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Published On: Oct 17, 2003 08:01
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Fri - August 15, 2003
Map of my travels
As requested, I have created whereIvebeen.html">a
page showing maps of where I've been and where I am. Eventually, I
will try to populate it also with links to the various libraries of
pictures.
Posted at 10:54
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Sun - August 10, 2003
Cellphone
Posted at 01:31
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Kherson, Ukraine
Sorry it has taken so long to get these up. Here are a few
pictures of Kherson, Ukraine. This is the town I've been living in
all month.
Posted at 01:22
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Fri - June 13, 2003
No room at the hostel
Rats! The one hostel I thought I could stand does
not have any room. I'm going to someplace cooler. I'll stay here one more
night then go to Kosice, Slovakia.
Posted at 10:53
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Sun - June 8, 2003
Budapest for a week
I have indeed had a great night's sleep, although I
still feel a little bad that my roomates had to take such drastic action. At
least I was able to pay them for the money they spent on this place. They
grudgingly accepted it. I am sad that they're gone, but I guess we each must
learn whatever is for us to learn.
My
lesson: No more late night dinners for me -- especially not with cheese sauce!
I had lunch at that same restraunt today. Great food! about $9. (1350
Florens) eneough to hold me until tomorrow with lots of
water.
I told the landlady, Piroshka.
We talked. I will stay in one of the smaller rooms in this flat for a week for
189 Euros. That's about $30 per day or so). I could only do better at a
hostel, with roomates. And then I'd be worried about my stuff. This is a good
deal.
So now, I'm off to post all this
stuff an an internet place I found yesterady during the walking tour (3500
florens)
Posted at 02:05
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Fri - June 6, 2003
in Budapest
The flat was a huge room with a private bath in an
apartment with three other such rooms (although only one other of which had its
own bath) and an nice kitchen and dining area. We ate a late dinner (my bad)
and in the morning my roomates informed me that I snored and kept them all awake
for the past TWO nights. So I left (and felt great, albeit somewhat guilty) and
took the walking tour and checked on other places to stay. They slept
in.
The walking tour was a blast. It
lasted all afternoon and by the end, I knew where I could find a woman who
hooked up travelers with apartments. She only had one in my price range and the
lady was very nice although neither of us could understand a word the other
spoke and her apartment was amazing, but alas, the bathroom had no shower
curtain. She wanted me to use the tub; I pantomimed that I wanted to wash my
hair; she pantomimed that it would get water all over the floor. I asked if she
had more towels. Alas, it wasn't to be. I went back to my flat to ask my
flatemates if they'd be willing to try one more night (there were spaces
available in the dorm at the hostel the next night) but they were not enthused.
On the contrary, they went out to dinner and returned less than an hour later
informing me that they had found a hotel room and they were moving out
immediately and I could have this place all to myself. Well, I paid them what
they had spent here and not used and watched them go sadly.
Posted at 01:59
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Thu - June 5, 2003
Taking the train to Budapest
So the train to Budapest was in the company of a
group of three traveling students, a semester or two away from graduating. Vee
(a guy) had been studying computers. His girlfriend, Lena (short for Carolina)
has been studying zoology with an thought toward veterinary school, but it is
insanely expensive. She asked me about vet schools in the US, but I'm afraid I
was only minimally helpful. But they've got to be cheaper than Australia. The
other girl's name is Jo (short for JoAnn). She studies tourism and hostel
management, if I understood correctly. We had nice chats for a while and as it
got late, they set up the beds (the conductor had shown them how before I got
on).
During that night, we were awoken
by border agents 5 times. At some point, the door was left open and someone
(the conductor thinks it was someone who entered the train and left when it was
breifly parked at Sarajevo) came in and rumaged around in two of the girls
daypacks but only took a brand new wallet meant as a gift containing a Scotts 5
pound note (not good outside Scotland) and some alergy pills and 70 Euros cash
out of my wallet. (I had put the rest in my money belt). At first, I also
thought they had taken my bankcard, but fortunately, I was an idiot; it was
simply hidden between the pages of my passport back in my moneybelt. Briefly, I
entertained what the world would have been like if I had to wait in Budapest for
my bank to send me a net card; not happy thoughts, but at least I could have
managed it. I had 120 Euros and my ID. The bank would send me money and charge
me $50 per transaction, until I could figure out how to get them to send me a
new card. So even if the worst happened, it would still have been okay. The
girls' packs were found by the conductur in the toilet room in the morning. My
wallet had been in my packet, but at some point during the night, as I turned
over it fell out and I asked one of the others (I was in the top bunk) to put it
in an outside compartment of my small backpack; they
had.
When we finally got off the train
(2 hours late arriving into Budapest) we were isntantly mobbed by a motley group
asking if we needed rooms. The four of us picked out an attractive woman in her
late thirties (or early fourties) who seemed reasonable and followed her into
the station to change money to Hungarian Florens (250 or so Florens per Euro)
and then onto the subway to her flat downtown.
Posted at 01:55
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Wed - June 4, 2003
Taking the train from Paris to Venice, Italy
Happily, since I haven't had much sleep in a few
days, whoever I was supposed to share my train compartment with has not showed
up so I have a compartment and a bed all to myself all night from Paris to
Venice. The only hotel I could find in Venice even remotely cheap enough (and
yet with my own private room) was $100 for the first night (because it is a
triple room) and then $40 per night
thereafter.
But since I slept so well
on the train, I arrived feeling fresh and enthusiastic. I walked around
(dragging my luggage) the suburbs of Venice for a few hours until I found the
hotel. Their directions were abysmal. So then I waited in the waiting room
(there was nobody at the front desk) for another hour and by the time a woman
showed up (and yelled upstairs to the woman who was supposed to have been there)
I decided to cancel my reservation there. This took another half hour or so
and then I was free. I went back to the train station and discovered that I
could get a ticket to either Bratislava or Budapest. I've always thought
Budapest sounded like a romantic place so that's where I got a ticket to. The
train leaves twice per day. Once 15 minutes after my train from Paris was due
to have arrived that morning (but didn't; it had been late) and then again at
9pm to arrive the next morning at
11:30am.
So I found a luggage check
place (3 Euros to store your stuff all day) and spent a very pleasant day
wandering around the suburb of Venice I was in. I found an internet cafe that
gave free food while you were online. I found a canal (just one). I found a
store that sold cellphones and vaccume cleaners (who didn't speak enough
English).
Posted at 01:34
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Tue - June 3, 2003
Reporting from Paris...
There was a big rainstorm one afternoon. Room 19
didn't fare very well. I was put that night into the dorm. There was no chance
of sleep for me or any of the others. Thee was a large group of drunken young
people who spent half the night joking and laughing. At least the lights were
out for part of that time. In the morning, I had been moved (I was told) to
room 17. This was tons better. It even had its own shower. But alas, it
didn't last. The next night I was told I had to move to room 3
downstairs.
Room 3 was okay, but it
used the downstairs shower which was pretty bad. Also, it had a window on the
courtyard in which people stayed up all night talking. So I slept during the
day to catch up on sleep and began searching for another hostel or hotel or room
or something. I never found one.
So
after a couple days of this I decided to come back to Paris another time. The
next question is, "where next?". So spent some time after sleeping only a
little more and finally decided I wanted to get to places where I could afford a
room to myself at night. (I wonder why that would have occurred to me?) So
rather than north to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm or west to
Glastenbury, Bath, Dublin, Edinborough and so on, I decided to head east to
Venice, Italy. It was as far west as I could get a
train.
At each train station, you can
only get a train to the next station to which the train goes from here. You can
usually get a local in-country train almost anywhere, but Europe has no central
train reservation computer so there is no way to buy a ticket all the way from
here to, say, Kiev. So I went east.
Posted at 09:50
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Sun - June 1, 2003
Arriving in Paris
Upon arriving at the station, I used my main most
powerful tool for learning how to get to the hostel at which I had made
reservations: Patience. I slowly walked around the station and asked a vendor,
"Metro?" and "Information English?" and he rattled off a bunch of stuff and
seemed to wave his arm in a direction, so I walked that way and found a while
nother part of the station I hadn't seen before and before long, I found a
counter with the sign, "Billets" which reminded me of places to sleep in World
War I war movies so I figured it referred to hotels and that they'd understand
English; I was right! The woman sold me ten subway rides for a little under 10
Euros (1 Euro = Approx. $1.25) and directed me to a subway map. I studied it
for a good half hour and found both the station I was at and the one to which I
was going and from there, it was easy to figure out the route. All the
different lines are numbered so it was just a matter of memorizing something
unique about the names of the station at the end of each line I was taking (so I
knew in which direction to go) and the stop names or count
stops.
I arrived at the hostel and was
put in room 19. There are little separate toilet rooms all around but there was
only one shower on the floor (for 30 or 40 people). The shower itself had a
little changing area which was only separated from the hallway by .. you guessed
it .. a shower curtain. This was a little nerve wracking but all in all,
everyone was very respectful that way. On the other hand, later at night, there
were an awful lot of party people who would come into the rooms they were in in
the middle of the night.
Posted at 01:57
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Sat
- May 24, 2003
La Sagrada Familia
La
Sagrada Familia is the name of a famous church designed by Gaudi here
in Barcelona. Here is
its website. It looks like it was the inspiration for Dr. Suess. There seems
to currently be a great deal of construction and restoration, but there was a
walkway for the public (for 9 Euros!) which turned out quite entertaining as you
can see from the
pictures. Going up into one of the spires, a spiral staircase winds
up to the beginning of the first spire and then one switches to a staircase that
winds around the hollow spire as it ascends, perhaps, 20 or 30 floors or more.
I'm not sure how high it was, but it was a ways up there. There is only one set
of windows along the extremely narrow spiral staircase, so you can count'em to
see how many turns around it makes. There are bridges between the spires which
is how we get from one to the next. There are arrows telling us that some ways
we must go up or down so that the traffic does not bottleneck. Two slim people
cannot pass each other, so you're kinda stuck with whomever is ahead and behind
you for a good ways, although every now and again there is a balcony or bridge
so people can step around each other if they wish. It was pretty
neat.
Posted at 11:06
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Tue - May 20, 2003
Onward to Paris!
So now that I've been in Barcelona,
Spain for two weeks, I am beginning to feel that the end (of me, here
that is) is near. So I've made reservations at a hostel in Paris for next week
and purchased a ticket on the night train to take me there on Sunday night,
arriving Monday morning.
Posted at 06:17
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The zoo and other stuff
So here are a few pictures I took this week at the
zoo and the beach and other stuff. The zoo begins at the bottom of page
2.
Posted at 06:16
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Wed - May 7, 2003
Arrived in Barcelona, Spain!
I am staying in a private flat. I met a woman on
the street who saw me with my luggage and rented me a room for 20 Euros per
night. That's about $25. dollars. It is very clean and I'll put up the
pictures now that I have finally found a place to connect to the internet (3.60
Euros per hour -- abour $4). I will post lots of pictures. Here
are the pictures!
Posted at 07:32
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Sun - April 27, 2003
Onboard the Golden Princess: Impressions.
This is a beautiful hotel. Oh yea, and it floats.
Here are
some pictures.Everithing's made of
polymers and composit amterials which probably all seal against water and look
like various woods and ceramics. There is also lots of actual glass and very
ultra shiny metals. This ship is brand new. Almost a thousand feet long, it
has the feel of a very expensive hotel. Even my room is clearly modeled on the
concept of an upscale USA hotel room. There's a hair dryer, soaps and shampoos
in the bathroom (head?) although the door to the bathroom looks like it can seal
against moisture. Many things are attached - lights, TV but surprisingly, many
are not. Trash cans and telephones are just like in a normal hotel. Drawers
lock when closed. There's a thermostat and, of course, a view. Pretty
consistent, that. The ship is always
moving a tiny bit in three different ways. There's an occasional hum (it's
there all the time, but you can only feel it in certain places) of 100-200 hertz
which must be engine noise. There are also occasional oscillations as
impossibly strong waves cut by the ship send shivers of resonence throughout the
heavier pieces of metal surrounding me. These come and go and last for a moment
or two and are generally between 4 and 8 hertz. Then, of course, there's also
occasional gentle rocking. (Or maybe I can feel us occasionally leaping
forward). Sometimes it feels almost but not quite like vertigo. Often, it
feels oddly relaxing, like stretching out for a nap in the back seat of a car
moving down the highway, but without the nasty bumps.
I've got the balcony door open so I
can alsy hear the sea-- it, too, is calming. The weather is fine and warm, but
occasionally too humid. They must have dehumidifiers in the rooms, because when
I had it open while I slept, after a while I felt briney so I closed it and felt
clean again after a surprisingly short
time.There are two kinds of crew
members. THose in white run the ship and enjoy a kind of awed respect from the
other passengers and crew. So far, without exception, they've been white,
british and short haired. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The other kind of
crew are all maner of servants who behave more like hotel staff, but always so
deferential that it makes me uncomfortable. Like carnies or people running on
not enough sleep, they are always so willing to help, but not always mentally
capable of doing so. They're accustomed to work which requires no though maybe?
I don't know. I'd be more inclined to beleive that they haven't slepa dn
they've been recently afraid for their jobs and/or they're starving and trolling
for better tips. Or maybe they're all type A and brown nosing for tips? It's
an odd feeling. This ship carries up
to 2,600 passengers. On this voyage, I have heard that there are either 900 or
1,100 of us. I have also heard that 400 crew members were recently laid off.
Notice that I have no way of verifying either of these so called, "facts". But
it is interesting..
Posted at 09:07
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Two dumb mistakes
Hanging out at Robin & Jim's house
Spent the week in the Bay Area
Leaving Albuquerque
Brief change in plans to get to California
Current Travel Plans
Where've I been?
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