OK, I've said some of this before basically but I don't feel like revising this post from the one I put on my other blog so deal with it. Most of you will tl;dr this anyway.
London fucking sucked. I get in all jetlagged and this cunt chews me out because she hates her job and I made her think a little while at work. Fuck London Heathrow and fuck the customs agents there. I get into London proper and try to get myself a ticket to Dublin, figuring I could take the train to Liverpool, make a few stops on the way, then take the ferry from Liverpool to Dublin. Nope, that would have cost me around 400£. So I buy a plane ticket instead, which was only 200£, which is 400$. Right off the bat. Food was expensive too, as were train tickets to the airport. Sightseeing wasn't bad but still fuck London. It doesn't help that I had to sleep in the airport not one night, but two nights because I couldn't afford the expensive-as-hell hostels (40$ to sleep in a room with 16 other people? Fuck you.) and I couldn't get a ticket to Dublin until the next day. On hindsight I should have just gone somewhere else, but looking through online prices now it would have been just as expensive, so it didn't matter.
Ireland, on the other hand, was awesome. Dublin had a lot of sights I felt were worth seeing (a lot of writer's museums, a lot of Irish history museums, a lot of bars) and the 5 days I spent there, I felt, were well spent. I got here before I really started to feel lonely, so I was still pretty antisocial towards everyone while in Dublin (met a couple people who were nice enough, and went out drinking with them, but that was about it). The lonliness started setting in when I stayed in a small town called Wexford, near the ferry port. No real sights to speak of, nor were there any good pubs, or... anything else. It was a nice small town but I'm really glad I was only there for a few hours.
Then I went on to the Frenchy-poo. Here I found out that the railpass (the thing that would have made travelling alot reasonable) could only be bought before I left, which meant paying an assload of money to get anywhere. This meant I stayed in Paris for about a week (instead of for a couple days and then going elsewhere), and I'm really glad I did. Everyone I met at the hostel there was really cool; a good mixture of neurotic, socially awkward nerds and less socially awkward but equally amiable 20-something scenesters. And a few normal people who were also cool. This may have had something to do with the name of the Hostel, though. "Woodstock," I imagine, would draw that sort of crowd. The city itself, and the sights, were awesome. I don't mean that in the way we use it now, "This pizza is awesome," I mean the original useage. Awe-some. Inspiring awe. It's just so beautiful and large. As too was the Chateau du Versailles, which... well, I now have a more complete understanding of why the French revolted. Everything is made of gold and even standing on a hill you can't see the end of the royal gardens. WHITE PEOPLE WITH TOO MUCH MONEY.
Oh, and, I was joking before all the times I said it, but now I can say it with pride: Fuck the French. Or at least Parisians. OK, so I get that you resent the fact that you have to speak English otherwise you're nothing on the international stage. This doesn't mean you have to treat everybody else who doesn't speak French like shit, you stupid fucking twats. Especially not after I tried my hardest to talk to you in my meager, 2 years of High School level French.
Now, not everybody was like this; I met a fair deal of French people from outside of Paris that I befriended, and even met some people from Paris who, under other circumstances, probably would have become good friends. Not all Parisians are like this. But too many of them are. Probably my favorite moment was when I was buying a train ticket and dealt with one of these cunts. She started giving me the "fucking English speaking tourist" attitude, so I started talking at her in Japanese (Which... probably didn't make any sense, but whatever, she didn't understand) and eventually made her feel bad. It was awesome.
Anyway, after Paris I went to a city on the French/German border called Straussbourg... and quickly left. It was a nice city but there was absolutely no reason for me to spend a day there. Two hours, tops. Then I went to Frankfurt... which also had no reason for me to spend a day there, it turned out, but I spent three anyway. It was nice, met a good group of people... none of whom I got contact info for, unfortunately, but that's how it goes. Got sick of hearing "Time to Pretend" by this point. Ate sausages. Drank 0.20€ bottles of beer. Not that bad of a city. Discovered a new way to be really cheap about making Pasta when I get back. (Who knew that adding ketchup to the sauce works as well as it does? I guess the Italians did, since the guy I learned the trick from was Italian, but hey.) The Germans are probably my favorite people by this point. Nihilist Techno parties are fun.
After an 8 hour train journey, I ended up in Munich. Munich was awesome. All the beer is amazing, and it's enough of a sightseeing event that I could justify spending a little more money on it. I wish I was there for Oktoberfeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest, but that would have been really expensive, and school made that impossible besides. Oh well. Also, confidence and human sexuality.
From there, I went to Berlin, which was awesome. Communism and Nazis (better than Munich which only has Nazis but that's still interesting). History is way more interesting when you're in the places where it took place. Good nightlife, and it's the cheapest city I was in. I can see why my friend Alex wanted to go there for a summer to work. The hostel I chose kinda sucked for people but had free internet so whatever. Kinda wish I spent more than 2 days here, especially since...
Amsterdam is overrated to hell. It's Las Vegas, only with pot and hookers instead of casinos and hookers. That, and I got there at the start of the weekend, which meant spending a minimum of $50 on a hostel room for the first couple days, which fuck that. I slept in the train station (well, until they closed it, then I slept on the steps of the train station). That wasn't that bad, actually, since a lot of other people did it, and sleeping on concrete is not bad when you're stoned out of your mind. But, in any case, the town's really strict, too, compared to other European cities, since you can't drink on the streets. Not different from America, but considering in every other country I've visited it's common practice to be drinking on public transit, it was a bit of a shock to see that the city that's world famous for its liberal attitude towards drugs and sex doesn't let you drink in the streets. Oh well, I think I may have enjoyed this place more had I gone here first, actually, or if I had come here with other people. Actually, with one or two other people with me and with more energy, Amsterdam definitely would have been much better. So it goes.
All in all, though, backpacking across northwestern Europe was simply amazing. I feel much more... competent now than before, both socially and in how I deal with situations. Having to find your way around and actually communicate with people or risk not having a place to spend the night does that, I guess. Undeniably a good move for my mental health, since it was my inadequacy in those things that sent me into a week or so of depression every so often.
And now I'm in Norwich. I'm not sure I understand the way courses work yet, but I know for sure that I only have 3 this semester, and I only go to each one once a week. This means self motivation and a lot of outside-of-class work, so they say. Uh oh. Shouldn't be too bad though since the only game I have easy access to is Kingdom of Loathing, and both of my characters are on Hardcore runs so I can only really play for a half an hour a day. On the other hand, there is a bar on campus that sells relatively cheap pints and alcohol is cheaper here than it is in the US. That may be a problem. Oh well, let's see how that works out.
I'm basically out of money. Enough to live, no more to travel. Too bad, I wanted to go to Poland and buy some real Absinthe, and to Scotland because it's Scotland. Wish I had gotten that visa instead of being lazy, then I could work part time and pay for travel that way. Too late now. So it goes. I've still seen a good deal of Europe now, and there's nothing stopping me from saving up money and coming back some years in the future. Or doing what my friend did and getting an internship that takes me abroad. So I'm not too sad about that.
I am sad, though, that my dog died while I was gone. I'd been expecting that since I started college 3 years ago (Golden Retrievers usually don't live 10 years), but it still sucks. Wish I had gone home once more before I left so I could have seen him again, but... well, so it goes.
