WHY HAVEN’T YOU UPDATED YOUR TRAVEL BLOG?
—Will Durney

Fine: I’m home.

Last night, my friend Jason and I decided to have a low-key night: the plan was to just hang around and maybe eat something. Jason had a lot of bananas, so we decided to make—or rather, attempt to make—bananas foster. That did not go well. Without being too graphic, let’s just say that what happened in the bathroom after we ate said “bananas” was anything but low key.

But you, the readers of this blog, are not here for stories about what I do in the bathroom (Katherine Yagle excepted, obviously). You’re here for tales of adventure, intrigue, and neutral countries with the outlandishly-high per capita GDP of $69,838. And you’re in luck, because after Italy (see previous post), we headed to everyone’s favorite udder-shaped country: Switzerland.

Our trip to Bern (a Swiss city chosen more or less at random) got off to an inauspicious start. After a quick detour to withdraw some money from one of my many tax-free offshore bank accounts, we began to look for our hostel. Now, in my experience, most directions make use of crazy, outlandish things like “street names” and “measurements of distance in universally accepted units such as meters,” but our hostel decided to take a more wacky, casual approach, and our directions were full of sentences like “walk for a little bit and then turn left at the clock tower next to the McDonalds.” But not to worry—we only had to walk a block or two before I saw the clock tower. Unfortunately, a closer look revealed that there were actually five or six clock towers within view. And no McDonalds’.

One of many clock towers. Note the complete absence of McDonalds’ in the vicinity. There isn’t even a Wendy’s or anything.

Luckily, after a few minutes walk, we were able to find a road sign pointing in the general direction of the street our hostel was on. Unluckily, this road sign was very obviously intended for cars, as it led to a sort of highway at the very edge of town. Doing our best to pretend to be cars, we followed the signs, and made it to our hostel after about twenty minutes of walking, with all our suitcases… only to end up about a minute away from where we had been in the first place.

We’d chosen to visit Switzerland essentially because of a geographical fluke—it seemed like the best place to stop in between Italy and France—but Bern, a city we hadn’t even known existed a week before we went there, turned out to be one of our favorite places. It had everything: a pleasant metropolitan area, beautiful nature, and a small enclosed park full of bears. True fact: In German, “Bern” means “bears*.”

Watching the sun set while looking out at the city. I’m not sure why it looks like I have boobs in this picture, but it might have to do with the traditional Swiss meal we ate shortly beforehand.

Hanging out in a playground full of gorgeous Aryan families (not pictured). This picture is only included because my arms look really good. (To compensate for the boobs.)

Sunday, our second and last night in Switzerland, also happened to be my twenty-first birthday. To celebrate, we went to one of Bern’s many amazing bars and had a fantastic time. Just kidding—in Bern, all the bars and restaurants are closed on Sundays, so we cooked dinner in our hostel! But we bought some wine, and it was a great meal. Just kidding again! Due to a language mix-up, we bought sugar instead of flour. Also, the “chianti” that I picked up at the supermarket turned out to be nonalcholic grape juice… that cost 10 francs a bottle. And we bought two bottles.

Me, looking nonplussed about the drink I’m enjoying that isn’t wine.

Next week on “Max in England”: we head to Marseilles, in the south of France, where we meet some other Americans studying in England, and where my brand new prescription sunglasses find a new home at the bottom of the ocean.

*Disclaimer: this fact is not true. I made it up just now.

A graveyard full of tombstones, none of which are mine, as I am still alive.

You may have interpreted the sporadic rate at which these blog posts appear to mean that I had died or met some equally horrible fate, like permanently losing my internet connection. In fact, though, the lack of updates has actually been caused by the fact that I haven’t done anything even remotely interesting for the past two weeks, except spend too much time crafting entries for the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. My entry for this week:

“They put me in a hold.”

Yeah, it’s not that good.

Anyways, it has occurred to me that I did, in fact, recently spend five weeks traveling around Europe, and have written about very little of it. Therefore, I will now delight and astound you with some chronologically-ordered anecdotes from that trip.

Milan, Florence, Rome
So, when I last left you, we were fearing for our lives in that former capital of civilization and current decrepit ghetto, Athens. But not to fear—we soon left Athens for Italy, land of pasta, pizza, and men who claim that the stereotype of Italians gesticulating wildly with their hands is just that, a stereotype, often gesticulating wildly with their hands to emphasize this point. We began in Milan, which was the Anna Wintour of cities: small, fashionable, and cold. (OOhhhh yeah.) The highlight was probably encountering a bunch of protestors handing out mysterious masks. At first we couldn’t figure out what they were protesting, but luckily my razor-sharp eagle-eye recognized the face of microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus on the masks. Turns out they were protesting India’s efforts to oust Yunus from the Grameen Bank, the microcredit institution he founded. (More here.)

Evan proudly wearing his Muhammad Yunus mask in the metro.

After Milan we headed to Florence, where we were immediately swallowed up by an unruly mob of fat, ugly tourists. Just kidding—in reality, we spent five minutes in our hostel and then we were swallowed up by the unruly mob. Florence was full of amazing, historic churches, beautiful, priceless art, and lots of other crap like that. It felt very much like stereotypical Italy. If they built a Las Vegas casino that was Florence-themed, it probably would not be that different from actual Florence.

Florence was also where I began to succeed in my ongoing quest to enjoy wine. (Background: I have never liked wine and always avoided it, which is unfortunate because I like expensive, obnoxious foods like steak tartare and foie gras, and a glass or two of wine greatly enhances the obnoxiousness of a person who is enjoying such foods.) Since most of western Europe is wine country (and yes, Europe is all one country), I decided at the start of the trip that I would force myself to drink at least one glass of wine with every meal, including breakfast and snacks every day. By Florence, my feelings about wine had evolved from active repulsion to mere ambivalence.

Many Italians enjoy drinking wine with lunch and dinner. The man on this walk sign evidently had a few glasses too many.

Next was Rome, a beautiful, fun city whose positive impression on me was somewhat ruined by my encountering the most overt racism I’ve ever seen. We met up with one of Evan’s friends from home who was studying in Rome, and some of the friend’s friends as well, and headed to this club to see some sort of concert that was supposed to involve projected visuals and be very cool. I head in with Evan and a few others and immediately head for the bathrooms, which are conveniently located outside, about six hours from the actual club (estimate). After enjoying the delightful smells (and sounds!) that emanate from the huge row of port-a-pottys, I make it back only to see Mac (Evan’s friend), who’s like, “We have to leave.” When we get outside, we discover that the bouncers are not letting in Mac’s two black friends—because they’re at capacity, they say. Of course, this seems unlikely, given that A. we’re watching a steady stream of other people head in and B. Mac himself was allowed in to get the rest of us out, but only after pointing to his friends and saying “oh, I’m not with those guys.”

So yeah.

Coming soon: We leave Italy and head to Bern, Switzerland, where every inhabitant is beautiful and the minimum wage is 19 francs an hour.

This gelato was so delicious that it caused me to jump out of this picture’s frame.

Finally found a hostel computer that can read my camera(apostrophe which I cant figure out how to type due to French keyboard)s memory card, so here are some photos from the past couple weeks.

In front of the Acropolis in Athens.

Traditional final picture devoid of context or explanation.

I'm in Florence.

Greetings from Athens, stop #1 on my Eurotrip that I’m expecting will be exactly like the 2004 film EuroTrip. Athens feels exactly like you’d expect the capital of a country on the verge of economic collapse to feel like—more third-world country than beautiful European tourist destination. On our first night here, we decided to wander aimlessly around the city without looking at a map (bad idea) and within two minutes had stumbled into a decrepit ghetto-like area which we nicknamed “The Acrapolis” (i.e. Acropolis + crap).

The Acrapolis (Artist’s Rendition)

Note: This entry has no photos because I am on a hostel computer and forgot to bring the cable for my camera. Whoops.

However, on day two (yesterday) we asked Yanissa the hostel employee (not actually her name) for some guidance, and she pointed us in the direction of actual civilization—specifically, the 3,000 year old civilization of the ancient Greeks. We check out tons of ancient ruins including the Parthenon, the Acropolis, some old temples and statues, and lots of other cool shit.

Some people who remembered their camera cable having a great time in front of the Acropolis

We also climbed Mount Lykabettos (off in the distance in the photo below) and got a great view of the entire city from the top.

Some people who, even if they didn’t bring their camera cable, probably remembered to bring at least one of the two different card readers they own, enjoying the view from the mountain.

We ended the day by eating some 2 € gyros (confusingly, “gyro” is also pronounced “euro”) and drinking some ouzo, a traditional Greek drink that taste like licorice even though it is not made from licorice.

A guy who, even if he forgot both his camera cable and his two card readers, probably at least brought that little thing that downloads pictures from his camera to his iPod, eating a delicious gyro.

I will conclude with a picture that is not from Greece, although it is actually of me: this is me, Charlie, and Evan peeing in the finest men’s room in all of Liverpool:

“I read your blog too. You should quote me in the beginning of the next one. And make sure you mention that I am stupid and smell bad.”
—Will Durney

Last week I hit up Liverpool, Barcelona, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. This one’s mostly photos since I have to go to “class” in ten minutes.

Liverpool is all about the Beatles: Here we are in front of Strawberry Field. (John added the “s” later.) Not pictured, but visited: Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby’s grave.

Exciting sneak preview of next week’s post: awesome updates from hanging out with my FAMILY who are all HERE RIGHT NOW.

“Your most recent blog post is fantastic. But also feels like it got cut off early—just like your physical development.”
—Katherine Yagle, a.k.a. the only person besides my family who reads this blog

I know what you’re thinking: two blog posts in one week? That’s impressive, Max, even for you. But there’s a good reason for this, aside from my desire to communicate with my parents without having to actually speak to them: I’m currently one-third of the way through a 1,500-word essay on the role of gender in Aemilia Lanyer’s 1611 country house poem “The Description of Cooke-ham”—my first actual assignment at this school, even though I’ve been here for almost seven week—and I am desperate to procrastinate by any means necessary, even though the essay is due tomorrow. (A different man might have started the essay—or at least the reading for it—shortly after it was assigned three weeks ago, but that man would lack my multitudinous academic and intellectual gifts, as well as my ability to type really fast.)

The grading system for essays here is actually kind of weird. Instead of giving your work to your professor (a.k.a. your “tutor”), you hand it in to a central office, where it’s anonymously graded by two—that’s right, two—different people. While this is probably a fairer system overall, it’s not so great for me, as a good portion of my academic success thus far has derived less from actual intelligence or hard work and more from getting teachers to like me personally.

Last Saturday was an ugly jumper party (“jumper” is the idiotic British word for “sweater”). Ugly sweater parties—also known as parties that force you to spend good money on an article of clothing you’ll never wear again—are just parties where you have to wear the ugliest sweater you can find. (You’d think this would be obvious, but I’ve had to explain it to everyone I’ve told about the party so far.) A girl complimented my sweater on the bus there, which was cool, but also not exactly what you want to hear on your way to an ugly sweater party.

Ugly jumper party. (The girl on the left didn’t get the memo.)

On Sunday, I met up with some friends to plan a disturbingly intense six weeks of travel during our spring break (which, yes, is six weeks long). Barring any last-minute changes of plan (which will probably happen nonetheless), I’ll be going to Athens, Florence, Milan, Zurich (in Switzerland), Marseilles (in the south of France), Barcelona, Paris, Dijon (to do a mustard tasting… seriously), Amsterdam, and Berlin. The magic behind all this is the Eurail pass, which for “only” 700-ish U.S. dollars gives you more or less unlimited train travel throughout twenty-two European countries. I may go batshit crazy during six weeks of more or less nonstop travel, but at least I’ll be going crazy while making other people jealous.

An extremely poorly-drawn map of my travel plans.

Alas, the time has now come for me to return the intriguing, scintillating, and, dare I say, arousing world of seventeenth-century poetry. As traditional demands, I will close with a photograph completely devoid of context or explanation.

A photograph completely devoid of context or explanation.

“You’re mean in your blog.”
—Claire Pywell

When younger Wesleyan tour guides come to me seeking advice on how to improve their tours (I promise this has happened at least once), my one tip is usually something along the lines of “make it a narrative”—in other words, try to make each tour stop more like a story and less like a random collection of facts. (Of course, the “narrative” of my tours is usually more about me than it is about the school. One concerned mother actually wrote on the feedback card, “The guide talked too much about himself.”) Anyways, the point of this delightful little parable is that this blog post is actually just going to be a list of things and not a story, my bad.

This week, all of my classes were cancelled. (All two of them, that is.) For some bizarre reason, British professors seem to think that if they assign you an essay, they need to cancel the class before the essay is due so that you can use that time to write the essay. I have yet to write either of my essays, but I did use the extra time for a few successful rounds of drinking. (Not directly, since the classes are at 11 in the morning, but you know what I mean.)

Monday night was an event called “Carnage.” Basically, you buy a £10 t-shirt that gives you—along with 10,000 or so sweaty, obnoxious other people—free entry into a bunch of pubs and clubs. You run around doing this for five or six hours, then get tired and drunkenly eat a massive plate of french fries (a.k.a. “chips”) from a fast-food place so shitty that it charges for ketchup packets. (The french fries thing is not officially part of the event, but everyone I was with participated in it nonetheless.) You also have to wear a costume. This one’s theme was Action Man/Barbie. (Despite my initial belief, it turns out “Action Man” is not a generic description, but rather the English equivalent of G.I. Joe.)

Action men.

There were some girls involved too.

As the term’s gone on, I’ve begun to make an effort to hang out more with actual British kids and not just other study-abroaders. This has actually worked out pretty well (four of the six people in the above photo are British—can you spot which ones?!?!?), in part because I’ve developed a foolproof strategy to get people at parties to talk to me: lying. When people ask me where in America I’m from—which they almost always do—I now say “New York.” In the past, when I was honest, my response usually brought the conversation to a halt, as most Brits don’t know anything about Boston, aside from the fact that it was where the first shots were fired in a bloody, violent war against their country and ancestors. But everyone has something to say about New York: “I saw a Broadway show once!” “My aunt lives in Park Slope!” “What do you think about the Ground Zero mosque?” (Seriously.)

I tire of this writing, so I will leave you, as usual, with some context-free photos.

Arm wrestling some bros in my flat. (I lost.)

Two-thirds of the people in this photo are having an AWESOME time at a pub.