Not Quite the Beginning - the story of the 3 little pigs

Here I am, sitting in my first-ever hostel in Nice, France (which is, indeed, very nice), decided where to start. Since I've been traveling for almost a month, it doesn't quite feel like a start at this point - though I suppose it is for you, dear reader (aka some of my friends with time to kill).


Quick background then: My name is Sam, I'm an American university student, and I'll be studying abroad in Toulouse for a school year. I made my way to France August 1st with my family, they ditched me on the 12th, and now I'm making the rounds of France on my own until school starts in September.

Now that's out of the way.


So let me tell you the story of my first night staying in my first hostel, because it's possibly the scariest/funniest thing to happen to me yet.
I was a bit nervous going into this whole hostel thing. Before now, I've been staying in places where I have my own room, and my own bathroom, and even a TV if I'm lucky, though rarely lucky enough for a good English-language station.
Maybe, I thought, they won't fill up the room. Maybe there will be super nice people I can go traveling with. Maybe they'll all be super creepy kleptos who steal my things. The reality is, I fear, well....you'll see.
When I get there, the only person in the room is a nice German girl who speaks perfect English, so I get to choose a nice top bunk right by the window, and I have a nice talk with my new sort-of friend.
Then the Brits arrive. Now, after a few days, I know 2 of their names, though I have no idea which one is which, so let's just name them the 3 little pigs. They are not literally pigs - they are actually just the incarnations of some of my worst hostel nightmares.
They seemed cute at first, but then midnight arrives, and the first bloke, the one with a house of bricks, stumbles in drunk and locks himself in the bathroom. Locks himself as in, he can't get out of the bathroom. This creates quite a ruckus, as you might imagine. Then he drops into bed and is asleep instantly. Not too bad, though the debacle did wake me up, and I was planning on waking early the next morning, so I was a little ticked. But hey, not so bad, I thought. If that's the worst this place is throwing at me I'll be fine.
Wrong.
The pig with a house of sticks comes in. I sleep through this, but then, in my dream, I'm all of a sudden attacked by an angry grizzly bear. I drift back awake to find that the sound was actually from the limey in the next bed over, who was snoring like a chainsaw that drank its weight in whiskey. The sound was insistent, loud, and impossible to sleep through. Oh great, I thought, a snorer. Fantastic. I'll get through this.
Wrong.
In comes the pig with his house of bricks. But he doesn't come back alone. You see, I was back in dreamland again, and in my dream, the world started shaking. But the world was, in fact, actually shaking. I wake up, and the bunk bed is shaking pretty violently. I scramble to find reasons for this sudden earthquake: he's having trouble getting into bed, there's a bug in his pants he's trying to shake out, the poor guy's having a nightmare. Nope.
Ringo was actually, on his first night in a 5-bed hostel room, playing bottom-bunk bingo with some Australian "lass," right on the bed below me. You see, I know this because she was still there the next morning. Pretty much class all the way, don't you think? And seriously, the room wasn't that big - his "mates" were no more than 5 feet away from him the whole time - and he was on a bottom bunk.
I've heard stories of people in dorms at Tufts bringing home a friend while their roommate's trying to sleep in the next bed over, and it always struck me as being only a few feet away from a menage a trois, and pretty stupid. But hey, maybe you didn't have many options, and you've been living with the guy/gal for some time now, I don't know. But this guy's in a tiny little 5 bed room, on the bottom of a bunk bed. And I'm wondering afterward how well he actually knows his travel buddies, and whether the better he knows them, the creepier it is, or the other way around.
The moral of the story is: Yuck.
But the story ends happily enough, since I talked to the three little pigs the next day, and they turned out to be alright guys, and they managed to go out and drink last night without waking me up on their return, so I'll forgive them. Plus I got to travel with other people for the first time in a while, instead of going solo, when I tagged along with them to Eze and Monaco, so it turned out okay in the end.
But seriously. The bottom bunk in a 5-bed room. Class all the way, those Brits.
But now for the good news: This is the view of Nice from my room in the aforementioned hostel.

Word of the Day:
Dormir
To sleep

Rome: Pros and Cons

(Written on the last day of my first trip to Rome, August 21st, 2008)

Con: In mid-August, it is ridiculously hot - sultry even - with little opportunity for shade.
Pro: Water is really accessible, with fountains everywhere, and it's cool and tasty at that.

Con: I felt dirty, pretty much the whole time I was there.
Pro: The dust was mostly from all the really cool old crap.

Con: Speaking of old crap, you could trip over all the ruins all over the place.
Pro: Well, you could trip over the ruins, there are so many, all over the place.

Con: Cobblestone roads. They seem quaint and cool when you first see them, but they can do hell on your feet and luggage, especially when they're sloppy, like in Rome. And car rides are not comfortable.
Pro: The cobblestone fits with the old buildings, fountains, and statues everywhere that really create this antique atmosphere.

Con: Caesar salad. I had some in a restaurant, and it was positively yucky. The dressing was this thick crap, all cheesy or something...yuck.
Pro: Gelatto. Oh-my-God delicious. And I had the best strawberry (fragola) gelatto on the Spanish Steps.

Con: Eating alone: I couldn't share any huge portions.
Pro: Pizza margherita. Mwah! (Said kissing my fingers, Mamma-Mia-Italian-cliche style)

Con: The limited metro and confusing buses.
Pro: The bus I was on was super nice, with a TV and everything. Plus, you can watch Rome fly by.

Con: Not knowing Italian.
Pro: Most people spoke English, and pretty well.

Con: The Vatican Museum is just too much. And you have to walk through the entire thing to get to the Sistine Chapel.
Pro: A combo this time: seeing nuns in all types of nun-garb all over the place....and spiffy Swiss guards!

Con: My feet are killing me.
Pro: The Fanta here is more like Orangina than orange soda.

Con: Seriously, I think my feet are permanently swollen, with blisters in weird places.
Pro: That's not totally Rome's fault, my feet took a beating in France, too.

Con: I've been cut off from news; even when I see it, I don't really understand it.
Pro: I find it funny that the Herald is the international English paper. Like, okay then.

Con: In a weird turn, my shins even feel weak.
Pro: Again Sam, not all Rome's fault, mostly just yours.

Con: Italian waiters are not very attentive.
Pro: They deliver to your table delicious pasta.

Con: The Italian/European keyboard - nothing is where it's supposed to be, and it took me forever to figure out how to get an @ sign.
Pro: I haven't had to use an internet cafe yet.

Con: My feet...
Pro: Oh, shut up about your feet already.


Word of the day:
Uscita
It's on all the exit signs in Rome, but also the term for the boarding gates at the airport.

Ciao Roma!