No one told us about the Arctic chill

We have been on the farm now for 3 weeks and we have gotten to the point where all we can think about is leaving. That is mostly due to the Arctic front that apparently has made its way to Ireland, and in the last three days the temperature has dropped by at least 15 degrees. We spend our nights wearing sweatpants, hoodies, and woolly socks, and as we watch TV we sit directly on the space heater in an attempt to stay warm.

The farm has been an experience, however, and here are a few highlights from the last week:

Thanksgiving without an oven. Menu included already cooked slices of chicken (we couldnt find turkey), mashed turnip, cranberry sauce, instant stuffing and instant gravy. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but we made the most of it, and we were sure to at least spend a little extra money on a bottle of red wine. We found some old curtains that we used as tablecloths, lit some candles, and toasted eachother with mugs of wine on how lucky we are for having been able to come on this trip.

The pigs. As we are in charge of feeding them twice a day, we have begun to bond with the animals. They hear us coming and bumble their way over to us. We swear they have doubled in size since we arrived at the farm. We now have a strategy when it comes to feeding them: One person walk into the pen as a distraction, while the other slips behind and sprints to the trough to dump the food. Once they hear the food being dumped we are completely ignored, and no longer have to worry about being trampled into the mud. We are getting a soft spot for the little guys, and we are coming up with ways for the gate to be "accidentally" left open on our last day at the farm.

Tom. Tom has been a recent addition to our life. He is Padrig's 85 year old father and he and his wife live in the big house on the farm. The highlight of our day is seeing Tom's daily outing on the farm. He begins by stopping at the barn, assessing our carrot bundling while warning us about the Arctic chill. He then slowly creeps along the muddy path to stop and stare at the pigs for a good 20 minutes, making sure they are okay and getting quite upset if they haven't received their daily treat of old tomatoes and avocados. He seems to have a soft spot for them, as well, and we are considering asking him if he wants in on our pig evacuation scheme. We think Tom is great, but became extremely concerned for the safety of the Irish population when we saw him roll up in his car to the farmers market to buy some fish. His face was 6 inches from the windshield and he usually has to be within 5 feet of us to even recognize (or hear) us, so we can only imagine what he must be like on the road. He is very proud of himself as he informed us that last year he bought the first automatic car in Ballinasloe.

We find ourselves getting rather frusterated with the lack of organization and common sense of our bosses. We leave you now with our favorite quotes from each of them, just to give you an understanding of what we're dealing with:

Padrig: "Hey, do you want to know something? I just found out that these little raisins are actually made from dried grapes! I never knew that till this month!"

Una: "I'm having one of those days where I can't believe I'm an organic farmer."
Laura: "Did you always want to be a farmer?"
Una: "Oh no. When I was eighteen I wanted to be an actress!"

Thank god we only have a week left on the farm.

The Two Best Farmers You've Ever Met

We have survived our first week on the farm and since we only make it into town once a week, we bring you now our weekly blog entry. Here are some key points and insights into the daily routine of life as an organic farmer:

- Wake up when it's still dark and real cold. Laura makes the instant coffee as Meghan whips up the porridge. This usually involves searching around the house for the Splenda, which we always hide frantically from Una, the wife of the organic farmer, because she only does organic and frowns at us for even chewing gum due to its artificiality.

- Get dressed in long underwear (pants and top), sweats, jackets, wellies, and waterproof overalls. Head over to the pig pen to begin our day. As we mix up their organic porridge breakfast, the 6 large males pigs crowd the fence, squealing for us to hurry up. One of us then has to take the food into the pen with all six pigs swarming and nipping her legs as she makes her way to the trough. The other stands outside and is usually crying from laughing so hard as the other tries not to get taken down into the muck. Usually half the food has been dumped on the pigs and the other half is smeared all over our clothes. We then trudge back up the barn, feeling defeated.

- The rest of the day is spent harvesting a variety of veg, including carrots, parsnips, celery, brussel sprouts, cabbage and tomatoes, all to get ready for the "market." We are still working on our harvesting skills, as we tend to either eat what we pick, or spear the veg with our pitchforks as we attempt to dig them up.

- Market days are particularly exciting because we get a chance to head into actual civilization. Our first day at the market, however, was not quite what we expected. In the days prior we had felt intense pressure and expectation to make sure there was enough harvested, and in our minds we pictured a giant, crowded market. We were amused to roll up and discover the market consisted of 4 stands and our four new best friends: the fish man from Russia, the pastry man from France, Martin, the wine and cheese connoisseur, and Padrig, the organic farmer we work for. We are there to help set up, but for the most part we stand around and gawk as Una, who is quite petite, displays her freakish strength by hoisting around bags of potatoes and wooden tables.

- There are a few elements of organic farm life to which we are having a little trouble adjusting. First things first, we aren't allowed to have a trash can because everything has to go in the compost or be recycled. We spend a good half hour arguing about what goes in which bucket, and whether paper towels actually ARE part of the compost (the dampness of the paper seems to play an instrumental role, but we haven't quite mastered the art). In the end we get fed up and hide a plastic bag of garbage in our room for our next trip to town where we can get rid of it in a public trash can. Another difficulty we face daily is having to walk outside to go to the bathroom. In an effort not to dirty our house (which is basically a large room with a space heater that Meghan is usually hovered over), the door to the bathroom is on the outside of the house, and every night at about 2 am we wake each other up as we turn on a light and dig around for shoes and a sweatshirt.

- The best part of farm life is the giant refrigerator room in the barn with all the fruit and veg we could ever want. We usually wait till everyone has gone home, and then we lurk up in the dark with a box and go on raids for dinner. Our favorite item is the expensive golden kiwi that has been imported from New Zealand. We've never eaten so much organic produce in our lives; we're going out to Indian tonight.

- Nightly activities, aka until 9 pm, involve alternating between reading and staring at each other.

We'll be back next week for further updates, unless we've been fired or eaten by pigs.

Life on the Farm

Yesterday was our first day at the farm, and I can now say that Meghan and I are the best carrot harvesters ever. Our day began by waking up in our little wooden house that is located on the farm itself in our bunkbeds. After a breakfast of oatmeal and tea (we were feeling very
farmlike), we hauled on our wellies, waterproof pants and jacket, and headed out. Una and Padrig are the couple we are working for, and Una began by showing us around the farm, including the polytunnels, crops, and pig pen. We thought we were only dealing with vegetables, but just
our luck, they acquired pigs about 4 weeks ago, and Meg and I now have the pleasure of helping feed them every morning. After feeding the pigs, we headed into the carrot patch, where we spent the next 5 hours
pulling carrots out of the ground and loading them into the tractor. There was a huge order to be shipped to Dublin today, and so yesterday we apparently harvested in a day what they normal do in two weeks. After the harvesting we had a quick lunch of organic vegetables and
then headed into the barn and bundled 250 bunches of carrots that had to weigh 1kg each. Needless to say, we were busy until about 7pm.

After quick showers in the bathroom that only has an entrance from the outside (which is starting to get annoying when we have to walk outside at 2am), we whipped up a dinner of more organic, had some tea and played cards, and then looked at our watch to see that it was
still only 9:30pm. We sat and stared at eachother for 15 more mintues,then decided it was more than acceptable to get into bed to read.Within half hour we were both completely passed out.

Because we had such a busy day yesterday, we were given the day off,and we have wandered into town to use the internet and check out theshops. Our legs and backs are pretty sore, but we are enjoying beingin the country as opposed to the dirtiness and craziness of Dublin. We
will try to blog again soon, as well as post some pictures to give asense of our current situation. Hope all is well with everyone, we miss you!

Our last days in Dublin

Our final week in Dublin was a bit of a fiasco.
- on sunday we left the house to run around the corner for a huge cup of coffee, in our pajamas, planning to be gone about 5 minutes. when we walked back (without coffee...we forgot everyone is at church sunday mornings) we both looked at eachother waiting for the other to open the door. no keys. awesome. we spent a good 2 hours trying to get into the house.
- tuesday-last day of work. we have to celebrate so we go out for a pint. we walk back to the house only to put in our keys and set the alarm off. it is deafening and we have no idea what the code is to turn it off. there is no number on the alarm box and we dont know who even set the alarm on (we hadnt been setting it). We had no cell phone so we frantically run up the street to call our landlord for the code at 1am...they tell us the code and we run back home. code doesn't work. bollucks. we run back to pay phone to see if tehre is maybe a different code. landlord doesn't know. we run back to house. still can't turn alarm off. dont know what to do. all of a sudden, there are about 4 cop cars that come screaming down our street and surround our house, thinking there is a burglar in our house. we try to explain what is going on but they yell at us to be quiet while they send men in. they look at us weird and dont understand when we show them our keys. finally they realize we live in the house,there is no burglar, we dont know how to turn off the alarm and that we are foreigners. police man gets alarm to miraculously stop about 4 hours after it started going off. we eventually go to bed. our poor, poor neighbors.
-thursday- we are tired of the city and want to see a little of ireland before we go to the farm. so, we rent a car. it is manual so i drive while laura navigates. we are a genius team and manuever ourselves through ireland and their terribly marked road system. i manage to drive on the right side of the road (most of the time) and we arrive safely back in dublin. the car rental place is closed until morning so we park the car outside of it and walk back in the morning to return the keys. we arrive in the morning to see that someone has stolen all of the hubcaps off the car and scratched the door. cool.
-saturday-we managed to pack up all of our stuff and head to the organic farm where we plan to work/live until the end of november.

Hi ho Hi ho It's off to Oktoberfest we go...

Our 10 day hiatus from Dublin went as follows:

London:

London was great because we both got a little taste of home. We spent our first day with my dad (he was on a business trip in London) sightseeing and going on a "jog" around Buckingham Palace. Besides getting to stay at a nice hotel, wear comfy white bath robes and be treated to a good meal (and get to see my dad of course), a highlight for us was the Tower of London. After reading so many historical fiction books on Henry VIII, we thought it was so cool to see where he lived and where Anne Bolyn was beheaded (wow, that sounds really morbid). We also go to see Westminister Abbey which was pretty amazing. Everything about London was very cultured and cool (minus the fact that everything is super expensive!). The other short days we were in the city we spent with Laura's cousin and her family in Notting Hill. Notting Hill was gorgeous and really cute, just like in the movie. Laura's cousin and her family were so good to us- it was hard to leave but we had to head off to Germany.



Berlin:
We arrived in Berlin on Tuesday night and made it to our hostel which for some reason was called Green Eggs and Ham. After spending the night in the smallest bed we have had yet to share, the first thing we did was take the train across the city to what is known as the East Side Gallery. Basically it is a portion of the Berlin wall, extending about a kilometer, that has been preserved and painted by people all over the world with images regarding the separation of East and West Berlin, the destruction of the wall, etc. We walked up and down the street for a good hour looking at the murals and took a ton of pictures. We also visited the location of Checkpoint Charlie, and though there isn't much left of it, a memorial has been constructed that describes the history behind the wall, the Cold War, and the eventual resolution when the Americans finally left Berlin.
Other than that, Meghan and I spent our two days in Berlin just walking around the city and taking in the sights. The city has amazing architecture and has a very modern feel to it, and we were constantly impressed with the efficiency of the Germans. Fast speed trains were always whizzing around, everyone spoke English perfectly, and the city streets were immaculate. The Germans were also extremely friendly and always willing to help when we had questions, and for the first time Meghan and I felt like we fit in with the population, as people frequently assumed we were from Germany and would come up and speak to us in German. It was a nice change from the weird stares we had grown accustomed to receiving while travelling around Eastern Europe.



OKTOBERFEST:

Day 1-

We rolled up to Munich after a turbulent flight. Meghan was looking somewhat terrified by the time we finally landed (she's not exactly a fan of flying and didn't take her Xanax...I tried to be supportive and not giggle at her continuous grabs at the seat in front of her), and the first thing she said to me was, "I need a drink."

After checking into our hotel and dropping off our bags, we headed to the festival at about 1pm. Five minutes after arriving we were completely overwhelmed and at a bit at a loss of how to proceed. We walked into the first tent we saw and were immediately overpowered by the polka music, Germans dressed in lederhosen standing on tables singing, and beer wenches screaming at us at the top of their lungs (kinda scary) to move out of the way as they made their way to tables with six gigantic mugs of beer stacked on top one another (which takes an impressive amount of strength). We wandered around for a bit, looking for a table at which to sit, as you don't get beer unless you are at a table. Finally some Italian guy snatched us up as he walked by and led us to his table, where we squeezed in and finally got a taste of our first beer at Oktoberfest. Conversation lacked as they didn't speak English, but after a few minutes we were kicked out of our spot anyway by people who had planned ahead and reserved the table (sometimes I realize how much it would help if Meg and I were planners). So we wandered around for a bit, finishing our mugs and making random converstation here and there, until we came across a table of old Dannish men who let us squeeze in with them. The beer wenches were busy at this point and nowhere to be seen, so being the classy ladies that we are, we dumped the remanents of beer from various mugs that had been left by previous seat occupiers into our own cups. Free beer! Sweet. Things start to go downhill from there. We both remember standing on the table, swinging our mugs back and forth and clanking them with those of others while exclaiming "Probst!" in between verses of "Que sara, sara." After that its a little hazy (apparently the beer at Oktoberfest is considerably more alcoholic than regular beer. Who knew?)
After some more beer and singing, we emerged from the tent and decided to try out some rides. We hit up the rollercoaster, the swings (our favorite) and some spinny ride that made us extremely nauseous. So we nixed the rides and spent some time eating ice cream and huge gingerbread heart-shaped cookies that people liked to wear as necklaces. We were both still very drunk and Meghan began complaining that her feet were freezing (it had been raining all day and neither of us had the sense to bring an umbrella), so we headed back to the hotel. At 8pm. I watched TV while Meghan went to shower, and after about half hour I started to get a little concerned that she was still in the bathroom. I yelled at her from my bed just to make sure she was still alive, and I eventually got the muffled response that she was cool, she had decided to take a bath to warm up and she passed out. Winner. By that time it was 8:30pm and we both decided to "rest" aka we both fell asleep and woke up at 2am completely wired because we had been asleep for the last 6 hours. We did a little recap, trying to piece together the events of the day, and at 3am decided the best thing would probably be to try to sleep so the hours until we could do Oktoberfest all over again would go by faster.

Day 2 :

We had two rules for ourselves on Saturday:
#1. Drink slowly (remember childhood story of tortoise and hare- slow and steady is better)
#2. avoid all italians (i.e stay away from creepy men and stay near to hot german men who can beat up creepy italian men)

what happennned: we ended up sitting in the italian section of the beer tent, laura had to dance with a creepy italian dude, we were hammered by 11am, took a "power nap" in the mud, rode on almost every ride in the park, ate way too many giant pretzels and german sausage, and lasted all the way to night. success. The day goes as follows:

We wake up feeling suprisingly well rested and ready to give it another go. Oktoberfest might have killed us on Friday (as we were unprepared and inexperienced), but now we were really and truly ready. After a hearty breakfast of eggs and coffee, we hopped on the metro and rode out to the festival. Lucky for us, the sun was shining and, although it was only 10am, the beer tents were already packed. We made our way to the front of the line and snuck in only to be pulled aside by a german security guard. Laura and I look at eachother like, "crap, do they remember us from yesterday and won't allow us back in their tent?". Oh no, don't worry...they just wanted our ID's because we look UNDER THE AGE OF 17. we didn't see them card anyone else, we couldn't believe it!

Anyways, once we got in the tent we wandered around trying to find a table we could squeeze into. It proved difficult as there were SO many people already there. All of a sudden, this cute, little man invited us to sit at their table as they had some space. We were desperate for a beer by this point (you can only order a beer if you are seated at a table) so we thankfully sat down with them. Sure enough, only one of them speaks english (and very little at that) and of course, they are italian. Furthermore, everyone in the area is Italian. and not just Italian, but men (ok, i dont want anyone to think we dont like italians...its just that italian men that we have met through our travels have all been super intense and really agressive). We had no idea what they kept talking about so we focused on our beer consumption. Several giant, cold mugs of beer, 2 jumbo pretzels and a few dances with random italians later, we staggered out of the tent into daylight. This part of the day is a bit hazey...please refer to pictures on the side of the blog to understand. We spent the afternoon riding rides and eating ice cream. and obviously, having a ball.

Soon the alcohol and rollercoaster rides caught up to us and Laura turned to me with red eyes and a slightly nauseous expression on her face and simply stated, "Meg, I need a quick rest". I nodded in agreement and we headed towards some grass/a bench outside one of the beer tents. Unable to get comfortable on the bench, Laura and I noticed that there were a few people "napping" on the muddy grass. They looked very content (probably were passed out) and we became jealous. Thinking at the time that it would be totally acceptable to nap on the disgusting ground at oktoberfest, I gave Laura the thumbs up for her to sleep while I performed "lookout duty" on the nearby bench. Genius idea, we know (again, good thing we have college degrees so that we can come up with these great ideas). Well, she fell asleep really fast and a few random men came by and tried to take a picture of her...not to worry, i scared them off by yelling and throwing pretzels pieces at them. Soon I had company on the bench in the form of an old, german man who kept laughing at Laura and I. He wouldn't stop talking to me in german despite me continuously telling him I didn't understand. Finally, he pointed to the grass next to Laura and showed me that he would lookout for us. So, I went and layed down next to Laura in the grass for a little rest, only to be woken up about 15 minutes later by some dude taking another picture of us and the old man on the bench crying because he was laughing so hard. Laura and I quickly ran away with a few leaves in our hair but felt rejuvenated after our "nap".

The evening we spent drinking more beer, riding more rides, eating more german food and being fully entertained. Eventually we pooped out and headed home around 10pm-fully proud of ourselves for having lasted so long. It was a fabulous day/night and 2 days of Oktoberfesting was just enough for us. We aren't sure if we could have lasted another day and still be alive.

We are now back in Ireland, working, hanging out, doing irish stuff. Its nice to be back.

Our newest and best plan yet

So, here is a little life update:

1. Theory: we are supposed to be coming home in a month and this should be our last week of work.
Reality:we got kicked out of our sweet apartment and are now living in our bosses guest room, we are spending next week in Germany at Oktoberfest, somehow our bosses have agreed to let us continue working through October (they are the best), we have decided to move our plane tickets home to December (so that we can eventually hit up Scotland and England), and for the month of November we will be working on an organic farm in a small town on the west coast of Ireland (dont ask how this came about).

2. Its a good thing we are leaving town for a week because we have made friends with just about every bouncer within a one mile radius of our old apartment. They see us walk by their pub, smile and yell 'hello' to their favorite california customers and then insist we come into their pub by waving us past the waiting line of people.

3. It has all of a sudden gotten really COLD here so we have been looking slightly homeless as we wear almost all of our clothes at once (no pun intended by the fact that we currently are actually homeless). This just adds to our weekly experience of rolling into the nice irish bank in our ghetto clothes, throwing down two fat paychecks and asking for an envelope of cash. We are pretty sure they think we are running some sort of illegal business.

4. We spent this last weekend up north. It was gorgeous, like Ireland in a postcard (rolling green hills into the really blue sea). It was another world up there...the conflict between protestants and catholics still runs the towns. We couldn't fully understand the politics of it all as it seems to run deep in one's family blood; making it impossible for outsiders to grasp.
While up north, we spent a day in awe by the beauty of the Giants Causeway. It is a natural phenomenon where the stones leading into the ocean have formed into hexagonal columns. However, the Irish say it was obviously not a natural phenomonon and instead, the workings of none other then the giant Finn MacCool. Finn wanted to build a bridge across to Scottland so he could fight the giant over there (duh). He laid down the hexagonal rocks as stepping stones so that he could get across...good ol Finn MacCool.


**I'm taking over for Meg to write about the North a tiny bit. We took a train from Dublin to Portadown, a town about half hour past the border between Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland. Our friend Peter, who comes from the North, picked us up and played tour guide for the weekend. As well as Giant's Causeway, we toured the northernmost coast and drove through endless green fields filled with sheep (for some reason that made it feel really Irish) until we made our way to Belfast. The drive really was idyllic and we were extremely content just being in the car staring out the window. It was also somewhat mind boggling for us because, as Meghan said, there is such an emphasis on the division between the Catholics and Protestants. We would be on a country road that would reach a little town and all of a sudden the British flag would be hung from every lampost and the curbs would be painted in red, white and blue; then 10 minutes of continuing down the road a flag of the Republic of Ireland would be hung, signifying the Catholics who lived in the area. Even as we drove through parts of the country that didn't have any sort of marking, Peter would tell us whether the area was a Protestant or Catholic part of the country. Meghan and I were fascinated because it was such a foreign concept for us and there is really no way that we can fully understand the tension and intensity of the feelings within the two groups. Driving around Belfast was also a unique experience; again, sections of the city seem to be designated as Protestant and Catholic, and as we drove around we saw a number of the murals that have been painted on the sides of buildings that refer to the IRA, hunger strikers, Easter Rising, and other individuals and events relating to the conflict. It felt like such a different world compared to anything Meghan and I are used to seeing at home (especially in the Bay Area), and while we can't relate, it was definitely an experience that we appreciated.


So thats a quick update. Tomorrow we are flying to London for a few days, then to Berlin, and finally to Munich for Oktoberfest. We will write again when we get back. Hope this finds everyone well. Cheers!

Rule #1 at work functions: Don't drink so much that you black out and wake up on the boss' couch

Scene:

Its last Saturday morning. I wake up. It's 5:30am and I stare confusedly at the somewhat familiar room full of children's toys. Then I realize I'm still fully clothed in yesterday's sweater and jeans and I begin to freak out a little. I look over and am immensely relieved to see Meghan sleeping beside me, and notice that she is also in yesterday's outfit. I try to think back on what I last remember.....oh yea, the company BBQ. Let's backtrack.

Last Friday night the employees of LeCayla Technologies decided to have a little get-together. Let me start out by saying that the entire company consists of 12 employees. However, Conor, our boss, decided that was more than enough people to justify purchasing a keg for the occasion, as well as champagne and copious amounts of wine. We all sat out on the patio at Conor's, eating hamburgers and "crisps." Meghan and I had been looking forward to the opportunity to bond with our coworkers, and we took it upon ourselves to get the party started. After a few beers and glasses of wine, Larry, our other boss who is Irish but now lives in California, decided that the concept of a keg stand needed to be introduced to his country. Meg and I jumped at the suggestion and suspended him in the air, chanting the number of seconds Larry was able to chug while the rest of the party gawked. This is pretty much the last thing either of us remember until the moment we woke up the next morning on the pull out couch in the childrens' playroom. We got up, snuck around the house until we found our shoes, scribbled a note to Conor and his wife apologizing for any "inappropriate behavior based on alcohol consumption" (yes, that is literally what we wrote; I got a classic photo of Meg writing the letter still drunk while it's still dark out), and jetted out of the house asap until we found a cab to take us home (where we passed out again for a few more hours). The next day we tried to pretend the whole night didn't really happen, but on Monday morning we knew we had to face the music.

We walked into the office, eyes cast downward in shame. We stopped in the doorway of Conor's office with embarrassed smiles on our faces and began to apologize until he stopped us. He told us that we were "brilliant" and everyone had a great time, and if it made us feel any better he and Larry woke up together on the couches in the guesthouse the following morning while his two kids and wife were comfortably asleep upstairs. We felt much better after that.


We don't have a whole lot of news to report. Mainly work and seeing the inside of a lot of Irish pubs. We are having a great time and think we are going to bum around for a while longer. That means we are probably on something like "Plan E" now. Hope everyone is well, we will keep you updated and try and blog a bit more.

Cheers.

Life in Dublin

WORK:
So after close to three months of travelling and living each day according to our every whim and desire, Meg and I find ourselves with full time jobs. It's been a little difficult to adjust. Two weeks ago we couldn't even commit to an activity two days away because it was too stressful and we changed our minds every hour, and now we are responsible for showing up at a specific time and place five days a week. However, I really shouldn't be complaining. We don't have to get to work until 10am every morning, we live a 15 minute walk away, and we have the most easy going bosses who seem more concerned with getting us drunk and ensuring we tour every pub in the city as opposed to the amount of work we actually do.

The company is called LeCayla Technologies, and it's a start up that, long story short, offers a billing and subscription management solution for software as a service (and up until last week I could not have begun to tell you what that meant). Basically we are responsible for going through a huge database and emailing and calling companies in the US offering this service, trying to generate leads. We sit upstairs in our own little room with our phones and computers and we are thrilled with the unlimited amount of internet time from which we have been deprived during our travels to email, gchat, facebook, and read stuff online.......oh yea, and work. I'm all caught up on my pop culture and Meg is caught up on world news, so we are both happy.

Conor, the CEO of the company and the owner of the house that was so generously lent to us while he was on vacation with his family, has since returned and is proving to be a unique boss. He has offered countless tips on what to see while in Ireland, the best places to drink, etc, and last night Meghan and I went to his house for dinner. We had a great time with Conor, his wife, and his two young kids, eating a great homecooked meal and sitting outside on the ONLY night it's been clear and warm enough to do so since arriving in Dublin. Conor is a big fan of wine and he brought out a really nice bottle of pinot noir for us to try. Well, one bottle led to two bottles.....which then led to three bottles. I would be halfway done with my glass, turn away for a split second, and turn back to see it had been refilled to the top. This happened over and over and after dessert as Meghan and I helped clear the dishes I whispered to her, "Um, is it just me, or are you kind of drunk?" The fit of giggles in response let me know that I was definitely not the only nonsober member of the party. We had Conor drop us off at a pub near our house after dinner, and he handed me a bag as I got out of the car with a couple of beers we had left in the fridge while staying at his house. I thought it seemed overly heavy, but didnt bother to look in the bag until I had hauled it around for about an hour. When I finally did, I saw that not only had Conor sent us on our way with our few beers, but he had included another few from his own stash AND a full handle of tequila. I love Irish bosses.

LIFE:
using the good old internet, we managed to find a small apartment in Dublin to rent for the time we are here. We saw the apartment only once before we "moved in" (aka unpacked our 5 shirts, 2 pants, underwear and books) and we were excited because it was such a great location- smack dab in the center of the city, walking distance to work and of course, just a block from starbucks. The apartment has one bedroom (where we share a cute marital bed), a small living room and kitchen area and the best part is that it has two small balconies that are amazing for wine drinking and people watching. however, we have quickly discovered not only is the apartment in the center of the city, it literally is right in the middle of the famous "temple bar" area: the main pedestrian walkway full of bars and people at ALL TIMES OF DAY/NIGHT. We cant really think of a comparison in the states as to what its like to live in this area but it has been really crazy. At first, we were thinking we would go to bed at a decent time so that we wouldn't die at work the next day, but people are yelling and singing (the irish have a "theme" song for just about every team/event/holiday known to man...plus, they love to drink in honor of just about every team/event/holiday known to man) throughout the entire night. so basically, if you can't beat them-then join them. so we have become regulars at all the pubs around our apartment (especially the one that we live above). plus, we have our own personal alarm clock. its the honking of the truck at 7am as it hauls in about 200 kegs of beer to deliver to a few pubs.

a few highlights from around town :
-In the pub, Laura attempts to order a Sierra Nevada only to be told by a disgusted bartender that he refuses to serve her that "rubbish" and that instead he would give her Irish beer.
-Every other store is a Pub. and usually it is called Doyles or Finnigans. and even though there are so many pubs, they are all always full. these people can drink.
-Irish are big on sandwiches except, apparently, don't ask for mustard. we did and got a dumbfounded look and the response of "um, we only have mayo and butter"
-The grocery store had out samples of sushi so we, of course, tried it but before we were allowed to, the lady asked us "this has tofu in it. do you know what tofu is? you can try a beef sushi instead if you would like".


and the tooth saga continues: so, i see a candy stand and obviously cant pass it up so i proceed to fill up a bag with lots of candy. then, since it looks so good in the bag and i cant wait until i get home to eat it, i indulge myself. so now im walking down the street, eating my bag of candy, happy as a lark when i bite into something hard. disgusted that the candy has random stuff in it, i spit out the candy and the hard thing i bit into. being bummed, i sadly walk home candy-less and mad at the candy shop when i realize oh no, my crown on the tooth i had worked on in romania is gone! then it all clicked: the hard thing i bit into while eating the candy was my crown...and it must now be laying discarded somewhere in a puddle on the street in dublin. deciding that i needed it back, i proceeded to wander the streets, stepping on every white thing i saw. sure enough, after my shoe was covered in a lot of gum and who knows what else, i found the crown of my tooth sitting in a puddle. i picked it up and happily put it in my pocket...havent quite figured out how to proceed from there though. damn the romanian dentist.


we will try and blog more soon. plus we are working on the picture situation. but for now, we have to get back to work!

Prague to Poland- the closing of a chapter

Prague-

We had high expectations of Prague and somehow, it lived up to every one of them and more. It really was the magical, medievil city everyone claims it to be- the winding, labyrinth like streets, castles, gorgeous buildings with lots of little shops...it was all very cool. Nothing exciting to report besides lots of walking, site seeing and just enjoying our time travelling.

In sticking with our eastern Europe journey, we decided to take a train to Poland because word on the street was that some city named Krakow was cool and had the biggest square/plaza in Europe. So off to Poland we went.

Poland is ghetto. Really really ghetto. There isn't much to say about it other than it is probably one of the randomest places we have gone and dont have much desire to go back. We are really happy we went but wow...its ghetto.

Some Poland highlights:
1. The bathroom doors aren't marked by the usual pictures of a man and a woman. Oh no, they are marked with pictures of tigers and hippos. After several "mishaps", we came to realize that as much as we wanted to be tigers...we are definitely hippos. Tiger=men Hippo=woman. lame.

2. Krakow was cool...until my wallet was stolen. We were chillin in the market with all the polish people, thinking we were all cool and blending in like locals when I went to buy something and realized my wallet was gone. bummer...but i guess it was bound to happen to us eventually and hey, at least i have my passport. things could be worse.

3. Krakow was only an hour from the infamous Aushwitz death camp of WWII so we took a little day trip there. Having spent the entire bus ride spacing out, this guy sitting in front of us who looked like he knew what he was doing, got off the bus with his family. I, all of a sudden deciding that this was where we should be getting off, hopped right off the bus with Laura confusedly following. It turned out it was the wrong spot which we quickly realized as the bus drove off with all the other tourists laughing at us out of the window. luckily, the concentration camp was only like a mile away so we rolled up to Aushwitz on foot. kind of awkward. But the experience of seeing something you read about constantly in history books was really moving. and too hard to describe.

4. From Krakow, we went to Warsaw and Warsaw was ghetto-est. It was all destroyed in the war and then they frantically rebuilt it...which is quite obvious by how ugly everything is. Laura and I ended up going to the movie theater twice in the day we were waiting to go to the airport because sighteseeing failed miserably.

From Warsaw we flew to Dublin where we find ourselves now. We are putting our travel plans on hold for a while as we are settling down in Dublin with some jobs, working for a startup and hanging out. Its a nice change of pace...more to come on this later.

So its the close of our easter European adventure and in honor of it, we've tried to sum it up a bit. Here is what we have come up with:

Best city: we cant decide (istanbul, athens, budapest)
Worst city: Bucharest, Romania

Best Monuments: 1. the Acropolis 2. Aya Sofya (Istanbul) 3. monastaries in Meteora (Greece)

Best beach: Mylopotas on the island of Ios, Greece

Best people: hungarians, slovakians
Worst people: bucharest, romania people

Memorable adventure: Hungarian baths

Best drunk night: our first night out in Athens

Best plaza: Prague

Ghetto-est place we stayed: Hostel Aphrodite (Athens, Greece) and the Casino we stayed at in Burgas, Bulgaria

Most memorable moment: eating greek salad, on top of a hotel, during a thunderstorm, looking out at the acropolis

z's and y's might be messed up

From Slovakia to Austria

Meghan:



So yes, we admit Bratislava, Slovakia is a slightly random place...but we must say, we really loved it.



We spent our time there at "Juraj's Hostel" which we found on the internet. After reading some reviews about it, people kept commenting that Juraj, the man who lives and owns the hostel, is very eccentric...and let us tell you, he lived up to everything people said. Juraj took quite a liking to Laura and I, probably because we were the only ones who would sit and listen to his mumblings, so he provided constant commentary on the sanitary conditions of the two other hostels in Bratislava. He was always mumbling about "infectuous diseases" at the other hostels and how if people spent the night at another hostel and then tried to come "infect" his hostel, he wouldn't let them stay...he was on to their game (the other owners of these infected hostels are polish and juraj is not very fond of polish people). Little did he know that by the end of our stay Laura would have some mysterious bumps on her arm from the beds at his hostel. He made our stay interesting to say the least.



Bratislava itself was interesting to see especially when you would look out across the city to a bunch of level, high rise buildings that just screamed communism. Everything through the city has communist remnants and its kind of a strange feel. It is just weird to imagine that ten years ago these people were allotted 2 hours of television a week and now they are trying to embrace capitalism.



We only spent 2 days in the city but our time was very well spent. One day, we woke up early to go hunt down a coffee shop. With our caffeine buzz, we were really gung-ho to "see the city". We had our map, our walking shoes and decided to begin our tour of the city at the castle. The castle was a little bit of a hike as it sits on top of a hill, overlooking old town bratislava and the Danube. As we climbed up to it, we got passed 4 times by little red, disneylandish trams full of old german tourists who enjoyed waving at the two panting american girls. At the top, we took in the castle and rather than touring the indside like all the other people, we tried to figure things out ourselves and managed to only find the castle well. Don't get me wrong, the giant hole in the ground with a bucket and string dangling down it was pretty hard to discover and for some reason, no one else seemed interested in it, but Laura and I just werent feeling the castle and decided to leave.



Perhaps it was something in the air, or perhaps it was just thirst...but we gave up our grandiose plans of sightseeing when we passed a pub on our way down from the castle and saw that beer was cheaper than water. Despite being only noon, we sat down to a nice cold, half liter of pilsner and some weird looks from the waiter (not too sure if women here order big mugs of beer here...). It was so good and refreshing that our one beer led to us having our own pub crawl through bratislava culminating at the "slovak pub" where we proceeded to buy shirts that the bartenders had on which say something we aren't too sure of in slovakian. It was a much more culturally enlightening experience in the slovak pubs than a day of sightseeing could ever have been.



So about 5 beers later...and us being slightly intoxicated...we stumbled upon a sushi bar. Bad idea to eat sushi in slovakia, right? wrong. We thought that it sounded like an amazing idea since we hadn't eaten all day (beer=food in slovakia) and there was bound to be fish in the Danube river, right? From what we remember, it was a pretty good meal and our waiter probably thought we were crazy as we kept trying random things and then ordering more.



Between pub crawls, good ol' Juraj, wells, slovakians, sushi and everything else we managed to pack in...we had a great time. We continue to be fascinated by the things we are seeing and the differences from country to country. Its crazy to see the difference between Austria and Slovakia...nieghboring countries where after WWII, one embraced capitalism while the other embraced communism. To see how people live in Slovakia compared to here in Vienna, just an hour up the Danube, is pretty astounding.

Laura:

Vienna

We arrived in Vienna about an hour and a half after leaving Bratislava by way of the hydrofoil down the Danube River; the highlight was sitting on the boat in the Vienna Canal, waiting for the water to fill up so we could continue on our way. We had a really good time exclaiming to each other in excitment at how much higher the water level had gotten from the last time we looked (this happened about every five minutes...I think the people around us were starting to get annoyed). We had decided to take the hydrofoil because it sounded way sweeter than the train, but once we got off we realized a little research may have been a good call...the boat dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we lugged our bags around for a good half hour before amayingly spotting a lone cab that rescued us and took us to our hostel.

We have spent the past two days exploring Vienna and for the most part we are fairly impressed (though that may be due to the frequent Starbucks that dot the city). Yesterday we went to the Palace and walked through the gardens that included miles of tree covered paths, Roman statues, floral designs, a labrynth, and the imperial zoo. It was beautiful, and while we had intended on touring the actual inside, the immense lines of tourists abruptly put an end to that plan. Travelling in a more Western, touristy city is definitely a different experience in comparison to our travels in Eastern Europe, where we tended to be the only foreigners, and he fact that its late July is not helping matters. We kind of miss the weird looks we would get for being the onlz tourists...it was a thrill to feel as though we were in a completelz different world, where as here we are two of a zillion backpackers.

So moving on, we skipped the palace interior and started trekking across the citz toward St. Stephan´s Cathedral and the historical heart of Vienna (for some reason the metro never dawns on us as an option). But thank god for our walking, becuase otherwise we would have completelz missed the activitz that took up the rest of our daz! We ran across a huge flea market and decided to "check it out"- long storz short, we discovered an amaying open food market and spent the next three hours feasting on grilled salmon and fresh fruit before buying four different kinds of hummus and vegetables for dinner (for some reason the market was predominantlz Middle Eastern, and I thought Meghan was going to faint with excitment when she spotted a vendor selling Turkish Delight....we of course got some, but we were good this time and maintained some self control when it came to portion).

So zea, we didnt make it to the Cathedral that afternoon. But after dinner we went on our nightlz stroll and ended up walking to the historical section, anzwaz. We got to see the gorgeous gothic stzle cathedral of St. Stephan then, as well as discover an entire section of cobble stoned streets closed off for pedestrians. It was then that we felt as though we got the essence of Vienna, and it reallz is a wonderful citz, full of its old buildings and historz. Todaz after our venti coffees at Starbucks we went to the Leopold Museum, an art museum primarilz dedicated to the works of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Kolo Moser. We also attempted to go to mass, but on our waz to the church got completelz lost and didnt quite make it. We arent doing so well in terms of sticking to a plan in this citz, but we decided we wouldnt understand anzthing that was going on anzwaz, so we are postponing that activitz until we get to an English speaking countrz. And speaking of Sundazs, everzthing here is closed, including the grocerz stores, so I leave zou now in pursuit of dinner.

Croatia

So, we spent the last week and a half being complete beach bums.  in southern croatia.  on the adriatic sea.  in turquoise water.  that felt like bath water...amazing.

Not too much to report.  croatia is gorgeous.  we scare ourselves when we look in the the mirror because after so many days in the sun, we look like another race.

Our first few days we spent in Split.  After a long night in the Budapest airport, we got into town at 7am and found a cute, old man with a sign on the street advertising "private rooms" in his house...and obviously, in eastern europe, when a strange old man wants to take you home- you go for it.  So with him chatting in croatian and us smiling and nodding, we followed him through town to a cute little apartment building where he set us up quite nicely with a room.  We spent our time walking to the beach, picking up dinner at the local farmers market (where we constantly got ripped off but still paid about 2 dollars for an entire watermelon) and making up for our lost time on the mediterranean.

As hard as it was to leave Split, we decided to journey south to the very bottom tip of Croatia to Dubrovnik.  We spent all day on a ferry travelling down the coast, stopping periodically at different islands to drop people off.  Eventually, we got to our port, hopped off the ferry, and this time got in some random woman's car who told us she had "private accomodation".  Again, it worked out nicely as we could walk to the beach and had a small balcony where we would dine and read our books.

We stayed in the main town but ventured over to the old town of dubrovnik which is surrounded by fortress walls and streets of white marble.  Its preserved in its venetian 
atmosphere and we enjoyed strolling around the marble streets and tiny alleyways.  During this strolling, we 
managed to find a movie theater that happenned to be playing the new Harry Potter.  We were pretty happy although
 the socalled theater felt like a 5th grade assembly hall.

Dubrovnik highlights included us renting a kayak one day.  After getting weird looks as tried to gracefully board our neon orange boat, we proceeded to paddle hard for a good 15 minutes out to the open sea where we then ate all our snacks and floated around waving at the boats that passed for a few hours.  Then, we turned around and ferociously paddled ourselves back to shore.  whew...its a hard life we lead.  Another day, we 
found a random boat to take us to some island claiming it had a "sandy beach" (most beaches in croatia are pebble).  It turned
 out to be another perfect day with turquoise water and a sand bar that stretched out 50 meters.  We hitched a ride back around 
sunset which made the day impossibly more perfect.
We quickly got into a routine of morning runs, days spent in the sun on the beach and evenings eating fresh fish washed down by wine.  we
 were spoiled. 

We originally had planned on staying in dubrovnik just a few days, but found ourselves still there a week later ...still unsure how to get out of the country as croatia seems to be lacking in frequent public transportation.  In the end, we found a cheap flight and as we write this, we find ourselves in a thunderstorm in bratislava, slovakia.  It feels good to be out of the heat and we are excited to explore the city.

Cheers.

Budapest, Hungary

Meghan:
alright- to pick up from where we left off last...(passed out on the train riding into Hungary)

We find ourselves in the intricate city of Budapest which is split right down the middle by the Danube river (all of these places we vaguely remember learning about in like 6th grade...but now wish we had paid more attention in class rather than who was going to be on our dodgeball team during recess). The hungarians, who we have found suprisingly chill, creatively named one side of the river Buda and the other side...(go ahead, take a guess...)- Pest. Laura and i have found ourselves suprisingly enamored with this strange city and people despite the lack of starbucks (which they easily make up for with lots of hippie coffee/tea shops) and intimidating old women who keep trying to talk to us in hungarian. Budapest has an earthy, free spirited vibe that Laura and I have been basking in (our "traveler" look...which is actually more on the homeless looking side...kind of makes us blend in here...sweet).

Our first day we spent walking around, per the usual. We just wander and wander, looking at all the old buildings surrounding us. Our attempts to absorb the scenes of the city around us tends to be accompanied by endless tripping on the cobblestone (we swear they made it uneven just so they would be entertained by the tourists). It is suprisingly hard to walk, talk and look around here...rough life. Anyways, gorgeous city.

The next day, after finding an amazing coffee shop called "California Coffee Company" which we have proceeded to go to at least once a day, Laura and I decided to completely give ourselves over to the the hungarian culture and embrace all that is budapest by going to the hungarian bath house. It is this huge, old communist building where most hungarians are members, but you can get a day pass to use the baths. Once you go in, you change into your swimsuit (apparently, up until recently, it was a nude thing) and then they show you to the thermal baths. The place is like a maze, with pools of different temperatures in every direction. Some are hot, others are lukewarm; some have medicine in them to heal different parts of your body, some just had a lot of old people sitting in them; some are outside and some are inside...it was crazy-but it was the most relaxing day we have had in a long time. Amongst the baths are steam rooms and suanas. Basically, we spent the entire day being stared down by old hungarian men and women while we ran from pool to pool. The best was when we got into an empty pool that has some caution sign in front of it in hungarian which we of course couldnt understand. We were suprisde when we walked on the weird ramp into the water to find that it was a giant whirlpool pool with jets that shoot you in a circle! it was like a ride at a water park! Some of the best things were the sauana and steam rooms because we finally could sweat all we wanted and it didnt matter...the hungarian baths were absolutely awesome. This culture knows whats up. We are thinking we should try and get one started back in California.

The next day we decided to leave our comfort zone of pest and venture across the danube to the buda side...crazy-i know. The Danube has nine bridges that cross it, so we picked one and had one of those moments where we were like "wow, we are walking across a bridge over the danube right now...in hungary...weird". As we looked up we could see the huge palace on top of the hill. We hiked up to it and then ventured through the streets of buda looking at all the cool buildings. Underneath buda is an intricate labyrinth that was originally made by thermal pools, but was then home to cavemen, then dug out and used as a secret military headquarters during the world wars. It was so cool, we got to go underground and walk through it. I kind of freaked out that there was no oxygen but quickly forgot about it when we saw that in one of the secret rooms was a fountain of not water, but wine. yum.

Laura:
Budapest Part II

Wednesdaz afternoon we met a guide and a group of tourists all around our age at the train station, where we all got on a bus and proceeded about 10 minutes outside of the citz center for our caving adventure. We were given overalls that resembled space suits and helmets equipped with halogen lights, and then the group of us were led to the cave enterance. We spent the next two and a half hours or so literallz crawling on our hands and knees along pathwazs that led throughout the cave into various "rooms" where we would turn off our lights and sit in pitch darkness where I couldnt see mz hand directlz in front of mz face. I was a little worried Meg was going to freak out due to the lack of oxygen, especiallz when our guide began comparing our situation to that of being in space, but luckilz she held it together. It was all in all exactlz what I wanted in a caving experience...lots of squeezing through little holes, banging our helmets on low ceilings, and sliding down rocks on our stomachs into darkness without any end in sight. We both loved it.

And then that was the night I thought Meghan and I were going to die. It was about 4am, and I was sleeping soundly until I heard a noise coming from the window of our room. We were on the second floor of a building that was located on a back street of the city, and we had left the window open when we went bed that night, thinking there was no way anyone would reach the window. But as I woke up, still half asleep, I looked at the window just in time to see two hands and a dark figure begin to climb inside our room. At first I thought it was Meghan, and I thought to myself, "now what's she doing," but then I looked over and saw that she was still sleeping beside me. I FREAKED OUT. I'm pretty sure I almost had a heart attack. I started shaking Meghan, screaming at her that someone was coming through the window and to run. We jumped out of bed, both screaming our heads off, and ran through the hallway of our hostel, her in the lead and me following right on her heels. Between screams, however, we heard some girl's voice drift down the hall repeating, "English?...English?" We stopped screaming and looked at each other in confusion. As it turns out, the intruder was not some creepy drunk guy coming to attack us, but rather this stupid drunk chick who was staying in the room next to us. Apparently her two roomates had gone home with guys they had met out at the bars, leaving her without a key, and she thought she was climbing into her room, not ours. We couldnt believe she had gotten up there from the street, and she assured in a drunken slur that she was "a ridiculously good climber." I could have killed her. Needless to say, we slept with the window locked from then on. We considered climbing through her window the next night to give her a taste of how it felt, but unfortunately she was leaving Budapest the next day.

Thursday was a pretty lazy day...we walked around the citz for about an hour looking for a used English bookshop we had read about in Lonely Planet. Once we found it the effort was well worth it. The walls were lined with used books for sale and we felt like kids in a candy shop (books have become our primary source of entertainment and we value them like gems). Just when I thought we were going to be looking in there for three hours my eye caught sight of a book title that left Meghan and I feeling like coming to Budapest was a sign. See, we had read the first three books in this historical fiction series, but were feeling extremely unfullfilled in life knowing that books 4, 5 and 6 were still out there. Low and behold, this random secondhand bookshop in the middle of Budapest, Hungry, had, of the series, books 4, 5 and 6. It was amazing (I really hope our friends will still hang out with us when we come home after reading this). We couldnt refrain from buying all three of the series, plus three more unrelated books, to haul around with us for the next couple of weeks....if i ever complain about our bags being heavy you can just tell me to shut up.

After that we rented bikes and cruised around the city on a bikepath that follows the Danube river, and spent the night at a hookah bar we had found, reliving our memories of Istanbul. Today was spent at the torture museum which tells about the Secret Police during Communist rule in Hungry. The building in which the museum is located is the actual building used by the secret police during that time, and when we went underground we saw authentic torture and prison cells. We visited the museum gift shop on our way out and found it extremely odd that they were selling candles in the shape of Stalin's head....so odd, in fact, that we each bought one. Not too sure what I'm going to do with it now that I think about it. Tonight we have no home, as we have a flight to Split, Croatia at 6am and apparently have to be there 2 hours early. So we wasted a few hours this evening going to see the movie Miss Potter (we were all set to go see Harry Potter until we were informed it was dubbed in Hungarian), and now we are going to waste a few more hours reading in a coffee shop until we have to pick up our bags and 10pm and head to the airport. Wow, it is going to be a long night.

We've been stationary, so this blog is a little boring.

Brasov:

note: this keyboard has the y and z switched. also, we dont feel like blogging so this might suck.

so, we arrive in brasov to be greeted by this crazy woman named Maria who owns the hostel we are stazing at along with her two daughters. she grabbed us the second we stepped of the train, leads us around the train station, secures a cab and sends us on our way to the hostel in one giant whirlwind while having constantly been talking this whole time about how she hasnt slept in three days. once we got to the hostel, her daughters then immediately begin their speech on everzthing to do in the area. Laura and I were exhausted and found ourselves completelz spacing out onlz to be called back to realitz bz the girls asking us if we are okay.

brasov is another small town, up in the mountains of romania. however, this small town seems to think it rivals hollywood as one of their main "attractions" is the sign on the mountain that sazs BRASOV...in giant white hollywood letters. We would crack up everytime we saw it. we stayed there for a week...which was a long time for us but it was nice to not have to be packing up our stuff constantly and getting on trains.

One of our days we ventured to a famous romanian castle called Peloj. It was gorgeous but what made it stunning was the setting it was in. Beautiful green hills and mountains all around it, and then this picturesque castle right in the middle of it all. The castle itself wasnt extremely huge or ornate, but it was very interesting to see the different design styles on the inside. speaking of the inside, it took laura and i quite a while to figure out how to even get into the castle. we found the "foreigner entrance" where there were mass amounts of tourists hovering around the door. not cool. so we tried to find another way in and stumbled upon the "romanian entrance". we tried to sneakily saunter through, thinking that if we just kind of smiled and nodded maybe it would work, but as soon as we got like 10 feet from the door this woman started shaking her head at us and pointing to the foreigner sign. lame. back at the foreigner entrance, a bunch of people were being let in so we just kind of followed them in...only to be turned away again because apparently it was the israeli group. you have to wait til you hear your language called and onlz then can zou be let in. english of course was the last group which was easilz distinguishable by the couples in tevas and cameras around their necks, loudly yelling to eachother to get them a coke from the nearest drink stand.

another one of the days we ventured to Bran castle...the home of dracula. romanians take great pride in dracula, as he defended their honor against invaders and such. bran castle was pretty cool to see, but all around it is nothing. its kind of a town solely built on tourism so besides the castle, there is pretty much just a ton of shops with dracula teeth, scary masks and haunted houses.

thinking back now to brasov, i cant really remember what we did. we havent run into many americans out here, and not very many backpackers either. its been pretty nice not having to deal with mass groups of tourists.

on a side note...my tooth is all better which is nice. now i can go back to eating lots of candy. whew. and excuse the poor write/grammar...this keyboard is really confusing.

Cluj:

After Brasov we took a train to Medeas to see my cousin Heidi perform (shes an amazing singer/songwriter and shes starting to become pretty famous in Romania). We got off the train, checked into a hotel to shower and change, and then met her at Hotel Binderboobi. I made her repeat the name about 3 times over the phone as we giggled to eachother, and then Meghan and I had another giggle fit when i repeated it to the cab driver. We were expecting a pretty laid back scene, some sort of relaxed bar environment, but as we got out of the taxi we looked up to see the one of the nicest hotels we have yet to encounter in Eastern Europe. Apparently this was a gathering for Romanian and American businesses that worked in partnership and the event was NOT casual. We glanced at eachother in horror as we noticed that everyone inside was wearing nice suits and dresses, and here we were in our cutoff jean shorts and tshirts, hair all wet from the shower and no makeup. sweet. one romanian dude wanted us to sit at his table because "now he could get as drunk as he wanted and he still wouldnt look as bad as us." he wasnt one of our favorite romanians. luckily heidi rescued us and we ended up having a great time.. there was a delicious buffet from which we proceeded to gorge ourselves and we celebrated the 4th of july watching heidi sing and then dancing to a romanian cover band who played all the classics like sweet home alabama, brown eyed girl, and big band swing music.

We spent the next few days at Heidis house in Cluj. She lives just outside the city right at the edge of a gorgeous forest, and we quickly got into a routine of getting up in the mornings for early walks through the trees. We managed to get lost finding our way back everytime, even after Meghan brilliantly set up sticks in the shape of Xs to mark our way. Lucky for us, a number of stray dogs that hang around the neighborhood would join us, and we came to rely on their sense of direction to get home. We would get to a fork in the road, stop and ponder which one to take while reasoning sensibly with eachother, start walking down one of the paths, look behind us to see the dogs walking the opposite direction, turn and follow them. So even though it at times took us a good couple of hours to get back, it was worth it...as Heidi puts it, its feels as though you are wakling in a JRR Tolkien novel with the dense ferns and birch trees.

Other than our hikes, we spent our time in Cluj relishing the fact that we were in an actual home and taking advantage of the comforts that accompany being settled. We wore sweatpants as much as possible, made countless cups of coffee and tea, cooked, read, did laundry, and watched movies (Heidi has a little tv and an old vhs, and we watched Sweet Home Alabama about 4 times). One day we had a bbq with Heidis friends- we got up at 9am and decided it would be brilliant to make some cookies from scratch. unable to find a definitive recipe for snickerdoodles (we were trying to make something new and american for the romanians), we glanced over a few different ones and eventually mixed and matched ingredients until we came up with something resembling cookie dough and rolled it around in some cinammon and sugar (and shockingly they actually turned out to be delicious). We spent so much time bbqing and preparing the food that by the time it was actually ready to be eaten we were starving. Meghan and I began devouring our shishkebabs only to realize that for every three we were eating, all the Romanian women had eaten half of one. And then when the apple pie came out, we each tucked in two whole pieces globbed with vanilla ice cream, while the others seemed content to just talk about how good it looked and just eat a few bites. It was a little embarrassing, especially after one of the women commented on how she was expecting us to be fat since we were American. Pretty sure our eating habits that night didnt help out the stereotype. It was really a nice time, though, hanging out with our new Romanian friends and spending time with my cousin (this was the first time I had seen her in 9 years), and we went to bed late, only to get up at 4:30 am to catch our 5:30am train to budapest. we got to the station around 5:20, all ready to go, and discovered thjat it actually left at 5:12. damn. so we took a cab back to Heidis, spent the day doing some more hiking and movie watching, and hung around until 2am, when we repacked our bags and headed back down to the station to catch the 3am train. Once we got on we each stretched out on the seats and passed out until our arrival in Budapest at about 10am that morning. Which is were we currently are located. The city has beautiful architecture and the Danube river that separates Buda and Pest is very impressive. But that is all for the next blog. Get excited to hear about our adventures with the Hungarian Bath houses and 4 hours crawling around in a cave. Ive been bugging meghan all trip about wanting to visit caves, and im getting giddy now just thinking about it. Until next time.....

Roaming Romania

From Varna, we road on a super ghetto train up into romania. The bathroom consisted of a hole in a room that went straight down on the tracks. gross. and, we got to spend 2 hours sitting on the border in the crazy heat trying to figure out how to open the window of our cabin because there was a serious lack of oxygen. whatever, we were just so happy to be getting out of Bulgaria. Finally we arrived in Romania.

Bucharest, Romania: the capital. ghetto. desolate. poor. desperate. mean ex commies. and apparently have some odd need to put "xerox centers" on every street corner...


We managed to haul our crap from the train station into a supermarket to get dinner (aka whatever weird canned things they sell in romania) and then onto the metro and eventually to our hotel. Sadly, our hotel gave away our room as we naively thought things (i.e our train) would run on time and we would get to Romania by 3 when in reality, we slid in around 10 at night. Luckily, they had another room we could have that we quickly realized could probably double as the hotel's sauna. Laura and i spent the entire night waking up ever half hour to one of us yelling to the other some form of "this must be what hell feels like". We were nearing a low point.

Our day in Bucharest was spent trekking all over the city. We just wandered around and took in all the architecture from the former soviet country. On occasion, we got lost in which case we would wander in to a store or tourist agency and meekly approach whatever person we saw too ask them in our sweetest voice if they could maybe help us. This was usually followed by the person we asked rolling their eyes at us, schooing us away with their hand, and them looking down/returning to doing nothing because obviously if you just dont look at us we will disappear. cool.

so on a side note, i had been having this toothache since i ate all that turkish delight in istanbul. it had been getting progressively worse to the point where shooting pains pulsed through my entire head and i would randomly start bawling because it hurt so bad. laura we really concerned and i was running out of painkillers, so we decided to consulate the ever-dependable parents. now, you would think it would be fairly easy to make an international call, but no, it took us 3 hours to do it. we bought the wrong type of phone cards because no one could tell us what to get. everyone would tell us to go different places to make the call ("go to newstand", "stand at red post office", "no, you don't make international calls in romania")...basically it was terrible. finally, we were about to have a breakdown when laura decides that we are marching into the really nice Hilton hotel we found, pretending we are guests, and sweet talking the concierge into explaining to us what exactly we had to do. somehow, despite our rather frightening appearance and me with tears streaming down my face while my hand is clenched to my jaw, we managed to get through to the parents who helped me conclude that i needed to see a dentist ASAP because i needed a root canal. nevermind that we,of course, are in one of the most ghetto countries we'd been planning on going to. nevermind that bucharest was extremely scary, dirty and the idea of having some dude with a drill have his way with my tooth sounded only slightly worse than our sauna of a hotel room, i couldn't deal with the pain any longer so we started to try and research dentists. After many internet cafe trips and such, it seemed like our best bet was to take a train north to the small city of cluj where there were some german dentists and such.

so we packed up our bags, threw on clothes that were really disgusting from our previous travels, and hiked to the train station. at this point, we were dripping in sweat (we pretty much hadn't stopped sweating since bulgaria), our feet were black either from the sun or dirt (most likely dirt) and we pretty much just looked scary. but not to worry, people would still stare at us because we stick our like sore thumbs and laura would respond to the stares with her own glare that said "whats your problem? dont look at us and if you do, im going to wipe my sweat on you". so yah, we jumped on the train for the 8 hour ride north. On the train might have been our low point, as it was so hot we were just dripping with sweat until this romanian girl in the seat next to me looked really concerned, busted out a pack of baby wipes, and proceeded to wipe sweat off my back and told us to take as many wipes as we needed. i tried to graciously thank her while i fanned myself with a small, ripped up cardboard box of my painkillers for my tooth. it was bad, real bad.

but things got better. we arrived in cluj after having an interesting chat with a romanian girl on the train. You can feel the pull of two world in this country; one where people are excited to be a part of the eu and move forward with technology/economy/etc and then the pull to hold on to their simpler lives in the country and the foundation of their culture. you can tell people are really torn so it will interesting to see what happens to romania in the next few years. also, we forget how recently it was communist. that was such a huge part of people's lives not that long ago, it is still in recent memory for many. after asking the girl on the train about what things were like when romania was communist she replied with "i dont know if it was better or not. then, we had money but no choices...only 2 kinds of cigarettes. now we have many choices, and coke and pepsi and fanta. but no money. i just dont know"

romania has completely won us over. the northern part of the country is gorgeous and the people are so genuine, warm, and take you in as one of the family. once we arrived in cluj, we went about finding a dentist. we wandered to his office where i walked in, he put me in a chair that had a video screen about 8inches from my face blasting crazy eastern european music videos. i tried to explain to him over the noise what the problem is with my tooth while he is smiling crazily at me, using his drill as a microphone and singing along to the music. finally, he tellls me not to worry and starts drilling away. all i can do is hope it works out. my tooth is definitely feeling much better, and im going back to see him in a week. our time in cluj was well spent, especially because we got to do laundry and got to meet Laura's cousin who lives there! It was so nice to see a familiar face.

While in cluj, we found ourselves confronted with the same scenario several times when we would interact with a romanian. It consisted of the following:
Laura and I: smile. "Hi"
romanian: looks at us weirdly and starts to chuckle. turns to whatever romanian is closest to them. they look at eachother. both are then laughing.
Laura and I: politely laugh also. "why are you laughing at us"
romanians: "we were just wondering. what are you two doing here? WHY are you here"

basically, people think we are really weird. but they are very curious and extremely nice. we left cluj to come to this little town of brasov which is nestled in the hills. it is exactly how you would imagine romania...thatched rooves, cute buildings, etc. its a ski town in the winter and just a breath of fresh air for us. we are going to stay here for the week. there are lots of castles in the area, including Draculas castle! we are really excited to see all the stuff, drink some good wine, and just hang out in one place for more than a night.

sorry this was so long. hope everything is well at home. happy summer! we will write more about romania soon.

Bulgaria was a bust

meg and lbora: blog us bitches! facebook only entertains me for so long, keep us updated and post those "pictures" or else we're gonna start thinking you guys are just hiding in reno, NV tripping off acid and making all this shit up.

This is an excerpt from an email written by Kathleen (college roomate...we miss Anza) that cracked us up. Sorry this took so long Kathleen, this blog is for you....

OK. Where did we leave off? Istanbul. We took a bus the next morning from Istanbul to Borgas, Bulgaria. In total the trip took about 7 hours, and we made sure to drink NO water whatsoever in fear that we would not stop during the entire trip for a bathroom break. But oh how wrong we were. This was a sweet bus ride. Music videos played the majority of the time (though they were all of Bulgarian pop stars who were half naked, so it was kind of awkward). A little Turkish man was our bus attendant, and he ran up and down the aisle of the bus like his life depended on it. Meg and I agreed that he was the hardest working person we had seen since arriving in Europe. He had an area set up in the back of the bus with all his "supplies" and would periodically appear with all sorts of treats with a dramatic flourish. First there was water for everyone in little plastic cups. Then he appeared with a glass bottle that was filled with hand sanitizer, which he loved to zealously dump into everyones hands. Next it was fruitcake, followed by more water, hand sanitizer, Nescafe, hand sanitizer, candy, and MORE SANITIZER. My hands have never been so clean. The bus also stopped every hour and a half or so, and Meg and I would scrounge up some change to pay for the bathroom and then check out what new snacks we could find in the mini markets. As we tend to do, we started wandering off during one stop to check out the scene until we heard some yelling from behind. Our little Turkish man was having his shoes shined, but had seen us drifting away and was bellowing at us and gesturing wildly to remain near the bus. He was definitely looking out (and it was probably a good call not to wander around some random little town in Turkey anyway). He truly won us over, however, when after some rumaging around in his area he produced a tray of little cups of ice cream. I'll miss that little man.

Finally we reached Burgas, Bulgaria (it's on the coast of the Black Sea). We wrongly assumed we would be dropped off at thecentral bus station and figure out a hotel from there, but instead we were dumped off on the side of some road, the only ones on the bus to depart. The only actual person in sight was a guy selling really old looking bananas across the street. Sweet. So we wandered around for a bit, made some inquiries about hotels to whoever spoke even the slightest bit of English, and ended up staying in what I could have sworn was an abandoned skyscrapper until we walked through the door. Think really tacky 50's decor in a concrete building. We spent a night there, and then spent two more nights in Varna, another seaside town about 2 hours north of Burgas. I'm just going to lump the towns together in my description of what we saw, as they were pretty much the same thing (although in Varna our hotel wasn't only a ghetto skyscrapper; it was a ghetto hotel/CASINO skyscrapper. Uhhhhh! We tried to go in but they wouldn't let us until they checked our passport and so we decided we were over it).

Now I hate to be judgemental, but bottom line: Bulgaria sucks. Meg and I kept looking around and just cracking up- it was like we were in Bizarro World from Seinfeld. The country is obviously very poor, but the people seem as though they are trying so hard to appear as though they are loaded. The women walk around in the most ridiculous outfits. Imagine a ton of flourescent bright colors, really tight spandex dresses, and heels at all times of the day, even on the beach. We would get dinner at a cafe on the main pedestrian road and just ignore eachother for at least an hour, each of us completely absorbed in our people watching. We saw a lot of mother daughter pairs in equally skimpy outfits, 4" heels and bright turquoise and lavender eyeshadow walking hand in hand. I almost bought Jan and I some matching florescent yellow minidresses to sashay down Tiburon's main street, arms linked, when I get back home, but then I thought about how the nursery school would probably ask her to resign and she would get kicked out of the Marin Women's Tennis League, so I refrained. Sorry Mom, no presents from Bulgaria.

We spent a day at the beach and a lot of time walking in the parks, where the sights just got weirder and weirder. There were about 4 babies per Mom (and I swear we didn't see one mother over the age of 25), but the kids were fully entertained by the odd array of petting zoos, balloon sellers, stationary plastic animals (that I personally thought were real scary looking) that kids could sit in and be rocked back and forth, and the concerts being performed every half hour by a choir of senior citizens. The number of stray dogs wandering in packs was astounding and we noticed that each dog had been tagged in its ear...I'm not too sure what the Bulgarians were trying to accomplish with this, but perhaps its good they are making the effort to keep track of the stray dog population?

We are pretty sure the diet of Bulgaria consists solely of popcorn, corn, and fro yo. But I was especially ready to get out of Bulgaria when we walked by the snake tent that had been set up, pictures of pythons out front enticing visitors to come in. My intense phobia of snakes mixed with the jenky, broken cages stacked up on the side of the tent was a sign that we had to move on.

Goodbye Greece, Hello Turkish Delight

Alright, lets back track a little:



From Delphi, we took a hellish bus trip to journey further north to Meteora, Greece. In usual Greek fashion, a bus trip that should have taken about 3 hours, took us 6 because we had to switch buses a bunch of times and go in a way that had no method. And to make things better, the longest leg of our journey happenned to be the most crowded because some girl with a broken neck was sprawled across the whole back seat of the bus...hence, we had to stand for 2 1/2 hours. what a slut. plus, we of course found ourselves next to the chattiest pair of 80 year olds, who had decided to backpack through europe, but couldn't even lift their own suitcases. and for some odd reason, they kept asking laura and i where to go and which bus to take despite us being as confused as they were. so yah, eventually we got to meteora and it was well worth the trip.



Meteora is another small greek town at the base of giant cliffs which used to be under the ocean. some phenomenon with the plates of the earth or something...we didn't really bother to inquire. on top of these cliffs are monastaries built in the 17th century. we took a bus up to the very top and hiked from cliff to cliff and were able to walk through a few of the monastaries. most are active, but it was really amazing to see the buildings that look like they are part of the rocks. it was breathtaking and the interiors were covered in frescoes that were amazing. we loved it.



From Meteora we continued along northern Greece to Thessoliniki...we still can't pronounce the name. It is the second biggest city in Greece and after all the little towns we'd been to, it was nice to finally reach a city. We aren't going to lie, the first thing we did after having to switch hotels because ours was "out" of water, was get giant coffees at Starbucks. Seeing those green overhangs was like heaven. Then, to be even more american, we went to the movies and saw oceans 13. brad pitt is hot. We pretty much just chilled around town and then saw a Ruby Tuesdays. We got really excited for the salad bar because we haven't had anything but cucumber and tomato salads, yogurt and gyros in a long time. thinking we had hit the jackpot, laura and i piled up our plates at the salad bar, chowed down, then got up to go for round two out of many but were shot down by the waitress who said "um girl, in Greece, we only go up ONCE"...we stared awkwardly at her and our tiny piles of carrots on the plate and wanted to cry. So we left thessolinki and greece behind.



and here we are in Istanbul, Turkey...not caring about long lost salad bars and instead smoking all the hookah we want and enjoying our sugar high of turkish delight (which is really delightful) and bahklavah.



To get to Turkey, we took an overnight train where we were woken up at the border at 4am with an islamic prayer blasting over some loud speakers. we rolled into istanbul in the morning, and were stunned by everything around us. Our hotel is between two infamous buildings- the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia. We are trying to think of how to describe this city and the culture of it, but can't. It's the gateway to the middle east...islamic prayer plays over loud speakers 5 times a day, many women are clad in head to toe coverings, arabic letters are everywhere, carpet stores line the streets (in between the shops selling turksih delight). The grand bazaar is the main market here and it is unbelievable. There are about 5000 shops in a covered area with people selling anything you could ever want. It was a little intense for us, as we stood out like sore thumbs and the harassment got overwhelming (most common names for us were "angels", "shakira and paris", miss california, and the pickup line of someone pointing behind us and saying that we dropped something-we ask what-they tell us its their heart). We were able to go into the blue mosque (after removing our shoes and being givern skirts and head coverings in order to enter). Inside, people were praying...the men in a huge area while the women were in a smaller, closed off area in the back of the mosque.



We then went into Aya Sofia where we were both almost brough to tears. It was originally built as a christian church and then the sultan converted it to a mosque. when converted to a mosque, most of the christian mosaics were painted over but they left a few to see out of respect. It was surreal to see a giant image of the virgin Mary and baby Jesus on the ceiling, just a few feet away from an enormous Islamic lettering in the same place. It was just insane to see these two religions in such close proximity and such a diverse group of people appreciating it.



We have spent our days here trying to stay out of trouble. We wander the streets, taking in all the sights/people, in awe of where we are. Our nights we spend at the local "water pipe" bar where we made a turkish friend who coached us on the workings of backgammon...we will mix it in with our chess playing. It is just wild to be here, we can't really explain it.

As this isn't the safest place to be, we are heading out tomorrow to Bulgaria and the Black Sea. The goal is to rent a sweet "smart car" (the tiny 2 door euro car) to bomb around the beaches. We'll see...

Slight change in "the plan"

So our plan of living in the Greek Isles for the summer, working at a bar in Ios, has come to an abrupt halt, and in true Meghan and Laura fashion, has been completely reworked in favor of a new, BETTER plan.

We worked for a total of 5 nights at Red Bull Bar, the last of which Meghan ditched out to throw up a few times and then head home (apparently you arent supposed to drink the tap water?) Everytime one of the Greeks inquired as to her whereabouts, I told them all she had gotten sick and was throwing up, and immediately they responded with, "is she pregnant?" I got home at 5 am, and we decided there and then that we just could not hang in Ios for the next two months. We had fun, but we realized that we wanted to spend our limited time seeing and experiencing as much as possible, and we could always go to Cancun spring break some other trip. The next morning we quit our jobs, rented an ATV, and bombed around the island, checking out all the remote beaches and feeling enormously content with our decision.

One aspect of our brilliant "new plan" was to ditch the big, rolling duffles we had hauled from home. We bought two blue small handbags and along with our Northface school backpacks, plan to take on Eastern Europe. We look a little bit like our own private tour group with our matching bags, but the lack of luggage has already proved its worth- besides the fact that we basically wear the same thing everyday.

Long story short, we had to take a ferry to get back the the mainland of Greece, so after a day trip in Mykonos, where we chilled with an old, bitter man selling "she shells" (we didnt have the heart to correct him) who shoved packaged frappes down our throats, we boarded a ferry at 11:30pm, only to find entire families sprawled out on the floor with the blankets they had brought from home. We made it to Athens at 4:30am, then hopped a bus to Delphi, our current location.

Delphi is a little town located in the mountains of central Greece, the infamous site of the oracle and home to the ancient temples of Apollo and Athena. It feels right to be travelling again, although we are running out of books to entertain us. Tonight we are planning on getting some red wine and playing chess...we are no longer on the path of old women, but rather old men.

We're having a ball and planning as we go...tomorrow we will bus it up to Northern Greece to check out some ancient monasteries built into the mountainside, and then who knows? We'll keep you updated (and yes, we need to post pictures and i realize i say this everytime, but we are working on it).

A day in the life of Laura and Meghan

Alright, since we last wrote, we have arrived on the tiny island of Ios. Words cannot even begin to explain the insanity of this island, and we are both slightly stunned that this is where we are spending our summer. its a lot to take in and we will do our best to explain it to you.

basically, ios (population 1500) is spring break all summer. its mostly australians, canadians and a few americans...i.e no one speaks greek. you would never even know you were on a greek island. imagine white sand beaches in the meditteranean packed of people aged 20-30, drinking, playing loud music, swimming...and next to the beach they have a whole pool scene, where you can lounge at the pool if the meditteranean isn't quite good enough for you. it is complete insanity. so yah, that is the day scene.
at night, the island turns from crazy beach scene, to crazy club/nightlife scene. the small town is like a maze of white streets that are jam packed with people partying there lives away. its wild, and we are completely overwhelmed and kind of out of our element. most of the people we meet who have been here more than 5 days have this glazed over expression and are in a constant state of either drunkenness or hungoverness...they are barely functioning.

and as crazy as all this is, we are going to try and stay here, we have "jobs" and a place to live, so that we can prolong our travel money for september and after so that we dont have to deal with all the tourists in europe. our summer basically consists of this:

12pm: we wake up, eat some greek yogurt and discuss the antics of the previous night

1pm: we go to our bar that we work at to help clean it and receive our illegal wages that are just barely enough to pay our rent and buy some food (although we've been getting some good tips)

3pm: we wander down to the beach (we are slowly turning into complete beach bums) and sit apart from all the craziness to read our good historical fiction books and watch all the people that we saw who were wasted the night before at our bar looking like they want to die

6pm: wander home, eat some dinner, take a nap, shower, get ready to go out (aka drink some wine on our balcony of our little room we are renting)

10pm: start work (we are "waitresses" at a bar called red bull...its a really popular bar that plays good music and compared to other girls working on the island, we have really good hours. a lot of the people work from 10pm-7am and then have to go down to the beach to promote their bar from 3pm-6pm but since our bar is already popular, we dont have to do promo) working means we bring people their drinks, but mainly stand on the steps outside the bar and look like we are having the best time EVER so that you want to come into our bar. we work with this crazy girl from texas and apparently three blond girls from the states are a tourist attraction as people keep randomly taking awkward pictures of us...not cool.

12am: still working
1am: still dancing
2am: still working
3am: still working
4am: still working and dying
5am: thinking we get to go home but end up getting dragged out to "party" til like 7...cool

7am: we get home, laura tries to pretend to read and wakes up in the morning not remember what she read and i usually just sleep.

which brings us back to us wakign up. we'll see how long we can keep this up but our boss, george, is nice enough to say that we can ask when we want a night off...like 1 night off ever 30 days.

alright, we need to go nap.

we might be drunk in Santorini right now...

we just finished a nice, romantic dinner on the balcony of Lithos Restaurant, watching the sunset, sipping out wine, and being forced to drink free, bright blue ouzo concoctions that reminded us of the AMF's back in Davis. Santorini has been a breath of fresh air...lots of beaching, breathtaking views, and imagining the erruption of the volcanoe in 1100 BC...we're pretty sure we would have survived just fine. We mean, how bad could it have been, right? Last night we saw a poster advertising the "english version" of Pirate's of the Carribean...so we went, duh. the only issue was that it was at 1030 at night, all the way across the island with no bus to take us home. being the dedicated americans that we are, we decided to go anyways and hike home...let's just say it wasn't one of our better plans to hike back in the dark but here we are.

Santorini has cemented earlier interpertations and observations of the Greeks, which continues to leave us mindboggled and entertained. A few include:

Obviously the bus station is not located where the sign marked "bus stop" is; instead, look for a small raised block of cement completely unmarked.

Time is of no importance. you are on the schedule of the driver and when he finishes his cigarette.

"chef salad", "garden salad", "vegetable salad", "mixed salad" = tomato. cucumber. feta. (i.e: a greek sald)

random billy goats tend to wander. there is no need for concern as they are on an island and are not going anywhere.

we now undersatnd why europeans smell bad...the showers suck. if one of us goes in to shower, the bathroom turns into a lake and we still aren't clean as it is impossible to hold the shower head and try and shampoo/shave. so yeah, we aren't looking too cute.

it is unclear whether greeks are just "chatting" with a friend, or engaged in some intense argument. the decimel level they speak at is abnormal and we are going slightly deaf. or else, they think we are stupid.

there are many more which aren't coming to mind currently. we just got bored so we are leaving now. maybe to a bar? peace.

Tomorrow, we are off to Ios where we plan to settle and find some jobs. we'll keep you updated. stay well.