocolate off of my iPod, I can’t imagine that it’s good for the electronics inside.

Lesson 2: Super glue works wonders on wounded feet.  After hiking the Cinque Terre coastal footpath in Italy for many kilometers in my sandals, I had quite a few blisters and cuts on my feet.  The band-aids kept slipping off, and I eventually ran out.  Then another backpacker showed me that you can just super-glue the wound shut!  Apparently this is what they do in hospitals if the wound isn’t bad enough to warrant stitches.  It worked like a charm.  A short time after the wound heals, the super glue just falls off like a scab.

Lesson 3: Never take your eyes off your belongings, even in the comfort of “first class”.  For the faint of heart, let me just say that this story has a happy ending.  I was leaving Paris on a train with very few people.  One of the perks of my EuroRail pass is that it gets me into the first class cabin on any train, so I was enjoying the un-crowdedness and large seats by putting my feet up in front of me, spreading out my books and journal on the table, with my backpack on the aisle seat next to me.  I heard a voice from behind:

Overly Friendly Man: Bon voyage!

Me: Oh… er… no parle bien Frances.

Friendly: Ahh, Inglesh?  Where do you go?

(I gestured to the open page in my Lonely Planet guidebook on the table in front of me)

Friendly: Ahh, Bordeaux!  Very beautiful!  Big cathedral, you must see!

Me: Ah, merci.  Thank you.  Very nice meeting you!

Friendly: You… family… France?

(Five minutes or so of broken conversation, which kept getting awkwardly extended every time I put my nose back in the book and the man kept talking to me from behind my seat.  Then…)

Friendly: You… write your email?

He handed me a piece of paper and a pen.  I had no idea what he would want my email address for.  Did he want to send me his personal travel tips?  Sell my email address to a spammer?  I just wanted to end the conversation, so I turned to the table, and scribbled down one of my junk email addresses.  I turned back to Friendly Man and handed him the paper.

Friendly: Merci!  Bon voyage!

And with that, he turned and walked away.  How strange, I thought, turning back to my book.  Five minutes later, I reached over to my backpack to grab something out of the top compartment, and I noticed an empty space.  And in that empty space should have been my brand new 12 megapixel Canon Digital Rebel xsi camera.  My heart sank, as it suddenly occurred to me what had just taken place.  I shot up out of my seat, searching in vain all around me for what I knew was now in some stranger’s possession.

A train employee was emptying a trash bin nearby.  She didn’t speak any English, so I put on a performance of which any world-class mime would be envious, describing the theft that had just taken place.  Her expression turned to a mixture of sympathy and franticness (matching mine) and for a few moments, we both just stood there uttering frustrated sounds such as “ehh”, “ummm” and “ahhhh”.  Then she pointed to the other end of the train and said “con-duc-tor!”.

Worth a try, I thought.  I flung my bag over my shoulder, and sprinted down the aisle, moving from car to car until I found a few conductors talking at the other end of the train.  Again, not much English was spoken between the four of them, but I managed to get my point across, describing my camera, and the Overly Friendly Man who snatched it.  To my pleasant surprise, the conductors sprang into action like a special police task force.  Motioning for me to follow, they began to comb the upper and lower cabins of each train car, occasionally looking back at me to see if I recognized the perpetrator.

As we drew nearer to the other end of the train I was beginning to lose hope.  Surely this man was an a camera snatching artist, as he managed to reach into my bag and grab a rather bulky camera case while I was just inches away.  I envisioned that my camera was stashed discretely in some dark corner of the train, to be retrieved later when the thief was ready to make his get-away.

NOT SO!  To my astonishment, I suddenly saw Overly Friendly Man surrounded by the conductors ahead of me, camera in hand!  He turned it over quickly, and made several motions of innocence with his hands, explaining very unconvincingly how he had “just found it sitting there” on the other side of the train.

The conductor picked up a phone to arrange for the police to meet us at the next station, but the train stopped there only a minute later and no police were there waiting.  Friendly man casually walked off, explaining how this was his stop, and he would love to stay around and chat about the camera that he of course did not steal, but he had to be getting home.  The conductors tried in vain to verbally detain him, but were powerless to do anything else.  So he got away.

In any case, the important thing is that I didn’t lose my camera or more importantly the 1,500 precious memories stored on it thus far.  If I had discovered it missing any more than two minutes later, Friendly Man would have walked right off the train with it.

This was a good lesson to learn right before coming to Barcelona, which I have been hearing is the pick-pocketing capital of the world.  I’m not about to adopt a “trust  no one” attitude, but I will certainly exercise a bit more caution the next time an Overly Friendly Person develops a sudden and persistent interest in my travel itinerary.

Married on July 31st, followed by the craziest wedding party ever.  After staying up til 5am to catch the train the night before, and sleeping on and off for a few hours on the way to Perpignan, it took me a whole lot of caffeine to keep me awake and dancing til 6:30am with the rest of the French partygoers.  But I did it!  Despite my lack of French speaking, I had such a great time.  Many people spoke English, and those who did not had no problem communicating with me in simplified expressions, hand gestures, and occasionally in Spanish.  I am off to Barcelona next!

I ate snails!  They were pretty tasty, served in their shells with some kind of buttery pesto sauce.  Some of them put up a good fight as I tried to extricate them from their shells, even though I was armed with utensils that looked like medieval torture devices. 

Yesterday I took a bike tour of the city, from the same company “Fat Tire” that I used in Berlin.  It was a great way to see the city, and check off a lot of the sights all at once.  We got a lot of historical background on some of the older streets and plazas in the city, from public guillotine sites used during the French Revolution, to the streets where the Allied Troops marched through when Paris was liberated from Nazi control.  Again, I was reminded of stories my grandfather told me about WW II.  He was among those troops marching through Paris, and a little girl ran up to him and handed him a small figurine of Napoleon, a token of thanks which he kept on the windowsill in the living room.

I posted a message in the couchsurfing forum for Paris that I was traveling solo, and looking for other solo travelers to meet up with.  Yesterday I got a response from a fellow CSer named Jules who is from Berlin.  We met up in a park in the afternoon, and sat and watched a drum and dance performance put on by a group of rhythmically-gifted individuals from Sierra Leone.  Then, remembering some advice from Anna about how to truly enjoy a relaxing day in Paris, I suggested we go to the store.  We brought a whole heap of cheese, wine, and bread back to the park, and slowly grazed while enjoying the music.  All the stories I heard about the bread in France were indeed true.  It was so wonderfully crispy-crunchy on the outside, and perfectly soft on the inside.  And oh how I wish we could get giant hunks of delicious brie for €1.50 in the states.

Today, Jules and I are going to meet up and explore the “Catacombs” of Paris.  Apparently long ago the cemetaries here were overcrowded and they exhumed thousands of skeletons and stuffed them into underground tunnels which you can now walk through.  Lonely Planet calls it “creepy, but fascinating”.  After that, we are going to try and check out the Tour de France.  The final stretch is running right through Paris so hopefully we will be able to catch a glimpse.

-d

Hello friends…

I am writing from the lobby of a youth hostel in the historic French town Besançon.  Just crossed the Switzerland-France border earlier today.

I ended up spending four nights in the Swiss town Gryon, high up in the Alps.  The hostel there is wonderful, and many of the occupants were “long termers” who come back every summer and stay for weeks or even months.  I can understand why; it was paradise.

My days were spent going for beautiful hikes in the mountains, along rivers, up mountain-sides, and next to sweeping views of lush valleys.  I love the Alps.  I made some friends with some fellow hostelers who shared my same passion for hiking, and funny enough several of them were from California.  We cooked some nice group dinners in the hostel kitchen, including the first Mexican food I have had in over a month!  One guy in the hostel is from Mexico and he made the best ceviche I have ever tasted.  Nights involved drinking wine by a bonfire, playing my drum along with singing and guitar-playing travelers, and enjoying the crisp Alpine breeze.

It was hard to pull myself away from Gryon, but JB’s wedding is coming up soon and I want to get a good taste of France!  Not much seems to be happening in this town–I picked it due to its proximity to the border.  I think tomorrow I will take the high speed train to Paris.  Probably will skip most of the southern cities, as I have heard they are overrun with tourists, overpriced, and crowded.

So far Switzerland might be my favorite country of all.  Between the great outdoor activities, the incredibly friendly people, the richest chocolate I have ever tasted, and cheese that smells like the feet of angels, I was one happy Dave.

Just wanted to share some pictures from a hike I took in the Swiss Alps the other day.  Picture a small
trail snaking through gigantic snow-capped mountains, with sweeping
panoramic views of valleys and towns below… small farms here and
there with herds of cows grazing, their cowbells ringing loudly
together like a symphony of windchimes.  I hiked for five hours, on this incredible trail that Bettina recommended to me, and it was so much better than any packaged tour I could have arranged on my own.  The only people I saw along the way were older Swiss hikers.  Not a fanny pack or guidebook in sight.

Next, I will be heading to a small town in the Alps called Gryon, which was enthusiastically recommended to me by Jocelyn and Jerica who both have stayed there.  There is a hostel which faces the mountains, and offers a very home-like atmosphere with a fireplace, large communal kitchen, and has wine and chocolate tastings every night.  They also arrange camping trips, rock climbing, and paragliding in case I get bored of just sitting and appreciating the nature.

After that, I will make my way over to France.  I got a few recommendations of coastal towns to visit in the south on my way to Perpignan.

Cheers!

Dave

Greetings from Interlaken, a beautiful small town nestled between two enormous lakes and surrounded by mountains. I am couchsurfing with a local journalist named Bettina who met me at the train station yesterday. She went to work, and it’s raining this morning, so I decided to post some photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/eurodave2008

Some hilights from the last week or so:

• Eating the best pizza in the world, in Naples, from a pizzaria that has been open since 1870.
• Hanging out in a plaza in Naples late at night with a girl Giovanna that works at the hostel and could translate Italian for me. Making several Italian friends who gave me lots of travel advice.
• Wandering through the ruins of Pompeii, an ancient city which was frozen in time when it was buried under a blanket of ash and lava in 79 AD following the eruption of Mt Vesuvius.
• Taking a night train from Naples to Riomagiorre, the first of five coastal towns that comprise the “Cinque Terre”. Sleeping on the street, right next to the ocean, until the hostel opened up.
• Breathtaking views of coastal towns and cliffs, hiking on the Cinque Terre footpaths
• Playing my aluminum djembe (which I bought in Naples) on the beach at night.
• Cooking dinner for a group of eight in Cinque Terre. First good serving of veggies in quite a while. Pasta with mushrooms, spinach, garlic, and peppers served with the finest local boxed wine. Check out a video that my friend Hunter made, documenting the occasion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZ-WJiSCxY
• Italian espresso and gelato every day
• Arriving in Interlaken, Switzerland, marveling at the nature, the physically-fit older people, and the bilingual small children
• Being greeted by my incredibly kind couchsurfing host Bettina who is a local journalist. Cooking dinner together, learning about all of her favorite mountain hikes (which I will explore once it stops raining).

Still trying to decide if I should splurge on skydiving or bungee jumping… hmm…

After overdosing on museums, churches, and crowds of tourists, I was starting to feel burned out.  I talked to some people in my hostel in Naples and they recommended I go to the island of Ischia which is a one hour ferry ride off the coast.  What a good idea that was.  Here’s a brief recap:

Day 1: Arrived at the hostel on the island, run by three Italian brothers.  Will have to post some pictures soon because words won’t do it justice.  The island is mostly a big hill/mountain getting steeper as you go further inland.  The hostel is perched with a beautiful view of the mountain and the houses built right into it, and you can see the sunset and the ocean from the terrace on top.  The brothers have a family restaurant, and they give people in the hostel a free ride there at night if they want to go.  So a group of eight of us went.   The food was so good… I sampled a bunch of different Italian foods, made by the brothers’ mom, and lots of good wine.  Nice bonding experience with the others in the hostel as well.  At night, I went down to the beach with a few of my new friends with a guitar from the hostel, and a small metal djembe that I bought in Naples.  We had a beach jam session, singing horribly off-key and taking turns strumming the guitar randomly (nobody knew how to play).  Dipped my feet into the ocean which was as warm as bath water.

Day 2: Took a trip to some natural hot springs with some of my friends from the hostel.  We decended some steep steps down a cliff, and saw the springs… an oasis of emerald colored water, with smooth round rocks dotting the bottom.  The ‘hot’ end of the springs was marked with a warning sign in seven languages, and with good cause.  Somebody actually was making hard boiled eggs in it.  We positioned ourselves at a safe distance where hot currents from the springs mixed with cool currents from the sea in a delightful tango of temperatures.  We spent several hours there, soaking, swimming, floating around, and generally just being blissful.  Went back to the hostel, fell asleep in a hammock, read for a few hours, and went out to dinner at the brothers’ restaurant again.

Day 3: Woke up early, hiked up to the top of the island mountain, which used to be a volcano.  It was about an hour of steep climbing, but it was worth it for the view: a 360 degree sweeping vista of the island, mainland Naples, and the whole bay.  After the hike back down, we rewarded ourselves with some lunch, big bottles of Italian beer, and a dip in the sea.  After another nap, went out to a different restaurant with some people.  Got a delicious seafood rissotto, tasty white wine, and finished it off with tiramisu.

It was a great vacation from the vacation, and it made me realize that traveling for me has to be a lot more than crossing things off the ‘must see’ list.  I can certainly appreciate man-made things such as castles, bridges, and even the most beautiful sculptures, but seeing them will never be as personally rewarding for me as something so simple as sitting on a beach staring off into the ocean.

Had a good day in Naples today, wandering around with a friend I met at the hostel.  Taking the train up to La Spezia today, which is a jumping-off point for Cinque Terre: Five coastal towns in Italy connected by coastal foot paths with incredible views of the sea.  Will be spending three nights there before heading up to Switzerland.

In a few days, it will be the one-month mark of my trip.  It has flown by, but I am also getting homesick some times.  I’d love to hear some updates from all of you, my dear readers!  And if anyone in San Francisco knows a way to send me a Tacqueria Chile Verde burrito via an overnight courrier service, I will be your best friend forever.  There is no mexican food anywhere and it’s killing me!

Ciaoooo…