2 days on a train later, after having missed our flight back to london, we find ourselves in a city in germany ive never heard of. live, from bremen, germany, its part nine of

THE EUROBLOG

- i am using a tiny laptop with a weird keyboard that has the strangest oddities…. for example, i cant bold the title of euroblog. dont worry, i havent forgotten our little continuity ;)

- only six days left on the eurotrip. just trained out of italy and we are going to catch a plane to london tonight before making the final leg of our journey back to manchester.

- my whole life, the one place i wanted to go the most was rome and the one thing i wanted to see was the coliseum. we got to rome late thursday night with plans to see the ENTIRE CITY in one day. no problem! world learned travelers we are, with all our mighty travel experience, nothing would stop us from conquering the great city. … at 3 a.m, i woke up and puked for an hour, randomly. i had been totally health the entire trip while, i admit, hardly taking care of myself nor eating that welll. finally it caught up to me. if i were at home, i would take this opportunity to sleep through whatever commitments i had the next day – but this was ROME! i only had one day! (ok, for some reason only the exclamation points on this weird computer are bolded…) anyways, i decided to champ it and get up instead of sleeping in. we went to the vatican, joined a guided tour for 40 euros, and trekked through the heat. this later turned out to be a bad decision. about twenty minutes into the tour, i nearly fell over and had to sit down. the tour guide’s voice began to seem very grating and so i hovered half a minute behind the group. i stared uninterested at the various works of art. whenever someone bumped into me (and this happened A LOT – the vatican is so crowded. you are in a river of people) i would groan and get really grumpy. four hours later, after struggling to make it through one of the landmarks of the world, i went back to the hostel and had a great nap. probably one of my top ten naps of all time. and i take a lot of naps!

srsly what is up with this keyboard…

only TWO euroblogs left! i will have an update for you on friday and then a very special episode of the euroblog sunday night, when i am back in canada and jetlagged. its been a ride!

!!!

ok this tiny keyboard is incredibly hard to navigate. tilll next time!!!!!!!

jkd

i am in italy! i only have eight days of travel left (yipe)! my shoes are falling apart!

time for edition EIGHT of

THE EUROBLOG

- italy rules all countries (besides canada, of course). the specialty foods of all the other countries i have been to have been good, but not total standouts. german sausage is good, but its still just sausage. italy, however, apparently has had a stockpile of HUGELY delicious ice cream (or “gelato”… say that out loud and sensously) that is seriously making me want to go out and get more as i think about it. and delicious flavours, too – peach, mango, lemon, mmmm…. and they all taste BETTER than youd expect! western ice cream has got NOTHING on it. i am not even exaggerating. i want to consume nothing but this ice cream for the rest of my life.

- saw the David today. they dont allow photography in there. my problem is that i am using a wind-up disposable camera for this trip. there are sentries who are on the lookout for photo takers in the gallery, and the shot i wanted to get was right next to a sentry. i wound the camera in my pocket… they definitely noticed. “scrnchh… scrnch… scrnchh…”. we made eye contact. i nodded. i left for ten minutes then came back, snapped, and walked quickly away as if i had committed a crime.

- also saw the leaning tower of pisa. it sure leans. also there are hundreds of tourists at any point doing the “hold-up-the-tower” joke shot. i tried to get in the background of as many as possible. i wish i could read the facebook comments for all of my hilarious photo bombs.

ok till next time!

jkd

dunno if you noticed (not that i doubt your perception skills), but we went through a briiief hiatus here at pib studios. we had simply TOO MUCH reader mail we had to tend to, like this beaut…

dear nathan/joel: can i be anything i want to be when i grow up? – tommy

i don’t wanna be party to any endorsement here. if you wanna be a police officer but have terrible hand-eye coordination, i dont wanna be linked to you shooting some civilian down the line, you know? so im not gonna give you any hope in that regard. now, if you wanna be some sort of gardener, i don’t have any issue with endorsing that. go for it. follow your gardening dreams.

anyways

after a brief hiatus, edition seven of

THE EUROBLOG

alot of stuff to cover since last time. actually, i only have 13 days (out of 49) left of travel on the eurotrip. its a blur, really. 49 days is a long time! i don’t know if i really realized that before i left. i wonder if i will be able to fit back into proper society after this trip. i have a beard now. i spent most of my days over here travelling to and admiring landmarks while not showering.

to recap the last two weeks (to the best of my memory…)

- berlin ended up being a seriously great place. had a great time there. it was a while ago so i dont have any anecdotes for you.

- after berlin, we caught the train to “wolfsburg”, a small city in north germany. if that wasn’t an uncommon enough place to travel to, we proceeded to make our way to “fallersleben”, due to the fact that i have relatives there. thing was, i had never met them in my life. turned out to be great – we stayed with them for a week and i gained weight. germans, of course, love to eat – growing up around german grandparents i have become accustomed to the constant “refill-your-plate”  mentality of this culture, so i expected it. but for a week, i was never not eating or drinking something. the best part was that only one of them spoke english, the husband, but the wife spoke just a LITTLE bit of english… the words “eat, eat!”.

- we then went to dresden. the hostel we stayed at lent out free bikes which were probably from the mid 1940s. they were rusty and charming. the one day i wanted to go biking, however, only one bike was left – a purple girl’s bike with a raised seat that elevated high into the crouch area. but i REALLY wanted to go biking. so i took it anyways. and what followed was the most painful 40 minutes of my life. also, this thing was CLEARLY a girls bike. i rode by folks and caught many stares. i made sure to ding the bell at them, as if i knew what i was doing.

- tomorrow we go to italy. i am super excited!

that’s all for now. see you friday!

jkd

holy smokes, the halfway point of this series/the euroblog! half over! crazy!

not too much time again to write a post, so here i go with edition six of

THE EUROBLOG

- finally made it to berlin! it is a pretty radical city. we’re “couchsurfing” with a guy named adrien. couchsurfing is this site where you send messages to strangers asking if you can sleep on their couch or floor. my first impression? sketch central. but it turns out, it’s actually super exciting and cool that people will let you do this just because they are rad folks (somehow i have picked up the habit of saying radical/rad. you would think i would get MORE cultured over here, not less). adrien lives in a flat that i would’ve pictured being in italy – sloped roof wall with windows, two floors separated by fiendishly long staircases, and a ROOFTOP TERRACE. so jealous. i slept out there last night and i now have all sorts of grass in my hair.

- we went on a walking tour of berlin yesterday, which was great. these tours are well known in berlin – they’re even advertised on the maps of the city – so there were tons of people at the meeting place well before the time the tour started. at about 3:55 (tour started at 4) a man wearing a lanyard came up to us, introduced himself as a tour guide, and said he could only take a small group of about 25 with him, but that the rest had to wait for the other guide. we were near the front so we went along. the tour guide was great, an actor who gave tours in his free time, and he had lots of interesting stories to tell. when we were done the tour, after giving the tour guide a few euros we went to a german restaraunt (to eat “bratwurst”) and the guide started saying his goodbyes. right before he left, he said “just so you folks know, i hijacked you today. goodbye!”. he wasn’t a real tour guide! i was, more than anything, impressed by his shrewdness.

till next time!

jkd

Had a bit going on this week, it’s just been nonstop adventure ’round these parts. I considered creating a watered-down version of Part 7 of the Apopalypse, but I decided it would be better to give you the full version, just late.

For the first time in forever, I am going to have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch a bus. I can feel my good night’s sleep ticking away as I write this.

So I apologize to you the readers, and to Joel, for dropping the ball. I have let you all down. I’ll see if I can’t get my act together for Monday.

-Nathan

the connection between the bros and the scientists revealed! tune in friday for the SHOCKING CONCLUSION (nothing to be concluded)

i am writing this blog post at 5 AM after having not slept all night. you may be thinking, “yup, that’s a eurotrip for ya! crazy party all the time, with NO TIME to sleep! havin’ too much fun PARTYIN to sleep!” and while i appreciate the go-getter perception you have laid upon me, that is simply not the case (this time. wink. or ever)

today we were at the airport, having arrived at 12 am. our flight was to leave at 6:50 AM to berlin. we attempted sleep in awkward positions on airport lobby chairs, next to snoring fat men and chatty italian couples, at went to check in for our flight at 3:30 AM. in a haze, we heard the following -

“… these tickets are for tomorrow.”

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so we grumbly made our way back to the hostel where i now sit with a box of 59 cent cookies that are making my stomach growl. since we haven’t paid for today at this hostel, the plan is to go find a park somewhere and sleep on the ground next to the snoring fat men and chatty italian couples (THEY ARE EVERYWHERE)

you win some, you lose some.

tomorrow, though, it’s off to berlin!! i am super excited to get there. even though it is my first venture into a country where the people don’t speak english. i only speak a bit of german, and by a bit, i mean one phrase – “vie geih des dier” (spelling obviously wrong) – which means “how are you”. so hopefully politeness will get me a loooooong way in germany.

also this

so concludes this edition five of THE EUROBLOG

jkd

last week, in manchester, we stayed in a really cool hostel – if you’ve ever been to summer camp, it was like hanging out in the mess hall. this week, however, we’ve been staying in central london in a sketchy $9 a night dump i can’t wait to leave from. it makes me kinda claustrophobic. the hallways are so narrow. if i were a larger individual, i might have trouble fitting through the hallways. it’s true what they say – people seem to be generally thinner in the UK. i have a hypothesis for why this is – fast food is way expensive!! in canada, i can get a super extra mega value meal at mcdonald’s for under three dollars canadian. a steal! and so tasty! i walked into a london burger king the other day, and was shocked to see that even the whopper JR. costed four pounds (about six dollars canadian)! that’s without fries (or “chips” as they call them) or a drink. seeing these prices, i walked out and bought bread and meat from the local convenience store (which are all called “tesco”. no 7-11 or macs here). but it makes sense – the only reason i buy fast food is because it is so cheap. if i can get a delicious meal for 3 dollars, i will frequently do so. here, where you’re ranging from 6-8 dollars for slime food, no wonder people seem to be slimmer.

i miss grease though.

anyways it is time for edition four of

THE EUROBLOG

- last night we went and saw a play called “avenue q” at a theater where it had been playing for five years straight. and the place was still packed. the play stars puppets and is a laugh riot. out of the seven plays i have watched, this one ranks near the top.

- (for my fellow american and canadian readers: the world cup is a tournament of “soccer” games played in europe. “soccer” is a game where you attempt to kick a “football” into a “net” in order to score “points”. the group of players [or "team"] that scores the most points at the conclusion of the game is the “victor”.) for the longest time, whenever someone back home asked my opinion of soccer (or “football”), i would respond with some variation of “that is boring and i don’t care”. i’ve watched a few games in the hostel now, though, and my opinion is rapidly changing. its super exciting! last night, after spain won the semi-final (spoiler alert), the streets of london were flooded with crazed fans screaming and singing that “ole, ole ole ole” song. it was so cool! hundreds of fans on the streets jumping and shouting. some of them brought trumpets out with them (which i like to picture as if they have on them all the time. so when they go to the supermarket they bring a trumpet, just in case they need to express their spanish pride).

- london sights seen so far: st. paul’s cathedral (went to the roof. so high and sweet. they also have this thing called a whispering wall, wherein you can stand on one side of an enormous circle and whisper into the wall, and your companion on the other side is able to hear it. we used this opportunity to whisper the lyrics to the black eyed pea’s immortal “boom boom pow”) and big ben (which was incredible. maybe my favorite thing so far. at the grounds of big ben were camped an large group of anti-war protesters, who had been camped out in tents on those grounds for months. one guy had been there for nine years!! they were smelly but very interesting. one came to talk to us and may have been crazy, as he kept repeating a rap to us over and over. it went – “i ain’t a part of the sea, i ain’t on that mtv screen”. over and over. “i ain’t a part of the sea, i ain’t on that mtv screen. i ain’t a part of the sea, i ain’t on that mtv screen.” then he would say “i ain’t pink. i ain’t britney spears“. i believed him.

till next time!!

jkd

i paid a pound to come write the post for today and plunked down in a quiet corner with a cherry 7-up (delicious!). i cracked my fingers (which i don’t usually do so that hurt) and got ready to write. then, legitimately, 14 rowdy manchester thirty-somethings poured into the room shouting and hooting and are currently crowded around the pool table behind me yelling and playing pool with their hands. woooo..

ah well.

time for edition three of

THE EUROBLOG

- it is our last day in Manchester, which has been way better than i expected it to be. the city itself is not the nicest, and there are very few sights to see, but the hostel we’ve been staying at has been a ton of fun. we’ve met a lot of people. its kinda like summer camp – everyone hanging out in the mess hall and takin er easy.

- i met a man named jeffrey, probably sixty-five, who got to the hostel the same day we did. the day we got in we were super jet-lagged and just napped all afternoon. i woke up at like 4pm and looked over to see an old man crouched over on his cot with his back to me with his head in his hands. i went back to sleep and woke up an hour later. he was still sitting like that. i thought “dubs t f?” and went back to sleep. a couple of days later i spoke to him and he told me he had just been kicked out by his wife, lost his kids, been fired from his job, and all his possessions were being held by the city. he was super sad (obvs). i didn’t see him for a couple of days until today, when we talked again, and while he hadn’t sorted anything out yet, he was noticeably far more chipper and said to me, “you know, i know that we are not animals. and there is a system that will eventually solve my problems. and i continue to be vigilant and to stay positive and i know everything will work out”. :)

- tomorrow we are headed to london, which i am super excited for.

ahhhhh internet time out already??? nooooooooooo

jkd

i have 15 minutes left on my internet cafe time, so i’m gonna try and write AT LEAST 120 words per minute (not gonna happen). that is not to say i doubt my typing skills. of the skills i have, i am not hesitant to boast about how well i type. i am fast, accurate, and dynamic. i wish they had conventions for typing. it would be the lamest convention ever – so boring – but i would do pretty good.

anyways

THE EUROBLOG blog 2

- brits really seem to LOVE canadians. they make fun of our accents. they want us to say words so they can laugh at us. so like… i was talking to one about a car that drove past. laughter. they asked me to say it again. “car”, i said. more laughter. they said it themselves, prounouncing it “cah”. never before has my boring drab accent provoked laughter. it is great!

- other travellers who do not speak much english are really apologetic. there are a few really nice french travellers at our hostel who ALWAYS apologize when they cannot think of the proper english word in conversation. i ONLY speak english. i make no attempt to learn their language. and yet they politely apologize for learning english! seriously nice people round here.

- i woke up in the middle of the night in the dorm room (14 beds), and realized i was talking in my sleep (which i do almost every night). i tried to remember what my dream was, hoping it was not too embarassing. i then remembered i was talking to my old dog. i looked down. i had my blankets in a pile. i was petting the blankets in my sleep like i would pet a dog. geeeeeeeeeeeeeeez

- i cannot handle people snoring.

that’s it for now! see you monday!

jkd

here’s the first entry into our post-apocalyptic series. i will refrain from giving away any details until we get farther into the series, but stick around! i’m very excited about it.

if you didn’t catch my last blog, then you are unaware that i am spending the next 6 weeks in europe. london, then germany, then switzerland, then italy. i am going to do the majority of these posts in internet cafes and hostel basements, just because i remain dedicated to “the cause” (the cause: posting cute pictures of monkeys)

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

but here it is folks, edition one of:

THE EUROBLOG

(spoiler alert: i am not yet in europe. i am typing this post the night before i catch the plane, because i am not gonna get a chance to write one tomorrow night)

so basically, here is the itinerary for us in the first few days -

- catch the plane sunday @ 5:30

- arrive in manchester at 7AM on monday

- ????????

we are spending the first two weeks in england, but those first two weeks are wide open. we’re staying in hostels, but as to what we will fill our days with remains undecided.

i actually have never been on a plane nor traveled past the three canadian prairie provinces, so this trip is crazy out there for me. i am 21 and have never seen any landscape besides grass and gophers! it is crazy! though, i admit, i will miss the experience of telling people i have never been on a plane and then seeing their face lapse into an expression that says only “i feel sorry for you”. then, typically, i would follow that up with “yeah, never even been out of saskatchewan, manitoba, alberta either”. never can do that again. that was one of my favorite anecdotes…. :(

but seriously – i remain committed to bringing you blogs throughout the trip. i will probs post pictures, stories, et cetera. i know sometimes travel blogs bore people, but ill like, make jokes, n stuff. and post pictures of cute monkeys.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

see you (seriously) in euroland.

jkd