my life as a weekend backpacker
"we ain't goin' to the town. we're going to the city. gonna trek this shit around. make this place a heart to be a part of. we ain't goin to the town, we're going to the city..." a little interpol action for those of you who are sick of my singer-songwriter quotes =)
i have a month's worth of stories to catch up on. again. how does this happen? where does the time go? i feel like i've done nothing but travel for the past couple of months, which is, of course, to some extent true... after the spain/france/london adventure, there was a week of school and then another long weekend, which, thanks to some brilliant maneuvering on the part of the powers that be, turned out to be an even longer weekend for me, so i got to spend a few days visiting a friend near nice. which was really just amazing. in some ways it was a lot like california...only cleaner and prettier and more...french. adorably so. plus my friend there is literally THE nicest person on the planet, which is just amazing. so yeah.
then i was sick, and there was a weekend at home... which reminded me of the importance of traveling on weekends!!! how the hell did i survive winter here?!?! ...oh wait.
then last weekend I met up with steph again. this time in cinque terre in italy. so far, i've met exactly one german who's ever heard of cinque terre. everyone else just looks at me strangely and says they've never heard of the place, which is weird because germans LOVE to go on vacation--it's seriously like the national pasttime. (i'd never seen people take vacationing so seriously before. it's ridiculous. i love it.) AND people here are always raving to me about italy. so you'd think... but no. and every american i know who's been to italy, has been there--which, now that i'm thinking about it, might be why the germans DON'T go there... =)
so i found a mitfahrgelegenheit as far as milan, and i was going to take the train from there. first of all, this is the first MFG i've had, where the driver didn't really speak german, so that was kind of fun(ny). he was italian and working in germany but had also spent some time near ann arbor and lived in tons of other cool places, so we had a nice chat on the way down there. we even went to dinner at this crazy little (italian, of course!) restaurant before he took me to the train station--because he wanted to "show me the real milan." heck, yes! ..i mean, if you insist, right??!
we were going to get into milan pretty late, so after days of fruitless searching on the internet, i gave up on finding a hostel or hotel, and decided to crash at the train station. i was only going to be there for a few hours anyway, so no big deal, right?
i generally try to avoid mentioning these kinds of things to grown-ups, because they get all weird about it and stare at me like i'm crazy. which i may very well be, but NOT because i occasionally have to crash in train stations or airports!! it's when i travel--or talk about my travels--that i realize how young i am... and i'm not that young!! it's just that everyone i work with is... you know, grown-up. they're all adults. they're married or at least pretty setttled in grown-up relationships. they have jobs--god help them!! they drive sensible cars and go to bed at 10 o'clock. they do, you know, grown-up things. like planning their vacations months in advance and buying five different travel guides for each region of the country they're visiting and talking to thirty other people who have vacationed there before to make sure they're doing it right and have all their bases covered... i, on the other hand...??! am still in student mode in a lot of ways. "sleep is for losers" is pretty much my motto. i have no money whatsoever. i travel when and how i can. and i'm more or less at the mercy of the deutsche bahn and the local buses when it comes to getting anywhere. so yeah. how grown-up can i be?? it's a little like being 14 and having to have your mom pick you up outside the theater or the mall. only worse, because when you're 14, everyone's like... "awww, poor little pre-teens. i remember when i was that age and had to be driven everywhere, too." but when you're 25, it's just pathetic. fortunately, here the theater is near a bus stop, and they don't really have malls--not that i would hang out at them anyway, but even if i did, my mom can't exactly just come pick me up, seeing as she doesn't live here...
anyway. train station. milan. my new italian friend was a little concerned about me sleeping at the train station. (he was an adult, what can i say?) so he took me in and helped me find the waiting room and made sure it was open all night--which is just cool, by the way. of course, it then also doubles as something of a homeless shelter, but it was fine. i walked in, and there was this room--the size of a small country--full of huge wooden benches and road-weary travelers sprawled out on the benches or slumped over their bags. it was the most comical thing i've seen in a long time. i mean, there were probably about a hundred people crashing at this train station. and benches for all of them. i told you it was a huge room. i wish i had a picture, but a) my camera was buried at the bottom of my backpack, and b) it's just kind of creepy to take pictures of sleeping people. but yeah. hilarious. and needless to say, i didn't sleep much.
took the first train in the morning to cinque terre and spent the morning wandering through the streets of riomaggiore and catching up on steph's adventures over coffee. good times. there's this hike that takes you through all the villages, so we did that in the afternoon and into the evening. other than noticing, once again, how ridiculously out of shape i am, it was utterly amazing. i mean just gorgeous. like, damn...
we hadn't really decided ahead of time whether we were going to stay in cinque terre for the whole weekend or go to florence, and although we could have easily stayed another five years in cinque terre, we decided to move on. you pass through pisa on the way to florence, so of course, we HAD to stop and see the leaning tower of pisa, which is, p.s. THE biggest disappointment. i guess i thought it would be bigger somehow. but we did get some yummy gelato though, which made up for the whatever the tower lacked.
then on to florence. we had to literally run to make our train, which was just funny with the backpacks and all. i mean, steph's probably weighs more than she does, so i don't how she can move with that thing, let alone run. mine was just a normal backpack, but still. we hadn't booked a place to stay or anything in florence, so we ended up wandering around for a while, before we found a place, then we headed out to explore a bit and perhaps get something to eat. it was also imperative that we find a tele-taxi, because it was mother's day, and being in another country is no excuse for not calling--nevermind that my mom didn't even answer the phone. but i tried. we walked past this cute restaurant and decided to eat there, even though we weren't hungry and ended up going out for drinks with our waiters after they closed. i don't think i've had that much to drink since my birthday... we had a good time =)
we spent the next day wandering around florence, and then i had to meet up with my MFG for the return trip. cool kids in a VW bus who listen to ben harper. i heartily approve of that. unfortunately, due to the whole VW bus thing, it just took us a ridiculously long time to get where we needed to go, you know trying to get through the mountains and all, so... instead of having to spend a few hours at a train station again, i ended up not making my train and ending up, oh about an hour and half late to school... ouch. (we only missed the train by about 25 minutes, and i jumped on the next train, literally about two minutes after i got to the station, but because i live so in the middle of nowhere, i have to make about 50 connections, which means lots of standing around waiting for trains, and the general incompetence of some DB employees, helpful as they may try to be, doesn't improve the situation...)
yeah...i don't know how the real backpackers do it, jumping from city to city, being on the go all the time. i'd go nuts. but i do like my long weekends, and seeing as i only have a few of them left--i go home in less than two months!!!--i feel like i have to take advantage of them... so, more adventures to come!!!
i have a month's worth of stories to catch up on. again. how does this happen? where does the time go? i feel like i've done nothing but travel for the past couple of months, which is, of course, to some extent true... after the spain/france/london adventure, there was a week of school and then another long weekend, which, thanks to some brilliant maneuvering on the part of the powers that be, turned out to be an even longer weekend for me, so i got to spend a few days visiting a friend near nice. which was really just amazing. in some ways it was a lot like california...only cleaner and prettier and more...french. adorably so. plus my friend there is literally THE nicest person on the planet, which is just amazing. so yeah.
then i was sick, and there was a weekend at home... which reminded me of the importance of traveling on weekends!!! how the hell did i survive winter here?!?! ...oh wait.
then last weekend I met up with steph again. this time in cinque terre in italy. so far, i've met exactly one german who's ever heard of cinque terre. everyone else just looks at me strangely and says they've never heard of the place, which is weird because germans LOVE to go on vacation--it's seriously like the national pasttime. (i'd never seen people take vacationing so seriously before. it's ridiculous. i love it.) AND people here are always raving to me about italy. so you'd think... but no. and every american i know who's been to italy, has been there--which, now that i'm thinking about it, might be why the germans DON'T go there... =)
so i found a mitfahrgelegenheit as far as milan, and i was going to take the train from there. first of all, this is the first MFG i've had, where the driver didn't really speak german, so that was kind of fun(ny). he was italian and working in germany but had also spent some time near ann arbor and lived in tons of other cool places, so we had a nice chat on the way down there. we even went to dinner at this crazy little (italian, of course!) restaurant before he took me to the train station--because he wanted to "show me the real milan." heck, yes! ..i mean, if you insist, right??!
we were going to get into milan pretty late, so after days of fruitless searching on the internet, i gave up on finding a hostel or hotel, and decided to crash at the train station. i was only going to be there for a few hours anyway, so no big deal, right?
i generally try to avoid mentioning these kinds of things to grown-ups, because they get all weird about it and stare at me like i'm crazy. which i may very well be, but NOT because i occasionally have to crash in train stations or airports!! it's when i travel--or talk about my travels--that i realize how young i am... and i'm not that young!! it's just that everyone i work with is... you know, grown-up. they're all adults. they're married or at least pretty setttled in grown-up relationships. they have jobs--god help them!! they drive sensible cars and go to bed at 10 o'clock. they do, you know, grown-up things. like planning their vacations months in advance and buying five different travel guides for each region of the country they're visiting and talking to thirty other people who have vacationed there before to make sure they're doing it right and have all their bases covered... i, on the other hand...??! am still in student mode in a lot of ways. "sleep is for losers" is pretty much my motto. i have no money whatsoever. i travel when and how i can. and i'm more or less at the mercy of the deutsche bahn and the local buses when it comes to getting anywhere. so yeah. how grown-up can i be?? it's a little like being 14 and having to have your mom pick you up outside the theater or the mall. only worse, because when you're 14, everyone's like... "awww, poor little pre-teens. i remember when i was that age and had to be driven everywhere, too." but when you're 25, it's just pathetic. fortunately, here the theater is near a bus stop, and they don't really have malls--not that i would hang out at them anyway, but even if i did, my mom can't exactly just come pick me up, seeing as she doesn't live here...
anyway. train station. milan. my new italian friend was a little concerned about me sleeping at the train station. (he was an adult, what can i say?) so he took me in and helped me find the waiting room and made sure it was open all night--which is just cool, by the way. of course, it then also doubles as something of a homeless shelter, but it was fine. i walked in, and there was this room--the size of a small country--full of huge wooden benches and road-weary travelers sprawled out on the benches or slumped over their bags. it was the most comical thing i've seen in a long time. i mean, there were probably about a hundred people crashing at this train station. and benches for all of them. i told you it was a huge room. i wish i had a picture, but a) my camera was buried at the bottom of my backpack, and b) it's just kind of creepy to take pictures of sleeping people. but yeah. hilarious. and needless to say, i didn't sleep much.
took the first train in the morning to cinque terre and spent the morning wandering through the streets of riomaggiore and catching up on steph's adventures over coffee. good times. there's this hike that takes you through all the villages, so we did that in the afternoon and into the evening. other than noticing, once again, how ridiculously out of shape i am, it was utterly amazing. i mean just gorgeous. like, damn...
we hadn't really decided ahead of time whether we were going to stay in cinque terre for the whole weekend or go to florence, and although we could have easily stayed another five years in cinque terre, we decided to move on. you pass through pisa on the way to florence, so of course, we HAD to stop and see the leaning tower of pisa, which is, p.s. THE biggest disappointment. i guess i thought it would be bigger somehow. but we did get some yummy gelato though, which made up for the whatever the tower lacked.
then on to florence. we had to literally run to make our train, which was just funny with the backpacks and all. i mean, steph's probably weighs more than she does, so i don't how she can move with that thing, let alone run. mine was just a normal backpack, but still. we hadn't booked a place to stay or anything in florence, so we ended up wandering around for a while, before we found a place, then we headed out to explore a bit and perhaps get something to eat. it was also imperative that we find a tele-taxi, because it was mother's day, and being in another country is no excuse for not calling--nevermind that my mom didn't even answer the phone. but i tried. we walked past this cute restaurant and decided to eat there, even though we weren't hungry and ended up going out for drinks with our waiters after they closed. i don't think i've had that much to drink since my birthday... we had a good time =)
we spent the next day wandering around florence, and then i had to meet up with my MFG for the return trip. cool kids in a VW bus who listen to ben harper. i heartily approve of that. unfortunately, due to the whole VW bus thing, it just took us a ridiculously long time to get where we needed to go, you know trying to get through the mountains and all, so... instead of having to spend a few hours at a train station again, i ended up not making my train and ending up, oh about an hour and half late to school... ouch. (we only missed the train by about 25 minutes, and i jumped on the next train, literally about two minutes after i got to the station, but because i live so in the middle of nowhere, i have to make about 50 connections, which means lots of standing around waiting for trains, and the general incompetence of some DB employees, helpful as they may try to be, doesn't improve the situation...)
yeah...i don't know how the real backpackers do it, jumping from city to city, being on the go all the time. i'd go nuts. but i do like my long weekends, and seeing as i only have a few of them left--i go home in less than two months!!!--i feel like i have to take advantage of them... so, more adventures to come!!!
posted by be at 4:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home