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Ah, Florence. Home of the Medici, and briefly though fictionally, Dr Hannibal Lecter, everyone’s favourite cannibal. Florence was a far sight better than Venice, it just took us a day to see it that way.

We arrived in Florence after a long and fairly painful train ride which, it seems, will be de rigueur for Italy. We got to the train station and started calling hostels, and, as also seems to be de rigueur for Italy, they were all full. We tried, what, two, before we found a place that had room, and after we’d tromped there and signed in, we found out that, contrary to what I thought I’d heard on the phone, we had one night, not the four we needed. But, they told us, show up at the desk the next morning before ten and we should have beds for you by then. Great. We went upstairs to our 22 bed dorm, made our beds and decided to take a turn about Florence to see what exactly we’d landed in.

The nice thing about Florence, as compared to Venice, is that it has streets. Canals are pretty cool and all, until you realize that they can do absolutely nothing to help dissipate traffic. And as we found out the other evening, high season in Italy last until the first week in November, and so both places were still packed out. Still, Florence was much better set up to handle crowds.

We went downtown, saw the outside of the Duomo (cathedral), walked about the centre of the town, all that sort of thing, then we got hungry. We wandered around in very unpromising piles of old buildings for some time, then found, (da da da daaaaa!) a kebap joint. Then we ate kebaps. After that, we went over to the nearest internet cafe, updated the old blogs and tottered back to the hostel to read for a spell. Then we slept.

At 7 AM the next day, the first alarm went off in our 22 person dorm, and the following 2 hours involved no sleep, and a constant stream of people getting up to shower and get ready, all the usual stuff. Another hour or two later we hauled our own carcasses out of bed and wandered down to see if we had a place to sleep that night. Turns out we didn’t, woohoo.

After performing our own morning rituals, we left our gear in the luggage room at the hostel and left to find some breakfast and an internet cafe in the hopes of finding someplace to sleep that night. We found provolone cheese and Tuscan bread for breakfast, which didn’t turn out so well. Provolone, as near as I can tell, is eight parts salt to one part cheese, and Tuscan bread has no salt, or so goes the taste. It was lovely. We had better luck on the net, and while Will went out looking for a particular museum I managed to locate and reserve some very nice beds at a smaller local hostel that wasn’t mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, called the Locanda Daniel. It reminded us of nothing so much as our hostel in Madrid, which was also a small, wonderful place.

So, the HI hostel in Venice, the Ostello Venezia, sucks. Not only does it suck through lack of effort, so-called passive sucking, it also actively sucks. I think they try to suck. They do everything they can short of physically abusing you to make their hostel suck, and they succeed wildly. Allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, it’s on a completely separate island that has no bridges going to it. So, you have to take a waterbus at €5 a pop, or you can buy a three day pass for €25. With our grand-total daily budget for two sitting at a whopping €80, you can imagine how deliriously happy this made us. I have to say, before I go much further, that it wasn’t our first choice. Or our second. It was third out of three hostels listed in the book, but they did have room (no surprise why) and beggars have a dreadfully difficult time trying to moonlight as choosers, so there we were. Now, where was I?

Ah, yes, the boat. The waterbuses are kind of cool, but expensive. So, the first night, we get on one, spending one eighth of our daily budget, or 12.5%, getting to the island. We get off, we wander over, and we sign in. As I believe I mentioned in relation to Turin, you have to buy your way into HI hostels, it’s like some sick kind of semi-legal bribe, and we still had four stamps to go (I’m sorry Timmy, you need eighteen tickets to live!), which was going to set us back another €3 per night for the four nights we were there. Grand total cost, €22.50 per night. Factor in, for the next three days, the boat tickets at €16.67 per day for the both of us, and you have a baseline cost of €61.67 per day. And €18.33 is not a lot to get by on in Venice. Oi. We went over budget, every day.

So, long-distance rail travel can really suck. We spent the better part of a day getting to Turin, and, well, it really was the worst part of the day. Italian trains are, unfortunately, a lot more like their Spanish cousins across the Mediterranean than their German and Swiss neighbours. That is to say, they tend to be cramped, a bit grungy, and late. Oi. But, we did make it to Turin eventually, and as it turned out, it was a beautiful city.

I had expected Turin to be an unimportant backwater, mainly because I’d never heard of it before the Olympic hullabaloo in February. Turns out that’s not the case. As it happened, Turin was the capital of Italy from unification in the 1870′s until 1945, since it was the seat of the ruling House of Savoy, and it shows in the architecture. The city of Turin is incredibly dense, with narrow streets and tall buildings for their types, three or four storeys high. And many of them, especially in the truly massive downtown core, are really, really nice! All told, Turin is gorgeous, and as soon as I can find a place to upload photos you can see for yourselves.

The first day we found our way to the hostel, got a little bit lost, then had to climb a fairly steep hill for a few hundred metres to get to the place. It’s part of the Hostelling International organization of hostels, and when you stay with HI, you can pretty much guarantee that everything from the facilities to the staff to the guests will be old. That in itself isn’t so bad (though it seems to drive Will to distraction, since he doesn’t seem to want to hit on old women), but most of them charge extra if you’re not a member, to the tune of €3 or more per night. Fortunately at Turin, those extra euros were counted towards membership, which costs €18, and with our stay in another HI place here in Venice, we’re over the top and into the secret club. Hooray.

The room was pretty nice. We decided to go Cadillac and get a double with it’s own bathroom, for €22 per night, which is fairly expensive, but definitely worth it for the two days we were there. Oh, another annoying tendency of HI joints is their propensity for lockouts, times during the day when they boot you out to clean. Hooray again. But lockouts and non-member pricing aside, it wasn’t too bad. They even had breakfast, though it wasn’t all that filling.

After we got checked in we went out to find some dinner. All we really wanted was McDonald’s, which, naturally, meant we could not find it no matter how hard we tried. And of course, we found it the next day, having come within 200 metres of it and turned the other direction. Eventually the hunger got to where we just couldn’t take it any more, and we settled for the old standby, kebaps. Turned out to be a good decision, as they were the best ones we’ve had thusfar, and we went back for lunch and dinner the next day. We did a bit more exploring that night, then went back to the hostel and turned in early, since we were both bone-tired.

The next day was devoted to our main reason for visiting Turin, the Shroud. Legend has it that the Shroud of Turin was the burial cloth used to wrap Jesus for His rather brief experience with death, and it has the imprint of a crucified man on it, made in a way that no one has ever been able to replicate. We went to the museum, watched a film on it, which was really interesting and rather convincing, then viewed the museum. We wanted to see the attached church as well, but the museum closed from noon to 3, so we had to come back later. We spent the interim wandering around beautiful Turin and eating lunch, then we went back to the church for guided tour in English that took about 10 minutes. We weren’t sure why they couldn’t just have let us in at noon, but, c’est la vie.

Afterward we went over to the cathedral where the Shroud is actually kept. Being really, really old, it’s not in immaculate shape anymore, so it goes on display very rarely (next public, showing 2025, keep your calendar clear!), but we did get to see its giant metal container.

All in all, the Shroud is yet another interesting glimpse into European Catholicism. I like Catholics, I’m related to several of them, some of whom are probably reading this (hello family, see you at Christmas!), and I’ve maintained for years that serious Catholics are serious Christians. But I have to admit, there are parts of Catholicism that I have serious reservations about, especially their attitudes towards the saints, Mary in particular, and relics, which are bits of saints or items associated with them.

On the one hand, I like the Catholic ideas about the community of faith, that though the saints are dead they’re still part of the church. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, praying to the saints, properly understood, is asking them to pray for you, and isn’t all that different than getting your pastor or your friends to do the same. But when saints or relics are venerated, almost worshipped, I get idolatry-shivers. It’s the reason I could never commit to Rome when I was flirting with her in college. Yeah, she was beautiful, mysterious and dignified, but there was just something about her that made me think twice.

Relics are even more sketchy as far as I’m concerned. If the Shroud of Turin is genuine, that is, if it really did wrap Jesus for a weekend 2000 or so years ago, it is a significant object worthy of preservation, study, respect and even a little bit of awe. But to venerate or worship it is going a bit far. It’s like worshipping Jesus’ toenail clippings. Yes, they were part of His body, but it’s kind of missing the point.

There was a Dilbert comic from years ago where Dilbert and Dogbert go to the Grand Canyon on vacation, and on the trail they come across a hole in the ground a couple of feet deep. Mistaking it for the real thing, they proceed to camp out for a week, and are very disappointed with the whole experience, especially when someone asks them why they’re camping in a hole when the beautiful Grand Canyon is over the next rise. Obviously the role of the deceased saints in the Church today is a large and complicated issue, and I can’t pretend to be qualified to make a pronouncement on it, but it is enough to keep me from becoming a Catholic.

Other than the Shroud, there wasn’t a lot to do in Turin. Like most places, it’s the kind of city that opens up more and more as your wallet expands. It was lovely, but any more than two nights and we would have gotten bored. Good kebaps though.

We got up the next morning and set out for Venice, and it’s going to be expensive. We’re meeting Will’s brother tomorrow, and for those and other adventures, tune in next week.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, Italy really is as beautiful as everybody always says.

We were eating dinner in our hostel in Geneva, talking to a girl from Victoria, and asking her where she’d been already. As it turned out, she’d just come from Zurich that day, and was telling us about this crazy older German guy who stayed at her hostel, and wanted everybody to join the army. I had a bit of a flashback, and, wouldn’t you know it, she’d stayed in our hostel the day or two after we left, and met our crazy German guy! Small world or what? Well, small Alpine country anyway.

Oh, also, you remember that 20 francs I was so excited about scooping up? Yeah, turns out they were ours. Rock on. On the other hand, now I’m even happier that I picked them up. I counted things twice, once when we got to Geneva and once when we left, and when we arrived we were 20 francs to the good, and when we left, we were right on target. I don’t quite get it, but oh well, at least we didn’t lose any money.

Geneva was much, much better than Zurich. I think it had more to do with our actions on the first day than anything else, and the hostel was 6 francs cheaper per night, which helped as well. Specifically, we didn’t go to a Mexican restaurant in the tourist district for dinner, which meant we didn’t spend obscene amounts of our very limited Swiss currency on sub-par faux-Mexican food. To my American friends who say Mexican is bad in Canada, I can only say just wait till you get to Switzerland. Oi.

When we arrived we naturally spent our first few minutes finding a place to sleep. We had a number of options from the Lonely Planet, including one promising-looking one that we also had a brochure for. We found the nearest bank of phones and got to work. The promising-looking one didn’t answer the phone, and said that booking had to be done online. I had looked online, and it said it would be full the day we got there, which was discouraging, so we tried the others. We finally found one that could take us, but for a fairly high price, so we set out, thinking we’d stay only one night and come to Turin early. Just for kicks, since it was close, we decided to walk to the brochure hostel first, just in case, and lo and behold, it had two beds for three nights! For a decent price! We settled right in, went to a grocery store to buy some pasta for supper, and took a short tour of the city, which is very pleasant, actually.

As we were strolling, we found Hannibal for sale for a mere 4 francs, so we jumped all over that. We had picked up the previous two novels in the series, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs in Prague, and both of us enjoyed them a lot. Will read it one night, and I read it the next, and we both finished before we left Geneva.

We made our way back to the hostel and met our Stanley, who turned out to be a friendly sculptor from Vancouver who also inexplicably left us a goodbye note wishing us well on our travels when he shipped out the next day. Then we made dinner, did the internet thing, and eventually I had the brainwave to make eggs and toast for breakfast instead of buying bread and cheese for a few days. It was, unfortunately, too late to get the necessary supplies at that point, but we resolved to do so in the morning. Watched the Sixth Sense, which remains an excellent movie, but all of the dialogue is delivered sotto voce, which makes it devilishly hard to hear when a group of idiots is talking loudly at the table behind you. I eventually, very politely, asked them to move on, and we watched the rest of the movie in peace and quiet. Then we went to bed. Well, not right after, we probably did do stuff after the movie, I just can’t remember what. I can guarantee, however, that we did go to bed that night.

The next day we got up, Will bought the stuff while I showered, and got mushrooms as well. We discovered that Edam cheese, which is like a bit milder version of Gouda, goes very, very well in scrambled eggs, complimenting the taste of the delicious little cholesterol bombs instead of overpowering them like cheddar tends to. You can’t really find cheddar over here anyway, so we weren’t in any danger on that front anyway. I also awoke to discover that I was getting sick, I had a sore throat and stuffy nose. Hooray.

Our plan that day was to tour the Geneva offices of the UN, and visit the Red Cross museum, and we set out to accomplish that task with our usual gusto. We got to the UN, found out we were too late for one tour and too early for the next, so we went to the museum instead. It was pretty good, and definitely took a different perspective on armed conflict than most. It also housed a really interesting temporary exhibition on the Cambodian genocide, which was a great thing not to go through by all accounts. Eight kinds of crazy.

We had still more time to kill when we got out, so we toddled off to a grocery store to get something to drink. That’s a lesson for anyone who intends to travel: grocery stores are always, always cheaper than anywhere else, and if you can find them, use them. You can buy a bottle of Coke for €1.25 in a grocery store that costs €2.50 twenty feet away. So we went to the store, got something to drink, and sat down and waited. My throat was starting to bother me a bit more, so I went to a nearby pharmacy to get some Advil, having vainly searched the aforementioned grocery store for the wonderdrug, and got charged 9.90 francs for 20 tablets of 200 mg ibuprofen. I don’t even want to know how badly I got ripped off, but it did help my throat.

Eventually we went back to the UN and got in line for the tour. And we waited. And we waited. And we went through a metal detector, and we waited. Repeat. Eventually, the security guards asked who spoke English and who spoke French. Then we waited. Then they told us that the tour was only in English. Then we waited some more. Finally, they let us go to another area where we waited in line to buy our tickets (a UN tour costs 10 francs, but we said we were students and took them for 4 francs!). Then we crossed a yard, saw a peacock, and waited.

Finally, we took our tour, which consisted of a fairly informative running lecture, a tour of a hideous 1960′s era building, and a really nice one from the 30′s, the old seat of the League of Nations (unofficial motto: What do you mean World War II?). We got some nice pictures, I picked up an International Labour Organization propaganda magazine, and we had a fascinating snapshot of the transnational bureaucracy at work. I personally don’t like or trust the UN, but I must say, if they conduct their business the same way they conduct their tours, I’ll sleep a lot easier at night.

We returned to the hostel, and read for a while. Since I was feeling ill, I tried to go to bed early, but since we’d gotten up so late, all I succeeded at was to rest up enough to ensure sleep would be impossible before 3 AM. Woot. (for those of you unfamiliar, woot is a cyber-geek expression roughly equivalent to “cool,” used here in an ironic sense) Will also spent a significant amount of time sewing up the shirt of mine he ripped by accident in Salzburg, then sewing up his shirt that I ripped back. Who says you have to be mature at 23? Speaking of which, I think that’s the age cited in that classic Blink 182 song “What’s My Age Again?£” Nobody likes you when you’re 23.

Geneva was the home of everyone’s favourite second-favourite Reformer, John Calvin, so the next day we went out to find the various and sundry sites associated with him. We managed to find the church he preached at, but not, unfortunately, his grave. There was also a Reformation Museum, which looked promising, but cost a lot of money, so we passed.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around, getting wet at Geneva’s enormous fountain, and eating McFlurries. That was the night we talked to the girl from Victoria. The next morning we shipped out for Turin, embarking on a long and arduous train ride, switching in Milan, and arriving exhausted and feeling ill from crappy train air.

Oh, and somehow, we managed to save enough room in our budget for Swiss Army knives, which was great. Turns out they’re exactly the same as the one we more or less stole from our friend Lindsay from Victoria and have been using so far. Same brand even. But hers wasn’t actually bought in Switzerland! That and two pounds of Swiss chocolate concluded our Helvetic detour, and now we’re back in the blessed Eurozone! No more currency switches until we go to London! That my friends, is reason for celebration.

And, one more thing: The itinerary is being drastically updated as well, so if you’re curious, or you’re wondering when we’ll be isolated enough that you can kill us with a reasonable chance of success, surf on over. Unless you really are planning to kill us. In that case, we’re going to be in Turkey for the forseeable future. Really.

Overheard in a Swiss Hostel:

An American Tourist in Cologne, Germany asks a pensioner how far to Paris. The answer? “About five days march.”

We’ve left Zurich, and I’ve got to say I’m pretty happy about that. We got off to a bad start there, paying too much for so-called Mexican food on the first night, and we never really recovered our momentum after that. Geneva seems to be slightly cheaper, at least in terms of accommodation, but really it’s a mental thing, we’re in a new place, and we haven’t been hosed yet. It’s nice, really.

Other than expensive, and rather because of that, we didn’t do a whole lot in Zurich. Really, we did a whole lot less than usual, and we stayed less time as well. After a bit of exploring, we came back to the room to read, and met a friendly old Swiss guy who was on his way somewhere from Nigeria, where he’d recently lost everything he had. I didn’t quite catch all the details, but he was bearing it remarkably well, all things considered.

I’ve come to the realization that I’m absolutely terrible at ending conversations smoothly. Short of finding an excuse to leave, as long as I’m in the same place as someone, I’ll generally continue talking to them, however awkwardly, until they lose interest, which, with pretty girls, seems to happen fairly quickly I’m afraid. The friendly Switzer kept talking, so I found an excuse to excuse myself on the pretext that we should explore Zurich a little more, getting Will off the hook as well.

We went downstairs to the lobby, and just sort of stayed there and read, and in the course of things I heard a 40-ish German man tell that joke to an Aussie and a Californian. After a few more minutes of conversation he had managed to offend both of them to point of departure, and his audience gone, he started to talk to me.

Now to be fair, he didn’t just fixate on me as his next best target. He had been discussing the social and demographic problems associated with high levels of Muslim immigration in Europe, and the Aussie wouldn’t stand for it, and the Californian didn’t want to get into it. I made a comment after they’d left, and so I ended up talking to him for quite awhile. I got to hear the aforementioned joke again, and he gave me all sorts of travel advice for Italy, very little of which will be of use. Eventually I left to go to bed, and that was the last I saw of the fellow.

The next day we walked around a bit, then did a Zurich bench tour, after we’d done our internet duties for the city. I was trying to get 90 minutes of internet time, and the girl at the counter didn’t understand me, and managed to sell me two and a half hours of net time instead of the hour and a half I’d come in for. At twenty francs, it was not even remotely a good deal, but it was the only one I could find short of the coin operated box at the hostel, which was busy at the time. Oi. Zurich, expensive.

That evening we did very little, and to escape unwanted conversation in the room again, this time with a programmer from Vancouver (who, I might add, was very interesting for quite a while. I just can’t end conversations well) and three potheads from California (who were very nice kids, just a little dumb that way), I went into the little kitchen next door to have some tea and read. After a few hours I went downstairs to find Will alone in the lounge, and we spent the next four or five hours talking and drinking tea, which was free. I think we had at least fifteen little cups each, and we were up til 5. It was great.

The next day we went church-hopping, did some more reading, and that was about it. This morning we got up, got ready, and came off 20 francs to the good, which was very nice. Someone had dropped a 20 franc note on the floor of our room, and it wasn’t either of us, nor did it belong to anyone else in the room. It think it was probably the programmer’s, but he’d checked out an hour before. We let it sit for awhile, then I asked the guy there one more time if it was his, got a negative, and pocketed it. It was wonderful. Then we got on a train and came here.

I didn’t enjoy Zurich, which is unfortunate. I’m not going to go so far as to say I didn’t like it, because I simply didn’t have the money to give it a fair shake. But we were both happy to be leaving this morning. We weren’t sure we’d be able to find a place to sleep in Geneva tonight, and we were prepared, if need be, to lock up our gear, go sight-seeing, and then go on to Turin tonight, which would have sucked. But we did find a decently priced hostel, and it seems like a pretty nice place, so it should all be good. Which means that it won’t, but we’ll all just have to wait and see exactly how!

We are away from Austria, away from Germany, and moving south, into expensive, expensive Switzerland, and once again onto a computer where I can’t change the keyboard to English, so once again, if I mention Germanz, please don’t think I’m being cute. I have discovered that I hate Swiss keyboards even more than German ones though. Why can’t we all just get along and use the same keyboards? It would make life so much easier for me, and that’s really all that matters, right? Oh well, you get used to it in time.

On the way to Salzburg we talked to a nice couple from the States who were in Vienna for a medical conference, which served to break up the monotony of the trip some. Once we arrived, we found a phone and Will called the hostel to see if we were sleeping on the street that night, and on our way out of the station Andy, one of the Americans we’d talked to, asked to make sure we’d found a place. Awfully decent chap, eh? We had, so we said goodbye, and Will commenced to navigate the streets of Salzburg to find the hostel. That was our first mistake.

We’ve run into all manner of people on our trip, including a lot who are travelling in groups, and a clear pattern of delegation has emerged. In most groups, things like navigation, talking and the like are usually handled almost exclusively by the same person all the time. Since I’ve inherited my father’s impeccable sense of direction, I usually navigate.

After a few questionable turns I grabbed the book (which, to be fair to Will, generally has hopelessly inadequate maps) and tried on my own. I had looked up a few hostels on the net the night before, and the name of the one we were trying to find tweaked in my memory for some reason, so I stopped to find a payphone.

Over here, and I presume back home, there’s an organization called Hostelling International that, as near as I can tell, exists solely to make travel difficult for non-members. Many affiliated hostels will charge you extra if you don’t have a card, and some won’t even let you stay at all. This one belonged to the former group, and it turned out that we’d be charged another 2 or 3 euros per night to stay, which is ridiculous. Having found that out I made a quick course correction and we went to another hostel with considerably more reasonable terms.

The hostel was decent, as hostels go, high-middle of the road, but not good enough to break into the top ranks. It did have a big-screen TV though, and a collection of videos that included Grosse Pointe Blank, one of my favourite movies of all time, and one that Will and I have been itching to watch again for a month or so. That was a pleasant surprise.

It was a funny city really, and it seemed a lot smaller than it actually was at the outset. We just read books on the first day, Will had picked up Carrie in Vienna, and I read the Sophie Kinsella book Undomestic Goddess that we’d half-traded half-stole from Budapest after I finished Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I counted them out, and I’ve read eighteen or nineteen books since we left, and will is another three or more ahead of me. I love Europe, I haven’t gotten this much reading done in I don’t know how long (now where is that blasted exclamation mark key?)! (there we go, stupid Swiss keyboards)

Outside of Salzburg is a palace called Hellbrun that has a bunch of trick fountains, and it had been recommended both by the Americans on the train, and Will’s mother, so with an endorsement like that, we figured we couldn’t go wrong. Naturally, we did, and waited at the wrong bus station. We decided to go find the brewery instead in hopes of getting a tour, but what we found was a giant beergarden with a whole bunch of food stalls instead. We made do.

We did find our way out to Hellbrunn the following day, and the trick fountains were quite a sight to behold. They were built for a crazy bishop in the 17th century. The man was a real jerk, as they included a table where the guests had to sit with water jets going up their posteriors at the bishop’s pleasure, a sort of early-Renaissance bidet with clothes on. It would have been hilarious to do to somebody though, and the tour was in English as well as German, so understanding it all was an added bonus.

That’s about all for Salzburg highlights. We decided to cut our time in Switzerland short for some reason, by a day in each place, and boy are we glad we did. It’s ridiculously expensive here, and I can’t wait to get to a more reasonable economic climate. We’re also planning to meet up with Will’s brother Tim in the next few weeks, probably in Venice, assuming the schedules work out. Pending that, there’s going to be a major shakeup in the itinerary, so stay tuned for that!

As I’m sure many of you know, Salzburg was the setting for The Sound of Music, and there are tours and memorabilia for the movie all over the place. I’ve never seen it, though our hostel showed it every day at 10:30 in the morning, well before any reasonable person gets out of bed (exclamation mark, where are you…ah, there we go!)! I was thinking about getting up early one day and spending three hours in a noisy bar watching Julie Andrews traipse around the Alps, but then I had a better idea, and it goes something like this:

Pretty Girl – “You mean you’ve never seen The Sound of Music!?!?”

Me – “Nope”

Pretty Girl – “Well, we’ll just have to remedy that now, won’t we?”

I think we can all agree that this is a much better plan. I’ll leave you on that note, and with a really terrible joke that I once heard.

The Hill family was travelling through the mountains when they were caught in a terrible storm. As they got colder and more desperate, Mr. Hill finally saw a castle in the distance, and with the last ounce of his strength he got his family to the door and pounded on the knocker. The door was answered by a strange little hunchback named Igor who immediately ran to get his employer, the master of the house.

The kindly count had the family brought in and tried everything he knew to warm and revive them but to no avail. One by one the Hill family passed away, and finally the count had Igor take them to the basement until the storm abated and he could have them buried.

As Igor was finishing his task, the count went to his chamber and began playing a mournful dirge on his great organ. Igor had just placed the last body in the cellar when, one by one, they began sitting up (Blast, where is that…oh, here we go)! In a panicked rush, Igor stormed up the stairs and into the count’s chamber shouting breathlessly, “Master, master, the Hills are alive with the sound of music!”

The Idle Poor. That’s what we are. We certainly envy the idle rich, I mean, who wouldn’t? But, since we can only fulfill one of those criteria, we’re idle. I think that might be a deciding factor in the second part there, but who can say? I mean, here we are, in Europe, doing nothing of value, for five months. Just with less money. A lot less. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. Well, that’s a lie, there are a lot of things I’d trade this for, like world domination (always number one on my Christmas list), or this trip with more money, or perhaps more time, or both. But as reality goes, this one’s turning out pretty good.

Vienna was glorious. Possibly the best place we’ve yet visited. And, as I’ve already mentioned, it was wonderful to be back in Western Europe. Will remains a bit enchanted with the East, likely for the same reason I will always love Germany, but higher prices aside, I’m loving being back in the West.

We arrived in Vienna in the early evening, probably around 5 or 6 (trust me, that’s early evening here). We phoned the hostel from the train station, took two minor wrong turns, and found ourselves in a very nice hostel that was very reasonably priced in short order, then we walked down Mariahilferstraße (that crazy looking ß is called an ess-tset, and it sounds like a double s, an alternate spelling would be Mariahilferstrasse, but I like the German version better), the main road to the center of the city.

Vienna is wonderful, because it’s fairly big, but all of the interesting things are located fairly close to each other, unlike Paris or Berlin. The city, especially Mariahilferstraße, is an interesting combination of old and new, with a lively commercial district existing within a lovely old city. At the end of that street the Hofburg begins, the fantastically large palace of the Habsburgs, the Austrian Imperial family for oh, a thousand years or so. It’s a beautiful building. The northern Germans seem to have learned their love for enormous buildings from their Austrian cousins and rivals. Magnificent buildings in marble and stone, with statues all over all the roofs, and many of them are in the process of being restored, so they look even better.

I found Vienna fascinating becuase I’ve never really given a lot of thought to Austria in history. My considerable interest in German history focuses mainly on Prussia, a territory in the northeast. Their interactions with the Austrians were mainly violent as they struggled to become the dominant power in the German parts of Europe before the unification, from the late 1500′s on, and so I’ve always seen the Austrians as the bad guys and not much else. I’ll have to look at it all a lot closer, since there’s a tonne of fascinating stuff here.

Other than nice buildings, Vienna is a cultural centre of Europe, and Will and I had planned to spend our time here getting cheap tickets to concerts, operas and the like. Naturally, we never got around to it, but at least now I have a compelling reason to go back!

We did manage to catch a few museums, including a one room affair in a church that was, really the most pathetic excuse for a museum I’ve ever seen. We also caught the rather creepy Habsburg crypt, which creepiness arose mainly from the strange ways they decorated their coffins and sarcophogi, and a museum in the Hofburg dedicated to Empress Elisabeth, who is something of a cult figure in Austria. Also on that one were the Imperial apartments, and the Imperial siler collection. Apartments interesting, silver not so much. Imagine a case containing a thousand plates. Repeat. But we had to get through that to get to the good stuff, so at least there was a reward at the end.

Oh, and Will just reminded me, we also went to the supremely boring Freud museum. Will liked it a bit more than I did, being a Psych major and all, but even so, it was two rooms of Freud, and a floor and a half of couches. Yes, couches. Supreme waste of time, but at the same time, it was the site of the man’s Vienna practice so we were pretty much obliged to go. Rip off, let me tell you.

Other than that, we basically did a bench tour of Vienna. Got a lot of reading done, went to Starbucks some, McDonald’s some, went out for Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday with some Canadian girls we met at the hostel, that was about it. I still haven’t been able to get in touch with my brother, he apparently doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sure I’ll track him down though.

This must be wretched for you readers, all four of you. I mean, we’re sick of museums, and our idea of a good time is a reasonably comfortable bench and a good book. Maybe something terrible will happen in Salzburg to spice things up for you. We can only hope.

One last thing, before I sign off. In case you haven’t been reading Will’s blog, I have a hilarious story from Budapest. Will and I were sitting on a bench, arguing as is our wont, when this fellow came up to Will and asked, “do you speak English?”

“No.” Matter-of-factly, no hesitation, no nothing.

“You don’t speak English?”

Grudgingly, “Well, a little.”

Turns out the poor guy just wanted directions to a hostel, which I supplied. I don’t think he took them seriously. Unfortunately, after Morocco, our Trust Reflexes have been permanently damaged. I used to be such a nice person, I’d take things people handed out in the street, stop if they tried to talk to me. Now I just blow right by them, and I’m starting to enjoy it. I guess I’m just a bad person. Oh well, c’est la vie!

We’re back in Western Europe, back in a cultural context I can understand, and a language I’m at least nominally familiar with (what do you mean “non-indo-european?). It’s almost like coming home.

Budapest was, well, Budapesty. We didn’t really do all that much. I believe I’ve mentioned before that we’ve sort of gotten museumed and cathedraled out over the past three months (and geez, has it been that long?). We wandered around the city and marvelled at how cheap everything was. And that was pretty much the extent of it.

I forgot to mention last time, that on the train ride to Budapest I’d managed to lose our train tickets in a crack in the seat. I saw them on the floor, but I couldn’t get my big meaty hand through the gap, and there were no small-armed children around that I could enlist for help, so I just sort of sat there and worried. Actually, I found out that I’d dropped them when a conductor came along and asked for tickets. Mercifully, he saw me digging for them, said something in Maygyar, shrugged, and walked off. I was on pins and needles until we got off the train, but it was all good. I just didn’t want to get fined again, a la Paris.

We stayed in a hostel called the Aboriginal, which was infested by Aussies, but run by Hungarians. It was really quite good, and I highly recommend it to anyone travelling to Budapest. It’s probably the second best we’ve stayed in so far, after the Marabou in Prague. It had free laundry, that they insisted on doing for you. In fact, if you tried to do it on your own they’d fine you. It was beautiful.

Canadians, and Americans too I imagine, live under a curious delusion. Since our countries are so incredibly large, we figure Europe can fit in our pockets. Sure, it might take a couple of hours to get from, say, the bottom of Spain to the top of Germany, but surely journeys within countries can’t take more than a few dozen minutes! And you must be able to jump from city to city in these strange little Eastern countries that look like so many ink-spills on the map. I can authoritatively tell you that this is not the case.

Just a note, this update has been a twofer, so in the unlikely event you’re interested in our non-adventures in Bratislava, scroll down.

Thanks to the very helpful front desk at our hostel, we found out that the best way to get from Bratislava to Humenne, the base-camp for our adventure to Karna, was to travel first to Kosice, the second major city in Slovakia, and then connect. The trip to Kosice took over six hours, and the trip to Humenne nearly another two. Now, I’ve been traveling back and forth between Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia my entire life, not to mention some pretty long-haul train rides here already, but let me tell you, that one nearly did me in!

We had, fortunately, had the foresight to buy supplies for lunch along the way, consisting of dry buns, bananas, and Snickers bars (it was a long week-and-a-half without you my pretties! I think I’m going to have to go into Snickers rehab when I get home), and without these I would have wanted to die. More than I already did, that is. Oh blood sugar, why must you dip so low when I forget to eat, and then punish me mercilessly? Why?

I spent most of the train ride reading an Elizabeth George novel that we’d picked up in Friedrichshafen. It was good, entertaining, and very interesting because a couple of summers ago I bought a book on how to write a book by her, without ever having read her. I got some useful hints from it, and having read her work, I can see that it wasn’t a total waste of money, which is lovely.

We arrived in Humenne in the evening. We had tried to book a room ahead at the Best Western in town, but ran into difficulties when the receptionist who answered didn’t speak English, and poor Will’s Slovak wasn’t up to the task. We figured we’d probably be pretty safe winging it, and we got a nice double room with minimal fuss, that ended up being cheaper than our crappy hostel in Paris had been. Oi. If you go to Paris, don’t go to the Blue Planet. It sucks, though it did introduce us to the first Stanley.

All we did that evening was go to the supermarket for some really, really gross bread and cheese, then we hid in our room that night watching music videos. I’ve developed an unhealthy fascination with Justin Timberlake’s newest hit “Sexyback.” Leaving aside any moral judgments on the matter, I find the whole thing aesthetically offensive in the extreme from the get-go, from the title to the music to the vocals to the video. It’s just incredibly, incredibly stupid. Apparently our dear Justin has taken it upon himself to restore a little joy and beauty into the world, declaring, in an overproduced and rather ridiculous tone, “I’m bringing sexy back.” That, combined with an exceptionally mediocre performance from Robbie Williams in “Rudebox” kept me entertained for hours. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I’d be able to catch the video once on the one music chanel, then a few minutes later on the other. Exciting times, I tell you.

Also, note to my friend Mustard, you know who you are: I saw the music video for Satisfaction, scantily clad girls using power tools. It lived up so perfectly to the song I was dumbfounded.

The next day was the big day, the checking of the final box on our to-do list for the trip. It sounds impressive, but we only ever had two real items on it, Run with the Bulls (check) and visit Karna.

We got up late in the day and took a twenty minute bus ride out to a village in the Slovak countryside. For the eight of you who have ever been to Smeaton, Saskatchewan, you’d know more or less what to expect. It was pretty much all houses and a church, but kind of half rural, half urban, with big overgrown yards that occasionally tried to pass themselves off as gardens. The houses were all old, and so were many of the people, though it was a Saturday afternoon, and quiet. We pretty much walked the length and breadth of the place, got some great pictures because it was beautiful, and then went back to Humenne.

That night was music videos and a Ken Follett novel that someone bought in India and left in Prague, which we traded for another Follett novel we bought in Spain. Both were terrible. I didn’t even get to see Sexyback all the way through, and Ken has got to be one of the worst writers I’ve ever read. It was entertaining in it’s badness though, and Will and I shared many a a laugh over his various literary foibles. But don’t waste your time on it if you’re not killing time in Slovakia. I also got to call home and talk to everyone who was there, which was lovely.

Before Ken and Justin though Will and I ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had duck, and he had a venison steak, we had dessert and a couple of drinks, and the total was, what, $30 Canadian? It was wonderful, and cheap, and I miss it already. I like duck, and I think I’ll seek it out whenever I can.

The next day, which, as always, was today, we got up, had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, bought supplies for the day and got on a train to Kosice, from where we’d be catching another to Budapest. I bought eight buns, four bananas and ten Snickers (we had a lot of Slovak crowns left, and not much of Slovakia), and we ended up waiting in Kosice for six hours for the first train to Budapest, and ate most of the food there in a park. I managed to finish Ken, mercifully, and started on Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, which is the prequel to Silence of the Lambs. I finished that on the long train ride here and just started Silence when we’d arrived.

When we were arriving into Prague I saw someone just finishing the book, two volumes in one, and offered to buy it from him. He gave it to me, but tore out the copyright page so we couldn’t resell it. At the time I didn’t care, but looking back I’m actually rather offended. There are a dozen ways to make it seem reasonable, but in the end it just sort of seems like a jerk thing to do, you know? Especially the way he did it. He said sure, then, wait, tore out the page, and handed it to me. Like giving a gift with strings attached, you know? We were unlikely to try to sell it anyway, but now we won’t even be able to trade it in at a bookshop if we wanted another one.

On the plus side, they’re really, really good books. Especially coming off of Ken Follett. It’s just so nice to read a well-written tome. It’s obviously not perfect, but everything from the style to the tone to the verb-usage was, and is, exquisite. Makes me want to see the movies. And go to bed.

Well, we’ve managed to escape Slovakia unscathed, which is my preferred way to escape. We visited two cities and a village while we were there, but since we didn’t have internet access in Humenne I couldn’t post Bratislava until now. I’ll do them both together, and I’m afraid this will be a short one, in case any of you were trying to procrastinate from papers or anything *cough*Mark!*cough*

We arrived in Bratislava and sought out two things: money, and a hostel. You really don’t realize what a wonderful thing a currency union is until you leave it, but right now we’re on our third currency in as many weeks, and it gets a little confusing. For instance, I’ve been over here long enough that I really don’t think in Canadian Dollars anymore, I think in Euros.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia they use crowns, but different countries mean it’s a different currency, like Canada and the States. One Euro will buy you 28 Czech crowns, but it’ll pick you up a whopping 37 of the Slovak variety. Now we’re in Hungary, where the local currency begins with an ‘f’ and is worth 270 to the Euro. Our accommodation for five nights cost us 27,000 Ft, which works out to about a 100 Euros. I’ll let you convert that to your home currency of choice on your own.

We split up, and I found an ATM an got cash while Will looked for, something. I think he was looking for a city map, but he came back and told me he found us a hostel, which was what we needed anyway. They also provided a free cab-ride from the train station, which was also lovely.

While we were waiting for the cab and the organizer fellow this crazy-looking old guy walked by and asked me if I wanted information on hostels. I, as you can well imagine, am incredibly wary of strangers in ports of entry, and said I was fine, I already had one. He said that the information was free, why not look? I said again that I was fine, then he cryptically said “very well, I will tell you after you have paid a fine.” and walked away. Needless to say (which is kind of a stupid precursor if you think about it) I was very much disturbed, and expected menacing Slovak cops to jump out from behind every corner and nail us to the wall for some infraction I didn’t even understand.

We did, however, manage to arrive at the hostel without incident, and we eventually figured that the fine he was talking about was a 30 crown per night room tax that we evaded by claiming to be students. I felt a little twinge of guilt, but then, I really am a student still, even though I’m not enrolled in any University at the moment. I figure if I end up not going back to school, I’ll mail the Slovak government the $5 that I’d cheated them out of. I’m not terribly concerned.

Our hostel in Bratislava, I believe I’ve mentioned, was not nearly as nice as the one in Prague. But then, none have even approached it, so there’s not much to say on that point. It was institutional, the bathroom smelled bad, and there was only one toilet per floor, with three shower stalls. Talk about your misplaced priorities!

The first night we wandered about the town, saw the Danube for the first time in our lives, and generally rejoiced in being in a cheap place. We ate the first of five McFlurries in our three day trip, Kit Kat, and all of a sudden I’m craving ice cream.

Bratislava is tiny compared to Prague. The old city is nice, but there’s really not much to it. We were originally planning to give one of the Nuremberg days to Prague and one to Bratislava, but I’m so glad we stayed that extra day in Prague. Much better. Bratislava did have it’s own charm though, and the place was still delightfully cheap. They do have some of the worst cheese we’ve yet encountered in Europe though, which saddened us greatly.

The second day we went up to the castle, which was also a museum. We couldn’t see it the night before, but the other bank of the river is taken up in these hideous Soviet-era apartment buildings, and we were glad not to have to wander among them. The museum was an interesting and eclectic collection of things, from an exhibit on Slovak Stations of the Cross to arms and armour, and an itinerant exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci. This last one had reproductions of some of his more interesting models, and seemed to be at least partly focused on dispelling the ridiculous cloud of myth built around the man by a certain bad novelist. It was well worth the 100 crowns each it cost.

We spent the afternoon hunting for a Slovakia hoodie for Will, a search that proved fruitless, I’m afraid, and went out for dinner for some traditional Slovak food, which turned out to be dumplings in sheep cheese. It was, weird. Imagine macaroni and cheese in sour cream. I couldn’t finish it.

I spent most of the next day uploading a few hundred pictures to the site here, so they’re available for your perusal if you haven’t noticed them already. That evening we went out for our last round of McFlurries and heard some loud explosions. We were hoping for a revolution or something, but we think it was just fireworks, though I’m not entirely sure why they were set off.

Our last night in Bratislava we went to bed at about midnight, and were awakened a few hours later by Hard Done-by Stanley. This Stanley had come in earlier, when we were still awake, claimed and made up a bed, then left again. Some time between me falling asleep and me getting woken up by the lights, someone else had stolen his bed and was merrily asleep in it. Hard Done-by Stanley got management involved, but for some reason they moved him and not the sleeping Stanley. Then they just left the lights on. I waited a bit for them to come back, but eventually I just got up and turned them out, none too pleased since I had to wake up at 6 to catch a train.

After another hour or so, Stanley the Squatter got up, took his bags and left, so he’s been dubbed Squatter Stanley called Travel-quickly, and I wish him ill. Well, not really, but I liked the way that sentence sounded when I wrote it. I only wish him a little bit of ill, and that’s mostly because I’m tired again. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll be more or less neutral in my wishes toward him.

On second thought, I think I’ll do Karna and Humenne as a separate post. Until then…