Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
hint: hit Ctrl + to make the pictures bigger

The Libyan Sibyl, Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is a very serene place, accompanied by the sounds of 2000 digital cameras and guards yelling out "QUIET!" every few minutes.  This was the point in time where the guards seemed to have given up yelling "NO PHOTO!" and just didn't care anymore.

An Ode To Train Travel 10/26/10

Sunrise from train, somewhere in Serbia

Hamburg Hauptbahnhof

An Ode To Train Travel 10/26/10

So far on this trip, 90% of my traveling has been done on trains, save the occassional ferry or bus. I have become the biggest proponent of train travel ever, and I especially with a pass if you're going long distances. On trains, you have your stuff with you with access to it, you can get up and walk around, sometimes there are nice observation cars with big windows, there's really nothing to keep track of except that you get off at the right station. Its not like driving where you have to stay awake and maintain alertness throughout, usually you get to see a lot of pretty views out the window, and most of all, you can physically feel the distance that you are traveling. Plane travel is a little like cheating in this way. Planes are necessary of course for getting places far away quickly, but its sort of like teleportation—snap and you're there. You don't even have any concept in your mind of how far you've traveled. On trains you've actually seen a lot of where you're traveling. You get to see more of the country and landscape that way.

Oh and by the way, did you know that they have train ferries? Yes. I rode one over the water from Copenhagen, Denmark to Malmo, Sweden. Your train drives onto a ferry, you leave all your stuff in the train, go upstairs to the people part, where there are outdoor decks and a restaurant and a few stores. You ride the ferry for about 45 minutes, then go back downstairs and get back on the train. The ferry docks, the train drives off and away you go.

And train passes. They are much more expensive now than they used to be, but I have a Eurail Global pass which allows me to travel on pretty much any train in 22 different countries within a limited timespan (15 travel days within 2 months in the case of my pass, you can get different ones) They're so nice because you can usually just step on any train you want and it makes it so easy to change your plans. The only annoyance is making seat reservations in advance for certain busier trains. You have to pay extra for reservations, but usually only 5-10 euros (about $6-12)

On this particular train ride (I was going from Berlin, Germany to Lund, Sweden, I happened to make a few friends—a Guatamalan guy studying in Germany for his masters degree and a Swedish woman from Lund who is a professor of comparative literature at a university in Germany. I talked to them for almost the whole 5 hour train ride, so the time passed quickly. Meeting people is fleeting while traveling. You may sit and talk to someone for three hours on a train, and then finally learn their name, and then say, ok, well it was nice talking to you. Happy travels and I'll most likely never see you again. People you spend a little more time with, you might trade emails or facebook with (I've used facebook so much more traveling...its the wave of the future). And then, sometimes you go to actually visit a few of the people you've met.

For instance, I met this cool girl from Switzerland on the day and a half long complicated train ride across Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia. We just started talking and were also hanging out with this group of 4 Scottish boys on their way to Bled, a city in northern Slovenia (its supposed to be really nice despite the name). I thought I was going to head toward Budapest, Hungary when I had to change trains in Belgrade, Serbia, but through the course of hanging out, I just decided to go with them to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We had a really fun time for a couple of days hanging out in Ljubljana even though the country was experiencing some epic floods. And later when Anna had to leave to start the school year again, she said I should come visit her in Switzerland if I had the chance. And I did so I did, and it was really really cool. And now I have some new real friends, not just traveling ones I'll probably never talk to again.