Overdue Update!

Whew! What a fast several days we've had. We're now beginning the last 1/3 of our journey already! We've done so much yet it has gone so fast. This is a crazy sensation, one I must tell you more about when I return in about a month.

Currently we are in a bar using the WiFi in Prague, Czech Republic! We successfully met up with my brother Joe. We actually met up with him several days before we were planning to, in Zurich, by accident. Lee and I were taking photos of some nice churches and all of a sudden Joe appeared in a picture. Then he appeared across the street with his friend Simon. We were all pretty surprised, and celebrated with Starbucks. Mmm.

Tomorrow we are going to Berlin and we've just bought plane tickets to Barcelona for Thursday. We'll try to do Madrid together, then Joe has to get back to Frankfurt to fly back to the US and Lee and I will go to...

Stay tuned! Gotta run, battery's dying and Pilsner calls...

Back from Africa

We beat the odds and managed to make our way from the Sahara Desert to the Tunis harbor in time to catch the Sunday night ferry back to Italy (via Malta).

That was about a week ago. Since then, we've seen:
Valletta, Malta,
Genoa, Italy,
Cinque Terre, Italy, and
San Marino, San Marino.
Tonight, we're taking an overnight train to Zurich, Switzerland.

Our Sahara excursion was awesome, by the way. Camels, sand dunes, giant dry salt lakes, mountain oases, great mosques, and Star Wars. What more could anyone ever ask for?

Hee hee

Gute Fahrt!
Originally uploaded by Jess is a dinosaur

This is the revenge I take on Lee for not blogging. He does Gute Fahrt in Vienna here, but also participates all over Europe and Africa. (Not to mention America.)

Update on where we're going, where we've been

You may notice an increase in blog updates this week. (Okay, basically yesterday and today). It is because we're in Hammamet, a blissful resort town on the eastern coast of Tunisia. Our pace has relaxed somewhat because it is very warm here, and this nice, air-conditioned internet cafe is right next to our hotel, is very cheap (two dinars for one hour, which is about $1.60) and much faster than the paltry "free internet" computers at many hostels where we've stayed. Lee and I are both uploading lots of photos to make room for more. (I think I've already taken 700 photos and we're not half done yet. God bless the digital camera.) We're also undertaking some major planning for the next few days of our trip.

So far it has been very easy to hop from one train or bus to the next, from one city or country to the next. It is easy to show up, find the tourist info station, find a free map and find a place to stay. But since we've ventured into less touristy places, a bit more planning needs to happen. The tourist centers are often closed or nonexistant. (You'd be surprised how far you can get without a map, though.) Since we are entering a heavier touring season, we are competing with Europeans on vacation, who invariably seem to know what they're doing moreso than I do.

We are going on an excursion tomorrow to south Tunisia. We will step foot into the gateway to the Sahara and possibly ride camels. We will see many sites of Star Wars filming. We are traveling with a tour group, so it should be easier. We will stay one night somewhere along the way and arrive back in Hammamet Sunday evening.

Here is where the planning comes in. All along we had though we'd take the Tuesday ferry from Tunis (the capital) back to Italy, all the way to Genoa, actually. But we found out yesterday there is also a Sunday ferry from Tunis, and it stops in Malta, which we wanted to get to but didn't know how. The tricky part is this: we need to get from Hammamet to Tunis (about an hour) and then to the port (maybe half an hour) and THEN through customs (prior to Italy this took 10-20 minutes, in Italy it took over an hour but luckily their ferries often run one to two hours late) and then on a boat to Genoa at 22:00. (Oh yes, and we're supposed to check in an hour before departure.) Our tour from the Sahara returns to Hammamet at 19:00 at the latest. In THEORY, we should be able to do this. But ports are notoriously difficult to navigate, we've found. Ferry tickets need to be purchased in advance and this particular ferry is quite expensive. (Not that big a deal, as we've been under our budget so far and have plenty of dough to blow on ferries. But not if we miss the ferry.) So, do you think we can do it? We haven't decided yet if we're going to try to go on the Sunday night ferry or stick with the easier, but less fun, Tuesday ferry.

Here is an updated list of our adventures so far, and I list these as much for myself as for you faithful readers, because I often forget where we've been, what we've done, where we are, who I am, etc. (Just kidding.)

Oslo, Norway
Stockholm, Sweden
Vaxholm (part of Sweden's archipelago)
Helsinki, Finland
Tallinn, Estonia
Riga, Latvia
Majori (part of outlying Riga coastal area)
Vilnius, Lithuania
Warsaw, Poland
Krakow, Poland
Auschwitz/ Birkenau, Poland
Budapest, Hungary
Bratislava, Slovakia
Vienna, Austria
Salzburg, Austria
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Zagreb, Croatia
Split, Croatia
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Kotor, Montenegro
Bari, Italy
Napoli, Italy
Palermo, Sicily
Tunis, Tunisia
Carthage, Tunisia
Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia
Hammamet, Tunisia

Many of these were little side excursions and did not take a full day. We've already done more at this point in the trip than we had planned, and if you looked at our itinerary before we left, you know it was ambitious. We were even ahead of schedule for awhile, but I'm not sure where we are now since we've slowed down a bit. (Took a long nap yesterday due to a wedding party and hellish heat at the hostel in Tunis the night before, slept in today and will probably go to the beach for some of today.) I think sometime next week marks the half way point, which is CRAZY, because we've already done so much but it also feels like we've barely been gone a week. The rest of our trip is also a bit up in the air because it depends on what we shall do and where we shall go when we meet up with my brother Joe in Germany. Prague? Spain? Portugal? Morrocco? So many possibilities.

Traveling is both very easy and somewhat challenging. I never predicted how easy it would be to just decide to go somewhere, to show up and to find things to do. This is something I want to do more when we come back. It makes no sense that I have been to Africa but not to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I ventured into Montenegro, the newest country (besides Kosovo) yet I can't manage the trip into Minnepolis.

The challenges don't seem daunting yet, and I know that is thanks in large part to having such a compatible traveling partner. Being with Lee makes everything seem easy and fun (if you are gagging at my saccharine sentiments, you should not be reading this blog). His French has been invaluable in Tunisia, which was once a French colony. I may have to prove my worth when we get to Spain. But before then, I'd better practice my Spanish.

Buenas tardes, y gracias por leyendo! (Okay, I cheated on that last verb, and I'm still not sure it's correct. But c'mon, it's irregular! I can't be expected to remember all the conjugations!)

Some favorite photos from Krakow

I am trying to stay current on my photo uploads, as my camera is getting full, but it takes quite awhile. Here are some photos from Krakow from June 22 ish:



Pierogies at last.



Hope Amidst Horror, at Aushwitz



The risk of flip flops



Lee on a night train to Budapest

You are always welcome to look at my photos on my Flickr page, though I must warn you there are a lot and I haven't culled any for quality. We enjoy reading your comments. I swear to you Lee promises to do more blogging. Right now he's updating his "Cities I've Been To" application on Facebook to make everyone jealous.

Fast internet at last!

Sorry we haven't been very active on the blog lately- it is because we are too busy having fun! But now we both have to do a photo dump before our cameras are full, plus we're taking a ferry to Bari tomorrow (heh heh-- it would rhyme if not for Italians and their consistent pronunciation... it's BAR ee, like Atari). There's not much in way of cheap accomodation in Bari, so we were thinking of getting to Naples... figuring out the complications as we speak/ type.

The past few days have been among my favorite so far. We made a minor detour from our original plans, and it's working like a German train. First, instead of staying in Vienna, we spent only about eight hours there. It is near sinful to only give Vienna eight hours, but there was a little game going on there that evening: the last semi-final game in the EuroCup tournament, which they have every two years here. As a Norweigan waiter put it, "It's just like World Cup, only without Argentina and Brazil."

Basically, thinking we could find a place to stay the night in Vienna would be like thinking you could walk into a Beatles reunion concert five minutes before the show and pick up some extra tickets. So we saw the city and the fans, then made it to Salzburg by midnight. The place we stayed was listed on a hostel website, but it was actually a hotel. You cannot imagine the luxury I felt having my own room that I didn't have to share with loud/ farting/ sweating/ other people. Our OWN bathroom. And... our stay included breakfast.

Most hostels, when they advertise that they include breakfast, offer one or two choices of cereal, milk (unrefrigerated! Crazy!), maybe bread and jam, coffee and tea. Nice enough, especially when it's free. At the Hotel Lasserhof in Salzburg, we ate more at breakfast than the previous three days combined. They had cereal. (Four kinds.) They had bread and jam. (Eight kinds of jam.) They had EGGS. (Both hard-boiled and scrambled.) They had bacon. They had fruit cocktails. They had cookies. Coffee. Juice. Tea. Milk. Hot chocolate. And they had Lee and Jessica at their table, stuffing face before heading out for...

...The Sound of Music Tour! Definitely one of the most "touristy" things we've done so far, but totally fun and worth it. We even received a special Edelwiess souvenir. (It was a pin. Peter, our tour guide said they used to give out Edelwiess seeds, which will only grow in mountains, but too many Austrailians were questioned at customs. I think he made this up. Peter had jokes.)

So from Salzburg we went to Ljubljana, then to Zagreb in Croatia, then to Split in Croatia. Then the plan changing continued. We were going to take a day trip to Dubrovnik, southern Croatia, then take a ferry from Split to Ancona in Italy. However, it takes 4.5 hours to reach Dubrovnik by bus, and that's with no traffic and no border problems. (Don't know if you know-- the six countries in former Yugoslavia had a war here nigh on ten or so years ago.) Many people we've met on our travels said Dubrovnik was awesome. We didn't want to miss it. So we booked two nights here through a website, which didn't list many hostels but lots of private residences. This worried us because often when you de-board a train or bus, flocks of people will rush into your face with signs reading "Sobe. Room. Chambre. Zimmer." and try to convince you to give them money and take you far away. The place we're staying in Dubronik is very nice. It's in the home of Svee and Niko, two grandparent types who are very sweet and very non-English-speaking.

Upon our arrival in Dubrovnik, plans started falling into place. Instead of returning to Split to take a ferry to Ancona (in order to eventually take a ferry to Tunisia, Africa) we booked a ferry to Bari, which is in southern Italy and much closer to Africa. Then we booked a day trip to Montenegro, the newest country in the world. (Kosovo, number six in the former Yugoslavia, has not yet been recognized by the U.N.) We returned from Montenegro just a few hours ago and plan to have dinner with a Russian couple we met on the tour. Dinner despite HEAVY feedings on the boat. Our excursion included lunch and a snack. Well, when they brought the snack out (we were off the bus and on a boat by then) we thought it was maybe lunch and that the candy and shot of Russian grappa (45 proof) had been the snack. Snack consisted of four kinds of meat from pigs, cheese, tomatoes and a bread basket. A few hours later we had the real "lunch:" an entire fish complete with face, cucumbers, tomatoes and bread and cheese. Whenever food is included in the price we like to eat up.

But I digress. What I wanted to say is that Dubrovnik is how I imagined heaven when I was a little girl. There's an entire city walled in by a stone wall you can walk around. The ground appears to be made of marble-- in fact it is so slippery I keep almost wiping out. There are palm trees and mountains, cool breezes and blue skies and sun all day. It is, in words that fail to do it justice, awesome.

That's enough for now. I keep bugging Lee to do a post so people don't get bored of my take on things. He keeps saying, "one of these days."

Wish us luck in Napoli, land of pizza and Pompei!

Croatia Rules!

Hey everyone, it is Jess and Lee (he is sitting right next to me, so no, I am not hogging blogging duties) live from an internet cafe on the lovely island of Hvar, near Split, Croatia. We are in the Adriatic. We are tan. We are happy. We cannot find the apostrophe key on the keyboard.

That is all for now.