Driving on the wrong side of the road

Since my trip to New Zealand, I’ve been asked what it’s like to drive on the other side of the road. My short answer has, for some reason, been met with mixed reviews. Those of you who’ve driven on The Other Side, see if this checks out:

Imagine that you walk into a mirror, but it doesn’t break. Instead you pop through to the identical mirrored world on the other side, hop into a car and tootle off down the highway. Then you realize everything is backwards except you and everything’s insane. I think we all know what that feels like, right? Relatable stuff.

…I lost you, didn’t I. That description has earned blank stares from everyone but Alice and Jonathan Strange, so I’ll give you the long version:

Just looking
Parker and I hadn’t really planned to drive in New Zealand.

Auckland: A To-Do List

Here’s an Auckland to-do list, in chronological order.

We were in Auckland longer than we’ve been in any single place since (11 days), so if you start going ADD on me I’ve conveniently bolded the headlines for you.

Day 0: Sleep.
But first, get really excited about the view out the front window of the folks who have graciously taken you in:

Looking over this balcony is when it hit me that I am now on the other side of the planet.

Day 1: Sleep.
It’s important to hit the ground running. So be sure to do that tomorrow.

Fiji: land of tropical fruit, tourist traps and killer weed whackers

About one month ago I quit my dayjob and joined my buddy Parker LiaBraaten on a three month journey through New Zealand. We left armed with a handful of names and addresses and two backpacks each. We’ve just concluded the first leg of our journey: the north island. So, time to catch you up. First up: the flight over and the stopover in Fiji.

Adventures in Babysitting: The Supper

Nick, age 4, Mom and I sit at the dining room table eating chicken. I’m paying special attention to my table manners, being careful to set a good example for Nick.

Lost and homeless 4,650 miles from home at 1 a.m. in a ghost town. No big deal.

So I got a little distracted for about 3 months, but here’s part 2 of the Milan/Austria adventure. If you’ve forgotten the first half of the story, it’s over here. And if you can’t be bothered to read that, I present the 10 second, sentence fragment summary: went sightseeing in Milan, Italy. Took bus back to wrong airport. Flight was going to leave in an hour and a half. Freaked out. Paid 250 Euros for van that sped to the right airport. Made it to our gate with about 10 minutes to spare. Resumed breathing.

The flight was good

I forgot to include this brief gem of a social interaction last time, so we’re going to rewind the story. After I was relocated to my proper seat, I had the following conversation with the Austrian guy next to me.

Me: “Hi! How are you doing?”

Guy: “I am going to Vienna!”

Oh. Well. That really didn’t answer the question at all, did it.

Me: “Oh! Me too, I guess. And… how are you doing?”

Guy: “Yes.”

Me: “Ah.” *Awkward smile and nod.*

It was a good talk. I think we really bonded.

Paris, Day 2: The Eiffel Tower, and barking like a seal

(Here’s Paris: Day 1, if you missed it.)

Moulin Rouge: Not the Slovenian techno-pop band
The second day of the Paris trip started with a countdown and a blast off. Our first stop was the world-famous nightclub, Moulin Rouge (French for red windmill). We didn’t go in, but we did stand by the entrance and take some goofy pictures. This nightclub’s claim to fame is the large model moulin rouge (that’s still French for red windmill, if you forgot already) constructed on its roof, and the fact that this place has inspired at least 7 unrelated movies called Moulin Rouge. One is a pretty popular musical about a writer who falls in love with one of the nightclub’s dancers. Not to be confused with the Moulin Rouge from the 50s about an artist who repeatedly falls down a flight of stairs. And never ever to be confused with Moulin Rouge, the Slovenian techno-pop band from the 80s. Though I’m not sure how you ever could confuse those two, or why you’re even thinking about a Slovenian band from the 80s at all. They passed their prime at least 15 years ago.

According to the posters plastered everywhere outside, the dancers in the Moulin Rouge aren’t really big on wearing shirts. How about that. I don’t think that was in the movie. Either of them, though I’ve never seen the one about the guy falling down the stairs, so I guess I can’t be sure. Either way, let me repeat we didn’t go in. We did do the can-can ouside the entrance. We also made a human pyramid. We got a few strange looks. Probably because of Eric’s orange backpack.

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Paris, Day 1: Don’t scream “LEE!” at large groups of Asians

I know I said I was going to write about the rest of the Austria trip, but I got distracted by the pretty lights of Paris. I will tell you about the catastrophe/amazingness that was the rest of the Austria trip… eventually. But I was already starting to forget about Paris, so we’ll just see how long I can keep you in suspense on that particular adventure.

It was obvious from day one that the Paris trip was going to be of the GO! GO! GO! variety. Leeanne handed us all printed itineraries the day before we left of what we should go see when. This was awesome, because it meant we got to see everything worth seeing in the 3 short days available to us. Except Versailles and juggling, fire breathing tightrope walkers. But those guys are hard to come by nowadays, what with the economy and all.

P.S. My debit card didn’t work the whole trip, so just imagine me being completely broke in one of the most expensive cities in the world throughout the duration of this trip.

Meet the characters:
You met Leeanne, Megan, Laura, Eric, and especially Mikey in The Churro Incident. And Megan and Laura were also both on the Austria trip. But for some reason I wrote small novels on everyone again anyway. Enjoy.

Leeanne: This trip’s organizer. A huge fan of Moulin Rouge and The Phantom of the Opera, she almost melted into a puddle of joy in front of the real life Moulin Rouge and opera house. Leeanne is very good at counting stairs. Inexplicably, Leeanne does not like Nutella.

Mikey: Self-proclaimed shopaholic with a penchant for over packing, darting into oncoming traffic and inadvertently offending large groups of minorities, though usually not all at the same time.

Misadventures in Milan: What do you mean, “wrong airport”?

Austria trip, day 1: just a little bit crazy. And by “a little bit crazy” I mean dashing through airports like you’re being chased by rabid bears, then wandering around lost and homeless in a deserted corner of a completely foreign country at about 1:30 am, for starters.

Our itinerary was simple enough: *inhale* in three days fly from Sevilla to Milan (Italy) to Vienna (Austria) then take a train to Salzburg, another to Linz, then fly to England and then back to Sevilla. …What could possibly go wrong? Rewind to the beginning:

Meet the characters
There were 8 of us on the Austria trip:

David: Me. You already know me. The guy who takes buses the wrong way and occasionally has a hard time riding a bike.

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Ben: This trip’s fearless organizer. Ben’s German pronunciation is… really good. Yeah. Ben is friendly and has a penchant for suddenly vanishing and reappearing again, like Casper the friendly ghost. Ben loves Nutella.

Cameron: The fearless leader. Cameron isn’t afraid to strike up a Spanish conversation with random strangers, even if that random stranger speaks neither English nor Spanish. A convincing debater; almost persuaded us to believe that everyone speaks Dutch in Austria.

Evil Fancyclowns in Milan, Prelude to Adventure

The journey to Austria was one of the craziest trips of my life. And if you know me at all you know that’s kind of saying a lot. But I’ll get to that in the next post. Before anything went too crazy, our little group had a fairly normal day seeing the sights in Milan, Italy:

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
The Galleria is what happens when you cross a palace with a mall. Under the disorientingly-impressive glass dome you have a few huge, super ritzy shops and… McDonalds. Of course.
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There’s also a famous mosaic of a bull on the floor. Apparently it’s good luck to plant your heel on the bull’s, uhh, lower extremities, and spin around 3 times. No, I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone does. But so many people have done it that there’s a huge hole worn into the stone where that bit of the bull should be.

We're pretty cool.

Honestly, I think the good luck part’s all a bunch of bull, considering our luck the rest of the day. I have the sneaking suspicion that some Milanese prankster and his friends just started doing this one day to see how many other people they could get to look like silly weirdos. Anyway, it’s working.

I got a bike, and it’s trying to kill me. But this nice guy named Jesus fixed it.

Walking: kills shoes, naps and travel plans. And people, when they blow away.

One of the most common European stereotypes of Americans is that they’re addicted to their cars. I think this is completely ridiculous…ly true. Here in Spain you would never think of driving to the grocery a mile away. Or even 5 miles away. You could definitely walk that. You probably spend over an hour a day walking here, minimum. As awesome as this is, I have a few problems with it:

• It did this to my shoes:

I call this the “classy hobo” look.

A third of my poor, overworked sole just fell off halfway through a crosswalk. I carried it around in my pocket the rest of the day because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Aaand, when this shoe died I was an hour and a half away from home, so I got to walk around like that for the rest of the day.