Traveling through West Europe

Subject: first letter about European work travel kemping email distribution list
Date sent: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 23:08:58 +0200

Hey dudes,

so I just got on the bus going to Amsterdaam. Spent two weeks with my cousin in London. First week was a bit stressed out with work and stayed in trying to get in my ten pages a day. Would wake up at 7 in the morning when the kiddies would be waking up. Brushed my teeth and took a shit, ate breakfast with the kids, said goodbye as they went to school, went back into my room to watch TV while working for about two hours.

Getting ready to leave.

In Simona's "backyard".

Then I would get tired and sleep for about two hours, wake up, turn on the TV, make myself lunch, work until kids came home at about 5:15. Turn off the computer and TV so they don't ask me to play the "shooting game" (Quake), play with them out in the garden until dinner, eat dinner, back to work and watching TV (occasionally hang out with cousin). Second week started getting comfortable with new working environment, less stress about work.

Monday afternoon Tina with her husband and new baby came over for lunch (met my cousin), after which I went to the super big carnival in NottingHill.

Wednesday night hung out with Tina and gang and had dinner and booze paid for. Me and Tina had a bunch of fudge and she was glad to finally party after four months after her pregnancy. Slept over. Thursday night Simona, my cousin, an eye doctor, was invited with her peers to a fancy Thai restaurant by a salesman trying to "sell" them this new gunk you drop into your eyes to help against dry eyes. Booze and food were subsidised by salesman, my cousin paid for the rest for me (we made an agreement beforehand that I would cough up the cash to take a bus to her and then to Amsterdaam under the condition that she would supply all my food.

Now I'm on the bus with a bunch of people who smoke pot, I got I guess a gram left of my stuff (did a survey and was mentioned to me not to worry about bringing some with me), got happily fudged before getting on and now writing this letter. Tomorrow morning at 9:30 I roll into Amsterdam, Misa would have arrived 15 minutes before me and her friend drove up from his rinky dinky village in the Dutch country side (where we will be staying for a week), and I am sure we will be well taken care of by him. Misa is also bringin' some shit with her from Czech. Probably spend the day in Amsterdam going from cafe to cafe and trying to fuck our heads up as much as possible. We might or probably will stay overnight and then go to his village on Sunday. Some chick gave us a contact to some dudes in Amsterdam who will apparently love us for knowing her. Think it will all be interesting and we might be well taken care of the whole trip through. Gonna make a website of all the pictures we'll take with little stories etc. Will probably notify all of you when it's done.

Because several people have expressed interest in learning about the progress of my/our travels, am offering if you want to be added to an all, spank bankin' NEW email distribution list. If you want to be added to this distribution list, respond YES to this letter. Don't expect any major degree of censorship.

later
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Subject: second letter
Date sent: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 11:48:54 +0200

Hey dudes,

So, after checking and sending my email for the last time in London on Friday afternoon, went to my auntie's place for dinner, smoked some fudge, got on the bus and wrote my first letter while on the bus on the way to Amsterdam.

Well, needless to say, got a bit paranoid. You know, with my little bit of fudge on me and all. So I hid in in the seat of the dude in front of me. I'm so evil! More dudes in the back row got pulled out, people were pulling bags out of their pockets, but everything eventually settled down and only the one really bad dude got thrown off.

The day we were finally ready to split, I thought I'd try to impress everyone with my computer geek skills and tried to hook up my computer to the network at the camp bar. Was installing all sorts of TCP shit, figured out the mask and IP addresses, and almost had the thing going but time was running short so had to bail out and make our move. Took a train to some town where Baas was building a fence (that's his job), so they picked us up and drove us back to his place. Lot's of fudge in the car. Made it over to his place in some rinky dinky village, started unpacking my shit and was ready to impress everyone with my roaming internet system. Punched in Holland and the nearest village, was ready to dial up and connect when... Well, we're not in America you know where every street corner has a McDonalds and everything is standardised. So it was off the next day, a 45 minute jog to the centre of this village, which is essentially broken up into about three parts stretched out like a big long noodle along the river and train tracks. Came back home and still nothing. Tried something again Tuesday and still nothing. Wednesday me an Misa set out of a long hour walk to make a serious attempt. Went to a couple of stores to see if we could find an even more special adapter. No one seemed to pick up on our hint requests that we would like to borrow their phone line to test in case Baas's line was screwed. Were eventually diverted to a computer store where we hogged up two hours of a technician's time to determine the following: there is nothing wrong with my modem; nothing seems to be wrong with my laptop; but the laptop does not seem to be communicating with the modem. Hmm, didn't realise this. Thought it was a phone line problem. So I spent some time trying to resolve it myself and the final decision was that I was gonna phone the guy tomorrow about coming by for the even better techhead to take a look at it. The suggestion was to hook up some harddrive to my laptop, install Dutch Windows on it and see if it is a problem with my modem port or if something screwed up with my Windows. On his suggestion, I started uninstalling all sorts of programs which might be "conflicting" in my system. Even disabled the com port and reinstalled it again, as with all my modem drivers. Still nothing helped. On the way back, occurred to me that I might have to buy an internal modem for my laptop as a quick solution and get the rest resolved back in Prague. Called my Czech dude in Prague and started comparing prices. He agreed to send me an internal modem by FedEx and charge it to my credit card. Seems the stores around here were significantly more expensive. But our planned deadline to leave this village was rapidly approaching and I still hadn't managed to send out the round of emails to the dudes we were supposed to be visiting. Before the internal modem idea, was contemplating going back to Prague to resolve all this. Or maybe to Munich, which is on the way back to Prague, sort of, where we can stay at a friend's place and try to resolve this situation. Anyway, so me and Misa are walking back in sombre contemplation. What will happen with out trip? Will we have to go back to Prague for a while? I couldn't even send the email out to our next destinations to plan something and we didn't have telephone numbers to these people. So, rather than getting stressed and depressed, decided we would go buy a bunch of beer, some good cheesy nacho chips and play nintendo for another afternoon. When things go shitty, remember, that is the time to treat yourself. I was getting a bit paranoid, but my life experiences have taught me never to lose faith in the great creator. We are, afterall, so much more important than the bumblebees, which are given an ample amount of flowers. So I tried to follow one of the bible commands: don't worry about tomorrow dude. Baas came back from work. While at some store, he happened to ask about this or that and was referred to some computer dude in the village.

Afterall, there are no other variables: I didn't hit my laptop, I take care of my shit, it is not because of the phone line, hooking up another modem in the shop showed that it was not the modem... but where could the problem be? Anyway, the new expert ended up solving the problem in about two minutes flat. But we stayed there for about two hours talking and shit. He offered me some Dutch tobacco and I told him I only smoke tobacco when it is mixed with something else. He asked me to repeat myself, after which he said, "Like this" and stuck an open film canister under my nose. Yaaah, that's the ticket... Showed me a lot of interesting stuff, offered to give him some cash, but learned he charges 105 USD an hour, double that at this late express hour. But he said, don't worry my poor little Czech hitchhiking person, I like you Canadian disposition and we will take care of you. No charge. Exchanged email addresses and finally made it back to Baas's place after midnight. The girlies stayed behind and were all worried about what problems us "men" could have been resolving. SO, I am finally back on line and the trip continues. YEEEHA!!! The computer dude's wife even offered to drive us down to Belgium on Saturday. She is visiting her sister and says we can stay there as long as we want. But I think Misa might want to hang out here a few days longer. Baas is her friend. His network of village friends are also apparently even preparing a party for us novelty Czech travellers. I'm glad the bumblebees are taken care of. later

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Subject: letter no. 3
Date sent: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 01:31:01 +0200

Hey dudes,

well, seems like a good time to write letter number 3.

So, where did I leave off? Guess it was just after I finally got reconnected to the internet again in bum-fuck village town Holland. Well, after three days of not being able to hook up, seems that customers started phoning me again concerning work the moment I was able to connect again. Funny how things seem to work out that way.

So we stayed at Misa's friend's place for a week. But I think he sort of had the hots for her or what and, after a week, gave us a little speech why he wanted to throw us out on the streets the next day. All of his reasons seemed pretty pathetic and the most resounding of which was that we loved cooking with garlic and that it made his food taste icky. I mean, anyone out there NOT eat garlic? Perhaps you can tell me: is it possible that if, after we wash our plates manually and then put them into the dishwasher that, if you put food on them, garlic remains hidden in the porcelain molecules and someone particularly sensitive to garlic finds his dinner distasteful with garlic? Whatever. So on the road, homeless again, off to our next destination.

They would get together for beers in the Hash House. One guy brought up the idea one day that they should start some routine where they would go for a jog and then get together for a beer afterwards. Anyway, this idea seems to have caught on and now this volunteer organisation has spread all over the world. There seems to be at least one hash group in every city in the world with half a million or more inhabitants.

There's even a hash group in Antartica. Basically, anywhere where you have some people who aspire to "try" and stay in shape but who also love beer, etc. etc. Then they have these things called interhashes, where one city's hash wants to host a hash inviting hashers from other cities to come visit their hash event. Two years ago, there was a world hash held in Malaysia and apparently 60,000 hashers from all over the world were running the streets of Malaysia, dropping in to this and that pub to swig down a beer along the way. The average Prague hash has about 85 visiting hashers, mostly from around Europe but easily from as far away as Vancouver. Anyway, it is customary for hosting hashers to offer their place to crash for visiting hashers. I hosted hashers from Finland and different parts of Europe without even knowing them beforehand. So, when we were planning our trip through Europe, it occurred to me that I could approach various hashes around Europe (I referred to a website of all of the world's hashes for this) asking them if anyone would be willing to let us crash at their place for a while. I sent them a picture of us (directly above) and said we needed a place to crash (or a place to set up our tent), an electrical socket to plug my computer into and a telephone line to make the occasional local call so that I could check my email (I have an internet roaming account in more than 50 countries). Well, the response was good and 3 people we didn't even know said we could crash at their place. So now we're in Brussels visiting some hash fanatics. They seemed pretty pleased because there's a big interhash coming up in Prague next May and they're glad to know they have a place to crash as well.

Drinking down-downs with the Hashers in Brussels.

Unfortunately, they too are a bit in bumf*ck nowhere, so I spent the week working, we'd go for the occasional walk, and Misa would try to venture outside the house to "soak in the culture".
Misa on one of her trip to the centre.
The average people we visit must think we're sometimes pathetic. I mean, here we are, visiting some other country, and all we do is loaf around the house all day watching movies, playing Nintendo, sleeping a lot...

The whole time we were staying there, the words Shape Hash House Harriers kept coming up. Didn't really know what they were talking about. But, one day, while taking a shit, I learned from a poster that SHAPE stands for Strategic Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Yes, Joyce worked for Nato and her work, about four klicks away, was the political headquarters of apparently the largest military organisation in the world. Added to that, we were rather close to the city's airport, so I started taking greater notice to the sounds of jets flying overhead. But, alas, our stay came to a close.

I mean, we've never been to these places and we don't know where the good and shitty places are for hitchiking.

We were planning on taking a day trip in Luxembourg but, because it was already late enough in the day, we thought we might as well stay overnight.

Found some hidden spot below a railroad bridge, set up our camp (what, you think WE are going to pay for some Youth Hostel or something?), and went to town to party up a storm. Had a meal at McDonald's, a joint in the central square and three beers each in a cool, happenin' pub. We're on Czech budget, our beer consumption has been quite low the past two weeks and the three beers seemed to do the trick nicely. Got up the next morning, scanned the situation and decided to lug our bags up the slope through the forest to the bigger grocery store. After all, looked like this store was on some main road leading out of town (all we had was the small central map they were giving away at the Youth Hostel).

Under a railbridge in Luxembourg.

The trip up the hill was a killer and heard a lot of complaining from Misa. But made it we did and now we were in search of this "grocery store" the guy at the reception at the Youth Hostel drew on our map. Anyway, turns out that the grocery store was a hypermart and that it was a good hour's walk from where he drew his little square. We gave up looking for the "grocery store" and decided we would try hitchhiking to our next destination.

Had a wonderful snooze after quite a tiring day and finally woke up and made a serious attempt to find this grocery store. Misa stayed behind to watch the property and this is when I found out that it was a good hour's walk. Got there to find out it was already closed. There I was, standing before isle after isle after isle of food. That day we only had three pieced of bread each, smeared over with boringish mustard and globbed over with graded cheese from a bag which we didn't managed to use for spaghetti yet, nothing to drink all day and this pot of gold is CLOSED! So, had a quick beer at a local pub and headed out for the long trek back. Decided to hide the laptop in a bush again, leave the tent behind and walk back downtown for yet another McDonald's meal (barf), a couple of beers, make it an early night and try our luck early in the morning. This time though we will take a city bus to the on ramp and start earlier (we are also quite near to the bus stop). So, here I am, lying on my back in the tent, my laptop propped on my bent thighs (quite comfortable actually), our tent set up in a forest just next to the main road where no one was willing to pick us up, little drops falling on our tent from the trees above, and writing some letters before I snooze off to sleep. Tomorrow we can either crash overnight in Stuttgart with some friends of Misa's or make it all the way to Munich to stay with some friends of mine while visiting my crazy uncle, practically the only artist in my entire family. Then we plan to zip through Austria on our way to Slovakia, where we will stay with Misa's grandparents for a week. Already wrote to some friends I have in Austria, so we shall see what develops there. So far, the trip has not been the most exciting, but it is nice to be living my dream of working while travelling and to do it on a budget as if I was living in Prague (budget excluding rental expenses of course). Seems we have been managing quite easily. Makes me think that I must spend a serious penny on beer indeed when living in Prague. But I also realise that the serious limiting factor to our trip is not having a van to live out of. If I wasn't paying rent in Prague and using the expense instead to pay off some loan for a van, had a good internet connection through a mobile or mobile satellite, and took showers for free in Youth hostels or at friends' or hashers' places along the way while Misa would be driving and I working, watching the world roll by below me, I think the trip could be a lot more interesting. But, shit, shouldn't complain, should I? On On!

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Subject: letter no. 4
Date sent: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 10:25:47 +0200

Well, we're into our fourth week and hence we have letter no. 4.

So, where did we last leave off last?

We climbed up the hill, exhausted ourselves from our previous bender the night before, and decided we didn't have enough energy to stand there by the road waiting for someone to pick us up, so we bailed out, set up the tent in the forest next to us and spent one more party evening in Luxembourg. The next morning we got up fairly early and made our way to the bus stop. But, when the bus finally arrived, contrary to what we were told by the receptionist at the youth hostel, the bus driver said there wasn't really any advantage of taking the bus to the highway, that we essentially already were by the highway. Something like that. So we decided we would trust the bus driver instead. After all, a large part of the previous day's problem was due to the instruction the same receptionist gave us concerning the location of the "grocery store". So we walked back to the place we tried hitchhiking the day before and waited there, without success, for an hour. After that, we thought we would try the bus again.

I guess the biggest problem was that the highways were mighty noodly in this part of Germany, onramp after onramp after onramp, each highway going different directions, and it made it difficult to find a good place to stand.

A different map, the map we started with, of the same section as above. Looked much more "innocent" than the closeup. Note also the minute distance we travelled for the whole day compared to our desired destination: Munich.

It was getting a bit depressing and Misa said it seems like prayer time (although she doesn't really believe). It was early in the evening and I couldn't sleep so I took my only book out, which was my bible. She mentioned the word prayer a few more times out of desperation and the subject somehow got onto consultation. I told her my technique of consulting with God which was by opening to a random passage in the bible. The first random section I opened to, just for fun, spoke of massive calamities and a horrible situation. Well, I guess that might have reflected the situation we were in. I generally use it to ask God to help me make a decision, but she wanted to use it to ask God if we will make it Munich the next day. Looking at the map before hand, I came to realise that we only managed to make 50 km that day. Considering from when we were first picked up by that lady in Luxembourg (I looked at my watch when we finally got to the highway and it was the dreaded 13:13, the same time we started hitchhiking by our failure spot the day before), that meant 50 km in five hours, a whopping 10 km an hour. Furthermore, Luxembourg to Saarbrucken looked like only one tenth the way to Munich. Added to that, the noodleness of the highways seemed to only get worse from this point forward, so we weren't very hopeful. Nevertheless, Misa's consultation yielded a good result, so we went to sleep with some comfort that we would get up early the next morning and somehow make it to Munich by the end of the next day. Got up at the crack of dawn, pulled down the camp and made our way back to our previous day's spot. But by now the traffic was very heavy and we couldn't even cross the highway, so we made our way back to the roundabout and took the long way around. When we got up in the morning, I made the suggestion that we try hitchhiking up to a certain time, let's say noon, and then consider taking the train the rest of the way. But, during the 10 minutes we were struggling our way with all our shit along the skinny stretch by the roundabout, we noticed at least 5 cop cars zipping buy. Didn't want to risk a fine and eventually decided we'd just bag it and take a train all the way to Munich. After all, it was already Monday and I technically lose more money every day by not working than the money I would have saved by not taking the train. So on to Munich it was. Took the snail and cheaper train and rolled into Munich by 8:30 in the evening. My friend picked us up from the train station (I SMSed him to be prepared for two, mighty stinky Czechs) and took the tram to his place, about a 10 minute bicycle ride to the centre and what seemed like a lap of luxury. My friend's wife is very clean and it was quite a nice change from our previous three days. But, as seems to be the case almost everywhere we go, a fish truly does seem to smell after three days and it is now high time to move on to our next destination. We are clean and feel we manage to be very respectful of our hosts' wishes and way of life, but Misa's burps and my farts were just too much for this finicky person and it is time to move on. During our stay, saw my famous artist uncle several times and he showed us some of his sculptures around town.

Misa getting free beer, again.

Yesterday we went to the Oktoberfest and it was nice to get drunk again (I had to pull Misa around by the hand because her tolerance was exceptionally low - she could barely stand up). Now I write this the next day while waiting for Misa to recover. Our hosts are sleeping in the next room and probably looking forward to settling back to their normal lives. I can't hook up to the internet right now because Paul had to do something yesterday and took his T1 constant online connection to the living room, so I can't check out the train schedule. But I already suggested to Misa several times and we will still have to make a final decision. It's Sunday and I'm thinking, hmmm, maybe we should try hitchhiking...

	Partying with Ivo's statues.
	Ivo himself in one of his statues.

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Subject: last letter
Date sent: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 11:32:50 +0200