adventure

It’s an overcast Tuesday. We awoke in the nick of time to reserve our room for tonight. Stacy wanted to see gardens, but for me, I plan to spend this overcast day getting some things done–a haircut. What a “perfect” day to get a haircut. After putzing around for a bit I ventured downstairs to ask for a cool place to get my hairs snipped. Mamood, the desk attendant, recommended his stylist to me. His name was Gabriel and he owned a shop about 1 minutes walk down the way. Haircuts here, says Mamood, cost 1400ptas, which is pretty good for around here…

Today was like any other at Balmer’s…except for the damn rain. This weather may put a damper on my plans to go rock climbing. I got up anyway and had some breakfast by myself since Stacey, Dave, and Ketan went into the mountains early this morning. I didn’t go with them so I could go climbing—it would really suck if I miss out on climbing…

We woke up to a typical European breakfast of rolls with butter and some wonderful coffee. I was really groggy since we woke up at the last minute, but I still managed to meet up with four really sweet girls, and of course—cuties! I gave them the address of a cool place to stay in Venice. We finished up our eats and carried ourselves off to the Uffici…

No story could sum up today’s activity. As I’ve stated before, or maybe not, but I’ll say it now: One of the best ways to get to know a city is to walk around using the map as infrequently as possible. This game doesn’t making getting to any particular place any simpler, but it really yields an extremely accurate overall impression of a city’s ambience—good, bad, and ugly. Because of its labyrinthian network of streets and canals, Venezia was not one of the easiest cities in which to do this. But why not? We had time to kill…

I slept surprisingly well on the 9-hour ride in 2nd class, however, I was still anxious to search München for what we’d call home for the next two adventure-filled days. The tourist office didn’t open until 11:00 AM (it is Sunday, remember?) We managed to kill some time in a small pub just down the street from the terminal. Hmmmm, we really are in Germany, aren’t we?! It is Sunday–the tourist office doesn’t open till late morning, but the pubs have been open since the crack of dawn! We ate a plate of frankfurters, sauerkraut, and some mineral water…

After staying up late chatting with Stacey last night, our day started out somewhat slowly. We even received a call from the front desk early this morning. They first asked (what seemed like) for us to quiet down in the native language. We obviously had no idea what the party on the other side of the line was saying. Therefore, the kind manager, unable to express his wishes to his boisterous western patrons, had nothing left to do but make the universally known “shhhhhhh” sound into the phone. Finally, his intentions were quite clear to me. We got the point…

It was Wednesday, May 31 when our trip began with a luxurious ride to Newark, New Jersey in the ’84 Buick Skyhawk furnished with a cornucopia of foodstuffs from Mom. What a car! What a ride! What a day! This will be the last ride in the ‘Hawk for at least seven weeks. When in Newark, we were greeted at the jetway leading to a Boeing Vertol 747 by the most beautiful French flight attendants. I was directed to my seat by one of these lovely ladies in French. It was then and only then that I realized or even considered…