Markus and Brian's Excellent European Adventure

Stereophonic

This entry's going to be a little bit different. I'll take this entry from my personal travel journal and type it up later onto the website. So, the tone of this entry will be a little different than usual; you can expect more crass language, sexist attitudes, and immodest, revisionist storytelling from the gutters of my torrid mind. Enjoy!

As I write this, I can see rolling hills of green fields pass by my train window as I chug along towards Dublin, Ireland. I'm guessing the Irish are farming the colour green over here. We're talking deep green, lush farm fields bounded by lines of even darker green trees. Obviously helped along by the rather wet climate; dark, moddy clouds blanket the hills, falling over each other as they race to see who can open up and rain first.

The Irish themselves seem to wear a lot of green too -- I saw one elderly fellow wearing a green-upon-green suit. More fitting the Irish stereotype, though, is the unexpected, universal friendliness of the Irish people. It's only been about 8 hours since I jumped off the 19 hour ferry from France, and I've already been struck up into several conversations with total strangers -- like one of our guidebooks say, the Irish need about as much prodding to talk as hemophilliacs do to bleed. Even if it's not always cheery: One depressed bus driver was getting visibly sadder by the moment as he praised how "brilliant" it was that I was backpacking Europe. He then rached some sort of breaking point and brooded in a low voice over how his life is in a rut, how he's stuck doing the same bus driving job day in, day out. He mentioned how he has enough money saved up in real estate and in the bank, and nothing tying him down; I told him he should pack up and travel as well. I think that's what he wanted to hear, anyway. Brian Glick, international traveller, inducing misery upon others 6 days out of 7 (on Wednesdays I go shopping).

Spent the day today in the fantastic, oldish Irish town of Kilkenny (whose name makes me think of South Park every time). Not too touristy, with a large castle overlooking the river. The guided tour of the castle was fantastic; maybe I can enjoy and absord more of this whole "culture" and "history" deal after all, at least as long as it's narrated by that cheeky, fun-spirited Irish accent. (Sorry, Ireland, but I just can't take the accent seriously! Even when you're swearing or threatening to knock my lights out, it sounds like there's a punchline at the end of every sentence.)

As I write this now, I'm at the hostel in Dublin a day later. (Yeah, it's a multi-day entry, deal with it.) Went out last night with a bunch of people from the hostel to the packed, cobblestoned Temple Bar area of Dublin, and drank in one of the more local-filled, authentic pubs. What a trip -- the Irish will talk your ear off, and by the end of the evening half the place was standing (or swaying) while belting out off-key lyrics to whatever was playing. Our group escaped to a small area in the back so we could actually hear each other.

Speaking of the end of the evening, it comes quick -- most clubs and bars close at 2:00am, or else no one in the country would ever get to work on time (or get there sober). Tonight, I'll check out one of the many pubs devoted to live music, and visit the Guinness brewery and the ancient Book of Kells at Trinity College during the day.

The Tour de France was an intense but short-lived experience, by the way. I headed out to the edge of Toulouse, fought through massive crowds and giant fleets of media & team cars, and was near the front to see the crowd erupt into cheers for Lance Armstrong as he was introduced on the stage. I worked my way down the course before they started to get a decent vantage point, and if I had blinked I would have missed the whole thing -- they zoomed by, with the yellow-shirted Lance in the lead, and that was that.

Headed back to Paris afterwards for a few days, and went to the Pompidou Centre to visit the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Arts. I think I'm really starting to get a taste for that stuff, though I doubt I'll ever pretend to "get" or find much value whatsoever in the break-a-mirror-on-the-floor-and-call-it-art art. Still, most of the pieces were excellent. I snuck a quick movie of an amusing piece based on The Usual Suspects that I'll post later. There were also a number of "older" modern art pieces by Picasso and Dali that were fantastic and bizarre.

I also changed my flight ticket in Paris; Markus and I were taking about the trip before we split, and we're both missing people back home quite a bit. Three months, in retrospect, is an awfully long time to be away. We'd also like to catch a little bit of relaxing before the summer ends, and I'd personally enjoy having at least a little bit of cash to buy some food now and then (or even to pay a bit of tuition).

So, I'll be heading back to Toronto on the morning of August 4th, and Markus has hopefully booked a similar flight by now. It's only a two week cut, and we figure we'll just have to come back next summer for Spain!

That's it for now. Cheers!

Addendum

I'm also posting a few pictures along with this post, which should make you media-starved junkies happy for a day or two. But, the Internet cafe here isn't making it terribly easy for me to post 'em, so a lot of the pictures I'd like to post will have to wait; these are just a few. You'll have to also crane your neck and get a few cramps. Enjoy!

Pictures

1) Markus cliff-dives off a 10 foot cliff in Corfu, Greece. He also cliff-dove off the 50 foot one, but I unfortunately bungled the photo, which really, really sucked.
2) The Pink Palace puts on a traditional Greek dance and performance during the 4th of July toga party in Corfu. Apparantly traditional Greek dancing involves rings of fire.
3) Our beach in Ios, Greece. Our campground was in the complex of pools on the left.
4) Our campground bungalow. Note that you can't see the giant black ants that infested it and forced me to sleep by the pool one night.
5) One of the major stretches of clubs in "the village" in Ios. (Kahlua Bar, Disco 69, Superfly, and the Bulldog Bar.) At night, you could barely walk anywhere; the roads were packed with people hopping from one club to another.
6) "The village." This is pretty much all of it, too! (The bars and roads are hidden.)
7) Us, before we left, hanging out with three super-hip half-Japanese girls studying in America, and two blokes from Macedonia. And if you think that photo of me is bad, you should see the ones I'm not posting. (Or, no you shouldn't.)
8) The Roman Forum, in Rome.
9) For my aspiring-archaologist Mom, a photo of several of 'em at work.
10) The Colosseum
11) I love this sign.
12) Yes, humans actually built this.
13) On the path above one of the villages of Cinque Terre.
14) Another Cinque Terre village...Vernazza, I think.
15) Lance shakes the hands of young bikers before setting off on the day's stage.
16) Lance in the lead.
17) The rest of the stragglers.
18) Castle Kilkenny, on a typically cloudy Irish day.
19) The only picture I have of Dublin so far, this is the hella-busy pedestrian Grafton Street. More to come!

Posted by Brian at July 23, 2003 06:30 PM