It is day 14 of my 32 day trek. My sister and I are on stop 5 of 5 of the sister portion of the trip, enjoying beautiful Barcelona. Stereotypically, "Barcelona" would be preceded by an adjective like "sunny", but I was woken up this morning by an aggressive thunderstorm. "Sunny" would just be lying.
Being back in Europe has been relatively surreal and wonderful. I find that no matter what country I'm in, I want to speak German. Since we have mostly been in English speaking countries, this doesn't make any sense to the people around me. My habit was particularly inconvenient when watching the World Cup game of Germany vs USA. But first the backstory. We were exploring the Palace of Versailles and were coming to the end of our tour. Being the huge soccer fan that I [claim to be but really it's only during World Cup], I had checked the time of the match earlier in the day and knew for certain we had time to get back to Paris and set up camp in a place clad with other patriots. Meanwhile, generous Louis XVI had left it in his will before he was beheaded to ensure that WiFi be installed at the Palace! To our excitement, we were able to start FaceTiming and Snapchatting friends back home right in front of the Palace facade. It took 2 seconds to realize what was happening. My timezone skills had in fact miscalculated the time of the kickoff, and our friends and family began responding with things like "All ready for the game!"... which was in exactly 10 minutes from then. "WE HAVE TO GO!" I said, since who cares about the Palace of Versailles anyway? The peasants of France in the 1780s sure don't! So, in an act of solidarity with them, we used King Louis XVI's WiFi to find the closest pub and then left. We ended up there only 3 minutes into the start of it all. Also at our viewing party were about 40 Germans and 4 USA fans (of which we were 3). If the US did poorly or if Germany did well, I would shout "Nein!!" at them or remark. Many an eyebrow were raised.
Obviously other stories and experiences have created themselves in the past two weeks, like when we got fish pedicures in London (don't judge until you try), or when I went on the world's worst walking tour that I felt was being filmed for Punk'd, or how we basically stumbled upon seeing THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. Those stories can come later, but just now I have a rainstorm to watch musingly out the window.
It has rained at every location we've been to; fortunately we have enjoyed one great day of weather in each place. In case you haven't been absolutely entranced by my Instagram photos, our stops have included Paris, London, Edinburgh + surrounding coast of Scotland, Dublin + west coast of Ireland, and now [should-be sunny] Barcelona. My intention was to upload some fave pictures, but the WiFi here is terrible, despite the fact that it's 2014. Here's all I could manage for now.
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| The gold gates the French peasants stormed through demanding free WiFi, among other things. Vive La France! |
Nächste Haltestelle: Frankfurt am Main :)
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