Well, if ever there was a lesson in blogging before the day is over, my night in Vienna would be a good example. Pretty much I didn't go to bed right away. And pretty much I drank several beers. I ended up hanging out with the Germans I met earlier. They were on their way out to some festival thing, and I figured in the spirit of getting into this solo traveling thing, I'd better start practicing seizing every opportunity to hang out with people! So our adventure started in the hostel kitchen, which is in the basement, and is behind about 5 heavy steel doors. Seriously. Straight out of Get Smart. Except without the shoe phone, sadly. It was quite a while before we actually left the hostel. So late, in fact that we had ... read more

I mostly slept on thelfight to Frankfurt. Or at least tried to sleep. It was fine with headphones in and a little music playing, but as is to be expected, not that comfortable for long periods of time. I also managed to enjoy a couple of episodes of Extras, a couple of in flight meals, and a couple of tiny wines. Customs in Frankfurt was fun. I approached the passport checkpoint.... No questions asked. Thanks! I love European customs. They seem to just get it. Or at least they don't have the intense paranoia that we're used to seeing. Oh, and their H1N1 screening consisted of a sign, way off to the side (so I'm sure 98% of travelers didn't even notice it), and it just had some information on it. Pandemic what? We collected our ... read more

Well. This is it. The last stop on our grand adventure. One more night in Paris before we head home to Canada. Are we ready to go back? Yes and no. We've been away for two months, but there's a few years worth of things we haven't seen yet. Yet. I'll be back soon enough, and I'm going to make sure of it too... So how did our last day go? Well, we probably couldn't have asked for a more fitting conclusion to our European travels. It actually started the day before in the train station in Amsterdam where it took us about two hours to get reservations for the trip to Paris.... yeah TWO HOURS! It was insane! You took a number, and you waited... FOREVER! It must not be that unusual because no one ... read more

Have you ever stopped and thought about how terrible Guns and Roses lyrics are? Neil and I did, and it entertained us for days. "You know where you are baby? You're in the jungle. You're gonna die!" Terrible. Amsterdam is too far away from Gimmelwald to get there in a day so we had to break up our journey. Well, actually, it's more the lack of high speed rail running between the two places. So we decided to add another country to the list: Luxembourg. A small country, and from what we've learned on this trip, smaller seems to be better. It's easier to see everything and get a full sense of what a place is like in a short time if the place is small. Makes sense. And so far small places have lead to ... read more

So, if you didn't pick it up in the previous entry, the Swiss Alps are pretty breathtaking. It's great to be back in the mountains. Also, when we got back in Switzerland, the railway announcements were in German, Swiss German, Italian, French, and English. It was pretty wild. Also, when the French announcement was made, it was the first time we'd understood a language other than English in a couple of weeks, and it felt pretty good. Interlaken is a pretty small city that lives because of tourism. In the winter it's a hub for skiing, and in the summer there are companies offering adventure sports everywhere.... expensive adventure sports. Activities include parasailing, canyoning, and skydiving, and most of them cost well over 100 swiss francs. No thanks. We'll stick with the free hiking. And I ... read more