Venice and Klagenfurt!

October 13-17 Klagenfurt/Venice

Ok, so last time we talked I was on my way to Klagenfurt, Austria. On my way to Klagenfurt I went through the Austrian alps, which would have been nice, but one of the reasons I was leaving Poland was I was getting tired of the cold and rain. So my heart sank a bit when it snowed on my train ride for about 2 hours of the trip and had show covering the mountains. My spirits lifted a bit when I got to Klagenfurt because there was no snow there just a bit over cast but the sun did come out at times. When I arrived I was pleased to meet Anna’s new addition to her team and also roommate from Canada, Kristina. She is a super nice girl and is always smiling and I also met up with Nichole one of Anna and Brody’s friend from Santa Clara and my new travel partner for the next few days. So when I got there the girls were just heading off to practice and because there is a lot of younger girls on the volleyball team that go to the University in Klagenfurt they practice really late to allow most of the Austrian girls to take the classes they need. So I spent most of the night hanging out which was nice after my 9 hour train ride from Frankfurt, Germany. Which the whole time I had had a biscuit with jelly and power bar and a water over that 9 hour span so I was very happy to finally get some food as well and stretch the legs out. The next day consisted of the girls going to the gym early for weights and so Nichole and I went to go check out some of the sights in Klagenfurt. After running around town all day we met back up with the volleyball girls before they left for their first home game of the year. So Nichole and I went to the game but it wasn’t much of one. The girls won in three straight sets with the starters not playing much of the end of the third. They also did this all without their starting setter, so the sets to the girls were a little all over the place. After the game we went back to the girls apartment and got ready and went out for the night to celebrate the win. Also joining us in the celebration was 6 of the boys from the men’s volleyball team that are all from Canada except one from Chicago. We went to this little dive bar that was having one euro drinks so that was the place for us. I had a great time in Klagenfurt once again and I am very grateful for Anna and Kristina’s hospitality again for letting me crash on the coach.
The following morning Nichole and I were catching our train from Klagenfurt to Venice at 10:23am so we had to hustle in the morning to get everything organized so we could get there on time. When we got there we were hustling but our train ended up being 30 min late anyway so it worked out for us. We arrived in Venice at about 2:45 and it was sunny but a cool out, probably high 50’s. I didn’t care though I was just happy to see the sun and a lot of it! So for the first day after we dropped off our bags we grabbed some pizza from one of the many pizzerias and set off around the city to do some exploring and hopefully get a little loss. We managed to do both really well, not surprisingly, more so the lost part than any. So we managed to do a few thinks like the Rialto Bridge which was beautiful but just took in everything that the city has to offer and the beauty of it all. Everything about Venice is one of a kind, which I really love about it. Nichole and I went to bed pretty early that night but for me I was starting to develop a bit of a cough that I think I had gotten from all the smoke in the bar the night before in Austria. The following day we got up early and ate breakfast at the hotel and took off toward Saint Marc’s Square. We had probably walked for about an hour when we came to a bridge that we had started at an hour earlier so we decided that we would just take the taxi boat through the Grand Canal and take the opportunity to see some of the sights from the boat. This was a great decision because the boat ride was beautiful and we had great views of the city. We spent a good amount of time walking around Saint Mark’s square and also going into the Saint Mark’s Basilica and also going into the Doge’s Palace. Both of which were amazing to be inside of, but just everywhere we went there were great views and new things to see. That night we went and ate at an authentic Italian restaurant which was great, we ended up spending almost 2 hours at the restaurant with the different courses and just hanging out. When we got back Nichole and I planned out next trip out, we are headed to an area called Cinque Terre. It consists of 5 small towns that run along the Northwest coastline of Italy. The towns are about 10 minutes apart from each other by train. But most people try and day hike the three cities to get the most out of the country. We are on the train there now, and this is one of the places that is at the top of my list to visit so I am very excited to start this adventure here today. As always, I hope all is well back home.

Poland Life

Life in Poland.

So I know it’s been a little while since everyone has heard from me but not much has been happening. I have spent the last 9 days in Poland at both Brody’s place in Starogard and also 2 separate trips to Gdansk (the big city). The days in Starogard usually start with Brody’s alarm going off 3 separate times (sometimes more) around 8am to get up. I usually get up with him, but sometimes I managed to push through the alarms. Mostly I get up with him though. Depending on what we had for dinner and how late it was when we ate, depends on what we have for breakfast. When we are hungry Brody or I cook up some eggs with cut up sausage in it with bread and jam (this has become one of our favorites). It’s usually a big breakfast and we don’t eat again tell well after lunch. Other days we just mix some yogurt and granola, or have some cereal. They have some pretty good knock off Honey nut Cheerios at the store that we buy bags of at a time. Brody then heads off to morning practice were he lifts and does shooting drills. I hangout and watch movies or try and stream TV shows and movies online. Brody and I have become professionals at finding websites to steam movies and TV shows on, but I also have to give credit to the help of my tech friendly friends back at the University of Phoenix as well for helping out. When Brody gets back we usually either go to the store to pick up things for us to eat for the next few days. We usually have to watch what we buy because everything we buy we also have to carry back to his apartment so we can’t just stock up like we are coming back from Costco or anything. This is usually why we make 2 to 3 trips a week to grab things. We are doing a pretty good job of making dinner every night as well. I have been doing a good amount of cooking for the both of us while he goes to practice in the evenings. Most days we usually do a good 2-3 hours of watching movies and surfing the internet during the afternoon. I also typically go and watch Brody’s evening practices as well. They are to the point now in the season were they aren’t doing as many drills but doing a lot of 2 on 3, 3 on 3, 4 on 4, and 5 on 5 and a mix of just about everything. They do it in a way that keeps competition high, were the same people remain on the same team and they play it to whoever scores a certain amount of points first. It is very fun to watch and I have caught onto the games in practices that they play and it’s very entertaining to watch the teams compete during practice. Then Brody and I walk back to his apartment after practice which is about a 10-15 min walk. After practice we usually just eat dinner (which has been very good as of lately), we have been trying some different things but the last few days I made beef and potato stew, hamburgers, a pasta noodle lasagna, and of course just pasta itself. The best so far was the beef and potato stew. Even Brody’s teammate Tony couldn’t stop talking about it. Then we either try and stream some more TV shows and also do some skyping (webcam calling) with family and friends or we go over to Tony’s and play some video games, mostly Halo. I try and keep the games close so that Tony and Brody will still want to play with me but we can just say I haven’t lost in my nine days back. As Brody wrote in his blog I came out sniping like I was Mark Walberg in the movie “Shooter” (my dad might not get that reference, so he’s like Matt Quigley AKA Roy). Other than that I try and call my family when I can and I miss everyone back home very much. But one of the first things I did when I got back to Poland was get a Euro cell phone finally! One of my first weeks back to Poland Brody and I went to Gdansk with 2 of Brody’s teammates one of them being the other American Tony from Chicago and one of his Serbian teammates, Uros. Both are great guys and a lot of fun to hang out with. We took the train from Starogard to Sopot which is a suburb of Gdansk, but is right on the beach of the Baltic Sea. It is more of the tourist destination in that area. We went out that night and had a great time, some more than others! The next morning we meet up with our friend Karoline who is the daughter of the café owner that is right next to Brody’s apartment that we always go to. Brody and the rest of the guys from the team had become good friends with the family so when we left Starogard the day before Karoline was leaving as well to go back to school in Gdansk. So it worked out that she then became our tour guide the following day and took us all around Old Town Gdansk as a Tour guide but the weather was not as good as we wished. The one thing about Poland is that the wind is always blowing and makes it so the weather is unpredictable. For example one day while Brody and I made or 12 minute walk to the store it was sunny, then rained on us then not a cloud in the sky all just in a 12 minute span, but rain or shine it never got over 55 degrees the whole 9 days I was in Poland. One of the main highlights of the time in Europe so far was going and watching my first European basketball game. I was fortunate enough that Brody was able to get me on the bus with the team to travel to the game with them and go through all of their pregame. We started off with a walk though in Starogard then went and ate a big Polish lunch that could have feed a small family! We then took the team bus a little over 2 hours south to the town where they were playing. When we got there we stopped and had coffee and this carrot cake with ice cream. Then walked around for about 15 min then headed off to the gym. While the guys got ready I went to the gym and shagged balls for the guys shooting as they came out. As the game got closer I went and claimed a seat in the team section for guests which was front row on the baseline just an isle away from the team bench. I was on the corner of the baseline and sideline (it was the best seat in the house). I was wearing one of Brody’s practice jerseys that sported his number the whole game! The game was good, Polpharmer went up and stayed up by 10-15 all game tell the 4th quarter when the other team made a late run coming within 2 points, which they could have tied and taken the lead, but missed 4 straight free throws that were huge. While Polpharmer had some big stops at the end and some big offensive rebounds topped off by 2 big steals at the end that lead to consecutive dunks to put the game away! By far this was a great win and it was great to experience it all with Brody and the whole team. I am leaving now it is Tuesday, October 13. I few into Frankfurt, Germany last night at midnight and stayed at a hostel across the street from the main train station. My train left at 8:20am this morning and I didn’t get much sleep last night because there was a guy in my 8 person room that sounded like he was sawing logs right next to my ear last night. Which is something that I have just come to realize that is just a part of the traveling and it’s going to happen no matter what. I am headed right now back to Klagenfurt, Austria to see my friend Anna again but also pick up another solo traveler my friend Nicole from Santa Clara to do some traveling together. So now there are 2 of us in my wolf pack! I am very excited as well about getting back to Klagenfurt because Anna is also having one of her first volleyball games at home on Wednesday, so I am thrilled to see my first European Volleyball game as well this week. Again hope all is well back home and if you see a weird number calling it’s probably me trying to call you from my phone or computer… :)

September 26-28 Rome, Italy

So I got to Rome safe and sound around about 9:30am. I walked out of the train station and followed my directions I had written out for myself earlier the day before. I got to my Hostel and dropped off my backpack and locked some of my personal stuff up in their lockers and asked the lady at the front desk what she would recommend me doing since I had the whole day to start my adventure. She advised me about the many different types of tour buses that go around the city to all the sights. I had already planned on doing it from friends I had met in Vienna had told me that is was a great way to go. So I jumped on one of the buses that she recommended with a bunch of people. They give you little ear pieces to listen to the commentary of the trip because they have them in 8 different languages so it works out pretty well. I decided that I would first go all the way around the loop which takes about 2 hours to see all the sights and to stop on and off. I sat on the top of the two story bus, which is also roofless, so that you can get great shots of all the places we pass by. I got to see all the big sites like: The Coliseum, The Vatican, and many others. After I went all the way around I stopped at the Coliseum first which I was most excited about and took a guided tour through in and the ancient ruins along with it. After going through it I decided to walk back to my Hostel to go check in. I had a 24 hour pass on my bus ticket that I could use tomorrow as well. So I went back to the Hostel Alexandor. I have to say so far though that Rome is one of the hardest cities to navigate by map because every 2 blocks you walk the street that you are on turns into a different name and the their signs aren’t really the best in letting a person know where they are. So needless to say I took a little different route back then I had planned but it worked out because I got to see a little more of the city and find a nice little park that I would go to the following day. So I got back to the Hostel checked into my 8 bedroom hostel and showered because it had been extremely warm but mostly humid in Rome that day. So I showered up and jumped online to see what to do for the night ahead. I was considering a pub crawl but when I got back to my room a few of the people in my room were headed to an MTV international concert that they had invited me to go with. So I ended up going out with 3 people all from the England, one from Canada and one from Brazil and me… So we were all quite a group. So we took the Subway to the front of a historic building where there were thousands of people. We stopped on your way to get dinner and some beer and wine. So when we got there we just found a place to sit and watch because none of us knew what they were saying but the girl from Brazil who spoke about 5-6 languages. So we sat and ate and drank and listened to the music, some of the songs they would play we knew so it was a great time.
The next morning I got up and ate breakfast at the hostel which consisted of cereal with room temperature milk and a biscuit with jam which is pretty basic breakfast, nothing like the Carpenter breakfasts that my parents do, that’s for sure…. I did my laundry because I was in the stage of reusing clothes. So for laundry in consists of my going to the sink in the bathroom and washing each article of clothing by hand and wringing it out. I hung up my clothes up afterwards and went on my way to do some more traveling. I wanted to go to the Vatican just to say I had done it, but the weekend I went was a free weekend to get in. So needless to say the line was about 3+ hours long. So I decided to just walk around and see some more sites around Rome by foot. Let’s just say Rome is a BIG city….haha I spent most of the day walking around and when I got back to my Hostel later that evening I was pretty tired of walking with some good sized blisters to go along with it. So I headed off to the park that I had found the day before to relax and read my book while my clothes dried. I wasn’t sure when I got there but there was some big party going on in the park when I got there. I think it was for “Yom Kippur” maybe, its some Jewish holiday I know, but that’s all I could think of what they were doing. So I found a quite spot and read for a few hours which was nice because I was starting to get into a sightseeing overload with everything looking the same. So that ended my day in Rome. The next day I was off to Florence.

September 28-30 Florence, Italy
After how amazing Rome had been I was excited to see what Florence in store for me. When I arrived it was a little past 2pm and the lady at the front desk advised that it would just be a little longer tell my room was ready so I dropped off my backpack and set off to a authentic italino restauranta that the front desk lady had mapped out for me. So I went and it was very good. I ended up going back a couple of times. So I checked into my hostel and went off again exploring. When I got back I met a couple that were also Americans that where in the same room as me. They were great but they had to stick me with the only Americans in all of Europe that were Vikings fans from Minnesota, right after they got lucky beating the 49ers with 2 seconds left. I told them right away I didn’t want to talk about the game, because it would instantly make me mad… (just kidding) But they were really great and we ended up going to dinner the 3 of us. They had been traveling for about 3 weeks coming back from South Korea where they had taught English for a year and saved up to travel when they were done. They were great people. The next day at 8am I headed off to the train station where I had looked up earlier that they were having a guided tour of Tuscany that went all over the place which I wanted to do. It was a little expensive but by the end of the trip it was all well worth it. The first stop we had we went to Sienna were we had a guided tour and also got to go to a church of all things if you can believe that, haha. But Sienna was really interesting learning about its yearly horse race that they have in the middle of town. After that we went to an organic winery were they showed us around there winery and also farm that they have. After the short tour we had lunch and the best part, wine tasting! So we got to try a few different versions of the different types of wine that they made on their winery. All the wine was really good and the best part was you could try as much as you wanted. Let’s just say everyone got a little more talkative on the tour after lunch. After lunch we headed over to a castle and spent some time walking around and at the castle they had a gelato ice cream store that had been the world’s best gelato for the last 2 years. I feel like I am a pretty good judge in this area and it was pretty good. Then from there we were off to the leaning tower of Pisa. It took a while so I got a good nap in which was much needed. I got some great pictures of the whole trip and will have them posted along with my new blog. After the tour of Tuscany with was a 12 hour day I headed back to the Hostel and started planning my trip back to Poland. I am headed back to Poland for a week and a half to stay with Brody and just hangout for a bit. Before I go back and hit the tourist scene again. I trip back to Poland is 25 ½ hours with 3 train changes in Vienna, Warsaw and another small town in Poland. Hope all is well and I’ll try and keep everyone up to date on my travel plans…