How Pocahontas Really Died

Knife fight.  In Gravesend, England.  She probably came here thinking, "My, what a quaint town.  What a cute little village on the banks of the Thames."  Unbeknownst to her, the locals of Gravesend prey on naive Powhatan princesses by luring them in with charm and character and cobblestone streets, and then they gather all their chav friends together and paint with all the colors of the wind.  And that was the last of Pocahontas.

But, no, seriously guys, Pocahontas is buried here!  A city's tourism industry could thrive on that alone!  But somehow, people in Gravesend don't think that's cool at all.  My friend Tom always described his hometown as a complete ghetto.  I imagined him living in the equivalent of the Projects, south of London, with hypodermic needles strewn across the sidewalks and hand guns hidden in babies' diapers.  But that all changed when, upon minutes of arriving, I come to learn that Pocahontas died here!  And Charles Dickens lived here!  And there are 12th-Century castles and cathedrals just chillin' off the side of the road!  In southern California, we don't have the luxury of that kind of charm.  We go to Disneyland for that.

Soooo what if there is a bullet hole in the front window of Tom's house and his little sisters aren't allowed to walk outside by themselves.  Pish posh.  Potato Potahto.  I'm a glass-half-full kind of girl.  I am of the Pocahontas school of thought.  Maybe it didn't turn out so well for her, but did it for anyone who talked to raccoons? 

 At church 

 Oh look, kids, a castle on the side of the road.

 Tom's family

Gravesend at night

Welcome back to Pah-ree

Ah, Paris.  The City of Looooove.  The City of Light. My city.

A certain friend of mine will undoubtedly abhor the fact that I call it my city, but when you live there long enough to get a regular babysitting job, to make friends with the florist down the street, and to know exactly which metro stations smell like urine and which smell like day-old croissants, it can be your city too.

I wanted to give Matt the real deal French cultural experience....So we stayed in a ghetto suburb south of Paris that is predominantly inhabited by Asians.  What?!  It was cheap!  The directions to this obscure place were as follows (I kid you not):  "Go to Villejuif metro station.  Take exit Maxime Giorki.  Walk 60 steps straight.  Turn left down a narrow alley called Dupont, but it may not be clearly marked.  Turn right.  Walk several blocks until you see a Japanese restaurant.  Turn left and walk until you get to a row of parking garages.  Turn right and go down another alley.  Our hostel is across the street."  I want to know what made these people think they could run a hostel in the first place.  Somehow they had the foresight that they would be patronized by ultra cheapskates like myself who are willing to cut corners on housing when it means you'll have extra cash for good food.  And believe me, Paris has good food.

Upon our arrival, the petite Korean owner enthusiastically informed us that "da loo loo is free todayyy!"  The what?  "Da loo loo!"  Stumped, I looked to the backpacker sitting nearby and he translated.  "She means the Louvre."  Ooooh right.  Da loo loo.  Got it.  "And der are flyworks at Eiffel Tar-wer!"

Turns out we were conveniently in Paris for Bastille Day.  Hurrah for independence!  So, as our hostess so clearly stated, the city was celebrating with a firework show at the Eiffel Tower.  And free entrance to the Louvre.  I convinced my brother to skip out on the Louvre (Mona Lisa is probably # 2 on the list of The World's Biggest Disappointments.  The Sham-Wow is #1), and we did our own celebrating with a gastronomical tour of all my favorite, cheap, questionable food joints.  Kebabs, crepes, gelatto, pastries, bread in any form...Everything that is terrible for the body but vital for the soul.

Oh-so-good to be back.

   Double fistin' it at Place St-Michel.  Baguette panini and a crepe.

Matt's first kebab

Da Loo Loo

Versaille Palace

                                                          My old apartment.  Haunted grounds.

The Neolithic Era

I expect to feel somewhat like a man when I'm backpacking.  Muddy boots, no hair dryer, infrequent shaving (I'm not afraid to admit it).  Not to mention my 50-ton pack makes me stomp around all squatty-like, as if I were a pro weight-lifter.  Sometimes, however, I feel more like a cave man.  I can do the whole no-phone thing.  In fact, I relish that.  Brings me back to the golden years when I didn't have a cell phone to make various arrangements.  If you say you'll meet at the playground, you'll be there.  If your mom forgets to pick you up from piano lessons, you just walk home and if you're lucky she'll see you somewhere along the road.  Simple as that.  But things like watches are nice to have.  And knives.  I'm crap at telling time by the sun's placement in the sky.  And I can't be bothered to fashion a razor out of a rock to slice a piece of cheese.

Paragliding.  It was heaven.

Matt and I found ourselves in a foreign country with no way to tell time and no way to cut cheese (tee hee).  Poor planning on my behalf.  We tried to see how long we could last..... 48 hours is all.  And to add to the cave man persona, we resorted to a lot of grunting, as we did not speak the native German language.  

How oddly convenient that Switzerland's primary exports are knives and watches!  And cuckoo clocks.  But I couldn't find any sort of intrinsic value in those, and I definitely don't need one to survive.  Bear Grylls probably would have used the cuckoo mechanism to fake a mating call to the wild cuckoos of Zimbabwe, and then he would fry their eggs over a hot sandstone and take the little Swiss yodler figurines and somehow squeeze water out of them and drink that.  But I haven't watched enough Man Vs. Wild to call myself that advanced yet.  Ergo, our first souvenirs:

Switzerland: Land of happy people and happy pills

The Swiss.  What a jolly folk.  The jolliest folk I ever did meet.  I suppose I would be happy all the time too if I never had to worry about war.  Or is it because the lucky turds get to live amidst majestic alpine peaks, glacier-blue rivers, and geranium boxes gracing the windowsills of every thatch-roofed cottage?  I suppose you have to be happy if you live in a postcard.  Take this view of our walk through the Lauderbrunnen Valley, for example, and tell me if I'm wrong.  

My brother and I finally made it to our lakeside hostel in the village of Iseltwald after sleepless hours on a plane, multiple train rides (one of which we had to jump off because of our invalid tickets...brings back memories of Romania), an impossible bus ride (I'm telling you this bus was NOT made for making the hairpin turns that it made), and an umbrella-less walk in the rain.  Here we are in all our jet-lagged glory:

The minute we entered our cramped, humid hostel room, I knew this was the kind of experience I was hoping to give Matt for his first European backpacking trip.  It was perfect.  Seven beds piled on top of each other in the space the size of a bread box, questionably stained linen, fogged up windows, and the putrid smell of something I've yet to identify.  Even better, I was the only girl, squished among a hoard of Korean boys who let their bodily functions run wild each of the four nights we stayed there.  Due to the aforementioned jet lag, I was barely functioning on only a few hours of sleep.  I do my best to avoid pill popping, but drastic times call for drastic measures.  Exedrin PM, baby.  On night two, I loaded up on my happy pill (come to think of it, maybe this is what's working for the Swiss) and prepped for a soundless slumber.

Well, of course that wouldn't happen because I'm in Europe...on drugs...so something is bound to go awry.  I woke up in the middle of the night, one pill for the worse, and saw who I thought to be my brother sleeping in a different bed.  "MATT!" I shouted, "that's not your bed!  Get out of there!"  The confused figure shot up to a sitting position and hesitantly said, "Oh, I thought this was my bed."  I rubbed my bleary eyes and stared at his outline for several seconds until I realized that he was in fact not my brother.  Didn't look a thing like him.  I didn't even say anything and just crashed back onto my pillow and fell back to sleep in about half a second.  The next morning I recalled the previous night's mishap and apologized to the poor guy for yelling at him.  Turns out his name is Matt, adding to the fun and confusion of it all.  Cheers, Exedrin PM!

                                              Iseltwald.  Population: 20, including the cows.

Return of the Jedi Rover

Wow.  MASSIVE failure at keeping up Da Blog while I was Eurotripping.  Sorry guys.  I know all of you in Malaysia and Jordan and Brazil and Greece (you can't hide from me!  Blogger Stats tells me you're reading this!) were hanging by a thread for a month, aching to know what was on my mind.  Again, I apologize.  But not TOO apologetically.  Because internet cafes "across the pond" (as the Brits say) cost an arm and a leg and a first-born child.  And when I say I'm "backpacking" Europe, I really do mean that.  Unlike the cheaters who take their laptops.

So, this is where my blog will take a rare veer off course and become slightly travel-loggy.  I'll do my best to minimize the loggy-ness while still providing ample detail of the past month's adventures.  And I'll spare you having to read all about it in one giant, wordy post.  So stay tuned (this time I won't let you down) over the next few days and you'll get the whole of it.

Last but not least, I shall leave you with a "janky cartoon" (dedicated to you, Annie) that highlights some shenaniganizing that took place whilst in London.

I See London, I See France! (Part Deux)

Instead of resurrecting my old Euro-backpacking blog (http://eurotrip-sarah.blogspot.com/) I'll just continue to post here.  No promises that I'll write that often (come on, guys.  Do you really expect me to take a blog break when I'm busy yodeling in the Swiss Alps and getting my jig on in an Irish pub? <---yes, I realize that last one is very easy to turn into a sexual innuendo).  So, stay tuned if you wish to see some photogs or read the occasional travel mishap story.  Believe me, there will be plenty.  Au revoir!

To America: Hey, Beautiful

Independence Day just isn't right without listening to Ray belt this one out.  God bless you, America.  And America, don't forget to bless God too.  Here's to freedom!  I sure love this land.