face melting. mindblowing. southern accent. dancing. storytelling. sick and a little growl-y. hot. oh the dancing. rocking out. kickass solos. cover of For What It's Worth by Neil Young. Gravedigger, sans band. new song. seriously, so much dancing. and so much talking. two step. lie in our graves. ants marching. awesome.

See you at the Gorge, Dave.

back on Canadian soil

... in London that is.

We were taking pictures in Trafalgar Square and noticed the Canada House right next door, so we decided to go see if there was anything cool and there sure is... free internet! And a really pretty (and warm and dry) building to hang out in!

Our visit in Espelkamp was a real blessing. We've been travelling five weeks now, and I cannot express to you how good it felt to relax with a family, to sit and read without keeping an eye on your stuff, to go for a bike ride with kids and chat with other adults. Heck, I won't lie, it was nice to talk to someone other than Michelle for more than five minutes! It was exactly the right thing to encourage us and rejuvenate us for the remaining weeks of our trip.

We left there Monday evening, and got to Cologne around 10pm. Our hostel proved easy to find, and we immediately wished we had more time to spend there, because it was just one of those really great hang-out-and-meet-people places. We hung out in the bar until ridiculous hours (I went to bed around 4:30, but Michelle stayed up until daylight, around 6) chatting to other Canadians, and then the next morning we went to the Cathedral, climbed the 509 steps to the top, and took a tour around the inside. It was really cool!

Since it was our last day in Germany, Michelle finally broke down and bought one of the cuckoo clocks she had been eyeing since Munich, and ever since her face will light up now and then and she'll say "I have a cuckoo clock!!!"

The flight from Cologne to London proved adventurous. We of course have been travelling exclusively by train for over a month, so we didn't think about what sorts of things are allowed to be brought in hand-baggage and whatnot. Wanting to keep our time in London as affordable as possible, we bought a bunch of groceries in Germany to bring over. After checking our big bags, we proceeded to security with our daypacks and the bag of groceries that Michelle planned to pass off as her purse. When we got to security, however, we realized that the Nutella and the six-330ml bottles of apple juice were not allowed in our hand bags. Shoot. Oh well. We chugged the apple juice, and threw the Nutella in a garbage bin, only to realize that Michelle had also forgotten to transfer her swiss army knife into her checked luggage. Unwilling to part with that, she decided to check her daypack. Well, might as well keep our Nutella, then. I stood watch as Michelle dumpster dived for our hazelnut and chocolate treat, and we proceeded to pay the 15 Euros to check the extra bag.

Now it was my turn to be an idiot... after all that, I had forgotten that there was a corkscrew buried deep in my purse, which was buried deep in my daypack. The computer found it, and I was forced to part with my beloved "purse corkscrew", a gift from Lindsey that has been very useful on this trip alone.

RIP, purse corkscrew.

After an hour delay, we got on the plane, and followed the orange and purple sunset to jolly old England, where we proceeded straight to our hostel, and went to bed.

Today is our only real day in London, so we splurged for hop-on-hop-off tour bus tickets, and we're going to see as much as possible before dinnertime, when we head to Wembley to see our friend Dave. DAVE. IN LONDON. TODAY.

it´s not crashing if you don´t speak the language

Lila and her family have graciously welcomed us into their home on a pretty busy weekend. Right now Miri, their middle daughter, has a bunch of friends over to celebrate her 14th birthday, which is tomorrow. This morning Tabea, their oldest daughter, was interviewed in church because she is getting baptized next week. And yesterday, we got to go with them to a wedding!

We felt pretty self-conscious about this because we obviously did not know the couple, nor did we speak the language, nor were we appropriately dressed (who rocks the hot in quick-dry fabrics? we do). Nonetheless, we jumped in the car with Lila and the girls and headed off for the church. We arrived at the same time as the bride, which is always fun, except they were all just hanging out outside, and the doors were open, so everyone is turned back to look at the bridal party hanging out there, and in come the Töws family, with two random underdressed girls in tow.

So of course we try to discretely slip into the back couple of pews. This would have worked out, except we somehow managed to locate The Loudest Pew In The World. Every time you shifted your weight, I swear flocks of birds in the fields nearby swarmed into flight.

Awk-ward.

The ceremony was somewhat different from what we´re used to. In Germany churches can´t actually marry people, so they get married legally the day before, and the service is more like a regular church service, except the announcements seemed to have to do with the reception, and the groom welcomed everyone near the beginning as well.

At the end, they walked out to "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You", and then there was a receiving line as you exited the church.

Awk-ward.

We discussed at length how we should handle this. "Hi, you don´t know me, and you don´t speak my language, but you look beautiful and I hope you´ll be very happy together." Hmm. Maybe a language-barrier-crossing thumbs up sign and a hug? No.

We snuck out the side and waited behind some shrubs until the girls were done.

Friends, Lonely Planet does not advise you on how to navigate this stuff.

Espelkamp

Wooo!!! We´re in Espelkamp, Germany, where we started and finished our choir tour two years ago! We´re staying with Lila and Didi and their three girls, and we´re even going to sing with the youth choir on Sunday morning at church! We love it here!

We took the train out of Berlin this morning, said goodbye to Hesha and Ella and their adorable kids, and arrived in Espelkamp around 3pm. We just got back from a delightful after-dinner stroll around the neighbourhood, where we stood at the end of Lila´s brother´s driveway and chatted for like 20 minutes. It´s such a relaxed pace around here, it´s great.

In Berlin Michelle and I bought Thai Fisherman´s pants, which are the most comfortable pants in the world ("These are like the pants version of a muumu!" - Heather, on Fishermans pants). Tonight as we were walking around the neighbourhood, I looked at Michelle, decked out in her melon green softshell and bright orange fishermans pants and said "you look like a walking fruit salad!" She didn´t seem super enthused about that, which caused me to reflect that if she looked like a fruit salad, my black softshell over my light blue shirt and dark blue pants made me look like either a walking blueberry, or a walking bruise. Good times!

Movie note: Last night we saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was a lot of fun, and redeemed our Berlin movie memories of Spiderman 3. Woot!

dana petker... you have been to this internet cafe before

We are in Berlin, sitting in the same internet cafe where we checked emails two years ago on choir tour. Berlin seemed a little different then; I think there was less construction going on.

We´re staying with a family from the church where we sang two years ago as well. They are super nice, although its a little awkward because they don´t speak too much English and we speak almost no German. They have a 2-year old boy and a 4-year old girl (I´m actually pretty sure I have a picture of Dana holding the little boy as a baby), and we have been using one of the children´s books with German and English words for stuff to try and learn more German. It´s pretty fun, because the kids seem totally bewildered by the fact that we are grown ups who apparently don´t understand what they´re saying.

Yesterday was ripping hot and we had slept on the train the night before, so we decided to take it easy and spent the day wandering Potsdamer Platz, mostly in a mall and in the Sony Center. We even found a movie theatre that shows movies in the original English, so in the interest of air-conditioning and a taste of home, we decided to see Spider-Man 3, which was a HUGE disappointment. I mean, I wasn´t expecting my life to be changed, but this was ridiculous. Oh well. We did manage to learn that there is assigned seating in theatres in Germany, and that you can save a Euro if you agree to sit in the front 5 or 6 rows. Dad, I thought of you. ("I like sitting in the front because then I have to turn my head, just like in REAL LIFE!!")

Late in the afternoon we entered Potsdamer Platz and heard a roar of drums with some crazy rhythms going on. It was a group of kids playing all sorts of different drums, and another group was doing a breakdancing demonstration. Some of these kids had crazy skills, and we watched them for quite awhile.

And that´s all I have to say about that.

it´s happened to most of us

This afternoon we went on a free bike tour of Munich, a 3.5 hour extravaganza that involved a visit to the world´s second largest beer garden and afterwards a sing along on bikes through English Garden, mostly led by the two of us (we started with a little "Doe-A-Deer", and then took a request for "Leaving On a Jetplane"). After the tour most of us went to a place called Sausalito´s, a bar near the city centre that gives specials to bike tour participants - €5 (regular €10) for a drink that is like 4 or 5 shots plus a bit of juice or cola. I have never had a drink so strong.

Apparently, neither had the girls sitting near us, a group of four from Minnesota, between the ages of 18-20, and obviously new to the world of alcohol consumption. We first noticed that something was up when one girl was obviously flirting with a guy whose girlfriend was across the table... soon she was puking on the sidewalk (this is at 4 in the afternoon) and not long after that Michelle accompanied her and some of her friends to the washroom. I chatted with some others for awhile before switching places with Michelle, only to find these poor girls in a panic because their friend was so sick, puking and struggling to stay awake in the washroom. I hung out with them for awhile, and then decided that this was more serious than we could handle, and asked a bartender to phone the ambulance.

When the paramedics arrived, I was holding this poor girl up over the sink, alternately trying to get her to drink water and letting her puke, glad to have her off the bathroom floor. One of her friends had made off with her puke-stained shirt, washing it in another sink, so I gave her my button-up shirt so that the paramedics wouldn´t have to carry her out in her bra.

They would only take one person with them in the ambulance, so the sister went along and Michelle and I walked the two friends, also somewhat drunk and scared, back to their hotel rooms, and put them to bed.

We told them we´d check on them before our train leaves for Berlin at 11 tonight, and that each of us has to have an experience with alcohol that scares us into a healthy respect for the stuff. They were super grateful and sweet, but instead of letting them try to pay us back, we told them they should "pay it forward", a clichéd but important way of looking at it.

Oh Europe, the adventures you bring...

sights and sounds of Munchen

- An old man walked by us at dinner tonight, wearing a three piece striped suit, vest open and jacket over his shoulder, with a black button up shirt with white ruffled bits and a gold sparkly top hat.

- €2 beer during happy hour at our hostel. cute bartender.

- Buskers. A man playing "Knockin on Heaven´s Door" on a left-handed guitar with a Canadian flag sticker and a Deutschland sticker. A long haired equally hippie looking woman sat beside him and sang harmonies when she wasn´t talking to passersby.

- A TV in our hostel room! we have watched Grey´s Anatomy dubbed in German, and Flavor of Love, shamefully, because it was only subtitled in German and we could actually understand it. Flavor FLAV!!

- More buskers. A man playing a baby grand piano in the middle of Marienplatz. Nelson, we have an idea for you...

castles and bavarian beer

Today we visited King Ludwig II´s crazy castle in the hills, the one that they worked on for 17 years and was still only 1/3 finished when he died "under mysterious circumstances". It´s a pretty cool place!

We couldn´t find a hostel in Munich, so we decided to look for one nearer to Fussen, the town where the castles are, and we ended up in this great hotel on a lake in a little town called Seeg. It´s a super small town, and when the woman heard we were backpackers coming by train she sent the restaurant manager to pick us up. Riding around in a VW van felt just like choir tour, and we were glad not to have to walk the 2km in the rain.

We went to the restaurant for dinner last night, and it was great. Did we mention we´re in Bavaria? The decor, the atmosphere, and the food were stereotypically bavarian, but the music was BeeGees, John Mayer, Mariah Carey, Coldplay, and Phil Collins to name a few. We laughed about that, especially after several bottles of Bavarian beer!

This morning was sunny again, so we walked back to the train station, trained to Fussen, bussed up to the castle, and then hiked the "40" (read: 20) minute trek up to the castle. We still had some time, so we went up even farther to this bridge behind the castle and took some pictures. Now we´re on our way back to our hotel, and we´re thinking we´re going to ask if there´s a canoe we can take out on the lake behind our hotel (michelle pointed out that we should canoe to dinner at the restaurant, which is down the road/lake).

Munich tomorrow!

a little taste of home

As we walked down the platform in the Munich trainstation, looking around at our new surroundings, a train moved out of the way and revealed, miraculously, a Starbucks.

We resolved before we left that this was not going to be a "tour the Starbucks of Europe" trip, and for three and a half weeks we have ignored the few ones we´ve seen and sampled the local coffee instead. But today both of us were tired, quiet, and a little travel weary, and seeing those green letters was like clicking our shoes and going home, if only for a few minutes.

Tomorrow: Neuchswanstein (the Disneyland castle)

europe is causing us to hate children

...with the fire of a thousand suns.

They´re everywhere! Every freaking tour, sight, bus, hostel, streetcorner, is swarming with large groups of children. Don´t they ever go to school? I swear education in Europe is one giant field trip.

On our boat trip yesterday, 7 year olds in matching hats literally took up all but 5 or 6 of the seats. Then we had to bus to Schloss Hellbrunn with them. The same group of rugrats showed up at our hostel that night, along with like 5 other school groups, running around an screaming and shouting and laughing and swarming like angry bees. Today at the Mozart residence we somehow got ourselves caught in a room with a group of junior high aged kids, yelling and laughing and whatnot.

I never thought I´d say this, but children should be seen and not heard. And preferably never in my way.

My anger at children is somewhat enhanced by my anger at the Stiegl Brewhouse. Why, you ask? Well, I´ll tell you.

Yesterday we bought "Salzburg Cards", passes valid for 48 hours including all transit, and admission to most attractions in and around Salzburg. They paid for themselves yesterday afternoon alone, but today we used them to visit the Hohensalzburg Fortress (over 500 years old, overlooking the whole city), and both the birthplace and later residence of Mozart. In the early afternoon, we realized that among many other things (like a wax museum and a marionette museum, both of which I find extremely creepy), our cards include admission to the Stiegl Brewhouse, touted as the biggest brewhouse in Europe, and whose tour includes 2 glasses of beer, a pretzel, and something else that we don´t know how to translate.

How exciting!

We promptly jumped on the bus, and headed in that direction. We got off the bus, walked down the street indicated on the map, and after several blocks, realized that the brewhouse was not on that street, but since it was on the edge of the map, they just put the little icon there to indicate that it was in that general direction. The actual brewhouse was like 5 blocks over.

Thanks, Tourism Austria.

So we trudged through the hot streets (the rain is gone, it´s warm out today), undaunted because, hey, we were about to get free beer and pretzels! An hour and a half after we left our hostle on this trek, the brewery rose into view. Free beer here we come! When we arrived at the gate, however, a sign was posted in three languages. "In order to make our brewhouse tour better, we are closed for renovations from January to Autumn 2007. Thank you for your understanding."

No, actually, I do not understand. You mean to say we passed like eight signs pointing us toward you, saw three or four advertisements in various tourist propaganda, and no one thought to mention until the front gate that you´re closed?!?

We stood and stewed.

Then we marched the several blocks to the nearest bus stop, got back on the bus, and rode back into the centre of town, and now we are sitting in an internet cafe, drinking cans of Stiegl that we bought for € 0.89.

It still would have been cool to have a tour. And a pretzel.

once an austrian went yodelling...

and he got rained out.

It was ripping hot in Italy, but today it rained in Salzburg, and we got wet.

The day started well, with a sleep-in and the realization that unlike Italian and French hostels, Austrian ones know how to do breakfast. We had a buffet of fresh Kaiser rolls, fantastic jams, meats, cheeses, carrot cake, hard boiled eggs, cereal, fresh coffee. We feasted.

We then sat around for a couple hours, chatting to girls in our room and looking at the various tours we can do in this town. By lunch time we had resolved to take a boat tour up the river to Schloss Helbrunn, a 400-year old palace that was built as a day retreat for the prince at the time. It has some crazy extensive gardens, including a bunch of weirdy grottoes (the original hugh, I commented) and these crazy trick fountains that the tour guide seemed to enjoy using to get us wet. Never mind that it´s raining and we´re a twenty minute bus ride from Salzburg. This was like being in the front row at the killer whale exhibit at the aquarium. We got wet.

Despite our wet and coldness, we toured the inside of the palace as well, not too big, just 10 rooms or so, and the highlight was the music room, no bigger than an average living room, which had such a fantastic acoustic that we decided to sing a bit of a Taize round, and it was quite fun.

Afterwards we decided it was time for lunch, and we stopped at a little cafe on the way back to our hostel where a friendly Austrian man provided me with a wonderful cream of vegetable soup and Michelle with a piping hot apple strudel. It´s so close to the hostel that he must get other tourists in there, but it felt like a neighbourhood restaurant, with old men coming in for a beer and little kids getting ice cream and brownies. It was great.

I´ve been fighting a cold, and this weather certainly is not helping, so I took a nap after that, and then we wandered around town for awhile before finding dinner, at Bio Bistro Spicy Spices, a vegetarian Indian restaurant that is highly recommend by Lonely Planet. It was good stuff, although admittedly it was not spicy enough to clear out my sinuses as I had hoped.

Oh well, apparently tomorrow is supposed to clear up, so maybe we´ll do the Fraulein Maria Bicycle Tour, and certainly the birthplace of Mozart.

Mostly I´m just excited for another breakfast feast!

the hills are alive...

that´s right kids, we´re in Salzburg, Austria, land of The Sound of Music and some guy named Mozart. pff.

We didn´t post in Venice because we couldn´t find an internet cafe that wanted less than 8€ for an hour of Internet, and hey, we´re trying to do Europe on a Shoestring here.

Venice, however, was fantastic. We booked our hostel in advance, on hostels.com, and when we had to ride buses for over an hour out of Venice to get there, we felt a little worried. However, when we arrived, we were at a big campground with little two-room trailers for 15€ a bed, and the site had a bar, a restaurant, a market, several Contiki tour buses, and, best of all, a 20-minute ferry service to Venice. No more buses for us!

Upon arrival in Venice, I immediately regretted our decision to only spend one night there, as it is every bit as cool as travel brochures would have you believe (unlike Naples, which is stinky and sketchy, but we had fun there too). However, I consoled myself on the bus by turning to Michelle and saying "really, this place is far too romantic to be visiting with you anyway." She agreed. If our future husbands happen to be reading this, they should know that we will be going to Venice sometime.

Anyway, back to the campground. We ate the baguette and Nutella and lemon soda that we had bought for dinner, and then purchased two bottles each of Hefe-weissen, the kind we distinctly remember drinking at the good-bye party in Germany two years ago. We wandered around the campsite for awhile, and finally found a dock, where we sat and drank and discussed important things. It was divine, and innapropriately romantic as Venice might be, we both wished we had not booked our trains for today just so that we could stay at the campsite and hang out a few more days.

Oh well, we wandered for a few hours around town this morning, visiting more Murano glass shops than should exist in the world (they´re particularly adventurous when you have a backpack on your back and another one on your front...) and then jumped on the train.

Nothing to report yet about Austria, other than that it looks like BC, except somehow more...refined? Mozart saw these mountains, after all (and Julie Andrews).

More to come!

quick post

2 minutes left!

We're in Florence, staying in an HI hostel that is a converted 17th Century villa! It's really cool!

Michelle forgot to mention a couple things about our hostel in Naples

1. They proudly display their "Hostel of the Year 1989" certificate at the front desk

2. They serve instant coffee with breakfast.

Instant coffee.

That is all. I'm out of time!

To Pompeii and Beyond

Here we are in Naples!
Naples is an interesting city. It is busy, the streets are narrow, and people cannot drive well. But we abousolutly love the hostel we are staying in, or I should say the location anyway. It is on the side of a hill and from our window we can see the Med. Sea. It is also close to the metro station, which makes for easy travel. The hostel itself is soulless and filled with older people... at least it is quiet! The price is right though, we scored a double room with it's own bathroom and breakfast included for very cheap! It is nice to have our own room and bathroom, but hey lets face it, it's just nice to not be sharing a room with a bunch of guys!

Today Heather and I made the treck out to Pompeii and then to a neighbouring site called Herculanium.
Herculanium, Italy lies to the south west of the Italian volcano Mount Vesuvius. During the year 79 A.D. Mount Vesuvius erupted showering the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculanium with moltin rock and ash buring the two cities for almost 2000 years.

My geography and archaeology skills came in handy today as I marvelled at these two sites. I began to talk about extrusive igneous rocks, volcanic activity and taking a post precessual approach to describing the site.
Heather thought the sites were "neat".
From a local vender I purchased a tour book of the the Pompeii site. It also came with a map of the site with numbers on it that corresponded to the important parts of the site. The numbers were then described in the book, often with pictures. It was a great investment as far as I am concerned!
The weather today was very warm... duh! Go Med Sea!!!

Our entire day was consumed with travel to and from the sites and walking around in them. By the time we got back to our hostel it was about 6pm.
After a bit of a rest we ventured out into the surrounding area to look for some dinner. We came upon a pizza place that sold by the gram -70/100g. We each got a slice, and we shared a rather large bottle of beer. We took out feast to go and headed down the street a little more and ate on the shore of the Med. Sea. The water splashed up against the rocks with such force, that at times we were hit with drops of salt water. At one point drops came up so high the threatened to land in Heather's beer. This resulted in her yelling "Stay out of my beer, sea!!!" I almost did one of those very unattractive spray liquid out of our mouth as your laugh because you did not have time to swallow laughs, but managed to swallow just in time.
After pizza we thought that ice cream would be the responsible choice. We stopped at a cafe and met a very nice older man. We asked him how much for a cone, and his answer was how much would you like to pay. We settled on 2 euro. Long story short, ice cream is good.

That's it for today kids, time for bed.

We Came, We Saw, We Crawled

Sorry there was no post yesterday, the computers we were using wouldn't let us log in to blogger. The pub crawl was a good time, we met a group of five Canadian girls (one of whom got friendly enough with Newfie John that we didn't end up sharing a room with him that night afterall), and a bunch of guys from the British Military. The title of this post comes from the backs of our souvenir t-shirts. And that's all I have to say about that.

Yesterday we visited Vatican City, climbed the 400+ stairs to the top of the dome (we could have reduced the number to 320 by paying an extra 3€ for the lift, but we're far too hardcore for that), and wandered around the Square. We did not go to the Sistine Chapel because neither of us felt up to standing in another line only to pay 8€ to be herded like cattle for 3 hours through more art than a person could ever appreciate (I heard that if you were to spend one minute on ever item in the Vatican Museum you would be there 1400 hours) only to be released into the Sistine Chapel, full of other cranky people and cranky scary Italian guards barking "no pictures!" every few minutes. This was the description I gave to Michelle, and she agreed that it simply was not worth it.

We went back to our hostel, which is named Fawlty Towers, and sat in the TV room, watching some Fawlty Towers and planning our next few days. In the evening we wandered from Piazza Del Popolo down Via Del Corso, saw Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Memoriale of Vittorio Emmanuele II, and the Colosseum all lit up, before returning to our hostel to enjoy a bottle of wine on the Terrace, which is very quiet and nice, and smells of jasmine.

This morning we got up early, enjoyed a breakfast of baguette, cream cheese and strawberries, and of course Nutella, and then headed off to see the Catacombs. They were really cool! The first ones we visited were quite small, only 7 miles of tunnels and 100,000 graves. They are named after Saint Sebastion, but apparently the remains of Peter and Paul were there for awhile too. They were only excavated in the 30s, and they were really well preserved. The other ones we visited were 20km of tunnels, and a half million graves. They were excavated in the 1800s and were far more rebuilt than the first one. I was glad we had done both.

Now we're just on our way back to the hostel to grab our stuff, cause we're catching a train to Naples this afternoon! We're gonna eat pasta and seafood and go visit Pompeii and Herculaneum! I can't wait! Michelle says to add that she is looking forward to a "sweet sweet archaeological adventure."

Don't worry guys, I'm sure your lives are cool and interesting too.

y'all have a good time now!

There seems to be a theme developping on our trip. Well, I should say, there is a thing that has happened several times.

On our last night in Paris, we had to rebook our hostel because we had only reserved for 3 nights and were now staying a fourth. We were both able to get beds, but only Michelle got to stay in the same room. I had to move to a different one.

That afternoon, we went back to the hostel to move my stuff, and Michelle noticed that the clothing of her new roommate seemed to be very large. And masculine. Sure enough, the room's new tenants were John, a married Australian guy, and two Dutch guys, who were apparently set to arrive on bicycles late that night. The only other beds in the whole place was another guys room, and a co-ed room with 20-something latin american guys. Have we told you about the Spanish orgy guy? Ha. Michelle decided to stay with the married guy. We went back up, and Michelle left the following note for the Dutch guys. "Dear Dutch guys: there has been a mix up, and there is now a girl staying in your room. Please do your best to be decently dressed and I will do the same."

Michelle came down to my room early the next morning, as I was packing to leave. "Apparently the Dutch guys didn't get the message. I threw my stuff in my bag and got out."

Last night we arrived in Rome, and the pensione we found had no more dormstyle rooms, so she said she would put us in a triple room with a bathroom and only charge us the dorm rate, and we could move the next day. Sweet, we thought, a room to ourselves!

Not so much.

When we entered our room we found Lloyd, an American who was in Rome to audition for some sort of famous performance art company, and had gotten the part. He seemed as surprised as we were, but chatted amiably to us as we got our stuff set up and he rolled a joint. Then he put on his black cowboy boots and leather jacket (Lloyd is originally from Alabama, but has been living in LA) and said he was going for a walk by the river. It was Lloyd who gave us the title for this blog as he left this morning to catch a plane home.

This morning we sat in the kitchen of the pensione eating breakfast when a guy walked in with a Canadian flag on his bag. "A Canadian!" I said, and Michelle threw in "we like Canadians!" He came over and introduced himself as John, from Newfoundland, and he has been travelling in Europe for about six weeks, has another 3 or 4 months to go. As we left for the Colosseum, I joked to Michelle "Hey watch, John will be our new roommate."

Pretty much, eh?

We're going on a pub crawl with him tonight, 20 Euros for 4 pubs and pizza, and a souvenir t-shirt. Yes, yes, we'll be safe and smart and all that.

We booked a double room for Naples.

the adventures just keep coming

Well, I gave you all a few hours to get caught up on the main events from Taize. Do none of you comment ever? Did a tsunami take you all out? honestly. We're still having trouble with the photo uploading situation, but don't worry, we haven't given up.

But we can't sit around waiting for that to happen, because there are more adventures to tell!

We left Taize yesterday morning, got a ride with a Swiss youth group to a little town called Tournus, where my (Heather's) grandfather ran an orphanage after the 2nd world war. There wasn't much to see there, because it was Sunday and all, but we wandered around and ate lunch by the river and felt sorry for ourselves that Taize was over.

At 4:23 we boarded a train, confident we could make it to Modane, the train station on the French-Italian border, in time to catch a night train to Rome. However, by the time we were transferring trains in Chambery around 8:30, I noticed that we seemed to be in the French Alps, and it seemed to be pretty remote and quiet up there. Beautiful, but quiet. As our train stopped at tiny station after tiny station, it occurred to me that Modane might not be quite the thriving metropolis that I had assumed it was.

Indeed, it was not.

We got off the train at 9:48 and were greeted by an empty platform, utterly deserted except for the dozen other travellers disembarking with us. Sure enough, there were no more trains arriving or leaving Modane that night. Well, we thought, hopefully hotels here aren't too expensive.

We walked outside to find a completely dark street, except for one sketchy looking hotel sign, with a bar for a lobby, and 5 or 6 men sitting inside, watching us walk by. We decided to follow the signs to centre-ville, hoping there would be a more inviting place downtown.

An hour and a half later, we had wandered most of the streets of the town, which was even more dead than that first road outside the train station. We had considered asking some paramedics we had seen doing a drill for directions, but didn't quite like the idea of walking up to a bunch of men in a dark empty street, even if they were in uniform.

We decided to return to that first hotel, but found it also deserted when we got there. By this time, it was almost midnight, and the first train out of Modane (back into France, but still a way out of this cold and awful place) was at 5:38AM.

We decided to sleep outside the train station.

It provided some shelter, we reasoned, with enough light ot see what was going on around us without drawing attention to ourselves, and it was right next to the police station should any trouble arise. Great! We pulled out our sleeping bags and pillows, leaned agaisnt our bags and got settled. Michelle was able to sleep quite quickly, but between my vague fear of getting yelled at by police or train station personnel, and the apparent inferiority of my sleeping bag, (one sign said it was 9 degrees back at 10 pm, so it must have been colder by now), it took me at least an hour to doze off.

Around 2:30 I realized that now was the time to make use of the long underwear I brought along, and that made a big difference. Still, we both woke up about every half hour or so until about five when we packed up our stuff and went into the station, washing our faces and brushing our teeth in the washroom, and charging iPods in the waiting room.

We got on a bus at 7:30 that took us through a 10km long tunnel through the mountain, and we emerged on the other side, in Italy, where we boarded a train to Turin. We had breakfast in Turin, lunch in Milan, and we just had dinner in Rome.

Don't worry, we have a hotel room tonight.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about our new roommate...

Images From The Taize Video Montage In My Head

- Hanging out with "Swedish Guy" (Tobias) at Oyak (the place where you get beer after prayer, or coffee during the day), listening to him talk about Viking axes, which apparently were very effective, and using words like "we" and "our" (as opposed to they, thousands of years ago). Did we mention that the Swedish Navy can apparently take out the US no problem?

- Checking out Houston Adam's tattoo, before we knew him as Houston Adam

- Oyak on Monday night, having an international sing-along to "With Or Without You", with the Italian version of Jack Black shouting "screaming!", except it came out more like "squeaming, SQUEAMING!!!" at the "oh-oh-oh-oh" part.

- Monday night at dinner, watching our soon-to-be-friend Travis arriving with his green hat and faded t-shirt and backpack and like six bags, rockin the hot.

- Fighting for seconds in the Extra Food area on pasta night.

- drinking out of bowls all week

- Chicago Adam (who is a doctor, and had administered some antibiotics several days before): "So Michelle, are you back to 100%?"
Michelle: "yeah, I think so"
Travis: "were you sick?"
M: "no, I had an infection"
T: "where?" (awkward silence)

- Tobias: "That's non-alcoholic beer you're drinking"
Michelle: "Oh, that's why the line was so short!"

- Brother Maxime, who speaks about ten language, exhorting us to "fuckus, er, FOCUS on Christ". He then looked right at the two of us, among a group of 150 or so Dutch, Swedish, German and Polish people: "sorry Canadians!"

- Brother Maxime using Q-Tips, Tetris, and his apparent love of Rage Against the Machine as examples in his Bible Introductions.

- William singing the Tetris theme in the lunchline.

- Learning to queue like Europeans (basically, there are no rules!!)

- Travis: "So... I used to be kind of a hippie. Actually, I was a Phish-head."

- Speculating about Houston Adam's (who is getting married in a couple weeks) mass newsletter to his Taize friends: "Dear Losers: Sex is awesome. In euphoria, Adam"

- Heather, on garbage duty, pelting that blonde Swedish girl with a big bag of plastic bottles. (Actually we really liked all the Swedes, and it was totally an accident, but it was still pretty funny)

- Heather: "Michelle, if Tony Funk and Sean Gasperetti were to somehow have a child together, he would look like THAT GUY!"

Pictures to come, as soon as we find an Internet cafe with USB hookups.

we are alive

we left taize this morning, we're taking an overnight train to rome.

we'll update and post pictures there.

see you in rome.