He Ain't Heavy

"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California"--Edward Abbey

Well my brother visited me last week with his friend Walker and despite my own opinions constantly being voiced, my brother is in love with LA and California. The main point of this post is to show ya’ll some pictures because recounting the actual events of the week my brother and his friend Walker were here will probably bore you. I’ll give you a short rundown so the pics make sense then limit myself to captions, I promise :)

Thursday
-Pick up rental car at 6, ‘move in’ to my apartment and hang with my new roomie Erin, and then pick up boys at 11 pm ish cause of flight troubles. Then I took the boys to In N Out, the California fast food chain that most are obsessed with. There’s one right by the airport where people go to watch planes take off sometimes.

Friday
-Drive to Escondido, (with minor detours) eat at macaroni grill, a chain with some enjoyable dishes, as I’m sure all of you know. What can I say; I’m a sucker for cheese and pasta. Drop the boys at the skate park and check into the Holiday inn.

Saturday
-More of the same, skating, although during the middle of the day there is a no skating time so we went to a farmers market and an orange orchard (grove, farm?) and picked oranges then skated more.

"California is a fine place to live—if you happen to be an orange."--Fred Allen

Sunday
-The boys got to skate with almost every professional in-line skater on the west coast, so from here on basically no matter what I did I could guarantee them having a good trip. Then I took them for awesome Mexican food. It was incredible.

Walker with his Carne Asada burrito, his standard order


Will drinking horchata, a cinnamon-y rice milk drink. Delicious.

Monday
-Moving! I rented a 10’ uhaul truck and we moved my stuff one block from my boyfriends’ place to my new place. Low point of the day, getting yelled at in Spanish by a guy upon a not even close to a collision incident; highpoint was the sound of the ice cream cart guy—one dollar ice cream bars=mmmm.

Tuesday
-Skating again, plus leftover shrimp and traffic. Also that night we went to my favorite Chinese place ever, hooray for slippery shrimp!

Will sporting his high class elbow pads with Walker in the background

Wednesday
-Six flags, not much more to say. We got handed a half off coupon, so that was cool. And then leftover Chinese and push pops for dessert, meal of champions. Courtney arrived that day, and we all watched the Olympics with lots of commentary whenever a McCain add came on :)

Batboy looking pensive with his cape blowing in the wind

Batboy's neon shoelaces blind his opponents so that he can karate chop them

California sunsets, made beautiful by smog

Thursday
-Lunch at my favorite sushi place in Beverly Hills. We almost didn’t make it because of traffic. Apparently business lunches make everything miserable in that area but I finally scored a parking space. Courtney, will and I shared some awesome sushi and Walker got some chicken teriyaki (thank goodness they had it, I had a momentary panic attack at being informed of his dislike of all seafood). Then we walked around rodeo drive to see how the other 16th of the population lives and we saw some expensive cars, which was exciting for the boys. Then we went to Scoops, an amazing gelato place where they have flavors like white grape peach, whiskey apricot, and apple pie. That night we had a bunch of people over to heckle the Olympics and such; good times.

Shenanigans

Courtney thinks this is the perfect photo because it perfectly embodies each boy's personality

Friday
-5 am got up and headed for the airport

I was soo glad to not have to drive in LA anymore , and to be able to decorate my place. I'll put up photos when my brown and turquoise paradise of a room is complete!

What a beach vacation is SUPPOSED to look like

Whew! It’s been a while, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, my ridiculously long bus ride. We took a night bus and both got very little sleep and then once we arrived in the city of Zagreb we immediately got on a bus (or was it a train, hmmm, Lena?) to Zadar, a city on the coast, and then another bus to the small fishing village where our hotel was. (In total, about 24 hours of travel) We had no idea what the place would be like because we had booked in a rush in Switzerland, but it was in the middle of nowhere.

We got there, got false directions, walked a mile with our bags in the wrong direction (curse you watering you garden lady, you do not know the area within 800 meters of your house) walked back to the bus stop, asked at a restaurant and walked past said restaurant around a corner and there it was. It was a cute set of beachy, whitewashed buildings and we immediately dropped our bags donned swimsuits and went down to the beach. We had our own private gravel beach and the water was sooooo warm because of the little cove we were in. we decided within about 20 minutes of arriving that instead of staying for two days and then moving on we would stay 6 days and make this little hotel home base.

The driveway down to our little beach, there's a little red umbrella there where one of the most leathery tan women usually sat ALL day every day we were there

This is a shot of our spot on the beach (before we put our stuff on it, we're NEXT to the awesome umbrella, it's not actually ours)

We stayed in the hotel room two nights before moving to a little studio with a kitchenette, it had air conditioning which was lovely, but Lena was convinced I was freezing her to death with my polar bear like constitution, eventually we worked out a temperature that worked for both of us but there was one night where I stumbled in to consciousness to the sound of her trying to turn off the air conditioner with a remote without glasses in the dark…

For a day or two we just sat around on the beach although the gravel kind of hurt our feet so we didn’t spend much time in the water. We went to Pag one day because it was a cute beach town and the water was supposed to be nice. (There is an isle of Pag cheese that is supposed to be amazing, we must have missed it) We got some decent food including delicious meat pastries but the beach was so crowded that we were there for about 10 minutes before we decided to catch the next bus back to our oasis.

These are both from Pag , which is an empty ghost town during the day because it is so hot. and everything is white stone, so the sunlight just reflects directly to the back of your eyeballs. Gelato was a very, very necessary part of life for the two hours we were here.

This was the beach in Pag, you can't see it from here but it was super crowded and the water was colder than our little oasis, we didn't last long here.

One day we went to Zadar to look for new books for Lena (she hated short stories and some depressing novel I had brought, and the hotel only had books and magazines in German and Italian. Italian Cosmo, by the way, is hilarious.) Sadly, there are no English books except for in two cities in the entire country. We ended up doing so many internet errands and things that we completely missed the sea organ we had planned on visiting but maybe we’ll catch that the next time around. We grocery shopped a bit and made it to the bus station about 3 minutes to late for our bus, and the next one was in 3 hours. We ended up passing the time in the bus station by planning out a screenplay idea; people watching (highly entertaining), drinking coke, and having some sort of lamb burger thing.

This was the bus station where we spent about a 1/4th of our time in Croatia. I loved the signs for all of the different restaurants that sell basically the same thing.

Aside from those trips and our daily walk to the corner store (of sorts) to get ice cream or pasta to cook we led a simple life of beach going, movie watching, restaurant eating, and napping that was very relaxing. We even got a raft and some water shoes so we spent as much time as possible floating around. The only downsides were that there were only a few families on our beach and they were boring to people watch in addition to having annoying repetitive noise toys and that I got sunburned. I put on sunscreen, I don’t know what to tell you; I think maybe my body went into shock after going from the UK to the sun so fast.

Movies we saw that Lena had on her computer:

-Horton Hears a Who: loved the book, the movie not so much
-A messed up movie about the life of bob Dylan that I don’t remember what it’s called. Cate Blanchett was awesome and so was the kid in it, but it was way to artsy and made no sense
-The beginning of Four Rooms, a Tarentino movie about a hotel, but it was way weird. Seriously.
-Also the beginning of some very creepy movie where one girl was captured and tortured while the other was going to sleep listening to the backstreet boys. We turned it off at the first sight of blood
-Also don’t remember the title but it was the Cuban version of the godfather with Andy Garcia and every Hispanic actor ever, except S L O W
-Coupling, the series basically the British version of friends, it is hilarious and you should watch it as soon as possible

Anyway, after a very relaxing time in Croatia, with very little sight seeing and a lot of sleep, we moved on to Budapest.

This picture was taken in Zagreb by one of Lena's Friends from school. We were very hot because we were tossing a frisbee in the sun, and the random guy took a lot of pictures of us without asking, we may be Croatian celebs.

The train was hot, but we got a compartment almost to ourselves so it wasn’t too bad, and we watched coupling and ate snacks. When we got to Budapest we stayed in Lena’s apartment from when she was studying there and met the new tenant, Monica, who was really funny. We ended up going out for gyros and drinks and instead getting a Hungarian street food that is basically a savory funnel cake covered in sour cream and cheese, it is gigantic and heart attack inducing and delicious.

By the way, I have no pictures, but this apartment was EPICALLY amazing. It had huge ceilings and a balcony and Lena’s room alone was the size of half of my current apartment. It was a huge old beautiful building and it was so fun to stay there even for a few days.

The next day we went to this huge market in the morning to get food for dinner one night and we got pastries and fresh squeezed orange juice (so good) before buying chicken and bulgur and stuff for dinner. The market itself is train station size, it was made during a time when the city was booming and the government built a bunch of new buildings so its old and incredible, plus it has the usual draw of fresh produce and tons of bright colors and cool textures. It is something of a tourist draw, though, so I ran into a lot of people who suddenly stopped in the middle of a walking area to take a picture. In the end, we got stuff to make a pretty sweet tabouli with cilantro instead of parsley and cranberries and then chicken, man I am getting hungry. We ended up eating it later with Monica and Lena’s mom in the apartment kitchen, which was also very cute.

Lena went to pick up her mom from the airport and then that night we went out for a walk around town. (Her mom was such a sport to go out right after a 10 hour flight or however much) I forget the order of things but we had some pretty great meals (mmmm, duck) and saw a palace and walked across a bridge. There was a celebrate the EU fair going on so there were lots of stands with jewelry and things, Lena got me a ring for my birthday that was green and white enameled copper and really pretty. (She has a matching red one so we have Budapest memory rings) aside from the huge number of people it was really fun.

Budapest by night, VERY pretty from the top of our hill

The next day we went to the baths. The baths are an experience, let me tell you, imagine a water park with heated water and no slides and a huge yellow building and you will be close. There were different heat levels of pools and ones with jets and ones with lazy rivers and wet saunas and dry saunas. We were thoroughly pruny by the time we got out. Highlights were the lazy river pools (how many times did we try to make our own when we were little? I think baths should exist in the US too) and the massage by Lena in the dry sauna, very nice.

The city itself had a lot of history and I loved how easy it was to get around and sort of fell in love with Lena’s apartment. I left Budapest early in the morning for the airport and flew to London for a day and a half to wait for my flight home. I shopped and went to the British museum and watched TV in my tiny room in a B&B right by Victoria station. The British museum was incredible, but very crowded so after seeing most of what I wanted (I skipped the Rosetta stone and some of the mummy stuff because of a large horde of Asian tourists, but I didn’t feel a huge loss) Then I went to Gatwick airport and flew back in to Atlanta and then took a shuttle home finally. The funny part about the flight was I was next to two teenage boys and their mom, who ended up having very personal serious conversations about, whether they should be having sex before marriage RIGHT next to me. I do not want to hear that people, can’t you wait the 5 hours that it will take to get you not right next to me? Clearly the subject has waited for years, just a little longer? But no, alas.

And that was my epically huge summer vacation. It was a lot, and probably more that I will EVER tackle again, but it was a wonderful experience.

Things I will miss from Europe: easy transportation, easy access to good food (basics like cheese, yogurt and bread), laid back people, free museums

Things I missed about the US: stores being open after 5 pm, our money, yes it is all the same color but it is lighter (no one and 2 dollar coins) and it FITs in my wallet, sigh, little things, barbeque, Mexican food (oddly enough in Budapest I had a gyro that tasted exactly like a taco, it was the closest I got to Mexican food in about 6 months and it was trying to be Greek!), movies coming out on time, less expensive everything, seriously the US is soooo much cheaper than all the rest of the ‘civilized’ countries in the world.

Tune in next time for updates on my new apartment and the great big California adventure that was my brother’s visit:

Fondue=Nirvana

"Any country that has melted cheese as it's main dish must have good people" -Lena

So when I left off, I was in Scotland with Courtney and we had managed to do all of the things that she wanted to do but never got to do while she was in Edinburgh. Then we went to London.

London is way over-rated; it is very big and very crowded. I feel the same way about it as I do about LA, its size allows it to have certain opportunities others do not, but it is SUCH a hassle to take advantage of them! Granted, some of the hassle (forgetting my wallet at the hostel and having to walk all the way back) was of my own making, but most of it was because of the extreme amount of people in the city, and London and the UK in general are expensive.

We did go to the TATE modern art museum that had some interesting stuff in its collection, a special Cy Twombly exhibition, and a collection of photographic portraits. The photos were my favorite because it was done chronologically and Courtney loves Cy Twombly so it all worked out. The next day we went to look at graffiti/street art that was commissioned by the TATE from a few artists from Spain and South America. It was fun because they give you a map with lots of pink dots on it and each corresponds (somewhat inexactly) with a piece of street art so it is like a scavenger hunt. My favorites were old circular light street signs which were repainted and then hung up in random alleys because people almost never think of adding objects to the street instead of just painting on the wall.

After an extensive period of art scavenger hunt/ picnic lunching, we decided to see Westminster abbey and Buckingham palace, which we did briefly, the church was impressive but the palace was sort of boring. Then we went to buy high tea and, to use Courtney’s words, we were thwarted. The first place we went was closed for a private function and the next was out of high tea. Sigh, one day it will work out but fate instead wanted us to drink tea and eat dry chocolate cake while WATCHING three young American girl tourists nibble at their finger sandwiches and waste at least 30% of it.

We needed a pick me up after that so we went and found a movie theater to watch the movie Wanted. Movies are very expensive there and because I didn’t get a student discount, I ended up paying 10 pounds to see a very ridiculous movie with the most hilarious cheesy training sequence ever. When we got out of the movie the finals for the Euro 2008 soccer game were already on and we wandered around trying to find a place we could eat dinner and watch the game. Every bar had a crowd of men outside watching the game through the windows but we finally found a small Italian restaurant playing the game on a projector screen. We had pasta a la Sofia Loren, an anchovy caper pizza (tasty and very, very salty) and wine as we watched our team, Germany, lose to Spain. In a restaurant full of Spain fans. But the food was amazing.

The next day we took the tube to the airport where they changed the destination of the train we were sitting in 3 times because of delays. In the end I had to say goodbye to Courtney in the train because my flight was very soon. (Except it got delayed, but oh well) and then I flew to Switzerland to meet Gaby and Phillip my Swiss friends, and Lena my travel companion/roomie for the next two weeks.

Gaby was my nanny back when I was wee, in around 1995 and she graciously said she would host us in Switzerland. This involved she and her husband, Phillip, who is almost a doppelganger of my dad, driving us everywhere. They showed us a rotating restaurant on top of a mountain, where they filmed the James Bond movie ‘In Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and the air was so thin we got tired walking around the top of it. Then a cute little town halfway down the mountain with a mouthwatering cheese shop. That night Phillip cooked up fondue which was AMAZING. As Lena put it, any culture that could make an entire meal out of melted cheese has to be good people. I want a fondue set as soon as possible because I could eat fondue at least every two weeks. Phillip was a proponent of a small glass of schnapps to aid the digestion because ‘it is very dangerous to eat only cheese’ it was nice in very small sips but I don’t think I could detect the hint of pear flavor above the heat of the alcohol.

View from the top of the world

People would actually parachute from the top of the mountain. This one small Asian guy asked us (in english oddly enough) if we would hold up the top of his chute for him like a kite. That's him standing on the steep slope. when the time came, he said "Thank you!" yanked the chute into the air, and jumped off the mountain.

Lena and I during out little high altitude hike. Yes that is a snowball, in July. Also we saw a woman hiking this in tight white pants and heels, according to Lena she was Russian. I LOVE people watching.

The next day, Phillip drove us all to Switzerland’s wine country. (And sorry, Phillip, I don’t have all the names of places in front of me because I can’t get out the route map you gave us at the moment, but I will put up place names when I post my picture post once I return home) we rode the train for part of the way; we were in the car, on a train car, going through mountains, it was incredible! And much faster because only the train has a tunnel through the mountain, otherwise you have to go over the top. We ate at a steak restaurant, a delicious lunch with herbed butter for our steaks and it was amazing because other than burgers it had been a long time (ok Paris) since I had eaten beef. We also went to see a glacier which was incredible and huge but i have no really good pictures of it sadly.

View from the train before we go through a mountain. Houses in Switzerland are really pretty!

Lena and I after amazing steaks


The noble 'Mountain Pig' roughly translated from Swiss slang. I don't remember what they are actually called but there was some tourist trap zoo of them for us to see, isn't it cute?

That night we ate at Gaby and Phillip’s neighbor’s house. They had an outdoor barbecue house type thing and we had grilled chicken and sausages and everything was delicious. We couldn’t understand our hosts a lot of the time but Gaby told us that was probably better as our host kept making odd jokes.

The next day Gaby, Lena and I went to Bern for the day while Philip packed up his and Gaby’s stuff to go on their trip to Spain the next day. We had a great time in the city walking around and souvenir shopping as well as going to lunch and eating spatzl and rosti which were both incredible. Gaby and Lena both humored me and we also went to an art museum where there was a retrospective exhibition of a Swiss artist called Ferdinand holder that was pretty interesting. Also in their permanent collection they organized everything by subject matter rather than time period or style, which was interesting because in one room you could see how animals were painted in the 14th century versus the 20th century. I liked it because each painting was not lost in a sea of paintings in the same genre, but in some cases they covered the walls to such an extent that I was overloaded.

Bern was gorgeous, tons of old clocks and fountains everywhere and an extremely blue river.

Bern's crest is of a bear so they have a 'pet' bear in the city but he is very sad looking because his 'habitat' is not very natural. Gaby said that they are building a new home for him, hopefully it is finished soon!

OK, this was one of the weirder/cooler things I saw in Bern in a sports store. It is an elevator that you hop on and off of like an escalator. What happens if you get stuck? Does it reach the top and switch directions? No idea, but it was awesome.

The next day Phillip drove Lena and I to the train station and we left for a day in Luzerne while they went off to drive through Spain. They were incredible to show us such a great time and I hope that someday they will visit me so I can do the same for them!

Anyway, Luzerne. We walked around a lot and did a bit of shopping but since I left the map of the city and guidebook on the area in the locker we put our bags in we didn’t really know a lot about the tourist attractions of the area, which was fine with us.

I had also forgotten to print the actual tickets for our bus ride to Croatia because I had printed the confirmation sheet and thought that was enough. Cue annoying conversation with the head of the bus company. This was unpleasant both because of his attitude/clear dislike of us and also the language barrier. We finally agreed that we didn’t actually need to print tickets and the confirmation sheet would be enough. Fast forward 5-7 hours when we are waiting at the bus parking lot having spent the very last Swiss francs on dinner and we go to the office again to make sure everything is ok. The SAME guy is on shift and this time he says we do, in fact, need tickets, even though he has looked us up on the passenger list and knows we have paid in full. Finally he prints us tickets and we wait with crowds of people in a disorganized parking lot for our bus. (None of them are really labeled very well) We decided that Croatians must run the bus service because the Swiss are MUCH more organized.

Anyway, finally our bus comes and we find out there is a fee to check our bags underneath the bus. We had no money because we had carefully used it all up on a nice dinner so Lena ran off to change a few American dollars while I tried to stall the bus driver. Guess who comes over to speed up the bus leaving and gets angry with me for holding everything up? Yep the same guy from twice before. Thankfully Lena came back and saved me from his wrath, but seriously nowhere on the ticket or website did it say ANYTHING about a bag fee! We got on the bus and there were no open seats together and after asking a few people if they would mind moving (which two of them very grumpily refused) a nice man finally moved and we sat down in the very crowded bus (which was completely full by the way so why the attitude about moving from once aisle seat to another?) and began the 8 hour journey to sunny Croatia.

Tune in next time for my ramblings on travels through Croatia and Hungary and my final journey back to the US. Till then!

Irish whiskey is distilled 3 times, that means it is the best whiskey in the world. FACT.

Well it seems like it has been a long time since I blogged last. I think it has actually only been a few days but since we have stayed in a different place almost every night it seems like very long ago. I am writing this in the bar below our current hostel because there is no internet above floor 0 (the first floor here is the American second floor, the thought of floor zero baffles me, also I have seen a floor ‘+’which was between 0 and 1, WTF?) Anyways I am also writing this in a noisy bar, with cricket and pop/rock in the background because our room SMELLS. It smells like onions and dirty, dirty boy. Mostly because there is a dirty boy sleeping there, ALL THE TIME. He almost never leaves and he is sleeping at least 16 hours a day, which makes our room smell worse and means that it is always dark, ugh; thank goodness we are leaving in the morning because he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I think people that are somehow inconveniencing/ disturbing in one way just are in every other way because he is also loud (getting in and out of be, packing, snoring) and messy.

Anyways, our recent adventures:

The end of our southern Ireland tour

Courtney and I both kissed the blarney stone, which required a spotter as you had to lay backwards and upside down over a ledge, but I haven’t notice either of us becoming more eager to speak or more eloquent than we were before. Perhaps the gift of gab takes a while to set in?

We also went to the Mitchelstown caves which had a lot of amazing rock formations and were also not touristy so we got the cave to ourselves pretty much. There was one large cavern with great acoustics that they apparently use for concerts, and we staged our own private concert of the two bus clowns (Australians, I am having the hardest time convincing Courtney that ALL Aussies are not loud and obnoxious because Aussie tourists like American tourists ARE for the large part loud and obnoxious) singing ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin. Complete with prancing movements and duets, these guys knew ALL of the lyrics and it was awesome.

Northern Ireland Tour

The tour itself was a much different group of people and different material than our first. The first was geared to budget travel under 25s and we had one bus to one group and it was mostly cheerful scenery and partying, and our guide was very young and basically a big kid. The second had mostly families and couples, a few people like Courtney and I, and then two other tour groups that were going in the same direction to ‘minimize their carbon footprint.’ Because of this we had to stay in multiple hotels and hostels and everything was very disorganized. Our guide was a small irish woman whose sentences almost always trailed off into laughter a la Kitty from That 70's Show. She is the person I've quoted in the title of the post because she was quite funny on most occasions, but did tend to talk a lot. but she was Irish, so I forgave her. It was nice in a way, because we got a whole new group of people to people watch with though. We had alone guy, alone girl, Canadian annoying girls, Canadian family with Loud wife, Italian woman and a few others. Alone guy and alone girl got together in the end, happy ending for all of us, except apparently there were bedbugs in his bed and he had a poor end to his trip

Northern Ireland was, amazing, and Heavy. With a capitol H (or ‘haetch’ as they would pronounce that letter here) it was a war zone until the 90s and only recently has settled down. First we went to Derry/Londonderry, a town right on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. People from Ireland call it Derry and people from UK and Northern Ireland ‘loyalists’ as they are called call it Londonderry. We were very careful with this name as it defines which side of this conflict you are on. Conflict aside, it was a cute town with interesting city walls and has seen less open conflict than Belfast because it has a river separating the Catholics and the Protestants so that there is very little interaction between them. I say this trip was heavy because there is SO much history in this conflict. Both sides have been hurt by each other in different ways for so long it is all a gray area and very difficult to ‘pick a side’ from the outside anyways.

Belfast, though by no means Peaceful it is for the moment stable because of a huge peace wall separating the two warring constituents from each other. The gates between the wall close in the evenings to keep everyone off of one another,’ but in city center where we were staying there was a mall and movie theater and pizza hut and kids sneaking around hard cider to get drunk just like any other city in Ireland.

We toured the city in a black taxi, this taxi/bus system was the only public transportation that still ran during the period of the Troubles and by and large was respected as honorable and necessary by both sides of the conflict once the bus system was discontinued because of too many attacks. The drivers that do the tours were mostly drivers during the troubles too and so are both very knowledgeable and local heroes to a point. They took us into housing project like areas of both Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods which were interesting because of all of the murals and memorials to people that fought for each side, usually in terrorist groups such as the IRA and the UFF that died in action. We also got to sign the peace wall between the two communities which was interesting and a loaded thing to do because as our driver said it isn’t to celebrate peace between the two groups, it keeps the peace by keeping them separated.

Edinburgh

We took ryanair back to Edinburgh from Dublin, a very unusual discount airline with BRIGHT yellow and navy furnishings and hit the ground running with activities. In two days, we saw the Royal Yacht Britannia (the queens old yacht, very huge and well furnished, they still make fudge in the kitchens which is very tasty), the hall of Scottish Freemasons (two very cute old Scottish men for tour guides, although I swear one of them did not speak English), hiked a mountain (it was steep), saw a Georgian house furnished as if in that period, went to the Surgeon’s Hall Museum (very cool, Arthur Conan Doyle and other notables studied and worked there, also there were a lot of pathological specimens), and shopped.

In addition to all of these activities we ate a lot of important foods like Haggis, which was actually pretty tasty if about as photogenic and appetizing looking as taco bell’s ground beef. We also ate a steak pie, chips and brown sauce, onion rings, AND a battered and fried mars bar. The mars bar was interesting in that it had all of the qualities of chewy melted chocolate while staying not messy AND having crispy batter on it, I approve of this fried delicacy at least if not the fried slice of pizza or the fried cheeseburger that the shop was also selling.

This will seem like a lot more once I post pictures I am sure, but for now we are off to London to relax. Our goals are to see the Tate modern art museum, have high tea and a full English breakfast, and sleep. A lot. If you are wondering why we are going to London to relax, this is why. We live in LA, a big city, and after running around for two weeks, we don’t want to tackle it as it is busy and big, and full of busy frustrated people that I do not want to deal with. I would rather drink tea and have a buttered scone.

Anyways, that it our trip to date, I’ll keep you posted. Monday Courtney leaves Europe for South Jersey and I go to Switzerland to meet up with Lena and Gaby, hooray!

It's a grand old land so it is

Bon Soir everyone!

Last time I spoke with you, I had just cooked tex-mex style food in Paris, which was difficult because the small stores we went to didn’t have things that I take for granted like cheddar cheese, or any cheese besides brie or emmenthal. Our tostadas still turned out alright, however, and we left our host with an entire pot full of refried beans. We also had an awesome pear tart and I had AMAZING apricot ice cream the day before we left Paris and I intend to replicate them both at the earliest opportunity.

We saw some art museums but other than that we didn’t do much of note in Paris but relax and enjoy, I think we really baffled all of the Frenchmen we met because we treated France as much more of a meeting place than a destination. Although I loved the food in Paris I think I would like to see other parts of France because it reminds me a bit of New York City and it would be interesting to see smaller towns.

For breakfast the next morning we left we had a bread dessert (pain perdu) our host made for us with bread sugar and cream and egg and bean burritos which we ate on the way to the subway as the sun rose.

Our flight to Dublin was fine except for the Beauvais airport, which was a huge cluster of madness largely because of the fact that the airport had one security line and four gates. Also, French people have no idea how to queue, which is why I am glad to be back in the UK area.

Dublin was lovely, we had full days of activities all four days we were there, but we never had to rush around too much. We saw the national art museum, the national history museum (which had lots of neat old metalwork and some bodies of people that were recovered from bogs. Bog people, by the way, never just fell into a bog and died, they all were brutally killed and then thrown in)

After the museums we appropriately ended the day with a tour of the old Guinness storehouse. The building doesn’t function anymore except as a museum (sort of like the coca cola museum for you southerners) but it was interesting to see all of the old ad campaigns and we did get a free pint and a novelty pint shaped oven mitt to keep Courtney’s ghost oven mitt company. An oven mitt collection is really dangerous by the way, so we have restricted ourselves to only novelty SHAPES not just designs. Guinness here is much lighter than Guinness at home and very nice except for the slight burnt popcorn taste.

The next morning we saw the Oscar Wilde memorial and did a bit of shopping (I got an Ireland soccer jersey—I have discovered that I have very expensive taste in clothes except that I go for soccer jerseys instead of Louis Vuitton purses) and then we went to the Old Jameson distillery. This tour was a bit redundant because making whiskey is pretty similar to making beer except for distillation, but there was a completely ridiculous audio visual (video) about John Jameson at the beginning. It was about a ten minute video on a man that managed to give the audience absolutely no personal information about him, his business, or the process of making whiskey. We learned that he: was patient, awesome, wore a green jacket and shoes, and we saw a lot of shots of the old buildings in Dublin in sepia so we could imagine it back in “his time.”

We met Courtney’s high school friend Stacey on one night in Dublin and watched football and went to Messrs McGuire and someone I don’t remember’s Pub, where they had a beer that tasted like a pale version of Guinness somehow and a very odd dj, but the building itself was old with lots of carving and a huge wood staircase so it was still enjoyable.

Since that night we have been on a three day bus tour targeted at young backpackers so that you can see the countryside on a budget. It is nice because our days are planned for us and transportation to all of these small places would be difficult on our own. Plus the people watching in our group of fellow travelers is amazing. We have the odd couple (literally) the pretty couple, the American newlyweds, 80’s guy, and sandwich guy (who has since graduated to food guy). We have seen:

*Countryside in fair weather and not

*Another distillery

*An old monastery (Clonmacnoise) where there is an awesome whispering doorway that has carving that transfers sound from one side of an archway to another

*Lots of cliffs, lots of ruins, and lots of good Irish superstitious stories told in a very convincing fashion.

*The Atlantic ocean, which we put our feet in because the saying goes that when you put a foot in the ocean in Ireland you leave a little piece of your heart here (awwww)

Tomorrow we go to see the blarney stone and another castle before we go back to Dublin and on Monday we leave for a tour of northern Ireland, which is nice because people watching is getting boring with this particular group as we have already categorized everyone in it.

Pictures to be added on my return to the US July 16 or later, deal with it.

Slante everyone! (Pronounced Slan-sha, which is a Gaelic toast meaning good health)

Au Revoir Australia

Hey Ya’ll, I am coming to you straight from the U S of A as I have, FINALLY, finished with my work for my semester in Australia.

For those of you who didn’t know, I ended up returning home early because of my seemingly endless battle with strep throat, strep throat again (I apparently had the Penicillin resistant strain, I suppose after a hundred years of being around some things have become immune) and Mono. And yes, before you all ask, it was that bad. (Many people find it incredible that I found it necessary to fly home early and, I assure you, it was. I wasn’t going to even come home until my mom threatened me with hiring an Australian nursing service to come to my house and cook meals for me. Plus my department made it super easy for me to complete things at home and email them images to grade from, so that’s what I did. Here are the paintings I created in a period of roughly two weeks in my living room on the floor watching the home and garden channel and food network:

Ok, I WAS going to post pictures of my paintings here, but I have since left the country and do not have access to the files, to be updated later....

Although I left Australia about a month ago now, I feel as if I am just now wrapping up my trip abroad. I am still re-teaching myself to walk on the right (many interesting near collisions in the airport) and eating food besides burgers and sausage. (Seriously, I have totally expanded my food horizons since I got back to barbeque pork and steak, much different) Readjusting ahs not been much of a chore since Northern California where I am right now is very similar to the part of Australia I was in. They are both in drought, both have wine country, both have big open skies and small clumps of trees on brown rolling hills, both have lots of cows (although the cows in California are apparently happier). The main difference is the fact that food is much cheaper and here there are coyotes instead of dingoes. I would say overall that the experience was positive in that I learned a lot about myself and how I feel about The Future, and I definitely enjoyed my time until I got sick, but I am very, very glad that I came home as I still do not feel completely recuperated. Mostly I am just very relieved that it is finally summer vacation and I don’t have to think about school for a while. This is not turning out to be a very conclusive ending to my semester but oh well I suppose this paragraph reflects how convoluted the experience became towards the end.

And now for the latest goings on in my life: I have been visiting Riley and Dennis in Gilroy California since Saturday and it has been like staying in a luxury spa. The house is big and airy with a Tuscan inspired decorating scheme and a pool/hot tub combination out back. We’ve had Pina coladas, played croquet, and eaten at Dennis’ dad’s and stepmom’s house in the course of a few days. (They were a winning combination; he made killer ribs and she made homemade lemonade and the best potato salad EVER. I don’t even like potato salad but she made it with sour cream and lime instead of a bunch of mayo and it was incredible. I am also constantly entertained by Dennis’ two dogs, Jake and Jazz, King Charles spaniels I think and VERY energetic, much like Dennis. On the same level and equally entertaining, Dennis and his sister are the type of siblings that enjoy squabbling to pass the time, not an hour goes by without some sort of music lyric or dance contest and not a night goes by without one good chase around the house. (I was called upon in the music lyric game, but I always forget EVERY idea the minute I am put on the spot, thank God for the Beatles.

I also saw Kung Fu Panda on Sunday and it was AWESOMe! My faith in animated movies and Jack Black (umm, Nacho Libre disappointed me I’m not gonna lie) has been restored! For those of you who have seen it, there is no charge for awesomeness, or attractiveness, for those of you who haven’t, I hope this quote tempts you to go see it.

Today Riley and I are flying up to Seattle to see his sister’s graduation at an apparently ‘hippie’ school which should be an interesting contrast to my own former military southern private school background. (I am sure that wearing plaid skirts builds character on some level) So, I am going from sunny California to a very rainy and 20 degrees cooler northwest in addition to meeting the fam. It should be an entertaining trip to say the least because I get to meet a whole slew of friends and family in a period of less than twenty four hours and all of them are sure to be entertaining.

On Thursday I am headed for London and then directly to Paris to meet with Courtney, I am SO psyched.

My itinerary:

London

Paris

Dublin (Bus tours of northern and southern Ireland)

Edinburgh

London

Geneva

Lyss (to stay with Gaby my friend and ex-nanny, hooray!)

Croatia

Budapest

As you can see it is quite the whirlwind adventure and I am exhausted just looking at it but I will have Courtney and Lena to hang out with at last. When I get back to school next year I will be 21, have my own room in an apartment containing a bar, a basketball court, and ghost oven mitt, AND and inflatable couch. I will be playing Frisbee again AND it will be football season! Life is pretty good, minus mono.

I am off, I might check in with you all a bit while I am abroad but most likely I will just post about it when I get back. Thanks to Holy Shit for the emails about south America, I have not responded for obvious reasons but I can’t wait to have girl talk when we are back in La. You are coming back to LA, right?

Kate Enzenauer, signing off.

PS I am posting this from Paris where Courtney and I are couchsurfing with an awesome host, Sylvain, and his girlfriend Melanie. They have been great and it is so fun to meet people this way as opposed to in a hostel. We have also:
eaten mussels
been instructed in red wine
seen the statue of Nike of Simothrace
cooked tex mex and plantains
listened to the lion sleeps tonight as played and sung by a french brass band

More later...

Miscellaneous Photos, Boredom...

Hello! My friend Elaine finally posted some pictures from her camera, and I am bored so I am passing them on to you! I thought about inserting them in the appropriate places in previous posts, but then I will notice all of my old spelling errors and you will have to read the same posts again, so here are some miscellaneous tidbits left out of earlier work:

Fraser Island: We visited this on my Queensland trip, we look happy because it was only about the third day of the trip and only the second day of rain...Anyways interesting story about Fraser Island is how it got to be named.

"Fraser Island, Batjala K'Gari, is the largest sand island in the world at 1630 km². It is located along the southern coast of Queensland, Australia, approximately 300 km north of Brisbane. Its length is about 120 km^[1].

The original name of the island is 'K'gari' in the Butchulla people's language. It means paradise.^[6]

According to Aboriginal legend, when humans were created and needed a place to live, the mighty god Beeral sent his messenger Nendingie with the goddess K’gari down from heaven to create the land and mountains, rivers and sea. K’gari fell in love with the earth’s beauty and did not want to leave it. So Yendingie changed her into a heavenly island – Fraser Island.^[7]

The name Fraser Island comes from Eliza Fraser and her story of survival from a shipwreck on the island. Captain James Fraser and his wife, Eliza Fraser, were shipwrecked on the island 1836. The name of the ship was the Stirling Castle. Captain Fraser died but Eliza was rescued off the island. Eliza later made money traveling around England and Australia telling her story of the events that had occurred while the Stirling Castle’s officers were on the island."-Wikipedia

Ok, the island was also called Indian Head after Captain Cook saw a bunch of Aborigines looking at the boats from a point on the island as he passed by. But the really interesting horrible pt of the story is what our guide told us, apparently Capt. Fraser did something to really offend the Aborigines and was killed pretty soon after arrival, but Mrs. Fraser was kept for five years and left the island in the peak of health. Mrs. Fraser wasn't getting enough attention after a while being back and started making up stories about rape and torture which lead to attacks and bias against Aborigines for years before someone figured out she was lying. Great way to name a island!

Me on the ferry to the Island, it wasn't raining yet but very windy.

This huge tree was usually used for ships masts, apparently it is a baby compared with others on the island that we were not able to see that day...needless to say this tree provoked several short jokes. It doesn't help that both of them are Amazons compared with me :) From Left: Gaynor, Me, Elaine

Also nearby is Rainbow beach where a lot of the different dunes have different colors of sand. The Aboriginal story, much abridged, is as follows. Once a woman fell in love with Rainbow, and would go to the beach every day to see him. One of the great warriors in the tribe however wanted to marry her, she refused and ran away. He followed her, grabbing his best killing boomerang and chased her to the beach. Rainbow saved her from the boomerang, but in doing so fell into a thousand pieces on the beach and has been there ever since. Aboriginal woman apparently used to travel here to put some rainbow sand in her hair or collect some of it to carry as sort of good luck/ protection. I confess my one touristy buy was a small neckalace with rainbow sand, what a good story!

Tumut: I don't think I left anything out in my account of the last trip but here is one picture. My friend Elaine is a fan of all things ridiculous. (she is sitting opposite me in a koala jumper, sweater, and also purchased a jumper with a skiing kangaroo on this trip) She got the tea cozy from the CWA a (usually) older women's group that makes jam and knitted things. It inspired me to pick up some grey yarn for a crochet project on the plane home, imagine a Koala's ears where the owl's eyes are...hmm, i may start this sooner rather than later as my house is pretty boring right now, daytime tv here is awful.

I didn't know she was taking this one as all of her focus seemed to be on the owl. As a side note this was at the Chit Chat Cafe in Tumut, toasted croissants with Devonshire cream and raspberry jam=delicious.

T Shirts: I found this one also on threadless and forgot to post it, but it isn't for sale anyway, sadly. Isn't it cute? scratch having a dog, i want a mini elephant.

Elee, My Extraordinary Pet! by Jemae

No other news as of yet, I am working on postcards but cannot find any printers in Australia. I could print and send them from the states for cheap but that would defeat the purpose of a postcard from here. Would you mind? I have started a small illustration ala threadless and will post it for your critique before i maybe submit it, it is after one of my fave childhood songs by Natalie Merchant according to the internet, I do not remember myself:

“Come Take a Trip in My Airship”

I once loved a sailor.
Once, a sailor loved me.
But he was not a sailor,
who sailed on the wide blue sea.
He sailed in an airship;
Sailed like a bird on the wing;
And every evening at midnight,
he would come to my window and sing:

Chorus:
Come take a Trip in my Airship,
come sail away to the stars!
We'll travel to Venus,
we'll sail away to Mars!
No one will see while we're kissing
No one will know as we SPOON.
So come take a Trip in my Airship,
and we'll visit the Man in the Moon!

One night while sailing away from the crowds,
we passed through the Milky White Way.
While idly drifting and watching the clouds,
he asked if I'd name the day!
Just by the Dipper, I gave him my heart,
the sun shone on our honeymoon.
We swore to each other, we never would part,
and we'd teach all the babies this tune.

All this in addition to fervently working on my research paper and paintings of course... I'll probably post soon as one or potentially both of my roommates will be gone this weekend. Oh, i have to buy catfood, excuse me.