Plans

Monday, January 25, 2010 - Leg III of our travels are approaching, but we will first be spending a week at Disney with my fam, then a couple months with Ana's family in Brazil.. I think this year in Brazil will possibly be the most interesting of all the times I've visited:

1) We will be there for Carnaval - this will be my first time to experience Carnaval in Brazil.

2) My bro and ex-roommate from Portland, Marcelo, will be spending Carnaval in his home state of Bahia, and we are going there to meet him.. Bahia is a place in Brazil I've heard the most incredible things about and have long since wanted to visit.

3) Our good friends from Portland - Ifar, Mark (Ana's ex-roommate), and Christiana from Fortaleza are going to meet us in Bahia for Carnaval also!

That will be crazy. Here's a plan of what our next year looks like..

Leg III

After Brazil, Ana and I will head to Portugal, Spain, France and Italy for 3 months, but my parents, who have never been to Europe, are meeting us in France and travelling with us for about 2 of those months! After Italy, Ana and I will spend 2 months in Israel, renting an apartment in Jerusalem. My folks will be with us for the first week. We have family that lives in Tel-Aviv that I've never met, so I'll be especially excited to meet them.

Leg IV

After we leave Jerusalem, we plan on seeing Petra in Jordan and the pyramids in Egypt, then a few weeks in Turkey, then we go to meet my already insane cousin Greggy for his 40th birthday in Munich for Oktoberfest.. I hope my liver makes it ok through the next year. After Oktoberfest we go into the Czech Republic, then to Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, then back home for Thanksgiving.

Lucerne

Friday, December 12, 2009 - The power cord to my laptop broke while we were in Switzerland and though I was of course still able to work with our other laptop, I temporarily lost the pictures of Lucerne I'd taken. I just got a new power cord last week, so finally I'm posting Lucerne.

Luceurope

I think Lucerne was our favorite stop in Switzerland.. And I noticed something about the city that made our last stop of this leg of our travels so fitting - the city seemed to have elements of each of the other countries we'd visited. The tear-drop-shaped cathedral domes were very German. The city itself is built all around a river, giving it a very canal-city feeling like all those in Belgium and Amsterdam. Patina-domed buildings with murals painted on the sides gave it a very Austrian feeling.. But the Alps here stood out as very Swiss...

Train

The train ride into Lucerne was I think by far the prettiest we'd ever had. It seems like I keep saying that, but seriously, this one. The train coasted by literal little postcard villages in the valleys of dramatic Alps, most of the time chugging next to a lake reflecting all of it, and I still can't get over how green everything is. It was November for Pete's sake.. What up with that?

Alps

We took a little cable car up to the top of one of the mountains. The ride up was literally surreal, I really don't know how else to describe it.. I felt like I was watching TV riding up there. The top was blistering cold (shocker), and the wind was blowing almost hard enough to knock me over.. I literally was having trouble walking around up there. It was really interesting to watch the birds that had become accustomed to flying around up there; they don't use their wings really (lest the wind rip them off), so they just kind shoot all over the place and use their natural aerodynamics to guide themselves around.

Lots of pictures!

Ana's Interlaken

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - Here are some of Ana's shots from Interlaken, which I found there to be too many to include in the last post. The laptop that I'd been putting all my photos on, however, broke. Unfortunately, I had a few shots on there from our train ride from Interlaken to Lucerne that were quite good.. I'll have to post them later. For now though,

Interlaken

Saturday, November 14, 2009 - We've been travelling outside of America for over half a year now and will be flying back for the holidays on Friday.. The funniest thing of all is that the next destination on our list we're most excited for is Houston. But, Interlaken ain't that bad until then..

One of the first things that struck me when coming in on the train here was the water.. I've never seen rivers or lakes this blue in my life. And I don't recall seeing rivers or lakes this crystal clear in my life. We see fountains near these waters sources (likely draining from them) all over the place, and I think you can drink out of them. And the tap water here literally tastes better than the bottled water we showed up with.

Unfortunately little Ana got a cold the day we left for Interlaken and it lasted a while, so we didn't do a ton there except enjoy the scenery. The views from our hostel room are also ridiculous. We've also taken the time to start planning out the next leg our of travels which will take us through Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.

Bern

Monday, November 9, 2009 - Bern: the Swiss-German word for Bear after the duke that founded the city supposedly killed a bear. Bern: Einstein's temporary residence. Switzerland: FLIPPING EXPENSIVE. I overheard some people in our hostel talking about how a hamburger at the McDonald's there (yes, I know, unfortunate) cost $12.

Of course, it is beautiful. The train ride in was especially ridiculous; alps everywhere, lakes everywhere, green everywhere. The old town area of Bern is super interesting.. There are apparently over 250 fountains in it alone, and each of them is hilarious; and sometimes creepy. The fountain closest to our hostel was of a brute-ish looking fellow eating small children. Oooookkkkkay? as my dad would say.

One thing I found particularly interesting were these cellar doors all up and down the main streets. When we first arrived some were open and some closed.. But we quickly realized that they weren't cellars - they were shops, restaurants, bars, etc that are underneath the street.

We also got to see the apartment Einstein's lived in while he worked on his theory of relativity. It's open to the public and is very informative. I learned all kinds of stuff about him I never knew, from being foundational in starting the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to the fact that he was offered presidency of the state of Israel but declined! Can you imagine?

Innsbruck

Thursday, November 5, 2009 - Finally, we're getting our first taste of the Alps; and they're lurking around lots of my photos like little stalkers. The town of Innsbruck itself is horribly pretty with building architecture like I don't believe I've ever seen. A picture painted: doll-house buildings stacked next to each other sit on cobblestone streets on the bank of the River Inn, all of which sits at the base of the Austrian Alps which unnaturally somehow are snowcapped while the vegetation below is lush green. Does it snow on the grass ever or does it just remain postcardish year round?

I found my office here. Cafe Moustache. A cafe dedicated to the art of mustaches. Framed pictures of famous upper-lippy-haired celebrities from Marlon Brando to Vote for Pedro.. But best of all is the cafe's leading dude to don their menu: Mr. Thomas Magnum himself, Magnum PI: my hero. I would pay cover to come here just for that alone. Inside the cafe are 4 different rooms decorated completely differently: an asian room with hookahs and pillows abounding, an english pub room, the africa room, and the main cafe area. Only on my 2nd day to go there I am already greeted with a "You have come back again!" Probably a 90% chance I'd grow a mustache at some point if we lived in Innsbruck just because of this cafe.

Brasileiros

Finalmente, estamos nos Alpes, e sao lin-di-ssimos.. E a cidade de Innsbruck se faz tudo mas incrivel ainda. Essa cidade parece um conto de fadas! E tambem, eu achei o meu escritorio aqui - Cafe Mustache - um cafe decorado com fotos de celebridades com bigodes. Que legal.

Wien

Sunday, November 1, 2009 - The train ride from Salzburg to Vienna was pretty cool. It had a restaurant on it, as well as private cabins with seats that turned into beds. This is the way to travel dude. Buy a ticket that’s more or less good for whenever, leisurely stroll to the trainstation whenever you please, forego any kind of security mess, grab whatever seats you feel like, eat at a restaurant, recline in a lay-z-boy and go to sleep. If I had the means I’d install all sorts of tracks back in the states just so I could travel this way from now on..

Speaking of which, something kind of strange is happening.. There’s a destination on our list that the two of us are growing more and more excited for: Houston. It surprises me to say that even as I type it, but we can’t wait to see everyone back in Houston. And I think Ana may be even more excited than I. It will have almost been 8 months of travel since we’ve been in America, and we’re not tired of travelling or anything yet, but just very excited to hang around family & friends. That’s making it tougher and tougher to enjoy each city we visit as much as one probably should.

That being said though, when we ventured in toward the city center of Vienna, our inspiration was somewhat temporarily renewed.. The place is simply never-ending marvel of human achievement. It’s really pretty ridiculous, it almost felt a little futile.. A feeling that, even if you’d lived your entire life there, you’d never have the time to see everything.

Brasileiros
O trem de Salzburg a Vienna era bem legal. Tem um restaurante, camas, e vistas lindas. Eu queria poder sempre viajar assim!

Entao, Vienna eh cheio de coisas lindas, quase sem fim. Mas ainda, estamos animados demais para estar em Houston no fim desse mes. Por causa disso, fica mais e mais dificil aproveitar as cidades que vemos. Ainda, de vez em quando vemos uma cidade que nos faz animado de novo: Vienna eh um exemplo disso.