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
Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
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!
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!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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
"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.
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 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.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
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....
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....
Friday, June 18, 2010
the HI IM IN FLORENCE POST
currently intoxicated in florence. spent last night in milan, saw some beautiful stuff there. phone is done and i feel like shanking the french prick who sold to me and guranteed that i would have no problem refilling minutes anywhere in europe NOT TRUE YOU FUCK, YOUR MENUS ARE IN FRENCH. CHRIST.
so the other night went out in paris, missed the pub crawl and went to a bar run by alggerians who were stoked to see americans. they drank us under the table and david and i tried to communicate with them in spanish... somewhat succesfully. then we went to a local bar by the latin quarter and entertained the locals with fine raps. it was about as good as it sounds. AS IN TOTALLY BITCHIN.
sofia david and i went to milan. milan is full of people who dress nicely. i wore a polo tshirt and felt like a fucking heathen. beatiful shit though, we saw rafaels school of athens' HINT= ITS NOT IN COLOR. there was also an amazing church, and the entrance to where you see leonardos the last supper. saw some pheonominal cathedrak tooo.
dave and i saw the arc de triumph and les invalides. and came home to jim havving not left yet.
quotes'
"QUI THE BEST"
-random stranger' "WE GLOBAL!!!!!"
there was an amazing catherdral. all in all, italy is fantastic. easy to communicate, were in a wonderful hostel, and theres americans eveywhere. and college bars and places everywhere. beautiful shit too. italy>france, by a long shot.
HEY GUESS WHAT ITALIAN ISNT THAT MUCH LIKE SPANISH. fortunately italians speak great english. and are beautiful. especially the canadian ones.
HEY SUMMERS I JUST CAME
=and thus ended the drunk post.
so the other night went out in paris, missed the pub crawl and went to a bar run by alggerians who were stoked to see americans. they drank us under the table and david and i tried to communicate with them in spanish... somewhat succesfully. then we went to a local bar by the latin quarter and entertained the locals with fine raps. it was about as good as it sounds. AS IN TOTALLY BITCHIN.
sofia david and i went to milan. milan is full of people who dress nicely. i wore a polo tshirt and felt like a fucking heathen. beatiful shit though, we saw rafaels school of athens' HINT= ITS NOT IN COLOR. there was also an amazing church, and the entrance to where you see leonardos the last supper. saw some pheonominal cathedrak tooo.
dave and i saw the arc de triumph and les invalides. and came home to jim havving not left yet.
quotes'
"QUI THE BEST"
-random stranger' "WE GLOBAL!!!!!"
there was an amazing catherdral. all in all, italy is fantastic. easy to communicate, were in a wonderful hostel, and theres americans eveywhere. and college bars and places everywhere. beautiful shit too. italy>france, by a long shot.
HEY GUESS WHAT ITALIAN ISNT THAT MUCH LIKE SPANISH. fortunately italians speak great english. and are beautiful. especially the canadian ones.
HEY SUMMERS I JUST CAME
=and thus ended the drunk post.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The LeMans Post
edit- highlighted the non lemans specific stuff, after i realized that this post is stupid long.
So now with two completely passed out mates I can get caught up. the past few days have been interesting to say the least. ill give you guys what exactly we did, but jim and I had so many other thoughts and musings while we were doing this, hopefully we will be able to post that stuff when we get the chance. by the way this may not be followed for awhile, since im off to florence in a couple days and im not sure where exactly jim (and his laptop) is going off to.
So at my last posting i was falling asleep in Deuville. Jim and I did so successfully. We also woke up at 2 am successfully. Desperate to fall asleep, we took a couple of dremamine. It worked. So well, that we missed our train to Le Mans....
well shit.
showed up at the train station and learned that we'd need to hop between a few towns to get to LeMans. Fine. got on a train to a little town named Liseiux, where we had a ocuple hours to go before our next train to Caen.
Liseux was a cool little town. Everything was cheap, which was lovely. we went to an amazing pastry shop and ate in front of this beautiful monestary where a nun walked by and greeted us. having gone to catholic school, i feared a beating, but go figure, nuns are really cool here. We stopped by another bakery for a big ass baguette (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and dropped like 3 euro on a bottle of wine. DAMN WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY.
so on we went to Caen, where we discovered that we'd be getting into LeMans pretty late. from here we decided to try to work out a sleeping situation and we decided on just picking hte nearest train ride from LeMans. booked a hotel after struggling to communicate with a cute french girl who worked at the station, and then left the rail station on a mission for.... a way to blow a few hours. Our goofing up of sleep schedules was really not paying dividends at this point. We would be in LeMans at 630. pitwalk ended at 8. shit.
so we had a beer in a pub at Caen and then headed back to the station. Every try to open a bottle of wine with a knife? we hadnt. we didnt do well, shattered the top of the bottle and received lots of disaproving looks from the locals. fuck em, were american (offially now the motto of the trip). got a couple of cups and got to drinking since i didnt feel like cutting my lips on broken glass. by we got to drinking i meant me. the whole bottle. with little help from my comrade. oopsies. this made for what would otherwise have been a miserable time at lemans massively enjoyable.
so we got to lemans ata round 630 and immediately went to the track to catch the end of pitwalk. we showed up at the front gate and go figure, they had run out of student tickets. thinking ourselves to be solidly screwed we decided to go check out the campsite next to the entrance.
We ran upon a ton of cool ass cars just hanging out. A supra, a ferrari Dino, astons, a TVR, a ford festiva RS, and all sort of cool automotive geekery was just chillin' out on the grass. everywhere else there were drunk englishmen, none of whom elected to wear shirts, and union jacks and camps which were producing amazing smelling barbeque. Super cool! we walked around until we saw a ticket vendor who had student tickets. we bought them and scurried off to try to catch the end of the pitwalk.
we get inside the gates and go to the top of the first hill we see. so im trying to get situated. i figure i know the track pretty well, so i try to see what im looking at. wait, is this maison blanche? the porsche curves? wtf, theres no hairpin, and the dunlop bridge is over where? i suspect that im looking at the smaller circuit. we ask a nice looking english speaker next to us what were looking at.
He literally spits out in the harshest scottish accent weve ever heard. "WHAT YOU ARE LOEOUKING AT IS THE BUGHAAAAATIII(PGGTHTHHT) CIRCUIT. HEAD UNDER THE TUNNEL AND GO LEFT, YOU CANT MEES THE PATTOCK ITLL BEEEE A DRAG WITH THOSE SAACKS THOUGH" oh yeah, weve got these 40 pound mofos on our back. sweet. so we hustle down, up a ton of stairs, go through the village, AAAAAAND GET THE GOD DAMN FENCE SHUT IN OUR FACE. FAAAAAAAUUUUCKKKKKKK.
so we walked back. uphill. again. we dont know how that is possible. hopped on the tram to the train station, and headed to the town of Lissometing (jim would know) where we would be spending the night. well that blew.
so we got to our host town for the night and checked into the best western. twas the night of the France opener for the world cup, so we caught the end of that and went out to a pub to have some food and a drink. Food was good, drink was better. So we had some more. The locals were just hanging out at this place having a good time, so we had a few pints and took off down the street. We spotted a bunch of young guys hanging out in an alley in front of a bar and decided to go check it out. it was all a bunch of dudes and they gave us funny looks as we went in, but when we got in it was this really cool lounge with people just hanging out and drinking. we decided to partake.
note- all the music we heard all night was american. yet no one speaks english. somethiing fishy here.
after heading back to the hotel we went to sleep.
Got up in the morning and headed towards leMans on the TGV, first class. that was bitchin. we arrived to lemans nice and early and headed to the track with the rest of the early birds. The crowd was fantastically international, french, german, italian, and lots of northern europeans.
We arrived and spotted the Porsche cup cars bombing the top of the Dunlop curve, rev matching and trail breaking and trying to avoid each other in a massive group. SWEET. Now it was time to find a place to ditch our bags for the weekend. We tried a few places unsuccessfully until we decided to try the LeMans museum. There, we managed to let them stow our bags in a back room they had. We seriously cant thank them enough for this :-) While we were there we decided to check out the museum...
wow. jim will post pictures. it was every bit of automotive sex you can imagine. The classics, from the buggatis that dominated the circuit in the 20s and 30s to other ground breaking historical cars that had Jim shaking. I got to see some of my favorite cars ever including the Porsche 917 longtail and the Bentley speed 8, Audi R8 ( no not the street car), the renown Mazda, Silk cut jaguars... unbelievable machinery. We hung out there and drooled for at least an hour. Around noon we went out to stake good seats for the start of the race. While we were waited we were treated to some classic races featuring old Group C LeMans cars (read- BADASS). We staked out some ground by the dunlop curve where we would see the field come down the front straight, Take the French Tricolors and come into the curve before tapping the brakes to go the other way. We took a nap and when we woke up it was an hour before the race and there was a wall of people behind us. LeMans attracts over 200K fans. neither of us have seen so many people in one place. it was nuts. After the national anthems there was the traditional flyover bearing the french colors (very cool) and the 24 hour race started. We watched 55 cars bomb ass towards us for a few hours. Badass to say the least. The most startling cars to hear were.... ANYTHING WITH AN AMERICAN V8. holy god. the corvettes, Saleens, and Ford GTs sounded otherworldy, pissed, loud, obnoxious. Weve never been so proud to be american.
so we took the next few hours to explore the circuit. look at exhibits, see the pit straight, see different corners. i wish i could put what we experienced into words but there is no way. it was violent, it was beautiful, it was truly awe inspiring. We had a conversation with a friendly british fellow whose first question after learning we were american was whether or not we like nascar. god dammit.
i noticed that there were a few different fans there. without a doubt, many fans were just guys out for a good time. the race was just a backdrop, they wanted to have a good time and get drunk and campout. Then then there were motoring enthusiasts, which is definitely most like the average sports car or indy car/F1 fan in the US. a fan which the US is desperately low on.
then we noticed that the majority of teh fans were simply sports fans. in europe, racing is just... another sport, like football, like rugby, people know it, pay attention to it, have their alleigances. it makes me wonder if it could ever acheive such status in the US... being that many people still wonder whether or not motor racing really is a sport, and dont know that motor racing beyond that nascar rubbish exists.
off my tangent. next came an even which is one of the highlights of... uh, my life. ENG-USA, soccer. we saw alot of painted faces and english jerseys and flags around. clearly they were excited. we had nothing that gave us away as american and kept a low profile. we ordered a couple of beers from the guinness hospitalty tent (including this delicious apple cidery shit) and headed off to the big screen that would be showing the game. we assummed wed find a massive bunch of english fans and maybe a few americans huddled in the corner.
we didnt. what we found was god damn terrifying.
british soccer hooligans. all painted up. literally, 500 of them which would grow to 1000 by kickoff. NO AMERICANS. NOT ONE. NO STARS AND STRIPES. OOPS. we quietly found a good place in the middle of the field to watch the game.
the fans started singing songs, doing chants, breaking shit, climbing shit. there were beach balls going around and a massive inflatable player. they sung songs about their favorite players, rooney, and gerrard. finally the hooligan leading it all asked OY ARE THERE ANY AMERICANS OUT THERE. jim and i hesitantly stood up and about 700 eyes locked on us.... and began yelling and heckling. we took a bow and waved sheepishly. i think we yelled some shit. we dont know. we sat down and the people around us suddenly seemed really intersted in us.
the guys in front of us were giving us shit for not knowing anything about soccer. they asked is david beckham or lebron james were on our team. we were playing dumb and talking to them and they were very cool. later though i decided to show them that yes, there were football fans in the states
"hey, dont girls play football in the US"
"yes they do, in fact our girls team is quite good"- fact
"is that your girls team playing now then"
"the team that your team is tied with? yes"
"oy, they are a bunch of girls"
"well, at least we didnt bring in the coach of the italian diving team to teach our team to play like girls"
"..."
sports illustrated, world cup preview, bitch.
Anyways, i was hoping that the telecast would start after the national anthems. of course it didnt. they sung a rousing rendition of god save the queen. We stood up and sung our national anthem when it was our time, while dealing with the folks behind us yelling the whole time. twas a very fun moment.
The guys behind us started talking to us and pretty soon people started throwing us beer and whiskey, since were american and obviously love jack daniels. no shit. soon we were joining in the english chants. we were relieved to see hte english score first, for it meant that we were more likely to escape alive. by the time hte US scored, we were solidly inebriated. we got up and yelled and high fived and jumped around like idiots. aaaand promptly sat down after it stopped being funny to us and there were a bunch of englishmen yelling at their goalie.
the guys behind us were awesome. we talked about got knows what. they were complementing great american innovations such as spring break, the wave, and bouncey balls. oh, and general yelling and public drinking and hooplah. we gave them such great british inventions such as hugh laurie. honest to god i dont remember that part of the conversation. it was thanks to this lovely shit called desperado. They claime that it is mexican. uh, its brewed by heineken. its basically beer with tequila worked into it. it tastes like a margarita-beer mix. and they had a mini keg of it.
at halftime, the british crowd requested that we sing some american football songs. they had us there. so what did we do?
we drunkenly decideed to sing the only american football song we knew. in front of maybe 900 brits, jim and i went through a screaming and rousing rendition of the aggie war hymm
gig em bitch.
they invited us out to their campsite. once again, camping at lemans is badass. they were out by maison blanche (forza geeks- the last chicane before hte front straight, where you see a ferris wheel to your left). we had some ribs there and put back a few drinks. we went back to the track with a mission- the mulsanne straight.
the mulsanne straight is a 5 mile or so straightaway on hte back of the circuit. on any other week, it is a public highway. now the straight is interrupted by 2 chicanes, but before that it was a place of pure insanity. cars would do 230 and 240 on it. cars would end up flipping that way. mulsanne is the stuff of legend. it is also completely off limits to spectators. reasonably so- the fastest cars still hit 215 back there before bombing the brakes before the chicane.
we knew that we would have to take an undtraditional route. we tried asking people, who all told us the same thing- there is no way in hell we would get back there. bullshit, said we. we exited the track and headed towards the town... and the fabled straight.
we got stopped by a marshall who told us to turn around. we went to the nearest campground, ditched our bags, and hopped a fence.
we creeped towards the sounds of engines.... and saw flashlights. immediately we hit the deck and prayed they wouldnt see us.
there we were in hte middle of a forest in france, flashlights passing right over us... until 10 minutes later we decided it was safe to keep moving. we hopped another fence, and we could hear the cars even clearer, see lights ahead. we saw a marshall asleep in a van and ran past him... we could see the fence. we just walked around it, and there we were.
what we saw then is beyond words. ill try though...
you see lights. you hear something. its coming closer. the lights get brighter, you hear a boom in your ear and you look to your right and the lights are getting smaller and theyre red.
it was car passing at what had to be 200. engines at full song. drivers probably taking a break to read the guages, passing by in violence, fury, a symphony of light and sound.
a couple of marshalls a few hundred yards down saw us and were watching us so we went over and gave ourselves up, claiming to be lost. they told us to go away but let us watch from a few yards back. jim and i sat up on a wall and took it all in.
guess whose camera was out of battery for all of this? yeah....
so we go back to the village where surprise, there is a bumpin ass party at teh guinness tent. its now 330 am. these guys are truly nuts. we decided to sneak into the paddock via the back, where the teams bring their wheels to get tires mounted. a quick hop of a fence and we ran around the paddock and vip areas. got to check out where all the retired cars are brought, and we even saw a couple of cars coming in on the flatbed, having been peeled off the track. we did see American corvette driver johnny o connel hanging out eating in his trailer, and snapped a quick picture of him, much to his bewilderment. didnt wanna bug him though, he looked like he was down for a nap soon.
after that we wandered around and enjoyed t symphony, before settling down to sleep at t dunlop curve. i could already see the sun peering over the horizon. screw it. eventually the sounds of race cars downshifting, brakes glowing rocked me to sleep.
MORNING TIIEEEIIIIIIMM. an asshole drunk german fuck who i pray dies young woke us up with a scream. for a moment, i contemplated murder.
jim and i were freezing. the temperature had randomly fallen to like 50 and we were in shorts and tshirts. we went to the only air conditioning we could find... an audi tent where they were showcasing a car.
basically audi had hired a bunch of pretty german girls to hang out with us and color. literally. for like an hour we colored and they told us about how cool munich was. this one girl thought that we were crazy for being from a state that allowed you to shoot anyone who was on your property. yes texans, this is what people abroad think we do. looking back on it, i think that our perceptions of other places might largely be based off of misinformation
except for our perception of the french. fuck em. england and germany and every single person weve met agree. they are assholes and do not deserve this beautiful country.
so, after that we went off to tetre rouge, the corner right before the mulsanne straight. cars were going through here pretty quickly. lots of cool pictures though and a great view of how hard these cars really grip, as they were going through the corner impossibly fast. jims got some pretty cool videos. we found a grassy hill to nap on and took our 2nd hour of sleep in.... at 10 am. we woke up hungry and saw a baller ass campground which had porsches, lambos, all sorts of crazy stuff. got some stupiid overpriced food and headed to the front straight to watch the finish.
if you dont give a shit, skip this part.
the battle for overall honors was going to come down to the german audi team, which had entered 3 cars, and the french peaugeots, who had 3 factory cars and had sold one car to a privateer team as an "insurance policy." these 4 basically took off from the start and dominated the race. the privateer team had some issues at night and fell behind the audis, which were still pursuing them. but one by one, the peaugots had issues. 2 of them had issues big enough to end teh race. one had now just fallen behind the audis. only a lap behind in th 17th hour, it was hauling ass to catch up. While it was lapping a slower GT class corvette (aka, the american racing team, which was at the time leading the class) it forced the vette off course and into the wall, ending the corevettes hopes. this pissed me off. i wanted more than anything to hear an american national anthem at the end of the race. at this point i wanted nothing more than to watch every peugot blow up.
and one by one... as they were in a neck in neck battle with the audis, thats what happened. finally, about 22 hours in, the final privateer peaugot which was hauling from 4th place to get on the podium, slowed down with an engine failure. this left audi 1,2, and 3. it also left a crowd of very dissapointed frenchmen (once again, HAH). This also meant that tom kristensen, a Danish national hero and lemans' all time winnignest driver would be taking a third place podium. this thrilled the danish fans and led to that being the most flown flag all day! oddly enough.
so a side note- a fellow by the name of Leh Keen was running his first lemans. Leh is a member on the Roadcourse section of supraforums.com which my dad and I frequent. I met him a few years ago when he came to drive the GSC motorsports supra at the national supra meet, and my dad and I have watched him progressed from a Grand am rookie to ALMS hotshoe. he was running his first ever 24 hours of lemans and his car finished 2nd, he had the honor of bringing it across the line. It was cool as hell seeing someone i knew on the podium at the worlds greatest sportscar race.
So the finish at lemans is a big deal. finishing is no easy task. the 3 audis made a formation and made the finish together, as the marshalls saluted them by waving every flag, a man standing on the track, as always has been the tradition in the 78 runnings of hte race, threw the checkers. we were right there for it. a mindblowing event i have seen on tv god knows how many times. we watched every car finish (less than half of them). and then rushed the track, as is the tradition. we hung out and listened to teh german national anthem and watched the drivers bathe each other in champagne.... really made my hair stand on end to see all of that in real life. 24 hours is a long time guys. seriously. we then wandered around a bit and caught the train home... completely exhausted.
finally at the train station we met the first americans we had found all weekend. the first was a mexican fellow who had been waiting his whole life to do it. it then dawned on us how damn lucky we are. a couple of 20 year old kids, and we were fulfilling this mans lifetime dream. (he had tried to get onto mulsanne, and failed). it really sunk in how damn lucky we are to be on this trip. so for everyone who is supporting us through us (who the hell are we kidding, our families) thank you. a billion times over. this weekend by itself made the whole trip worth it. it was the best of both of our lives... unparalleled by anything.
we then met a few more american students, took the train home with one. all car geeks like us. nice to see some familiar faces.
So the next day jim and i didnt leave the bed except to eat and do laundry. im having to rearrange my entire backpack so the room is a disaster. sofia and david came in randomly while jimi and i were asleep and judged me for such disaster. screw you guys.
burnt out on writing.
today we went to versailles. it was eye popping for sure. i took comfort in the fact that the last folks to live there wound up headless.
-so jim and david are waking up now. probably too late to go out so were gonna rest up for tomorrow. we basically have a day to see the rest of paris. and tomorrow we need to get back on our streak of drinking every single night. what a stupid country. off to milan in a couple of days.
just heard in our hotel room....
-we need to meet some american girls
-the point is to expose yourselves culturally
-french girls wont talk to us
-alas
-thats the jist of it.
-Vinnie
So now with two completely passed out mates I can get caught up. the past few days have been interesting to say the least. ill give you guys what exactly we did, but jim and I had so many other thoughts and musings while we were doing this, hopefully we will be able to post that stuff when we get the chance. by the way this may not be followed for awhile, since im off to florence in a couple days and im not sure where exactly jim (and his laptop) is going off to.
So at my last posting i was falling asleep in Deuville. Jim and I did so successfully. We also woke up at 2 am successfully. Desperate to fall asleep, we took a couple of dremamine. It worked. So well, that we missed our train to Le Mans....
well shit.
showed up at the train station and learned that we'd need to hop between a few towns to get to LeMans. Fine. got on a train to a little town named Liseiux, where we had a ocuple hours to go before our next train to Caen.
Liseux was a cool little town. Everything was cheap, which was lovely. we went to an amazing pastry shop and ate in front of this beautiful monestary where a nun walked by and greeted us. having gone to catholic school, i feared a beating, but go figure, nuns are really cool here. We stopped by another bakery for a big ass baguette (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and dropped like 3 euro on a bottle of wine. DAMN WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY.
so on we went to Caen, where we discovered that we'd be getting into LeMans pretty late. from here we decided to try to work out a sleeping situation and we decided on just picking hte nearest train ride from LeMans. booked a hotel after struggling to communicate with a cute french girl who worked at the station, and then left the rail station on a mission for.... a way to blow a few hours. Our goofing up of sleep schedules was really not paying dividends at this point. We would be in LeMans at 630. pitwalk ended at 8. shit.
so we had a beer in a pub at Caen and then headed back to the station. Every try to open a bottle of wine with a knife? we hadnt. we didnt do well, shattered the top of the bottle and received lots of disaproving looks from the locals. fuck em, were american (offially now the motto of the trip). got a couple of cups and got to drinking since i didnt feel like cutting my lips on broken glass. by we got to drinking i meant me. the whole bottle. with little help from my comrade. oopsies. this made for what would otherwise have been a miserable time at lemans massively enjoyable.
so we got to lemans ata round 630 and immediately went to the track to catch the end of pitwalk. we showed up at the front gate and go figure, they had run out of student tickets. thinking ourselves to be solidly screwed we decided to go check out the campsite next to the entrance.
We ran upon a ton of cool ass cars just hanging out. A supra, a ferrari Dino, astons, a TVR, a ford festiva RS, and all sort of cool automotive geekery was just chillin' out on the grass. everywhere else there were drunk englishmen, none of whom elected to wear shirts, and union jacks and camps which were producing amazing smelling barbeque. Super cool! we walked around until we saw a ticket vendor who had student tickets. we bought them and scurried off to try to catch the end of the pitwalk.
we get inside the gates and go to the top of the first hill we see. so im trying to get situated. i figure i know the track pretty well, so i try to see what im looking at. wait, is this maison blanche? the porsche curves? wtf, theres no hairpin, and the dunlop bridge is over where? i suspect that im looking at the smaller circuit. we ask a nice looking english speaker next to us what were looking at.
He literally spits out in the harshest scottish accent weve ever heard. "WHAT YOU ARE LOEOUKING AT IS THE BUGHAAAAATIII(PGGTHTHHT) CIRCUIT. HEAD UNDER THE TUNNEL AND GO LEFT, YOU CANT MEES THE PATTOCK ITLL BEEEE A DRAG WITH THOSE SAACKS THOUGH" oh yeah, weve got these 40 pound mofos on our back. sweet. so we hustle down, up a ton of stairs, go through the village, AAAAAAND GET THE GOD DAMN FENCE SHUT IN OUR FACE. FAAAAAAAUUUUCKKKKKKK.
so we walked back. uphill. again. we dont know how that is possible. hopped on the tram to the train station, and headed to the town of Lissometing (jim would know) where we would be spending the night. well that blew.
so we got to our host town for the night and checked into the best western. twas the night of the France opener for the world cup, so we caught the end of that and went out to a pub to have some food and a drink. Food was good, drink was better. So we had some more. The locals were just hanging out at this place having a good time, so we had a few pints and took off down the street. We spotted a bunch of young guys hanging out in an alley in front of a bar and decided to go check it out. it was all a bunch of dudes and they gave us funny looks as we went in, but when we got in it was this really cool lounge with people just hanging out and drinking. we decided to partake.
note- all the music we heard all night was american. yet no one speaks english. somethiing fishy here.
after heading back to the hotel we went to sleep.
Got up in the morning and headed towards leMans on the TGV, first class. that was bitchin. we arrived to lemans nice and early and headed to the track with the rest of the early birds. The crowd was fantastically international, french, german, italian, and lots of northern europeans.
We arrived and spotted the Porsche cup cars bombing the top of the Dunlop curve, rev matching and trail breaking and trying to avoid each other in a massive group. SWEET. Now it was time to find a place to ditch our bags for the weekend. We tried a few places unsuccessfully until we decided to try the LeMans museum. There, we managed to let them stow our bags in a back room they had. We seriously cant thank them enough for this :-) While we were there we decided to check out the museum...
wow. jim will post pictures. it was every bit of automotive sex you can imagine. The classics, from the buggatis that dominated the circuit in the 20s and 30s to other ground breaking historical cars that had Jim shaking. I got to see some of my favorite cars ever including the Porsche 917 longtail and the Bentley speed 8, Audi R8 ( no not the street car), the renown Mazda, Silk cut jaguars... unbelievable machinery. We hung out there and drooled for at least an hour. Around noon we went out to stake good seats for the start of the race. While we were waited we were treated to some classic races featuring old Group C LeMans cars (read- BADASS). We staked out some ground by the dunlop curve where we would see the field come down the front straight, Take the French Tricolors and come into the curve before tapping the brakes to go the other way. We took a nap and when we woke up it was an hour before the race and there was a wall of people behind us. LeMans attracts over 200K fans. neither of us have seen so many people in one place. it was nuts. After the national anthems there was the traditional flyover bearing the french colors (very cool) and the 24 hour race started. We watched 55 cars bomb ass towards us for a few hours. Badass to say the least. The most startling cars to hear were.... ANYTHING WITH AN AMERICAN V8. holy god. the corvettes, Saleens, and Ford GTs sounded otherworldy, pissed, loud, obnoxious. Weve never been so proud to be american.
so we took the next few hours to explore the circuit. look at exhibits, see the pit straight, see different corners. i wish i could put what we experienced into words but there is no way. it was violent, it was beautiful, it was truly awe inspiring. We had a conversation with a friendly british fellow whose first question after learning we were american was whether or not we like nascar. god dammit.
i noticed that there were a few different fans there. without a doubt, many fans were just guys out for a good time. the race was just a backdrop, they wanted to have a good time and get drunk and campout. Then then there were motoring enthusiasts, which is definitely most like the average sports car or indy car/F1 fan in the US. a fan which the US is desperately low on.
then we noticed that the majority of teh fans were simply sports fans. in europe, racing is just... another sport, like football, like rugby, people know it, pay attention to it, have their alleigances. it makes me wonder if it could ever acheive such status in the US... being that many people still wonder whether or not motor racing really is a sport, and dont know that motor racing beyond that nascar rubbish exists.
off my tangent. next came an even which is one of the highlights of... uh, my life. ENG-USA, soccer. we saw alot of painted faces and english jerseys and flags around. clearly they were excited. we had nothing that gave us away as american and kept a low profile. we ordered a couple of beers from the guinness hospitalty tent (including this delicious apple cidery shit) and headed off to the big screen that would be showing the game. we assummed wed find a massive bunch of english fans and maybe a few americans huddled in the corner.
we didnt. what we found was god damn terrifying.
british soccer hooligans. all painted up. literally, 500 of them which would grow to 1000 by kickoff. NO AMERICANS. NOT ONE. NO STARS AND STRIPES. OOPS. we quietly found a good place in the middle of the field to watch the game.
the fans started singing songs, doing chants, breaking shit, climbing shit. there were beach balls going around and a massive inflatable player. they sung songs about their favorite players, rooney, and gerrard. finally the hooligan leading it all asked OY ARE THERE ANY AMERICANS OUT THERE. jim and i hesitantly stood up and about 700 eyes locked on us.... and began yelling and heckling. we took a bow and waved sheepishly. i think we yelled some shit. we dont know. we sat down and the people around us suddenly seemed really intersted in us.
the guys in front of us were giving us shit for not knowing anything about soccer. they asked is david beckham or lebron james were on our team. we were playing dumb and talking to them and they were very cool. later though i decided to show them that yes, there were football fans in the states
"hey, dont girls play football in the US"
"yes they do, in fact our girls team is quite good"- fact
"is that your girls team playing now then"
"the team that your team is tied with? yes"
"oy, they are a bunch of girls"
"well, at least we didnt bring in the coach of the italian diving team to teach our team to play like girls"
"..."
sports illustrated, world cup preview, bitch.
Anyways, i was hoping that the telecast would start after the national anthems. of course it didnt. they sung a rousing rendition of god save the queen. We stood up and sung our national anthem when it was our time, while dealing with the folks behind us yelling the whole time. twas a very fun moment.
The guys behind us started talking to us and pretty soon people started throwing us beer and whiskey, since were american and obviously love jack daniels. no shit. soon we were joining in the english chants. we were relieved to see hte english score first, for it meant that we were more likely to escape alive. by the time hte US scored, we were solidly inebriated. we got up and yelled and high fived and jumped around like idiots. aaaand promptly sat down after it stopped being funny to us and there were a bunch of englishmen yelling at their goalie.
the guys behind us were awesome. we talked about got knows what. they were complementing great american innovations such as spring break, the wave, and bouncey balls. oh, and general yelling and public drinking and hooplah. we gave them such great british inventions such as hugh laurie. honest to god i dont remember that part of the conversation. it was thanks to this lovely shit called desperado. They claime that it is mexican. uh, its brewed by heineken. its basically beer with tequila worked into it. it tastes like a margarita-beer mix. and they had a mini keg of it.
at halftime, the british crowd requested that we sing some american football songs. they had us there. so what did we do?
we drunkenly decideed to sing the only american football song we knew. in front of maybe 900 brits, jim and i went through a screaming and rousing rendition of the aggie war hymm
gig em bitch.
they invited us out to their campsite. once again, camping at lemans is badass. they were out by maison blanche (forza geeks- the last chicane before hte front straight, where you see a ferris wheel to your left). we had some ribs there and put back a few drinks. we went back to the track with a mission- the mulsanne straight.
the mulsanne straight is a 5 mile or so straightaway on hte back of the circuit. on any other week, it is a public highway. now the straight is interrupted by 2 chicanes, but before that it was a place of pure insanity. cars would do 230 and 240 on it. cars would end up flipping that way. mulsanne is the stuff of legend. it is also completely off limits to spectators. reasonably so- the fastest cars still hit 215 back there before bombing the brakes before the chicane.
we knew that we would have to take an undtraditional route. we tried asking people, who all told us the same thing- there is no way in hell we would get back there. bullshit, said we. we exited the track and headed towards the town... and the fabled straight.
we got stopped by a marshall who told us to turn around. we went to the nearest campground, ditched our bags, and hopped a fence.
we creeped towards the sounds of engines.... and saw flashlights. immediately we hit the deck and prayed they wouldnt see us.
there we were in hte middle of a forest in france, flashlights passing right over us... until 10 minutes later we decided it was safe to keep moving. we hopped another fence, and we could hear the cars even clearer, see lights ahead. we saw a marshall asleep in a van and ran past him... we could see the fence. we just walked around it, and there we were.
what we saw then is beyond words. ill try though...
you see lights. you hear something. its coming closer. the lights get brighter, you hear a boom in your ear and you look to your right and the lights are getting smaller and theyre red.
it was car passing at what had to be 200. engines at full song. drivers probably taking a break to read the guages, passing by in violence, fury, a symphony of light and sound.
a couple of marshalls a few hundred yards down saw us and were watching us so we went over and gave ourselves up, claiming to be lost. they told us to go away but let us watch from a few yards back. jim and i sat up on a wall and took it all in.
guess whose camera was out of battery for all of this? yeah....
so we go back to the village where surprise, there is a bumpin ass party at teh guinness tent. its now 330 am. these guys are truly nuts. we decided to sneak into the paddock via the back, where the teams bring their wheels to get tires mounted. a quick hop of a fence and we ran around the paddock and vip areas. got to check out where all the retired cars are brought, and we even saw a couple of cars coming in on the flatbed, having been peeled off the track. we did see American corvette driver johnny o connel hanging out eating in his trailer, and snapped a quick picture of him, much to his bewilderment. didnt wanna bug him though, he looked like he was down for a nap soon.
after that we wandered around and enjoyed t symphony, before settling down to sleep at t dunlop curve. i could already see the sun peering over the horizon. screw it. eventually the sounds of race cars downshifting, brakes glowing rocked me to sleep.
MORNING TIIEEEIIIIIIMM. an asshole drunk german fuck who i pray dies young woke us up with a scream. for a moment, i contemplated murder.
jim and i were freezing. the temperature had randomly fallen to like 50 and we were in shorts and tshirts. we went to the only air conditioning we could find... an audi tent where they were showcasing a car.
basically audi had hired a bunch of pretty german girls to hang out with us and color. literally. for like an hour we colored and they told us about how cool munich was. this one girl thought that we were crazy for being from a state that allowed you to shoot anyone who was on your property. yes texans, this is what people abroad think we do. looking back on it, i think that our perceptions of other places might largely be based off of misinformation
except for our perception of the french. fuck em. england and germany and every single person weve met agree. they are assholes and do not deserve this beautiful country.
so, after that we went off to tetre rouge, the corner right before the mulsanne straight. cars were going through here pretty quickly. lots of cool pictures though and a great view of how hard these cars really grip, as they were going through the corner impossibly fast. jims got some pretty cool videos. we found a grassy hill to nap on and took our 2nd hour of sleep in.... at 10 am. we woke up hungry and saw a baller ass campground which had porsches, lambos, all sorts of crazy stuff. got some stupiid overpriced food and headed to the front straight to watch the finish.
if you dont give a shit, skip this part.
the battle for overall honors was going to come down to the german audi team, which had entered 3 cars, and the french peaugeots, who had 3 factory cars and had sold one car to a privateer team as an "insurance policy." these 4 basically took off from the start and dominated the race. the privateer team had some issues at night and fell behind the audis, which were still pursuing them. but one by one, the peaugots had issues. 2 of them had issues big enough to end teh race. one had now just fallen behind the audis. only a lap behind in th 17th hour, it was hauling ass to catch up. While it was lapping a slower GT class corvette (aka, the american racing team, which was at the time leading the class) it forced the vette off course and into the wall, ending the corevettes hopes. this pissed me off. i wanted more than anything to hear an american national anthem at the end of the race. at this point i wanted nothing more than to watch every peugot blow up.
and one by one... as they were in a neck in neck battle with the audis, thats what happened. finally, about 22 hours in, the final privateer peaugot which was hauling from 4th place to get on the podium, slowed down with an engine failure. this left audi 1,2, and 3. it also left a crowd of very dissapointed frenchmen (once again, HAH). This also meant that tom kristensen, a Danish national hero and lemans' all time winnignest driver would be taking a third place podium. this thrilled the danish fans and led to that being the most flown flag all day! oddly enough.
so a side note- a fellow by the name of Leh Keen was running his first lemans. Leh is a member on the Roadcourse section of supraforums.com which my dad and I frequent. I met him a few years ago when he came to drive the GSC motorsports supra at the national supra meet, and my dad and I have watched him progressed from a Grand am rookie to ALMS hotshoe. he was running his first ever 24 hours of lemans and his car finished 2nd, he had the honor of bringing it across the line. It was cool as hell seeing someone i knew on the podium at the worlds greatest sportscar race.
So the finish at lemans is a big deal. finishing is no easy task. the 3 audis made a formation and made the finish together, as the marshalls saluted them by waving every flag, a man standing on the track, as always has been the tradition in the 78 runnings of hte race, threw the checkers. we were right there for it. a mindblowing event i have seen on tv god knows how many times. we watched every car finish (less than half of them). and then rushed the track, as is the tradition. we hung out and listened to teh german national anthem and watched the drivers bathe each other in champagne.... really made my hair stand on end to see all of that in real life. 24 hours is a long time guys. seriously. we then wandered around a bit and caught the train home... completely exhausted.
finally at the train station we met the first americans we had found all weekend. the first was a mexican fellow who had been waiting his whole life to do it. it then dawned on us how damn lucky we are. a couple of 20 year old kids, and we were fulfilling this mans lifetime dream. (he had tried to get onto mulsanne, and failed). it really sunk in how damn lucky we are to be on this trip. so for everyone who is supporting us through us (who the hell are we kidding, our families) thank you. a billion times over. this weekend by itself made the whole trip worth it. it was the best of both of our lives... unparalleled by anything.
we then met a few more american students, took the train home with one. all car geeks like us. nice to see some familiar faces.
So the next day jim and i didnt leave the bed except to eat and do laundry. im having to rearrange my entire backpack so the room is a disaster. sofia and david came in randomly while jimi and i were asleep and judged me for such disaster. screw you guys.
burnt out on writing.
today we went to versailles. it was eye popping for sure. i took comfort in the fact that the last folks to live there wound up headless.
-so jim and david are waking up now. probably too late to go out so were gonna rest up for tomorrow. we basically have a day to see the rest of paris. and tomorrow we need to get back on our streak of drinking every single night. what a stupid country. off to milan in a couple of days.
just heard in our hotel room....
-we need to meet some american girls
-the point is to expose yourselves culturally
-french girls wont talk to us
-alas
-thats the jist of it.
-Vinnie
Monday, June 14, 2010
This is Jim. Some tidbits from Le Mans:
- The stereotype about the French being pussies- absolutely true. We saw a soldier carrying a puppy and a vanload of French police officers merrily singing soccer carols. My first day here, Vinnie and I walked past six cops trying- and failing- to wrestle some North African dude to the ground in a mall.
Later, we were asking people at the race if they knew how to get to Mulsanne.
The English response: "Shit if I know! My arse would be hopping the fence there if I did!"
The French: "Eet ees forbeedden. Daungeaurous."
- The English are a nation of kind, big-toothed receptionists. We attended the USA-England game and were promptly called out and heckled by exorbitantly drunk British soccer hooligans. They started comparing American and British inventions, the greatest American accomplishment being the concept of Spring Break. Then they got us drunk and cooked us ribs. Awesome people.
- German women are awesome. In every way. We talked to a group of them at the Audi booth for an hour on Sunday morning; if we had engagement rings on us, we'd be married.
And of course, the race. I've never seen anything like it, and I'll never see it again, most likely. I don't know how to describe it. It's 24 hours of pure violence, the summit of automotive engineering being tested. Everyone should go. There's more to say, but it'll take more time than I have.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
So first off, an update. currently in a hotel in deuville, freshly showered (FINALLY) with a passed out jim next to me. we were going to go out to eat and walk around and have a drink but its raining outside and him letting me borrow his computer to write an email is about to turn into me writing a novel because he isnt moving. we will be sleeping in the same bed tonight. its concave. hilarity should ensue.
so yesterday morning i worried and waiting for a cal from jim. i get an email that says that hes there but cant get his hands on a cell phone and is taking a nap. cool. eventually i went up to the airport to rescue his severely jet lagged self and i took him into paris to get a cell phone and lunch before sending him back on the RER to pass out in his hotel up by the airport. As much as i would have liked to sleep in a decent bed and shower I wanted to go out one more night. I wandered around the Gare de Norde train station sorting out tickets for this weekend and then got lost in the niehgborhood before finding a place cheap enough to eat at. i headed back to the hostel after that and stuck my stuff in the safe room because i didnt have a bed in the hostel for the night. fortunately my friends room had a free bed so i just slept there for free. score me.
anyways some brazilians and americans and i went up to the sacre coure again (yes its worth to go twice) with a guitar and screwed around, sang songs for people, drank, and enjoyed ourselves until theses creepy drunk armenian guys came on and tried to hit on the girls we were with. this one guy was stumbling around pulling his shirt up and another guy got drunk and fell on our whole group while i was away taking a tinkle. around there we left. on the way back down to the hostel i had my first butt clenching moment in france as a couple of guys were walking behind us in a dark alley in a bit of a hurry. we power walked to the nearest lit street, which was still freaking empty. i was scambling to find the blade in my sack, because i had my passport on me.
anyways we spent the rest of hte night goofing off at the hostel and we talked to these scottish guys about sports and comparing and contrasting the different states of our countries and whatnot. twas fun. we made plans to go out and pub crawl tomorrow down in south east paris tonight but it looks like theyll be going without me....
\
because the next morning jim calls up and says he wants to meet. after both of us getting lost we met at the massive mall at the chatalet metro and lugged around all of our luggage while trying to figure out a place to go. we decided on deuville and made arrangements to go from here to deuville to lemans in te morning. found a place to eat and got confused as hell trying to get to teh train station but eventually wed get there.
we spent the first train on the floor between cars by the bathroom, since we had no seat reservations, we both slept like babies though. when we finally got to a seat it was next to these ttwo girls, one british and one an american from washington (like the 8th person from washington ive met here...). they thought us to be stereotypical texans. so we played that up. to quote, "i hate fucking hippies." score a couple points for texas public relations. twas funny. id like to think that they found us amusing.... Also, jim and i have figured out that the general mime for "id hit that" is universal in nature. a northern african dude who spoke french and jim had a moment. yay for international relations.
so we show up to deuville and its groggy and wet. when we showed up we thought hte place was a dud, but its just dead right now because its not vaction season yet. regardless, it is really pretty, right by the shore and hills with old french neighborhoods just perched on top of them. massively cool.
jim is out cold. i may go off by myself now....
anyways, so tomorrow comes the highlight of the trip for me. its something ive wanted to do my entire life. the 24 hours of lemans, so i will bore you with the details.
the 24 hours of lemans is the biggest sports car race in the world, period. bigger than indianpolis, daytona, monaco, anything. there are 4 different classes of cars on track at once, with teams battling for national pride. manufacturers sink millions of dollars a year into winning this race. not an entier series or championship, but his very race. the best drivers in the world compete. although the stars are not the driver. keeping a car running for 24 hours at 200+ mile an hours speeds is a team effort, and parts changes which would maen the end of hte race for any other team are taken care of in minutes. A victory for a marque of a certain country is a national victory. the teams are selected on an invitation only basis. its not a small deal.
so yesterday morning i worried and waiting for a cal from jim. i get an email that says that hes there but cant get his hands on a cell phone and is taking a nap. cool. eventually i went up to the airport to rescue his severely jet lagged self and i took him into paris to get a cell phone and lunch before sending him back on the RER to pass out in his hotel up by the airport. As much as i would have liked to sleep in a decent bed and shower I wanted to go out one more night. I wandered around the Gare de Norde train station sorting out tickets for this weekend and then got lost in the niehgborhood before finding a place cheap enough to eat at. i headed back to the hostel after that and stuck my stuff in the safe room because i didnt have a bed in the hostel for the night. fortunately my friends room had a free bed so i just slept there for free. score me.
anyways some brazilians and americans and i went up to the sacre coure again (yes its worth to go twice) with a guitar and screwed around, sang songs for people, drank, and enjoyed ourselves until theses creepy drunk armenian guys came on and tried to hit on the girls we were with. this one guy was stumbling around pulling his shirt up and another guy got drunk and fell on our whole group while i was away taking a tinkle. around there we left. on the way back down to the hostel i had my first butt clenching moment in france as a couple of guys were walking behind us in a dark alley in a bit of a hurry. we power walked to the nearest lit street, which was still freaking empty. i was scambling to find the blade in my sack, because i had my passport on me.
anyways we spent the rest of hte night goofing off at the hostel and we talked to these scottish guys about sports and comparing and contrasting the different states of our countries and whatnot. twas fun. we made plans to go out and pub crawl tomorrow down in south east paris tonight but it looks like theyll be going without me....
\
because the next morning jim calls up and says he wants to meet. after both of us getting lost we met at the massive mall at the chatalet metro and lugged around all of our luggage while trying to figure out a place to go. we decided on deuville and made arrangements to go from here to deuville to lemans in te morning. found a place to eat and got confused as hell trying to get to teh train station but eventually wed get there.
we spent the first train on the floor between cars by the bathroom, since we had no seat reservations, we both slept like babies though. when we finally got to a seat it was next to these ttwo girls, one british and one an american from washington (like the 8th person from washington ive met here...). they thought us to be stereotypical texans. so we played that up. to quote, "i hate fucking hippies." score a couple points for texas public relations. twas funny. id like to think that they found us amusing.... Also, jim and i have figured out that the general mime for "id hit that" is universal in nature. a northern african dude who spoke french and jim had a moment. yay for international relations.
so we show up to deuville and its groggy and wet. when we showed up we thought hte place was a dud, but its just dead right now because its not vaction season yet. regardless, it is really pretty, right by the shore and hills with old french neighborhoods just perched on top of them. massively cool.
jim is out cold. i may go off by myself now....
anyways, so tomorrow comes the highlight of the trip for me. its something ive wanted to do my entire life. the 24 hours of lemans, so i will bore you with the details.
the 24 hours of lemans is the biggest sports car race in the world, period. bigger than indianpolis, daytona, monaco, anything. there are 4 different classes of cars on track at once, with teams battling for national pride. manufacturers sink millions of dollars a year into winning this race. not an entier series or championship, but his very race. the best drivers in the world compete. although the stars are not the driver. keeping a car running for 24 hours at 200+ mile an hours speeds is a team effort, and parts changes which would maen the end of hte race for any other team are taken care of in minutes. A victory for a marque of a certain country is a national victory. the teams are selected on an invitation only basis. its not a small deal.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
So a couple of nights ago I go to sleep alone and I wake up with 2 roommates. One a dude from Lyon just here dealing with businesss, the other a Finnish guy on a pilgrammage for an I-pad.
Couple of nights I meet a couple of Americans and we went out to Pigalle, kind of the seedier red light district area. Lots of fun though, saw the moulin rouge and ran around bar hopping. One of the things ive noticed straight off the bat is that the French dont fear sexuality. Boobies are plastered everywhere. I have also noticed that french taste in boobies is different than Americans so far as i can tell. Petiteness rules here apparently. okay, off boobies.
I wandered qround Paris university and the latin quarter yesterday, checked out the Notre Dame, gardens of Luxe,bourg and the Pantheon. I wish i had more to say but they were all just mind blowing, it almost gets old after awhile how your senses just get overloaded off of this amazing stuff yuo see. That night I went off to the Sacre Coure overlooking the city with some friends, drank quite a bit and goofed off dancing and shit while ejoying the view. That night we went off to a couple of cool local college bars by the university of Paris. So ive decided that it isnt just the placebo effect, French girls are hit and miss and frankly, mostly hits. They really have abother sort of beauty to them. They also make smoking look hot somehow... not quite sure how they do that. And finally, as soon as they hear our broken english they think that were mental and dont want muxh to do with us. We did meet some cool Americans though, may go out with them tonight if Jim and I dont manage to get to Nice.
oh; so in France apparently it is perfectly cool to dance by yourself. Most people do. If you are dancing with a girl, its damn near surefire she wants to go home with you. Learn something every day I guess...
finally we took the coolest cabby home last night. I quote... ``whoever told you that this would be 17 euros, you should shit on them. and then piss on them. and if you want to, fuck them but only with a rubber because they will be shitty. IN DE ASSHOLE... you are from texas? FUCK WACO!!!`
so ended my night.
Currently hanging out about to go book some train tickets for jim and I at Garde de Norde. Kindq nervous qbout how were going to et to Nice since theyre all sold out and my rail pass doesnt start till tomorrow. Also we need to find a train comng back from lemans. Id much rather not blow that deposit since apparently ive already done that in Stuttgart. Apparently hes safely jet lagged somewhere near the airport but i havent heard from him yet...
Couple of nights I meet a couple of Americans and we went out to Pigalle, kind of the seedier red light district area. Lots of fun though, saw the moulin rouge and ran around bar hopping. One of the things ive noticed straight off the bat is that the French dont fear sexuality. Boobies are plastered everywhere. I have also noticed that french taste in boobies is different than Americans so far as i can tell. Petiteness rules here apparently. okay, off boobies.
I wandered qround Paris university and the latin quarter yesterday, checked out the Notre Dame, gardens of Luxe,bourg and the Pantheon. I wish i had more to say but they were all just mind blowing, it almost gets old after awhile how your senses just get overloaded off of this amazing stuff yuo see. That night I went off to the Sacre Coure overlooking the city with some friends, drank quite a bit and goofed off dancing and shit while ejoying the view. That night we went off to a couple of cool local college bars by the university of Paris. So ive decided that it isnt just the placebo effect, French girls are hit and miss and frankly, mostly hits. They really have abother sort of beauty to them. They also make smoking look hot somehow... not quite sure how they do that. And finally, as soon as they hear our broken english they think that were mental and dont want muxh to do with us. We did meet some cool Americans though, may go out with them tonight if Jim and I dont manage to get to Nice.
oh; so in France apparently it is perfectly cool to dance by yourself. Most people do. If you are dancing with a girl, its damn near surefire she wants to go home with you. Learn something every day I guess...
finally we took the coolest cabby home last night. I quote... ``whoever told you that this would be 17 euros, you should shit on them. and then piss on them. and if you want to, fuck them but only with a rubber because they will be shitty. IN DE ASSHOLE... you are from texas? FUCK WACO!!!`
so ended my night.
Currently hanging out about to go book some train tickets for jim and I at Garde de Norde. Kindq nervous qbout how were going to et to Nice since theyre all sold out and my rail pass doesnt start till tomorrow. Also we need to find a train comng back from lemans. Id much rather not blow that deposit since apparently ive already done that in Stuttgart. Apparently hes safely jet lagged somewhere near the airport but i havent heard from him yet...
Monday, June 7, 2010
day uno
I DONT KNOW HOW TO SAY SHIT IN FRENCH.
INTERNET IS EXPENSIVE =_ CLIFFS
nerves didnt let me sleep at all on the plane
left the airport with no eurorail (cant get it there), no working credit card (oops - dad), no cell phone (machine was broken).
hung out at a cafe. drank. ate. got lost. slept on a bench. sofia eventually found me.
saw the view from the saccre coure which was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen.. until i saw the inside. just unbelievable. and now im off to pizza. i really hate being alone here so im off to a bar afterwards to see who is who. the language barrier is really killing me, the only people i can talk to are spaniards and they all seem like pricks. lots of pointing and grunting to get around.
only one day in one less than crazy neighborhood and i am already so impressed with the place.
INTERNET IS EXPENSIVE =_ CLIFFS
nerves didnt let me sleep at all on the plane
left the airport with no eurorail (cant get it there), no working credit card (oops - dad), no cell phone (machine was broken).
hung out at a cafe. drank. ate. got lost. slept on a bench. sofia eventually found me.
saw the view from the saccre coure which was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen.. until i saw the inside. just unbelievable. and now im off to pizza. i really hate being alone here so im off to a bar afterwards to see who is who. the language barrier is really killing me, the only people i can talk to are spaniards and they all seem like pricks. lots of pointing and grunting to get around.
only one day in one less than crazy neighborhood and i am already so impressed with the place.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
This is a blog.
Blogs are dumb. But I've decided to start one so that I can at least attempt to chronicle this stupid trip I'm about to take.
I leave in 14 hours and I don't know where I'm sleeping the first night.
That pretty much sets the tone for this trip.
I'm going to Europe, Originally it was to accompany my buddy David to visit his lovely sister Sofia who is studying abroad in Paris.
Overtime it evolved into a monstrosity of a trip that will take us to 3 countries in 3 weeks.
I got nothing else now. Mostly this blog is for you all keeping running bets on where Jim and I will die. Right now my money is on Munich.
I leave in 14 hours and I don't know where I'm sleeping the first night.
That pretty much sets the tone for this trip.
I'm going to Europe, Originally it was to accompany my buddy David to visit his lovely sister Sofia who is studying abroad in Paris.
Overtime it evolved into a monstrosity of a trip that will take us to 3 countries in 3 weeks.
I got nothing else now. Mostly this blog is for you all keeping running bets on where Jim and I will die. Right now my money is on Munich.
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