SeanTerrill.com » europe

Europe Journal and Photos

webmaster — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:53:30 +0000

Well, I finally finished transcribing my journal from Europe, which was nothing compared to culling 700+ photos down to 442, editing, tagging, and captioning them. If you’re primarily interested in the journal part you might want to start at the beginning, but there are tags for individual countries too.

I guess finally getting some closure on this project is a subliminal attempt to close out the entire seven-year chapter of my life that was college, since Saturday I move out of what I fervently hope will be my last apartment.

Heads Up

webmaster — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:52:42 +0000

Just a note to let people know that if it doesn’t seem like much is happening, it’s because I’m (finally) transcribing over my journal from Europe, and sorting, tweaking and captioning the 442 photos, at a rate of maybe 3-4 posts per day. They’re backdated so that things won’t be weird, but the “europe” tag will cut back to them.

My carpal tunnel is acting up, so read them, dammit!

Luxembourg

webmaster — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:33:45 +0000

Having been in Eastern Europe, it’s hard even to express just how comforting the rail system is within the Deutsche Bahn’s sphere of influence. I was planning on taking the night train from Munich to Paris, but it was fully booked, so I’m going to spend a few hours in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg instead. I should get into Paris early enough to take a walking tour, and without needing a reservation to boot. [I actually spent my last night on the Continent on a park bench in Luxembourg, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.] Then it’s Brussels, and home. The past few days, essentially killing time, have made me homesick for the first time. So yes, I am looking forward to not living out of a backpack for, oh, the rest of my life.

Party City: The Tent, outside Munich

Luxembourg is a great place around which to walk.

It figures this would be the last thing I saw.

Krakow

webmaster — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:25:12 +0000

I spent an unplanned fourth night in Krakow last night, partly because I needed to use up my remaining zloty, but mostly just because the hostel here is so amazingly nice. It’s definitely way better than my apartment, and costs less to boot (something like $550 a month, including breakfast and dinner). Actually, it’s most like staying at a friend’s, albeit with better social opportunities. I’ve been hanging out with a couple of British girls, who just graduated and are starting their trip. It’s fun to compare their initial enthusiasm with my desire just to get the hell home.

Krakow is pretty neat on the whole. It’s overrun with tourists, but I guess pretty much anywhere is this time of year. It has the standard Eastern European city features: castle on a hill; river bend; city walls-cum-park, but is small and sort of quiet. Definitely a good place to relax, even if my knee and ankle haven’t quite gotten back to being 100% yet. I’m taking the night train to Poznan, then Berlin, where I’m staying in an H2G2-themed hostel. After that I only have two nights to plan before I fly home. I’m thinking about trying to catch either Bastille Day festivities, or the Tour de France, but who knows how it will pan out?

Krakow's mascot

Donya and Catherine

I imagine this is less funny in places that were actually conquered by the Nazis.

English is kitschy, but apparently not actually spoken much.

Auschwitz

This would be a great name for a bar.

Yes, it's a theme hostel.

If you visit Berlin, you HAVE to go to the Pergamon.

Zakopane

webmaster — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:51:22 +0000

I left Poprad on schedule; I was actually too excited about the hike to sleep well. Poprad, incidentally, is as far east as I’ll ever get; it’s all homeward bound from here on out. Rysy, where I crossed the border, is so steep that the last 500 m took 45 minutes, much of it spent climbing on all fours (with no safety equipment, of course). The view from the top, though… for a few minutes I knew what it was to be a god. Aesthetic properties aside, it was so damned tough it almost killed me.

Anyway, I arrived at Morskie Oko, the Polish trailhead, at 7:30, exactly 12 hours after I started. A Polish guy I met up top, and who buddied up with me on the descent for safety, was nice enough to pay my share of the (horse-drawn) cab, and I got to Zakopane at about 10:30. Due to a misleading map on the hostel’s website, however, it took three hours and all of my remaining cell phone credit to actually get a to a shower, and bed.

After a good night’s sleep, my bad left knee (old news) and right ankle (a recent development) have stiffened to the point that walking is both painful and funny-looking. Good thing I’m out of money, or I’d be pissed about not being able to do anything. Oh, and my favorite hat blew off my head and landed in either Slovakia or Poland, so all in all not a high point on the emotional roller-coaster that is backpacking.

I'm headed for the one on the right. With the snowcap.

The Aussie who gave me that stick probably doesn't know he saved my life.

This seems like a nice vacation spot, but it was deserted.

About here I figured out my trail map wasn't to scale.

Pretty neat trail overall

I think some of these people were using it as an illegal immigration route.

First view of the true summit

I really loved that hat.

Not something you see every day

Poprad

webmaster — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 02:51:15 +0000

One strange thing about Europe in general: sales tax, which is very high by US standards (in the 15% range), is included in all prices. This is a fantastic idea from a practical standpoint, although I can’t quite square it with the informed-citizen, government-oversight thing. Bottle deposits, though, which are also high (10-20 cents), are not. In the Czech Republic, and now Slovakia, the result is that the price of beer can be as much as 50% more than what’s on the sticker. If you’re doing the math and wondering if I made a mistake, don’t; a pint bottle of cheap beer is indeed about 30 cents. Obviously, I’m just back from the grocery store, having laid in provisions for tomorrow’s hike: bananas; potato chips; pears; Snickers; and 2 L of Coca-Cola. The hypothesis being that an abundance of caffeine and simple sugars can’t be a bad thing when you’re engaged in what I’m conservatively estimating will be 12 hours of exercise.

Tonight I’m staying in this hot-sheets hotel in Poprad. The only things it has going for it are that a room is $20, and it’s directly across the street from the train station. Handy for when you have a 6:18 AM train.

Incomparable luxury

Budapest

webmaster — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:33:54 +0000

My Eastern European blitzkrieg has bogged down, as is typically the case. I spent the last two days in Budapest, having decided that Ljubljana in just too far out of the way (9 hours, and no night train). So the plan for now is to hike over the Slovak-Polish border at 2500 m, and then relax in Krakow for a few days before heading home on what will no doubt be a hellish six-day gauntlet of international trains, intercontinental flights, and interstate driving.

Actually, I’m crossing out of Hungary right about now. I speak absolutely no Magyar, which is what Hungarian is called by people who aren’t ignorant Americans, but the procedure is the same everywhere: the one with the gun wants your passport, the other one, your ticket. In most of Western Europe (the Shengen countries) border crossings are seamless, and the gun-toting passport-checker doesn’t even board the train, but I’ve crossed the Iron Curtain several times now, and by local standards it’s almost hassle-free.

All told, then, I will have been in 14 countries (12 of them for the first time) in 53 days, about which I can’t help feeling a little proud.

Grazer Schloßberg

Graz and the Kunsthaus

ATOs are EVERYWHERE.

Serving absinthe the badass way.

Nicest. Hostel. Ever.

Crappy weather in Budapest

Bratislava is known for wacky sculptures...

... this being the most famous.

'UFO bridge' and Soviet-era tenements

Vienna

webmaster — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:45:09 +0000

Something I noticed in Salzburg seems to be true here as well: Austrians take their weekends very seriously. When I got into town last night, at 5:30 on a Saturday, the grocery stores were all closed. Today (Sunday) the hot dog stands are shuttered up.

Vienna is huge. Just the downtown area has a radius of something like 6 km. Despite the length of the walk from the hostel, which is near the train station and therefore, I assume, in a touristy area, to the city center, though, every other person I passed was American. Literally half the population of Vienna, or at least half of the population that’s out and walking around on a Sunday, is a tourist.

Some more relevant observations, then: there’s a lot of old stuff here. I realize that’s a sort of European non sequitur, but in Vienna even the fast food joints are in 200-year old buildings, or at least buildings that were designed to look 200 years old. The effect is really pleasant, and makes it a nice city just to walk around, which is nice, because the other things for which Vienna is famous (opera and theater, e.g.) are sort of out of the reach of a backpacker’s budget. In sort of a nod to culture, I am going to a screening of The Third Man this afternoon.

Vienna also has a fantastically wide (50 to 100 m), tree-shaded ring road from tearing down the old city walls. This is obviously good for navigation and for providing a way to get out of the sun, but also seems to function as a sort of bike/jogging trail/park.

Bookstore

Pretty sweet public pool

Anachronism

Ostentatious enough for you?

Lipizzaner stallions

Concert at the Rathaus

Parliament (Funkadelic)

HUGE mosque

Inventor of the automobile

Since... 1978?!

Prague

webmaster — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:08:19 +0000

I had intended to write something about the virtues of cheaper, slightly less touristed Eastern Europe, but my forearms are really sore from the climbing wall at the bar next door, so I’m going to have to leave it at that.

It's a BIG DEAL here.

My hostel is near the white radio tower.

I <3 crenellations.

Changing of the guard

Canucks at U Fleku

SIGN FAIL

Could this be the world's largest metronome?

Bar climbing wall

Cesky Krumlov

webmaster — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:40:45 +0000

I’m sitting in the castle garden in Cesky Krumlov, bored out of my skull. I had planned on having a full day here so that I could relax, but I hadn’t counted on relaxing, or at least relaxing alone, being so damn dull. Prague, and the hostel I stayed in, were an absolute boot. Being that the Czech Republic is the birthplace of the modern lager, I’ve spent a fair amount of time adding to my bottle cap collection, at something like 30-80 cents a pop. I have 192 Kc (about $9) to spend before I leave for Austria in the morning, though, so I’m going to have to splurge and go out for dinner tonight.

One thing that’s been relatively constant in Europe so far is that I have a lot of conversations during which I speak only the local language and the other person speaks only English. This doesn’t work, however, in Czech, where the word for “yes” is “ano”. So basically a bilingual conversation is out of the question.

Wacky sculpture

Cesky Krumlov

Miami Beach?!

Really picturesque town

The castle is built into the cliffs.

Rotating theater, for some reason