another longass post detailing a few days....

so with the frequency that im updating this thing, i wouldnt

believe that anyone is still bothering to read it.

fortunately, the trip hasnt ended in anyones arrest or death.

unfortunately, weve tried our damnest. heres what weve been up

to...

So! When i last posted we were on our way to munich. we showed

up somewhat surprised but very happy to see a healthy, wealthy

and wise david. why did we get there at different times?

in a nutshell... david likes soccer. so much in fact, that he

refuses to leave the damn restaurant where were watching the

game (i keed, i was doing the same) in time to get to the

train station to catch our overnight train. no big deal, but

our luggage was in luggage storage. we'd never used luggage

storage before... and while we knew it was getting more

expensive by the hour, we hadnt realized that it closed. so

we got there maybe half an hour late. thankfully, people will

still there. of course theyd get us our stuff, take our

money, and send us on our way, right?

wrong. this fatass diego maradonna looking prick and his

compadre stood inside and watched us yelling, begging, and

putting up bribe money for an hour with little more than an

annoyed smirk. soon it came to be decision time. davids

ticket was nonrefundable, so we had to send him on the train

with the clothes on his back. jim and i would find a way to

munich in the morning... problem was, that until then we had

nowhere to spend the night. our plan was to stay awake all

night somehow since we had no luggage to bother us or hotel

for the night. the later it got, the dumber that idea

sounded. fortunately we managed to slip into a hotel for the

evening and score some sleep and shelter away from the less

than friendly confines of the train station.

we rode up to the border of italy with a beautiful italian

humanitarian worker named francesca. she seemed pretty pleased

with italy and less than thrilled with the united states, but

nonetheless was really interesting to converse with being that

she had ben all over the globe... except america. At the town

on the border we watched the end of the USA-Algeria game, and

flush with pride we boarded the train to munich. By the time

we arrived, munich was celebrating the german victory over

Ghana,so we walked around town, wrapped in the stars and

stripes taking in the scene. the scene was a rather cool one.

so the next morning we decided to do a walking tour and get a

feel for the city. our guide was really good. cliffs? here

it goes. munich couldnt be anymore different from berlin.

when you think of german culture, ledenhosen, bratwurt, beer

brewed by monks to survive lenten fasts, you think of munich.

so post world war one, in 1920 the nazi movement is rising in

munich. quickly. germany however, is collapsing as a nation

and bavaria is looking at splitting off. hitler, knowing that

a split germany would put a massive dent in his plans of a

third reich, walks into the beerhall where the secret meeting

to discuss seperation was taking place, takes the leaders to a

backroom and threatens to kill them and himself after if they

dont join him in revolution, which would be starting.... a few

hours ago. they obliged. hitler takes off for an emergency

and leaves his alcoholic buddy in charge at the beergarten.

that turns out to be about as good of an idea as it sounds.

the leaders escape, blockade the city, and hitler comes back

and leads a march on berlin, which ends in his arrest. which

leads to his book, and so on and so forth. we got to see all

of the places where this went down.

its tough to find though, why? because we bombed the christ

out of pretty much all of munich except for a few towers that

let the bombers know what they were hitting. the nazis knew

that munich would sustain damage so they made sure to keep

records on how everything looked so that hitlers capital could

be rebuilt. they used these same plans to rebuild the city

from scratch... but the rise of the nazi movement is

essentially swiped from history. just a couple of tiny

monuments you need to have a really good eye to spot.

swatstikas are illegal, zeighieling (yes, misspelled), will

land you in jail.

after spending the night doing munich-ey things david caught a

train to bremen for a wedding. jim and i, feeling that we'd

seen all that was to see in munich, started to work out how to

spend our time before having to meet david in stuttgart on

monday. we decided on vienna. spent the rest of the day at

the bmw factory and museum by the olympic stadium before

having to hustle back to the train station to catch our train,

which we made with some time to spare.

ive met like 15 australians for every american ive met on this

trip. i cant believe it sucks so badly there in the summer.

when we got to our hostel jim and i both wanted to go out, so

we shared taxis and went out seperate ways. i went off to a

club with some australians and jim hung out at this really

cool garden/bar where he had quite the interesting night

mingling with the locals. me on the otherhand, hung out with

some folks from our hostel until they started filtering out of

hte club and then we all headed home (my german is weak, at

best. non existent, at reality). The next morning presented

challenges. no rooms available in all of vienna for us to

stay. and a limited attention span. jim and i spend the day

walking around beautiful vienna, jim having managed to damn

near die at the sight of finding mold at the bottom of his drink (seriously, it was gross). that put a damper on things,

but vienna was realy cool to see. but we'd seen it. and alot

of cities. so it was time to head to the mountains. which

mountains or cities? we had no clue... so we hopped a train

west to see what we could find.

When we got to salzburg train station jim and i were looking

at the next slew of departures when we found a city he had

read about and looked spectacular. fingers crossed that we

could find a hotel. we decided to go for it and hopped the

train minutes before it left... a few hours later, we wound up

in the local beautiful mountain tourist trap of zell am see.

and boy was it beautiful. the town is nestled next to a lake

at the bottom of a spectacular mountain range. apparently its

a haven for high school kids looking for a night on the town,

they were running around everywhere... kind of a strong

argument for a drinking age higher than 16... but no matter.

jim, being a boss, haggled our way into a nice hotel room for

cheap. meanwhile i was posted up at a place watching USA-

Ghana. after jim had another near miss with food poisoning

(raw chicken), we headed for the hotel and he stayed in while

i decided to wander about. the night was interesting.

austrian kids are really into hockey. they think the NHL is

the most amazing thing in the world and could tell me the

starting 2 lines for the dallas stars. it was fun

interchanging broken english. then i found out that the

people i was talking to were 17... the youngest among them 14.

all hammered. what? okay. open minds i suppose.

the next day jim and i felt like walking. alot. uphill.

eventually this would get boring/suck and we took a bus (best

4 euros weve ever spent) to get to the lift to take us to the

summit. what met us up there was views like we had never seen

before. hang gliders and parasailers were taking off next to

us and we were at 6,000 feet just blown away by the views

surrounding us. i need to go skiing here. then jim and i had

a dumb idea. lets hike to the bottom. wearing what was on

our feets (addidas and boat shoes...). 8km and 1400 feet later

we had made it to the bottom. it sucked, but for the stuff we

saw on the way, was totally worth it. we grabbed some food

and checked out the lake, hoping to not have to pay to swim.

it wouldnt be. around now we were getting burnt out on zell am

see... cool place but we had done it all. so we hopped a train

to salzuburg where we would find a train to munich so that we

can catch an early trip to stuttgart.

so we got to salzburg, found our train to munich, and got

on...

and at 1130, we stopped. but we werent in munich. we were in

innsbrook.

fuck.

so, we enacted our dumbass idea from bologna. shed our

luggage. find a bar. hang out until the next train (430 AM).

besides, we'd sleep on the train and save ourselves a hotel

room for the night. great idea!

and thats precisely what we did. we found one of 3 bars open

in innsbrook on sunday nights and made friend with this

awesome bartender. a few hours later we headed for the train

stations bellies feer of complementary shots, redbulls, and

beer. turns out the 430 overnight to munich was pretty

popular though, so we hung out in the dining car and didnt do

much in the way of sleeping. when we got to munich we saw a

train for stuttgart departing within a minute, so we ran to

get on it and got there in time. and this morning we showed

up at the stuttgart train station... with no idea how to get

to our hotel.

and then i woke up. we checked in here, showered, and jim and

i have been passed out for 5 hours solid. tonight we check

out the stuttgart opera... some high culture (9 euro student

tickets? yes please) to make up for being homeless last

night. that is if david finds us in time. tomorrow we check

out car stuff here. gonna try to convince these guys to go to

the zoo too, apparently its really awesome.

just damn glad to be sleeping in a bed.

-Vinnie

Munich was massively cool. ill do a post regarding its history later... took in some very cool history and culture. jim and i got bored though and hightailed it for vienna. theres a bit music festival here though so we may go to salzburg tomorrow.. have a nice quiet day out in those beautiful mountains we pass on the train. then on monday we meet david in stuttgart for a little more auto geekery.

bought a shirt which i can oull of in europe but am 90% sure will be passed off as ghey in the states. but hey, it was 10 euro.

bmw museum was fantastic... sexy pictures to follow...

vienna nightlife is every typical euroclub youve ever imagined... fun though.

beer maidens do exist.

hitler is a sore subject in munich.


tomorrow jim and i will take to the streets rocking our USA flag in support of the yanks as they take on ghana tomorrow... should be alot of fun.

homesickness setting in, but ill be there soon. after reflecting a bit on this trip ive learned not to take anything for granted. family, friends, the people who really matter. education, opportunity, stroke of luck by birth.... and damn id love to drive my car again. i hope the powers that be are taking good care of her... ahem!

and im off to bed. night!

regarding mcdonalds... by Jim

Actually, it was the third McDonalds trip for me. I had a particularly awful Big Mac in the Paris airport. Fast food in Europe is terribly uncanny. It's like if you came home from school one day and your Mom had a mustache; something's not quite right. They make some shit-awful attempts at new menu items. Case in point: McDonalds' BBQ chicken wrap that I ordered last night in Bologna. Chicken-foam ensconced in cold diced onions and too-sweet BBQ sauce, all wrapped up into the dryest, most tasteless excuse for a tortilla I've ever ingested. Truly the worst fast food experience of my life. However, we were terrifically entertained by the couple sitting behind us. It was an interesting pairing: thick, foine-ass black girl (which was exotic- we've run into very few black people that aren't Wesley-Snipes-dark North Africans that wanted to sell us plastic Eiffel Towers/kill us on this trip) and a sleazy looking Italian wearing a leather bomber jacket. The Italian dude was attempting to provide his beau with the illustrious history of his eveningwear. An excerpt:

"Thees jacket, is from war. Flyers, eh, American aeroplane, pilot of aeroplane wear jacket. It very expensive, cost six-haundred euro. I know owner, so I get it for five-haundred. Still is expensive."

Nubian Goddess nodded and half-smiled. The international sign of disinterest.

-JZ

a scatterbrained post- apologies!

update- made it to munich, were all reunited and didnt lose our luggage. sweet!



other notes- we have now taken to speaking to people in english completely apologetically and gauging their reactions. often it is hilarious, they give us this baffled look and point somewhere.

also, whenever people are trying to communicate us and they dont understand what we are saying, we will mime as we usually would and say something completely random. for example someone asked how to get to the bathroom, and we pointed them around the corner while telling us them "we have red cats in our bedroom."

after that we went to a tiny town called santa'agata, home of lamborghini. we enjoyed a really pretty bus ride on the way there, passing through the italian countryside.

other notes- we have now taken to speaking to people in english completely apologetically and gauging their reactions. often it is hilarious, they give us this baffled look and point somewhere.

also, whenever people are trying to communicate us and they dont understand what we are saying, we will mime as we usually would and say something completely random. for example someone asked how to get to the bathroom, and we pointed them around the corner while telling us them "we have red cats in our bedroom."
'
infortunately that all ends now that we go to germany, where from what we can tell, everyone speaks great english.

my facial hair is becoming a serious problem. its damn gross and i havent had a chance to shave. end note.

we watched the end of the USA-Algeria game in a little cafe on the border of italy and switzerland. wearing our american flag we were super stoked when we scored that goal to end it, and the italians and there congratulated us. hopefully we dont play germany in the round of 16.... just kidding. i hope we do.

right now we are on our way to munich. originally i thought it would be a day wasted but i wouldnt have wanted to slepe through this. th scenery and snow capped mountains are some of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. summers and andrew- we are coming here to ski, soon. period.

so. lets see, stuff we have been up to...

san'agata was a beautiful little city. it seems that everyone knew each other, and half of the town worked at lamborghini. we went to the museum and were greeted with some really beatiful stuff.... the murcielago gtr was particularly lovely.

jim and i's clothes were getting particularly rancid so we walked off to east jersulem to find a washeteria. (by the way dad, your idea of soaking clothes and drying them by hanging them has just resulted in moldy shirts... they smell like hell). there we met possibly the nicest italian weve ever met. he hung out and watched our clothes while we ate and actually walked with us to a place to eat. gave us change and was in general super awesome. our whole conversation was in mime and broken italian/spanish. we bought him a beer but he kindly refused, and we finished our laundry and headed back to the hotel. that night we went out to experience the local college nightlife. we brough david's instant italian book. hilarity ensued. around 3 am we were walking around asking random people "how much for the day" and other completely random phrases... none of which occur to me now.

the next morning we woke up with the dreadful knowledge that we had to be somewhere that the locals havent even heard of by 2pm for a rather exclusive tour we had set up of the pagani factory. after failing to find a bus we got a train to modena and got a taxi from modena... the poor taxi driver led us to an industrial park in san cesario, but he kicked ass and made a bunch of calls and eventually got us there just in time to meet our tour guide. we were lost on a street in the middle of nowhere, and around the corner we heard a mercedes v12 growling and a zonda going past... so we figured there would be a good place to turn.

the pagani tour was really cool. its a small family business essentially. one of horacio paganis kids actually fetched the stupid, stupid purchase that i made there for me. they produce 14 cars a year, each worth well over a million euros. there were 3 rooms, one where they were literally putting the car together by hand, one dedicated to laying carbon fiber, and another with autoclaves and some research and development... which we were very much not allowed anywhere near. they did have their test zonda R there sitting there on corner balances, and an AMG v12 sitting on a stand in one room. really beautiful stuff.

afterwards we were contemplating how we were going to get from the middle of nowhere in italy to maranello. unforutnately it got too late so we never got to see the home of ferrari. another trip for another trip i suppose.

we had a very cool conversation with our tour guide. she had been educated in saudi and been all over the place. she lived in italy for 19 years and was less than satisfied with it. she apparently families still have feuds and hte rich ones still run the small towns like the very one we were in, and unless youre connected, finding a job isnt going to easy. apparently the locals were very intellectually inbred and if you had money, most people wound up leaving, many to the US.

on the other hand, on the train today jim and i talked to a woman who was born and raised in italy but had been all around the world doing humanitarian work. she seemed pretty keen on italy, felt like she was biting her tongue a bit on her feelings towards the US though!

anyways, so we caught a taxi back to the town of Modena, where we got lost and wound up stumbling onto some pretty cool sights and local backstreets. unfortunately every restaurant was closed so for the second time this trip... we hit up mcdonalds.

so now im off to nap... for alot of baggage carrying and uncertainy awaits us in munich. wish us luck... ive only got about a week left. damn. ill bug jim to write a post and give a better account of whats been going on... my crappy quick blogging has got to be getting old by now.

david keeps finding reasons for us to hate him. the latest? setting the thermostat at 17. by the way, our hotel in bologna is really cool. old as hell, rustic...ish.

so a couple nights ago we were in milan. ate pizza, saw ridiculous churches, blah blah blah... italians seriously know how to dress. the girls might not be as naturally pretty as french girls, but they really take care of themseleves

in florence, we ran into a lady who immigrated from the phillipines but has been waiting to get into the us for 13 years. in france, we were talking to the saddam hussein looking guy in the front about how we wanted to come back when we were richer... he said that in america, we could do it. bottom line... america might be a whole lot cooler than we give it credit for.

bologna is a cool city. we just came here to have a base for doing car stuff (modena might have been better, we have no idea how were getting to pagani or maranello today). its not touristy, but more of a local college town. a couple nights ago we went out to watch the brazil- ivory coast game, and afterwards there was a parade of brazilians in the street, playing music and dancing. funny thing about the brazilians, like the italians, they just love being brazlian. same with the italians... in paris the local vendors had flags and shirts from everywhere, but in italy, its just italy, all the time. hats shirts, everthing, even the locals. and the brazlian locals... will never hesitate to let everyone know that they are brazlian. and you are not.

so after seeing a bunch of beautiful renaissance art in florence we were a bit bored of beautiful stuff (donatellos david is really cool in real life though), so we decided to see beautiful stuff.... with wheels. that took us to the ducati factory, which is impossible to find and apparently nobody in bologna knows that a massive name in motorcycles happens to be based here.

so we got there, not knowing that a reservation was required for entry, even just to the museum. this blew. fortunately for us, the tour that was leaving in 15 minutes had 9 no shows, so we got a practically private tour. and it was really, really cool. ducati puts out 250 handmade bikes a day, and even with those kinds of production members everything is triple checked, and just walking through you can tell that a ton of care goes into every bike. watching everything coem together was really cool. makes me kind of want to start riding, the machinery in there was seriously hot.

after that we went to a tiny town called santa'agata, home of lamborghini. we enjoyed a really pretty bus ride on the way there, passing through the italian countryside\

post has got to end here. running out of internet time.

so somestuff has happened since. we screwed up... trying to find a way to munich. werd. all is safe and well though.

so the other day we are at the louvre and jim sees the back of a sculpture. it is a venus, laying down, naked, highly erotic. we are both enthralled. we walk to the other side and find a penis, hilarity ensues.

last night a gypsy lady tries to sell us an umbrella. we already have them. we shake them to show her that we already have umbrellas. she just sits there staring at us for 10 seconds. jim screams WU TAAAANNNG in her face. hilarity ensues.

so the other day we were at hte eiffel tower and we thought that the US had a soccer game thanks to davids less than brilliant blackberry app. we went to the eiffel tower and fifa fan fest sporting an american flag and got disgusted looks from foreigners and wtf looks from americans.... we were dissapointed at the lack of patriotism, we were the only american flag there, when every other country would go nuts on the day that their team was playing!

the game was the next day. fml.

but hey we took a picture in front of the eiffel tower with the flag, thats cool right?

we were holding it backwards, as we discovered today...

fml.

the other night jim said while i was sleeping i was whimpering alot. i was sleeping next to him. he screamed at me to wake up and as i was doing so i was literally in the act of punching him in my sleep. apparently i had grabbed him earlier and tried to assault him in my sleep. my bad jim.

last night we got 4 bottles of wine for 10 euros. projectile vomitting ensued. white wine is now stricken from my beverage arsenal forever.

what was vomitted, was the best meal we had ever had. 15 euros. yeah we figured we'd ball on daddys credit card one night. it was unbelievable. the best ravioli and lasagna any of us had had, and yes we know its weird that we are so enthused on lasagna. and then came these skewered meats and desert... amazing stuff.

last night we went to a super euroey club de le club. twas an experience. florence was really beautiful and the locals have been wonderful. now we are off to bologna for automotive bliss.

cliffs- in the area between bologna and modena lies a bunch of italian exotic car and bike manufacturers. specifically we will be seeing ducati, lamborghini, ferrari, and pagani. you may have heard of some of those.... should be beautiful.

off ot breakfast, to see michaelangelos david, and hit the train station....

lisa happenini.

you know, before i forget.