A final thought.

This will be my last post from Europe. After i wrote last, I did end up having some chocolate and it was not enough to change my thoughts on Brussels. I would be happy if i never visited that place again. It was the most dirty, boring, male-filled city i have been in. They did have some good brews though and the downtown area was nice. I think it was just the part of town we stayed in. We went to London yesterday and that was nice. We hit up Camden town, did some shopping, and then went to TATE. Last night we went and saw Amber sing in The Black Peter Group! It was her roommates birthday and we went to the party in a tiny little pub in Soho with all her fashion friends. Today Cait and I ventured on our own back up to manchester to fly home in the morning. Her cousin met us down here and now we are going to find a pub to watch england play in the world cup. So that is that. Amazing trip, amazing places. See you in the states.

Amsterdam and Brussels

ok so i realized something about the blogs i have been writing....pretty boring...even for me. so this one is going to be different. instead of telling you how many hours i slept and when i ate some food, i will try and sum up the good parts and only tell a brief story or two. any details that you absolutely ,ust hear that i am leaving out, you gotta ask another time. here is what happened since prague: so,e people got 500 crown citations for having the wrong bus pass, got on a train that we nearly missed that had no beds left. so i slept on the ground between the seats, was woken up by german train people multiple times, woke up in frankfurt, then took a train to amsterdam. the whole time i was looking forward to a nice hotel as a reward from my hellish night prior: only to arrive in a city where virtually every hotel was booked. we found a nice little place for the girls and us dudes ended up paying 60 bucks each for the dirtiest most disgusting apartment type thing. i had to sleep in a gross bed. some reward. Amsterdam ended up being great though. the food and the people were amazing and i now wish we had canals in our city. we left this ,morning and came to brussels, belgium which isnt all that impressive, but i havent tried the chocolate yet so more on that later. We take a chunnel to London tomorrow morning. now i am going to eat. by the way this keyboard has the buttons all rearranged so this post has taken far too long. see ya

Dynamics and Nomburrs

Prague, why are you so crazy. This town is amazing. I think that this is the part where I write how much my mind has changed about things. I just woke up from my third and final night in this city and i feel like i am going to miss it. So much happened to fit in one story but i'll get the highlights. First the City is so awesome. The first night we just wandered around after checking into our amazing pension with Eva, my new czech mother. That first day was also the first time we got to experience the patio times (ask me some other time). That night we just went to a pub and headed home. The next day we all kind of woke up late and me, cait, jordan, ryan, and brian went and saw the dancing house and had market juice (beer). Look it up on the internet if you want. It's an amazing piece of architecture. Then we came back, met back up with Alethia and Cat, had a little more patio time, showered up, and went to this old square that was amazingly beautiful at night. We sat in a neat little place in the square that had a dixie land jazz band playing and brian and I split a 35 dollar glass of whisky. Worth it for one time. The girls headed home in a cab and us boys drank some market juice on some benches in the center of town. I bought a bum named George some food and he praised the name of New Jersey after smashing his wine glass of whiskey. Us boys got home at like 4 in the morning. Yesterday we awoke again to head back to that old square and have lunch and shop. By the way, the whole time Cait and I have been eating like royalty. After some more patio time at the pension, we went out and back to the square again. Cat and Alethia headed back around 1 and the rest of us went to the bridge to drink market juices and bid farewell to the town. We asked a guy to take a picture and we ended up hanging out with him until early in the morning. His friend, Utice, was from Idaho, and Charles was from prague. Long story short they were amazing people and Charles was the perfect example of everything good in this City. He made the choice so easy between sleep, or staying up way to late so he could buy us all drinks to celebrate graduating and have good conversation. That was a night to remember, as was this city. From here we take a night train to Amsterdam. More adventures to come later. Also i feel like I should detail that being here in this city, with this group, and my lady, has helped shape my views and understanding about so much. Mostly interaction, group dynamics, my relationship, my role as a man, and so much more. Also the dixieland jazz band sang when the saints go marching in and the singer didn't really have an accent except for the word "number" which sounded like "nomburrs" and was hilarious.

Prosím

Right now I am sitting in a little room in Prague (aka Praha) typing on a keyboard. I might be in heaven. Yesterday morning we left Interlaken and took a train into Zurich. From there we were planning on heading up to Germany but we ended up finding an overnight train that went direct to Prague. We booked ourselves in and the were left with 9 hours to kill in Zurich. Luckily there were lockers for us to stash our packs for the day. I was bummed at first because I was really looking forward to hanging out in Munich but that feeling was quickly swept aside as we explored Zurich. It ended up being one of the most awesome cities I have visited yet. We walked around and looked at all the cool old buildings, sat in a mini-sports arena and watched the U.S. soccer team lose to the Czech team in the world cup, ate bratwurst and drank a beer on the side of the street, and listened to the churches ring their bells while standing on a bridge over a river. I also got some of the best pictures yet in that city! After the long day, 10 p.m. finally rolled around and we got on our train. We were a little confused because our train said Praha/Budapest, which are two cities that are like hundreds of miles apart. Turned out that our cars split up in the middle of the night though so we were good to go. I stayed up for so long just looking out the window of the train and taking in all the dark scenery. It was so beautiful. Then we drank some wine and went to bed and woke up here in Prague. I'll write more in a few days after I have had some adventures here. By the way Brian and I figured out we have been to like 12 different countries together. He is a good travel buddy.

p.s.

by the way. today is mine and Caits 9 month anniversary. we rented mountain bikes and rode around the lakes and looked at the alps. words cant describe it. ill try with amazing. thats a good start. google image a picture of interlaken switzerland and you will get the idea.

Those Dang French Trees

So I am now in Interlaken, Switzerland. I wanted to put an exclamation point after that sentence but i don`t know where that key is on this crazy key board. It was kind of a rough crazy journey to get here. We left two days ago out of Spain on an overnight train to Geneva. About four hours into the ride our train sort of just came to an abrupt halt somewhere in the middle of France. We found out that apparently our train had hit a tree that had fallen on to the train tracks and messed the engine up. They said the wait would be unlimited because they had no idea when they could find a replacement engine to tow us. We were up for a good three hours without going anywhere. Around 1 in the morning we all just fell asleep. The good part is that we woke up in Geneva. None of us really knew when we got going we just know that our train was originally scheduled to arrive at 8 a.m. and we arrived after 12. Oh well. At least we had beds. We took a beautiful train through switzerland to get here to interlaken, which is a series of lakes surrounded by the swiss alps. It is an amazingly beautiful small little town. The only bad part is that it is a hot spot for a lot of American backpackers so a lot of the nightlife is similar to MTV springbreak, which is kind of lame. We found a nice little swiss pub last night though that was not too bad. We should have also reserved a hostile earlier too because the only thing we found was this tent village for like 20 dollars a night. It is definitely not the most accomodating situation but hey, i am in the swiss alps. Can,t be that bad. We stay here one more night then it is off to Prague to live like kings. We are all looking forward to that. I will write more when i get there but until then, Goodbyzenhausen

The Rain in Spain...

So we left the U.K. a few days ago and made a quick stop over in France before arriving in San Sebastian Spain! I think this might be one of the best places on Earth. It´s a spanish beach town with everything good you can think of! We have just been walking around during the day and taking in all the beautiful scenery, beaches, and old spanish architecture. At night we found some little hole in the wall clubs that are amazing. A guy from Nevada named Chris led us to the place, which is called Burunda, and the bartender Ramon might be the jolliest Spaniard I have ever met. We went to the beach yesterday (topless women by the way) and I got in the water to do a little surfing. Waves weren´t too good but hey...I still surfed in SPAIN! It´s nice to be able to understand the language as well! The people are so beautiful and so kind and we also met a bunch of travelers from all over the U.S. We are heading out either today or tomorrow, depending on what kind of flight or train ride we can find. Eventually we will end up in Prague but we are figuring out the next few days as we go. Kinda crazy but kinda fun. My lady is amazing and we are having such a good time. I´ll post more in a few days!

Items to remember: Calimocho: Coke mixed with mine makes the most refreshing drink ever. Burgers with a fried Egg on top. Brian was the M.V.P. the first night, Alethia was the second night. Logan and Elisha know Melody. I got a bloody nose surfing and I got scared of Sharks!

Manchester United!

Well I am here finally. Cait and I flew all by ourselves for over twelve hours only to arrive in Manchester, England! We got here at like 8a.m. which was midnight in san jose. That means we have been up for like 24 hours or so traveling! Kinda crazy but we took a phat nap. When we got in we took a train into town and we were walking to the hostel to meet up with Brian and Jordan and Ryan(Jordan's brother). We ended up running into them on the street while they were on their way to eat breakfast. We all ran back to the hostel and dropped our bags off and then went with them to breakfast. We had a proper english breakfast with the beans and bangers! After that we walked around and looked at the city and found a free museum which was so awesome. Around noon cait and I started to crash so we went back to the hostel and slept for two hours. It was hard to wake up but i eventually did! Then we went out again, exploring and what not. We found this awesome outdoor beer garden and spent like an hour and a half there just drinking and eating. Good conversation. We planned the next few days as well which should line up to be pretty stinkin awesome. Then we just looked around some more and found some shopping area. We hung out for a while more and then came back to the hostel. Jordan Ryan and Brian all went to see Ed Harcourt tonight but Cait and I stayed back because we are still adjusting and stuff. They won't be back til like midnight and we all have to be up at 4 a.m. to catch a flight to SPAIN! Cait and i just grabbed some dinner and now we are going to head to bed (it's like 9 p.m.) We are gonna catch up on some sleep and be the wake up crew tomorrow. So that's my first day. I'm safe...took some photos...loving life.