Sad Day

Well here it is. A huge milestone in our epic Amazing Race. Two contenders leave. Big stuff. The two contenders left the Race from Berlin and are headed back to the States with their tails between their legs. Ha. Just kidding but T-leave and Patty have officially left the trip.

We got up and the two of them started packing their stuff into two of the sleeping bag bags we had left since obviously we don't have actual backpacks anymore. It was cute so once they packed (or so Patty thought) we headed into city to meet up with Mike and Logan and get some good German food. We did. It was fantastic (even the sauerkraut is good here which I usually hate) and I had possibly the most delicious beer ever. Hefeweisen. Apparently this means Hell Beer but that doesn't matter now. It's amazing. I had a Hofbrau and Paulaner.

After that we went to the entrance point of the wall near the US and British Embassies (which was very modern and cool). Then the big moment came. We took T-train and Patty to the subway station to send them off. Sad day. Good riddance jerks! Leaving us like that. Oh well. We went and drowned our sorrows with a pint of Hefeweisen. Ya. Then we went and checked out Checkpoint Charlie where you would actually pass through the border patrols. So weird. As was the Berlin Wall decorated Embassy (McD’s) there. But the Magnum Brownie McFlurry was sooo good!

We walked along the shopping section of Berlin for a bit to mail some cards and I also stopped by H&M because I needed a sweater since it was getting a bit chilly outside and mine was stolen in ROOOOME! Then we went to the Monument for Murdered Jews and it was very interesting. Basically people wanted a very visible monument to the murdered Jews in WWII. So it’s a huge square area with enormous cement blocks of different sizes all in rows. It’s quite a sight really. And the bunker below it is all about Jews that were murdered in the war. They even read small 3 minute biographies of Jews that they know of that died. Powerful stuff.

Guess who it is!

 
We headed back to Logan’s hostel but not before finding this really cool found object sculpture gallery in this sketch alley of Berlin and I freaking loved it! Unfortunately my camera is dead at this point but charging so I haven’t snagged many pictures. Stupid crap. After that we grabbed some quick pasta for dinner and a couple more Hefeweisens and wandered around back the the car... 2 men short. And a good laugh was had when we found Patty’s glasses case and contact solution sitting on top of the car. What an idiot!

Knock it down!

Well we only got about 2 hours out of Krakow before we were practically veering off the road so we did. And slept for about 4 hours or so. Then back to it! Pretty smooth sailing until literally the moment we entered Germany we got invaded. No joke. We were just listening to some Vampire Weekend on the car cd player when BAM! It switched over to the radio and said traffic alert. Seriously? Is it necessary to take over my car stereo and tell me about the traffic? Nope. Sheesh. Why did they even put that technology into the car stereo. Kinda scary.

Then once I started driving we hit some huuuge traffic, which I reckon is what that alert was about. And it sucked because that's the first time I've driven a stick in traffic and it was completely miserable. My clutch leg was so tired from keeping the clutch depressed that I wanted to chop it off. Ridiculous! But I finally got us to Berlin and sped on the AutoBahn on the way (although I guess it's not really speeding is it?). We drove around Berlin for a bit looking for a free parking spot and finally found one across the river from the train station. (keep that last bit in mind)

 

And I thought the US had a roach problem…

Food was next since we hadn't eaten pretty much all day. We searched and searched for a place to get a German sausage and liter mug but we came up with nothing so we grabbed some pizza at a cheap little shop and of course tried some German Pilsner brews. And while walking around we came across a Haagan-Das and being in Germany, it had to happen. It was delicious!! I had chocolate, pralines and caramel. Phewee!

Awesome architecture. And that blue van! Wowee!

Since we had a few hours until Mike and Logan's train got in(actually now a bus since they missed the train. Fools), we went to check out the Berlin Wall. Very interesting and terribly weird to be honest. Having an enormous wall that just splits a country and city like that is totally bizarre. But it's good that it is now fallen. Only a few sections remain for history's sake. We also checked out the “Topology of Terror” Museum right there which talked about Berlin Wall as well as the buildings the Nazis took over and use in the 30s and 40s up until the bombing of Berlin pretty much destroyed them all. Interesting stuff.

On the way to meet Mike and Logan we saw some weird purple pipes running through town. Remnants of communism. I know it! Then we met Mike at the huge TV tower (although dwarfed by Prague's TV tower) and after chillin some it was bedtime. Too bad it took us two hours in the rain to get home. Patrick was dumb and mixed up the local train station and the international train station. Not to mention Booty led us in a huge circle. The fools...

Speechless

We got up that morning and after our usual wake up/prep/slash time we started to walk through the ancient city of Krakow. It actually was a little similar to Prague in architecture and atmosphere but still absolutely beautiful in its own way.

 

Oh is that construction? How unexpected.

 

There was a huge town square we walked around in with a cathedral and a ton of street performers including this fantastic marionette who did a super legit dance with a Michael Jackson puppet that he made dance and moonwalk like a pro.

On the outer ring of the square in these long halls was a huge open market of anything traditional Polish arts or touristy things like shirts, jewelry, ornate glass vases and dolls. Very neat. Then we stumbled upon a perogi festival which is kinda like a Polish dumpling. Quite delicious for the most part but some we tried were quite strange.

Nearby the city of Krakow is the infamous concentration camp, Auschwitz or Osweicim in Polish. Unreal. Absolutely unreal. We walked around the smaller, original camp (there was a huge expansion of the camp across town) for at least 3 hours but since it took us forever to get there due to getting super lost, we didn't have as much time as I would've liked. Yet those 3 hours were emotionally intense  and mind boggling. I honestly want to go back and read more. There was far more to read than I could've ever done in a few short hours. (And as a small side note: It would pour down rain while we visit the most depressing place on earth.)
Anyways, once we got back we just decide to grab a couple of kebaps and take a quick nap before leaving Krakow for Berlin, which we did. At MIDNIGHT! AH! I'm so tired!

“This ain't no Sunday drive...”

It's a Saturday one. And wasn't it a big one. We had to get out of Prague and to Krakow, Poland by 8pm (at the airport there) or else our buddy Logan would be stuck sitting around at the airport while we sped down foreign highways.

So we got up and of course awkwardly exited our minivan in front of tons of tourists and hit p Mike's hostel to get prepared for an awesome ride through communist Eastern Europe ( not all things I say are true, just 100% of them)

I took control of the wheel once again since Patrick was a sissy girl. Common occurrence in his life. But while I could've done the trip in around 7 hours, T-Nav had to EP (emergency poop) several times along the way due to a certain Kebap we all enjoyed right before leaving Prague. Sheesh. Such a princess. It was cute. Not really.
But thanks to my brilliant navigation we made it to Krakow airport in a little over 7 hours to pick our buddy up and also learned that Polish sloztys (currency) are basically worthless. 4 slzy = 1 €. Anyways, when we got into town we knew dinner was in order.

But things aren't that easy for us as we all know. We got a tid bit lost trying to find Logan's hostel and got terribly misled down back country roads by signs for a similarly named hotel, Man. Stupid. Also, T-silly was in the trunk of the car as we drove around yelling about how much he loves burritos. People… Then we found the hostel and set out for dinner.

We accidentally came across this traditional Polish food restaurant still open and I had the most amazing Goulash ever. Hunter's cakes was the meal's name I think. So good. And Polish brews were only about 1.75€ each so that was wonderful. We walked around the town a bit and called it a night.

The nightlife WAS looking pretty cool but we were so freaking tired from driving like mad through all of Eastern Europe we went back to the car. But of course not before a super cheap kebab. 2.50€ here and around 7€ in Ireland. That's what I'm talkin about! Man communism... you cheap! I like that.

Praha Livin’

Well it took a while but we did manage to find some parking which was one of the tightest parallel parking spots ever. First course of action: Embassy trip and the Cheeseburger Challenge.

 

 

 

Let me explain…

 

 

 

 

Basically I challenged Patrick that I could eat 10 McDonald’s cheeseburgers in one siting. Ya. Intense. So we walked up and ordered 40 cheeseburgers for the 4 of us like it was nothing. And, being in Eastern Europe now, it was crazy cheap. The conversion is about 1€ to 27 Czech Krons. And I cheeseburger was around 20CK so like a 70 cent expense. Not bad.

Unfortunately, the 10 were just too much for me and T-Feast and also Mike the Second. But Patrick prevail. What a loser. Eh I guess he’s the champ. Whatever! As we more or less finished eating, Mike the First showed up and ate the rest of our burgers. It’s just too bad he messed the insanity of the first half of this trip.

We then walked around Prague and checked out the amazing sights including cathedrals and castles and the like. Also a super awesome jazz old timey sorta band that was Czech. They were playing on the main bridge and it was simply marvelous. Check out one of their songs here. Then…

 

It rained. As usual. In my time here in Europe I have come to the conclusion that it rains… a lot. Everywhere all the time. As is the same with construction. Everywhere. All the time. Goodness gracious.

Anyways, on the way down a humungous hill we stopped in a bar and got some lovely and super cheap Czech brews which were only like 1€ (or $1.25 at a bar so not bad). You may know it better as Pilsner Urquell. But also we tried some other darker beers from Czech Republic as well. Europe loves their beer. And speaking of things to love, we went back to Mike the First’s hostel where he was staying and had a Cuban cigar. It was great. Suck it Embargo!

Time to check out the nightlife! The girl at the hostel recommended us to this club across town that wasn’t lame and touristy so we decided to bite. We rode the metro there (Patty and I have a love of metros as you might have noticed) which was semi-free. Ha. And then we got to definitely the weirdest night club ever. Let me just tell you… effects of communism still are evident in Czech Republic because the building was ultra-industrial with pipes and motors and stuff like that all over the place. Not to mention the people all just stand in lines facing the DJ nodding their heads and barely actually moving. So creepy. I love techno and all but this was just beyond bizarre. Patrick and I tried to stir things up by dancing all around and it actually worked just a little bit in the smaller dance room but the main room was not having any of our pro-capitalistic dancing  shenanigans. The poor things.

So we bounced and had a nice hour long walk back home in the rain and slept quite well. Right in the middle of city centre again. Love it.

Rome in (about) a day…

Final day. Final freaking day in the terrible, lousy, awful (but still really gorgeous) city of Rome. And our 4 star hotel. Ha. 540€ a night for all 4 of us. Ouch for Peugeot. Hooray for our lovely bums. So clean.

Once again we took the bus in town which was sorta free since they don’t check tickets on the bus system at all. And I decided to get off at this sweet pillar first since I knew I had read about it somewhere before. Everyone rejoiced because it was wicked awesome.

Then we spent the better part of 2 hours trying to find stamps and envelopes to mail the original police report to the Peugeot place and also try and make some copies for our insurance claims (hopefully). We did figure out that we may get back some from our travel insurance. Sweet! We found possibly the only tobacco shop in Italy selling stamps and envelopes and also the only post box in Rome. What luck. Finally. And getting crap done. Finally.

And then… ROAD TRIP IS BACK ON! We went to the garage and signed some meaningless forms and drove away on a brand new tire. Yes! Suck it ROMA! (Actually the sights and people in Roma were great, just not the criminal underworld… should’ve seen that one coming i.e. the Godfatha). It took us a little while to make our way out of the City and headed in the right direction which did cost us a few € in unnecessary toll fees but we did it! We made it out of the Rome Triangle. HA!

One last Rome picture…

I took over driving since I think I am really get this stick driving thing down. And it wasn’t long before T-Lost, the navigator (aka T-rex aka Boots aka Tyler) started making me take wrong turns like crazy. 4 wrong turns almost in a row. Well we first took a wrong exit because he didn’t believe me on how this one turnoff worked. And it brought me to a roundabout on a hill where I proceeded to stall the car 3 times trying to get going. Whoops. Stupid city driving. I got it going finally and got back on the highway then immediately T-zombie had me take another wrong turn. Great. Worst navigator award. But instead of trying to get back to the highway, this time T-elder decided we should take small windy country roads which led us to Assissi, a huge castle on a hill. It was pretty darn cool, I’ll admit. But ya. Some more country roads, a couple more wrong turns including one involving a toll road and we were on the right track.

The toll road we were on for around 4 hours ended up costing us around 28€! Ouch man. But it did really help us make up time since technically we were already supposed to be in Prague, Czech Republic by now. Mike the First is waiting there for us currently. At around 2 we switched drivers at the edge of Italy since I had been driving since 8. Now it’s nearly 11am and we are driving into Prague traffic trying to find parking. Hooray.

If it weren’t for bidets, I’d freak out.

Well once again we bideted our bums (yes again… really) and showered and went back to the police station ready to make our new police report. Luckily it was the same awesome Italian detective from the day before but this time with a translator.

So we made our case again but this time a little more clearly. Phew. And we also fought about the French word for diesel in the middle of the police station and the translator probably though we were dumb but he was legit. But ya this time we wrote down all the stuff that was stolen instead of just some.

Ah Friends!

Once we left the station we called the Peugeot dealership in France who had been in minimal contact with the car repair shop in Roma and told us that the car wouldn’t be ready until at least the next day (the 11th). STUPID! So I demanded the address of the garage and needed to get directions so we went into this lovely 5 star hotel and looked only a bit out of place with our grotesque clothes and smelly stature. But we got directions to this place waaay far away from city centre so we left and headed for the subway. It was the most jankity, tagged, broken down subway train I’ve ever seen but we made it and walked another 15 blocks or so to find this place.

And of course the dude at the garage barely spoke a lick of English with the exception of about 3 words but we somehow managed to figure out that the fire would be fixed tomorrow but not the driver’s door keylock which would take 2 weeks to get the part in. With our strong stance of hating Roma we said just the tire is good enough since the car still locked alright and if anything is harder to get into now since the keyhole is jammed.

 

Headsets that tours use

This being around time of the oil spill

A feast was in order. So after we looked and looked for an American style buffet we settled on a little Italian restaurant and even saw a sweet street art exhibit outside called Rome To-day. I got some phenomenal cheese tortellini with ham. It was fantastic and tasted amazing. Then after supper we went back and checked into our 4 star hotel for the third time and the receptionist just laughed. Patrick and I got a nice rooftop room which was pretty sick.

Another day in Roma, another failure to leave it. It’s like the Twilight Zone or Roma Triangle perhaps.