Coffee on the Keyboard

Foremost: Many thanks again to the Geesinks of Zeist! Friends of my family for many years, they put me up for a few nights, took me sailing, fed me: it was a wonderful few days in the middle of Holland! So, if any Geesink should happen to stumble upon this, Thank you again, and you and yours will always be welcome in my home!

I made it to Italy! It was a long, long train ride, but I’m here. (You can go from Amsterdam Centraal to Milano Centrale, with only one change in Basel, but it’s a long trip.) I’m in a metro station cafe in Milan right now. I’m only here for about 18 more hours, before I head to Rome tomorrow afternoon. Milan seems a great city if you want to shop, but being male and poor it doesn’t work for me. And it doesn’t have the massive sense of history that I think Rome will. But, I’m here, so I figured I would stop for a night and check it out. I wandered through Duomo and the P.ta Venezia earlier, both are pretty much just shopping now. There’s some history there but it’s not particularly respected. This city looks kind of like a cross between Paris and Grafton Street. The buildings are old-ish (though a slightly different style of ornamentation) and low, but it’s very much a giant shopping district, or at least what I’ve seen so far. I’m going to head out to the San Siro when I’m done here, since it’s very close to my hostel. I may even check out the tour in the morning, before I leave. I did try the gelato: exceptional. And I picked up a gift for a friend (the last time he was in Europe he brought me back a Real Madrid jersey, so I found him an AC Milan shirt; it’s a knock-off, but he had more money than I do).

So, to dinner and the stadium? Sounds like a plan. I also, of course, need to find a cafe and sit there for a while, as I am wont to do.

Ciao!

I’m back in Paris for the second time, and now, finally, after more than a week, on my way back to health.

I fell ill last time I was here, after walking back with some cool Americans from the Eiffel Tower to the Bastille and back to Republique, which took around 2 hours in the middle of the night. I went to San Sebastian anyway and wasn’t really able to appreciate it, so I’ll have to go back, since it was a great city. Then on my father’s suggestion I went to Madrid and he put me up in a hotel to get better. That didn’t work, I actually got worse. The hot air didn’t help and the fields of allergens between me and the commuter rail (I had to go from Getafe to Madrid every day, not a great way to recouperate, admittedly) made things pretty bad. So I came back to Paris and spent another three nights in hotels, and went to the American Hospital where they gave me antibiotics and I’m finally feeling a little better. Tonight I’m going to a hostel for the first time in a week. Hopefully it will be less boring than the hotels.

So there’s not much to tell, because I haven’t done anything for a week. But lying out in the sun in the lawns between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire is great, by the way. If I manage to find a way to spend next summer here I will definitely waste a good deal of time doing that.

So I am in an internet cafe in Dublin already! I completely forgot to do a fare-well post. Well, not forgot, here’s the story: Tuesday was my 21st birthday, Wednesday was my flight out. My old teacher decided it was important I get completely trashed on Tuesday–I don’t necessarily agree, but by that point it was out of my hands. So, yeah, I drink way more of way more different things than I should. My friend Joe, a great friend, drives me home, and on the way I end up lying on the grass by his car continually rolling backwards so I don’t lie in my own vomit. Then I get home, sit on the toilet for a while, more vomit. Sit down on the couch, sometime around 2am. Wake up, still sitting, at about 7. Crawl into bed for hopefully 2 hours. I feel like shit, so I don’t sleep. My dad wakes me up so I can finish packing and take off, which his painfully slow. Plus I keep drinking water to, you know, lessen the horrible hangover I’ve got going on. So I struggle with that for a while, then get in the car and leave. We’re not even out of town yet when I make my dad pull over, open the door and throw up all the water I’ve been drinking. But after that I started to feel a lot better, I ate a sandwich, etc. However, now I’ve been up for about 25 hours straight (after 5 hours of passed-out sleeping sitting up) and eating what food I could scrounge in airports and bus stations. My stomach feels like shit, I haven’t showered in days already–and this is day 1 of the trip–and I can’t really focus on far off objects, which makes wandering the streets of Dublin particularly dangerous. So I hope to get in some sleep and maybe a shower before too long, and try to get some real food and some water in my gut.

So that was a long paragraph. Long-story-short: I’m in Dublin, sorry I didn’t say goodbye before I left, but I’m saying it now, and I’ll try to post some updates as I’m able. Ciao all!