17 September 2007 · Comment [3]
We finally made it to Greece after 35 hours of traveling! Now just 9 more to go until we get to Santorini! Nur.
Hey everyone! We’re staying up all night at an internet cafe so we can catch the first ferry to Santorini and then we’ll just sleep on the 9-hour ride and live like vampires! Except the whole avoiding the sun thing because you better believe we’re gonna spend a million hours on the beach. Hopefully we can rustle up some sunscreen that’s stronger than freaking SPF 4.
So, right. 35 hours of travel. Don’t have a lot of pictures to show for it, which is probably for the best because this computer doesn’t have USB access anyway. I do wish I’d taken some pictures of these two British kids we met on the 8-hour bus ride from Sarajevo to Serbia yesterday who taught us all about England and how completely insane it is in ways that you’d never guess. Did you know that being a redhead is the worst thing you can possibly do in England? They call them “gingers” and they have school assemblies about how you should treat people of all races and religions equally but no one ever says anything about treating the gingers equally. And kids yell “ginger boy! ginger boy!” to taunt them and the two guys didn’t know a single successful ginger between them and they can’t get girlfriends or good jobs. One guy had to move to France where it’s acceptable to be a ginger. And Duncan told me about this delightful tidbit earlier but I still can’t wrap my brain around it: Prince Harry is a ginger because Princess Diana cheated with a ginger, so they kept the ginger gene out of the royal family for thousands of years and now it’s all ruined! Hahahaha. Way to start the Ginger Revolution, Harry!
So back to Serbia: it is by far the worst country in the world, hands down. No question. Ha ha, just kidding, that’s probably Canada. But Serbia is still pretty awful. All the street signs are in Cyrillic and our map was in English and we had to get from the bus station to the train station in the dark and literally every store was closed and when we politely asked people on the street if they spoke English, they looked at us in disgust like, “How DARE you speak to me in English??” So infuriating. Also their phone cards have the weirdest instructions for use and they’re not written ANYWHERE! And I really wanted to call home because it was David’s birthday yesterday so we ran to a million places looking for help and everyone was like “Why are you asking me for help? What do I look like, a purveyor of information?” when they were sitting right under an information sign! Jerks! Also we needed to change money so we went to the huge “Exchange Office” sign and gave the lady our money and she was like “What are you doing here? Go to the ATM,” and I’m just sorry she didn’t speak better English so she wasn’t offended when I said “So what do you even DO?? This is your JOB!” and by that time we’d super had it with Serbia. Oh Serbia, how I detest you. David and I think it might be like Germany after World War II, because even though America was totally the good guy who put a stop to all the ethnic cleansing, that still means America put Serbia down, so there’s probably still a lot of bitterness. Is that right even a little bit? We were but tiny children when that all took place and there’s only so much you can glean from a guidebook summary when you’ve been living your whole life completely oblivious to current events.
But anyway, we got the crap out of there (like six other ridiculous things happened to us in Serbia but I’m tired of complaining about it) and then took a 16-hour train ride to Greece! And we slept for a gloriously huge percentage of that. And then we took a bus down to Athens and we met these two men from Barcelona and we talked to them in Spanish! But mostly we realized how bad we are at Spanish. One of the guys said his English wasn’t as good as our Spanish but he was so very, very wrong. And then we got to Athens and saw some pickpockets on the sidewalk rifling through trash bags full of wallets and fanny packs! Ridiculous. And then we got to the internet cafe and I’ve been watching The Office for the past three hours and it’s been so amazing. Also I realized that in my sleep madness the other night, I forgot to write about two pictures, so it’s bonus picture time!
Oh first of all, this is David Simon! We met in physics discussion on the first day of college when we were partnered up for a lab and then we turned out to have the exact same math section right afterwards and then we turned out to live three floors apart! O Daveed, how I miss you.
One more of the bridge in Mostar. I like this one because it’s got shapes in it, which makes me think of “Shapes” by the Long Winters, which I wanted to post here but there’s not a single good copy of it on youtube. But srsly, worth checking out.
And this is the cutest graffiti ever! Outside a gutted building in Mostar. Yeah, so yesterday when I said they rebuilt everything in Mostar including the shale roofs, that was just in the tourist area. Outside the tourist area are a ton of buildings that look like this and it’s sad. Well that’s a downer. Ummm, happy thoughts. Puppies, rainbows… I’m seeing Duncan in four days! And we are going to fast for Yom Kippur and then break the fast with delicious tapas and go out to a crazy electronica discoteca and maybe I will finally shower and brush my teeth! Because neither of those have happened in over 35 hours. Ha ha, gross!
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« A stalker's guide to people in this blog!» I finally have time to post again because we're almost not vagrants anymore! Ha-cha-cha-cha!
You smell nice now. It was touch-and-go for awhile. Just thought all of your loyal readers out there should know this nice little fact.
— Jovanna · Sep 18, 11:30 AM · #
YOUR PICTURE OF PEACHES MAKES ME SPLOOGE!! It is so beautiful <3 <3 <3
— Catie · Sep 18, 08:23 PM · #
hello Sarah!
British Kid number one here! You’ve painted us to be terribly mean folk without a single mention of the dreaded “white nosebleed” or “monging”. Plus, more of your cartoons please!!
Hope you’re well!
xx
— Dani Martin · Sep 21, 01:12 PM · #