i hate to be cliché, but i couldn't help it. its sound of music this, and sound of music that, all over this place.. i DIDN'T go on the sound of music tour however. i refuse. aaanywhoo.

i'll start back a day or two, as after i left george in frankfurt, it was 5 hours on the train for me towards the far southern border of germany, to a little town called füssen, to see castles! the train ride was, well, a train ride.. i was able to catch up on some sleep, i'm pretty sure i slept nearly the whole way. i then get there, its hotter than hell still, i walk all the way to the hostel to find that they have no room. fine. i then walk to the tourist info place, cause they supposedly find rooms, but just my luck, its sunday. they're closed. brilliant. i walk around some MORE and finally a place for €35, which included breakfast! one more goo all-you-can-eat breakfast wasn't gonna hurt i figured. however, after all the walking and struggle to find a room, it was getting late. booo. so much for my original plan of being able to see both castles that night, and then head out on an early train the next morning.. oh well.

you can't see anything from town, but i catch the bus, and in 5 minutes the bus is winding up this road, and out of both sides of the bus you can see these castles looming up on the mountain. it was UNBELIEVABLE. the famous one especially, neuschwanstein, which i had seen in more pictures than i could count, but to actually be seeing with mine own eyes.. WOW. i immediately began snapping pictures. i would walk 5 meters, and take another one. each one better than the last. each one postcard-worthy. soo incredible.

i book my tour for the lesser castle, as thats all i have time for, then tour it, and then hike up and around neuschwanstein. the most spectacular view of the day, and perhaps of the trip thus far: from a bridge on the back side of the castle, up in the mountain, looking down at the castle from above with the entire valley behind it. its breathtaking. if this internet didn't cost a small fortune and if it wasn't a crappy computer anyway, i'd upload the oh, 50 or so pictures i took of it for you to see. although, the pictures can't begin to do it justice. you had to be there. wow.

from there, i walk the 8km back to town, at which point i'm quite tired. so off to bed in my lonely single. stupid filled-with-families-and-school-groups hostel. every town should have a nice, BACKPACKER oriented hostel. none of this crap where there's old guys and 5 year olds all over the place. i guess i'm just bitter.

not wanting to deal with that whole mess again, the not having a place to stay and wasting hours trying to find somewhere, i decided to skip innsbruck, and head straight for salzburg, where i was able to make reservations at YoHo, a hostel that many people have recommended, and where i could hopefully have some human contact.

the next morning, i had my actual last buffet breakfast, hiked to the castle, toured the castle, snap more pictures, hiked BACK, and caught the noon train out of town, getting me into salzburg around 6pm. hurray for the YoHo, i sat down in the lounge, and 30 seconds later was chatting away with a big group of folks. mostly canadians and australians, but fun kids. good to be back in the backpacker circuit.

wondered around today, visiting mozart's birthplace and residence, and some fortress, and just general meandering. i enjoy that. and tomorrow, off to hallstatt to visit some ice caves and do some more hiking, in austria's lovely lake district. its beautiful here, in austria that is. its like a nice, cheapER, switzerland. i like that.

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well, actually, i'm typing this from a hotel in frankfurt. buuut, i'd already written from here, and we're merely here for the evening, and rothenburg was wonderful, so i figured i'd title it from there.

we i last typed, we were actually just out the door to pick up our car. so, we did.. a lovely opel, lightning car. brand new, very german-esque car. we then manage to zig-zag our way out of town, en route to dachau, the first concentration camp.

dachau was, well.. a concentration camp. a gripping movie, followed by an audio commentary of the entire guide, followed by a complete and well done museum. it was a lot to chew on. the camp that i had seen in latvia had been just a memorial, and was difficult enough at that.. this was the real deal. and it was expained so clearly, with such detail, that it brought out such sadness and such hate that words cannot describe. truly an experience. it was an overcast day.. how fitting. yeah i think that'll be the only one of those i'll be visiting for a while.

the day however, thankfully, got more upbeat after that. from there, we headed off in our lightning car on germany's "romantic road".. basically, a route from south of munich, to frankfurt, winding through the german hillside and small seemingly 15th century towns. the drive was spectacular! hills and rivers and castles oh my!

we finally arrive at rothenburg, (aparently pronounced ROE-ten-berg), and manage to find our way to our hotel, nestled in right next to the town's medival wall. the man running the place greets us, and is a little less than friendly, as it was about 8, and we had not called. made some snide remarks like "in germany we have phones you know.."... um, whatever buddy. deal with it. beautiful little place though. and the CITY! like the title says, its a medival city that looks as though disney had designed and built every little building and every little shop. more so than any city i've been to.

wake up, the man is MUCH nicer at breakfast. decent breakfast (i've been evaluating the buffet breakfasts thus far... still have yet to eat the one here at this hotel, but in my expert, breakfast-deprived opinion, the first one we had, in prague, was the best. just in case you cared.)... then off to finish off the romantic road.. well, we got a tad off course i do believe, as the romantic road was supposed to take us all the way into frankfurt, but somehow we managed to get off of it, and onto the autobahn! oh the joy. not a single speed limit sign posted, we cruised at a rather fine clip in our little (not really little) lightning opel. and then you've got the porche's passing us probably doing 220+ km/h.. you do the math.

and so we're here.. at the hotel manhattan... its a balmy 35 degrees here, again, you do the math, but i'll give you a hint, its freaking hot. and even in a fine hotel like this, these europeans have seemingly yet to discover air-conditioning. oh well. there's a shower, and a buffet breakfast. my last one for some time. oh how i'm going to get george's money worth out of that one tomorrow morning. :-) and then, sadly, george heads back across the pond to the good old us of a, and for me its off to visit the castle that inspired the castle at disneyworld, mad king ludwig II's, leiwieghstiener (its not really spelled like that, i pretty much just mashed keys to generate that facimile).. i'm quite excited.. then off for about a week through austria, innsbruck, salzburg, hallstat and viena. i THINK. and then, east, i do believe.. back to the land of weird languages and cheap stuff... i couldn't be more excited..

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well, george and i are here in munich, just about ready to rent our car and head off towards rothenburg for a night, and then its back to frankfurt. hard to believe really that george's time is nearly up, time for me is starting to FLY by... entire weeks seem to just disappear, um, like THIS ONE. so strange. but its been the best time, eating well, visiting some AMAZING places.. and there's still time left i guess..

cesky krumlov was the most amazing little town ever.. soo much different than the hustle and bustle of prague, and we could tell that even on the walk in from the train station. a steep downhill (and unfortunately, a steep UPHILL on the way back), we could practically see the entire little town from the top of the hill.. nestled along this winding river. we get settled into our hotel, the zlatny-andel, have a bit of lunch, wonder around a bit, and spend the rest of our time on a tour of the town's castle. following that, we had yet another authentic czech dinner, and again had not a clue what we were ordering. as before, it ended up tasting quite good, and the two of us managed to get quite stuffed for a whopping 350 thingers (roughly $11) (note: in my confusion over non-euro foreign currencies, i refer to them ALL as thingers.) oh, and the czech beer, both the original budweiser, and the original pilsner.. not bad. i suppose i'm not quite enough of a beer lover to know if they're the best in the WORLD, but aparently, they are..

from there, a lovely 8 hours (4 changes) on the train. somehow, in our confusion, we did not get me a ticket out of the czech republic, but thankfully, the conductor was not ARMED, and was actually quite nice about the whole ordeal. it cost something like 96 thingers to make it right ($3). riding through austria was spectacular, rolling green sound-of-music scenery.. i'm quite excited to be returning there next week on my way to eastern europe.

munich sort of let us down, however. its a rather large, modern city, and doesn't really have anything of MAJOR significance to see aparently. we wondered around, pretty much aimlessly, through the old center, and were relatively unimpressed. we then rented bikes, and with them were able to see much more of the city. highlight for me, seeing the OCTOBERFEST grounds. its just IMMENSE. the festival's not for another month and a half, but already they're constructing MASSIZE "tents", which are actually not tents but huge wooden-framed buildings. its an impressive sight. not sure if i'm going to make it back for the festival or not, but even the thought of a million people, all drinking huge mugs of beer, all crammed into this area where we were, is hard to imagine.

we finished off our day in true german fashion: at the hofbräuhaus. the most "famous" of munich's beer halls, aparently. we ended up having dinner there, but had gone with 2 goals in mind. first, i wanted to merely drink a liter of beer in a german beer hall, and second, we wanted to watch the 200 japanese tourists, also drinking beer in a german beer house. funny, we managed to accomplish both. it was an interesting experience, complete with some sort of BAND, and people singing along. ha. we also learned that aparently in german, "grilled" means "fried", "fried" means "double fried", and "salad" consists merely of potatoes, and pretzels come as big as your head. too funny.

and now, like i said, we are off to the rental car place to pick up our autobahn-tester. wish us luck.

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though not really FUNNY, george and my first day or so of travel, all i could do was laugh really. cause it was just BAD. allow me to expound...

meet up with george, no problems there. actually went FAR easier than i would have imagined, meeting up like that, halfway around the globe for him, many countries away for me.. thats just ASKING for something to go wrong. but with the exception of george being like 20 minutes late, it went like clockwork.

from there, frankfurt was not too bad, though there really wasn't that much to do in the city. but it was nice to relax and just wonder, george had a couple of espressos, so his jet lag wasn't really an issue. we did however, end up WAITING for quite some time, as our train didn't leave till midnight. welcome to backpacking across europe: sitting in train stations.

and sitting on crappy trains. we were unable to reserve a sleeper train, or even a couchette, so we were forced to sit in a regular old compartment, for the 9 hour overnight train ride. (it didn't help that it was SATURDAY, AND, the ROLLING STONES were playing prague the next night.. so the train was PACKED) now, i had done this 2 out of the last 4 nights, sleeping in chairs on the train, but it was not quite what george had expected. six people, crammed into the six chairs of this little train compartment. "sleeping" upright. it really wasn't sleeping, cause well, imagine the most discomfort ever, and multiply that by a billion, and thats this train seat. AND, the guy sitting next to me is WASTED, and manages to spill an entire beer all over the compartment, so at least it smells horrible too. i managed to laugh about the whole thing with these 2 german girls who were in there with us, but really, the whole thing just sucked. 3 times in the night, we were "awoken" from our not-so-deep sleeps, by screaming, gun-yielding, czech and german officials about tickets and passports and what not. yeah. FUN.

prague, however, is worth the trouble. the city is BEAUTIFUL. words cannot describe. and believe me, i've had my share of people saying good things about prague. it seems everyone i meet has been, and there's nairy a bad thing spoken. only good. and now, having been, i can see why. granted, there's more PEOPLE here than i would have though (tourists), but as a whole its lovely. after arriving yesterday, we checked into the hotel, and walked around town, visiting the castle and other czech goodies.

after sleeping from 6pm last night till 8 this morning (yes, both of us.. aparently we were TIRED), we headed out for another day of wondering in this great city. the jewish quarter was worth it for the cememtary, jam packed with some 12,000 tombstones. a sight to be seen. and lunch at some authentic czech cafeteria-style place, where they spoke NO english, so we pointed, and before i could even BLINK, i had a plate full of czech slop. which was suprisingly tasty and filling, but the whole experience was rather strange.

and tomorrow we're off to cesky krumlov, in the southern part of the country. it should be interesting. prague is beautiful, and part of its splendor, is that they speak english. cause the czech language? yeah, NO CLUE. more than any language i've seen, its just a mish-mash of letters. consonants mainly. and who knows what we'll find in small-town czech republic. i suppose we'll find out..

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sooo, i haven't updated in a LOOOOONG time. this i do know, but i've been traveling almost constantly for the past few days (forgive me if there's weird typos in this, the keyboard is SCREWED up), and when i finally was somewhere for a few nights (luxembourg), internet was all but non-existant. so, here's there rundown of the past oh, week or so. was in lagos, portugual.. then the night train to bayonne, france... then a night train to luxembourg... then a train here to frankfurt, where i've met up with my uncle george for about the next week or so... now we're waiting for a night train to prague.. PHEW! thats practically from one tip of the continent to the other, in the matter of a few days. and thanks to my wonderful railpass, it cost me all of about €10. here's a bit of a summary of some of the highlights since i last wrote...

LAGOS, PORTUGUAL - had SOOO much fun there, and met sooo many tons of wonderful people. the place where we were staying was just great, and fostered a family atmosphere between the peoples staying there because of the shared kitchen and shared terrace where we would sit and chat and eat until it was time to go out. a TON of australians there, 3 of the best people i met there were from sydney, a couple of girls from the states, a couple of guys from the states and canada.. really too many to list them all. it was as relaxing as i could have imagined sitting on the beach, basically taking a vacation from my vacation. and the nightlife was something else. always something going on, and we were always going out as a big group which was scads of fun. aaaah, memories. ALMOST was convinced to stay there at least another night, but sadly i had a train reservation and a tour de france to catch. they refer to lagos as a black hole, i almost got sucked in, but in the end am glad that i left...

BAYONNE, FRANCE - 6 hour train ride from lagos to lisbon, meet a couple of kids from canada and kansas on the train ride, almost convince the girl to come with me all the way to france. haha.. it was nice to have company on the train though, although i was completely exhausted from having gone out the night before and having to be up EARLY. say goodbye to those temporary friends (its like fight club, seeeriously), and hop on a train for a lovely 16 hour jaunt across portugual and spain, to the very southwest tip of france.. a little town called bayonne, where the tour would be coming through.

arrive around 11am, no lockers so i carry my bag EVERYWHERE, all one million kilos of it or whatever. basically just walk around soaking it all in, there's people everywhere, and they're readying the street for the when the race comes through at about 4. i set up camp about 200 meters from the finish line, at about noon or so.. meet a couple from virginia, who explain the happenings thus far in the tour, as i have been sitting on a beach, even MORE further disconnected from reality than i had been previously. sounds like an exciting tour. i liken the whole experience to pamplona, minus all of the booze. 5 hours of waiting, for 5 seconds of excitement. but hands down, it was worth it. after the parade of cars that precede the bikers, the winner came, a whopping minute and a half ahead of the main group (the peloton). the buildup and the excitement leading up to the moment the peloton came into sight is indescribable. again, i compare it to seeing the bulls. your heart is racing, the crowd is cheering and crowding forward and snapping photos (i was in the front, standing on my backpack.. HA!). its amazing. like i said, absolutely worth all the travel and waiting and carrying that it took to get to that point.

from there, sitting in the train station writing in my ever-behind journal, until my night train at midnight, bound for luxembourg...

LUXEMBOURG CITY, LUXEMBOURG - after a long hike to change stations in paris, i arrive in luxembourg around 10 the next morning. i'm GROSS. haven't showered in a while, night trains will do that to ya. first thing i do is hoof it (a loooong ways) to the hostel, hurray, they have room. and i SHOWER. then, essentially for the next two full days, i just wonder around this wonderful city. its GEORGOUS. simply stunning. built on top of a fortress, a walled city of sorts, you find yourself stopping every 10 feet or so to take another spectacular picture. its the capital city of a freaking country, and yet you can walk from one side to the other. WOW. oh, and i saw EMILE, our bus from the choir tour. i tried to track down JEAN-PAUL, our bus driver, but with no luck. and i ate a lion bar. aaah, memories of the choir trip...

FRANKFURT, GERMANY - and now, after a 6am train, i have met up with george, looked around at all there is to do really in frankfurt, and am excited to head to prague. not excited about the train ride really, another night of sleeping in a chair, but once we get there, its hotels for the next week, and i couldn't be happier. oh, and we're gonna rent a bmw or a mercedes (not a pepecar mercedes, a REAL ONE), and take it out on the autobahn. woohoo!

soo, with that thought of us driving 100+ mph, i will leave you... i'll try not to let it go so long until the next time...

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allow me to begin a few days ago, around the time of the radiohead concert. as was to be expected, the show was AMAZING. more so than i actually had imagined, a lot of which had to do with the venue, madrid's bullfighting arena. sooo much smaller than i had thought, nowhere NEAR as big as a stadium for instance. our seats were down low, but really, there wouldn't have been a bad seat in the whole place. the opener, LOW, was also SOOOOO GOOD. i could have listened to an entire show of just them.. it was interesting, cause i was wondering the whole time leading up to the concert, what kind of band opens for radiohead? i wasn't dissapointed.

after that, the plan was to sleep overnight at the train station, which would have been only something like 3 or 4 hours, as our train was early the next morning. um, little problem with that. the station was locked tight. asked some security guard, sure enough, it didn't open up till 5. it was not even 1 at this point. scratch that idea. so, we find a pension across the street, 18 euro a piece, so much for saving money. but it was a bed.. our bags were locked in the train station, but oh well.

the next morning, wake up in plenty of time for the train, go to leave, but for whatever reason, the lady can't get the front door of the pension open. we're stuck on the inside, and this cross-dresser looking person is stuck on the outside. kinda funny. blah blah blah, we miss the train obviously, which is fine, i'm able to go to another museum, and finally we catch a later train.

problem was, we didn't really know where we were going... badajoz, spain, officially, but where the hell that was i had no idea. it was just going to be a stepping stone. summarizing the next oh, 18 hours: we get there, take a cab to the bus station, take a 2am bus to lisbon, take another cab (10 euro) to ANOTHER bus station (which is CLOSED).. wait there, talking to 2 portuguese guys for 3 hours, catch yet another bus to lagos. get here at about noon yesterday.

phew. little tired after that one. sooo, went to the beach to relax yesterday, then met a ton of people last night at dinner, and went out last night. beaches and bar hopping, tis all there is to do here aparently, but after having spent time in quiet places, and large cities for the last month or so, its rather enjoyable.

um, there's probably more, but my time is up...

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back in madrid... spent 7 freaking hours on the train today, at least it wasn't crowded and it was airconditioned. i was able to sleep quite well, making up for the fact that i had to get up TOO EARLY to get there..

went to watch the sunset over the alhambra in granada last night. actually, the sun doesn't set OVER the alhambra, but rather off to one side, creating this rather magnificant glow.. soo beautiful.

we've got a train towards portugual tomorrow morning, early, and the concert is tonight, so we've check our bags at the train station, and will be saving 18 euro by sleeping there. i say 'towards' portugual, cause the only train that would get us there for sure was a 50 euro hotel train. no no coco. tis not for me. so we're gonna wing it. where we end up, nobody knows. the end goal is to be camping on a beach down on the south coast of portugual for about the next 5 days, before night training it back up all the way to france to catch the TOUR! so i literally have about 12 hours left in spain. booo.

AND, for those who haven't already figured it out... i have posted ALL OF MY PICTURES, in un commented, unrotated, uncensored form. yes, unrotated, so you may have to turn your head about half the time. they're pretty much in order i do believe, france, switzerland, italy, france, barcelona, pamplona, madrid. so, enjoy.

ALL OF MY PICTURES, THROUGH ABOUT MADRID OR SO....

oh, and radiohead is in 2 hours...

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not a whole lot of time to type here, but just a few quick things..

first, just got off the WORST train ever, a smoking car for 3 freaking hours. i was for sure i was going to vomit. it was horrible. at least however, there was air-conditioning. ugh. i'm going to burn these clothes.

second, sarah's feeling a billion times better. hurray for that, there was a point in there i was for sure she was dying. not really, but close.

and finally, found a pension here in granada for 9 euro a person, plus it has a kitchen, which means that i will be living on about 11 euro for the next few days. that makes me happy.

and finally, i KNOW i screwed up the link to all the newest pictures the other day. in case you weren't able to find the rest of them, click here (this time it will work)

link to the newest pictures of pamplona and such that actually works

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first off... pictures!! words cannot describe how happy i am right now that i am currently in the process of sending ALL of my pictures to my website! that means that i will not only be able to post them all, but will also not run out of film. which makes me even HAPPIER, since i broke down and had to buy another card in barcelona for a whopping 40 euro. but no more. after offloading these, i *should* be able to make it the rest of the trip!

and now, lets see.. sarah and i are now in sevilla. its sorta been hell getting here though. as it turns out, she started to get REALLY sick starting our last night in madrid, 2 days ago. swollen tonsils, fever, yada yada yada. and the 1 billion degree hostel didn't help much. we make it to sevilla yesterday though, on the fastest nicest train EVER. by this time though she's doing pretty horrible, and having to lug a large bag around wasn't helping things out much.. we decide to go to the hospital, cause the stuff the pharmacy had given her wasn't doing ANYTHING. um, the lets go book said that the people at the hospital spoke english.. well, they didn't. it was a frustrating struggle to figure out anything. luckily we both speak about the same level of spanish, and the people were quite friendly, but it was still chaos. after an hour or so, we finally see a guy, and he gives her some medicine to take for the next few days. hopefully its the right stuff. we really have no way of knowing.

at this point, we've got no place to stay, and end up at this amazingly nice hotel, simply because it was air-conditioned and a block from the hospital. it was 105 degrees here yesterday, so walking wasn't really the best option. ended up sleeping for most of the evening, except for eating ice cream and such. her tonsils were really horribly swollen still, and she had a fever. there's a picture of them if you're brave.

woke up this morning and had the most wonderful buffet breakfast. nice hotels=nice breakfast i guess. much MUCH better than the stale bread and water that i'm used to :-) sarah's feeling better, hopefully something's starting to work, although her tonsils are still the size of freaking grapefruit. moved to a cheaper hotel, which is also closer to the sights. i just want to see the cathedral, 3rd largest in the world, and maybe go see a bullfight tomorrow, this is supposed to be the premier place to do it. the plaza del torros is BEAUTIFUL.

and speaking of torros, i've posted some new pictures!! not all, but those will come soon. i've just picked a handfull of the best ones.. they can be found somewhere around here :

newest pictures of pamplona and madrid

or here's some highlights... enjoy.

help! i´ve lost my negros	us kids, and PEPECAR!
dusty, vanessa, and jim, in pamplona	i think they´re having fun
holy BULLS BATMAN!	sarah and dusty in madrid

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strange things keep happening here in madrid, good things, but just random. reminds me of how much i like being on my own.. i was walking down the hallway of our hostel last night, and hear this 'dusty' from down the hall.. turns out its becky, this girl from iowa that i had met in nice. i had thought maybe she would be in madrid, but she ended up at the same hostel, straaange. i hear stories like that all the time, of people running into people all over the place that they had met previously. i was wondering when it was going to start happening to me. THEN, i was sitting in the kitchen last night before phantom, watching gladiator the movie (first american tv i have seen thus far), and i meet this girl, sarah elizabeth of all names. we chat for a while, find out she wants to go to radiohead, so we head off to buy tickets. she ends up buying a ticket for phantom as well, so wasn't (won't be) alone for either! she's great, we had the bestest time at phantom, it was soooooo good. as good as i remember, and i was able to figure out most everything! we were so proud. after that, pizza that was soo tasty, and buying of bootleg cd's off the street for $2! what a good night.

today we figured out that we're heading to sevilla tomorrow, so we can visit there and granada and maybe cordoba before we have to be back in madrid for RADIOHEAD, which, by the way, i'm a tad excited about it. they guys in the hostel in barcelona listened to it CONSTATLY, and got me totally pumped, and now i can't believe i'm going, in a bull arena no less, and not alone. hurray.

well, i traded a spaghetti dinner for internet access tonight, and i think my time is about up. thats about all for now anyways.. off to some pubs i do believe...

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