Plane Food Still Exists

Plane Food Still Exists!

I am disappointed to say that we are already two countries into our European excursions and my trillions of dedicated fans have not yet had a word from me, or a picture from Chris. It confounds me to say so, but we have had little to no wireless access since arriving at Heathrow some undetermined number of days ago. In Central America, we were on the Internet in the middle of beaches. As I type this now on a Word document from a bar at Camp Korana, Plitvice Lakes (I’ll get there, I promise), I can hear the sand crunching beneath our keys. I was once pinched by a crab in the back of the foot while on the Facebook Machine in Belize. Central America has less infrastructure than a Lego neighborhood, and yet Chris and I were on the Internet there more than we have been on our own couch in Wyoming. Given our previous experiences in the Third World, I had come to assume that the Internet really did grow on trees and Europe would prove more connected than an Apple Store.

                Europe has no trees.

                None.

                It’s like the Berlin Wall never fell.

                A web connection is rarer than a Brit with braces.

                Shocked? So was I.

Now that that bit of xenophobic ranting is out of the way, I will address the next conundrum I have presented. We are in Croatia, bumming it up in a field outside of Plitvice Jezera National Park.

 Here is a picture of me stomping on our tent:

Croatia is, if I could be so bold, the gem of the Adriatic, former member of Yugoslavia before that ship sailed (or combusted), and home to my new official favorite National Park (but even as I say that, I remember Arches and Canyonlands and a million others and then I doubt myself and it’s just too much to process). For the select few that managed to eke some semblance of an itinerary out of us beforehand, we did indeed have every intention of arriving in London and immediately nabbing some form of transportation straight to Paris, and this plan very nearly came to fruition. But that is simply not the Chris and Lauren way. We’ll start at Heathrow Passport Queue.

Terrifying British Passport Woman: Where are you from?

Excited Chris and Lauren: The states!

Terrifying British Passport Woman: Yes, and that is a very large place, isn’t it? You’re going to have to be more specific than that for this to work.

Excited Chris: What!

Baffled Lauren (stuttering): Ma….mass… Massachusetts.

Terrifying British Passport Woman: There now. How do you know each other?

Excited Chris: Work!

Confused Lauren: We’re together.

Terrifying British Passport Woman: Why aren’t you married?

Excited Chris: We’re going straight to Paris!

Outraged Lauren: We don’t need to be!

Terrifying British Passport Woman: How are you getting to Paris?

Excited Chris: We don’t know!

Practical Lauren: Probably by train.

Terrifying British Passport Woman: You didn’t book tickets ahead? It’s quite popular. Most people get tickets.

Excited Chris: We won’t stay past tomorrow!

Slightly Annoyed Lauren: We will get tickets with our money.

Terrifying British Passport Woman: So this is some sort of an adventure?

Excited Chris: We’re teachers! We’ve got the whole summer off to see Europe!

Indignant Lauren: Trust me, we’ll be gone by tomorrow. No interest in staying.

Terrifying British Passport Women (now attacking our passports with angry stamping): You’ve got two days. Move along.

I think that speaks for itself regarding our introduction to London culture. After we escaped the wrath of smugness, we wove our way through masses of extremely well dressed Brits, all of whom were wearing heavy winter coats and looking grim, until we found ourselves in the Underground, where we naively requested tickets to Paris. Directed far away to King’s Cross and St. Pancras, we hopped a train and enjoyed the looks of a set of lovely twin girls whose mother had spoken to Chris about our journey and excited them with the “difficulty” of the “miraculous adventure” we were about to start. (For Chris being as miraculous as he apparently is to persons of the opposite sex, I was certainly surprised when he tried to force the little doors to the Underground open without putting his ticket through the machine, and continued to do so even while watching me inserting and extricating my own ticket and gliding through the now automatically open doors without ever laying a finger, or forceful shove, on them). Throughout the course of our ride, I dipped in and out of consciousness. (Sadly, during our ridiculously pastiche ride on Virgin Atlantic airlines to London, I found that the rather nasty cold I was just beating had returned with a vengeance and the Beatles suggesting over the intercom that the sun was on its way took on a very new, unpleasant meaning. It was a plane ride to forget.)

King’s Cross/St. Pancras met us with frigid rain and the accidental purchase of a $600 train ticket to Paris, a ticket that was promptly returned when I realized I could not do math and had potentially crippled our budget due to utter inattention to details. That little micro-disaster helped me to rename St. Pancras to St. Pancreas, at which point it was decided that sleep was the only thing that could cure the rather disturbing start to our much anticipated journey.

Cue Click78. A hostel that was once the courthouse where The Clash were brought to trial. Twenty bucks to anybody that can actually tell me what they did to wind up in front of the judge. Nobody at the much lauded Click78 had any idea, though I think this was due in large part to the massive amounts of alcohol that were in the process of being consumed. I should not judge though, because I immediately put on blinders and slept so deeply for so long that our Australian roommates couldn’t figure out whether or not it was an actual roommate curled up in the corner of the dark bunk for 67,000 days. When Christopher discovered that I had zero interest in food, or even Diet Crack, he realized just how sick I was and started making funeral preparations.

Here is where I was holed up:

And here is what I probably looked like to the poor Aussies:

 When we finally became conscious again, London was busy being the super romantic city all readers dream of – it rained and it did not stop.

 For the record, it should be noted that Chris and I don’t like cities. We never have. Consequently, we should not have been surprised that we would absolutely revile a place like London. We were tricked by childhood fantasies of the “lofty meaningfulness” of the great European cities, as if our ADHD selves would actually be wooed by standing quietly in line to stand quietly in museums to stand quietly and appreciate really quiet artwork. We were duped. We have no business in Western Europe. None. We can’t appreciate anything about it and, frankly, we don’t feel like we should be expected to… I’m trying to prepare all of you real, functioning, cultured people for what I am about to say.

We hated Western Europe.

We even hated London.

This is how I know we hated London:

                                        

So we left. Chris snatched up a one-way ticket to Croatia and off we flew with the visions of national parks, brown bears, and real, live nature dancing in our heads. Best choice we could have made. Magically, my terrible, wretched, excruciating sickness is utterly gone, as if the pure joy of sleeping on the ground with tiny ants crawling all over us was all I needed to heal. Suddenly, we aren’t googling cheap tickets to Southeast Asia (this happened 14 times in London). Chris has stopped taking my hands, looking me deeply in the eyes, and saying, “I love you…but I really hate art.” The trip has been salvaged.

And now we’re here:

“Mountains speak. Wise men listen.” – John Muir

To all of you expecting pages of classic European history, gelato, and Eat Pray Love nonsense, we sincerely apologize. The mountains spoke. We had to listen.

Also, to all of you expecting real pictures of from a real photographer, I personally apologize. Having just arrived at Plitvice, the master has yet to be able to get his camera out and work. Here is a simple key to help you know when I am taking pictures and when the master is taking pictures.

Crappy Pictures = Lauren

Mindblowing Works of Authentic Art = Christopher

You’ll know the difference.

Expect more as we grow accompanied to Plitvice Jezera. For now, I’ll leave you with a few lists that Christopher has developed for your enjoyment.

Funny S*%@ That Has Happened To Us

1.       Ants in the tent (EVERYWHERE!)

2.       Lost one shoe (sort of funny, but only useful if also accompanied by the loss of a leg)

3.       Lost “meats and cheeses” (prompting the underfed Chris to have a minor meltdown and vow to make a system for every lunch purchase from here to eternity)

4.       Massive cartons of duty free cigarettes for purchase on the plane to Zagreb

5.       Lauren throwing up in a gutter in Zagreb while a nun watched sympathetically (sort of not funny…really, really sick)

6.       Outrageous stampede of over-fifties trying to get on the bus out of Plitvice at the end of the first days (us younguns were told to wait for the next bus after being elbowed by limbs older than Methuselah himself)

7.       A $40 meat platter at our first European restaurant, consisting of fried turkey, canned greenbeans, and a suspicious banana shaped sausage links with indeterminable origin (all served on a real tablecloth by a waiter in an actual cumber bun…the only thing missing was the ball pit).

Cool S%#@ That Happened To Us

1.       Lauren spotting an extremely long water snake slithering at the bottom of a cerulean Plitvice pool. We have never seen anything like it! It was literally slinking along the bottom of the River Korana. Fish were swimming above it, as if it is perfectly commonplace to see a gigantic snake flitting its tongue at the bottom of a river. (What in the world was it sniffing down there, anyway?) So. Flippin. Amazing.