Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Eastern Europe 2005 #1

hello friends and family-

i have been travelling around for the last 3 or 4 weeks with stephen and chris, and here is a condensed version of my trip... some of you may not care to read due to jealousy (jball) or laziness but whatev. also, for those of you who dont know, im going to be studying abroad in spain for the fall semester, so come visit. also, please forgive my ungood writing, i blame the keyboard... and my poor knowledge of the english language.

right now, im in split, croatia... its pretty here, we just came into this internet cafe from wandering around a palace built in 304 AD (thats old) and before tha playing frisbee in the adriatic sea... its a rough life. we rented a car 4 days ago and drove up the coast of croatia stopping in a few very small towns on the way. we decided to stay in one, and we ended up staying in this family's apartment (thats the easiest accomodation here) with them and they were very nice. we were the first americans that they'd had there, so they were interested in hearing about our life. the daughter (a senior in high school, and had a crush on us) wanted to know all about being from california like the huge sandy beaches, surfing, if its like baywatch at all, etc.

we began our coastal journey in dubrovnik, croatia and it was ridiculously amazing. there are over 1200 islands in croatia, and we went to one of them... whats that like .002 % maybe? anyways, chris, stephen and i decided we were going to move to one of the un-inhabited (habited??) islands and have a solar powerd water evaporator, a grape terrace, a huge slide going into the adriatic sea, and of course a floating doner kebab stand with a turkish guy there to serve us 24 hours a day, because they are delicious. so far, this city is one of the most beautiful ive ever seen, the only thing is its a little too touristy for me. we are planning on going to the very island that odysseus went to when he was seduced by the sirens, but dont worry, their powers have nothing over us.

before this, i was in belgrade, serbia... where i visited nevena (my friend from high school for those of you who dont know). it was really cool to see her again, mainly because we didnt think we ever would... and the city was kinda crazy, there were signs of the wars that have been going on recently, like buildings that had been bombed out by NATO and whatnot. it was really interesting talking to some of the locals about what went on. other than that, the city looked depressing and sad in some parts cause they havent really been keeping up on its looks, but we had some delicious and delectable food and had fun walking around and talking with nevena and her friends.

before serbia, chris, stephen and i were in budapest, hungary. i am hungry right now. i forgot how to spell the hungry kind of hungry today. it still looks wrong. anyways, that city was also really cool... definately one of the top few on my all time list of cities. they call it the paris of the east (i dont know how accurate that is cause ive never been to paris), but it seemed like a romantic place i guess... lots of just cool looking streets and buildings. we were there for 5 days and had a grand ol time doing some stuff: cave spleunking, sziget (europes largest concert, we saw KORN!! YESSSS!!!), and hungarian baths- the most relaxing time youll ever have at public baths. i could imagine there would be some pretty nasty ones, so maybe thats not saying much, i guess just wait for the pictures.

and before that, we were in london for 20 hours and visited my friend cassie during our layover... tehy had a bbq in our honor (or just because), and there were some spanish folk there, and chris and i realized we were going to have a tough time when we get to spain.

before leaving the continent, we stopped in montreal for 3 days to visit my friend mary (who i met last summer while travelling) and see the city. i was really impressed with that city too, maybe because i wasnt really expecting much for some reason. but she was a very good host to us and took us all over the place... had many debates about the use of the phrase "eh?" by canadians, and they tried to convince us that they dont use it. pshhh.

i hope eveyone back home is doing well... i am running out of time here, so im gonna go but feel free to write and ill write back. also, if youd like a postcard, and i dont know your address, send it to me and ill send one. maybe.

ciao!
-cody

PS dont you hate it when people go abroad then start using the word ciao in big stupid emails like this?
PPS congrats for making it this far.