The Adventure Continues

We spent our last four days in Barcelona. We knew we would return to catch our flight to the states. But more importantly, returning to Barcelona felt like closing the loop. So much of this trip has been uncertain, unplanned and unfamiliar, but when we returned to Barcelona everything suddenly became easier. We knew where to catch the train from the airport, how to get to our hostel, where to find food. Hell, I even basically speak the language! It felt good to be in a familiar place, somewhere easy.

We spent our last days in Europe relaxed. Waking up late, eating delicious breakfasts and drinking our coffee slowly. Taking the train outside of the city to go to the beach. Walking down the narrow, winding streets.

Sipping mojitos in El Raval, we remember the trip's highlights and low points.

After two days of this, we were both ready for some adventure. We very nearly went kitesurfing and then almost went on a kayaking and cave snorkeling trip, but in the end settled for renting some bikes and riding around the city. As the sun set on our final day in Europe, we parked our bikes next to the Barceloneta beaches and went for one final Mediterranean swim. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to Barcelona, and to Europe.

We celebrated our last night by having dinner at Juicy Jones in the Gothic Quarter. Juicy Jones is a super funky little juice bar and vegan restaurant. It has a little storefront on a side street off La Rambla with a diner style bar and a narrow kitchen. There are a few tables down some stairs in the back.

Marya and I got the menu del dia. Starting with an insalata mista and a hummus plate, we then demolished a delicious seitan filet with patatas bravas and homemade red wine gravy and an Indian thali plate with basmati rice, three curries and some delicious little pakoras. We even got a small glass of white wine and two weird but delicious vegan desserts. It's the kind of restaurant we would frequent at home. Comfort food in a comfortable environment.

Yeah, it was that good.

The next morning we rose early to start the journey home. After six weeks, nine cities and fourteen bedrooms; trains, planes, buses, boats and automobiles; performing our show in English, Spanish, Italian, Polish and German; eating the finest vegetarian delicacies and the foulest most desperate falafel sandwiches, we were ready. So we said goodbye to Barcelona at sunrise and chased the sun for nearly twenty four hours back to San Francisco.

The next morning I went to Circus Bella rehearsal, getting ready for a weekend gig up in the wine country. Of course I was sore from 24 hours of traveling and a little jet-lagged, but it was great to see everyone and to jump back into the show. After rehearsal, driving across the Bay Bridge I was struck by a strange feeling. I am so lucky to be visiting this beautiful city. And I am excited to go up to the wine country tomorrow! Wait a minute, I am still on vacation! The adventure continues.

The Bombastics an der Ybbs

3....

2....

1....

And we're back, ladies and gentlemen, here in Barcelona where the sun always shines and the party doesn't start until 2am and almost everyone wears these weird sandals that come from the island Mallorca, and which Mark and I have seriously considered buying more than a few times (the sandals, not the island).

It's an interesting sensation to be here again at the end of our trip. I feel as if I've traveled back in time, and we're really just beginning our trip, but I mysteriously know all the experiences and friends I have to look forward to. Or sometimes it's like I'm looking back on the me that was here 5 weeks ago, a little jealous, but also a little smug. I've been on a boat to Rome. I've hiked through Cinque Terre. I've turned 26 in Poland. I've eaten vegetarian schnitzel in a beautiful home in Waidhofen an der Ybbs, Austria. What do you have to say to that, 5-weeks-ago-me, hmmm?

She says that my flight back to the US is in just 2 days, which means Mark and I have to get the blog up to date NOW or it will never ever happen and I'll feel guilty about it for weeks, repressing the feelings eventually until someone mentions it to me again.

Wow. She knows me exactly as well as I know myself.

So when we left off last, Mark and I had just exited Poland and were headed to Austria, snuggle-crammed together in the back seat of our friends' car. As you might know, we hadn't planned to go there at all. Instead, we thought that after Poland, we would head to Berlin, then Amsterdam, then Paris, then back to Barca. Typical tourist plan, I think. I'm so glad Philipp and Petra presented us with the opportunity to do something different.

snuggle-crammed into the backseat
Outside the castle during our speed-tour of Prague.

Some background: Philipp and Petra do a street show as "Witiwati und Rosa." Dressed in typical Austrian garb, they juggle and do partner acrobatics, and present a grand finale wherein they pass clubs while Philipp rides a tall unicycle and Petra balances on a slack-rope held up by volunteers.

The best thing about street performers, I've discovered, is getting to know them past just what they do in their show.

Petra works as an interior designer, about to go back to school for architecture, and Philipp is a doctor who speaks English, German, Spanish, and Danish. He's also the kind of person who when he says, "Let's do it!" he means, "Let's do it right now, no excuses, why aren't you moving already?" Which is why when I mentioned needing a post office in Brzeg, we spent 30 minutes following him as he asked random Polish citizens, eventually figured out the word for Post Office is "Poczta" (pronounced "Pochta") and found it several yards from where we started.

It's also why when he said that we should come to Waidhofen because we could perform in a festival with them and hike in the mountains and eat his mother's home-cooked meals and go to Adventure Park in the Trees, he didn't mean "Someday." He meant he had already emailed the festival organizer and we already had a spot and here was our confirmation email and his mom already knew we were vegetarians and she was already thinking about delicious traditional Austrian meals that she could modify.

Austria was amazing, mostly because of these two people and the people they introduced us to.

WAIDHOFEN:

We arrived in Waidhofen on Thursday, September 1st, unfolding ourselves out of the car into the cool mountain air. Petra and Philipp live in a lovely (mostly) renovated apartment near the center of the (mostly) small town. Mark mentioned in a previous post that sometimes we call them Mom and Dad. This is not just because we rode in their backseat for 9+ hours. It's also because they absolutely took care of us, whether it was taking us through Prague on a 1 hour rest stop or teaching us about Austria or feeding us delicious food or guiding us to wonderful places.

For example...

The first day, after a delicious breakfast of eggs and eierschwammerl (chanterelle mushrooms bought in an absurd quantity from a roadside stand in Poland) and bread, they showed us around town (which was cute), then took us to Philipp's parents house (also cute) to eat the first of many spectacular meals. We ate so much good food in Austria that we had Philipp and Petra help us make a list of it so we could remember it forever. You, too, will benefit from this list, oh yes, you too. That first lunch, we had nudelauflauf gemuse (noodle casserole with vegetables), zucchini soup, and zucchini cake (it's zucchini season in their garden) and cucumber salad. This gave Mark a chance to practice one of the only German sentence starters he knew: Wir lieben______(We love _______.). In this case, “Wir lieben Zucchini Kuchen (cake).”

Later that day, we performed our show two times in the Shopping Night Festival. It did NOT go well. Bad spots, bad luck, bad audience, bad voodoo. I don't know. Our first show in a new country never goes smoothly. Let's not mention it again.

Breakfast spread.

The next day, we went swimming in a beautifully clear and breathtakingly chilly river, the Ybbs. Happy and sundried, we headed to Philipp's parents' house (again) where we ate vegetarian goulash and more zucchini cake and drank the finest Austrian wine with Philipp's dad (a connoisseur). In the landscaped back yard, we practiced feats of acrobatic skill and juggled with our hosts' friends and played games with some curious neighborhood kids (who thought my attempts at counting to 10 in German were unbelievably hilarious).

Jump!
Fording the Ybbs on the way back to the car.
Passing in two-high. Total success on 2nd try. We're pros.
Our crowd.
Mark's idea of what to do with all the extra adults and kids.

The next day, hiking in the mountains, hangin' with some cows, and drinking delicious white beer in mountain refuge restaurants near the peak (giving Mark another opportunity to practice: Wir lieben Weissbier. Also, for some reason at this point, he learned to say “Mein Kopf ist gross” or “My head is big”). After hiking, Mom cooked us dinner of semmelknodel (bread dumplings) in eierschwammerl sauce, finishing with tiramisu, and Dad set up the movie Pumping Iron for us to watch, because he said it was “part of our culture.” (Pumping Iron is a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger and other body builders in the 1970's.)

More Austrian friends.

And the last day, delicious palatschinken (crepes) with an array of jams, all made by various moms. Since it was raining, our Adventure Park in the Trees plan was canceled, but instead we played the card game Dominion that Philipp had taught us the day before. Mark and I lost two games in a row to a dangerously caffeinated Philipp.

Before we caught the train to Vienna, we went one last time to eat lunch at Philipp's parents'. This time: kurbiscrèmesuppe (pumpkin soup) topped with toasted pumpkin seeds (also from the garden), breaded zucchini cutlets (vegetarian schnitzel!), and potato arugula salad. With the one remaining schnitzel, Philipp made us a to-go sandwich and packed us a train lunch complete with cookies and a napkin. We safely stowed it in Mark's backpack, along with homemade mothers' jam.

Lunch!

Packed lunch!

Sad goodbyes to our adopted mom and dad at the train station, and then we were off into the wide world, alone and scared....

Until Philipp's sister, Barbara met us at the train station in Vienna and welcomed us into her home and fed us bread and cheeses and kept us wonderful company for the next 5 days until she walked us to the train station again to see us off. And this is why we love Austria.

VIENNA:

In Vienna, things happened (as they tend to do).

Thing #1: We downloaded an audio-guide to Vienna (called "Your friend in Vienna!") for my iPod and wandered around the city listening to our friend tell us stories about famous buildings and people and mispronounce words like "marriage" ("marry-age"). With her in the lead, we visited the beautiful St. Steven's chapel and drank coffee at Cafe Hawelka, a Viennese coffee house famous as a hangout for poets and artists. And us. Booyakasha.

Espresso and melange and Klimt.

Thing #2: We practiced handstands in a park overlooking the Danube (that's right, the blue one).

Thing #3: We toured Schonbrunn Palace and surrounding grounds, summer home to the 17th-20th century Hapsburgs. Best things about this place? There's a maze built out of hedges and a glockenspiel you can dance on.

Mark hangs at the palace.
On the platform in the middle of the maze.

Thing #4: Our first night at dinner, Barbara's friend Ingrid came over. Barbara works with elderly patients in a nursing home, and Ingrid works at a neurological hospital for people of all ages with psychological diseases. After hearing about our street show, Ingrid invited us to come perform for the patients on Thursday afternoon. Never ones to shy away from totally bizarre opportunities, we agreed. Thursday afternoon, we performed our show the first time for a non-street audience, and it was a huge hit. After the show, we hung out and ate cake (another opportunity for "Wir lieben Kuchen") and showed the younger kids tricks they could do with one club. Some kids were happy just throwing and dropping the club over and over. One kid did every trick Mark showed him to total perfection, all while wearing a jaunty backwards baseball cap. At the end, Ingrid gave us a box of chocolate. All in all, it was a pretty awesome experience.

Thing #5: We toured a crypt underneath a church where the conditions are such that bodies naturally became mummified (picture bodies so well preserved you can see smooth cheeks and silken ruffles of their dresses). We were the only English-speaking members of the tour, so after giving a long speech in German to the rest, the guide would turn to us and say it again in English. It was half embarrassing and half like having our own personal tour guide.

Things #6-Whatever: We wandered through the Hofburg under the threat of rain and were introduced to the wild artist Egon Schiele in the Leopold Museum and posed with bizarre naked sculptures by the Danube and watched the Circus Roncalli tent go up in front of the Rathaus (Vienna City Hall) and walked through the Prater, Vienna's amusement park, and most wonderfully of all ate lovely meals with Barbara (and sometimes her boyfriend Florian) in her apartment talking about culture and language and why no one in Austria has ever seen The Sound of Music. It was a little sad to fly to Barcelona, wondering who would make us breakfast and tell us what part of town to visit and pack us typical Austrian treats...

Weird naked statues....and Mark!

Freak show statues at the Prater...and Mark!

All our stuff plus us plus Barbara crammed somehow into the tiniest elevator in Austria.

But we pulled through somehow, and now I'm here again in the Yellow Nest Hostel. It's 11pm and the spacious lounge area is filling up with people revving up to go out partying again. Mark is watching the movie Sherlock Holmes in an otherwise empty cinema room and I'm furiously typing in the corner.

We know how to party.

See you on the Stateside!

Viva la Polska!

Hello dedicated readers! We have just passed our one month in Europe mark and we are happy to still have you here reading with us. It is becoming customary to acknowledge that this blog is not entirely up to date and I will take this opportunity to do so. We are currently on the train from Waidhofen, Austria to Vienna. We have just taken leave of our dear friends and companions of the last two weeks Phillip and Petra. A detailed account of what we did (and what we ate!) in Austria will follow shortly. For now, let me take you back to our first day in Poland. Let me begin by bellowing in a baritone, “BUSKER BUS!”

We arrived in Brzeg, Poland on August 23, haggard and stinking after 24 hours on the road. We were delighted to find that the hotel we were staying in was only a few blocks from the train station. Our room was small but charming. Two narrow beds, a small table, a shower and a closet. We moved our personal stuff in and made a lunch of couscous and lentils with hummus, which we ate with tortillas and fresh vegetables. After an hour's rest, we set out to see if we could catch some of the other performers and maybe meet our host, Romuald.

Brzeg is a small town, so it didn't take us long to find the main square. We saw a group from Japan called Ojarus performing and some musical acts. It was delightful to see a pretty weird and experimental group from Tokyo performing for a rapt Polish audience. We decided we should try to find out where we were supposed to eat dinner. We learned from another performer that Romuald was an older guy in a straw hat and a white jacket with blue stripes. We spotted him outside a restaurant and introduced ourselves. There was a tense moment when he thought we were a group called “Las Bombas” who had also applied to the festival but who he had not invited. Once he realized that we were the Bombastics, from the USA we greeted us with hugs and tickets entitling us to bizarre, vegetarian Polish meals three times a day for the next week.

The next day we had no assigned spot on the schedule, but we talked to Romuald and he gave us a spot at 2 pm. We were quickly discovering that BuskerBus runs a little differently than most street festivals. It's not so much all work and no play, with international artists trying to play great shows to huge crowds and make lots of money. It's a much more loosely organized affair. There is a rag tag family of performers from all over the world who, despite their generally high level of eccentricity, perform surprisingly diverse and delightful shows. For a week, this family of performers (and it really is a family) will travel together, eat together, perform together and drink together all over Poland.

Get on the bus! Romuald is in foreground below.

We decided to stop for lunch before our two o'clock show. Breakfast and lunch in Brzeg were served in the Milk Bar. Milk Bars are an institution left over from the communist period, which serve simple food at very low prices. Our usual milk bar breakfast consisted of a cup of instant coffee, a few slices of bread, two slices of cheese, half a tomato and a bowl of cottage cheese with dill. A little unusual at first, but not a bad breakfast if you can stomach it. Lunch was much the same.

Milk bar.

Our performing location turned out to be no more than a street corner two blocks from the center of town. It would have been a decent spot for a guitar player, but for a circle show it was just about impossible. Fortunately, our buddies Philipp and Petra who we met in Ferrara stopped by and scoped out the situation with us. Philipp gave us a killer pep talk, which is becoming a tradition, and encouraged us to just set up and do a show and to block the street if we had to. This put the fire in our blood and we ended up playing a great show on the street corner. By the end of our show we had blocked the entire sidewalk and had a crowd standing behind us in the street. Needless to say, we were glad we tried it. Thanks, Dad.

Much of our time in Poland followed the same pattern. We would wake up, eat breakfast together, go play a weird show in a weird spot, have dinner together and then all go to the “Festival Club” (read “bar”) for the particular city where we would spend our hard-earned zloty on Polish beer and vodka.

Dinner at the "festival club" Left side of table speaking German, right side Japanese.

Instead of listing everything chronologically, I will instead give a brief account of some of our unforgettable shows before I proceed.

Kiddy spin from overtime show (see below)

Amp show: We built a huge crowd on a great pitch in Wroclaw and just as we were about the start the show, our amp quit. We performed our entire show unamplified and without any music, including an eerily quiet juggling act. UPDATE: Part of this show was filmed and put on Polish TV (or something). Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_jjynyNvIU

Sprinkler show: We showed up to our pitch to find a sprinkler soaking the entire area. Philipp arrived on the scene and then went to talk to the authorities. Nobody knew who had installed the sprinkler or how to shut it off. Philipp failed to issue his usual pep talk and instead shocked us by saying, “It's not worth it.” We immediately decided to give up.

Overtime?: We played a show in the main square in Wroclaw. We were a little late to get started, because Dan Marcus got hassled by the police, so Philipp and Petra gave him their spot and played a bit later, but then they had to wait for Valeria and then we had to wait for them. The end result: we finished at 7:07 rather than at 7:00. This apparently made us some lifelong enemies out of the couple of clowns who were supposed to take over the spot at 7. I think they had some serious beef with Americans. Interesting to be stereotyped...

And then....a show where it threatened to rain the entire time, a show where we started out with a great crowd and lost half of them before the finale to Djammal's sound system, and our wonderful final show in Wroclaw where we had a hilarious translator pretending he was a presenter from the home shopping network (unbeknownst to us of course.)

Oh, remember when Marya got locked in that kebab restaurant bathroom? I had my turn of being locked in a bathroom for the trip. I got locked in the 40 degree (around 100 degrees Fahrenheit) shower room of our hostel for over an hour while the staff tried to find a locksmith. Don't worry, the humor of the situation wasn't lost on us.

Another momentous occasion: Marya turned 26 in Zielona Gora. We celebrated at the Piekarnia, a huge bakery turned bar (and that city's festival club). She had happy birthday sung to her in over 12 different languages. We had her traditional birthday watermelon as well as a delicious little cake with fruit and nuts and a large bottle of champagne (Thanks Philipp and Petra!), which magically seemed to serve everyone who gathered around.

Family portrait at the Piekarnia (Philipp and Petra pretend to be our parents)

The day after Marya's birthday was our last day in Poland. We also celebrated Romuald (the organizer of BuskerBus) and Buskerbus's birthdays. Romuald turned 60 and BuskerBus 15. It was a great night and we said our farewells to many wonderful people. At the end of the night we returned to our hotel where we shared a special Polish vodka that tasted of nutmeg with Romuald at 4 AM. It was the perfect final moment of our Polish adventure.

They are not big on cake in Poland... Vodka (60) and honey wine (15).

The next morning we all piled into Philipp and Petra's car and set off. To Osterreich!

Our cozy ride to Austria.

For our own reference, some people we want to never forget: philip and petra, sheishei and mai, nozomi, ojarus (masa and haruki – japanese ame and the pompon dance after their whip trick), stripey (and his mosquito bites and accent and the time he sang us all of “Billy Austin” in Wroclaw), romuald (and when he sang the song to Marya on her birthday), trickster circus (and their sweet dance moves), dan marcus, djammal (uh-huh), daniel mays, blond polish drummer (who said “say hi to your mom” when I told him my family was polish), fred/charley, tahmour, duo ruach, martin (our german friend – and how he sounded like Jan Damm doing Hans), christiano (his story about how the border police thought his friend's kazoo was a pipe, so the friend had to play it to prove that it was an instrument), qian lan (bicycle helmet) the danish musicians (we danced polka.)

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (anything but another bus!)

At this very moment, Mark and I and all of our stuff are crammed clown-style into a little red car, driving many kilometers per hour down a highway in the Czech Republic. How did we get here? How many kilometers are in a mile? Where is the Czech Republic, anyway?

I can answer one of those questions for you. The rest we leave to Wikipedia.

We left Poland today, after 1 week of traveling with BuskerBus, an international street performing festival. Oh, BuskerBus, how can I describe thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Weird.

2. Fun.

Actually, that pretty much sums it up. Two ways. I probably didn't even need to count them. Anyway, we met wild and wonderful people and performed in places that I'd never heard of and drank vodka with a Polish man on his 60^th birthday. So much more to say about it, but we'd like to catch you up to date first. For now, the important plot point to note is that we met an Austrian couple named Philip and Petra (also performing at the festival), who invited us to come to their hometown and hike in the mountains and perform in another festival going on there September 2^nd. They're the ones who Tetris-ed all our things into their car and that's how we ended up on this Czech highway.

But let's digress...

SOME THINGS THAT HAPPENED AFTER CINQUE TERRE AND BEFORE POLAND:

1. Marya got locked in the bathroom of an Italian kebab restaurant.

On the train ride from Cinque Terre to Ferrara, we had a layover in Florence. You may know it as the artistic center of the Renaissance, packed with paintings and statues and churches and architectural wonders.

Nobody ever mentions the sketchy train station packed with crazies on the outskirts of the city.

The layover was around 3 hours, so we moved our stuff to a little waiting area and settled in. The temperature was around 90 degrees. We had no food or water left. The bathrooms were all closed because of vandalism. The vending machine was broken. A band of 4 ragged looking crazies lurked near them, and every 3 minutes or so one of them kicked kicked kicked the machine until it spit out a coin (or didn't, judging by the noises he made). We sat in the waiting area with the other miserable Italians, all hoping our trains came soon.

Finally, we couldn't stand it any longer, so I went out into the surrounding area to look for provisions. Almost everything was closed (in August, everyone in Italy goes on vacation), but I found one open kebab restaurant. I ordered 2 falafel sandwiches in Italian, and successfully located the bathroom. Feeling pretty good about myself, I went to unlock the door and....couldn't. It was an old slide lock, with a bolt turned by a little screw, and the screw just wouldn't turn. At all. I pulled and pushed on the door, dried my hands, tried again.

At this point, I decided that the restaurant owner probably locked me in and was going to kill me as soon as he could close down the rest of the store. A logical chain of reasoning, I know.

I pounded on the door. I tried the window, but it was barred. Finally, I MacGyverer. I found Mark's little pocket knife and used it to jam a 2 cent Euro coin into the side of the lock, trying to push it back out. Only partial success. So, not panicking, I used the knife to pry the entire lock unit off the door. Total success.

When I finally emerged, after probably 20 – 25 minutes, the guy working there seemed pretty oblivious. I guess he thought I just had to use the bathroom really badly. He hadn't even made the sandwiches yet because I wasn't there to tell him how much hot sauce I wanted. As soon as he finished, I ran out of there with mediocre falafel and 2 bottles of water and Mark and I vowed to never again return to Florence. Art is for sissies.

After the harrowing adventure.

2. Venice

This one isn't quite as exciting, but infinitely more pleasant. We were going to Ferrara for a festival, but arrived a day early so we could spend time exploring Venice (about 2 hours away by train). After an incredibly late start, we stepped out of the Santa Lucia train station and into sunshine reflected off the Grand Canal.

We had read the night before that the thing to do in Venice is get lost in Venice, so we decided to make that our priority. It worked. We crossed tons of bridges, avoided thousands of tourists, watched dozens of boats, and I took two photos of a pigeon drinking out of a water fountain. Venice is beautiful, but also a strange experience. Tourists officially outnumber residents, and it's very obvious. I think the only non-tourists I saw were people working at identical stores selling useless things to tourists. It felt more like a theme park than a living city.

That said, we still managed to eat a delicious picnic lunch (bread, tomatoes, cheese), sitting on the steps of a bridge, listening to two street musicians play.

And at sunset, we took a vaporetto (a water bus) down the Grand Canal back to the train station. As you would expect, it was packed with tourists, but we got seats and spent 45 minutes watching the buildings float by. So to speak. It was great to bob along, watching awkward couples in gondolas and happy couples sitting with dangling feet at piers where streets dead-ended into the canal.

Late start, great day. Except for the part when Mark got really hungry on the train ride and we realized all the stores would be closed in Ferrara and we ate really bad falafel sandwiches with ketchup at ANOTHER kebab shop by the train station. C'est la vie.

Vaporetto station.

Sitting at the back of the boat.

3. Ferrara Buskers Festival

Our first street performing festival! Woo! It was quite the experience. Tons and tons of invited groups, not much organization. But for us, used to setting up on some street plaza, fighting for a crowd, and jumping at the sight of police, it was great. All we had to do to build a crowd was stand in our spot and open our box. Voila. Instant circle.

During the 2 days we performed, we learned how to do our show in Italian, met and shared a spot with the Austrian couple whose car we're STILL in now (6 hours after I started writing this entry), and ate pizza and drank champagne in the performers' area (courtesy of a wild English man). Pretty good time.

On our last day, Mark got into a long battle with one of the Italian women who organized the festival, mostly about how they gave us incorrect information and were awful about responding to our emails. His goal was to get our taxi fares to and from the hotel covered. No avail. In the middle of the 1 ½ long battle, tensions were running too high for me and I left to get into costume. I'm not quite sure what happened next, but somehow, by the end, we both got kisses and 2 free t-shirts and an invitation to return next year.

Ah, Italy...

Police? No problem.

The trick where we spin the kid. This guy was our friend the rest of the festival.

4. CRAZY Polish Bus

Mark already introduced this singular experience in the previous blog entry, but I'd like to add a few special details.

Like how every hour or so the bus stopped, the driver made a totally incomprehensible announcement in Polish, and everyone plodded off the bus to stand despondently in bathroom lines, or desperately smoke cigarettes. Oh, bus people. The same pathetic jumble no matter what country you're in.

Or how at one in the morning, the bus stopped and we looked out the windows to see an eerily lit castle, complete with dragons and wizards and what I think was supposed to be an Amazon. We left the bus in a daze, clutching our packet of crackers (we ate one at every stop as a way to stave off madness). Most of the lights were off, but a chorus of children's voices sang out in German from a darkened bumper car arena. It was at this point, wandering around this empty amusement park/ rest stop/ duty free shop, that we realized reality had abandoned us. We were on the crazy bus to Poland. First stop: Excalibur City, Austria.

Nothing else during the long night really compared to this, but things came close. A British-made kickboxing B movie translated by the droning voice of one Polish man, a 4am stop at the Polish border in which an officer came on board to check everyone's passports and we realized we had no idea if we were even allowed to just cruise into Poland on a bus, and a 7am unexpected bus transfer where Mark wandered from parked bus to parked bus asking hopefully, “Krakow?” And always the comforting dry mouthfuls of our individually packaged Saltine crackers.

We made it eventually to Krakow, and after a 4 hour long train ride, to Brzeg, tiny Polish town full of wild Gypsy children and the start of our BuskerBus adventures.

Our little red car has just entered Vienna. We have one quick stop, then 2 hours until we arrive in our Austrian friends' hometown. Until next time, Americanos!

The last package of crackers, eaten on the train from Krakow to Brzeg.

Between Sea and Sky

Before I tell you about our three day vacation in Cinque Terre. I have to disrupt the chronology of this blog by describing my CURRENT location. I am on the bus from Ferrara, Italia to Krakow, Poland. Marya and I bought bus tickets between Ferrara and Krakow a long time ago, while we were still in the states. We thought it was a good idea since we had to make the trip pretty quick, between finishing Ferrara Buskers Festival yesterday and being expected at BuskerBus in Poland tomorrow.

It wasn't easy to book the tickets. For one thing, the destinations Ferrara and Krakow are spelled differently depending on if you search the Polish version of the website or the Italian version. And I don't mean a little different. The Polish transliteration of “Italy” is, you guessed it, “Wlochy.”

Anyway, we had our tickets and set out to find the bus stop, which, after calling several Polish travel agents, we determined was at the train station (The address of the station? A road that does not exist.) We also picked up the clue that our bus would say AGAT on it. So we waited at the Ferrara train station. It was hot. Like 40 degrees hot. Finally, 45 minutes after the arrival time, a bus pulled into view across the street. We grabbed our gear and hustled over. The staff did not speak English, or Italian, but we should them the tickets, said Krakow a few times, and they let us on. We sent our big blue show suitcase in the car of our new Austrian friends (more on them later.) And it's a good thing we did, because all the luggage was jammed in the hold like Tetris, with two holes exactly the size of our personal bags. Marya and I took our instruments onto the bus with us.

On the bus there were approximately two empty seats total. There was also a serious language barrier. Marya and I stood awkwardly in the aisle as the driver took off towards Poland. After an awkward pause, another guy working on the bus came and asked a woman if she would mind moving so that Marya and I could sit together. (At least that's what I imagine he said.) And the woman graciously agreed. So here we are, on the bus, to Poland. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We left off in...

Cinque Terre

The train ride from Roma to La Spezia was pretty uneventful. We were in a nearly empty car and spent our time conversing with the guy selling snacks in broken Italian. At La Spezia we switched to a local train to take us out to the little town Riomaggiore. Now, for a traveling circus, we have very little luggage, but for a pair of tourists, we have quite a bit. It was not easy to board the little regional train with everything, but we finally got squeezed on board. As we rode along the sea-cliff, gasping at the views, the conductor came around to check our tickets. It turns out this particular ticket requires validation. The conductor threatened to fine us 50 Euro each, but ended up settling for a 5 Euro warning (bribe?) We paid off the conductor just as we reached the station and had to hump our oversized bags down the entire length of the train car in order to disembark.

We were left in the town of Riomaggiore, a small fishing village turned tourist haven on the coast of Italy, near Genoa. The town is built on a steep hill so that the houses sit almost on top of each other. There are no cars. Riomaggiore is the first of five villages connected by a hiking trail along the coast. People come to Cinque Terre (which means “five towns”) to hike between the towns, hang out on the beach and sample the locally produced wine and olive oil.

Marya and I checked into our hostel, which is really just a small, top floor apartment with a lot of extra beds crammed into it. The apartment was beautiful. We were on the top floor of a building on the main street. We shared a room with two very charming Australian women, who we got along with swimmingly. Good thing too, because it was tight quarters. We went out to eat at the restaurant across the street and had some delicious local delicacies, which we washed down with some of the local red wine. The wine was great: strong and spicy.

(View of Riomaggiore from our room.)

The next morning we set out to hike north to the next few villages. We had a loose plan of making it two or three villages down and then taking the train home. The first portion of the walk was along the cliff over the ocean on a wide, paved path. The Via d'ell Amore (Lover's Path.) It was packed full of tourists, including several large tour groups. We were a little worried that we would be surrounded only by tourists for our whole time here in Cinque Terre.

We made it to the next town in about half an hour. Manarola is a beautiful little beach town. We stopped in the local grocery to pick up some picnic lunch supplies. The next section of the main trail was closed due to rock slides so we had the option of taking the train to the next town or of taking some smaller trails that run further inland. We chose to take the inland trails, hoping to get a little off the beaten track. It took us a little while to find the trail we were looking for but once we found it we knew we had made the right choice. The trail climbed up the steep mountains that rise almost directly out of the water. The hill sides are terraced with thousands of kilometers of hand built stone walls. This allows the locals to grow grapes and olives on the steep, but fertile land. We spent the early afternoon climbing through these vineyards and olive trees with occasional views out at the stunning coast line. The best part? Zero tourists.

We arrived at a tiny town around lunch time. We walked in to town through the back door, with the trail literally passing through the backyards and alleys of the houses. We stopped for lunch in a courtyard in front of the little stone church. We ate between a vineyard and an olive orchard overlooking the Mediterranean.

After lunch we continued on to Corniglia, which was an early Roman settlement. Apparently wine flasks from Corniglia has been discovered in the ruins of ancient Greece. The town is beautiful, of course, high on a bluff over the ocean. After exploring the town we decided to press on one more town to Vernazza, where we had heard there was a beach.

About half way down the path to Vernazza, we noticed a small trail branching off the large one and heading down thousands of feet towards the ocean. There was a rock at the crossing and someone had scrawled in Sharpie “Spiaggia Beach” with an arrow. We decided, what the hell, lets see where this little path leads us. We started a steep, scrambling descent. A few meters down the trail we found an extension cord anchored to a rock that you could use to steady yourself as you scrambled down. As we made our way down the narrow path we continued to see signs for “Beach”, then “Free Beach”, “Naturist Beach”, “Naturist Beach, No Gay!”

We were not quite sure if we had made the right call here, but we pressed on. Finally we reached a cliff just above the beach and we could see people down by the water. Sure enough most of the men where naked and the women topless. It was at this moment that Marya witnessed a truly bizarre thing. She saw a snake fall 40 feet off a cliff and land on rocks below. The snake lay stunned on the rocks for a second and then started slithering back towards the forest. Needless to say, this put us on edge a little bit. We steeled ourselves, we had come this far, and we picked our way down the cliff to the beach.

We found a semi-isolated spot on the beach and went for a much needed and refreshing swim. The water is beautiful, clear, blue and just the right temperature. We were happy we had chosen to hike down. As we dried off on the rocks, we started to consider the question of how to get back to civilization. We could not easily scramble back up the way that we had come. It was crazy steep, and there were trails branching off everywhere. We had noticed a tunnel, like a small train tunnel through the mountain just above the beach, but we had discovered that it got pitch dark just a few meters in and was too dangerous and scary to proceed.

I asked an older local couple how far the tunnel went in broken Italian and the man told me it went on for “Ten, fifteen, thirty minutes. By foot back to Corniglia.”

After walking back and worth several times, unsure of what to do, we saw three Italians headed toward the tunnel. One of them had a flashlight. We decided to follow them down the tunnel. It seemed like this might be our only chance to get out. The three Italians turned out to be two Italian tourists and one local guy (the one with the flashlight.) We followed closely behind them, trying to see by the faint glow of the tiny flashlight. At some point the local guy caught on the the fact the we were following him and attempted to speak to us. We got out a few words, basically establishing that we couldn't understand each other. We walked in silence down the tunnel while the Italians conversed for what seemed like about 20 minutes. We fought off the mild panic of having no idea where we were, who we were following or how long this tunnel went on for. Finally, we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately it turned out to be two people riding a moped down the pitch black tunnel and not the other side. We finally did see the opening, however and we thanked our local guide profusely. We had made it back. We got on the train and went straight home to the safety and calm of our hostel. We decompressed with what remained of our local wine.

The next morning we took it easy. Had a nice breakfast in our hostel/apartment, did some laundry in the sink, and generally relaxed. We then got on the train and headed to the furthest away of the five towns. We wandered around Monterosso delle Mare, had a grapefruit and a gelato and hid from the mid-day heat in the narrow, winding streets.

When it had cooled off a degree or two, we set out down the path to Vernazza, the only town we had still not seen. Another beautiful climb through the vineyards. The trail turned out to be hard and hot, and we made it to Vernazza in need of a swim. Fortunately Vernazza has a beautiful little port where everyone hangs out, moors their rowboats, and goes swimming.

Marya and I went for a lovely late afternoon swim in the little harbor in the shadow of an old stone church. We hung around Vernazza, had a sorbetto and hopped on the train back home to Riomaggiore.

We needed a relaxing day like this after our somewhat harrowing tunnel experience the previous afternoon. We cooked in our little apartment and had a nice home cooked meal. We topped it off by walking down to the beach, looking at the stars and listening to the waves.

Our final morning in Cinque Terre we woke up, packed up and checked out of our weird little hostel. We went over the the Bar Centrale to get on the internet and have a cappuccino. We were just a little bit nervous about the fact that we still didn't have confirmation from Ferrara Buskers Festival that we had a hotel room for tonight. We decided to head towards Ferrara on faith, and try to call from a payphone in the train station.

I will leave off here, for the moment and let Marya tell you about our traumatic stop over in Firenze, our whirlwind tour of Venice, and our triumphs at Ferrara. I have to get back to watching this weird Adam Sandler movie they are showing on the bus which is dubbed over with the narration of a single Polish guy.