Follow Ryan

Beep, beep, beep. It’s 0800 and I’m not working today so why am I getting up so early? Because I can’t book a Virgin Trains ticket less than 24 hours ahead via their web site and phone reservations are only open from 0800 to 2200.
I decided to visit Amanda a couple of weeks ago. She has been living in the Bridge Hotel for quite a while now and I keep putting off actually planning a trip up. So…I skipped the planning and just bought a ticket.

Have I ever mentioned how much better train travel is than air travel? I, being unfamiliar with Euston Station, arrived one hour before my train departed. This was about 40 minutes more than I needed. This happens to be just the right amount of time to purchase and casually eat breakfast - how convenient. And when do you ever get this good of a view out of a commercial plane window?

I’m back to low-tech recording methods: my digital camera and Psion Revo are both out of commission. I’m looking for a Revo replacement (any ideas?) and my camera should be fixed soon. For now, I am relying on my trusty Lomo and a pen and notepad to record my adventures.

I say that I did no planning, but it’s not entirely true - I confirmed that the “gale force winds with severe flooding” that were reported in the area were not going to be occuring where I was actually headed. I also ensured that Amanda would be there! The weather should be cold, but not extreme and Amanda will be there.

This trip brings my UK city travel count up to three (four if you count brief layovers in Dover to catch the ferry to France) - Cambridge, Bath, and now Keswick.

Virgin offered to upgrade me to first class for £20. I now wish I had taken them up on the offer. I’ts not like an airplane where I’m trying to get more legroom…I’m just a snob. Most of the people in standard class are fine but there is that 5-10% who eat smelly food, leaver their mobile ringer on its loudest setting, and play their headphones so loudly that they turn into speakers. It seems that even in the last 15 months since I’ve been in England that the traditional English code of keeping quiet on the train is being rapidly destroyed. This is great news for people travelling in groups, but sad news for the solo traveller like yours truly.

But now I must sit back and enjoy the ride.

I took a trip to Cumbria to visit my friend Amanda. I used the traditional pen and paper to write my stories that I will type in to the computer soon. The pictures are already up so go ahead and take a look!

I have updated the captions for my Turkey Photos. I didn’t write any stories while I was there so the captions form a story on their own. It is a quick summary since basically the holiday was spent eating, drinking, sailing, and waterskiing. Enjoy.

I have recovered all the stories from the initial trip that inspired me to build followryan.com. Unfortunately, anything I have posted since then has been lost. I am not going to try to remember what I have posted or where I have been because looking back can be detrimental to your health. I was entertained reading all of my old stories, but I now need to move forward. I will be posting some new pictures soon and in the meantime, check out the Gallery Images.

My largest piece of advice for air travel overseas: spend the miles to get the upgrade to business class! I was lucky. I had an aisle seat in the center of the plane with two empty seats next to me. I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep - but not the good kind…where you feel refreshed, it was the sloppy kind where you basically just feel different than you did before you went to sleep. You think about it for a while, but can’t really tell if you are more or less tired than you were before sleeping. I had the better deal…
Erik was stuck next to a kid in an “airplane” seat (carseat, but adapted for plane use) that played with the remote control for the television the whole ride therefore rendering erik’s right armrest useless. He finally tried reverting to the sleeping in school methods of chin in the palm of your hand and arms folded over the desk (food tray in this example) with your head down. These provided about as restful of a sleep as they used to in school and so basically we didn’t get any sleep at all.

David and Maryse were right on time and waiting for us as we emerged through the maze of passport checkpoints and the watchful eye of customs (remember, DON’T make eye contact or you’ll probably get stopped! head down…you’re on a mission). We are planning our time in london and trying to get oriented while the Encerca folks discuss some of the first good news that they’ve had in a while - job security is always a good thing.

The exhaustion is kicking in. Could it be my attempts at making it on the board for powerball scores? Or is it the fact that I haven’t eaten yet? My mind is starting to slow down (which is probably evident by the borish article you are reading) and I said something to erik and he replied that he got hit by it about 5 minutes ago…the same time I did. Oh well…we are going to take a tour of london tomorrow and hit the London Eye on sunday so keep watching - don’t let one bad post get you down!!

p.s. The picture situation isn’t looking great. Ofoto wasn’t a great help in telling me the address to mail my film to - they keep telling me to use the mailers in my welcome kit with free postage…instead of reading my letter and telling me the address so I could mail film in while on the road. Anybody know of a good place to mail film into? Let me know!

I have noticed a couple of things since my return: I do not admire the world while actually living in it as much as I do during travel and the color and variety of my words have greatly diminished. Upon both of these issues I now work in hopes that I can keep the inquisitive excitement and wondrous view of the world afforded me during me trip.
We now arrive at the largest let down of the trip - the TGV train ride from gryon to paris. We had become quite accustomed to travelling by rail and came to expect certain things from it - a nice view out the window, a choice of fairly comfortable seats that best suited our situation, and conversation volume kept at a tolerable level (our railpass was for first class travel, I must note.) The TGV reaches an operational high speed of 186 miles per hour although it has been tested at higher speeds. The ride was to take about 5 hours - much shorter than the 9 it took to get to switzerland from munich!

Why was the ride a letdown? you ask. Was it that the speed didn’t meet your expectations? No, although it didn’t “feel” like almost 190 miles per hour. Were the seats not comfortable? No, actually they weren’t. The lack of space evoked a feeling of being on an airplane, however. Were there loud, obnoxious people talking the whole trip? Worse - kids all around us! Kids kicking seats, kids puking because of motion sickness, kids cavorting around like they are prone to do (I don’t handle children well, if you can’t tell). Were the windows small, offering no view? The windows were quite large, however, when we made our reservations (TGV is a reservation required train) we were (unbeknownst to us) assigned seats looking smack dab into the middle of a window pillar. The worse part had to be the large family in front of us that pulled out an entire meal and began eating it - filling the loud, cramped, poor view, high-speed chamber with varying odors of ham, mustard (we went through the city of dijon, coincidentally), and random malodorous vegetables. Don’t get me wrong - it wasn’t an unpleasent journey, just not the marvel of modern technology wonder we were expecting!

Paris is beautiful - the prague of the west if you will. The thing that caught my attention most about the city was the genorous amounts of space that are reserved for pedestrians and simple leisure activities - large gardens, HUGE walkways along waterfront property (prime retail space, but not a shop in sight), and just a general leaning towards beauty and leisure rather than shopping - as so many other cities have done.

Paris is a pain in the ass. Every other city we visited did a fairly decent job of attempting english (as I noted before most are excited to have a common language to enable communication with their neighboring countries). Not the french. They are very proud of their heritage and many either do not know english or claim to not know it out of contempt for an american who could only mutter the phrases “I cannot speak french” and “do you speak english?” Even people who did not speak much english in other countries would help us out with some vocabulary when our phrase book/dictionary failed us (as it did so many times - I wish somebody would make a decent one.) I know we missed out on a wonderful meal or two because we tried to be seated at a couple of places but couldn’t muster up a strong enough conversation to figure out if there were seats available or not and ended up eating at restaurants with menus translated into english. We had low quality coffee compared to every other city we visited as well. To top it off, our hostel had a curfew. Nowhere else did we feel more unwelcomed than paris. Still, it is a beautiful city and I recommend a visit to anyone.

We took the train to the airport and when we tried to exit found our tickets weren’t valid. We walked over to the ticket counter and explained our situation (once again, very little english spoken so it was quite a difficult task. Every other city staffed these positions: ticket takers at the airport, check in people, etc. with multi-lingual people.) He said it was 50 francs each for our ticket! Incredible! We hadn’t spent that much on a ticket since we started our trip - the strange thing is public transit IN town was among the cheapest we had seen. We didn’t have 50 francs on us and I was completely out of money at this point. We had some swiss francs in our pocket leftover from the switzerland trip that he was happy to take and give us a ticket (because after we got through and some quick math, we figured out he made about $5 US profit over the advertised price, but we were glad to get through.)

It’s funny - we went through 8 countries on this trip and the only time we get hassled is when we get on a plane. Metal detectors and a multitude of questions and detailed passport checks were all rituals we had to go through to get on the plane. It is a good thing that terrorists only travel on airplanes and haven’t found out about trains yet because it could be disastrous! Somebody else could pack your bag, you could be asked to carry something, or your bags could be out of your possession and you can still board a train! This kind of rampant disregard for stopping terrorists (and child pornographers I’m sure) should not be allowed and we should shut down the train system as it exists today - think about the children!

We had a very understanding flight attendant who answered our requests for multiple bottles of baileys and beers with said drinks and a comment about not letting the others know because they are not supposed to give passengers that much liquor - but we looked like nice enough guys. The baileys really helped the plane ride go faster and we made it to chicage in what seemed like a very short amount of time.

We disembarked and went to baggage claim, because we had to go through customs - uncle sam wants to make sure he collects taxes on things you’ve bought in other countries - and we had to have our checked baggage with us to do so. This is more a ceremony than anything else as there were pretty much no questions asked of anyone but rather just a steady line of people walking past the officers only to give their bags back to an american representative on the other side. This, I will note, is the last time I would see my bag for 2 days.

We made it to the next checkpoint where we had to empty our pockets of change and place our daypacks on the x-ray belt, the whole ritual that everyone knows. I was helping erik put some stuff in his daypack (so he didn’t have to take it off his back) and he was holding stuff for me as I re-arranged everything for this false-sense-of-security procedure that millions of people go through daily when we both realized that on the other side of that checkpoint, we would part ways and head to different terminals. Twas a sad moment, but also a bit of a relief. I had grown quite accustomed to hanging out with erik every day and knew it would be strange to wake up and not instantly say “what time is it?” as he was the only one with a working watch. It was a very fun time and it was sad to part ways, but I know the memories we both have will live with us forever. The other side of security brings us to the moment that we embrace with full-on maleness: a hearty handshake and “well, it’s been fun! see you later.” and we are on our separate ways.

Thus the adventure concludes, right? Not at all. I go to the gate for my flight that leaves in 45 minutes and check to make sure everything is in order: it is. I take a seat and wait for the flight to board. About 20 minutes before we are supposed to take off, there is still no word on boarding…then the announcement comes. “For those passengers waiting on flight 4209 to board, we regret to inform you that it has been cancelled. There is one other flight to indianapolis, but it is completely full. We can put you up in a hotel tonight or you can take a bus that will depart from in front of baggage claim 10 at 715 (1915 for the euro-viewer). Please come back to the counter and let us know which option you’d like to take.”

*sigh* I’m 180 miles from home and I get stuck in chicago. If I only had a little money, I have friends I would love to visit - but my back account is overdrawn and I was really excited about sleeping in my own bed tonight so I take the bus option. I stand in line and the woman in front of me turns around and says “i guess it’s a bus to indy!” We start talking and I find out she is from puerto rico and works for eli-lilly so she comes into indianapolis every month or so for meetings. We begin our adventure together - we get moved to a different gate for checkin but are diverted to baggage claim before we make it to the front. We wait at baggage claim until 730 for our bags - hers shows up at the last minute and mine never appears (what are the chances it would have made my flight since they can’t even get it to me at baggage claim?!)

She tries to locate our bus, but cannot find any bus that is going to indianapolis (one close call, but it was going to indianapolis avenue in chicago). Finally, after other passengers have made much noise at the bag claim desk, an american representative comes out and tells us that the buses (when did it become plural?) are still here and we should go out and get on them. If our bags haven’t shown up it’s because they made it on the flight to indy and we’ll be able to pick them up there (yeah, right I think.) We are given directions to the “buses”: go out of the building, left a bit, and the buses will be on your right. Okay - we walk and walk and walk, but no buses are to be seen anywhere! We decide to turn around and head back. We finally run into the group of people standing on the curbside in front of - no, I’m not kidding - minivans. They had hired 3 minivans to drive us to indianapolis. Unfortunately, the seating did not allow maria (I found out her name as well as numerous things about her during this fiasco) and I to sit together so our conversation was abruptly halted as she took a seat in the back and I got to sit shotgun.

The drive was long, but we barely dropped below 90mph the entire time so not as long as it usually takes. I made it to the airport around midnight and called dad on maria’s mobile phone (since my battery was dead at this point) to come get me. My bag was nowhere to be seen and I got a baggage claim ticket/lost baggage form with delivery info for pittsboro. The bag should be there by noon tomorrow, I was told. Not to be - I called late the next day and they said “we don’t know where your bag is sir. We’ll let you know when we find it.” Oh well, I’ve seen that stuff constantly for the last 30 days, kind of nice to not have to look at it anymore!

The bag finally showed up. My jetlag is almost gone. My mom returned from her trip to arizona. My brother is still MIA since he now has a job and has worked every day since I’ve gotten back. All in all, things are going well. I’ve got some tech editing as well as some writing lined up and getting back into the swing of working quite well. I’ve never been on a vacation that made me want to do *something* when I got back - I usually just want to stay on vacation forever, but this one motivated me to make some money so I can go back and begin another long-winded adventure that I can share with everyone once again.

thanks for watching. If you join the updates mailing list you will know when I add more information for your perusal. The list has had some problems in the past (as current list members can tell you), but I’ve been talking to my hosting company and hopefully they will be resolved soon.

Later!

ryan

We departed munich after an uneventful stay. We missed a much raved about city, but t was good to relax and take care of laundry. (London was the last washing - we were repulsive to many, I’m sure.)

We caught the train out of munich around noon and headed to gryon, switzerland…a 9 hour train ride!
Let me step back a bit and cover just how we got here. We were in london - part of the plan - when we found that it was cheapter to fly to amsterdam than take the rail to paris and start our journey on the mainland. Once on the continent, rail prices went down so we flew to amsterdam with the intention of visiting for a bit and then heading to spain.

Amsterdam was fun, but we wanted to see more of the netherlands AND see the tulips bloom. So we headed to a town called noordwijk because a hostel map on the wall in rotterdam showed it to be right in the middle of the tulip fields. We arrived at the hostel and found it to be quite sterile and unexciting. We decided to walk to the nearest town and see what was going on there. After an hour walk, we got to noordwijk aan zee (noordwijk on the sea) and found the hostel called the flying pig (if you’ve been following the stories, you have a rough idea of this progression so far.)

We moved from the boring hostel to the flying pig and had a great time and met great people. We like the chill atmosphere so much that we stayed for something like 5 days (they all kinda run together so I can’t recall exactly.)

One of the guys that was staying there was named wes. We hung out with him and others during our stay and finally decided to get out of town when wes pointed out that we should go to gryon and visit him in switzerland on our way to paris. It sounded like a great idea so we got the contact info for the hostel and parted ways.

So here we are - two weeks later and on a train to visit wes in gryon. The ride is quite interesting. If you’ve never seen the swiss alps you are missing a lot! I had heard from a friend (jennifer) that switzerland was amazing and I believed her, but didn’t really understand her enthusiasm about the place until I got there and saw it for myself.

We had a couple of transfers with about 5 minutes between our arrival and departure into stations that we were not familiar with at all that were quite hectic, but everything worked out in the end. The one that worried me was the final connection in Bex (bay) to gryon - we had about 7 minutes and the train track was under repair so we had to catch a bus that we had no idea where it departed from.

The train pulled into the station and we jumped out and half-ran to out of the station looking for a bus. We saw but one bus parked in front of the station and it looked fairly abandoned. I jumped on anyway and asked one of the guys sitting in a seat waiting “does this bus go to gryon?” To which he replied a simple “yes.” We jumped on and soon the driver showed up and we were on our way.

The trip from bex to gryon is about 30 minutes and basically a zig-zag ascent on a mountain. We were in this large bus whipping around 180 degree corners and barely missing oncoming cars in the process. I’m glad it was dark because I think I might have been rather scared - cars and oncoming traffic coupled with a sharp dropoff if the bus were to careen off the road make for a nerve-racking combo. We got dropped off in the middle of nowhere with the guy I asked about the gryon destination. It turned out he was heading to the same place so we started our (advertised) 5 minute walk to the hostel (uphill of course.)

After about 10 minutes we started to wonder if we were going in the right direction. We looked around and saw nobody and nothing really looked open except on chalet/restaurant/bar. I walked in to a room of french conversation that abruptly halted upon my arrival. I mustered my best phrase-book french and said: “Parlay voo englay?” (phonetic spelling) and was greeted with a comforting “yes, a little.” I inquired on the location of the chalet martin and was taken outside and pointed in the right direction - go up that hill past the roundabout and make a left…it’s on your right up a bit. We wandered up a little ways in that direction and found nothing - absolutely nothing!

This time it was chris’ turn to ask (chris is our new acquaintance from the bus). He found out that we were way off and had to go back down the mountain a ways before we could find it. We headed back down the mountain and found a small sign in a poorly lit location that said “backpacker hostel” on the corner of a steep turn. We headed off in that direction and finally found the place - good thing too since the snow was starting!

We were greeted with a “You guys get lost?” (we were an hour later than we said and we took the last bus up the mountain…so he knew when we should be getting there approximately.) We had, and we said as much then paid for the evening. It was quite the relief to actually step inside the warm building and know we wouldn’t be sleeping outside in the snow.

The good news is that once we got there we found the hostel to be one of the best ones we had stayed in. The place was clean, but had a strange hippy commune vibe going on. Couldn’t wear your shoes in the main area, signs everywhere telling you to clean up your dishes and wash the tables and not make a mess in the restroom, etc. Once you got used to that part though, the people were awesome and we had a great time. The strange thing about the swiss alps is I could talk about the view all day, but until you actually see it for yourself, you just won’t understand the awe that fills you when you look out.

We inquired about our long lost friend (wes) and received a jolly look and a “why yes, wes is here mate!” (the guy working reception was an aussie). We wandered around the rather small place and found no sign of the guy (he’s a big guy too! and always wearing bright tie-dyed clothing…) We resigned ourselves to a game of chess and trying to find him the next day when alas - he pops in from out of nowhere half dazed and with a rather shocked look on his face that we actually showed up! We exchanged greetings and swapped stories of our respective trips.

The rest of the visit was pretty low key and we just chilled for a while until the train to paris departed - two days later.