Heather and I caught a train after school and took it to Paris Montparnasse, rode the Paris Metro line #4 for 13 stops, and hopped on a train from the Paris Est train station in which we rode in a �Voiture Lit 3 Dames.� Yeah, this name meant nothing but an extra $35 to me either, until we actually got to our reserved space and realized that it was three really small bunk beds on top of one another, in a really tiny room which we would be sharing with a French lady. This French woman, Marie-Claire, was already established in our little room with her luggage taking up all the space in the luggage racks and her purse on the bottom bunk. Besides �Bonjour� the first thing that came out of her mouth was the English equivalent to �I really need to sleep on the bottom bunk, or I will wet myself if I can�t easily get up and use the bathroom during the night.� So of course I tried to be a nice person and allow Heather to take the second bunk, which put me on the top bunk, despite my extreme fear of heights. Everything was cool until I realized that I had only two ways of getting up to my bunk that was 9 ft. up in the air. I either had to use the 2 ft., non-stable ladder provided or the 10 ft. Tarzan rope that was hanging from the ceiling. You�ll have to see the video-taping job that Heather did of me to fully appreciate this 15 minute chunk of time, but I had quite a struggle climbing up to that beast. I was swinging legs, throwing arms, and had an extreme force gravity working against my thunder thighs, and ghetto booty. So when I finally got up to my cubbyhole of 115 degrees, I was sweating bullets, doing some heavy lamas breathing, and decided that there was no way that I was coming down from that bed until the train arrived in Munich, Germany the next morning. Heather and I lay in our beds and had about a 2 hr. conversation with Marie-Claire in nothing but French, so we were pretty stinking proud of ourselves! She gave me a large compliment on my speaking ability and even asked me if I was German because I didn�t have an American accent. I thought that she must have been drunk or something for thinking that, so when I realized that she was completely sober, I was rather flattered. Cool, huh! Time passed, the temperature rose in our little cart, and one of us could find the control button for the air conditioning. I couldn�t take it anymore, I was miserably hot in the clothes I had on, so I stripped down to my bra and underwear and just laid in my top bunk, hoping to God that no one would come in during the middle of the night and see me in nothing but my tighty-whities.
We arrived to Munich and made it to our other train on the other side of the station, and were able to catch it before it left, as we had like 10 minutes to make this transition. After this 7-hour train we finally arrived in Vienna (Wein, pronounced �vine� in German) and saw this huge sign for Subway. We were instantly weak in the knees and began salivating like Paslov�s dog. I ordered my 6� sub and was completely pumped to sink my teeth into some decent American food when I realized that their 6� is more like 6 centimeters! What a concept! Everyone in the world except Americans and a few other countries use the metric system, so those guys at Subway have probably never seen an inch! I felt totally disappointed with the quantity of the sandwich, but the American quality was still there! Heather ordered after me and learned from my mistake and ordered herself a 12�.
In Vienna, we stayed in a youth hostel called the Don Bosco Institution (which was actually a church tower) with only costs us like $6 a night. An Indian friend named Vivek recommended the place to me, so if there is one thing that I�ve learned about Indian people and their culture, it�s that they always know how to find the deals, no matter where they are! Luckily, the cute, little 95 year-old man behind the counter was excited to speak English with us and told us that the following day would be a national holiday for Austria and that everything would be closed. After this information was passed to us, we then decided to leave Vienna, go to Budapest a day early, skip Zurich, Switzerland, and go home a day early to make to our friend Isabel�s birthday party in Angers. We went to downtown Vienna to make the most we could in the limited time that we would still be there. We ended up spending the day learning the metro system, walking up & down the main shopping streets (while looking at things we couldn�t afford), trying Italian ice cream & checking out the guys. Oh my God, I think that they�ve been keeping the world�s stock hof hot guys all cooped up in Vienna, Austria! This city definitely goes down as the #1 city for hot dudes! Despite the fact that most European dudes look like light-skinned Ethiopians, these guys were tan & had some meat on their bones! I�m not talking chubby either; they were all sporting 6-packs, toned behinds, and light blue GAP fitted-T�s! |
