Bus Trip
Warning: This is extremely long. Maybe just read every other paragraph, and you'll get a good jist of my trip. Or take it in sittings, just like War and Peace, I think this blog will be better if you don't read it all at once then end up wanting to kill me by the end. and i'll post pictures later
Sorry this has taken so long to get up, but I have had limited time to write this since I got back from the bus trip. Without further ado…the story of my trip.
I wish I could write it in a more interesting fashion as opposed to just what we did everyday, but this is for my benefit of remembering as well, so you will have to deal with it, or you could just close your browser, you choice. This is going to be very long. I warn you right now.
Friday the 16th, I got up, grabbed my backpack and messenger bag and embarked on one of the best weeks of my life. Half of the exchange students met at one train station, and half at the other. Because of the amount of people that signed up they used two buses instead of the usual one, which was great because I got to meet a whole busload more people than I would have on a trip with just one bus. So us at Gare de Lyon kicked it for a few hours, as our bus was caught in traffic. Cards and greetings were exchanged, but it would take a couple days for everyone to become comfortable around each other and start really having fun. We took a pretty awful bus tour of Paris. Not my favorite part of the trip. Our free time was virtually non existent, but Zach, Jim (two other exchange students who came in on my plane) and I used our time to hang out with the Japanese and Chinese girls and take some fun pictures outside the Louvre. We hopped back on our bus for a 4+ hour journey to Dijon, which was made shorter by the presence of Zach’s speakers for his iPod. Zach and I sang every line to “What would you do?” by City High, and I attempted a singalong with the South Americans during Juanes. That night we had a welcome party, where everyone introduced themselves, and then danced the night away. The highlight of the dance was probably the 30 year old man who was staying in the hostel where we were; who decided that there probably wouldn’t be a better chance than this to pick up under aged women and joined in on the dancing. Awkward.
Saturday we got up early and drove 6ish boring hours to southern France to see the Pont du Gard, which is the largest surviving roman era aqueduct in the world. We took a guided tour and I should have paid more attention but it was somewhat boring. The coolest part was that we actually got to go into the aqueduct and walk through to the other side. Keep in mind that all this time, whenever we do a tour, or all the exchange students are together, there is a constant flow of amazing conversation, laughter, and fun. So even if something sounds boring, it probably wasn’t. Once we finished walking around and taking pictures we hopped back on the bus to head to Nîmes, where we were spending the night. As Nîmes was an ancient roman city, we had a fitting Roman dinner, complete with togas. Zach and I, always at the front end of fashion, forwent the given “togas” that we were supposed to wear and instead stripped our beds of the sheets and made ourselves some togas. We ate the semi-decent food with our hands (which was a relief after spending 6 months constantly worrying about my table manners). That night some of us hung out in a room, where Zach and Jim told one of the funniest stories ever, and Jim found out he has some capacity for good storytelling. Zach, Jim and I also had an experience that night in our room during our conversation with our roommate Nacho, as I was basically in tears laughing the entire time.
Sunday we got up, and did a tour of Nîmes. It was raining heavily, so I wore my Chacos, so I would just have wet feet and not wet socks. Basically what’s left of Rome in Nîmes is an old temple and a Roman arena, so there wasn’t too much to see, but we had some free time in the covered market in Nîmes to save us from the rain. After our tour we headed to España. Driving through mountains made me very happy, as looking at grey buildings 7 days a week can do damage to the spirit of someone from Colorado. We arrived in Lloret de Mar (hour outside of Barcelona) near dinnertime to our fantastic hotel which was located a short walk from the beach and complete with swimming pool, room/bar for dancing, and all-you-can-eat buffets for breakfast and lunch. Due to the prowess of Zach’s vision, we found out that there would be a Flamenco dancing show that night in the basement of the hotel. Let’s just say I wish I was man enough to dance Flamenco. Near the end we all got invited on stage and did a little dancing of our own, albeit far inferior to that of the salsa masters.
Monday we finally got to see Barcelona, which became very quickly dear to my heart. We spent most of the morning in a bus tour, which was interesting to a point, but mostly I spent it yearning to be able to get out and walk the streets of Barça. We had some free time at the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the city and the ocean. It was a gorgeous view accompanied by gorgeous, sunny weather, which we were treated to every day in Barcelona. We ate at a buffet near the beach, after which we had a few hours of free time in the center of the city. We walked down the Rambla (the large, pedestrian street in Barça) where we saw some street performers and some very cheap pets being sold. We had to resist Zach’s urge to buy some small rodent and let it loose on the bus. I think he may have made up for his inability to buy an animal by buying whatever exotic fruits he could at the market right off the Rambla. While at the market I had my first of two encounters with random drug dealers asking me to buy drugs on the trip. I bought a Cuban cigar from a store across the street, but it sucked. That night we smoked some Hookah as Gabby the Argentinian brought it, went and danced in the “club” in the basement of our hotel.
The next morning (being Tuesday) we had a tour of the FC Barcelona home stadium, which was okay. Seeing where star players get dressed isn’t exactly my cup of tea. We ate at another buffet (I ate so much on this trip) and then went to visit the Church of the Sagrada Familia, a modernist church by the famous Spanish architect Gaudi, which is still under construction. The church is amazingly planned out, with Gaudi taking hints from nature during his planning, with the inside acting as a kind of forest and the large beams on the outside shaped like Sequoias, among other things. The church was definitely my favorite site visited in Barcelona. It’s beautiful, and somewhat of a breather from the “normal” French churches that I’m used to seeing. That night some of us went down to the “beach” which was really a bunch of little rocks that obliterated my feet, and did some nighttime Mediterranean swimming. It was very cold. We didn’t swim long. On the way back, Jim and I got offered cocaine by a random guy on the street, thus my second drug dealer encounter. We made it out alive despite not buying any, and returned to the hotel for another night of dancing. We danced a lot that week.
Our final day in Barcelona, Wednesday, we visited a park designed by Gaudi, where we had free time to buy from the street vendors there (I got some 5 Euro “Armani” sunglasses), and admire the architecture. Again, it was gorgeous outside. Jim and I followed Posh English girls with ridiculous accents for a little, and then listened to some Spanish guitar in another part of the park. Oh, something I forgot to mention is that while in Barcelona, our buses were split up and our groups stayed at different hotels, so we didn’t see too much of each other, but we did have times together like at the stadium, and our time at the park overlapped. In that aspect I wish we would have spent more time as one large group, but it did allow the people on each bus to get to know each other better. We ate at McDonalds in Barcelona. I don’t know why. Then we went to the Picasso Museum, which was a let down mostly because one part of our bus had to spend 30-45 minutes waiting for a guide to come back to get let in, even though we really didn’t have to because there was a miscommunication. Waiting around was annoying to me because it cut into our last free time that we were going to have in Barça. But, as most worrying ends up, me stupidly being frustrated about free time meant nothing, as we got a lot of free time nonetheless, and Jim and I had one of my favorite experiences from the trip. Jim and I were walking down the Rambla, and all we heard was English and all we saw were people wearing red jerseys. We had forgotten FC Barcelona was playing Liverpool that day. Beer was everywhere, the Liverpool supporters were fired up and using the f word exceedingly. After walking for a bit, we stumbled upon a large place right off the street, where about a thousand Liverpool supporters were drinking, peeing, singing, and kicking soccer balls throughout the crowd. Jim and I stared in amazement at the sight presented to us, then went and bought a beer so we wouldn’t stand out too much. We had a random conversation with a guy from Liverpool, who thought we were speaking a different language at the beginning of our conversation. His friend with him, we understood not at all. Afterwards Jim and I wished we had been born in Liverpool. That night (the last one we would spend in a hotel) was kind of crazy. I won’t go into all the details, but there was swimming, dancing and fun to be had by all.
The last (tear) morning we drove to the Salvador Dali museum outside of Barcelona, where we took a tour. That man is crazy. But I love his art. Some of us decided to go all out and eat a big, Spanish, lunch for our last day, so a girl Eden and I split a “mixed grill” for two. Not knowing that Eden was vegan before she came, and not knowing that she was a little confused by the definition of “mixed grill”, I didn’t inform her that it meant “crapload of meat.” She ate a lot anyway, the good sport she is, and I tried some blood sausage, which despite it’s disgusting nature and aura, isn’t that bad. We explored the city a little and then headed back onto the bus. We drove to Montpellier where half the people got onto one bus heading to Lyon and another on a bus heading to Paris. It was time to say goodbye. Zach and I had a nice little farewell singing “N’importe quoi” with our South American friends we made on the trip, while Jim sat on the bus for an unknown reason. It was weird saying goodbye, because at this point in the trip everyone was just becoming comfortable with each other, just starting to have a really good time. So the only thing about the trip I can really complain about is that it should have been longer. We then loaded up on our bus to Paris, watched some movies, I slept in intervals of no longer than 30 minutes, had a great conversation with a Finnish girl named Nika and an American named Katherine, slept on the floor as our bus waited two hours in a parking lot no more than an hour outside of Paris because we were early and needed to wait for the place we were supposed to eat to open. After our unholy amount of time on the bus, we finally got to Paris, where saying goodbye was weird again. My return home was easier than those who had to wait at a train station then get on a 3 hour train home, so I was happy to return a short 30 minutes on the metro.
It’s very difficult for me to explain the utter amazingness and fun that I had on this trip. After writing all that, I think I failed miserably at portraying it’s amazingness. But those that went on the trip understand that despite some parts sounding boring, or some parts actually being boring, the entire trip was so amazingly fun. I know I’ve said amazing around 4 times, but it’s really the only word I can think of. Part of the fun comes from traveling to new and unseen places, but most of it comes from the people I met and the experiences we had together. As I’ve said time and time again, there is this unseen connection that every exchange student has with one another. It comes from the shared experiences, emotions and problems that every exchange student experiences. I was constantly amazed at the fact that with so many students from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages could be put on a bus, and have such camaraderie. Sitting on the bus I was struck by the relatively small amount of people that ever get this opportunity, to interact with and learn from so many different cultures at such a young age. After a week of hanging out and having fun with people from every part of the world, I realized how lucky I really was to have this experience. If there’s one thing I took from the trip, as my friend Brie put it, “this trip straight up made us international.” True that.
Brent
(If you read this entire thing, you should be applauded)
Sorry this has taken so long to get up, but I have had limited time to write this since I got back from the bus trip. Without further ado…the story of my trip.
I wish I could write it in a more interesting fashion as opposed to just what we did everyday, but this is for my benefit of remembering as well, so you will have to deal with it, or you could just close your browser, you choice. This is going to be very long. I warn you right now.
Friday the 16th, I got up, grabbed my backpack and messenger bag and embarked on one of the best weeks of my life. Half of the exchange students met at one train station, and half at the other. Because of the amount of people that signed up they used two buses instead of the usual one, which was great because I got to meet a whole busload more people than I would have on a trip with just one bus. So us at Gare de Lyon kicked it for a few hours, as our bus was caught in traffic. Cards and greetings were exchanged, but it would take a couple days for everyone to become comfortable around each other and start really having fun. We took a pretty awful bus tour of Paris. Not my favorite part of the trip. Our free time was virtually non existent, but Zach, Jim (two other exchange students who came in on my plane) and I used our time to hang out with the Japanese and Chinese girls and take some fun pictures outside the Louvre. We hopped back on our bus for a 4+ hour journey to Dijon, which was made shorter by the presence of Zach’s speakers for his iPod. Zach and I sang every line to “What would you do?” by City High, and I attempted a singalong with the South Americans during Juanes. That night we had a welcome party, where everyone introduced themselves, and then danced the night away. The highlight of the dance was probably the 30 year old man who was staying in the hostel where we were; who decided that there probably wouldn’t be a better chance than this to pick up under aged women and joined in on the dancing. Awkward.
Saturday we got up early and drove 6ish boring hours to southern France to see the Pont du Gard, which is the largest surviving roman era aqueduct in the world. We took a guided tour and I should have paid more attention but it was somewhat boring. The coolest part was that we actually got to go into the aqueduct and walk through to the other side. Keep in mind that all this time, whenever we do a tour, or all the exchange students are together, there is a constant flow of amazing conversation, laughter, and fun. So even if something sounds boring, it probably wasn’t. Once we finished walking around and taking pictures we hopped back on the bus to head to Nîmes, where we were spending the night. As Nîmes was an ancient roman city, we had a fitting Roman dinner, complete with togas. Zach and I, always at the front end of fashion, forwent the given “togas” that we were supposed to wear and instead stripped our beds of the sheets and made ourselves some togas. We ate the semi-decent food with our hands (which was a relief after spending 6 months constantly worrying about my table manners). That night some of us hung out in a room, where Zach and Jim told one of the funniest stories ever, and Jim found out he has some capacity for good storytelling. Zach, Jim and I also had an experience that night in our room during our conversation with our roommate Nacho, as I was basically in tears laughing the entire time.
Sunday we got up, and did a tour of Nîmes. It was raining heavily, so I wore my Chacos, so I would just have wet feet and not wet socks. Basically what’s left of Rome in Nîmes is an old temple and a Roman arena, so there wasn’t too much to see, but we had some free time in the covered market in Nîmes to save us from the rain. After our tour we headed to España. Driving through mountains made me very happy, as looking at grey buildings 7 days a week can do damage to the spirit of someone from Colorado. We arrived in Lloret de Mar (hour outside of Barcelona) near dinnertime to our fantastic hotel which was located a short walk from the beach and complete with swimming pool, room/bar for dancing, and all-you-can-eat buffets for breakfast and lunch. Due to the prowess of Zach’s vision, we found out that there would be a Flamenco dancing show that night in the basement of the hotel. Let’s just say I wish I was man enough to dance Flamenco. Near the end we all got invited on stage and did a little dancing of our own, albeit far inferior to that of the salsa masters.
Monday we finally got to see Barcelona, which became very quickly dear to my heart. We spent most of the morning in a bus tour, which was interesting to a point, but mostly I spent it yearning to be able to get out and walk the streets of Barça. We had some free time at the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the city and the ocean. It was a gorgeous view accompanied by gorgeous, sunny weather, which we were treated to every day in Barcelona. We ate at a buffet near the beach, after which we had a few hours of free time in the center of the city. We walked down the Rambla (the large, pedestrian street in Barça) where we saw some street performers and some very cheap pets being sold. We had to resist Zach’s urge to buy some small rodent and let it loose on the bus. I think he may have made up for his inability to buy an animal by buying whatever exotic fruits he could at the market right off the Rambla. While at the market I had my first of two encounters with random drug dealers asking me to buy drugs on the trip. I bought a Cuban cigar from a store across the street, but it sucked. That night we smoked some Hookah as Gabby the Argentinian brought it, went and danced in the “club” in the basement of our hotel.
The next morning (being Tuesday) we had a tour of the FC Barcelona home stadium, which was okay. Seeing where star players get dressed isn’t exactly my cup of tea. We ate at another buffet (I ate so much on this trip) and then went to visit the Church of the Sagrada Familia, a modernist church by the famous Spanish architect Gaudi, which is still under construction. The church is amazingly planned out, with Gaudi taking hints from nature during his planning, with the inside acting as a kind of forest and the large beams on the outside shaped like Sequoias, among other things. The church was definitely my favorite site visited in Barcelona. It’s beautiful, and somewhat of a breather from the “normal” French churches that I’m used to seeing. That night some of us went down to the “beach” which was really a bunch of little rocks that obliterated my feet, and did some nighttime Mediterranean swimming. It was very cold. We didn’t swim long. On the way back, Jim and I got offered cocaine by a random guy on the street, thus my second drug dealer encounter. We made it out alive despite not buying any, and returned to the hotel for another night of dancing. We danced a lot that week.
Our final day in Barcelona, Wednesday, we visited a park designed by Gaudi, where we had free time to buy from the street vendors there (I got some 5 Euro “Armani” sunglasses), and admire the architecture. Again, it was gorgeous outside. Jim and I followed Posh English girls with ridiculous accents for a little, and then listened to some Spanish guitar in another part of the park. Oh, something I forgot to mention is that while in Barcelona, our buses were split up and our groups stayed at different hotels, so we didn’t see too much of each other, but we did have times together like at the stadium, and our time at the park overlapped. In that aspect I wish we would have spent more time as one large group, but it did allow the people on each bus to get to know each other better. We ate at McDonalds in Barcelona. I don’t know why. Then we went to the Picasso Museum, which was a let down mostly because one part of our bus had to spend 30-45 minutes waiting for a guide to come back to get let in, even though we really didn’t have to because there was a miscommunication. Waiting around was annoying to me because it cut into our last free time that we were going to have in Barça. But, as most worrying ends up, me stupidly being frustrated about free time meant nothing, as we got a lot of free time nonetheless, and Jim and I had one of my favorite experiences from the trip. Jim and I were walking down the Rambla, and all we heard was English and all we saw were people wearing red jerseys. We had forgotten FC Barcelona was playing Liverpool that day. Beer was everywhere, the Liverpool supporters were fired up and using the f word exceedingly. After walking for a bit, we stumbled upon a large place right off the street, where about a thousand Liverpool supporters were drinking, peeing, singing, and kicking soccer balls throughout the crowd. Jim and I stared in amazement at the sight presented to us, then went and bought a beer so we wouldn’t stand out too much. We had a random conversation with a guy from Liverpool, who thought we were speaking a different language at the beginning of our conversation. His friend with him, we understood not at all. Afterwards Jim and I wished we had been born in Liverpool. That night (the last one we would spend in a hotel) was kind of crazy. I won’t go into all the details, but there was swimming, dancing and fun to be had by all.
The last (tear) morning we drove to the Salvador Dali museum outside of Barcelona, where we took a tour. That man is crazy. But I love his art. Some of us decided to go all out and eat a big, Spanish, lunch for our last day, so a girl Eden and I split a “mixed grill” for two. Not knowing that Eden was vegan before she came, and not knowing that she was a little confused by the definition of “mixed grill”, I didn’t inform her that it meant “crapload of meat.” She ate a lot anyway, the good sport she is, and I tried some blood sausage, which despite it’s disgusting nature and aura, isn’t that bad. We explored the city a little and then headed back onto the bus. We drove to Montpellier where half the people got onto one bus heading to Lyon and another on a bus heading to Paris. It was time to say goodbye. Zach and I had a nice little farewell singing “N’importe quoi” with our South American friends we made on the trip, while Jim sat on the bus for an unknown reason. It was weird saying goodbye, because at this point in the trip everyone was just becoming comfortable with each other, just starting to have a really good time. So the only thing about the trip I can really complain about is that it should have been longer. We then loaded up on our bus to Paris, watched some movies, I slept in intervals of no longer than 30 minutes, had a great conversation with a Finnish girl named Nika and an American named Katherine, slept on the floor as our bus waited two hours in a parking lot no more than an hour outside of Paris because we were early and needed to wait for the place we were supposed to eat to open. After our unholy amount of time on the bus, we finally got to Paris, where saying goodbye was weird again. My return home was easier than those who had to wait at a train station then get on a 3 hour train home, so I was happy to return a short 30 minutes on the metro.
It’s very difficult for me to explain the utter amazingness and fun that I had on this trip. After writing all that, I think I failed miserably at portraying it’s amazingness. But those that went on the trip understand that despite some parts sounding boring, or some parts actually being boring, the entire trip was so amazingly fun. I know I’ve said amazing around 4 times, but it’s really the only word I can think of. Part of the fun comes from traveling to new and unseen places, but most of it comes from the people I met and the experiences we had together. As I’ve said time and time again, there is this unseen connection that every exchange student has with one another. It comes from the shared experiences, emotions and problems that every exchange student experiences. I was constantly amazed at the fact that with so many students from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages could be put on a bus, and have such camaraderie. Sitting on the bus I was struck by the relatively small amount of people that ever get this opportunity, to interact with and learn from so many different cultures at such a young age. After a week of hanging out and having fun with people from every part of the world, I realized how lucky I really was to have this experience. If there’s one thing I took from the trip, as my friend Brie put it, “this trip straight up made us international.” True that.
Brent
(If you read this entire thing, you should be applauded)
