Sorry people. It's been weird here in Maynooth. There's nobody around since all the college kids are at home for the holiday and all the offices are closed until next week. Really dead. I haven't left the room today. I read a whole book today actually. Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. He's the guy that wrote Fight Club. I really like him. Survivor is the only thing I've read by him. I want to read more even though he's really weird and messed up and dissatisfying. Anyway, I bought this book after I escorted Adrianna to the airport. I took the first bus down from the airport to O'Connell street, crossed the Liffey to Westmoreland and right next to the bus stop is the Book Value store. They shouldn't do that to me. I had 40 minutes to wait for the next bus out here and what else was I going to do? It was only 6 Euro though. But now it's done. I go through little obsessive times. When I'm obsessed with music it lasts longer--it could last a whole year even. Obsessive reading can only last as long as the book. This one was only 289 pages. The Harry Potter stint was a little longer. Now I have to go back to important reading. I have to finish the damn Faulkner...
But hey, the last two weeks were fun. I don't think I'll complain about snow now that I know what real snow is. I didn't fall though! That's all I was praying for--no broken wrists or asses right now please. Wool knee socks and thick gloves are fantastic. Trains are quite nice most of the time. We got to ride first class for about an hour between Berlin and Munich since the first train we were on got stuck--there were rocks in the track apparently.
German beer is pretty good. I'm kind of biased toward Irish beer though. The Irish seem to have more variety, but those Munich-ers have the big jugs. So at the Hofbrauhaus we each drank 2 litres of beer. After that we went back to the hostel and turned in these voucher things and got another baby glass of beer and did this one super cheap gross shot that was apparently vodka and strawberry syrup. I've never felt worse in the morning. It was really weird. I've been far far far more drunk and never had a hangover like this. I thought I was going to puke all over the Bonhof platform in Munich. But I didn't. In my experience, girls can hold their puke back until they have a proper place to wretch...boys don't have this skill. Anyway, I fell asleep on that train and woke up an hour later feeling excellent.
German people were pretty nice. You can tell the difference between "Germany" and "Bavaria" though. I prefer Bavaria. Not that Berlin wasn't really cool. The Berlin Cathedral is beautiful. That was the first church we climbed. And sausage is great. It's not pretty to look at though. It's tall and gray. We only had one day there though, so this is just a first impression. We had our first currywurst, gluhwein, pilsner, pretzel, and sauerkraut there. We went to the place that Anthony Bourdain went to get currywurst. It's underneath the train in the northern part of the city. It's poplar and it was good.
In Munich there was more gluhwein, pretzels, and wurst. You can get all kinds of stuff at the Christmas markets. We climbed another church--St. Peter's. Munich is a beautiful city and when you look out over the tops of all the brown slanted roofs, you know you're in Bavaria. The hofgarten was a little slippy. Sausage salad, crispy pork knuckle, and a pork choppy looking thing with gravy at the Hofbrauhause. That was up there on the best meal list. Maybe it was all the beer and no water all day, but it was delicious.
After that everything was white for a while. We went to see the cindarella castle--Neuschwanstein. To see this thing you have to catch a train down to Fussen which is right on the border of Germany and Austria. Then you've to take bus over to Hohenschwangau where there is the Hohenschwangau castle which is older and more legit than Neuschwanstein. The H one is on the way too. So you trudge up this hill to the ticket office and they tell you when you can go see both of them--you can't see them without being part of a tour. So the English ones were two hours apart basically. That seemed like plenty of time, but we also had to catch another train over to Switzerland after all this. But one thing at a time.
You buy your overly expensive tickets and then trudge farther up the hill to the first castle--the yellow one. You have to walk up a bunch of steps and steep walkways and then wait around in the courtyard for your time. It was blizzarding the whole time. It was awesome. When we first got there you could see the Neuschwanstein up on the hill, but really quickly it was swallowed up by the fog and snow coming down. It was all up in my hair and my shoes were pretty wet through by the time we got in there. Snow makes everything look beautiful though.
You aren't allowed to take pictures of the inside of the castle. I don't know why. It doesn't really matter. Kings of Bavaria lived in this castle. The first guy was Maximilien and his sons were Otto and Ludwig II. Ludwig II loved building castles. He had a bunch started or planned when he died. I don't know if any of them were ever really finished. He built Neuschwanstein. He grew up in Hohenschwangau though. The ground floor was for the queen, the first floor for the king, and the second floor for the kids. On the second floor there is a piano that is not particularly impressive. Ludwig loved Wagner, and Wagner visited the castle and played at this piano for 8 hours once. That was awesome. You aren't allowed to touch it. Otto sounded cool though. After Ludwig II died he would have been King of Bavaria if he wasn't deemed insane. He was insane because he liked art and music more than people. He didn't like parties or talking to people, so he had to be insane. One of their uncles ruled instead.
After you're done at Hohenschwangau, you have to hike up to Neuschwanstein. There's this little pointy sign that tells you how long it's going to take you. It says 50 minutes from the bottom of the long and super icy driveway of Hohenschwangau. Well, we only had 35 minutes or something to get there. So we were doing the hurry walk. It's at the very top of this moderately steep hill. We got there in 25 minutes. I was proud. And out of breath. And my nose was really cold. Neuschwanstein castle isn't finished. They only got through a third of it before Ludwig II died and the family said stop, it's too much money to finish anyway. That third that is finished is pretty damn cool though. I said this guy liked Wagner. Every room--even the thrown room--is decorated based on one of Wagner's operas. Wagner wrote The Ryde of the Valkyries fyi. He's awesome. He also thought he was the shit and had nothing to learn from anyone else. There's a Tristan and Isolde room, a Persifal room,
Tannhäuser, Rienzi, and Lohengrin rooms. He had them build a fake cave for a hall way. Now they use the singer's hall for a concert of one of these operas once a year. That would be so cool.
Getting to Chur was a little bit of a nightmare. It only mattered because the hostel reception closed at 9:30 or ten. The back up was a bar next door. They closed at midnight. We rolled in at 1am. I was sure we would be sleeping on a bench in the snow or making an igloo or just wandering around the mountain all night. But there was a backup to the backup thank god. Another bar open until 2am. The bartender was really nice too. She told everything we needed to know, told us some Swiss beers, and made us some sandwiches cause we didn't eat dinner. All was well. I was freaking out and being bitchy for no reason.
Farewell and good riddance to Chur in the morning. We were supposed to take the Glacer Express to Zermatt which is this cool train that goes through the mountains and over a million bridges and it's supposed to be amazing. Well. It snowed a billion feet overnight ad they canceled the damn thing because they were afraid of avalanches. So, we had to go around the mountains: Chur to Zurich to Bern to Visp to Zermatt. It was still pretty cool. The last part was the same line--a private line that our passes don't cover, but we didn't know so we got out of paying. Sweet. Then we were in Zermatt.
Zermatt is different than I remember it. I was there in the summertime though, and I didn't care about money the same way I do now. It's ridiculously expensive. The hostel was $115 for one night for two people. Bat shit insane is what it is there. It's basically a place for tourists to stay after a day of skiing and gawking at the Matterhorn. We tried to gawk, but it again snowed some ridiculous and unusual amount overnight and when we got up to Gornergrat it was too foggy to see anything really. It was kind of cool too. Still no Matterhorn though. Not in July, not in December. I'll never see it I don't think.
Getting the hell out of there, Bern was next. Bern is pretty cool. The old town anyway--that's all we were really interested in. Even that part isn't very old seeming though. It's covered in mostly high-end shops and there are only a few sights we had time for. We climbed another church though! It's awesome. I love climbing church steeples. It's hard to take pictures like that at night though. This one was kind of freaky too. When you're going up the long spiral stairs like every other church you're ever going to climb, there were long widows (I guess. I don't know what else to call them right now). They weren't really windows...they were like, long and pretty wide rectangles cut out of the concrete or stone so you can always see outside--and down. It was a little scary actually. I don't like knowing how high up I am until I'm up there I guess. And then it doesn't bother me. But watching you're progress is a little unnerving. It also felt like if you tripped something you were going to go over the edge. It was weird. Awesome though. We had fondue that night! It was really good. After a while it gets a kind of hard to keep going though. The wine seems stronger the more you eat. There's this fountain of a guy eating children. I don't remember the story about it, but it was right outside the hostel we stayed at. There's the big Zytgogge clock too. I like that one. It's beautiful. More Christmas markets. We didn't have gluhwein here though. Probably should have.
We met up with Alfred to find that crest. The village it's in is Valangin. It's north of Neuchatel which is north of Bern. We took the train to Neuchatel and he was there waiting for us. He drove us in his car to Valangin and knew right where the little church was--it's a tiny village so I guess it's not hard to find anyway--and right where the crest was in the stained glass. It was cool. He didn't speak hardly any English and I don't speak any French. It was a little bit awkward cause we couldn't talk to him in the car, but it was okay. We told him we were going to Montreux and he decided to just drive us there. That was really nice. It took an hour I think. I fell asleep in the backseat.
It was beautiful in Montreux. The perfect winter day. We did Chillon castle. Climb to the top--see the city of Montreux 3 or kilometres away. When we told Alfred we were going to Geneva the same day he made sure we knew the bus to get on to get into Montreux again cause it's a little far to walk. We walked though--there's this path that goes all the way from the castle into town. It's pretty. And you have an awesome view of Lac Leman and the castle as you're leaving. In town is the Freddy Mercury statue! Another Christmas market. Another Ferris wheel. Another pig knuckle for dinner! More Gluhwein. Gingerbread, chocolate stuff, cheese, and meats. It was grand.
After eating a bunch of random stuff we jumped on the train to Geneva. I didn't know exactly how to get to the hostel, but it wasn't too terribly hard once you could figure out what street you're on. Their street signs are kind of small. It was way down the main road and then down this kind of dark street. It wasn't that bad though. We got in a bit early and played cards in the common room. We were the last ones in our room to leave. That was nice--it's hard to try and be quiet getting all your shit together in the morning.
Geneva is really nice. More things to climb: St. Peter's again. It's St. Pierre there though. We got to hear the bells on 1pm. we waited for them for 15 minutes. It was a little anticlimactic. Notre-Dame cathedral is really pretty. They have some of my favorite stained glass--really bright colors. It was awesome to be in there that day too because it was sunny and partly cloudy so it'd be a little dark for a while and all of a sudden really bright. I liked it. We walked around a lot. Had our wine in a bar in the old town. At at a Co-op. Switzerland is just expensive in general.
Back to good old Ireland that night. It was Christmas eve...and buses weren't running from the airport. You'd think they've have a big sign or something telling you that were kind of stranded at the airport. They don't. We were standing at the stop and some Filipinos came up and we waiting too when this random guy walked by telling us we were waiting for nothing. Sonofabitch. I guess we have to catch a taxi. He asked us where we were going and said he could give us a lift in that general direction but not the whole way. Okay, he wasn't a totally random buy. He was wearing kind of official clothes. I don't have words at my disposal today. He wasn't a creep. We were following him when he decided to talk to the "citylink" drivers. Those buses go between all the big cities in Ireland: Dublin to Galway, Cork to Belfast, Donegal to Dublin etc. One of them said he could take the "sliproad" to Maynooth and drop us there. We'd have a bit of a walk after that but no big deal. Better than paying 70Euro for a taxi. So we jumped on this bus and didn't have to pay anything. A slip road is a roundabout I guess...I don't really know. But dropped us there kind of in the middle of nowhere and I didn't know where to go. So, I chose the wrong way. There was a sign that said "Maynooth business campus." Well, it says Maynooth and campus so lets try it. I still don't know what it is, but it has 24 hour security and this guy popped his head out of a window and asked what we were doing. We're lost kind sir, not trying to harm this office building. He pointed us in the right direction and made sure we knew it was at least a 40 minute walk down the road. We've had worse.
It always seems like longer when you're carrying things--like 4 bottles of wine in a rolling suitcase, or ten pounds of chocolate in a plastic bag with the handles ripped, and backpacks full to the bursting point. It did take 40 minutes. We passed a bunch of people, but only a few tried to talk to us.
Then we were here in the freezing apartment. Crash. In the morning--Christmas day--we had to change our plans. We were going to cook, but we weren't really prepared and I didn't know that every single store in town would be closed. Do they do that in America? I don't really know because we don't really leave the house on holidays anyway. The buses weren't running. So we were stranded in Maynooth. We made berry pie. We could have made pumpkin pie but some bitches threw away my eggs when they left. They didn't throw away anything else of mine but the eggs I bought the day before I left. That made me mad...hopefully whoever it was took them with them instead of just throwing them away. They were fine. I was going to use them. Whatever. We couldn't do that. We had to wait until the next day--St. Steven's day. Most of the stores are closed that day too. Everywhere else but here it's called Boxing day and it's just a made up bank holiday. But here it's St. Stephen's day--the saint's feast day, so at least it's based in something. Not just an excuse to have three days off of work.
We "hoofed it" over to Tesco and bought supplies: green beans, cream of mushroom soup, junk food, beer, Jameson, lemons, eggs, milk. Then we went into Dublin. The goal was some more Guinness and wandering. We ran into Oscar Wilde first, said hey, read some quotes, and walked toward Grafton. We passed the Porterhouse and I remember reading about it somewhere, so why not, lets try it. Turns out it's a micro brewery. No Guinness, but they had this good oyster beer that was a lot like Guinness--black, smooth, and foamy. We ended up eating there and having three pints each. We were there for a good three hours too. There was a football match on the big screen. After that we ran into Molly Malone, said hey, took an extended arm shot, and walked toward Temple Bar. Got the all important picture of Temple Bar itself. Most of the other bars in the district were closed though. We finally found this chill one--there were mostly older guys in there watching the game. Two pints later it was time to catch the bus, but we got one more and had to chug it down. Bad move. The bus ride was fine, walking was grand, sitting on the bed afraid to close my eyes sucked.
I crashed hard but felt fine in the morning. It was kind of stressful on Tuesday. Her flight was at 2. Basically, she got there just in time. Can't depend on public buses to be on time and can't depend on me to have the right change for the bus all the time. Or any cash at all that day. I forgot that I had spent everything I had on pints. She got there though, and all was well.
I was pretty sad after that haha it was weird being here alone last night all day today. Now I'm back to being okay with it. It's going to suck to live alone though. I have things to keep me busy right now though--it's time to buckle down and make myself care about passing my classes. My first exam is next Saturday.
I love and miss all of you.
So I've been bored out of my mind the last two days. Too bored to be productive even. It's kind of weird how when you really have nothing to do, that's when you can't do what you really need to do. And when I start to think about exams I get a little anxious and tense so I stop thinking about it and do pointless things like watch Archer for the fifth time, or Mitch Hedberg for the tenth, or I rearrange all the stuff on my desk and tell myself it's more organized. That was yesterday anyway. Today has been slightly better. I've made some serious headway in this damn book. Like 80 pages or so. It's just so dense. It's not even that I don't like it--it's really interesting and all that, but it's a meta-text. Meta-something at any rate. That's what our teacher said. I thought that meant that it's a text about text. Like a novel about novel writing. That's not what this is. There is a plot and made up characters and weirdness. But apparently Faulkner was more interested in how this thing was put together than in the story itself. But that doesn't make sense to me either. The plot is so intertwined and weird and there are so many different things going on--racism, the Old South, fear of incest because you don't know who you're related to, pride, blah blah blah--why is anyone going to care how it's all put together? How is anyone going to even notice how it's put together. They are just going to think you are a convoluted and long-winded ass.
Louise is back now. At least she was earlier. Tony has been here too, and now they're both gone. People are starting to come back though--I can hear the obnoxious laughing outside my window and random stomping down the stairs. It's nice actually. I'm done with the quiet. It wasn't peaceful at all.
I really haven't thought about resolutions much this year. There's the generic "don't be fat" and "be nicer to people", but I think if I were more specific I'd be more likely to change. Something like "at least know where the gym is" or "buy some sweatpants cause I know it's too cold for me to go anywhere in these shorts" or "stop buying junk food." The junk food thing is weird anyway. I don't eat bad at home. I don't eat chips or cookies or fast food all that often, but I have been here and then I just tell myself that it's something different and "Irish" so it's okay. Not true. Crisps are just chips and chips are just fries and digestives are just cookies. Rashers is just ham (it's nothing like bacon). Irish food is like carb overload. All easy food is carb overload. Pasta and rice. And when I'm lazy it's JUST pasta and rice. My carrots rotted. Fucking Nate left carrots here from when they got delivered to him from Thanksgiving and then they got covered with bags of potatoes and I unearthed them today cause I had fried potatoes (carb overload) and eggs for breakfast and they are like a blackish grayish blob. Sick. I don't want to move it until I'm going to take 
the garbage out because I don't want to disturb it yet cause you know it's going to be rank. Moral of the story: Madre, could you please make me one of your monster salads when I get back? But anyway. Resolutions. Maybe I should just stick to one. I try to have too many that way I have better odds. The better your odds the worse it is when you fail though. So I guess I'll just say fuck being nicer to people, I'm going to try and disappear a little bit. (Don't remember taking that-->)
