all good things must come to an end...

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I suppose this may qualify as the biggest cheater entry ever, at least in my world. I think Lana has two worse entries than I do - case in point "Antarctica" and the Greece ones from home. But I suppose it's best that they are written as opposed to being forgotten completely. It's been a whirlwind of a last few days and I will do my best to capture what I can, it may be best to ask me about some of these RIDICULOUS situations in person and we can share a good laugh about my story-telling antics. I suppose some of you are imagining me rolling my eyes or raising my voice or even flapping my hands about (as I have a tendency to do), but hey - nothing beats the real thing right? 😊

Tuesday Now, as fabulous as the Funny Farm was (being attached to a 4 star hotel provides the backpackers with a serious number of perks) breakfast was definitely not catered to those of us with little to no budget. "All you can eat for 10 Sfc!" Umm... Last time I checked, yes the Canadian dollar was virtually on par with the Swiss Franc, HOWEVER - I can't remember the last time I paid 10 bucks for a breakfast that consisted of white bread, 2 kinds of jam, butter, cereal, milk and one cup of coffee. Apparently in this world eating doesn't equal drinking, so you could suck back all the strawberry jm you could get your hands on but heaven forbid you need a little caffeine to get you going. Or in my case, half a pot - yes, I'm an addict - I, Nicky Renault have a coffee problem; but I've been good this trip (mostly because you can't get the caffeine loaded drip coffee from back home to save your life) and have tried to limit myself to two or three cups a day. But those first two are rather critical to the success of the remainder of my day. And while I'm a little freer with money at this point because I am doing super well budget wise, I am not forking out 10 dollars for two cups of coffee. Funny Farm, real funny... All that rambling to say I spent the morning sleeping in. I did manage to make it to bed early but was awoken by the American crawling on the outside of the building (scaling the walls, I speak no lies) and sticking his head into every window to inquire as to peoples' plans for the next few hours. There was a swimming pool, he had a thing against pants - I'm sure you can do the math.
Got up the next morning to inquire about paragliding despite the injury - I'm a liability nightmare so any extreme sports were out of the question. My consolation price was heading into town to battle my way to Vienna the following day. After some rather successful grocery shopping, at a coop none the less, and a wonderful cup of coffee in a little shop beside one of the many lakes, I headed back to the hostel to do some serious lounging. My highest ambitions for the day? Find a book to read for pleasure and sit by the pool with the other two Canadian girls I was sharing a room with - life is rough I know. Playing in the swimming pool brings us to this trip's marriage proposal.
Calm, calm - it's a good story (and no, I didn't say yes). I was swimming laps in the pool and had stopped in the shallow end when a young blue-eyed blonde boy latched onto me. He had been swimming with his water wings, tired himself out and couldn't make the edge of the pool - I was clearly the next best option. When I spoke with him in German it was apparently love at first sight. He proceeded to try and drag me over to meet his father and announce that we would be swimming together and he didn't need his dad's help. Turns out he was turning 6 on Friday and his father had just taught him to swim that morning - he and I (his name is Florian, so Flo for short) played around until his lips turned blue and I kicked him out of the pool to go sit in the sun and warm up. When I climbed out of the pool shortly after that he raced over to lay with me in the grass and was clearly perplexed by the fact that I wanted to lay in the shade, the sun is far better! His father came over to join us and we chatted about life and football while Flo fell asleep in my lap. The day flew by and soon it was time for Flo and his father to head inside to the hotel for dinner. Flo insisted that I come for dinner, when that was politely shut down his next tactic was to declare that I was beautiful and therefore, "can she be my mum, daddy?" Uhhh... Insert awkward silence here. I managed to explain that I live in Canada and that it was too far away to be his mom, but thank you very much. His father (who was maybe all of 30) was very relieved and grateful because Flo seemed to be distracted by how far away Canada was from here. Off they went and I disappeared upstairs to have a nap and chuckle a bit about my luck. Woke up post nap, made myself dinner and then went downstairs to play cards and pool with a Swede I'd met the night before. Then it was off to bed far later than intended, I had a train to get on the next morning and he had to work. Oh the "real" world, how I don't miss you...

Wednesday - Now, the moral of this travel adventure is that no matter how pretty things seem - it's never a good thing. Climbed on the train and headed off to my first of two connections, it was going to be 11 hours (including 2 stops) to Vienna - but during the day, so perhaps there would be some beautiful countryside to watch. If not? Nap time! Making it to Basel was not a problem, nor was getting to Zurich - sat on two empty trains and virtually had an entire car to myself. Was a little perplexed when the train I rode to Zurich was continuing on to Vienna and I had been booked into one an hour and a half later - but alas, not my place to say anything. Hung out in Zurich and wandered around the little bit of the city before climbing onto my also empty train out to Vienna. At least I had a cell phone pact with Jessi to hang on to - I would be missing the Germany-Turkey game and she promised to SMS me every time someone scored to keep me in the loop. I assumed the country side would be slow after we passed through Switzerland, boy was I wrong. Beautiful mountains all the way to watch - we were trucking along just fine until about Innsbruck when the sky darkened and the weather became very foul very quickly. The woman I was sharing a compartment with disembarked and I was on my own again. The sky was black, the rain streaking down, but there was incredible sheet lightning all the way across the sky - followed by soul shaking thunder. I turned off the lights in my bunk and watched the lightning light up the world for seconds at a time while I waited for news from Jessi. I realized things were going badly when we started stopping randomly at stations that weren't on the itinerary for 15 minute bouts at a time. Occasionally we would stop under a bridge that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, alas my phone picked that moment to run out of money and I could continue to receive messages from Jessi but couldn't update her as to my current situation. We pulled into Vienna H (the first stop on the outskirts of the city, about 45 minutes from the city centre) two and a half hours late. There was only one more stop to the middle of town and I assumed we'd just be sitting here and waiting until things cleared up a little bit; I just wanted to make it to the hostel in one piece and as dry as possible - time was the least of my concerns. Boy was I in for a surprise. After a half hour pause a staff member made his way down the car to inform everyone that the tracks were flooded and this was the new end of the line. What? We were all ushered out onto the platform and watched as the train pulled away into the night. Okay, we'll figure something out... The entire train station is flooded, there are staff members in Euro 2008 gear mopping up water everywhere singing to each other and refusing to speak with anyone in any language other than German. (Side bar: They speak "real" German in Austria and boy was it a relief to be able to understand people again.) Doesn't matter, it was now 1:30am and the staff were not impressed with anything and really didn't want to help anyone out. I wandered random platforms with a crowd of people for another hour trying in vain to find another train that was headed the one stop into town. Turns out there were over 300 people stranded at the station that night - neat... Finally climbed onto an underground train and sat for another 2 hours while the driver waited to hear when the tracks would be clear enough to drive on. As I tend to do, I collected lost Americans and ushered them onto the train with me. They were sick of waiting and climbed off at the 2 hr mark - just as the driver announced the rails were clear and due to hazards this was the last train out of the station tonight. The doors closed and I was whisked away as the American orphans I tried to help were stranded on the platform. I'm not going to lie, there may have been a slight, "HA!" feeling - but I tried to keep it quiet. I was grateful it had stopped raining by the time I reached the train station I was supposed to be at and could walk to the hostel without getting drenched.

Thursday - Here's where the rage starts to come into play. I am tired from traveling, frustrated at getting stranded and am now on the verge of homicide thanks to the guys who cat-called at me as I was coming out of the station. I must have been radiating ire something fierce because after that no one bothered me the rest of the walk to the hostel. Made it, walked in the doors (through the celebrating Germans) and walked into a sauna. Now, sauna as in it was about 45 degrees in the lobby, I'm carrying a 20lb pack (and another 6lbs on my front), am wearing a rain jacket (breatheable my ass) - and buddy behind the desk tells me to wait five minutes he needs to smoke. Are you kidding me?!?! I stood and waited for another 15 minutes while he kept telling people behind me in line he could help them first if their questions were quick - I could feel the sweat pouring down my back and finally snapped when he started to call the fifth person to cut in front of me. When he realized I was supposed to have checked in four, almost five hours earlier he was immediately apologetic - helped me out and sent me up to my room where all I really wanted to do was tumble into bed. Okay, the temperature in the lobby was PLEASANT compared to the heat in my 4 bed closet upstairs. I turned on the fan, opened the window and decided to go downstairs to the bar for a beer to try and cut the rage a little bit before bed. I returned a little while later to find out that two of the girls had turned the fan off again and closed the window. Are you kidding me? It wasn't this hot in Nice, Barcelona or anywhere else I had been for that matter - there was a nice breeze outside and the walls were sweating it was so hot. I opened the window, turned on the fan and tumbled into bed. Sleep was not really an option, but I was awoken at 6am when two girls got up and started getting ready for the day - left their alarm on (radio - neat) and took turns singing in the shower. When girl A came over to close to window I all but flew out of my top bunk and tried to find a polite way of telling her there was no way in hell she was closing the window; over my dead body. Managed to sleep a wee bit and woke up hotter than before. During my brief nap they had closed the window, turned on all the lights, AND were hanging wet laundry on the fan which was pointed at the two of them in the opposite corner of the room towards them as they put their make-up on. The Aussie girl below me gave up and stormed out of the room to go sleep on the floor in the hallway. I climbed out of the bunk and spent 10 minutes arguing the value of letting the air circulate through the ENTIRE room. They were gone a half our later, Aussie and I crawled back into bed to try and sleep - breakfast, cheaper than Interlaken but still not free, was going to be missed.
Climbed out of bed in the middle of the afternoon and went off on a mission to buy a ticket to Heidelberg the following day. The plan was to return to München and party with the theatre kids for a few days, but visiting Jessi in a new city sounded like a better idea. I then headed into the city to check out the Museum of Modern art and eat a real meal in a restaurant. I figured after the last 36 hours - I'd earned it. Sure wished I had more time to spend in Vienna. Was done in by a wicked cough and what felt like a fever - spent a large portion of the remainder of my day at the pharmacy and then climbed back into bed for a nap. Perth (Aussie) woke me up around 7 to ask if I wanted to head into the FanZone with her for the Russia-Spain quarter final match; of course I did! We showered and headed out into what turned out to be the pouring rain. We stayed for the first half of the (boring!) game, soaked to the skin and unimpressed with the random bouts of violence erupting everywhere around us we moved back to the hostel to end the night. I was on another early train the following morning (only an 8 hr trek this time) to Heidelberg. On an up note we had much better roommates this night, they were glad we had the fan on and the window open - I just felt guilty for coughing the entire night away.

I'm le tired of typing and can't afford to be ripped off for the internet anymore. They'll be calling my gate in a few and then I'm on the plane to Toronto. It's been a whirlwind blast that I wouldn't trade for anything, and I can't wait to be home where the temperature is reasonable, I have pets to roll around on the floor with, I don't have to eat bread (or any white flour for that matter) and I can face two solid days of jet lag... I guess I do have to come back to the real world eventually...
I'll pull a Lana and finish the rest from home (or Toronto - it's kind of a long layover there)...

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