One Year Later

Well, here we are...one year to the day after we left on our around the world adventure. It really does not seem like it was 365 days ago that we were sitting in the Los Angeles airport getting ready to head west across the international date line (completely skipping February 15 by the way) to our first destination, Auckland, New Zealand. So what's happened since last Valentine's Day? We've visited twenty-two different countries...spent time in fourteen capital cities...jet boated....rode elephants and camels...swam with sharks...hiked along the Great Wall of China...stood in wonder and awe of the Taj Mahal...been to a wedding in the South of France...seen more monkeys than I can count...rode waves in the Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Andamman Sea...made new friends in random places (Mike and Vinnie, Carolyn and Mike, Uta and Axel)...visited historic monuments to man's darkest side (TS-21, the Killing Fields, War Remnants Museum, the Terror House, Auschwitz)...taken in some of mankind's most amazing houses of worship (Wat Pha Kro in Bangkok, Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, the Forbidden City in Beijing, Marble Mountains in Da Nang, the Jama Masjid in Delhi, the Virupaksha Temple in Hampi, San Marco's in Venice, St. Domnius Cathedral in Split, St. Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest, St. Mary's in Krakow, St. Nicholas' in Prague, St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague, Yorkminister Abbey in York, England and dozens of others...I could literally go on for pages and pages and that would just be the first six months of the last year. Since we got back to Atlanta we've moved twice, bought a house, gotten pregnant (just Cece...not me), fought off viral meningitis (again, just Cece), began teaching (okay that one's me), and much more. We've also had a lot of time to go over our pictures from the trip and try and recapture some of the memories and experiences. We'd like to go back periodically and post our memories and stories as we reflect back on the adventure. We hope you'll enjoy reading some of our tales again during your spare internet time. If not, you can always go to youtube and search for monkeys falling out of trees or kids breaking their arm doing stupid skateboard tricks. It's all good. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble so I better sign off. Thanks again to everyone who read the blog while we were away and posted comments or sent us emails. You'll never know how much it meant to get those messages; how good it felt to know we could still connect with the people we loved and missed. So without further ado I give you Matt and Cece: Valentine's Day 2006. [okay...there is supposed to be a picture of me and Cece at LAX last Valentine's Day here but blogger is acting up]

These are a few of our favorite things....

Okay, slowly but surely we are adding more stories to the blog. And this is one of our favorites, quite literally. On our final round of flights, we took some time and wrote a list of some of the highs (and some lows) of the trip. For any of you out there planning an around the world trip, you might want to take notes!

Airlines
Best meal: Thai Airways (those people will feed you even if you are in the air for only 15 minutes, for those on a budget, this is awesome)
Worst meal: an un-identifiable sandwich on Air China
Best audio/video: Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines
Best drinks: Singapore Airlines where you can get Tiger beer and a Singapore Sling

Hikes
Best: Freycinet National Park in Tasmania, Australia Wineglass Bay and the Hazards
Worst: Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, we were just 1km from the top of the mountain when we had to turn around because of rain. Absolutely no view that day.

Days
Cheapest: $0 Our free days when staying with friends and family in Oz, France, and Denmark
Most expensive: Our Amazing Race Day. Leaving Megan and Jeremy's house in Germany, riding five different trains, two buses, and a car with a Dutch stranger to reach the most expensive overnight ferry ever to Hull. A total distance of about 120 miles that cost over $500. That one really hurt, but we did finally make it there!

Hotels:
Best hostel/guesthouse: Hoi An, Vietnam The Thien Thanh (Blue Sky Hotel)
Worst hotel/hostel: Bangalore, India
Most social: Leo Hostel in Beijing, China

Trains:
Best: the express from Agra to Delhi, India complete with dinner service
Worst: the train from Hospet to Hubli India where the lady told us that we didn't need to reserve tickets...we ended up standing for 3 hours surrounded by 100 or so of our newest, closest Indian friends

Favorite Foods found on the trip:
Arnott's BBQ Shapes, Uncle Toby's granola bars, and chunky caramel KitKats from Australia
White Magnum- practically everywhere, but the US!
Any fresh fruit in Asia
Yogurt with fruit jam
Banana Pancakes - I was pretty sure Matt was going to turn into a banana pancake!

Beds slept in:
70 different beds
4 overnight buses
8 overnight trains
5 nights camping
2 overnight boats
2 overnight planes
51 Free nights stay at friends and family (we couldn't have made it without that!)

Coldest night: Camping in New Norfolk, Tasmania ended up switching to sleep in the car for warmth
Hottest night: Last night in Bangkok, we decided to save money and get a room with a fan and no air conditioning

Cheapest Night's stay: Hampi, India 250 rupee or $5
Most expensive night's stay: Ferry to Hull $250

Showers
Best free shower: Marlys and Joel's house in Coolum, Australia, words can't even describe how great it was
Best paid shower: That same hotel in Hoi An, the Thien Thanh
Worst: "the Mansion" on Nathan Road in Hong Kong
Most inconvenient: Bombay, India. We should have taken a closer look at the shower when they showed it to us. Who knew that we should have looked for a showerhead? A bucket shower does work though.

Meals
Best:
Pizza: the BBQ chicken pizza from Margee's place in King's Cross in Sydney
Meat: Our meat lover's meal in Cesky Krumlov with the best turkey, hotdog, and pork, we have ever had.
Veggie: Colva, India best curry we have ever had during a tropical storm. Made Matt even ask for a veggie meal!
Grill out: Denmark, either at Stine and Soren's or Heinrick and Dianna's
Longest and most elegant: Lisa and Duncan's wedding

Best gin rummy player
CECE!!!
That's what you get if you are the one that writes the blog entries!

And we're back!

Yes, we are back and alive in the U S of A! And what a crazy month and a half it has been.

First off, we arrived back to the US in celebrity fashion. While checking in for our flight at the Dublin airport, I happened to mention in casual conversation that we were on the final leg of a six month trip around the world and oh, by the way, it is also our two year anniversary. Nothing came of that at the check-in counter, however, once we got to the gate, we heard our names being called over the speaker. We walked up to the front, and sure enough we had been upgraded. We couldn't believe it. We had joked the whole trip about getting upgraded on our final flight, and it was really happening. Of course, it couldn't all be perfect. The video wasn't working on the plane and there was a screaming kid sitting across the aisle, but nonetheless, we were sitting in really comfortable seats drinking beer and you can't ask for much more than that.

We were greeted at the airport by Dianne (Matt's mom), Jenny (Matt's sister) and Livie (our niece). It was so great to be welcomed home by family. Of course, after flights all over the world and not losing a single bag, two of our bags were lost on the flight from Philadelphia to Atlanta. The lady at the airline told me that the bags weren't lost, they just didn't make the flight. Apparently, they were at the airport bar and just didn't hear the call for the flight. After many calls back to the airport, we were finally reunited with our bags the next day.

I must say that first week back was a whirlwind. We got back to our condo and it looked exactly the same. Suzanne did an excellent job on the upkeep while we were gone. We had heard horror stories from other people who had rented out their place and I was so thankful that Suzanne was staying at ours. Actually, Atlanta pretty much looked the same too. There were some new condo buildings around, but for the most part things were the same. Even some of the billboards were the same. We keep joking that the only way that we could tell time had passed was that kids had changed, our niece Livie had changed so much in the 6 months that we were gone, and our friend Kim had changed. She became pregant with triplets right after we left, so she definitely looked different when we came back. Other than that, everything looked the same.

We quickly had to go look for an apartment since we were going to close on selling the condo in just 6 days. Looking for an apartment was pretty amusing. When people asked us for a contact phone number we would say, yeah, we were thinking about getting one of those, our plan is to go and get phones tonight. They looked at us like we were crazy, how could these people be surviving without a phone. Of course, we did soon learn that our lifeline of internet was going to have to be replaced with a phone. And so it was.

We did manage to find an apartment. Matt's parents, in a brief lack of judgement, agreed to come to Atlanta and help us move. Thank God they did. Matt and I may have made it around the world with each other and been with each other 24/7 for 6 months, but I honestly don't think that we would have survived the move. It was grueling. The apartment that we moved into leaves a little to be desired, but of course, after the places that we have stayed over the past 6 months, it is the Taj Mahal!

The really crazy thing is what happened next. I started work on the Monday, one week after we had returned. We also sold the condo that day at noon. I noticed that I started to get a few headaches when I woke up in the morning that week. By Tuesday when I came home from work, I went straight to bed and slept through to the next morning. After 12 hrs in bed, my headache had still not gone away. So, we decided that we had to go to urgent care. I felt really bad because here it was my 3rd day after returning to work and I was going to call in sick. I didn't feel so bad later that day when urgent care told me I had to go to the ER and the ER had determined that I had viral meningitis, and subsequently checked me into the hospital. Yes, I went all around the world and then ended up in the hospital 10 days after my return. The Dr.s told me that I had probably contracted it in the States too. Can you believe it? So, that meant that I didn't really work all the next week. But at least I was getting paid not to work this time. And the best part was the health insurance. See, Matt and I had gone the week in between returning and me starting work without health insurance, which made me very nervous, but there wasn't much we could do about it. Thank goodness, I stuck out the illness until I started work.

I am fully recovered now. We are just working on our shopping list now, which looks a little bit like this, car, washer and dryer, vacuum cleaner, another car, house. Not exactly the itesm that you check off your list at Target. But we just keep remembering all that we learned on our trip, and we know that we can make it just fine with what we have right now. We have learned lots of tricks to get things done without the "necessities" that we thought we once needed. So slowly, but surely we will acclimate to our "real" life again, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that I hope it takes quite some time to get back to "real" life. I don't want to lose what we gained in these six months, which was love, understanding, and respect, for each other, our lives, and the lives of everyone else around us.

3 days and counting

Well, we are officially three nights away from sleeping in our own bed again (before packing that bed up at the end of the week and moving it somewhere else!). We have just spent the last few days in Edinburgh at the Fringe, a huge comedy and arts festival. It has been fantastic. We have seen 4 free comedy shows and three of them, at least, were really good!

For those of you wondering, we are flying tomorrow....through London Heathrow. So, that should be an adventure in itself with all the new regulations. We will be sure to write about that when we get back to the States. The good news is that tomorrow we are just flying to Dublin and our transatlantic flight is out of Dublin on Monday. We have just read that in the UK that you cannot take anything other than necessary items on board with you, so we will be packing everything up for checked baggage tonight. Only our passports and tickets will be with us.

So, with only three days left, we probably won't have much time to post more things, however we don't want any of you out there to think that the blog is over when we get back to US soil. We have lots of stories that we haven't had time to write yet, plus I am sure there will be some good re-patriation stories too! Actually, we will probably be better at posting once we get back. That is of course after we move, find a new house, and Matt finds a job!

So, thanks for sticking with us around the world and we hope you keep checking for new stories every once in a while! This has been incredible and since it is not quite over yet, we are off to enjoy our last night in Edinburgh!

Love and God Bless!
Matt and Cecelia

TFR: The Border, Part III

(Editor's note...okay, so it's been over a month since I last wrote about the Great Vietnamese Train Incident of '06. Sorry about that. I guess I've just been enjoying myself too much for the last month or so. Anyway, I figured I should start this one off by recapping the end of the last entry, so I just copied and pasted the last paragraph. Here are the important facts - we are in a small Vietnamese town...we just missed the train we had tickets for...the last train out of town is leaving in less than a half hour...we have next to no money to buy new tickets...that pretty much sums it up. Here we go.)

The next few minutes are a bit of a blur because, to be honest, the panic was starting to make itself felt. After catching up to the guy who'd walked away from us I was able to assertain that we had a couple of options. We could hop on the back of two motorbikes, fully loaded down with our backpacks, and chase the train to the next stop...a mere 40 kilometers down the road. For the briefest of moments this actually sounded plausible to us. We even went outside the station with the guy and found a couple of motorbike drivers willing to take on the job. Then our sanity returned and we thought about a few pertinent facts of the situation. 1) We didn't have nearly enough money to pay the drivers for the 40 km ride.

And really, who wants to stiff a couple of hardened Vietnamese motorbike taxi drivers in a small train station with no one around to hear you scream?? And 2) 40 km on the back of a motorbike with a big backpack in the dark of night on tiny backroads is just not a good idea. So we scrapped that idea and huddled up. We decided our best option was to obtain some cash and buy new tickets on the 9:15, no matter the cost. Naturally I hopped on the back of a motorbike and took off from the train station, leaving Cece there to figure out the situation with the tickets.

As we sped (I say sped...in reality I chose the guy with the slowest motorbike in all of Southeast Asia. An old lady in a walker and a three toed sloth racing two snails passed us on the road) towards town I thought to myself, "Self...this is a little crazy. You just left your wife standing in a railroad station where only one or two people speak any English and you're heading toward town by yourself in an attempt to take enough money out of the ATM to pay a Vietnamese motorbike driver's salary for two or three months". But I told myself it was all worth it because of our extreme desire to get on that train and out of Lao Cai.

After what seemed like an interminable amount of time (probably just five minutes or so) we entered the town and found a bank with an ATM. I hopped off and let out a sigh of relief when I saw the Visa logo on the bank window. I stepped inside and confidently made my way up to the cash machine. I chose to communicate with the machine in English and told it how many dong I needed. After a few seconds of thinking it told me that a connection with my bank could not be made. I just kind of stood there dumbfounded. I reinserted my card and tried again, this time asking for a smaller amount on the withdrawal. Again...nothing. I asked the girl behind the desk (yes, there was actually someone working there at 9:00 at night...Wait, it's 9:00!? The train leaves in fifteen minutes!!) if she could try it. Sure enough, she puts her card in and withdrawals some cash. The ATM works...it just doesn't like me. So this is it. We're stuck here in a town where the ATMs won't take our cards and we're just going to have to become tenant farmers and work till we can afford to buy motorbikes of our own and drive back to the big city on them in a few years. As we left the bank and started back to the train station I looked at my watch. It was 9:10. The train was going to be leaving in ten minutes without us.

When we pulled back up in front of the train station Cece was frantically waving at me and telling me to hurry up. As she pulled me up to the ticket counter I tried to tell her that I wasn't able to get any cash out and that we would just have to start looking for a nice farm to work. She was a bit confused at that statement but she told me that there might be another way to get tickets for the 9:15, which was now getting ready to leave. One of the guys that we had been talking to earlier was saying something about exchanging our tickets for the first train for cheaper tickets on the later train. Poor Cece had this exasperated look on her face like "why didn't you mention this a half hour ago??" but we weren't really in a position to ask questions. Before we knew it, the lady behind the counter handed us a pair of tickets and we were being hurried through the door, just as the guard was locking it up for the night, and made our way to the train. Apparently, the guy with the tickets had called the travel agency who sold us our tickets and they told him to buy us the cheap seats on the later train. Only he didn't bother to mention that to us. The only thing we knew was that we were getting on the train. Surely the worst was over now.

Well, not so fast my friends. We walked through the train to the very last car and found our seats. They were the last two seats in the chair car. The "non air-conditioned, packed to the rafters, we're the only two Westerners in here" chair car. So now all the stories about backpackers getting their passports and cash stolen while they slept started creeping into our heads. We vowed to make it through the night without sleeping and proceeded to set the alarm on our watch to go off every forty-five minutes to ensure we would be awake throughout the ride. Of course I didn't really need the alarm for the first few hours because I was too busy watching the guy who had been eyeing us from the second we got onboard. He looked kind of shady and kept looking back over his shoulder at us. About thirty minutes into the ride he got up and moved into the seat across the aisle from me. So now I'm sure he's just waiting for us to fall asleep so he can grab our possessions and make off like a bandit. After a few minutes of casing the area he whips out his cell phone and starts playing music...really loud music. I start to think, "well, if he is trying to put me to sleep he's not doing a very smart thing, blaring that loud Vietnamese music two feet from my ears". Eventually he stops listening to his cell phone and even nods off a few times. But I still kept my eyes on him.

The next occurence just kept with the theme of strange goings on. When we were scrambling around with the ticket problems before the train left there was another passenger who was in a heated discussion with the train staff. He was a Frenchman (apparently the only Frenchie who likes confrontation...ba-doom boom) who was supposed to be in First Class but had been "relegated" to lowly sleeper class. Anyway, he and Cece had talked about our ticket issues while I was off putting around Lo Cai on the slowest motorbike in Vietnam. After the train started toward Hanoi he came back to the cattle car to find us and see how we were doing. He told me that I should just go find someone who worked on the train and yell at them until they gave us a sleeper room. So I got up with Jacque or Pierre or Henri and went looking for someone to cuss out. Well, I was actually hoping Francis or Thierry or Andre would do the yelling for me and get me a bed to sleep in because at this point I was just too tired to get worked up about anything. After walking the length of the train, we finally found a group of conductors who were just standing around talking. Mr. Frenchy just starts ripping all these folks a new one, demanding a new room for himself and saying he's not leaving until he gets one. He leans over and tells me that I just need to start yelling and I'll get a room too. Of course as soon as I say one word, this little Dragon Lady jumps down my throat and asks to see my tickets. I show her my crappy, back of the train tickets and try to explain that the reason I have these tickets is because there was a mix up with my original tickets and I was supposed to have a sleeping car on the last train. She's not buying any of it. She shoves the tickets back in my hand and just starts shaking her head when I try to ask about getting upgraded. "No! No room for you!" is about all I get out of her. Feeling totally defeated I told Messiour Moulin Rouge that I was done arguing and was just going to head back and see if Cece was still wide awake, staring at the creepy guy across the aisle.

When I got back to our car I had to pick my way through the dark because all the lights had been turned off, even the ones in the little passageway between the cars that was right behind our seats. Cece explained that a conductor had walked to the back of the car, stood right next to her, taken off his shirt and shoes, laid cardboard boxes down in the passageway, turned off the lights, and plopped down to go to sleep! I honestly couldn't believe it. I had to stand up and look through the window to see it for myself. Sure enough, there he was, snoozing away while the greedy thief seated to my right now had the cover of total darkness to plan his mugging. Of course the bandit was pretending to be peacefully asleep and had done a good job of disguising himself as a normal, law abiding train passenger at this point. He was good I tell you...good.

Finally, Cece and I gave in and started to nod off in short little naps. Of course every forty-five minutes the watch alarm went off, waking us and all the people within ten feet of us (I'm certain we were very popular with our fellow travellers). Once, about ten minutes past God-knows-when, the lights came on throughout the car and a crew of four or five conductors started working their way through the crowd, back toward our area. I was thinking, "surely they aren't going to start checking tickets now". But seriously, so many bizarre things had happened so far that night I was ready for anything. Anyway, the conductors came all the way through the car, opened up the door behind us and started to wake their comatose co-worker with subtle foot nudges (I volunteered to help out) and teasing taunts. After a while he awoke, groggily stood and re-dressed, and followed the other conductors out the way they came in. As soon as he was gone I hopped up and turned the light back on in the passageway. No way was I gonna let that thief/nice man next to me get any sleep tonight! Cece and I laughed as we pictured the lazy conductor getting chewed out for sleeping on the job. Maybe they'd even fire him on the spot and toss him off the train at the next town we went through. Just as we decided that they had made him start to clean up all the appalling bathrooms on the train for his transgressions he walked back in the car, strode past us, took off his shirt again, turned off the lights, and went right back to sleep in his little "bed". So much for swift justice.

The rest of the night was rather uneventful. We nodded off a few times, only to be awakened by our trusty watch alarm. Upon arrival in Hanoi we flagged down a couple of motorbike drivers to take us back to the travel agency that sold us the train tickets. After waiting three hours for the owner to show up (the train got into town around five am) we demanded a refund for our mis"printed" train tickets and argued for a while about whose fault it was. Finally we got about $18 back and decided that was the best deal we were going to get.

Thus concludes the lengthy and totally accurate account of the Great Vietnamese Train Incident of '06. Now, if you think this sounds like the travel day from Hades, just wait till I tell you all about last Saturday and our one car, five train, one bus, one minivan with a stranger seven hour struggle to get 200 km from Cologne to Rotterdam in order to catch a ferry to England. Ho hum, just another day in paradise.

Some pictures from Asia

Here are some older pics from Asia, I am finally on a computer where I can post pictures and I am so excited!
The floating markets in Thailand
When Melissa came to visit us in Thailand, we actually had someone other than each other to talk to!
A typical intersection in Vietnam
Sitting in the little plastic chairs and drinking bia hoi (new beer) on the streets of Saigon. Each liter cost about 30 cents.

Some pictures from Europe

From the top:
1. Matt's greatest fear....man capris are spanning continents and generations
2. Exploring some silver mines in miner's gear in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic
3. On a bike tour in Krakow (with 5 Aussies)
4. In front of the Chain Bridge also in Budapest
5. On top of St. Stephen's Basillca (also in Budapest)

The Re-entry process has begun!

Well, with just a little over two weeks left in the trip, we are starting the process of re-entering our "real" lives. Two major things have happened over the past couple of weeks which is making this all seem even more real!

First off, after about a year on the market, we have sold our condo (pending a couple of inspection items)! I waiting forever to put something on the blog, because I didn't want to jinx it, so I hope I haven't now! Not only did we get one offer, but two offers on the same day. We came to an agreement with the higher of the two and are scheduled to close on August 21. For those of you keeping track that is one week to the day after we arrive back in the US. The buyers had originally asked for a closing date of the 15th, but we told them we didn't think we could get packed up and moved overnight. So, we have one week to find a place to live, and move all of our stuff there. We will probably look into a temporary solution like an apartment for a few months until we get settled back into life in the US again. So, that was a giant weight off our shoulders. Of course, by this point in the trip, we had convinced ourselves that it wouldn't sell, so we were actually looking forward to going back there, but we will take this scenario instead. We will have one week there and that should be enough.

Second, I have accepted a job which coincidentally also starts on August 21 (same day as the closing). That is going to be one busy day! The job is with Kimberly-Clark again, but in a different role. I am really looking forward to it and it is definitely re-assuring knowing that income will start coming in again shortly after we get back. Matt is going to make a career change when we get back, so it was definitely easier for me to find something while we were away than him. For those that might not know, Matt has decided to go into teaching when we get back. He is hoping to teach biology/life sciences at the high school level (following in the footsteps of his good friend James!). So that is really exciting, just a little hard to job search from Europe. We have heard about some new schools opening up and biology is what they call a need subject in Georgia, so that gives us hope that something could still work out for this school year even though we are getting back so late.

So, that is our big news. It has been crazy sorting all this out, but exciting as well. We definitely think it is all good stuff and are not complaining at all about having one heck of a crazy week when we get back. Not to mention that we only own one car right now which is in Huntsville, but lucky for us Matt's parents are going to loan us a car for a while so that car shopping doesn't have to be the first thing we do on the way home from the airport.

So, as soon as we know where we will be living after August 21, we will let you all know. Although, I am sure it will probably be an address to write in your address book in pencil as it will likely change one more time before the year is up!

Hope everyone in the US is doing well and we look forward to seeing all our stateside family and friends again soon!

Pencils ready?? Quiz time!

Okay, Cece and I are now in Vienna, Austria after about ten days in the Czech Republic. So the quiz will be about the Czech. First part: the Czech Republic is made up of two different "areas" that were separate kingdoms centuries ago. The larger of the two is Bohemia, with its capital in Prague. What is the name of the second area, and what is its capital?

Second part: After dealing with the hordes of tourists in Prague (which brags on itself that it is the sixth most visited city in the world!) we headed down south to the small town of Cesky Krumlov for five days of relaxing and rafting and tubing. The question is, what river were we lazying around on as we slowly circled the Old Town of Cesky Krumlov?

Again, past winners aren't eligible for prizes but we look forward to seeing everyone's answers.

Good luck!

Matt and Cece

Looking Worse for the Wear

Now that we are just 5 weeks from coming home, and we are still wearing all the same clothes that we started with, we are starting to look a bit haggered. You know those travelers whose white shirts just don't look that white and whose shorts don't look exactly clean....that's us!

I meant to put a post in the beginning of what we had packed. Basically, it was not too much. For me:
2 pairs of shoes (Tevas and tennis shoes)
2 pairs of shorts
1 skirt
3 pairs of pants (including a pair of female capri pants)
1 tank top
5 short sleeve shirts
3 long sleeve shirts
1 fleece
1 light jacket
plus the obligatory undergarments and socks.

Matt had a similar assortment of clothes minus man capris.

So, we figured out the other day that we have been on the road for about 145 days. That means that with 5 short sleeve shirts, I would have worn each shirt approximately 29 times. So over the 5 months that we have been traveling, each shirt has been worn for about a month! Thankfully, not consecutively. Of course, we have picked up a few things that we needed on the road, and some other things have been put to rest. We used some of our more worn out shirts as padding for packages that we sent home.

Our clothes really took a beating in India....quite literally. One of the main ways of washing clothes in India is still to beat them on a rock in the river. In Asia, the travelers were a lot more relaxed about clothes.....and about washing them. Now that we are in Europe and around people who are only traveling for 2-3 weeks at a time, we look a bit disheveled.

The worst part is definitely our shoes. The Tevas have developed a smell that we can't quite get rid of. I think that we are going to ceremoniously burn them the day that we get back to the States.

You all will be able to see the progression of our clothes in our pictures when we return home. The blue t-shirt in Australia....the blue t-shirt in India.....the blue t-shirt in Croatia.

We are really looking forward to putting on some other clothes when we return home!

Bird flu or malaria?????

Well, it was bound to happen at least once on 6 months on the road. We got sick....I am really sick. It all started when we got to Prague. We arrived in Prague on Wednesday morning July 5. We were both worn out because we had taken the overnight train from Krakow to Prague. There were quite a few people in our compartment so we didn't really have a chance to get much sleep. We headed straight for our hostel, which is part of a Prague dormitory that they rent out during the summer. Except it is slightly smaller than dorms that I have seen in the US if you can imagine. We headed straight for bed for a little nap. When the alarm went off at noon, we both had a harder than usual time getting up. We thought it was because of lack of sleep, but we soon realized that it was probably the start of the flu.

We dragged ourselves into town and started looking around. We were definitely not our normal sight-seer selves. We kept stopping to get a drink or sit or whatever. Matt got the chills first. He kept going from hot to cold and back again. A few hours later it started on me. We had tried to stay in town to watch the soccer game, but after one half, we both looked like death warmed over so we headed back on the metro and got back to the hostel as fast as we could.

Lucky for us, we have been carrying around a small pharmacy for the last 6 months complete with Tami-flu in case we had caught the bird flu in SE Asia. We took two of those and proceeded to go straight to bed. We both walk up around 2am. We had been going back and forth between the chills and burning up. Neither of us could fall back asleep so we started discussing if we thought we had bird flu or malaria. We were trying to recall all of the symptoms we had read about before we left home. After all, we really were around more live chickens in SE Asia than I had ever seen in my whole life, and we had stopped taking our malaria medication when we arrived in Europe even though it said to continue for 4 more weeks. At 2am (and probably more than half-way out of it), we were regretting that decision as malaria seemed like it definitely could be the culprit.

Alas, we slept for about 14 hours and then proceeded to spend another 5 in bed just trying to get the energy up to take a shower. We finally ventured out that day around 6pm and that was just to do laundry and try to get some food. Four hours walking among the living was about all we could take and headed straight back home to bed.

So this morning, we woke up, and lucky for me, I think I am over it. I think my fever broke last night because I woke up in the middle of the night with a totally wet T-shirt sweating like crazy. Matt seems a little worse today than yesterday as we seem to just keep passing it back and forth to each other. We did manage to leave the hostel today out of sheer desperation to get out of our little box. The fresh air seems to be doing us a world of good though and I think the worst is over.

This is by far the sickest we have been on the whole trip. I really thought we would have had a spell in Asia. I had even planned on writing a blog entry about how we had escaped bird flu even though we had seen so many live chickens all over Asia, (and we had told everyone not to worry because we would never be around them). Even India wasn't this bad. I thought that I was going to enter the Guinness book of World Records as being the only person to go to India and get constipated instead of getting the Delhi Belly! But alas, we knew our luck would run out at some point, but one day in bed on a 6 month trip isn't really all that bad.

Stay healthy everyone!

Connect the Dots

Just wanted to give a quick update on the travels of late. We've been making our way north through Central Europe and are currently in Krakow, Poland. We left Italy a little over two weeks ago, spending a fun filled evening on a bus from Trieste in the extreme northeastern corner of the country down to Dubrovnik, on the southernmost tip of Croatia (crossing borders into Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovinia just for kicks). From there we took a ferry to the spectacular island of Korcula and after a few sun soaked days we travelled to Split, again by ferry. Another bus ride, this one in the daytime, brought us to the capital of Crotia, Zagreb. I can't imagine too many Americans mark it down as a "must see" destination in Europe, but we found it nice. It's not too big, has a very easy to manage public transportation system (easy to manage could also be read as "easy to use without paying"), and loads of outdoor cafes in the central part of the city. It's definitely not in a class with Venice, Paris, or London but it was definitely worth a quick stopover for us. I mean, it's not like we have much a of a schedule to stick to.

After Croatia we took the train north and made our way to Budapest, the capital and heart of Hungary. This was a cool city people. It has all the advantages of a Western metropolis with plenty of medieval history and sights to keep you busy. We spent two and a half days sightseeing and still couldn't check all the biggies off our list. The one we really wish we had time to see is Statue Park. It is a park a little outside of the city where the Hungarians took all the Communist propaganda statues from around the city and depostited them. The places we did make it to included the Royal Palace, the Old Town, St. Mathias Church, St. Stephen's Basilica, the Opera House, one of the thermal baths, the Terror House (more on this one in a minute) and a few more I'm sure I'm forgetting. We took a walking tour of Pest (the city is actually divided into two pretty much separate parts - Buda and Pest - by the Danube) one night and got to hear some historical stories, legends, and anecdotes. The most interesting, and at the same time disturbing, place we saw was the Terror House. It is a museum based at the site of the Secret Police (Hungarian version of the KGB) from the Communist Era. It had exhibits detailing the torture, fear mongering, and brainwashing the Communists doled out in the years they were in power. It was truly frightening to see what supposedly intelligent people are capable of. To be honest though, it wasn't exactly shocking after what we saw in Cambodia. Basically, Communist leaders use torture and fear to stay in power. At least that's my take.

So, two days ago we hopped on an overnight train from Budapest to Krakow and we've been taking in the sights of Poland's royal city and historic capital since then. Yesterday we wandered around on foot and today we took a bike tour of the city. Our tour guide was a Canadian/Pole and we were joined on the tour by five Australian guys who are traveling Europe after watching their beloved Socceroos get bounced from the World Cup. Krakow is another city we both would say is definitely worth a visit. There is plenty of history to learn about, from the ancient Polish kingdoms to Oskar Schindler's factory, right here in Krakow.

Well, we still have another day or two in Poland (we don't really have any idea about the trains from here to Prague, our next destination) so we'll be taking that ever so happy trip to Auschwitz next, either tomorrow or the next day and maybe do some hiking in the Tatra mountains on the Slovakian border.

We hope everyone has a great Fourth of July. We'll raise a glass of Polish or Czech beer in honor of Uncle Sam. And I promise to finish up the Vietnam train story soon!