Laura’s Dad stopped by her apartment as planned, and after talking for a bit, he offered to walk me to the Gare de Lyon where I would catch my high speed TGV train to the Swiss capital of Bern. I appreciated his help all the more when my credit card didn’t work in the automated [...]
Recent Blog Posts
January 2009
On the last day of 2008, I slept late before heading off for a quick visit to the Paris’ modern art museum, the Pompidou. In 1998, it had been closed for renovations. I had just enough time to visit the temporary exhibitions, the most noteworthy being on the development of Futurism in Paris around the [...]
My first and second visits to Paris were during the summer of 1998. I saw a lot back then, and was excited to revisit familiar places and new sights now. The first morning began with fresh croissants, a baguette, and coffee. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side. A steady, cold rain was [...]
Gela greeted me bright and early in the morning. Breakfast was white bread topped with chocolate sprinkles, an unheard of combination in the USA, yet apparently the second most popular topping after butter for the Dutch! We both headed to the train station with our backpacks. She was making her way to the airport while [...]
I was tired, but had to be out of my room by 10am. I hung out with Tyler and Dan in the lounge and did some writing before taking the metro to the train station where I boarded a 3:19pm train to visit Gela in her hometown of Tilburg, Holland. Eight months earlier, we had [...]
The prior morning, Steve had been ejected from his bed and room at 10am, for housecleaning, so I got myself into gear thinking the same policy would be in place on Christmas. I later found out it wasn’t, and while Steve lay nestled in bed until 2pm as I would normally do, I washed up [...]
The Van Gogh hostel is about 15-20 minutes from the city center, but I took my time walking there. Lots of people were out and about, shopping for last minute gifts as they do in the United States. I ducked into a glitzy mall for warmth and exploration. Of course everything seemed too expensive, with [...]
At the Cairo airport, I learned Jetairways was a Belgian discount airline. The 737 was fully booked with Europeans returning home for the holidays. I was completely surrounded by children who screamed incessantly for takeoff and landing, and most of the time in between, except when they were running up and down the aisle and [...]