Granada

    As is the recurring theme of the last month, I said goodbye to the girls and took an 8 hour train ride down to Granada in southern Spain.  Granada is much more my scene than Barcelona was, and the landscape in the Andalucia area reminds me of Texas and New Mexico a little bit.  I had originally planned to stay here for 3 days and I'm currently on my 6th, so I guess you could say I like it here.  

    My first full day in Granada was spent with a group of people from the hostel on a little hiking tour of the nearby area.  The tour consisted of me, some other American guy named Sean who loved to talk about himself, 6 Australian girls, and our super outdoorsy and crazy cute Polish tour guide, Marta.  We hiked a few hours up a hill to see the city and a little down the way to a beautiful river gorge with ice cold water and tons of rock climbing.  It was a solid 104 degrees outside, but that didn't stop Sean from hitting on Marta the entire way to and from the gorge.  He would try to impress her by saying that he dabbles in indoor rock climbing and she would casually mention how she dabbled in climbing an 8 pitch, 100 meter crag a few weeks ago.  Needless to say, I was diggin on Marta.  Granada also locked in a spot on the list of cities I wouldn't mind living in: snowboarding in the winter, rock climbing newby, a beach 40 minutes away, and awesome food culture.  

Wild cherry trees along the way

The village we hiked from

Bridge at the gorge

    Granada is also home to an old Islamic Palace, called the Alhambra, which has hundreds of years of history between the Muslim Conquests and the Catholic Crusades.  I went there the next day with a girl from New York that I met at the hostel.  From pictures online, I didn't think it would be as great as everyone talked it up to be, but I was wrong: it was even better.  I had seen pictures of simple courtyards, which isn't that impressive, but what the pictures didn't show was the insane intricacy of everything in the palace.  This was my first encounter with Islamic art, and I was blown away with the beautiful geometric patterns interlaced into every door, wall, and ceiling.  

8017 wood pieces

    The other days that I stayed in Granada were spent just relaxing, going to tapas bars, and watching the Eurocup soccer matches.  Every bar in town is required to serve a little side snack, "tapa," with every beer, wine, or soda.  Some of these tapas are huge and delicious, and the beers are very cheap here, so eating out was very economical.  I caught on quickly and started hanging out with the heavy drinkers from the hostel and offering to eat their tapas after their second or third.  

First tapa

    Some of you might have noticed that I've been growing a beard during my trip, the so called "travel beard."  Well I also haven' cut my hair since I left home.  A few weeks ago I mentioned to my dad that I was growing it to eventually sculpt it into a mullet, and he was all, "you won't."  Well I proved him wrong.  And I got some racing stripes put on the left side (my left) of my head.  Marta hasn't said anything yet, but I bet she digs it.

Poofy mullet

    Southern Spain has a much different traveler demographic that Western Europe, which has been a lot of fun.  Most people here have been traveling for a few months and it's been a lot of fun to swap stories again and hear about their favorite places.  On the weekends, a lot of Americans studying abroad in Sevilla and Madrid come to visit Granada, which mixes things up a little bit.  Tomorrow, I head for Sevilla, where I'll watch the Eurocup final (that Spain is in) on the 1st and don my American flag on the 4th.  Like Charlie from It's Always Sunny, I'm about to go America on everybody's ass.  

"Texas ist der Bayern von America"

    After feeling bad for myself, still in Innsbruck, I took a lift up to some of the hiking trails in the mountains that hang just above the city.  The scenery was awesome and came up on you in an instant. There were a lot of other people around the gondolas, but 5 minutes in either direction and I was completely alone.  By the way, blogspot has terrible text editing features that make it impossible to have a clear background if you ever change it from that... thank goodness for Excel.

Innsbruck

Germany to the north

    Two of the guys in my hostel room I had met a few days ago in Bolzano.  They asked me if I wanted to come to the "public viewing" of the England vs. Ukraine soccer game, and I said, "only if I can wear my American flag."  So the three of us and some German girl who hates everything about Germany went to this big party, with me wearing my flag like a cape, and a badge of honor.  A lot of people stared at me and laughed and I heard someone say, "yeah the US is gonna go pretty far in the Eurocup."  But it was Austria so I didn't run into any anti-freedom anti-American sentimentality.  

Fried Tirolean bread dumplings with bacon and egg.  Better than the Don Juan.

    I took a train from Innsbruck back to Munich and got lunch with the Sandefurs (the YL family we stayed with a few weeks ago!) at a huge biergarten.  I forget the name of what I got, but it was a giant roll of meat with some potato salad and was amazing.  It was good to see them again and hear more about life abroad.  I told them about my few days in Bolzano/Innsbruck where I hated everything and they knew exactly what I was talking about: they had a rough time even a week within moving to Germany.  It was good to have someone to relate with, and I walked away really glad I had gotten to see them again.  One of the workers at the restaurant asked where we were from, and Ryan told him Texas, to which he responded, "ahhhh!  "Texas ist der Bayern von America!" which means "Texas is the Bavaria of America!"  Apparently, Bavarians feel that they have a lot in common with Texas, and in some ways they do.  Bavarians consider themselves Bavarians, then Germans.  My friend Jerry from Bamberg considered himself Franconian, then Bavarian, then German.  Gotta love the regional pride.

    I had 6 hours in Munich until my flight to Barcelona.  I thought about just reading, going to the gardens, seeing the river-surfers again, but decided to go to the Weihenstephan Abbey Brewery, just north of the airport.  Besides the Weihenstephan Weißbier being the greatest beer is all of Deutschland, they're also the oldest brewery in the world, established in 1040, and can trace its roots back to 768.  That's over a millennium of brewmastery, or braumeister-y.  It's now home to a university in which students can actually major is "Brewing Technology."  Forget petroleum engineering, damn.  The biergarten was actually really hard to find and a solid 20 minute hike through the woods to get to, but definitely worth it.  

Weihenstephan

    I rushed back to the bus station, went to the airport, and like that I was in Barcelona, Spain.  Why did I fly?  It would have been a 20 hour train ride and the reservations would have cost just as much as the plane ticket.  Why Barcelona?  To meet up with more friends, of course.  The next day, I met up with Carolyn Volk, Ellie Felbaum, Heidi Held, Heidi's sister Haley, and their friend Maria, who had all spent a month in Sevilla taking classes.  To make things even better, we grabbed some baguette, cheese, and chorizo and headed to a grassy area near the ocean.  The baguette/cheese/meat meal has become one of my favorites and I'm determined to continue working it in the States.

Me and good ole Carol

Picasso sketch, right before some psycho museum lady on a power trip gave me the business.

Sagrada Familia - very unique and beautiful

From the outside

    The next day we walked around the city and just did touristy stuff, but that night was a big one: Spain beat out France in the Eurocup and it was the festival of St. Miguel, which is basically a Fourth of July on the beach until the sunrise.  We met up with a big group of guys from UT, as well as Maricarolyn and Ellie, hit the beach around midnight, and walked into a war zone.  We had heard stories of how crazy this night was, but we were getting bombed by 8 year olds with fireworks that packed way more power than anything in the US.  I'm pretty sure I saw a kid in diapers with a roman candle or two.  The beach was pretty sketchy, but eventually we found out groove and chilled on the beach until 4 AM, leaving with the party still in full swing.  

The beach at 4 AM.

    I had heard for months now that Barca was a crazy place and the rumors are true.  It's cool and all, but I don't see myself coming back here, but I'm stoked to go to some of the smaller Spanish cities.  It's starting to sink in that I have three weeks and a day to cruise around Spain before I head home... and those days will go very quickly!

The beautiful parts of Italy

I spent 3 days in Manarola, one of the villages of the famous Cinque Terre in Italy, which thankfully happened to be the least touristy too.  Some of the coastal trailers were closed due to landslides, but the back trails gave stunning views and were pretty rarely traveled.  All 5 towns are linked by railways, so most people opted for those instead of the hikes, which is their loss.  The region reminded me of some of the best places I’ve been to on this trip: the water was as blue as it was in Fiji; the cliffs as crazy as New Zealand; the small in-between towns felt one part Italian and one part Nepali village; and the food was slammin (and somehow cheaper than in Florence or Rome, for the most part). 

I couldn't remember the towns' names when I was there, so who knows what town this is.

I think this is Manarola

View from the top of a nearby "mountain."  Should be able to see 4/5 towns in this picture, and the 5th didn't make it in the picture, but is still visible from the mount.

I guess this is Manarola too

    After my 3 night stay, I spent about 8 hours to get to Bolzano/Bozen, Itatly, a large German speaking town in Northen Italy (the region of South Tyrol).  Bolzano is the Italian name, Bozen is the German.  After WWI, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (you wouldn’t think by going to Hungary that it was ever a world power, no offense) ceded the region to the Italians, who then tried to kill off the German influence after the fascists moved in.  Now it’s a cute, culturally unique town just west of the Dolomites. 

    Bolzano is pretty cool too.  It’s pretty much the only city in Italy where döner kebabs and bratwurst are readily available and where beer is actually good and cheap.  I went on an all day hike with a mid-30’s American Army guy posted at some town in Italy.  Like Cinque Terre, the views were amazing and so was the weather, which made it hard to not like Italy. 

The Dolomites.  

The Dolomites

Llllllllama

    While making dinner later that night, I got more frustrated than I had in the last 4 months – nothing was working the way it should, food was spilling everywhere, it was hot, the internet sucked, etc.  I felt like I was going crazy.  Once I settled down (aka, ate), it felt like the energy was sucked out of me.  The next day, I literally just sat inside watching Sportcenter top 10’s and playing Mega Miner on addictinggames.com.  I felt like a loser, but I hadn’t just done nothing in a very long time.  But at the end of the day, I was more tired and felt worse than I did the day before. 

    

    I made it to Innsbruck today and still just felt like crap, not physically, but just a feeling of ugh.  I would say that I’ve been “ready” to go home for over a month now – glad to be here, but going home wouldn’t be bad either.  Today was the first day I wish I was home – if I could’ve moved up my flight home, I might have.  It was the first time I saw my next and last 4 weeks as something to "get through" instead of joyfully anticipated.  

    I’m a bit burnt out, and I think part of it is the fact that I haven’t taken a real Sabbath day in a while.  I haven’t really thought about it until today – I don’t even know what it would look like.  I guess it would consist of renting a bike, going to coffee shops all day, not planning the next city or next week’s hostels, and watching a few eps of Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  Just like trying to observe the Sabbath at home, it's something that is counter-intuitively hard to do.  And I'm sure part of it is that I'm tired of traveling, Sabbath or not.

    I guess the next step is not to "find time" for a Sabbath day, but to make time and trust God in that.  And not with the expectation of fixing my bad attitude, but with the intention of obeying God and the expectation that that's all that matters.  Also, God did bigger things than changing an attitude in the seconds it took me to write this sentence, but I'd rather see Him and learn of Him in the next 4 weeks than be happy the whole time.

llama.

Get in losers, we're going to the Duomo

    Elena, Lauren, and I arrived in Florence, Italy around 6:45 AM by an overnight train.  As usual, we had no map and only a vague sense of how to get to our hostel, but we made it in one piece and then went out to explore the city.  The girls did some research on the city, but I had never heard of the Duomo, Michelangelo's statue of David, or the beautiful bridge over the river that went through the city and the only I-talian I knew was from Inglourious Basterds.  But the Florence Duomo is easily one of the best cathedrals that I've seen in Europe - gigantic, colorful, and extremely ornate.  Every time we walked past it over the next few days, I was just enthralled by it.  We hiked to the top of the dome and got a 360 panorama of the city and the surrounding hills.

The Duomo

Same tower, from the top of the Duomo

    On our way to lunch, we ran into Kasey Givens coming back from class, then grabbed lunch with her at a restaurant overlooking the river and bridge.  That pretty much marked the start of a string of some of the best food Europe has to offer.  I had grilled zuchinni with meat on top and vegetables.  I don't even remember what we did between then and dinner - all I can think about is how good dinner was.  We met back up with Kasey and her friends Beth and Catherine (Katherine?  Kathryn?  Cathryn?), both of whom I knew from Texas.  We went to an Italian place that serves it's food family style: bread with cold cuts and other Italian stuff I don't know the name for, followed by three kinds of pasta I don't know the name for. The girls seemed to know all the names, but I was too busy stuffing my face full of the complex carbohydrate goodness.

Some bridge

The Duomo Quatro

    The next day, Lauren and Elena took a day trip to Cinque Terre (I'm there now, actually) and I opted to stay in Florence and eat American blueberry pancakes with Kasey.  Again, I don't remember much between then and dinner, but for dinner we met up with the same crew and went to a Mexican food place.  This was my first time to try Mexican food outside of Texas, but I think every table of patrons in the restaurant had at least one person from Texas.  Everyone was there for a fix, and my fix was enchiladas verdes.

    For our last full day in Florence, we went to Trattoria Mario's - a very small, very famous restaurant that is very well hidden.  We sat at a table of 4 - the three of us and a guy from Taiwan who was by himself.  The waiter called out, "3 for James... and just one, Joseph!"  There were plenty of awkward glances shared around the table, but when the food came we were all pretty absorbed in it.  Lauren and I shared a huge steak, and all three of us picked apart the large chunk of steak that our Taiwanese friend had left behind... and a bread roll that was left on the table behind me...  whatever.  We washed it down with way too much gelato, then headed on a train for Pisa.  Pisa delivered exactly what I went there for - weird tourists.  We all had a great time making fun of everyone around us.

Just-One Joseph mid bite

Pisa

Pisssaaaaa

I wish I had taken a picture of someone else doing this

    Our next stop was Rome, where we did a whirlwind of tours and sightseeing: the Pantheon, Piazza Navora, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Vatican Museum, St. Peter's Basilica, and every random thing along the way.  There is some truly staggering history, artifacts, and wealth in such a small area.  One thing that really caught my attention was the history of Imperial Porphyry - a deep purple, igneous rock that has only been discovered in once place on Earth: Gebel Abu Dokhan, Egypt.  It was used to make statues, sarcophogi, and other sculptures for only the elite, from Rome to Byzantium.  I was fascinated by the idea of a seemingly random, one-of-a-kind rock reserved for imperial use.  And what's even better, they say that the Vatican Library is home to 80% of the world's Imperial Porpyry.  It combined two of my favorite things: rocks and exclusivity.

Palatine Hill

    So we went to the Vatican the next day to check it all out.  We were on a time crunch, which kind of made it stressful, but there is some truly awesome stuff inside that place... some truly expensive stuff too.  I had no clue what to expect from the Sistine Chapel, but I was kind of let down, and the guards in the chapel were total jerks to everyone.  But St. Peter's Basilica was everything I had heard it was (everything I had heard came from Bart Frederick).  We walked around, then scooted to Piazza Navona  to grab dinner with Shelby Comito.

The Basilica and the Light of God 

St. Peters from the outside

    After dinner, we dropped Shelby off at her host family's place and went to see the Trevi Fountain.  We sat there for a long time, threw coins at people, made fun of more people, and just talked about the last two weeks.  It was their last night in Europe, so we sat there and enjoyed each other for a bit before saying goodbye.  I'm so thankful I got to travel with those two - I laughed more in the last two weeks than I had in a long time and it was good to have real, deep conversation with people I already knew.  It was good, great, and fun, but it also woke me up to a fact I had already known - being with friends is good, but it's not it, it won't fill me or make me happy forever.  I thank God that He decided to remind me of that here instead going home with all these expectations of those around me, only to have my world crumble around me soon after.  That's exactly what happened when I went back to Austin after spending 3 months in Wyoming, 3 years ago and also something that Henri Nouwen mentioned in that book that I quoted over 4 months ago in this blog.

Trevi Fountain

Just two priests eating gelato at the Trevi... what a cliche

SO FUN

    And now I'm back on my own again, just kinda tooling around and reading the books that Elena and Lauren brought me from the USofA.  Today I bought an American flag, just in case I couldn't find one near the Fourth of July.  There will be no doubt what country I'm from on that day.

Bierbahn

    At 8 in the morning on the 31^st, I woke up Ryan and Preston to say goodbye and thank them for letting me stay with them.  Then I also woke up Emily to say goodbye, and because she was sleeping in front of the door (space is at a premium in Paris).  I had a great time with them, but like every other person and place on this trip, I said goodbye and soon found myself alone and lost in a new city.  My next stop was Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.  Don’t worry, you’re not uncultured – I had never heard of it either.  If you’re a hardcore reader of my blog, then you might remember Uncle Ray, the inspiration and benefactor for my journey.  If you’re really hardcore, you might have actually clicked the link and seen that he’s the department head of statistics at Texas A&M (along with nutrition, toxicology, and bioinformatics; no big deal).  Well, I was in LLN because the Louvain Catholic University was giving him an honorary doctorate for the work he did with their statistics department and had a ballin ceremony to go with it.  He’s literally now Dr. Dr. Ray Carroll.  Again, no biggie. 

Left to right: Leah, Koen, Brett, Marcia, Ray, ME, Jeb

Notice Ray and my matching foreheads

    Before the ceremony, Ray’s wife Marcia and I attended his lecture on nutritional statistics, or something like that.  I had asked Ray is he was nervous, to which he replied, “oh no, I’ve given this talk before.  And plus, I know more about this topic than probably anyone else in the world… and by about an order of magnitude.”  He’s not even exaggerating.  After his talk, Marcia and bailed so we didn’t have to listen to the next guy.  On our way out, we hit up the food table, but one of the conference directors pretty much carded us by asking if we were with the lecture.  I mean, I basically looked like a homeless guy off the street, so you couldn't blame her, but she spent the next 3 minutes apologizing after she found out we were the family. 

    The next day, Ray, Marcia, their niece Brett, her boyfriend Koen, and I drove to Bruges, Belgium.  I had never seen the movie, but Bruges was a nice little town.  We saw some creepy art in a small museum, which was actually one of my favorites that I’ve been to so far, and ate what might have been the best salad I’ve ever had.  After two nights, we all said goodbye and I hopped on a train to Brussels.  This is what I’m calling the “beer train” or “bierbahn” part of my trip: Belgium, Köln, and München in a span of 2 days.  I had exactly 3 hours to try as much Belgian beer and waffles as possible before my train to Köln, Germany.  I went to a popular place called the Delirium Café for my brews and some hoppin spots for waffles, but I really wasn’t that impressed.  But I knew the next city would redeem it.

Take a closer look at... everything in this picture

Glorious

    I arrived in Köln in the early afternoon and my couchsurfing host Karsten was there to pick me up.  Before I left Belgium, Uncle Ray told me that his mother (my grandmother who I never met) said that the cathedral in Köln was the best one in Europe.  When I saw it, I said, “hoooooly crap,” so I think she was right.  We checked out the Cathedral and then met up with some of his friends at a local café and I got to try my first kölsch in Köln, which is like drinking Champagne in Champagne, but much less French.  Kölsch is only kölsch if it’s made in Köln and I’m a big fan of St. Arnold’s Lawnmower, a kölsch style beer made in Houston, so it was cool to try the real thing.  Later that night we went to a local brewery and tried some more kölsch.  All in all, I had three different kinds: Reissdorf, Pfeffen, and Früh, and I’d rank them in that order.  I liked the city a lot too, which was smaller than most places I’ve been lately and felt like it, but was still big enough to have the perks of a big city. 

Couldn't fit half the cathedral in one shot

Karsten and Pfeffer Kölsch

Occupy Köln making some serious headway

    I met back up with Lauren and Elena at München Haupbahnhof (main station) after they spent a few days in Prague.  We got in around 11 PM, but took the U-Bahn (subway) to Ryan and Emily Sandefur's apartment.  The Sandefurs have been doing YoungLife in München for 3 years now and we were connected with them through mutual friends back in Texas.  They had a beautiful place, totally put us up, and explained some of the finer German nuances to us.

    We only had 2 nights in München, so first we took a bike tour of the city.  Our tour guide was wildly inappropriate.  I wanted to make eye contact with the girls because of how ridiculous he was, but he was so dirty, I couldn't lift my eyes off the ground or even look him in face.  It was still a lot of fun, and afterwards we went to a small brewery just across the street from the famous Hofbräuhaus, which felt like choosing Good Burger over Mondo Burger.  As expected, the wheat beers were incredible, and with a name like König Ludwig Weißbier, it was hard not to like it.  We spent our last day in Dachau, the first nazi concentration camp, which was just 30 minutes outside of town.  It was a great museum without being too gloomy, but it was wild to see how beautiful the surrounding nature was.  It was hard to believe that it was so evil, so close to the city, and just within the last 75 years.

River surfing

They're there 365 days a year

Augustiner > Hofbräuhaus

Dachau, where the housing was

Entrance to Dachau - "Work sets you free"

Like a great man once said, "It's on to the next one," and so we bid farewell to the Sandefurs and hopped on our night train to Florence, Italy.  The only I-talian I know is from Inglourious Basterds, but I feel like I'm perfectly fluent whenever I put my four fingers together and touch my thumb to the index finger.

These two just couldn't keep it together at the Sandefur's