Nah.

Chicago, IL -> Pittsburgh, PA

To say that it's been a rough couple of days would be underselling my mental agony and physical exhaustion. I tried to count up the hours of sleep I've had in the week that I've been back, but it depressed me too much to really do until now.

You all know how much I need my sleep. I'm barely coherent when I *do* get the requisite 8 hours.

I'm so out of my mind that I just typed the number 9 for the month of May, when we all know that May is 5. And I *really* had to think about it for about five minutes before I figured out why the date looked wrong.

Last night it was less than two hours. It is fortunate that we have six drivers in the car, three of which were far better rested last night than were we.

Our show in Chicago was sparsely attended, and by the time we got out the the suburb where our hotel was, they'd massively overbooked because of a computer glitch so they were unable to honor our reservation. They called all the hotels in the area for us, but they were unable to find a room for less than $275. We slept in the van in the parking lot of the original hotel and managed to go out of our minds with giddy laughter instead of crying ourselves to sleep that night. We probably got in the van at around 2:30am, were all up by 5am, and had to pick up the rest of the party (the other band has been finding places to stay via couchsurfing.com, which we were initially sketchy about, but since they've had such amazing experiences and we've had such horrible ones, we've had to second guess ourselves) at 6am because the drive today was 8 hours (not including breaks) and we lost an hour going east.

This stuff is brutal.

Pittsburgh is a good town, though. Seems interesting even if we hear that the city itself is pretty unsafe (we're in a hotel by the airport, and it seems pretty good!). The show tonight was the best yet, and despite our delirium, we've continued to laugh at things instead of let them get us down. Kind of amazing, really. I have a feeling it's the company I'm with.

Anyway, as I'm stupid exhausted, I must sign off. Only a 2.5 hour drive to Cleveland tomorrow. A good, long sleep tonight, provided my body isn't suddenly used to 4 hours of sleep and decides to wake up at 5:30 am. That would suck.

There are more and more quotable quotes all the time, and I can't keep up with them. (And the internet connection in the van is effed up.) I made a comment about someone's underpants (or seeming lack thereof!) that sent four exhausted idiots into peals of laughter while in the van last night. I'm still chuckling over it.

Oh, and the war wounds continue to add up. I don't think anyone has had too much broken flesh yet, but everyone is pretty battered and bruised up. That's what happens when you're packing and unpacking what must be at least a half ton of equipment every day. My knees are purple, a few spots on my arms are green, I've bitten my fingernails down the to quick, and I can't remember where I am, what day it is, where we played in which city, what happened in which city, or who said what to me with any accuracy of context. Completely wrong words have started coming out of my mouth in sentences that would otherwise be mundane.

So yeah, some sleep.

You can only be *so* straight in the face of Wolverine

Portland -> Rock Springs, Wyoming -> Kansas City, Missouri -> Nashville, Tennessee -> Louisville, Kentucky -> Chicago, Illinois (en route as I write!)

While I could bore you with the mundane details of our two very sparsely attended shows (Nashville & Louisville, the former being an in-store, the latter being an early show with a huge music festival going on down the street), I think that my time would be better spent, and you, dear reader, better entertained if I gave you some quotable quotes instead.

1. Lady at Monell's (AMAZING southern food): "I can't have too much sexy, I have to drive later." The dessert at the table, a sort of chocolate eclair type of thing with vanilla pudding, chocolate sauce, and graham crackers, was nicknamed "sexy" by three very southern ladies. They cracked us up all through dinner.

2. Sarah: "Well, you can only be *so* straight in the face of Wolverine." In a conversation about X-Men, Jon mentioned that Hugh Jackman looked so good as Wolverine that it made him question his sexuality for a moment. I can't blame him, dude is HOT. I kind of think Jackman hit is high point in the X-Men movies and should walk around with those chops all the time.

3. Jacque: "If it's not one thing, it's yer mamma!" She was recounting clever things that a lady from Memphis said to her.

4. Scraggly- mulletted dart-playing beer-drinking freako with a very "country" southern accent, about his beer: "I'm gonna set this right here, baby." I should have offered him a stern warning and reminded him that I wasn't his baby, but I was laughing too hard.

I could also write VOLUMES about the hotel we booked for last night (seriously... it was bad. we ended up leaving and they REFUNDED the room price which means it's not the first time someone had to go...). I'll save that for the Drive from Chicago to Pittsburgh, which will be a doozy with all these peeps.

I know there are a lot more, I just can't think of them.

It's hard to keep up a blog when you actually have people to talk to. Or when you're driving.

I've also been really into puns on this tour. I can't think of any of those, either. I think I'm always pretty into puns, though.

Ok, bye.

Nanno 'n' me

Nate picked me up at 6AM yesterday, which wasn't a problem considering that my eyes popped open at 4:30.

The truly disturbing part is that once during the night, my eyes opened... slowly. I started to make out the painting on my wall and the lamp hanging from my ceiling, and I thought, "Wow, I have a painting just like that on my wall at home... and a lamp just like that, too." It was the first time in all the single-night stays in the last several weeks that I've awoken and not known where I was. And I was in my own bed.

Yesterday was lovely weather for driving. Cloudless or little white puffy cumulus clouds the whole way. We made it through Oregon, Idaho, Utah and about 100 miles into Wyoming. I would have been much more impressed with the snowy peaks and brightly colored hills if I hadn't just been in the Alps. All I can say is that these sights (including abandoned cars, rusted out factories, truck stops, and mile-long freight trains with oil tankers) just seem so American. American West. It's like "gritty highway poetry and everyday life" vs. "romantic Baroque gold leaf and sipping tea on the bullet train." We're still in puberty, especially in the western states. Europe seems like an unapologetic and self-aware member of our kin who has settled nicely into late middle age, with all the treasures and trappings of a somewhat turbulent life on display in the paid-for apartment in the old center of town. I knew I should have seen this first. But now, seeing it second, I understand our place in the world a little better. Somehow. I dunno.

Several crossword puzzles, many rounds of 20 questions (I couldn't get "a waffle" and nate couldn't get "a road sign"), espresso, and hundreds of songs kept us awake. About 16 hours after leaving, we parked our exhausted carcasses at the Super 8 in Rock Springs, Wyoming... right after it started to snow.

We named the Sprinter "Step-Mujzah," because our regular van is named "Mujzah" (think Austin Powers: Goldmember, "Fah-jzuh," "Oh, your FATHER???"). Anyway.

When my eyes popped open this morning at 4:30 (3:30 Pacific!), and Nate had told me that we'd just go when I woke up because I'd be up and he could sleep in the car, I tried to wake him, but couldn't. Finally, I half yelled, "Nanno. I'm up." We collected our stuff and left. But I left my pillow.

The thing is, it had snowed during the night. The freeway was wet, but not icy. The whole of Southern Wyoming looked as though someone had gone after it with one of those powdered sugar sifter/sieve things. In the half-light of the early morning, if it had not been for the sagebrush, I would have thought I was driving on the moon. I might have even believed it... seemingly everwhere else on the Earth exhausted in three weeks, why wouldn't I be on the moon?

I love the signs for Sinclair gas station signs because they look all 60s and they have a little dinosaur on them. So you know where your petrol comes from.

It's also strange and somewhat unbelievable to be posting blogs and writing emails from inside a very large van headed down I-80 toward Kansas City, Missouri.

Hellz of bells of burls of bowls

I was sitting downstairs having one hell of a calzone (they truly believe in garlic folks, much to the chagrin of whoever will be sharing my airspace tomorrow), and out of nowhere, bells started ringing.

Now, roaming all over the continent exposes a person to a lot of bells... ringing all the time. On the hour, on the quarter, half and three-quarters hours. All the damn time. And it's kind of nice.

But all the bells in all of Switzerland (or so it seemed) started pealing at once, and they didn't stop. Must have been for 15 minutes (or 30... I had a whole liter of beer with my calzone and that's a decent amount for your dear PR!). And it was LOUD and GLORIOUS!

But when the last clapper of the last lonely bell made the last metallic "ong" sound, I felt my trip was over. That's what I needed... to go out on an "ong."

Ciao tutti. See you at home.

*cough*

Photos are here.

Today is my last full day in Europe. I left Grindelwald this morning with the intention of at least checking out Zurich when I changed trains. It didn’t happen. I was looking forward to my room too much. And it was too warm. And the cities (actual cities, not towns) have all started to look the same.

It seems like not too long ago that I was sitting in my guest room finishing up my bags and talking to Krissy about the trip. But somehow Amsterdam seems like sooooooo long ago. Prague seems like sooooo long ago. Still, the trip went entirely too fast. Weird how that works.

I leave Switzerland at 6:55am, and I leave Amsterdam again at 10:30. I have feelings about it, but I’m not sure what they are yet. Earlier this week I felt pretty satisfied with the trip and was ready to come home. Now, while still satisfied with an amazing trip, I am conflicted about coming home. I would stay an extra few days and go to France if I could. I’ll have to save it for another trip. Home means real life again, and this was a good break from that.

I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever hugged a washing machine before, but I guarantee that I will tomorrow.

The only thing I did wrong was I nearly ALWAYS chose the wrong side of the train for the best view. I don’t think I’d trade slightly better seats for good weather, though. I had amazing weather luck the whole time… a drizzle in Amsterdam, a drizzle in Prague, and clouds leaving Venice as I arrived. It’s been downright warm everywhere I’ve been this week, and that includes the top of the world.

I wonder if I’ll remember the little stuff like the weird key that had to be stuck in the wall for the electricity to work at the Hotel Centauro (and just how long it took me to figure THAT one out), all the different toilet flushing mechanisms, how much I love bread and strawberry jelly, how I always felt like I was on a train, even when standing on solid ground (and how that freaked me out juuuuuuust a little bit when I was using the bathroom inside the Eiger when the train paused at one of the view points en route to the top).

I wonder about a lot more things. This is not the forum for all that, though.

After having fulfilled the dream of traveling through Europe alone, I think next time I'd rather go with someone. After the first few times of turning to find someone to share my excitement and finding no one there, I thought I should consider it next time. I always thought I'd do this alone, and I'm glad I did... but there's no substitute for shared experience.

Tonight I’ll stay near the hotel to eat. Since I already paid for my room and didn’t realize I had, I’ve got a nice wad of Swiss cash to spend on a phenomenal dinner. One last hurrah.

I’ll see you all soon.

There will be more from a different kind of trip in the next few days… the “Great American Road Trip” slash Charmparticles tour. I’ve got to get my head into a different space in a hurry. But I can do that on the plane.

Thank you for reading.

Love ya.

The "Top of Europe"

Photos are here. (That's the middle mountain, Monch.)

There are several things you can do in the Berner Oberland, and they all involve hiking, skiing, and seeing sights. As I’ve already added at least 20 years to my feet and knees on this trip, I opted for the Jungfraujoch and the cog-wheel train that takes you from 3,000 ft to 11,000 feet via a tunnel that was hewn into the Eiger about 100 years ago. And the railway is about 100 years old, too. Fun!

But I didn’t mind it. I would have normally been quite nervous about the whole thing, but I wasn’t. I figured that If the Eiger chose that moment to collapse in on that tunnel, then I probably deserved to go with it. I mean, It’s a tunnel that winds around inside a solid mountain. It’s lasted 100 years. I’m sure it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

There are a few stops along the way where you can look out of windows that sit on the face of the mountain. I mean, if you’re not cool with heights, you’re sooooo not cool with this view. But by the time you get to the top and take the elevator up 300 feet from the in-mountain railway station to the on-top-of-mountain observatory, you’d better be ready for the long look down.

The Sphinx Observatory is situated on a big rock that juts out from the saddle between Monch and Jungfrau (Eiger is the ogre, and Monch is the monk that’s standing between the ogre and the young maiden… that’s Jungfrau… protecting her from the ogre). Snow-capped peaks for miles and miles and miles and miles. And a pollution line… ruddy dusty-looking pollution hanging out below you. It’s weird. Beautiful and terrifying, nature and humankind battling it out everywhere you look.

I descended the mountain.

I kept thinking that people from Switzerland must be so disappointed with Yosemite. I contemplated the tiniest of white croci peering out from under the still snow-matted brown grass from last year, and was continually baffled by the torrents of water plunging off of the sides of the mountains. It something everyone has to see for themselves. It’s glorious.

I bought dinner of bread and cheese at the store in the town. I slept early.

Sputtering in disbelief

Photos are here. (For previous post as well.)

Going through the Berner Oberland for the first time was an experience I wasn’t expecting, and one that I wish I could do again for the first time.

My father was right. I had seen some dazzling things, but it was all [um, something not worth looking at] compared to Switzerland.

Each bend offers higher peaks, deeper valleys, sweeter cottages, and bluer sky. Breathtaking doesn’t cover it. Nothing does.

And then one last curve in the tracks reveals the most stirring and striking thing you've seen yet. You arrive in Grindelwald… in the valley at the foot of the Eiger. It’s a sheer drop from the top of that one, and it’s amazing that anyone has ever climbed it. You stand like a doofus looking at it between the train station and the hotel, and for the first time in your whole trip, you don’t care that you look like a tourist. You snap too many photos of it, then you finally go to your hotel.

So that’s what I did.

I ate some mindblowing fondue and had a delicious beer, and then I went to sleep.