Getting Things Done

I applied for a job in Chicago. The tiny chance of maybe, possibly being hired got me thinking. What if I had to leave Paris within the month? Would I be satisfied with everything I did here? Would I have given my time in Paris a good enough shot?

Naturally, the answer will always be no. You can always do more. You can always learn more. You can always see more, especially in this city. But all that aside. Would I have any major regrets if I left tomorrow?

Well… I wanted to go up in the Eiffel Tower again in honor of my late grandpa, who took me on my first France and Paris trip. I wanted to see a ballet and/or an opera. I wanted to eat at Dans le Noir, a pitch-black resturant with blind servers. I wanted to visit an old empty metro station. I'm just naming a few. There are more things I wanted to do.

So I'm going to stop lollygagging. I'm going to make a better effot to get some of this stuff done. Ideally I have until the end of August to cross everything off my list, but you never know. Could be sooner.

To celebrate this new determination of mine, I went to the Grand Palais to see the Andy Warhol exhibit, which I've had my eye on for months and months. I particularly liked the collection of Interview covers, the magazine he started in the '60s. The rest was good, too. I'm glad I went. I have been meaning to for awhile. Today I learned that getting around to doing something means to just go on and do it.

Photo Outtakes

I was editing photos for my little freelance gig, and came across some I never used.

I took this just outside of the Palais de Tokyo. If I had a scooter in Paris, I would want it to look somewhat like this.

This is just around the Centre Pompidou, or Beaubourg, as the locals say. I don't say Beaubourg because I sound stupid thanks to my dumb accent.

This is one of my favorite hipster streets in Paris. It's Rue Tiquetonne. There are a lot of hipster boutiques and even a hipster hair salon, where I got my hair cut once.

Bike in Paris

I thought it would always be cool to have a bike in Paris, and an opportunity to buy one presented itself. Another language assistant was leaving the country. She was offering the bike, locks, lights and helmet for €70. So I bought it. It looks like this:

It's not the perfect bike. Its brakes go EEEEEEEEEE!!!, which is a bit embarrassing. But I can get that fixed. It's a bike nonetheless, and I'm excited to cruise around the Paris streets this summer.

Another added benefit was that I paid the seller with $$. I've been holding onto the 20-dollar bills my grandparents send me every few months. As the seller was leaving for the states the next day, she didn't really need any more local currency. So the bike didn't even cost me €1.

I hope my other bike doesn't find out. My blue Schwinn road bike with yellow handlebar tape is sitting in my parents' garage, and I miss it dearly. It is a great bike, and we have been through a lot together. Like when I dropped it off my car during rush hour on Lakeshore Drive. Or when it dropped me on a cement sidewalk, and I thought I had broken my arm. Ahhh… great memories. I haven't forgotten you blue Schwinn with yellow handlebar tape. You are still my favorite. The Peugeot is only temporary. Shhh… just don't tell it.

Moving On Up: Maps

Anyone who knows me well knows that I get lost easily. In other words, I can lost in my hometown. In September, I brought the following with me to Paris, ready to battle the directionally challenged aspect of my being:

It's a Paris City Moleskine. A notebook with Paris maps and blank pages for taking notes and writing deep thoughts. Back then, it was a great tool. I had one small convenient notebook for writing addresses and directions and for finding places.

But I've outgrown the notebook. I no longer need any of the information written inside. The old addresses and shopping lists aren't doing me much good. The maps aren't always accurate. Oftentimes they don't name those little pedestrian streets of which Paris has a million. The metro map is missing the last stop on Line 14.

Okay, so no one visiting Paris needs to take Line 14 to its final stop. Which is why the book is really useful for a tourist or newcomer. I, however, needed something more serious. Enter this:

Tourists carry fold-out maps. Parisians carry l'indispensable (the essential) Paris Pratique. It's a book of maps separated by neighborhood. It lists all the metro stops, bike stations, one-way streets, and all sorts of other handy info. It's small, thin, and slips easily into a purse or decently sized pocket.

The problem with my Paris Pratique is its age. It's the 2009 edition, aka too new. It's clear that I haven't been living here long, because the corners aren't worn, the pages arent frayed, and the cover isn't warped. It's getting there. My Paris Pratique got rained on a bit, so some of the pages are a tad-bit water damaged. I'm proud.

So When Are You Coming Home?

I get this question several times a week from my friends, family and pretty much anyone I know back in the states. My teaching contract finishes the end of June, so everyone wants to know how quickly I will hurry back to that whole other life I left in the USA.

Moving here wasn't easy, especially at the beginning. But it also won't be easy to leave. I've worked really hard to carve out a little niche for myself in Paris. Believe it or not, this hasn't been a vacation. I have a life here, too. And I also really like baguettes.

After much deep thought and journal-entry writing, I've decided to stay in Paris at least until the end of the summer. Although making money might be an issue, I'm confident I can figure something out. I'll either keep freelancing or start waiting tables or something.

Why do I want to stay longer? I worry that I haven't given Paris the chance it deserves. There is so much in this city that I haven't gotten around to doing. And I would also like to take a couple months to concentrate on pitching and writing some freelance pieces that have been floating around in my head for some time. Plus I can't deny that my French still needs more work.

So I'll come home, eventually. I just don't know when that eventually is. Probably when I can no longer stand the riduculous level of second-hand smoke here. The first shirt I am pulling out of my wardrobe when I arrive home is this one.

Missing American Food

This weekend, I was in the neighborhood of the American foods store. So I popped in to take in some familiar sites and smells from the homeland. That Betty Crocker cake mix looks so foreign in Paris.

I walked out with a box of €3.50 Kraft Mac & Cheese. Almost four times the price, but Sooooo good, and equally so bad (For those who don't know: it's a box of pasta with cheese-flavored powder. Cook pasta, add powder, butter and milk. Eat. And get fat, because that powder is extremely high in calories). This got me to thinking about what other foods I really miss from home, mostly unhealthy stuff. Here are some things I never eat here:

- Macaroni & Cheese
- Nerds
- Peanut butter M & Ms
- Junior mints
- Peanut butter that actually tastes good (Can be found in the foreign foods section of the grocery store, but doesn’t take quite right)
- Deep dish pizza (Chicago only)
- Italian beef sandwiches (Chicago only)
- Hot dogs smothered with delicious toppings, not ketchup of course (of the Chicago variety)
- Lakota coffee (Columbia only)
- Chicken wings
- Potato skins
- Chocolate soy milk
- Bagels
- Bacon
- Pie, any kind. cherry, blueberry, pumpkin preferably.

I'm sure there's more. I had to do some thinking to make this long of a list. Like I said, these foods just simply do not exist here, so I kind of forgot about most of them.

Also, for fun, I google imaged "american foods." Basically it's pictures of the worst possible everything you could eat.

A Way in Which I Will Never be French

So I'm 22, going on 23. I graduated one year ago, after a normal time period of four years at college. Then, it was time for me to go out into the world and make something of myself.

And no one, (almost) no one in France understands what the hell I am doing.

"What university are you in?" a teacher at school asked me the other day. I quickly realized she had just assumed I was enrolled in a French university. "Did I tell you I was taking classes here?" I asked her. "No, I just thought you were."

I introduced myself to the secretary at my new office. "I'll be working here a couple days a week," I said. "Oh, you're an intern?" "No. I'll be WORKING here a couple days each week."

And on and on. I am constantly being asked these questions. How is it possible that I have already finished school? Am I sure I finished school? So I'm doing a teaching internship? Does my job pay me? How old am I again? Wait, I work to make my own money? Huh?

I will make a broad sweeping generalization here, and say that French people stay in college until they are about 25-27 years old, then live off their parents at least as long. So it's natural for them to assume everyone else in the world does, too. I try really hard to understand this culture, I really do. But I am contantly annoyed that the French are tagging me as something I'm not, then giving me the impression that they think I am worth less than I really am.

Why does a 22-year-old have to be in school? Is she not allowed to work alongside her superiors? Will going to school for three more years give her that right? Is she is not capable of working to support herself?

Well I am capable, France. And so are plenty of my American friends. I'm not the only one. I came to your country to understand your culture. Now open your ears and listen to mine. I am not a student. I am not an intern. Mom and dad do not pay my rent and feed me. I am a 22-year-old adult. Can you handle that?

Sadly, I think the answer is no. So I'll just keep getting annoyed by this. The question will come again in the next couple of days. So what university do you go to? grrrrr stop asking me!

I'll Try to Keep My Mouth Shut

My good friend Kelly and I registered for the Twin Cities Marathon yesterday. We had our hearts set on the Chicago race, but it filled up too quickly. So the Twin Cities race is our Plan B. Our 18-week training schedule starts whipping us into shape June 1.

The second and last marathon I ran was in 2006. Since then, I've taking some time off marathons and running in general. In other words, I got lazy and fat. Along the way, I've met people who never knew me as a marathoner and just don't buy it. I get "you don't look/seem like a runner," a lot.

Well I'm getting back in the game, but I'm bringing some newfound wisdom. Back in 2006, about 89 percent of my blog posts were about running. I went back, read some of them, got really disgusted with myself, and deleted them all. The thing is, when four months of your life are dedicated to this one final goal, you think about it a lot and mistakenly think other people think about it, too. Now that I've spent some time away from the hardcore running world, I realize how tedious it is for an outsider to hear about it all the time.

So my vow to any loyal blog readers is to not talk about running too much. I can't say it won't come up. A full-time training regime can consume one's life. But I will try to keep this whole running thing to myself. Deal?

On Making Someone's Day

24.04.04 Plitvice National Park
I don't know which is more enormous: Plitvice's magnificence or its surface area. These 16 lakes contain thousands of big waterfalls and little waterfalls and in-between waterfalls, all of which are burgeoning with water and gushing over bridges and walkways. It's been raining all day, which explains why all these waterfalls are overflowing. Most tourists are indoors to keep their feet dry. It's a bit lonely poking around the park, but it's also peaceful. It's just me, the waterfalls and the rain.

The path I'm following curves, and I see a group of Asian tourists. Eight or nine pose for a picture as the designated picture taker prepares to take a shot.

Then they see me.

The whole group starts shouting with glee. They are all shouting in a language I don't speak. To my anglophone ears, it sounds lke "YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!" I understand. Of course I will take a photo of the whole group. They don't even have to ask.

I snap two shots, each bringing more ecstatic shouts from the crowd. As I walk to hand back the camera to its owner, everyone starts applauding. The group parts as I walk through to continue on my way. "Thank you! Thank you!" every single one of them says. There is still a lot of that YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY going on, too. Everyone is laughing and so so happy, including me.

That silly expression 'to feel like a million bucks' suddenly makes sense to me. I just made 10 people's day, all at once. All I did was take a picture. What a great feeling.

On Finding a Hostel

24.04.09: Split
I'm excited for Split. Change of place, change of scenery. It's the country's second-largest city and is the home of some magnificent palace ruins. I just need to dump my backpack at a hostel, and I'm off to explore.

But the hostel is full. So is the next one. Hostel three is closed. As is hostel four, but the cleaning lady helps me out. After she makes a phone call and she and I have a bit of a confused English/Croatian convo, I gather that I can go to hostel five, where Mario should meet me in a few minutes.

An hour and a half has passed since I first started on this hostel-seeking journey. My pack is feeling heavier. My bottom lip is feeling poutier. I am officially grumpy.

Some hostels are closed because it's off-season. Which is exactly why nothing should be full. Who are all these people sleeping in hostel beds that are rightfully mine?

Hostel five does have a bed for me. I check in with three girls wearing matching purple hoodies with BUMMITS plastered across their fronts. It must be these bummits who have infiltrated the Split hostels.

They have accents. British ones. Right now I really cannot stand to have a conversation with people who sound like they have gobs of Bubblicious jammed in their cheeks. Especially because these people (albeit unknowingly) caused me all this trouble. I throw my backpack next to my bed, lock up my wallet, and bolt from the hostel. I am sick of hostels and people and everything.

As soon as I'm back on the street, bummit and backpack free, I instantly feel better. This whole thing has been a huge hassle, but it's over now. I have a place to sleep tonight. I survived. Big sigh of relief.

Now I can do what I came here to do. I explore Split and mostly forget about the first two miserable hours I spent there.

On Traveling Alone

20.04.09: Bus from Dubrovnik to Gradac
Alongside me stretches a sea that fades from green to blue and back to green again. Orange-tiled rooftops and gardens speckle the hilly landscape. If I weren't on a moving bus, I would get out my camera. Instead, I take a mental picture to remember.

Some would say it's a pity that I don't have a companion to share this moment with. Some would say traveling alone is the only way to go. I've only been a solo travler for a few days, so I'm not able to say. I can say that at this very moment, as the bus rounds another curve to reveal a landscape that is more photogenic than the last, I don't mind absorbing it in my lonesome. It's pretty, and I don't need someone sitting next to me to tell me so.

But I have a lot going for me right now. The sun is shining. I've just met a couple of nice Canadian girls this morning and am on my way to meet a couchsurfing host. So I have a good level of human interaction for the day. I'm not lost or tired or bored.

The weather could change, my host could never show to pick me up from the bus station, or I could get off at the wrong stop. Any number of these things could do a 180 on my attitude. And that is when I will wish that I had never come to this country alone and think I would have been better off spending my vacation twiddling my thumbs in Paris.

I do not think that right now, so I will not dwell on the thought. I am content to be alone right now. I will revel in the goodness of the moment because I know in a few hours or a few days, I may have the opposite sentiment. Traveling alone has taught me that nothing very good or nothing very bad can last for very long.

Too Good to Eat

On Sunday, I bought these:
Then I made some of these:
Sadly they didn't last more than a few hours. When I woke up the next morning, half of the strawberries were rotten. :-( It's okay. I got lots of chocolate in a package that just arrived from the states, so that makes it all better!

A Post About Writing

Sometimes I wonder why I want to be a writer/journalist. Writers make hardly any money, and it's quite a lonely lifestyle. How many hours are spent revising and redrafting and rewhatevering? There are talented people much much better at writing than I am. There are not many jobs for journalists right now. So why do I want to be one?

(Now I shall transition abruptly into a semi-unrelated story. Later I will come back to the first paragraph, the two stories will come together, and it will all make sense.)

I'm writing blurbs for a site about bars and restaurants in Paris. I have to go to these places, snap some photos and ask them silly questions such as "Do you accept all foreign credit cards?", "Do you recommend that people make reservations?", and "What is the average cost of a meal?" Meanwhile I try to ask some interesting questions too, just because I want to know. Such as "Where did you get those funky couches?" and "How did you chose the name of your bar?"

Sometimes the questions have relatively interesting answers: the couches came from Ebay. Sometimes the questions have really interesting answers: before this was a bar, it was a typewriter repair shop. It was one for ages and ages. Here stood the last surviving typewriter repair shop in Paris. We really liked the typewriter theme, but the place was a bit dirty and cramped. So we cleaned it up a bit, and named our bar "typewriter" (Machine à Ecrire in French). Still today, sometimes people will still bring their typewriters to be fixed, because they remembered this place from long ago.

(Now, I begin to get to the point.)

If I had never signed up to write this low-paying Paris bar listing, I would have never gone there and talked to the owner. I would have never asked the question, and he would have never given me the answer.

(Now, I actually get to the point.)

I want to be a journalist because I want to learn things I would not have learned otherwise. I want to make a life out of asking interesting questions and getting interesting answers.

(I just made my point, and there is nothing left for me to say about it.)

I Guess Nerds don't Translate

Last night I was in the company of a couple Europeans and an American. We were sharing car crash stories. I told my sister's story, when she totaled her car while eating a box of jumbo Nerds. Apparently the Nerds flew everywhere at collision. When we went to clean out her car, there were multi-colored nerds scattered high and low. She was embarrassed by the evidence. So we spent a significant amount of time removing every single itty bitty Nerd from the totaled car.

The American thought it was funny. Because it is funny. Say you were working at a garage and you see a totaled car. Then you see rainbow Nerds everywhere inside that car. It is very evident what happened. This person crashed his or her car while eating Nerds. A big box, not one of those dinky fun-sized boxes or two-colored ones. The car crash involved a box of king-sized Nerds. Funny, right?

Well it's not funny if you don't know what Nerds are. If you don't understand how pointless of a candy it is, that Nerds are in fact clumps of dyed sugar. If you don't know that on a box of Nerds, there are pictures of cartooned Nerds rollerskating and skydiving and playing frisbee. If you don't understand that a large box of this candy is such a ridiculous amount of Nerds. I can't explain it. They're Nerds. It's funny.

But it's pointless to try to explain Nerds. It was a lost cause. I'll just have to accept that Nerds are part of my culture, and outsiders will never understand it.

Easter Market

Happy Easter everyone! The weather in Paris today is marvelous, so this morning I went to the Bastille Market, even though I had nothing in particular to buy. I made a picture-taking event out of it.

There are tons of photos to be taken at any Paris market. Everything being sold, from the produce to the tablecloths to the fish, is overflowing with color. But it can be too much, too. It's difficult to focus on one thing or person with so many colors getting in the way. So, I experimented with black and white today.

Friday Night Movie

Tonight I saw Nous Resterons sur Terre. After seeing the preview several times over the past couple of weeks, I thought I should be a good citizen of the world and see it.

A literal translation of the title would be "We Will Stay on the Earth," but the English title is "Here to Stay." I thought the movie would make me feel guilty for all the mean things I had done to mother nature. I was expecting it to be a preachy, Al Gore global warming sort of movie.

But instead of a monotone narrator disapprovingly wagging his finger as smoke billows from a factory (as in An Inconvenient Truth. That movie was boring. Also, it sucked), music served as the backdrop to some stunning film shot from all over the world, from Indian to Iceland. One of four scientists/Nobel Peace Prize Winners/really important people would speak briefly between themes to transition to the next one.

The movie showed all sorts of stuff: landscapes, pigs being slaughtered, masses of people spilling onto crosswalks, tomatoes being processed, a deserted and rusted playground. And the music was right on. It always seem to match. For example, if you watch the preview, you'll see a brief clip of some humpback whales who look like they're dancing. This very last scene of the movie was paired with Sigur Rós' "Untitled 1." Gorgeous.

My point is that I learned zero facts and numbers from this movie. I don't know how many fewer trees the planet is missing each year, or how many tons of carbon monoxide are spit into the atmosphere per month. It was combining images with music really did it for me. The directors got their point across to me. They asked me, "What are you going to do when we've used it all up and there's nothing else left?" And I answered, "I don't know."

Père Lachaise at Last

Yesterday morning, I was impatiently tapping my foot and waiting for a late train when I heard this announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen. Due to a signaling problem, there will be no trains departing from this station before noon." I thought the train gods must have been smiling on me. Already at 8:00 a.m., it was shaping up to be a gorgeous day. And there was no way for me to get to work.

I had been waiting for a day such as this one to do a special something in particular. Now that I had a whole sunny day free to do what I pleased, I could finally go to Père Lachaise Cemetery. Pictures below:

Collection for the poor people of Paris. I have never seen one of these before.

Standard photo of tombs, just to give you an idea of what most of them look like.

Steps down into the crematorium.

My favorite crematorium plaque. All the rest were etched with fancy gold script, so this one really stood out.

Do you think those tombs are expensive? Nah, you can probably buy them at Target. Well France doesn't have Target, so Monoprix.

Oscar Wilde's resting place. Forgot my lipstick, so I didn't leave a kiss.

I crept inside someone's monument to take this one. I hope I didn't disturb any ghosts.

There were a few memorials for concentration camp victims. They really gave me the heeby jeebies.

I refuse to post a photo of Jim Morrison's tomb because I spent such a long time looking for it, and it was SO disappointing! If you are so inclined, you can take a virtual tour of the cemetery, and maybe you can see it yourself.

30 Minutes in Paris

I leave babysitting around 8 p.m. I'm hungry but don't feel like going through the trouble of the grocery store and lugging things all up the stairs and messing around in the kitchen. So I head towards the street of a million falafels, a street in the old Jewish neighborhood that has seven or so restaurants specializing my new favorite food.

To order the best falafel in Paris would mean to wait a long time in line, and I am hungry now, so I go to a place that is maybe not as good, but pretty good. One falafel à emporter, but please not with those red vegetables. I don't even know what they're called in English. Maybe they're beets. I should probably learn the French word regardless, so I don't sound so ignorant.

Falafel in hand, so I walk towards the nearest metro station, but don't enter. Eating in the deep dark depths of a filthy, smelly, mouse-infested tube does not appeal to me. Instead I sit on a bench next to a woman also eating falafel.

She is very French, and I am not. She has removed one leather glove to aid in the eating of her sandwich. She is wearing these shoes, these Victorian-era laced high heels that are very popular amoung the chic French ladies. She does not spill falafel on her red coat. I, on the other hand, am dropping bits left and right. I am very self concious of my Americanness as I sit next to her. It's not so much the jeans and Converse shoes that give me away. It's my orange North Face backpack, which is definitely not French and definitely not chic.

She leaves to meet a friend and two new women sit down, one on either side of me. They are talking on their cell phones. I listen to their conversations and think about how there was once a time when I my French was not good enough to understand people's cell phone conversations.

A man asks for the time, and I get nervous. Not really nervous, just a little bit, because I am really bad at giving the time in French. I still translate the 24-hour clock into the 12-hour clock. It makes sense to me, in my head, but not to other people who understand the 24-hour clock in a normal way. I tell him it's a little after eight, but he gives me this very puzzled look, so I hold up my phone with 20:31 on it, but he can't see it for some reason, maybe he has bad eyesight, so finally I get my act together and tell him it's twenty o' clock and thirty minutes. He understands.

The woman on my left tells the person on the other end of the line that she is sitting next to someone eating… I don't know what… a falafel. I nod my head a bit as if to agree, because I feel it would be more awkward if I did not acknowledge that she was talking about me. She meets this person two seconds later, and off they go.

I pick at my sandwich for a few minutes more, but end up tossing the last third. Down into the metro. It's Line 1, which isn't really convenient for me. I'm not in the mood to make several metro transfers tonight, so I take this line as close as it goes to home and walk the rest of the way.

On the walk home, I think about how I'm starting a grown-up job tomorrow, and what that means. My thoughts are sidetracked when I decide to stop into a store. I buy some of that yogurt I was telling you all about for dessert, chocolate with coconut flakes. I get some tea too, because when I woke up this morning I had no voice, and after teaching all day, my throat aches.

And then I go home.

Best Yaourt in the World

I would like to dedicate this post to French yogurt. I've tried many times to "get into" yogurt back home. But it's either too liquidy or too Splenda-y tasting. French yogurt is way superior to United States yogurt. My favorite brand is Mamie Nova.

It comes in packets of two. There are unbelievable flavors, such as coconut, mint chocolate and acacia sugar & honey. Maybe that sounds nasty. I agree that a Yoplait version of mint chocolate sounds nasty. But this is no Yoplait. Marie Nova is more on the level of gourmet yogurt. It is so so so good.

I just had to write this post because I just polished off a caramel & chocolate Marie Nova yogurt, and I wanted to pay my respects. I can't wait to eat the other one tomorrow. If you ever come to France, you must get this yogurt. Forget about the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. Maire Nova yogurt. I'm telling you. Believe me. They also have a cute website (if you would ever have a reason to visit a site dedicated to yogurt), too.

Part 6: Luzern, Switzerland

The last and final leg of our trip was my favorite. Luzern was the smallest city we were in, and maybe that's why I enjoyed it. It was a nice change. And the mountains. Oh yes, the mountains. Luzern is surrounded by them.

But before we could go up high in the glorious mountains, we had some things to check off our list. Like take a walk around the city just after sunset.

I think this might have been the oldest bridge in Switzerland. Or maybe that was the next bridge over. The photo below is the oldest one for sure, though. I wouldn't have taken a picture of just any old bridge if it weren't the oldest in the country:

One of the highlights of the city was the expensive-but-worth-it transportation museum:

Basically we're talking about every vehicle ever invented. I think this museum has them all. Here, I beat Jake hardcore in an ergometer race, one of my finest moments.

The glacier garden sounded like it would be really cool, but wasn't. But just after the exit, there was this random mirror maze. I don't know what it had to do with glaciers or gardens, but it's no matter. We got pretty lost, but finally made it out without cheating. Not without taking some pictures first, of course:

There were more mirrors outside, which made us giggle:

Finally, we used our last day to take an excursion up Pilatus.

Mountains, mountains everywhere. Also rows of lawn chairs. So you could just chill up there reading a book or contemplating life or whatever, which a lot of people were doing:

A nice person took our picture, but I am a dummy. Our backs are facing the uncool, unmountainous part. Oops. Well at least we got to look at them while the picture was being taken.

And lastly, the coolest thing we did, my most favorite-ist, was sled down the mountain. I don't have any pictures because I dismantled my camera before we got on the sleds. I also don't have any pictures of the whopping bruise I got when my sled actually got air, then slammed me back down with powerful force. It was fun. My biggest regret of the trip is not taking the cable car back up and sledding down again.

The End. I have no more posts to write about our Euro-trip. It's over now. Sad. :(