We don't know about you, but we here at the Tweener are fucking exhausted right now. Chalk it up to a 9-5 combined with three hour journalism classes three days a week, homework, blogging, "reporting", weekend debauchery, and we are just about beat. Thank god for thanksgiving break, then, where I can go home to sweet Baltimore and not worry about anything for four days.
Since this week offers relaxation, however, I'm going to break convention and take you all back to a time where I ruled the universe: 2003. It was a time of travel, music, courderoy jackets, foreign love, and lost wallets. Over the past weekend, my annointed princess of 2003 wrote a post* that inspired me to take a trip back, and in the first of this series, I'm taking you through europe baby!
*Take everything she says at face value.
Guide to Europe
To be honest, I don't know shit about Europe. Oh; sure, I've BEEN to Europe, including the following cities: Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, Munich, Budapest, Venice, Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. About half the cities on this list I was only in for 2-3 days, and they can be summarily dismissed as follows:
Munich- A nice place...Can someone help me out here?
Munich- An old, wonderful Bavarian town with a humungous park in the middle of it. To be honest, we indulged in a hotel room and hardly left it except to go to beer halls and the tourist attractions, which included...err...Some kind of church or something with a big tower. My lack of anything interesting to say about this city hilariously manifested itself in a conversation with an outrageously hot German student in my graduate program. You can pretty much take this paragraph verbatim and apply it to what I said to her. As a result, she’s not flashing me those big smiles anymore.
The Danube River - All we wanted was some gatorade
Budapest- It was day 9 in our month-long trip through Europe in the Spring of 03. We were suffering, for you see, the non-alcoholic drink selection in Europe is terrible. I mean, all you’ve got is soda, sub-tropicana orange juice, and mineral water. But there it was: Arrayed on the banks of the sparkling Danube River, the Gatorade beckoned. As we got closer, however, we realized that the area was roped off for a Gatorade-sponsored triathalon.
Fucking Triatheletes.
The other experience in Budapest included getting berated by a waitress at a Hungarian restaurant for being American. At least that’s what I think happened, as we couldn’t understand her non-American language. We sure showed her, however, as we eat all of the complementary bread and high-tailed it out of there!
Vienna - soul crushing
Vienna- Ragtime street musicians, Intimidating 18th-century Imperial architecture, free public transportation, swaths of parkland filled with gorgeous vistas, excellent local cuisine, and a city brimming with a rich cultural heritage everywhere you look. Yes; Vienna is as boring as it sounds. The only way I was able to fight the terrible boredom was by having a friend in the city who could show me to the parts that weren’t drowning in the wrist-slitting ‘pleasures’ of culture and heritage.
Italy-a hellhole
Venice- If you aren’t married, don’t even bother. The food also sucks. In fact, just understand this mantra: Just because you are in Italy does not mean you will eat well wherever you go.
Rome- Italians are secretly the biggest assholes in Europe. I honestly don’t know how the French got their reputation for being rude, because I found them to be moderate, whilst almost every American I know who has been to Italy noticed that the Italians hate our asses, unless you are wearing a Che Gueverra t-shirt. Apparently, Argentine people are descended from Italians, which explains the love for Che. Italians should thank their luck stars that they get to claim
Calvino.
Rome is a dirty city where you can really ‘feel’ the history..
Just watch this movie
Barcelona- Be sure to schedule your trip during anytime other than a holiday. I found this out the hard way when the whole place become the “the city that sleeps their asses off” when I was there at the of April.
Part 2 tomorrow...
