Bike Camping in Holland

My beautiful little bike, totally in her element.

I have a new cousin! Meet Thomas

Buzzing in Glittery Fairietale Prague Land

Im in a Starbucks in Prague- loving the free wifi and the English menu. Im super hyped up on caffeine and holding my head trying to figure out tickets to Kenya to teach English at a Primary School. I have very little info about it. Im talking to travel agents, tour guides, and Masaai warriors. I have to make a decision about my ticket by tomorrow and, in a half an hour, Im meeting up with a Czech cousin I havent seen in 10 years in front of a giant statue of a horse, in a city that looks like a toy diorama of Disneyland set up by a 6 year old girl, the buildings painted candy colors, mixed in with 15th century castles with giant statues staring down at the street that seem to say "if you do anything wrong in this city, not only will big brother see, but you will also be damned to hell". Looking at the city skyline, with castles and spires and crazy colors, I half expect to see unicorns flying out of the buildings and little fairies buzzing out of the castle windows like a glittery colorful hallucination. Looking down at the streets, the people look like they were set loose into a play set and are wandering around, all knowing exactly where theyre going and undoubting.
Can you say, overwhelming?

Prague Bus Station

Not too many people here speak English, but it's certainly encouraged.

Arriving in Policka

You remember when I said that Paris and London are really not that much different from big cities in the states, there’s just a change in perspective? Well that’s not the case anymore. Policka, a tiny little town 3 ½ hours outside of Prague, is nothing like what I am familiar with.
This morning I woke up at 5.45 in Paris, wrapped up some food for breakfast, packed up my last few things, and headed out to the bus stop a few blocks away, realizing that together, me and my backpack form an independent self contained ecosystem. I took the bus to a metro line, which took me to a shuttle which dropped me off in front of the Orly airport. Finding my flight was no problem. I bought a yogurt which I ended up eating in line for security, I got on my plane, and passed out before we left the tarmac. I woke up as we were preparing for landing and begged the flight could go on for another half hour at least, knowing that I didn’t have much of a plan of what to do after getting off the plane. Speaking “un peu” of a language, I found, is very different than speaking none. But I managed to follow the signs, exchange my euros for Czech crowns, pick up my bag and get onto a shuttle, which very conveniently dropped me right in front of a metro station. I was reassured looking around me to see that nobody else had any idea what was going on either. I took a metro line, transferred to a different one, and then came up out of the station knowing that I had to get on a bus that would, after 3 ½ hours, end up in Policka. But with busses, taxis, and shuttles everywhere, and zero information booths and apparently no one who spoke English, it was a little harder to find than I expected. After 45 minutes of aimless wandering, ridiculous heat, and a 30 pound weight on my back, a jolly old Czech fellow was obliged to point me in the direction of the bus station (which was of course very nearby and obvious), where I bought a ticket and a sandwich and collapsed into a plastic chair for two hours. When I got onto the bus is when I started to look around and notice how different everything was. The bus, first of all, was packed. It was a 3 ½ hour bus ride, and people were packed into every tiny airplane seat and the aisle was filled with people standing. I was just happy to be able to sit down.
The man next to me was going through some serious stress. I don’t know what the deal was but it looked like he was going to blow a gasket and let loose his problems with the world onto the whole bus, starting with me. I would reach down to get a book from my bag and he would heave a massive sigh and look at me like “This is exactly the kind of bullshit Im so sick of with you people”. Across the isle was a lady who seemed to store all of her body fat in her forearms and fingers. Also she had the most incredible, bleached she-man mullet Ive ever seen. Next to her was a tall, skinny teenage boy with big hair who, every time I glanced over, could be seen with a new food item in his hand. He went through a foot long sandwiches, a liter of some in descript green soda, a bag of orange gummy things, and a power bar in about half an hour.
Something about the women here are really different. From what I’ve seen, kids are viewed as pests that must be dealt with in the swiftest way possible, young women are gorgeous until they hit maybe their thirties, at which point they become incredibly wrinkled and aged looking. Realizing this, they try desperately to look young by cutting their hair in ways that are incomprehensible to western eyes, bleaching it blond, and then throwing in a smudge of bright purple or red here and there. My favorite hairstyle so far was sported by a 50 something year old woman and looked like her hair had gone entirely white and the red smear was positioned so it looked like she had been laying with her head resting in a pool of blood. I am not someone who judges people based on “hairstyles” but this has got to say something about the culture. What it does say, I havent figured out yet. For the entire several hour bus ride, very few people actually relaxed, read a book, listened to music, or gazed out of the window like I would expect to see on a long car ride through beautiful lush countryside. Instead, everyone craned their heads to see up the aisle or in between the seats, watching the road in front of them, like it was their teenage son learning to drive and they all had to actively participate to ensure our safe and expedient arrival at our destination. I can’t blame them too much though. The driver clearly did not know how to drive a manual but was faced with the task anyway. He noticeable improved as the drive went on.
So this went on for a few hours. I read some David Sedaris, listened to some music, and dozed off a few times. Then we got to Policka. I got off the train, and realized I had no idea where I was, no grasp on the local language, and all of my knowledge of my accommodations rested with my friend Martin, who was somewhere in the town but we hadn’t actually talked about a way to meet up. So I choked down a slowly rising lump in my throat, and finding that nobody spoke English or expressed the least desire to help me, I began to wander. Eventually I wandered into the middle of town where the skateboard race Martin is competing in was taking place but it looked like everything was winding down and, to my dismay, he was not one of the lingering few. With no plan in my mind, a pounding headache, and very little cognitive activity, I continued my wandering until, peering under the dimly lit terrace of a restaurant, I made out a gangly teenager and some curly blond hair, and I prayed it was Martin. He stood up and walked over to me, looking as relieved as I was. He showed me the room, I ditched my bag, grabbed my wallet and went back to dinner with him and his Czech skateboarding buddies, realizing I had seen maybe 3 other women since I got off the bus.
Dinner was delicious, the company was great, and the skateboarding scene is a lot like the skiing scene so I love it and can understand their dude talk. And my favorite part is that nobody here seems to be worried about anything or have “real” lives. They just talk about skateboarding, beer, and how much to tip the cute waitress. I think this place is going to work for me

A Brief Comparison of Power Bars

Before leaving to Europe, I bought a bunch of food bars that I could eat on a train or just on a day when I didn’t want to dish out money for lunch. And I really didn’t need to do that. First off, one of my main priorities here is food. I’d rather cruise around town looking for cool cafes and cute little patisseries than tour the inside of the Notre Dame, which is exactly what Im doing now. So when would I ever choose to eat a cliff bar instead of sitting down with a coffee and a warm broccoli and smoked salmon quiche and a good book? Never. But while I’ve got these bars, I may as well lay out a comparison.

So far, Cliff bars are my favorite. Some people think they taste like turds, but really they don’t. They only look like turds. There are actually many very good flavors. The best flavors so far are Peanut Toffee Buzz (that one takes care of the need for both the quiche, AND the coffee) and I think there was a White Chocolate Macadamia Nut (or some combination like that) and that was pretty good too. I also have Mojo bars that are good. Those look a little less like flattened bear poop and don’t have that ambiguous musty power bar taste. They’re more of a fruit and nut concoction but can take on the consistency of peanut brittle, which makes eating them a bit of a struggle. Especially when trying to be subtle about eating while walking through a hushed museum. Also they’re a little bit too sweet for my taste. And the last kind of bar I brought are Odwalla bars. Odwalla makes great smoothies but the bars are not so good. They don’t really taste like anything and are just not that good.
Bottom line, Im focusing on the patisseries and boulangeries. There are these incredible sandwiches, Im really not sure how they make them so good, that are called “jambon buerre” and they’re just exactly that. A small baguette cut in half with butter and ham. And that’s all. No American style, “We have 45 toppings, choose your favorite 15”. No, this is just bread, butter and ham (or salami) and it’s incredible. The bread here really truly is good.

Playing Games

While I was in Kenya, I thought, this is the way people should be living. Fuck all the little games we play and all the roundabout ways in which people get things done and all the distractions people put in front of themselves everyday to distract from whats real and whats happening now. It always freaks me out how “out of touch” we are living in big cities in little boxes, busying ourselves on weekends by buying stuff and watching movies about other peoples lives so we can forget about our own for a little bit. And you know what really freaks me out? The question “What do you do?” actually meaning “How do you make money?”, like that’s the thing that’s come to define our lives. But in Kenya, so much of it actually, was the same. In simpler terms of course but still, the same. (We were in a region called the Maasai Mara and got to see the beginning of the wildebeest migration). One source of major frustration for me is the games that people play with each other, constantly trying to outdo and impress each other. And in dating, all the little bullshit games people play. And it was the same damn thing with the wildebeest! We stopped in the middle of a herd and watched how they all interacted. They were all mating and the males would claim a territory and defend it to no end, charging and butting heads with any male who came into their little circle, hoping a female would be interested in the property they’ve invested in and mate with them. And there’s this species of birds where, after finding a female, the male will spend weeks building a nest for her. Then she’ll go check it out and if it doesn’t meet up to her expectations, she’ll leave and he’ll build another one. Sometimes, they’ll spend months building nest after nest, each one bigger and more plush than the last one until finally, the lady bird approves, moves in and starts pumping out the eggs. And my favorite was watching the baboons. They were the most manipulative little guys ever! First off, there are classes that are strictly followed. Usually, elders are respected in the group but a younger monkey of a higher class with get priority over an elder of a lower class. Babies are really valued in their society because a mother with a baby will get priority over a group in terms of places to sleep and food and treatment by the other members of the pack. So the baboons will try to steal babies from other mothers so they will get that priority. And males will steal babies to prove to the females that they can take care of it and are responsible and would be a good mate. Its like how women will be attracted to a single guy with a puppy because puppies are a lot of work so he obviously must not be afraid of commitment and responsibility.
Its reassuring to see that all these little games, distractions, society filled with classes and expectations, its not just us.

A Change of Perspective

On the way to Kenya, me, mom, Ted and the whole fam-damily met up in London for two days. We toured and took pictures and marveled and it was great fun. When you go to a new place, traveling to a different country or even just discovering a new road you’ve never gone down on a walk, there’s an air of mystery about it that makes it a little magical. And that’s the deal with traveling. I think that’s why so many people love to travel. There’s a lot of trouble involved. Here I am, in Paris, everything is in a different language. I can communicate fine but it takes a lot of energy to just go into the grocery store and not see anything youre used to, to ask for directions, getting lost and navigating around a new city, a new culture. And even still, walking around, although a lot is different, a lot is the same too. People go out to eat, people walk to the grocery store, and go to work and come home, and see movies. People live just like I live at home. But here, its magical! And its all so great and envious and beautiful. And one part of that is the unarguable fact that Paris is straight up beautiful. But what about London? It has great fish and chips and cheap Indian food, and I love the constant rain and the funny little phone booths are pretty cool I guess, but really it’s a huge, bustling metropolitan where no one talks to each other and everyone drives like they want to kill everyone else on the road and then themselves. And its only magical for me because Im on vacation and practicing Hedonism and, it turns out, Im really not that bad at it. Im waking up without an alarm and taking the time to stop at the little markets on the side of the street and walk through the parks. And turns out, when I do that in Boulder or LA, its really quite similar. I remember in London, stopping on a bridge to watch the sun set and reflect across the water and thinking, “Wow what a beautiful city” and then immediately afterwards I thought, “That was a stupid thing to say”. In Boulder, the morning after a snowstorm, there’s this incredible silence over the whole city and the sun warms it all up and makes the snow crispy and sparkling and it’s the prettiest damn thing in the world. And in Santa Monica, if you walk down to the beach on a Thursday night, there’s the best impromptu live music on the sand next to the pier and thousands of people picnicking, and the sun sets over the water and it’s always spectacular and it smells all salty and fresh. What’s better than that? The Parisians here, with their patisseries and delicious coffee and perfect baguette crust, They would be jealous.
I do have a point here but I dont know how to say it without it sounding like the moral after an Aesop's fable. So I just hope that it came through. My point is NOT "dont travel" because so far, its been one of the more valuable things Ive done in my life.