Back In One Piece

Wow, after three weeks on the run, it feels very nice to be back home tonight. We had a great honeymoon that exceeded our expectations in many ways, and didn't match them in just a few. All in all it was great. We've got loads of pictures to sift through and look at, some of which will find there way here I'm sure.

We started and finished in Frankfurt, Germany. From Frankfurt we stopped in Munich, then Vienna, Austria. From Vienna we went to Venice, Florence, then Rome. Then on to Geneva, and Dijon, France, and Paris. After Paris, we headed up to Brugge, Belgium, with our last stop in Amsterdam. We saw more than we'd intended but the pace was always good. We had no real plan and just went where we wanted, when we wanted. It just worked out that we fit in a bit more than we had intended. The winner of 'most awesome place that we want to move to' is far an away Geneva. Last place goes to Italy collectively, with Rome being particularly crappy. I will of course elaborate on this in more detail later on. Here's a map of our route:



Some basic impressions of our trip: although I live in a foreign country, it was really cool to feel like I was in a foreign country again. Japan is so different from America, but it's also very familiar at this point, the extent to which I don't understand it notwithstanding. And I've returned with a great appreciation for Japan that I might have lost sight of a bit. I'm sure I'll be bitching about barking dogs and lousy Kanazawa drivers again shortly, but there'll be a reprieve for at least a little while.

Things I noticed in Europe:

-dogs everywhere: on trains, in restaurants, museums, parks, everywhere!! I rapidly realized that I still don't like dogs, even if they are more social and less neurotic than the dogs in Japan.

-dog crap everywhere: apparently they don't mind it smeared all over sidewalks and everywhere else. The exception was Geneva, where they are civil enough to pick up after there mutts. Amazingly we managed to neither step in nor roll our suitcases through any landmines in all of our travels. Though, somewhat ironically, Chieko got shit on by a pigeon and I actually got (wet) pigeon crap on my shoe.

-non smoking trains: Japan tries this but fails. They have 'smoking cars' on the trains here, which is fine. Except that the trains spend so much time in tunnels that all the smoke gets pushed back to the non-smoking cars. In Europe, no smoking anywhere on the train.

-pay toilets: lots of public toilets, none of them free. Even in some restaurants you had to pay to use the toilet. Hmmmm...was that ALL dog poop?

-Belgian beer is so goddamn delicious.

-baby strollers: they have some serious baby strollers over there. Off road looking things with sleeping bags to keep the little ones warm.

-cars: I love cars, and Europe is a very good place to be if you love cars. It was interesting to see how many diesel models there are of cars that, back in the States, aren't offered.

-slow: I'm used to things, especially concerning public transportation, running like clockwork here in Japan. Nothing is ever late unless someone has jumped in front of a train. Things were generally late in Europe, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just an adjustment.

-English: also due to my time here in Japan and interaction with its inhabitants, I have rather low expectations for people being able to speak English. But good God, EVERYONE we met in Europe spoke English. And not just basic, get your point across English, but really good English. The Dutch were far and away the best here; they had a command of English on par with and exceeding pretty much every American I've ever dealt with. And the ease with which people (in general) were able to switch back and forth between languages really was enviable. I felt admiration, jealously, and a little bit embarrassed. It was a bit of an eye opener.

-expensive: I won't get specific, mostly because I don't want to freak myself out about how much money we spent, but Europe is not a cheap place when you are sleeping in hotels every night and eating most of your meals out. I suppose if you live there it's not so bad, but my main currencies are Yen and Dollars, both of which are getting spanked by the Euro.

-weather: we were warned and we were prepared, but the weather sucked. I think we had one or two days of uninterrupted blue skies. There was one day in Rome that I could where a t-shirt. But most days it rained/snowed at least a little, and most days we were cold. We were hoping to get lucky with the weather and didn't, but we managed to dodge rain drops and snowflakes most of the time.

-grime: Europe, at least in the cities, is kind of a dirty place. Aside from all the dog poop, there's a lot of garbage. It's pretty common to see garbage bags piles in the streets every morning, and general debris (newspapers and such) blowing around. There are cigarette butts everywhere. Again, perhaps Japan has spoiled me when it comes to clean cities. But I've realized it's important to me to live in a clean place.

-graffiti: Germany may take the cake in terms of graffiti square footage, but nobody else is very far behind.

These are some of the things that come to mind, I'll remember more as I talk more in depth about the different places we went. For now though, time for me to head off to bed. The flight back was 10 hours, which is short compared to my flights back to the east coast, but we had some runaround getting from Tokyo to Kanazawa that turned the travel tedious. All is well now though. It's raining and smells like spring here. Bring it.