REWIND: Romania

Romania was an unexpected stop on my trip. Getting there involved a night of sleeping in trains and train stations on my way to the Vienna airport, then a hectic taxi ride and super delayed train from Bucharest to Constanta, then a couple buses and an unexpected 6km trek in the dark to the tiny beach side town of 2 Mai, where a friend and I were staying in a hard-to-find pension.

Thankfully, we found the people in town to be incredibly friendly and helpful. A lovely lady at a gas station on the edge of town, who wasn't phased at all by our complete inability to speak Romanian even though she didn't speak English, called the pension for us on her cell phone and found us the English-speaking owner, who gave us directions. We were far enough away still that we got lost again. Of course. At this point we were pretty tired and sweaty and done with carrying our backpacks around, so we decided to hail a cab. The driver was so kind, he pointed out to us with many hand signals and imaginary diagrams drawn on the hood of his taxi, that we were only a couple blocks away and it would be kind of silly to pay him to take us there.

The lovely kindness of strangers was the perfect start to a super-relaxing week on the beach. This wasn't travel, this was vacation, no doubt about it. The nearby town of Vama Veche was the epitome of a beach-bum village, with patio-ed restaurants leading out onto the sand lined up one right after the other, serving cheap, cold beer by the pint.

I found Romanian, of course, to be a beautiful language, and completely fell in love with it. It helped that it's a romance language, so the Spanish I know made reading signs and menus a little bit easier (especially compared to reading them in any Slavic language, which was absolutely impossible for me). It seemed to draw from so many places, I am completely turned around as to when and how this language originated - but they say "da" for "yes" (Russian), and "merci" for "thank you" (French). Embarrassingly, and with no excuse whatsoever, I had a really difficult time remembering merci. I didn't get it down until the last couple days. I kept wanting to throw some Italian out there - oops.

I was too busy actually laying in the sun to take any pictures, so here's what the internet had to offer in that department. Yup, that was basically my week in Vama Veche.

REWIND: A meeting of poets and monkeys

Let's pick the story back up in mid July. I've just left Dresden and gone back to Olomouc to meet up with the wonderful friends I made at Poet's Corner. They had planned a group trip to visit the Ginger Monkey hostel in Ždiar, and I jumped eagerly on board. When you get so many great people together in one place, you just know it's going to be a good time.

The night we arrived there was a hostel-wide dinner of homemade goulash, which was the most delicious, flavorful bowl of soup I had my entire trip, and we were such a big group that someone had to eat directly from the pot with a ladle due to a lack of flatware.

I had only spent one day at the Ginger Money before, and did a really wonderful day hike called the saddle trail. This time we tackled it as a huge group, and it was even more fun than the last time - and everything looked so different! There were fewer flowers and everything green was taller, and even that last persistent patch of snow was almost gone (but there was enough left for me to bury my hands in it).

It was, once again, breathtakingly beautiful at the top, and worth the long slog upwards, but by the time we finished and were waiting for the bus, we were knackered (one of my favorite words I've picked up, just go with it).

We did a day trip to a nearby castle, Spišský hrad, one of the largest in central Europe and very impressive.

This photo basically sums up our day.

Some other memorable events of the trip include the XXL Pizza Challenge at Rustika, a local institution and favorite amongst Monkey guests. This pizza is 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs), and one must finish it in one sitting to be put up on the scoreboard at the Monkey. The record is something like 6 minutes, which just boggles my mind.

And, best of all, the onesie party. I don't know if you're familiar with the 80's era one-piece ski suits, but let's refresh your memory with a picture.

We took the dog, Wally, the BEST and probably the happiest dog in the entire world, out for a walk, of course wearing onesies because it gets quite cold in the mountains at night. And they turn out to be perfect party wear, especially when you have cowboy hats and silver tinsel wigs and pink-rimmed sombreros to add to the equation.

Beaches and deserts, both got sand

After two and a half months, the time has come to write once again about my travels. A lot has happened between Dresden and Today, but I'm going to put a pin in that for now.

Today, I want to talk about sand.

I spent a good few hours last Thursday on the beach in San Diego, California. The sand was soft, dotted with the occasional local sunbather, and the water was surprisingly warm for the Pacific.

There was some pretty interesting people watching on that particular beach, on that particular day. A few guys digging a big hole in the sand. A couple with crayon-bright hair in matching yellow and orange. And... wait, what? A pair of people dragging sacks around on the sand in big circles around a plastic storage tub. Huh? As soon as I saw them, I was mesmerized. What were they doing? I peered at them through my sunglasses, trying to make out what was going on. They had something in these sacks, and were dragging it around on the sand, then carrying the sack with a dark ring on the bottom of it and brushing something off into the tub. Repeat. I decided they were extracting the dark particles from the sand with magnets, possibly as part of some sort of scientific experiment. I was half right - we went to talk to them, and it turns out the sacks were pillow cases, and the fancy equipment in them were just blown out car speakers they got for free from an auto parts store. They were collecting magnetic sand, which they said had iridium and radium attached to it (on this beach) and it could be used to purify water, or smelted to separate the precious metals. I decided to compare it to searching for buried treasure in the sand with a metal detector, only way cooler.

Over the weekend I drove to Tucson for a birthday event, which included towers of beer taller than a toddler and dangerous amounts of bean dip, as well as a visit to the Tucson zoo to feed a giraffe carrot sticks.

The sand-related part happened (get excited) at NIGHT! We went on a night hike in one of the many parks surrounding the city. I consider this to be the "pretty" kind of desert, the kind with rocky hills and canyons and growing things like cacti and mesquite trees and even a little stream. The moon came up and was so bright it outdid my headlamp, and I could see my shadow clearly on the white, white sand. The wash we walked along shone so brightly in the moonlight, and we were surrounded by those great nighttime noises the bugs and the frogs and the air like to make. It was pretty fantastic.

Along the 8 freeway, which connects San Diego and Tucson, there is a section where one is surrounded on both sides by these massive, beautiful sand dunes. I love the way the wind blows little rippling lines down the slopes, visible even from a speeding car.

So, basically, sand not only featured prevalently in my week, it's also kind of awesome.

Tune in again for my REWIND series, where I fill in the big blank of the past few months.