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@ -9,45 +9,6 @@ description: >- |
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## Outline |
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- Denver |
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- What I had |
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- Why I left |
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- Loadout |
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- Road Trip |
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- Ibrahim notebook |
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- Choosing destinations |
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- The First Leg |
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- Munich |
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- Silence |
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- Relative |
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- Italy |
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- Milan |
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- Ostello Bello, friends |
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- Duomo |
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- Walking/Getting around (Google maps) |
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- Ravenna |
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- Currency |
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- Old monastaries, mosaics |
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- Florence |
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- Museums |
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- Celia |
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- Rome |
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- Tourism's effect on a city |
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- Too much to see in Italy, too little time |
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- Spain |
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- Barcelona |
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- La Sagrada Familia, churches |
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- Madrid |
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- Royalty, revolution |
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- Cordoba |
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- Playing things close |
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- Granada |
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- Flamenco |
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- Peace |
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- Lisbon |
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- Hostels |
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- A city where people still live |
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- Escher (Granada/Cordoba) |
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- The Second Leg |
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- Munich |
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- No more pictures, no more tourism |
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@ -104,3 +65,55 @@ description: >- |
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- Culture |
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- History |
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## Munich, Germany |
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On Febrary 14th I returned to Munich. Having been on the road for a little over |
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3 weeks, I was utterly exhausted, and neglected to take any pictures at all. In |
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fact, I hardly remember _what_ I did there, except go to the library a lot. |
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Munich has a fantastic public library, which I spent a considerable amount of |
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time at every time I was in town. I'd create my rough plans of where to go next |
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there, as well as do miscellaneous coding and writing. I was through being a |
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tourist. |
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After Rome I had begun really putting my strategy of "wander around and see what |
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calls out to me" to the test. By the time I was in Munich it had really sunk in, |
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and the only thing which really called to me in Munich was the peace and quiet |
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of the library during the day, and hanging out with Caitlin and her friends at |
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night. For the rest of the trip I wouldn't take so many pictures as I had been |
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doing, and wouldn't go way out of my way to see something which didn't truly |
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interest me. |
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After I left Italy I had begun eating differently too. Italy is, obviously, |
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known for two foods: pasta and pizza, and I had a lot of those while I was |
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there. At one point I had the awkward experience of an Italian guy asking me if |
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Italy had better pizza than the U.S., and me having to try and find a way to |
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both be honest and not seem like too much of a dick when I told him: "no". It |
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would be fair to say that, in Italy, your money goes a lot farther in terms of |
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quality than in the U.S.; or, in other words, their average quality is higher. |
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But it's not like Italians know some secret the rest of the world doesn't, and |
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you can easily find a good, crispy, thin crust, wood fired pizza anywhere, if |
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you look for it. |
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That was the real lesson for me: it's not that Europe has _better_ food across |
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the board than the U.S., it's that even their cheapest restaurants will be |
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pretty high quality, whereas finding good but cheap food in the U.S. can often |
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be quite difficult. So someone like me, who's on a spend-as-little-as-possible |
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budget, can still enjoy pretty good food anywhere. |
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All the same, I would largely stop going out to eat at all from this point in |
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the trip onward, and instead I began visiting grocery stores frequently. During |
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the day I'd always have in my bag: a bottle of water, a loaf of bread, a block |
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of cheese (usually gouda), almonds, and dates or dried figs. These I would munch |
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on throughout the day, and for dinner I'd make something simple like pasta or |
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rice with veggies and tofu. Having a kitchen would become a requirement for me |
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to stay at a hostel, and many hostels have a "free stuff" section filled with |
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food items people had left behind, like garlic or salt or whatever, so I often |
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didn't need to go shopping at all. |
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Of course, I didn't abstain from eating out _completely_. Every country has some |
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claim-to-fame food item, which I'd try once or twice while there, if it didn't |
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mean going way out of my way. But food wasn't a primary concern of my trip, and |
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so I tried my best to spend as little as possible on it. |
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Having spent a few days in Munich, recuperating and figuring out my next steps, |
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I continued on... to Brussels! |
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