I’m stuck in a sleeper car with two Spanish students that are studying in Budapest — Maria (roll your r’s), 20 and Silvia, 23. Poor me. Maria speaks English very well, and they both have the most wonderful accents.

Spain has been at the top of my to do list for Europe, so these two have been a great resource for where to and where not to go (both are from Pamplona). Apparently Pamplona is only cool for one week a year, during the running of the bulls.

Sleeper cars rock! If you ever have to take an overnighter get a second class couchette. It costs less than most hostel rooms (at only E13 extra for Berlin to Krakow), and you get the same kind of atmosphere. Downside to the room style overnighters is that you can get gassed in your sleep, putting you into a deeper sleep so that thiefs can fleece you almost completely without your knowledge. My car had it’s own conductor standing guard all night, so we had less to worry about… we still locked our door. =D Carrying a laptop is kind of scarry sometimes. From what I’ve heard and read about, the night trains, Berlin and Prague to and from Krakow, are the worst… so heed the warning if you travel into Eastern Europe.

I’ve also heard stories of ‘train conductors’ asking to see your ticket and demanding a fee for having something wrong on it. It’s another scam. Ask to see ID and a supervisor or cop before you fork anything over. I ran into a trio of American girls who nearly lost their Eurail passes to a scammer. It’s too bad that they paid for ‘valid’ tickets.

I’ve updated my list of languages, again:

1. Spanish (in the works… still) — I can get by in most of the Americas with English and Spanish
2. German — Viva la Switzerland (this one just got bumped up)
3. Russian — A lot of people in the world know this one, and it preps you for some of the Slavic languages
4. Mandarin Chinese — A lot more people in the world know this one!
5. French (maybe) — There’s only one country that I truly need this in, and that’s only because they hate us and our stoopid language.

We’ve been in Interlaken, Switzerland the last couple days; I love this place. It’s the perfect vacation spot for me. Though I believe that some of the things are a little too accessible for most — to clarify, they’ve turned the Alps into Disneyland — I think that at the right times of year most would decide against it, hopefully, for reasons of self-preservation.

Yesterday I took a guided canyoning tour. Typically, this one was supposed to be an advanced trip, but I guess they make exceptions late in the season (they had to hand-hold a couple of the participants, and one of them freaked so bad that she had to be rapped down every jump and chute). I had a blast though! Many of the chutes and jumps were enough to get me pumped up, and lately it takes a bit to get me there anymore.

Some of the fun was that I forgot my prescription goggles, so I was blind as a bat going over some of the ledges. The first jump was a lot farther down than I thought. As I watched the people before me they would get blury after a few feet and then they would hit the water out of possible sight. When it came time for my jump I leaped believing it was only 20ft to the pool below. As I doubled my original percieved distance the adrenaline hit me; totally not what I was expecting.

Normally I do canyons myself (usually as the equipement expert) with friends, but maybe I’ll do these guided tours more often and skip on my sight. =D

While I was doing this trip down the canyon I bonded with a couple of American guys, and they eventually talked me into what they called ‘Canyon Jumping’. I had never heard of it before, but as they described it you jump from a ledge, free-fall several meters and then swing past the centerpoint of the rope gaining a lot of ‘foreward momentum’

After taking a look at the equipment setup (after I already paid a hundred Euros to do it) I knew instantly what it was: Rope Diving. It was invented by Dan ‘Dano’ Osman a while ago, and he actually died doing it in Yosemite (leaving a child behind!). Oddly, when they said it was a few meters, they didn’t specify that it was a full length of dynamic climbing rope — 80 meters!

Needless to say, I’ve taken some mean falls while climbing, but none of them were a full length of rope. This thing scared the shit out of me. I was petrified; thinking of Dano’s body mangled by all the trees he hit before he smashed into the rocks below in Yosemite valley. Thank God the two American’s were there or I would have pussed out. There’s something about the male psyche that allows us to do the stupidest of things as long as someone else is doing it with us. I went last, which was probably only slightly more stupid than doing it all: those ropes are only made to do so many falls. Oh well.

As I was falling I was totally cool, calm and collected, until I hit a certain point in the free fall. I estimate the longest fall I’ve had at 15m. That’s far in my book. I estimate that I started screaming at around 25m. That’s fucking far in my book. I free fell 60m. This isn’t an estimate. It’s a measurement. I was moving at 120mph at the low point in my swing; another measurement. The lowest point of the swing was no more than 5m from the canyon floor; yet another measurment. I was so gripped by the end of the free fall that my arms are still sore today. I can’t ever remember yelling uncontrollably at any other point in my life.

I think this is one of those things you do once just to say you did it. My main reason is that I hate being dependant on gear while rock climbing. To me rappelling is the most dangerous part of climbing. This was not only being completely dependant on gear, but it was stressing that gear to it’s designed maximum. And worst of all the gear wasn’t placed there by me. Who knows how safety consciuos someone is if they are willing to set up a comercial version of something that is completely illegal in the States. AND I can think of a specific instance where somebody died doing it.

Oh, that and I can’t ever remember yelling uncontrollably at any other point in my life.

I’ve been able to synch my laptop with this blog again, so there are several new entries all at once, all of which predate this post, so take a look back a few.

I’m also reuploading all images of the trip so far in their proper rotation. I’m too lazy and busy to color adjust 700+ photos, so they’re just going to look crappy for now. There will be quite a few new pictures showing up over the next day or two… keep a look out.

Fussen, Germany is an interesting city in the north Alps. It’s got a couple of castles built by the kings of Bavaria a couple hundred years ago. You’re able to take a tour of each, but both must be guided and you can’t take pictures of the interior.

Oddly they have no problem with people using their cameras out the windows. Using that to my advantage I took pictures of stained glass windows, but beyond that, I didn’t really push it much. Yet I still managed to take two hundred pictures in two days!

Nadine and I had originally planned to take the Romantic Road down from Munich, but renting a car proved a little bit of a hassle on a Saturday, and returning it seemed even more difficult on the following. The train was much quicker anyway, and we arrived before the crowds (there weren’t any at all, really) showed up. After seeing both castles, I was feeling really tired (I’ve had a cold for three days now) and decided that a local hotel room would be a great idea. Nadine wanted to return to Munich in order to see some more museums and a White Stripes concert, so we parted ways.

After a long nap, a great big bowl of spaghetti and good conversation with some Japanese tourists, a loooong shower, and a great night of sleep I decided that it would be great to go for a hike in the German Alps! Several of the local maps pointed to a destination called Sauling peak, and since it didn’t look too far I decided to shoot for that.

After a quick three mile warm up around the nearby lake Alpsee, I blazed up the hill toward the peak. Part of the hike was also the journey that most tourists make up to the bigger of the two castles — the one that looks like Disneyland’s castle. So I was fighting crowds during the beginning. After the castle, though, it was rather lonely. The higher I got the more I began thinking that the 2068m elevation listed on the map wasn’t the sea-level elevation, but the elevation gain from the base.

Something that the map failed to mention was that climbing gear was required. Along the trail there were little indicators painted on the trees and boulders to let you know you were on the right path. Once I reached what was the end of the walking part, I couldn’t find the trail. For several minutes I was wondering how to traverse the shear rock face that the trail led to… until I looked up! I saw two bolts about five meters above me, and one of those painted flags! If I only had a climbing partner and some gear. It was maybe only a thousand more feet to the top. Oh well, the cloud cover was starting to get very low now, and had started fogging the elevation that I was at anyway.

As I climbed down below the cloud cover it started pouring. I was quite silly in leaving my shell behind at the hotel; all I had on me was a pseudo-wool sweater and a t-shirt. I started hoofing it downhill. What took me three hours to climb only took me forty-five minutes to down-climb. I was covered in mud and soaked, but that pretzel and coke that I stopped for at the castle on the way down somehow seemed to make up for it all.

Screw that, the views and pictures that I got made up for it. Everything they say about the Alps are true: strikingly beautiful! California (Yosemite and King’s Canyon) is probably the only place that I’ve seen that compares… so far. =D