Eurotrip.

As you know from my past entries, my best friend Kelsey Arver flew here to travel with me after my exams were over! I don't think I'll be able to update my blog until after our journey, so this will be the last entry for a while:

Our journey has already officially begun with Poland. We spent three days in Krakow, Poland, during which we went to the Auschwitz museum and concentration camp at Birkenau. We also got to enjoy a big dragon festival in the city center on the last full day we were there. The weather was very nice for us during the trip, and I will blog more about it
when I can put pictures up.

We had a few days back in Maynooth before the rest of our journey begins. Tomorrow we fly to London, England for two days. Thursday evening we fly to Milan, Italy for three days. We will be there the first day by ourselves, then Ben will fly to meet us there on Friday. On Sunday the three of us will fly to Paris, and then drive to Ben's house. We spend about 5 days in France, the first three will probably be with Ben in St. Martin de Boscherville and Rouen, the last two days Kelsey and I will probably be in Paris and stay overnight in a hostel. We will leave that next Friday for Faro, Portugal, which is on the coast and should be beautiful! We will spend two full days there before flying back to Dublin the following Monday. Tuesday morning, June 22nd, we fly out of Dublin back to the US. Ben, who is also flying to the United States that day, will land a few hours after us, and then we will all drive home together.

So in a nutshell:
Poland - Dublin - London - Milan - Paris - Faro - Dublin - USA

Although it will be exhausting, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime Eurotrip that Kelsey and I will never forget! I can't wait! Thank you to all my loyal readers and commenters. I am so glad I fulfilled my New Years Eve resolution to blog during my trip, and it always made me feel good to know when someone had been enjoying my stories :) See you all back in the states!

Goodbye Friends, Maynooth, Guinness, and Erasmus.
Goodbye Ireland, my Home.

Sláinte.

Wet Bed.

I was hesitating about putting this online before I had the pictures to go with it, but in lieu of Patrick's comment on my 'Vive la France' blog, I felt it necessary to put this in now. I'll add the pictures later.

The second night that Kelsey was staying with me, we came into my apartment to find a large going away party being thrown for my only American housemate Maria. She is also from St. Mary's. There were about 16 Irish students in our living room, and a few in Maria's bedroom. They were drinking, playing some games, and getting ready to go out to the clubs for the night. We said our hello's, and then left to do a few things outside of the apartment, which I thought was convenient timing because by the time we got back home everyone from the party would be out at the nightclubs.

Well, my timing was accurate, and we were alone in the apartment. I got into my room and quickly discovered that there was a huge wet spot on my bed by my pillow. Immediately I was in worst-case-scenario mode and thought it was urine. I have a bad sense of smell, so I grab Kelsey and make her smell it. She said it didn't smell like anything. It was also colorless, so I thought that it might be vodka, but it didn't smell like alcohol. No one at the party was drinking water, so I thought it was very suspicious that anyone would choose to suddenly sober up, go in my room and spill water everywhere. It was quite late, the only extra mattress was on the floor for Kelsey, and we were already incredibly tired, so I covered the spot with an old blanket and fell asleep on it, grumbling furiously to myself that people had broken into my room period, in addition to the fact that they spilled something all over my bed.

The next morning the spot is dry, I throw the blanket back in its corner and forget about it.

Two days later, after Kelsey has moved into my housemates old room because she left, I get out of the shower and am about to get dressed when I notice the spot on my bed. After it dried I don't remember seeing it ever again, until then. Now it seems to have taken on a whole new color. A yellow one. I run into the kitchen, grab Kelsey, and take her into my room. "Smell that" I demand. She didn't even have to get very close to smell it. She slowly turned back to me with an 'I feel really sorry for you' look on her face. "Oh God, no..."

"It smells like Urine," she says.

Not only did someone break into my room, in their drunken stupor they either decided it would be really funny to pee on my bed, or they were so inebriated they didn't know where they were peeing and perhaps even thought it was a toilet. Either way I was livid.

Whenever a skunk would be anywhere near our town, my mother would be able to sniff it out. It would even wake her out of her sleep most of the time. Whenever I would tell her "I don't smell anything" she would purse her lips at me as if I was making it up. Well, mom, someone urinated all over my bed, and for two days I never noticed the smell growing. If this isn't proof I'm not making it up, I don't know what is.

So that leaves me without a mattress, furious at everyone from the party, with no way to contact my ex-roommate to figure out what happened, and with no way of finding out who did it or why. If I hadn't just gotten out of the shower when I discovered it, I don't know what I would have done. I very well may have snapped.

I slept on urine for three days and had no idea.

Angry Mom.

On a note slightly unrelated to the purpose of this blog entry, I love Guinness. I realize the only update anyone got was from my birthday when I thought it tasted like garbage, which it did. However since then I've taken sips of all sorts of different beers, and have slowly grown to like the flavor. Recently I ordered a pint of Guinness, and thought it was smooth and delicious and perfect. Terrible timing, considering I'm leaving Ireland soon!

All of that being said, Kelsey and I toured the Guinness factory yesterday! It was really interesting seeing how everything is brewed, and at the end of the tour we each got a complimentary pint of freshly brewed Irish Guinness!

On the train ride back home it was quite busy because it was around rush hour. The ride from Dublin to Maynooth takes about 30 minutes, maybe a little more at this time of day because the train stops at every station. Needless to say, it's not very fun to stand during that whole ride.

Kelsey and I were sitting in two seats because we got to the station early and were some of the first people on the train. I noticed a woman, who appeared to be the mother of two little girls who looked about 3 and 4 years old, sit down with her girls, then stand up after a stop and walk with them to the front. After they passed our seats I assumed they got off the train. However, after a few stops, they walked back in front of Kelsey and me to where only the woman's seat was left. The mother sat in it, and said something harshly to the girls about how 'their seats weren't there any more' so they would 'just have to stand.' She was a short, burly looking woman with scraggly dark brown hair and a round, rough face.

Kelsey and I felt bad for the two little girls. We decided to give our seats up to the little girls, as we were seated very near to the mother, and then we would try our luck finding seats at the other end of the train. We stood up, walked into the aisle, and tried to get the mother's attention to offer our seats. After a few minutes with no success, I said "Excuse me," and the entire train car went quiet and they all looked at me, the mother included.

"Your daughters can have our seats," I said. "We will move to the back."

"No, YOU listen to ME," she scowled, pointing her finger at me. "She had to go to the bathroom, and someone took her seat. She needs to learn her lesson."

I was startled not only by the way she was punishing her 3 year old for having to go to the bathroom, but also by the way that she was reprimanding me. I was so stunned I just ended up covering my mouth with one of my hands. I mumbled through my fingers "I really don't mind.."

She promptly responded "Well I do, she needs to be punished."

I could feel my face becoming warm with embarrassment for her, more than for being attacked myself. Looking around at the other passengers verified, however, that her behavior was indeed stunning. I turned around to Kelsey, hand still on my mouth, to see her mouth agape as well. We were standing awkwardly trying to decide whether to sit back down or go find new seats anyway, when the woman who was sitting behind our seats said "I would just sit.."

"Really?" I asked. "I just don't know...just sit back down here?"

"That's what she said to do, and I'd just do what she said," the woman smiled.

We sat back in our seats and rode the rest of the way to Maynooth, during which our confused embarrassment turned to laughter by the end of the journey.

Mosquito.

Kelsey and I were in line at the Krakow Airport in Poland waiting to board our plane back to Dublin. As we were standing there, a mosquito flew up and landed on the back of the neck of the man standing in front of us. Kelsey, who was in front of me, started stuttering 'excuse me's and 'sir's, but was too quiet to get his attention. She almost committed to smacking him in the back of the neck, but then panicked and just ended up pointing at it and stammering some more. I kept saying "kill it! kill it!" but she just couldn't bring herself to smack a stranger. By this time a few people around us had become aware of what was going on as well. Suddenly the man turned around and grabbed the back of his neck, obviously noticing the bite, and everyone who was involved had a good laugh about the ordeal.

Afterward Kelsey, the man with the mosquito bite, the old man who was standing behind us, and I had a discussion about what we would do in that situation, now that we could think about it, and what we would want done to us. It really was quite a dilemma:

Do you hit a stranger? What if he hits back? Can you imagine how confused you would be if you were suddenly smacked in the back of the neck at the airport? I don't know about you, but I'm already on edge at the airport usually, and if I was suddenly struck in the back of the neck my first reaction would be to freak out.

Or do you get his attention as quickly as possible to inform him of the bug? That was Kelsey's route, and it was quite unsuccessful.

Because Kelsey was pointing at it, unable to smack him, we even discussed the option of simply pushing your finger onto it to squish it, rather than smack it. There was an immediate and unanimous agreement that pointing your finger into the mosquito on the stranger's neck was the most awkward choice of all, and none of us would do that or want that done to us.

In the end the four of us ended up with the same preferences: Although it would be confusing at first, we would want to be smacked. We would want the mosquito squashed immediately with limited physical interaction with the stranger. However, interestingly enough, we also all agreed that all of us were too cowardly to smack the bug off of a stranger ourselves. Even though it was a humorous discussion, it left us all pretty paranoid until we boarded the plane - we knew there were mosquitos around, and if one landed on us we now knew that we couldn't count on anyone around us to kill it.

Tom Foolery II

When Ben went to Vienna he gave me his apartment key 'just in case' I needed anything, my roommates were loud and I needed to escape, or I just wanted a change of scenery. I was telling Meagan D. about how I thought it was a sweet gesture, when her face lit up and she said "Mary! We have to do something to his room while he's gone!" The thought honestly had never occurred to me, but I knew Ben had a good sense of humor, so we met up with Brendan to brainstorm what we could do to his apartment before he got back. We came up with plenty of stupid ideas together, but none quite as brilliant as Brendan's contribution - "Let's wrap everything in his apartment in newspaper. I mean every single thing." Perfect.

We knew where the campus recycled piles of newspaper, so Meagan and I went to pick up a few stacks. We made it about 20 feet at a time with our huge stacks before we had to take a break because the weight was killing us. Luckily there were waist-high posts along the way. When the posts stopped, though, we had to call on our friend Cameron to help us carry the rest to our apartments because we just couldn't make it. Thank goodness he came when he did, (even though he wasn't all that thrilled when he found out why we woke him up to help us with something), because as soon as we got back to our apartment it started pouring outside. Perfect timing! The two of us carried what we could to Ben's later that day, and Brendan picked up the last of it when he joined us to help. In total it took about 5 hours for the three of us to wrap everything he owned. And I mean everything - in drawers, all clothes, every individual shoe, his closet doors, everything.

Here is Ben's room before:

Because of his broken leg he had to prop the end of his bed up with stuff so it was elevated when he slept, which is why stuff is shoved under the mattress. Everything on the bed was working materials.

His desk and closet before, and the stand he had laundry
drying on.

Me wrapping everything on his desk and window stand - dvds, empty bottles and cans, printer, computer. We even wrapped up his trash.

Meagan working on shirts and shoes. You can see his extra crutches wrapped in the corner.

Brendan and I working hard.

After a little while of working we decided it would be fun to take a break and try on Ben's clothes. He is quite lean, and so we thought it'd be a good laugh for basically any of us to try anything he owned on:

Brendan in his shirt.

I couldn't get his pants done, by I did get them on over my own jeans, which was a feat in itself.

Brendan struggled a little more than I did with the jeans.

And that's as far as they went on him.

Meagan struggled to get them done like the rest of us.

But then managed to hike them up even higher and create an impressive 'mom-jean' look.

After all of our hard work, we finished the morning of his arrival:

His bed.

All of his shoes.

The inside of his closet.

The desk I wrapped. The St. Patrick's Day hat was Meagan's handiwork, and a work of art I must say. She maintained the shape and everything!

The finished product! If you look under his mattress you can see that we wrapped up the soccer ball, and everything else, propping it up.

Beautiful.

We found out quickly that we took WAY too many newspapers, and left the rest of them at the entrance to Ben's apartment complex for anyone who wanted them. When Ben and I got to his apartment that night, he saw the piles and said "What's this?"

I said "Newspapers I guess" and tried to sound indifferent.

"Great!" he announced. "I want one!"

He spent about 5 minutes trying to rip a newspaper out of the plastic binding holding the bundles together, during which I couldn't stop smiling to myself and thinking "you have plenty of newspaper already." The fact that he worked so hard to get a paper made it even funnier when he got into his room and saw what we had done. He laughed pretty hard, and was impressed by how much work we put into it. It was kind of like Christmas everyday for him from that point on - he was re-learning what he owned, and trying to guess what different objects were before he opened them. He was guessing which shoe was which and tried to find the match he needed while unwrapping the fewest incorrect shoes in the process. After a few days, when he finally decided to unwrap everything, he told me it wasn't quite as funny when after two hours he was still unwrapped.

What he soon discovered, though, was that we bought and wrapped a few of his favorite beers for him as a 'welcome home, please don't be mad at us' gift. He appreciated the gesture, and didn't complain much after that :)

Taxi Life Lessons.

A few weeks ago Ben and I were supposed to fly to Prague, which was the birthday gift he gave me, but the volcanic ash got in the way again and our flight was canceled. It was the only weekend we could have gone, so we were both incredibly disappointed. The only good news in this was that because we were in Ireland and not Prague Ben could get his cast taken off early. We took the train, then hopped in a cab to take us the last 20 or so minutes to the hospital. Our driver was named Philip, and he had a very interesting story.

Philip made a joke about Ben's cast by saying he had played "too much football!" which was especially funny because that was exactly how he broke his leg in the first place - on the soccer field. Then as the conversation continued, we learned that Philip was in a traumatic accident when he was a young man. He was riding his bicycle, and was hit by a car going 80 kilometers per hour. The car was fighting to pass a truck who wasn't going to let it happen, and eventually ended up running right into Philip. His hands went through the windshield, the bicycle handlebar went through his stomach, he broke both arms, one of his legs, lost the tip of a finger, can't move another finger, and on one hand his thumb and pointer join is still broken.

It was a miracle that he survived. He was in a three week coma, and during that time, he soon learned, his nurse, who was English, talked to him every day. He said that he remembered hearing her saying his name a lot, "Philip, Philip." And when he eventually woke up from his coma, he had lost his lifelong Dubliner's accent, and instead could only speak with his nurses British accent! He had somehow adopted her accent during the ordeal when he was hearing her speaking to him during those three weeks! When he first picked us up I was surprised to hear a British accent instead of an Irish one, and now that I know why, I can only imagine how surprised his family and friends must have been when he started speaking to them again.

He told us that he remembered being outside of his body right after the accident, and even remembered watching himself on the operating table. "Ever heard of one of those out of body experiences? I had one," he said proudly. Then he told us that once he recovered, he walked away with 5 new philosophies on life that make him feel fulfilled and happy every day:

1.) Give love to everyone.
He described how we are each born into a world full of love, and how it is our duty to spread it to those who deserve it.

2.) Don't judge anyone.
He said it's just a waste of time and love, and we shouldn't judge anyone. Not by their skin color, their religious beliefs, not by anything.

3.) Always have forgiveness in your heart.
If someone apologizes or not, you shouldn't carry the burden of anger. You should forgive every person who wrongs you, even if they don't necessarily say sorry. Ben and I exchanged private smiles as he gave an example in which someone was forgiving another person named "Mary."

4.) Fill your life with Music.
Whether you can play an instrument or not, you should surround yourself with music.

5.) Laugh often.
This one he considered the most important.

He also said that if there was a sixth philosophy, it would be that 'You are #1, and you should live your life for you.' Make decisions that will make you happy, and follow your dreams.

Hamburg, Germany.

When I first arrived in Ireland I got a message on facebook from Swanni, an old friend who was a foreign exchange student at our high school. We hadn't spoken in years, but she saw that I was coming to Europe to study abroad and invited me to come visit her in Hamburg! After numerous logistical problems, including volcanic ash, Meagan D. and I were finally able to go see her. We flew to London and had a connecting flight to the Hamburg airport.

The Plane.

For those of you who don't know, this is how we board the RyanAir planes.

There was a particularly scary looking group of young men in front of us when we were in line to board the plane. Meagan and I exchanged a few quiet wisecracks, and then said agreed that there is no way we would be sitting by or near them on the plane.

After avoiding them on the flight we landed safely at the airport, and walked to the bus that would take us to the city center to meet Swanni. I was told the bus ride would be just over an hour. Meagan got on the bus while I loaded my luggage into the storage compartment, then followed her. As we were walking toward the back of the bus I started to get concerned that there were no seats left, when we saw that there were exactly two seats left. They were at the very back of the bus in a row of 4 seats, and were surrounded by the scary gang from the plane. The most charming one, Za, who had a crooked mowhawk and a big cross tattoo centered around a large mole on his head, scooted over to make room for us in between him and his friends. Of course.

We reluctantly took our seats, and learned that despite their scary exteriors, they weren't as bad as we thought they would be. Granted, they drank an entire bottle of vodka during the bus ride, but they courteously offered us some every time the bottle went by. They were three lithuanians and one brit who were on an anti-fascist, anti-racist soccer team. They were competing in a tournament that weekend in Hamburg. As a whole, they were fairly inebriated to begin with, and only became more drunk as the ride went on.

Za was quite talkative and interesting, but by far the scariest looking. Jack was friendly, but became way too friendly by the end of the ride and insisted on hugging us as we exited the bus. Paulo was the friendliest and most composed, but was constantly ridiculed by the others for being British. They all did their impressions of British accents as they explained to us that we were easier to understand. They said in England they sound like they're talking with an "apple in their mouth" or "water in their mouths." Their impressions of this sounded a lot like angry dinosaurs. Paulo had a good sense of humor about all of it though.

The last boy, Reagis, never said a word to us because by the time we got on the bus he had already passed out cold against the window. He had a pony tail of dread locks, (some pink, some his natural dirty blonde color), with a hello kitty barrette tangled into the mix. Za kept saying Reagis was his girlfriend as he would smash his unconscious, ragdoll face into the window. He also frequently belted out the chorus from Guns N' Roses "Paradise City."

By the end of the ride Za asked Meagan and I for our phone numbers. He called both of us Marilyn because I think he was under the impression it was one of our names and if he just said it to both he would get it right eventually. He asked, and I said "Nope." and he said "please?" and I laughed and said "Nope." As he tried to convince us again, Jack piped in telling him that we said no and to stop asking. I appreciated Jack a little more after that. Mostly out of fear, we asked Za for his last name and said we would find them on facebook when we got home. Za gave me his dirty, stained team t-shirt as a parting gift when we left. It was thoughtful, but was a terribly unclean, disgusting looking shirt. They were entertaining for an hour, but we were glad to get off that bus and don't plan on ever contacting any of the boys.

Swanni's street.

After we arrived, Swanni took us to different places with great views of the city.

We also walked under the harbor from one side to the other with this tunnel.

Me in the tunnel.

Me and Meagan.

Here is one of the streets of Hamburg in the evening.

The first night we were in Hamburg there was a huge festival, and Swanni and a group of her girlfriends took us to the lake to watch the fireworks. It was very cool because we were walking through town like a parade with hundreds of people, all going to the same spot at the park. At the end when we were all clapping and cheering together I really felt like a part of the city.

Here is the central train station.

Me and Swanni riding the train together.
The man behind us knew he would be in the picture. haha

The black steeple is a part of the church that we climbed to the very top of to get the best view of the city. We decided it would be faster to take the stairs than to wait for the elevator, and climbed 467 steps to get to the very top. We were quite exhausted when we got there.

Swanni said she sometimes comes to this beautiful church for the Christmas services.

The organ.

View of Hamburg.

Second view of Hamburg.

Me at the very top. It was a little windy, as you can see.

Swanni had to feed the pet bunnies at her neighbors apartment while they were on holidays, so Meagan and I went with her. They were very shy bunnies though. Here they are hiding under my chair next to my shoe:

The little white one was less skittish.

More of the city.

Swanni and I walking.

The city hall.

Another view of city hall.

For bachelor parties in Europe the groom-to-be is basically dressed up like a fool and forced to embarrass himself in public. This poor jail-bird with the microphone was about to serenade everyone in the plaza in front of the city hall.

The 'beer bicycle' seen above is a bar where every stool had pedals. We saw it a few times while we were walking around in the afternoon, but usually we could hear it coming before we saw it.

We spent our last afternoon in the city at Swanni's parents house and had lunch with her family. The lunch her mother and older sister made for us was wonderful, and they all spoke English quite well so the conversations were great as well.

Here is their house:

Me and Swanni at a pub.

I really liked the wall at the pub.

At the tiny airport before our flight we had a few hours to kill, and Meagan and I quickly discovered the children's play area. We kept ourselves pretty entertained:

Me in a rocket.

It was a tight squeeze.

Meagan's helicopter.

It was great to see Swanni again after all of these years! She gave us the best time in Hamburg! She might be coming to the states in September for a wedding, so hopefully it won't be too long before we see each other again.