| WARNING: This letter may be graphic and is not recommended for children under 12. If you have a weak stomach, save yourself and your toilet bowl the agony and stop reading now!!! :-O Dear Family and Friends, *Yaaaawwwwnnnn!* Boy, am I beat! My body is withered, my feet are battered, and my heart is gratified . . . my bed has never looked more inviting! Why, you ask, am I so withered, battered, and gratified? Quite frankly, because I have just returned from the very trip that I, along with two of my favorite Peace Corps friends, have been planning for about a year now . . . the very trip that I have anticipated and waited so anxiously for . . . the great jaunt around magnificent central Europe. So, now, let me lead you on this great journey so that you may experience the joys and thrills of these last two weeks . . . FIRST STOP: Bucharest, Romania. Our time in Bucharest was short and was more of a stopover between destinations, but the day was still action-packed, to say the least. Nevertheless, we had most of a day to explore the capital of Romania. After arriving in Bucharest on our night train (I'm telling you, there's nothing like sleeping on trains!), we stowed our bags and made our way into the city. The moment we left the train station, I felt my stomach gurgle menacingly as I stumbled on a cobblestone. "Whhooaa!" I bleated, clutching my stomach. It gurgled again, destroying all hopes of a normally sane day. No sooner had we left the train station, I was forced to stop dead in my tracks, keel over, and wheeze to Chris and Marisa, "Bathroom . . . Quick . . . Need bathroom!!!" I don't know what it was, but it must have been the threat of Dracula looming heavily in the Romanian air! I dashed madly to the nearest sandwich shop that looked like it might actually have a real toilet and not just a hole in the ground. As soon as my hind end hit the cool porcelain, I was bathed in utter relief as all of my insides seemed to come pouring out. After my encounter with the porcelain god, I hobbled weakly back to my friends and followed them pathetically through the streets of Bucharest. "What could it be?!" I wondered. "Could it be all of that dried fruit I munched on with Marisa at 3 o'clock in the morning at the border crossing in between passport checks? Or is it something more . . . SINISTER?!" I had no sooner finished my thought than I spotted a McDonald's, my stomach gurgling and sending me into violent convulsions. "Wow, look at that church up ahead," Chris exclaimed the moment I cried out, "Look, it's McDonald's, I bet they have a decent bathroom. Whoops, I better hurry!" I dodged oncoming cars as I raced to the restaurant's entrance, Marisa and Chris looking on in bewilderment. Awwww, relief once again! So, the extent of what I saw during our day in Bucharest was the city's toilets, as I made one stop after the next in between sightseeing. "Gotta go!" I'd shout to my friends as I dashed from one toilet to the next, my stomach heaving and threatening suicide. Rain soaked and chilled our bones that day, but at least all of the bathrooms I visited provided some shelter from the cold. Hours later, as we rode through the dark, menacing hills of Transylvania in the dead of night, the wind whistling all around us and the trees reaching out menacingly as if to gobble us up, my stomach seemed to miraculously settle down for the night and I began to ponder the bright red bumps that had suddenly appeared on my chest and seemed to make some strange, eerie formation . . . SECOND STOP: Budapest, Hungary. Budapest brought me blisters galore. Through out the entire trip, we walked to NO END, but my blisters seemed to pop up right away and keep spreading like the Plague. "Why don't we take a BUS tour now?!" I begged my two friends. Large blisters bubbled up on my aching feet with each step, as I winced and gritted my teeth. But, I hobbled along like a trouper, as anxious as the rest of them to see if we could actually find an open Wendy's in the city, like there should have been. My mouth watered for a spicy chicken sandwich, but no such luck since Dave Thomas seems to think that Budapest doesn't need one of his precious fast food restaurants any longer. My feet seemed to become one giant pocket of puss as I limped along, looking at small children in blessed strollers longingly. "If I had one of those," I pondered. "Would Chris and Marisa push me around the rest of our trip?!" Then, as I struggled to catch up to our New Jersey boy, I answered myself with, "Nahh, probably not!" Oh WHY can't I be a baby again?!!? I enjoyed the city despite my growing blisters, determined to enjoy the rest of our European adventure as well, even if I had to CRAWL through it. But, nevertheless, the hostel provided a haven at night as I slipped languidly into my soothing bed. My nightly ritual for the rest of the trip would henceforth be a mad, psychotic ritual of popping bubbling, festering blisters with my nail clippers, coating and smothering them in Neosporin, and turning my poor, startled feet into mummies with a Band-Aid or two. Awwww, relief at last!!! THIRD STOP: Bratislava, Slovakia. You know that it's a small world when you are at a random museum in the charming old town of Bratislava, SLOVAKIA and you run into a Peace Corps friend who recently finished his service. We were just walking along nonchalantly when Chris notice a lanky, pale blond boy and said jokingly, "Hey, there's Cole!" And, sure enough, it was Cole! So, we had dinner with him at TGIFridays, a delightful treat for four Peace Corps Volunteers who are STARVED for real nourishment these days! By Bratislava, the dots I had noticed on my chest in Romania had taken on a new form . . . White layers of skin were surrounded by redness, as the circles grew wider and threatened to take over every inch of my body, spreading to new locations. And boy did they itch! My fingers couldn't help but CLAW psychotically at my neck and arms as Marisa chastised like my mother, "Don't scratch! Keep your hands away from it!" I pouted and held my hands together viciously, daring them to make one wrong move. My blisters bubbled, the spots on my body prickled, my nose sniffled, and we enjoyed our time in Bratislava . . . Marisa, what's that red dot on your chest?!!? :-O FOURTH STOP: Vienna, Austria. "The hills are a-live with the sound of mu-sic!" I sang piercingly the moment we entered Austria, the very home of the classic musical. Vienna was our one taste of "western" Europe on this European adventure and I was amazed by all of the culture that surrounded me from every corner and crevice of the beautiful city. "Crisp apple strudels and snitzel with noodles . . . these are a few of my fav-orite things!" I sang as we gorged ourselves on the infamous Viennese meal of veinersnitzel and noodles, with apple strudel for dessert. On our last day exploring Vienna, we made our way to a small amusement park and came face-to-face with . . . THE AIR DIVE. "Please, can we go on it?" Chris begged as we stared up at the large contraption in amazement. For, you see, this ride required two or three people at one time. "Come on," Chris pleaded. "It's fun, I've done it before, it'll be cool if the three of us go on it together . . . Please?!!?" He peered at us with his convincing eyes and pleading smile as we peered up at the death trap with rattling teeth. Marisa grimaced, I shuddered, Chris tried to change his tactic by saying, "It's settled, we're going on it!" I imagined myself being lifted 100 ft. into the air by the giant cord, attached to my two friends, and then being swung like a rag doll through the air. "But, I CAN'T . . ." I mumbled. "It's too scary!" But, Chris pleaded like an eager child and, after Marisa and I conferred in the ladies room, we decided to give it a try. I stood nervously between my friends as our padded air dive suits were tightly tied together and then, with a stretch of our legs, we were slowly lifted into the air. "YIKES!" I screamed, tightening my link with Chris' and Marisa's bruised arms. "I wanna go back! I wanna go back!" My grip tightened, as we were lifted higher and higher into the air and an amazed crowd formed below with gaping jaws. "Aaauuuggghhh!" I screamed as eardrums within miles burst wide open and small children cowered. "I WANT MY MOMMY! I WANT DOWN, I WANT DOWN! Is it too late to change my mind?!!? Whaaaa!!!" And then the terror really began as we reached 100 ft. and were dropped with only a little cord to keep us bouncing manically in the air. I screamed, I gasped, I shouted, I cried bloody murder. "EEEEEK!" I squealed. "My head is about to hit that bicycle! AAAK! Did you see how close I came to that guy's head?!!? Ahhhh, that pole is coming right at me . . . look out below!" I screamed my throat dry; Chris and Marisa laughed until their bellies hurt; as soon as we touched ground again, I fell to my knees and began to kiss it until I ended up with a mouth full of dirt . . . though that didn't stop me from talking about the ride and how much fun it was the rest of our trip. FIFTH STOP: Prague, Czech Republic. By the time we reached the Czech Republic, both of my friends had developed the strange fungus that was rapidly overtaking my body as we became friends in fungus. Widening red circles covered our bodies, itching like there was no tomorrow. "I think I have a new fungus," Chris would say, pointing at his arm. "Look at how scary this fungus on my leg looks," Marisa said with a shudder. I looked like a lizard with three fat fungi festering right on my poor face! The fungi seemed to copulate like disgruntled rabbits on our bodies, destroying any hope we had of looking normal. Our Peace Corps doctor suggested a cream via e-mail and, as soon as we got our hands on that stuff (in Poland), we practically BATHED in it. "Die fungus scum!" we all chanted menacingly as we doused the fungi in pounds of gooey white cream. "Maybe we have the Plague?" we joked. "Maybe we'll get back and have to be quarantined together?" God Forbid! :-) Discussions about our fungi enveloped much of our European trip, and it became quite funny that we would all be fungal through out our journey together . . spreading our fungus all over central Europe. But, despite the fungus problem, Prague was a BEAUTIFUL city. It was like something out of a painting and it didn't seem real as we gazed at the city from the banks of the Danube. We were all three covered in a disgusting fungus and the blisters seemed to be hesitant to heal, but we still loved every minute of our amazing trip. SIXTH STOP: Krakow, Poland. I'm sure every one of us has heard a "Polack Joke" or two in our lifetimes so you most-likely know the theme . . . you know, about how Polacks are supposed to be stupid, following along the same lines as blond jokes. Well, it seemed that Poland had rubbed off on my friends and me as soon as we entered the country because we were headed to Krakow and we got off at the wrong train station, about 45 minutes OUTSIDE of the city. "Where are we?" We questioned as Chris went to investigate. "Are we even IN Krakow? Why weren't there a million people at the train station begging us to stay at their hotel?" Well, our questions were soon answered when we realized that were weren't even in Krakow. Oh, well, no big deal, we'll just get on the next train to Krakow. And we did, but an even greater task turned out to be finding our out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere hostel. We even picked up a couple of Italians along the way, who had also just arrived and weren't sure where to stay. So, our time in Krakow turned out okay. "Is it possible," Marisa questioned. "To walk a block in this city and not see a nun . . . or two . . . or three . . ." Apparently, it wasn't! On our second day in Krakow, we went to nearby Auschwitz to tour the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Now, I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., but there is nothing like seeing where the brutality actually happened. We made our way through the iron gates and barbed-wire fences and toured the barracks, the crematorium where dead bodies were burned, the gas chambers, the execution wall, etc. It was so emotional and so hard to comprehend how thousands of innocent people had been forced to live and the torture that they were put through. It was amazing to experience such an important part of history, yet so emotional all at the same time . . .So, that's our trip in a nutshell. We had a great, memorable time and I took lots of great pictures. I returned to Bulgaria to discover that my new kitten (by the way, I recently took in a cute little stray kitten) was the culprit of the strange fungus that was overtaking us. Apparently, four other people had developed the fungus, all who had come into contact with MY cat, and had developed what we discovered was ringworm! 7 people affected by 1 kitten! It's become a regular Peace Corps epidemic! It's kinda funny, but I feel so bad! It was MY kitten, after all. So, now it's back to the grind. School will start soon, I'm going to have to move AGAIN to another apartment because of the mold problem and leaking roof of my current apartment, and it will be completely up to me to make the most of the next ten months of my Peace Corps service. It's still hard to believe that I have been here for over a year now, but I'm sure the next ten months will hold yet MORE exciting adventures for an eager Peace Corps volunteer. Happy Trails, Chantel NEXT TRIP: Germany (October 3-7)!!! |
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