Amsterdam

I'm not gonna lie, the amount of times I've walked past a postcard stand and considered just sending postcards to my friends, family, and boss saying I won't be coming back number in the...well, every time I walk past a postcard stand. If everyone I loved could just start living in other countries, thusly removing the incentive to stay in one place, I would really appreciate that.

Amsterdam apparently has the exact same climate as Vancouver. I know this because it turns out one of my colleagues from a pop culture conference I attended last year moved from Vancouver to do his Masters in Amsterdam, and he lives a block away from our hostel. What are the odds? So yesterday we got a tour from a (semi) local. He brought us to a free university where we all had to pretend to be Dutch students. It fell apart when it became obvious none of us speak Dutch, but they insisted on feeding us anyway.

Today I saw the narrowest house in Amsterdam (reportedly, the owner is taller than his house is wide), sampled aged gouda, saw the outside of Anne Frank's house, and then met Patti Smith, the gravity of which I would have appreciated more if I knew who Patti Smith was. No I know it's shameful. But hey, I met her, and got to watch her sign her name in a book that I was pretending belonged to me but actually belonged to the man with the leopard-spotted fauxhawk (yes) standing in line behind me. So that was cool.

In just over 24 hours I will be packing my bags for the last time. I'm already compiling a list of places to go the next time I come to Europe, though.

Vienna (retrospect): the pros and cons of being in a butterfly house

When I was a child I was terrified of many things, like getting splinters, eating anything that might have a vegetable hidden in it, and coming in contact with any kind of insect ever. As a totally mature adult I've managed to establish an indifference to splinters and an appreciation for all vegetables (except for celery and usually tomatoes), but I don't think I'll ever be okay with having bugs on me and that's perfectly fine with me. This brings me to the question of butterflies. People talk about butterflies like they're not the same thing as an insect, just because they're pretty, like people will decorate their children with butterflies and never address the fact that they're basically just bald moths or praying mantises with wings, neither of which are things I'd expect to see on a baby hat or little girl's hairclip ("look honey I got you some more of those bald moth hairclips you love!" no? No.), but everyone pretends butterflies are fantastic, which is how I ended up in a butterfly house in Vienna, taking pictures of beautiful things that terrify me.

To be fair I had forgotten I was upset by butterflies until I got into the schmetterling haus and realized I was about to be surrounded by them. There were all these signs up reminding us to please not touch the butterflies (sure!) and all these tourists ignoring them and making their friends and family members pose with brightly coloured insects on their fingers like they were Disney princesses or something (my god, people, don't you realize what you're doing?). I was torn between taking pictures of all the pretty colours and fighting the urge to kill the ones that got too close, and then I discovered that the green dress I was wearing made me look like a gigantic hedge for them to perch on, and there were butterflies landing on my skirt and excited tourists running to me and picking them off as if I were some sort of butterfly tree. What a fantastic time that was. Wish I could post the pictures here but my phone doesn't like to cooperate with many upload sites, so you'll just have to take my word for it ( be my Facebook friend and relive the trauma with me).

Sweet sweet silence in Salzburg

This may just be the 3.5 hours of sleep talking, but I am going to marry Salzburg. I would be happy to just live in the café I'm sitting in right now. It has delicious food and an excellent demonstration of how to use disco balls as subtle decoration. That's right. Subtle disco balls. That's all I really ask of life--unassuming sparkles and lights.

Also, the streets. So empty. You can walk down a sidewalk and not run the risk of accidentally* punching another tourist in the face or kicking a dog or stepping on a replica of the Mona Lisa or being accosted by anyone hawking opera pamphlets in powdered wigs and 18th century ballroom dress. I'd be impressed by that even if I didn't have this great lack-of-sleep high going on. If I don't sleep soon the silence may take on a Shining-esque quality, admittedly, but for now, I'll enjoy the silence. And maybe try to pretend I didn't just find out the von Trapps actually existed and The Sound of Music is a real life event. MIND BLOWN. How did I manage to miss that one? I'm surrounded by SofM fans. I've been to weddings where they replace the toasts with special Sound of Music medley sing-alongs. No one ever told me it was based on real events! So there's my embarrassing admission of the day.


*"accidentally"

Vienna

Finally we are out of Venice. I've got to say, Venice was not my favourite--partially because of our location, but mostly because Venice seems to have been excessively touristified. Is s a great place if you want to huy elaborate carnival mask, or an 18th century style wig, or a Fendi purse, or an €80 gondola ride. I have a strong suspicion no one lives there except people involved in the tourist trade. Other than visiting the Peggy Gugenheim, I could have done with less Venice and more Vienna*, which is too bad since we're only here for 2 days.

Awesome things about Vienna:
-our hostel gives out free ice lollies when it is hot, as well as city maps that are accurate, helpful, and hilarious.
-their busking scene is excellent. They have people playing grand pianos on street corners, for instance.
-everything used to be something else. Each destination in our hilarious guidebook/map begins with, "this café used to be a brothel...thus bar used to be a metro station...this club used to be a bathroom (no, really)..."
-the wiener schnitzel I just ate, which was accompanied by possibly the best salad ever, which had marinated fried potatoes in it. In the salad.
-it doesn't cost an extra €3 just to sit at a table to have your morning coffee.
-metros. I never realized how much I love metros in foreign cities until there wasn't one.

So there it is. I have already decided I need to come back to Vienna because 2 days isn't nearly enough time to visit all the ex-bathrooms in this place.

*the most interesting thing about Venice was the might train leaving it, when we shared a cabin with a fransiscan monk who spent most of the journey listening to Italian opera music on his iPod and singing along to his favourite parts.

Sort-of Venice

In Venice...more or less. We* arrived at our lodgings and realized we had booked them on the mainland in Mestre, a 20 minute bus ride from Venice. We thought back to the night several months ago when we crowded around my laptop and spent over an hour trying to book a good hostel in Venice, and wondered how on earth we managed to not even book IN Venice.

At first we were both so annoyed we decided to try to find a Venice hostel to stay at. It quickly became clear what we had been thinking when we booked this place: that a Venice hostel in our price range appears to come with few amenities, shady hostel owners who have fights in the hallways, and a notable threat of bedbugs. Months ago, a hotel in Mestre was pretty appealing. Of course, nothing is appealing in 33 degree heat when all you want is to make a quick excursion to a museum and then scoot back to the hostel for a siesta, and the museum you want to go to is across the Mediterranean (a bit).

However, in the end we decided to take a 20 minute bus ride and a clean, private hotel room over the sketchtastic options we had in Venice proper (plus the very steep fee to cancel our mestre stay).

so here we are in Mestre!

*"we" now refers to R and me; A left us this morning to be reunited with her husband.

Nice--Firenze

I am in Florence and back in a place where I can get Wifi. We spent the last 4 days in an apartment in Nice, which was fantastically roomy and had 2 balconies with a view of the mountains and palm trees and an old-style cage elevator that scared Reba so much she wouldn't take her luggage into it for fear of breaking it with the added weight. I discovered my phone wasn't getting WiFi after I got a text from Rogers telling me id managed to use up half my data for the month researching the difference between a sling and a cocktail (very important business).

Nice was beautiful, hot, and primarily populated by very rich old tourists. I decided to give in to the temptation of the patisserie on our corner and bought an almond macaron, to the ridicule of my peers (apparently its crazy to want to buy a macaron in France, go figure. I mean it was possibly the sweetest thing I had ever put in my mouth and I made them help me finish it even though it was roughly the size of a toonie, but still. Delicious).

Then we tried to figure out French Laundromats and I became very cross with my travel buddies because they were more interested in helping me figure out how to put my washer on a spin cycle than they were in letting me finish A Farewell To Arms on the laundromat floor. Nice. Wild times happen there. 

Paris when it sizzles

60% humidity and 28 dégrées. I was not made for this sort of weather. But we ran into a bunch of Australians on the street the other day who weren't made for this place either. They had on jackets over sweaters over tshirts with toques on. We were in sun dresses. The one with the most layers asked us if we weren't cold and then reminded himself we were Canadian...i suppose they don't come from the three dog night region.

Visited Shakespeare and Company, which may have been a great place for the lost generation to hang out but nowadays spending more than 30 minutes in this pit of awestruck tourists would be a bit hard on the brain. Its a pretty fantastic bookstore, if course. I immediately began dreaming of winning the lottery so I can open a bookstore like that, since clearly the world needs more of those.

I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to give wardrobe advice to our new Brazilian roommate who has made me realize just how little conversational Spanish I have. Why she's asking outfit advice from a Canadian girl wearing pajamas at 8pm with white wine splashes on her glasses is beyond me (tip: do not walk around while drinking anything in a 10*10 room filled with bunkbeds. Results are...inevitable...), but it was a bonding experience.

Paris

I could have stayed in Spain forever (Barcelona in particular) not least because I could understand some of the language most of the time, and they put more effort into the design of a sidewalk than Winnipeg does into the design of its government buildings. I also just felt comfortable there, for all that ordering food was quite intimidating and we never did manage to get them to give us separate bills.

Now we are in Paris, in a 4-bed hostel room with black and white wallpaper designed to look faded. It may also be designed to look peeling, but I suspect that just came to it naturally. We are sharing the room with an Israeli pastry chef doing a stint in a Parisian patisserie. The room is so small if anyone wants to move around the room everyone else has to too, and there are footprints on the ceiling, and this all just feels about right for Paris. Having a room mostly to ourselves is an absolute luxury after the 16-bed Madrid hostel where someone was always coming inbat 3am and someone else was always getting up at 5 to catch a flight, or even the Barcelona hostel we shared with 4 Ontario girls, two German girls, and one poor man from Missouri who had to listen to us talk about how much we liked the German girl's skirt and which Harry Potter character is the hottest. Last night I dreamed the pastry chef had us secretly moved to another hostel in the night because she didn't like the hours we kept, and we had to share a room with six Australians who didn't understand what we were upset about. In reality she is very nice and gave us a delicious cookie to share yesterday. Today we are visiting the Eiffel tower (admiring it from afar) and some charming cemeteries.

Barcelona

We arrive in Barcelona and catch the metro to our hostel. Everyone is packed into the cars, our backs to the wall to avoid assaulting people with our backpacks (and to discourage pickpockets), and the train has just begun to move when there is a great commotion in the next car and someone pulls the emergency brake. We jolt to a stop and there is furious banging on the glass door and a man shouting in Spanish (he is quite likely a tourist, although it seems everyone in Barcelona is at least bilingual so the fact that he's not swearing in catellan is not an indication that he doesn't speak it), and for a second I'm under the impression someone's been caught in the sliding doors. Then another passenger explains to us that a pickpocket stole the man's bag. He is reacting as though someone just kidnapped his child. Authorities come to the outside of the metro and after a belaboured conversation the train starts moving again. The man is NOT okay with this and pulls the emergency brake again, losing any sympathy anyone might have had for him. He threatens to break the glass doors down if they won't let him off the train (be now the pickpocket, his bag, and its contents are long gone, and its unclear what he hopes to accomplish by getting off here versus at the next metro stop). After some more conversation with the authorities, the man collapses on the ground in tears. A very unimpressed metro guard comes down the cars of the metro and finally leads the distraught man and his entirely disinterested wife to the staff exit doors, which he unlocks to let them out.

The train stalls once more for no apparent reason and then we are finally making our way to Catalunya. Once off the train we break out the map and try to track down our hostel, which is like raising a Tourist flag and inviting everyone to come offer you directions. Hold onto your bags, they tell us. The pickpockets are terrible here.

Yes, we say. Thank you. We know.