Moneydick

The hostel I’m at has free internet, so I figure I’d take a breather and compile some travel log-type things:
I have been backpacking around Europe since September 19th, though definitely not nonstop. Here’s a list of the cities I’ve sacked and how I’ve done gotten thereplace

American Airlines to London, England
Megabus to
Brighton, England
Megabus to Leeds, Train to
York, England
Eurolines Bus to
Edinburgh, Scotland
Aer Lingus flight to
Dublin, Ireland
Bus Eireann to
Cork, Ireland
Bus to Shannon Airport, RyanAir to
Stockholm, Sweden
Train to Malmo, Sweden. Commuter Rail to
Copenhagen, Denmark

For every city I stumble into, I have a general idea of what I need to see from what I’ve read in the two travel books I have: Rick Steve’s Europe Through the Back Door 2005and Rick Steve’s Best of Europe 2005. Because I usually only have an address to get to… either a hostel or a friend’s flat… I make it a little game to find my way to the address without getting a map. I know it’s a dumb game, but it keeps me on my toes after sometimes a 15 hour travel day. I usually see a tourist information map on the side of the road after I start walking away from the trainstation/airport/bus station or I can just find the street on a bus route map that I pick up off the ground (worked in York and Stockholm.)
I think I’m learning mostly about the common structures of cities than anything else. Show me a 7-Eleven, and I’ll tell you the top 5 most likely stores nearby.
Which reminds me… there haven’t been any Tim’s Diary entries lately! I hope he’s still rockin somewhere. Click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Last night in Stockholm I saw an interesting commercial on TV before hitting the sack:

well it’ll have to wait because there’s some ass hole being himself who I need to whack with a shoe… ok I’m back:

It begins by introducing 3 cute Swedish girls. They’re probably in high school, but aren’t too young. They giggle, play around in their suburban paradise, but then you see them looking very nervous on the top of a hillock far from any building. They are gathered around a phone texting something very serious to someone. You then see a low shot of their feet walking through a dark tunnel towards an opening. They exit the tunnel, and wait for something, their feet dangling over the concrete ledge they are sitting on. A black Volvo station wagon, circa 1998 pulls up. The trunk pops, and you see a man from the waste down take cans of beer out of the back from a large pallet of 6 packs and takes money from the girls as they stuff the cans into plastic bags.
That sequence was very bright and cheery, and lasted about 25 seconds. Now comes the horror show: In the next 2 seconds we see quick flashes, all yellow-tinted and in near-darkness, like the blair witch, or a very well made horror film. These flashes show these scenes: 3 Girls running mad near the loading docks of a supermarket….. An extreme closeup of a girl with bloody teeth gritting with pain….a posh-dressed girl face down in a forest.
At first I was like holy WHAT, thinking it was the beginning of an Alias show or some crap like that. I expected the girl’s mother to come into the Law and Order Special Victims Unit office and scream…. but the entire commercial is a public message to parents to make sure their kids don’t go rabid in the streets after buying underground beers.
It’s an entirely different culture than Ireland, where I most definitely saw 14 year olds taking shots of Jameson triple distilled whiskey with pub owners… mothers and daughter walking through parks on Sunday mornings with Pints…. and such stuff.

to come… Rome, Bologna, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague (and then I dunno)