Home Again

27052019

Last morning of the vacation. Waking up early enough to pack, and eat the last of our snacks we headed out to the airport.

We had to take a train to the airport, a 20 minute ride, but the train station was a 20 minute walk from our apartment. We all survived the walk.

We got to the airport with enough time to try and find food, but all of the food we wanted was on the other side of passport control, we ultimately didn't eat anything because we kept going to the place only to realize it was the other side of a glass wall.

We did however find the fancy licorice we were looking. We picked up some of the Sea Buckthorn, the Berry and then some of the smoked licorice for my parents. So the airport wanderings weren't a total loss.

3 hours later we were back in Iceland, eating very expensive airport food, and then hurrying to passport control to get home. Laura got red-lighted at the portal, and then we got hurried along.

My parents flight was 30 minutes before mine, so I hugged them goodbye and waited around for Laura to catch up. Fortunately she did ultimately make it to the flight, all-be-it without her hair powder. I am guessing she was randomly selected for additional screening, and then the bag of un-labeled white powder caused some additional hang up. We made it to our flight.

Laura and I watched movies together by timing the press of the "start" button on our respective in-seat entertainment systems. We watched A Star is Born, which means not 24 hours later Laura is still humming Lady Gaga songs, The Favorite, which was cool because we were just wandering around 18th century palaces, so to see them in a contemporary setting was neat, and The Crimes of Grindelwald which disappointingly ended on a blatant money-grab to get you to see the sequel.

that ate up most of our 7 hour flight, we watched the mountains pass for the last leg of the flight, landed back in Seattle, took a Lyft home (on sale because of memorial day, we saved $4!) and got our typical post-travel Vietnamese food. This time i got 2 Banh Mi, Laura got her usual Pho and Spring Rolls, and we still walked out of there for less that $25.

We then slept with our humidifier on full blast, with our own blankets, in our own bed. it was glorious.

Not Just a Big Beach

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Woke up very early to hop the various trains out of Osaka. It took a subway transfer, and a high speed (but not ultra high speed) train to get us to Tottori in about 3 hours.

The train is convenient, but we had to pay extra. The Japan Rail pass doesn't cover you for a 75km stretch of rail, so the staff cone around and charge you 1700yen to travel on the special Chizu mileage.

We paid a bunch of money for these passes, and I guess it is my fault for not doing enough research, but it was pretty shitty forking out another $34 to take the train. So if you are planning to go, really do your digging and make sure that all the rail you want to ride is owned by JR.

Tottori is much like Nara, a small, vacation spot catering to Japanese tourists. The weather was also nicer, I think traveling south, and closer to the Sea of Japan means the weather is milder.

The areas claim to fame is the sand dunes and the pear orchards. After dumping our bags at the hotel we went over to the post office, mailed more stuff back via slow-boat to US, and headed to the sand dunes.

The town of Tottori knows that it exists for tourists to eat and sleep in while visiting the attractions, so they have a loop bus that is 300yen per ride, or 600yen for day pass. It takes you from the main Tottori station, to all of the attractions that to want to go to, and some you don't.

It takes about 25 minutes to get to the dunes from the main station, on the bus we made friends with a Portuguese guy that has been traveling Japan for about a month now. We discussed US politics and it's impact on the world. And ultimately parted ways as he wanted to see the sand museum, and we wanted to wander the dunes.

When we got down the hill from where the bus dropped us off we were a little unimpressed, it looked like a big Beach.

But that just perspective fucking us up. It is not just a big Beach

From The road to the water it is over a mile of sand in some places, and elevation changes of over 250 feet. In some of the depressions you can't see the ocean or the mountains, just the sand dunes surrounding you, if it weren't for the temperature you could be in the Sahara.

Thy sand for the most part is very fine, with the wind blowing little waves and ripples. There is minimal brushy grasses, and very clean. Until you get to the actual beach, and there the sea of Japan brings up the yeah peple dump in the oceans.

That last picture is a duneside that we walked down, prolly 100 feet at least a 60° angle.

We went back to the bus stop, ate some pear soft serve, because the pear farm was 800yen to walk around, and all really wanted was the flavor at that point.

We caught the bus home. Laura wanted to go to an onsen, the Japanese public bath houses, feed by natural springs. I had little interest in being boiled alive.

We walked to the place, she went in to scope it out and I went home.

She reported back to the hotel 45 minutes later. She said it was intense, the water is very hot. But she made some little old lady friend, that showed her how to do everything.

Afterwords we went to a little curry shop. This place was great. We figured out which one was chicken, ordered that and asked for the chef's recommendation she suggested pork. The pork was divine, pork belly comes in a vat of curry for long enough to stay together but fall apart if you look at it to hard. The chicken was also good, but nothing compared to the pork.

After curry we went to sleep, as the next day would another early travel day.

lame ass

25712

i am starting to feel really bad that i have nothing interesting to post on here. the highlight of my day was the kitten walking around my shoulders as i made my morning tea. the train was (thankfully) uneventful, spanish class was also not particularly exciting. we went to a crappy sandwich place for lunch, that literally drenched my sandwich in either mayo or a butter-mayonnaise mix, which i also over payed for. the other class was slightly more interesting, a lecture on Argentine literature, led by some academic of literature. we are never really introduced too thoroughly with out presenters, and if we are i miss it due to the language barrier. anyways the guy was young and seemed cool, basically a classic English Major (though i suppose here it would be a Spanish Major) turned teacher.

we went through the three major phases of Argentine literature, from the José Hernández Gaucho period to Borges with his fantastical short stories, to more modern avant-garde stuff.

and after this lecture we went home to work on our projects, mine was on the Falklands Crises/Malvinas war, i threw together a powerpoint presentation for use on friday or monday.

i managed to get to sleep early.

poor business model

26512 first full day in Budapest, the only thing we really did was the Museum of Terror. first off, i need to communicate how excited i was to go to this, as the first time i came through Budapest, it was Easter, and the place was closed. anyways, the museum was very cool, it was very very well done. like ive been to a good handful of museums dealing with such heavy topics, and some time you come out very sobered, like almost feeling like a collective human guilt for letting this happen, while other times youll end up confused, like the museums were disingenuous or something. this had neither, i got done, and it seems like the Hungarians have a good handle on their rather ugly history. so Hungary, after WWI became its own country for the first time in a while, and subsequently they lost plenty land to Croatia, and Romania, and Italy and whatnot, and they, like the rest of the losers of WWI were generally upset, and then the depression hit and it got worse, and eventually by the breakout of WWII fascism was lookin pretty sweet. they sided with the Nazis, and by '44 after the Nazis rolled into Hungary, their own National Socialist party, the Arrow-Cross party ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party ) popped up. and the museum went over how they did all kinds of awful things to their own people. then the museum went into how Soviet Communism rolled in, and did even more terrible shit. as the communists were in power alot longer more of the museum was dedicated to that. they also in the basement recreated the various kinds of cells used for torture, and confession extraction, and murder and whatnot, so that was crazy. i dunno, i cant really describe, there was lots of information on everything, but it was definitely something you need to see, to wander around the cells used (though this building only had holding, and maybe mild confession extraction cells, rather than the killing n stuff), was sobering. after the museum we wandered around a lil. we followed one of the girls, who had been here before, with family in the area, and we got a lil turned around, walking an unnecessary 1000m or so, i was cool, but one of the other girls in the group was lame (like literally lame, too sick to be wandering aimlessly), eventually we found our way to the fancy indoor multi-story market ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Market_Hall_%28Budapest%29 ) over by the green bridge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bridge_%28Budapest%29 ). that was cool, had some fried dough, covered in nutella and fried bananas, it had more than enough calories to last me the day, and it was equally delicious. after the food, we hopped the tram (we really, truly wanted to pay, but the machine was broke) and got ourselves home. most of the group wanted to head to the baths, which is apparently the thing to do in Budapest, and then me and one of the girlies (the one whose foot i mended), had a romantic (haha) dinner at the only restaurant in the area that was OPEN, apparently Budapest shuts down round 3pm on a Saturday, cause you know, no one wants to go out to dinner, or shopping in the mid-afternoon of a damn Saturday. got to bed early, read some books, and sleeped hard

Friday 22711

ooookkkkk

so, woke up in Montenegro, hopped on a bus, and drove, and drove and drove and drove.

so as i said (or maybe didnt) we were stamped into Kosovo, and cause Serbia doesnt recognize Kosovo, we couldnt go in without having the Kosovar stamps annulled, so we had to go through a country (Montenegro) which recognized the breakaway province/state, and then go through bordercontrol which could annul the stamp.

so we got that done

and we drove somemore

to Mokra Gora, and this tourist trap of a town on a hill (they call it a mountain, but im Amurrican so when i think of a hill i think of the Rockies i flew over, or the Alps, not some very big hills). it was wooden, apparently made by some famous Serb movie guy, and it then turned into an "authentic" old timey Serbian town. we ate, and then hoped back onto the bus for more driving to the Bosnia Herzigovina border, hopped the border, to the Republika Srpska portion of the country.

We stopped in a small town, Visegrad which had a famous bridge of the Drina, it was in one of the books we could have chosen to read (i did not elect to read this book).

and went on to Serajevo, we drove in at night, and it looks like a real city not these "biggest cities in the province" consisting of like 10,000 people, this looks to have lots of people, and buses and taxis and all that whatnot.