Österreich!

Well, Austria couldn't have started any less exciting. We arrived, found out Lars was out of town, and immediately it began to rain... We wandered around, tried to find a hostel, and ended up at a campground outside of town. After a long day of travel, 12 hours on a train, this was hardly what we were hoping to find in Austria.

After a couple of relaxing days of rain, Lars came back, the sun came out, and the mountains were gorgeous. This town could probably be called the Boulder of the Alps. Innsbruck is a town of about 100,000 people of which 25,000 are college students. The ski park gondola even leaves from the edge of town... A ski bums dream of college.

The olympics were held here twice in the sixties and seventies, and you can still visit the ski long jump stadium in town. It is one thing to watch these people on TV, but you have a completely different amount of respect for them once you actually see the jump. The ramp is narrow and literally straight up and down. An amateur would probably fall off the ramp and break their neck before they could jump off of it.

Lars is still Lars for all of you who knew him. An extremely light haired fun loving, skiing, mountain biking, surfing german who occassionally claims to be swedish simply to impress girls. He lives with two roommates on the sixth floor of a building overlooking downtown. In his small apartment there are 4 bikes, 8 snowboards, and 1 pair of skis. This town, this apartment, seem all too perfect for Lars.

From here we will leave in a day or so and travel to Krakow, Poland and visit the famous little place called Auschwitz...

As they say here, Auf Wiedersehen.

PS. Which member of the Grafton family do I look like in the last photo?
PPS. Apparently "fahrting" is a big problem here... See picture below.

Nederland!

Goodbye UK.

Hello,

As expensive as London was, it was worth it. On our last full day, we visited a couple science museums and attended Prof. Myles Jackson's talk at the Imperial College in London. Afterwards, we accompanied him and his colleagues to a pub down the street where we sat, ate dinner, and enjoyed a couple of beers, and made the walk back to the hostel.

The very next day, we had to figure out how we are going to get out of London... The city, as I have said and many of you have experienced, is huge. We decided to go the cost effective route, by buying a plane ticket from Stansted, an airport located about 30 miles outside of London. You could either take a bus the whole way for 20 dollars each, or take a train most of the way, and then a bus for even more. We (inexperienced london travelers), decided to take the bus... It took us 3.5 hours just to get out of the town! Luckily, people let us to the front of the check in line, otherwise we would have missed our flight.

Now we are in Amsterdam, which is quite possibly the strangest city I have ever been to. The entire center of the city is a huge network of bridges and alleyways which lead you in circles. The city itself is beautiful, just extremely confusing... With street names like Oudeziijds Voorburwaal, or Lijnbaansgracht, you could understand why it is so hard to find you way around or let alone ask directions.

Nearly everyone here rides a bike. The streets are filled with them. There are even some cars that are so small that they drive in the bike lane and have an engine that sounds like a lawnmower.

The city is largely divided. The only thing that divides china town from the red ligh district is a street. You can literally go through an alleyway and find yourself in a completely different part of the town.

Red light district in detail: Strange. Women stand in window right on the street, nearly naked, trying to get you to come inside. We even sat down and had a beer in the red light district, just to watch the interaction between the women and the people passing by. It was really interesting to watch how many men really did go in there. Apparently, 80% of the people who come to amsterdam for this are British (1/2 hour by air for cheap). We didn't even realize it, but we were drinking our beer next to a pimp. Strange world...

Tomorrow, it looks like we may get on another train, and head eastward. We will be spending some time in Innsbruck, Austria with an old foreign exchange student, Lars Lotze.

We will put some pictures up asap... Right now, our library computer is about to kick us off. So for now, so long...

London!

Well, it has been an interesting couple of days...

We successfully managed getting from the airport to our hostel located right in the heart of London. This city is absolutely giant, and although I have never been to New York, everyone seems to think that the two cities are twins... We have met some interesting people from Maine, Australia, New Mexico, Mexico City, China, Macedonia, and New Zealand. This city, among many things, is a cultural hub.

We have taken 'the tube' all over the city and have visited British National Gallery, The War Museum, The Science Museum, The Natural History Museum, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Leicester Square, among other things... We spent nearly 2 hours in the Holocaust exhibit and left feeling utterly exhausted and nearly sick to our stomachs. We also spent a significant amount of time in the Van Gogh and Monet exhibit at the national Gallery where we saw the painting sunflowers among others... In the museums alone, there is so much art that it would take weeks to fully appreciate it all.

As we walked through Hyde Park, we also got to see a BBC film being made. 2 actors, surrounded by nearly 20 people holding booms, cameras, wires, a director yelling orders. Quite the spectacle for a simple, low budget operation...

While in the 'Soho' district, we were amazed at how beautiful restaurants could be along side pornography shops. In the windows, women would try to allure the passing business men and women inside. If London is known for swingers like Austin Powers, it is because of this neighborhood. Fortunate for us, we found£1.50 ($3.00, a bargain here) drinks at a bar. As would be expected, the bar was overflowing with people. We meandered our way inside and found the bar. After ordering a drink, Allison realized that she was the only female in the entire bar. Not only was she the only female, but she was the only thing separating me from the men trying to dance with me. We had our drink, and went on our way...

Edinburgh and final days in Scotland...

Tomorrow, we will make the drive down to Edinburgh one last time, this time to catch a flight to London. We are even fortunate to have an experienced Scottish driver behind the wheel, Allison's Aunt Sharon. Maybe this time we will stay on the road...

Once in London, we plan to check out some of the museums, stay in a hostel for a couple nights, and attend a talk at the Imperial College (even sounds British) given by Prof. Myles Jackson from Willamette University (Allison's advisor).

In our earlier visit to Edinburgh we visited Museums, and were lucky enough to see paintings from Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, etc... We especially liked Monet's work. Even the people working in the art galleries were wearing traditional Scottish plaid pants. Additionally, we experienced some lovely Scottish weather (down pour, heavy winds). One police officer, while giving us directions, even expressed his love for the unexpected weather. The city really is quite pretty, with huge Gothic buildings, the royal mile, and a soiree of shopping throughout the streets.

Another thing I have noticed is the way they pour beer here in Scotland. In 'The States' it seems as if bartenders simply pour the beer. Here it seems as if it is an ancient ritual, moving the glass in various ways, as if they are seeking to pour a perfect beer... Strange observation, I know... Maybe things seem more poetic than they really are after having a couple of room temperature beers myself.

Highlights from our trip to Edinburgh:

Here are some pictures!

Leaving from Seattle...

A view of Iceland...

Kevin managed to make even swans hiss at him...typical

The sign says it all...

The beautiful Scottish coast...

A church from the 1100's...

St. Andrews Old Course

Here. Finally...

So we are here. We made it. Somehow...

This story starts in a small town called Seattle, located in the lovely Pacific Northwest. Here, a small plane, a 777, took off at 1:00 PM, 5/14/2007 and landed in the city of Amsterdam at 7:00 AM, 5/15/2007! A fabulously long flight, one in which I received approximately 3 hours of sleep and Allison watched a grand total of 4 movies. Never Been Kissed, Because I Said So, and two other equally fabulous movies.

Once in Amsterdam, we went to our connecting flight and waited for the line to decrease as they loaded the plane. The line continued to grow until we became concerned, 20 minutes before the flight took off, at which point we reluctantly went to the end of the line. At this time, we discovered that they were loading two planes at one terminal, one to Edinburgh, and the other to Munich. The only problem was, our plane left in 20 minutes, and the line looked to be about 25 minutes long. Allison, being a young attractive female, fixed the problem by going directly to the front of the line where a rather British looking (we will leave it at that) man was traveling alone. This nice man then allowed us to step in front of him, and as a result, we made our flight.

2 flights down. We arrived in Scotland, at which point we realized we didn't know who was going to pick us up, or what number to reach anybody at. Much to our surprise, Allison's grandparents were waiting outside to pick us up. All fine and dandy, until we get in the car with Charlie at the helm. Brief description of the surroundings: narrow roads, crazy drivers, round abouts, drive on the left hand side of the road, and the driver side and passenger switched. While navigating our way back to St. Andrews, Charlie managed to get passed in round abouts, delay traffic, nearly go off the left hand side of the road (mud on car to prove it), all while providing us with a guided tour including the history of just about everything. After traveling for nearly 20 hours, this resulted in an irreperable loss of our sanity.

After 45 minutes of driving that would made most theme parks seem dull, we arrived in St. Andrews, the home of golf. Here, herds of golfers pilgrimage to their mecca. We met several that had played 36 holes of golf in a single day! I played 9 several months ago and was not only tired, but frustrated and demoralized as well. These people are crazy.

The surroundings are beautiful. It seems as if the entire island looks like Western Oregon in the spring, with slightly overcast skies, lush green fields, a frigid ocean, a fairly chilly breeze and trees and flowers abloom. However, there is a significant difference in the accent that people talk with, and the buildings they live in. Here it seems as if a building is new if it was built in the last 3 centuries. There are even the remains of a church and a castle in town, with only a couple pillars and walls remaining.

After meeting a couple of students from the local University, extremely exhausted from the day, we called it quits. We had been up for 31 straight hours. We retired to the lovely bed and breakfast that Allison's grandparents had reserved for us...

After having what would be considered a short coma (12 hours of sleep), the hostess woke us up and fed us a lovely traditional Scottish meal rich in cholesterol and fat. We had bacon, sausage, fried eggs, and blood pudding (an item made out of the innerds of sheep mixed with blood and oats, not necessarily worth trying...).

If you are tight on money, don't spend your 'holiday' in the UK... Everything has the same price as the US, except it is in pounds... For example, a hamburger is 7£, but 1£=2$. So the real price you get to pay for that lovely hamburger is $14 (ouch!). We are already looking forward to Eastern Europe...

Kevin