08-23-2010

Yes today is 08-23-2010 and I am doing a post about 08-23-2010 (I fell asleep while writing this so I am finishing it on 08-24-2010). It is a bit weird to make a final post of a blog before making the middle posts, as I WILL fill in all the remaining days between my last entry and today, but I feel obligated to make this entry while it is fresh in my mind. It is a bit of a wrap up and in a way does not make sense or flow at all with my previous entries as it contains experiences not yet mentioned.

I am right now laying in my OWN bed, at my OWN house, after having dinner that I did not have to hunt for (even finding a grocery store or restaurant can be considered a hunt when you are in a foreign place every second or third day), and have just taken a shower in a shower I was familiar with. I am back.

It may be the exhaustion (as of the writing of this it is in my mind's time 6:30a.m and I have not been asleep for a bit over 24 hours) but it all seems a bit surreal. Like I just cannot believe I survived 6 weeks in Europe (and another 3 in Iran) going through 11 countries, 21 cities, over 63 days, and doing something new and different almost every day and facing challenges I never imagined.

ANYWHO. Let me back up a bit and start at the beginning of today, when I woke up in Frankfurt (and am now in Campbell. Such a weird thought in it of itself). I woke up at 6:29a.m, a minute before my watch was set to go off, and had an immediate sense of panic as I knew I hadn't woken up to the sound of my watch's alarm and thought it meant I had overslept. But this was not the case and I got up, dressed, and since I had my bag packed the night before, was out the door and on the train platform towards Frankfurt airport by 6:40 with a ticket I had bought with 2.80 of my last 5 euros (not completely true as I fount 3 more euros in my jean pocket a few hours ago).

Anywho, I got on the right train and to the right airport (you will see the importance of RIGHT train/airport as I update my blogs) and through the check-in and all with no problem and by 7:45 was waiting at the gate for my flight at 9:50. Yea, just a taaaad early. haha. I sometimes forget how efficient I became in this trip at this whole travelling thing.

A few quick naps and some pages of reading ("Plot Against America") later, I was on board and on my 11 hour flight home and soon to discover that some crazy bed-bug or something had devoured my arms and back as I was madly itching. But I did not care, I was going home, hopefully not with any of the crazy bugs that had bitten me though.

Eleven hours, 2 movies (one of which I managed to watch, and kind of understand, in Spanish because of my new determination of learning languages which you will read about eventually), 2 border-line shitty airline meals, and at most 3 hours of asleep later and it didn't really sink in that I was going home and away from the life-style I had become used to over the past 6 weeks until I saw San Jose on the little tracking screen of the flight.

The entire time San Francisco was on there but finally about 1 hour before landing San Jose came on there along with Oakland, Sacramento, and other places I knew and recognized. It might sound mundane to you but for me it was the first time that I knew more than just the name of the place I was heading to and it was interesting. Because of this familiarity I was almost overwhelmed with a mixture of patriotism and a sense of belonging. Like I just wanted to seriously shout: "AMERICA, FUUUCK YEAAA."

Off the plane and at the baggage claim I waited far too long for my one little 12kg of a backpack to come thorough but after it did I made my way through customs where I was randomly checked. The lady asked about my trip and all the places I went and hesitantly, but not wanting to get in trouble for hiding it if she was smart enough to figure out the three week gap between my date of departure and my stamp for entering Frankfurth, I also mentioned Iran. I then readied myself for hours of questioning (you will see why when I get to write on my trip to London), but they just looked through my bag a bit to see what I had and I was on my way. My mom and dad were outside to greet me and it was the first familiar faces I had seen in the past 6 weeks. It was just awesomely relaxing to say the least.

After the hugs and kisses we were on our way, through familiar streets filled with familiar cars driving on a familiar side of the street with signs in a familiar language. And having been picked up (not having to find a bus, a train, or another mode of transportation to my destination), it was just all too awesomely boring to be going from a station to a destination without having to worry about all the hassle of the in-between. I was home and now I am back on my laptop, I am sending text messages on my phone, and I even got to drive to Radioshack to buy an overpriced phone charger because mine seems to have disappeared over the 9 weeks I was gone.

The entry may not have crazy stories like the ones I will have to write about over the coming weeks or include any seeing of significant sites like Eiffel tower or the pantheon or leaning tower of Pisa, but the truth is for someone on a trip for so long the breath-taking must-see OMG I am here moments are actually what becomes a bit ordinary and this almost NOTHING of the day becomes a bit more memorable.

So now let me stop and take a moment to look back and try to answer some of your questions and kind of wrap up my experience in a few sentences for those who I may not get a chance to talk personally to:
-My favorite place:
ALL OF THEM. You can't ask that question and expect a real answer. They are all different and they are all unique. Yes some, maybe most, I would never want to live in, but as a visitor and tourist each city has a tremendous number of things to offer and a unique personality and poses its own challenges (language, transportation, food, lodging, ect.) that you cannot pick a favorite. One had amazing natural beauty (Switzerland), one was amazingly fun (Barcelona), one was amazingly cliche (Paris), one was amazingly picturesque (cinque terre), one was amazingly historic (Rome), one was amazingly frustrating (Pisa), and on and on and on. There is no favorites to pick here and I wont.

-Did you have fun? What was fun?:
It's a weird question to answer because this trip was SOOOO much different than any and almost ALL expectations I had going into it. If I answer it with the expectations and what I thought the trip was going to be then I would have to say almost, no. But the truth is I had no clue what I was doing and had no clue about the magnitude of the task I was undertaking. I just did it because I thought it be "fun."
HOWEVER, now looking back (and I have gotten to this conclusion for about the past 4 weeks as you will see as I catch up with my posts), this was the GREATEST time of my life and I had the most fun and the craziest experiences and honestly experienced the most extreme of most emotions I have ever felt in my life. I felt happy, sad, lucky, alone, depressed, excited, accomplished, exhausted, foreign, familiar, and ON AND ON.
The problem with the did I like it question is like this: If you ask a kid before he ever rides a bike, "What is fun about riding a bike?" he can tell a host of things he may think are fun and will be fun about riding a bike but not until he rides it will he really be able to answer your question. Vise versa, a person who has never ridden a bike asking the kid who has ridden the bike "what is fun about riding a bike?" will not be able to really understand the answer until he rides a bike. What I am trying to say is this trip was fun but not exactly in the ways I imagined.
For me, the most "fun" part was the challenge of learning to travel. Travelling is like any new sport or activity you start doing. For the sake of this argument I will use running a mile as an example. You start out maybe running/walking in 10minutes and being tired. And then a day later you run again in 10 min. again. Another week goes by and now you are at 8. And another two weeks and you are at 7. So you get better at it. At first it may be hard, but you get better, and it is cool to get better at something. Well, travelling is like running but instead of just 10 minutes a day and then you can relax and go about your normal life and come back to the challenge the next day or if you really don't feel like it take a day off, travelling is like running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as long as you travel. You have no choice but to keep running and EVERY mistake or fall you take (wrong bus, train, lost, hungry, tired) add up and you can't just go do something familiar and easier for a while and then try again. YOU HAVE TO KEEP GOING.
For me, this was the most "fun" part of travelling. I was terrible at finding my hostels (if you keep reading my entries you will see some places where it took me over two hours to find a hostel under a quarter of a mile from my train station/bus stop). I was terrible at packing. I was terrible at finding food. I was terrible at getting on the right bus, train, reading a map, planning my next couple of days, and ect. ect. I was terrible at travelling because well I never traveled before. But unlike ANYTHING ELSE I had ever taken on, what I was doing was not a PART of my life that I could get better at a little bit at a time over days and weeks, it WAS my life and I could not really walk away from it and needed to get better NOW.
You see, at the end of the day, I saw the Eiffel tower, went to a hundred different (famous) churches, saw a countless museums, ate crazy food, met awesome people, partied until past dawn, and I did ALLL the cliche things I imagined myself doing before the trip. HOWEVER, none of them, at least to me, were as special and important and memorable as the overall experience of learning how to travel and live and survive on the go. For me, these 9 weeks and more specifically the 6 weeks in Europe, were by far the most challenging time of my life and for me THAT was the most fun thing about the trip. I love challenging myself, and even though I honestly didn't realize that is what I was doing by deciding to go on this trip, I am glad I forced myself into this because it was an experience I will obviously never forget (until I get old and get dementia).

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-NZ