The Eurotrip: Part 3-Dear Bedbugs, I'm Not Your Dinner

Current location: Athens, Greece
An older Greek gentleman sat next to me on the train from the airport to the city. He noticed that I kept staring at the map off to the side. "Do you want a subway map of Athens?" he asked and then grabbed his copy from his pocket and gave it to me. Wanting to be that tourist who tries to learn about local language, I asked him to teach me how to say thank you in Greek. "Efharisto." "Huh? One more time please." "Efharisto," he said with ease. I tried repeating but my "thank you" sounded more like me trying to cough up snot. He laughed, then for the next 5 minutes, I got a lesson on pronunciation. Wong and a few others around snickered in my feeble attempts. (I probably would've done the same thing if I had to hear me try to speak in Greek.)
Do I like Athens? Not really. But it's probably because I was also eaten alive on my first night by some very hungry bedbugs. I woke up with over 50 red spots and a breakout of hives. (I would thank that one special bug who got me on my right eyelid. Now, I'm a pirate and I don't need an eye patch. ARGGGGH!!!)

The Eurotrip: Part 2-Rain, Rain Go Away. Come Again When We're Not On Holiday!

Current location: Berlin, Germany
Everyone knows Berlin. It's the capital of Germany, second most populous city in the European Union, major center of European politics, culture, media and science and oh yeah, there's a lot of history here too. While I had a great time here despite the crap weather. However, I couldn't help but feel depressed. (A word of advice... Limit yourself to only one museum devoted to either the Wall or the Holocaust per visit.)
And of course, on our last day, the weather cleared up. Naturally...

The Eurotrip: Part 1-We're Cold And It's Wet... This Sucks!

Current location: Kiel , Germany

6 months of talking, planning, emailing, researching and booking finally culminated to this... the wacky Eurotrip where we transcend to 3 far-flung countries in an attempt to see the continent. Wong and I first concocted this journey way back when I was still employed in Japan (yeah, a long time ago). And at 2:30a on Tuesday, it began with us dragging our semi-coherent selves to a freezing cold bus stop to catch a ride to the airport.
Now, since this is the end of June, one would expect sunny skies with warm shorts and a singlet type weather, right? Instead, London followed us and landed in Hamburg shivering. After some light shopping, we headed up north to Kiel to see some of Wong's old friends. Upon our arrival, the clouds thought it would be funny to dump buckets of water on us and threw in some hurricane-like winds for good measure.
For those of you who don't know your German geography, Kiel is located to the north off the south-east corner of the Baltic Sea and is known for its sailing events. Although not much sailing was to be seen (missed that by a week along with perfect weather), it was a nice change not having to deal with all the tourist pedal-pushing that I've growing to love. Would I come back here? Probably not but at least I can say I was here. And that's all that matters.

Let's Play... Make That Conclusion!!!

Just returned from: Turin, Italy
I'm going to try to make this an interactive blog post. Here's how to play. I'll list some facts and figures about my trip to Torino and you make your own conclusions. Let's start...

• Number of people who went to Turin with: 8
• Number of Australians in the group that went to Turin: 7
• Number of times the lone American got doused with water: >10
  
• Conclusion?

• Number of hours walking around Turin: 16
• Number of times we looped around Turin: 2
  
• Number of sites I actually remember: 1
• Conclusion?
  

• Number of pasta dishes eaten in Turin: 3
• Number of pizza slices eaten in Turin: 8 (small slices!)
• Number of gelato cones eaten in Turn: 1
• Conclusion?

• Number of cocktails drunk on Saturday night: 5
• Number of shots chugged on Saturday night: 4
  
• Number of times I turned red: 9
• Conclusion?

Good luck!!!

What Happens In Croatia Stays In Croatia

Just returned from: Central Dalmatian Coast, Croatia
Some thoughts...

• Island hopping in Croatia was awesome. Although, it still doesn't compare to island hopping in Thailand. Rocks with no sand does not equal a beach!
• Again, I met my creepy 40+ year old crusty man. The first guy I'll call Croatian banana man. I was in the Green Market in Split taking pictures. Croatian banana man was holding two bunches of bananas and just happened to be right in the middle of my shot. He smiled proudly showing off his bananas, persuading me to take a photo of him and the bananas. I did. An hour later, Croatian banana man saw me again by the pier. The bananas were gone though. He made a feeble attempt on a conversation but since my Croatian was limited to hvala (thank you), not much was said. But he did get out the word "address" then pointed at me. So, if there's an Ellen Chan living in London, you should be expecting a package from a Jofu Petrovic sometime soon.
  

• My second creepy 40+ year old crusty man encounter happened at a bench as I waited for a boat to Hvar. I was reading my guide book when the man suddenly said "excuse me." I looked up. "Where are you from?" he said slowly. "America." The expression on his face changed to a look of confusion. Remembering my low-level 7B Nova days, I started using hand motions. "Why?" with a shrug of the shoulders. "My hair?" Awkward silence. "Yes, yes, yes. America has many people," he patiently said. "American is unpopular, yes?" I smiled, nodded, then returned to my guide. About 5 minutes later, I heard another "excuse me" from the man. "I'm not the aggressor," crusty man said. Again, I smiled then quickly gathered my things and left.
• A lady mistook me as a Croatian and asked me in Croatian for directions! The sun must have been in her eyes. (And someone said that couldn't happen. HA!)
  
• I got some funky tan going. But, it doesn't matter because I actually got a tan. Woohoo!!!
• I'm not sure how this all happened but I ended up taking home an unexpected souvenir from Croatia. A Canadian. (It's a very long story...)