mediocre-blog/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md

title	description
Mr. Worldwide, Pt. 1: Europe	Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love tomatoes.

TODO

Outline

• The Second Leg
  • Munich
    • No more pictures, no more tourism
    • Diet
  • Belgium
    • Brussels
      • Communism and french fries
      • Comic book museum
      • Drawing
    • Bruges
      • Beer
      • A fucking expensive fairytale
      • So cold, so scarfed
      • Camina Del Santiago
  • UK
    • London
      • Cost of museums, theft of culture
    • Dublin
      • Housing problems
      • Glendalough
    • Edinburgh
      • Reading/Writing
      • Harry Fucking Potter
  • Amsterdam
    • Pub crawl (partying vs ...)
    • Van Gogh
    • Weed
    • Sex (museum)
  • Copenhagen
    • Freedom (Christiania)
    • So many chairs
  • Stockholm
    • Tradition
  • Berlin
    • History
    • Movie
  • Prague
    • Wandering
    • Planning
• The Third Leg
  • Munich
    • Alps, Olympics
    • Passport
  • Venice
    • Beauty in spite of tourism
  • Rijeka
    • Hitchikers
    • A strange beauty
  • Vienna
    • Riches and empire
    • A day at the palace
    • The Couchsurfing Cult
  • Athens
    • Culture
    • History

Munich, Germany

On Febrary 14th I returned to Munich. Having been on the road for a little over 3 weeks, I was utterly exhausted, and neglected to take any pictures at all. In fact, I hardly remember what I did there, except go to the library a lot. Munich has a fantastic public library, which I spent a considerable amount of time at every time I was in town. I'd create my rough plans of where to go next there, as well as do miscellaneous coding and writing. I was through being a tourist.

After Rome I had begun really putting my strategy of "wander around and see what calls out to me" to the test. By the time I was in Munich it had really sunk in, and the only thing which really called to me in Munich was the peace and quiet of the library during the day, and hanging out with Caitlin and her friends at night. For the rest of the trip I wouldn't take so many pictures as I had been doing, and wouldn't go way out of my way to see something which didn't truly interest me.

After I left Italy I had begun eating differently too. Italy is, obviously, known for two foods: pasta and pizza, and I had a lot of those while I was there. At one point I had the awkward experience of an Italian guy asking me if Italy had better pizza than the U.S., and me having to try and find a way to both be honest and not seem like too much of a dick when I told him: "no". It would be fair to say that, in Italy, your money goes a lot farther in terms of quality than in the U.S.; or, in other words, their average quality is higher. But it's not like Italians know some secret the rest of the world doesn't, and you can easily find a good, crispy, thin crust, wood fired pizza anywhere, if you look for it.

That was the real lesson for me: it's not that Europe has better food across the board than the U.S., it's that even their cheapest restaurants will be pretty high quality, whereas finding good but cheap food in the U.S. can often be quite difficult. So someone like me, who's on a spend-as-little-as-possible budget, can still enjoy pretty good food anywhere.

All the same, I would largely stop going out to eat at all from this point in the trip onward, and instead I began visiting grocery stores frequently. During the day I'd always have in my bag: a bottle of water, a loaf of bread, a block of cheese (usually gouda), almonds, and dates or dried figs. These I would munch on throughout the day, and for dinner I'd make something simple like pasta or rice with veggies and tofu. Having a kitchen would become a requirement for me to stay at a hostel, and many hostels have a "free stuff" section filled with food items people had left behind, like garlic or salt or whatever, so I often didn't need to go shopping at all.

Of course, I didn't abstain from eating out completely. Every country has some claim-to-fame food item, which I'd try once or twice while there, if it didn't mean going way out of my way. But food wasn't a primary concern of my trip, and so I tried my best to spend as little as possible on it.

Having spent a few days in Munich, recuperating and figuring out my next steps, I continued on... to Brussels!