summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
-rw-r--r--_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md91
1 files changed, 52 insertions, 39 deletions
diff --git a/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md b/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md
index a27be85..8a5eb97 100644
--- a/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md
+++ b/_drafts/mr-worldwide-pt-1-europe.md
@@ -9,45 +9,6 @@ description: >-
## Outline
-- Denver
- - What I had
- - Why I left
-- Loadout
-- Road Trip
- - Ibrahim notebook
- - Choosing destinations
-- The First Leg
- - Munich
- - Silence
- - Relative
- - Italy
- - Milan
- - Ostello Bello, friends
- - Duomo
- - Walking/Getting around (Google maps)
- - Ravenna
- - Currency
- - Old monastaries, mosaics
- - Florence
- - Museums
- - Celia
- - Rome
- - Tourism's effect on a city
- - Too much to see in Italy, too little time
- - Spain
- - Barcelona
- - La Sagrada Familia, churches
- - Madrid
- - Royalty, revolution
- - Cordoba
- - Playing things close
- - Granada
- - Flamenco
- - Peace
- - Lisbon
- - Hostels
- - A city where people still live
- - Escher (Granada/Cordoba)
- The Second Leg
- Munich
- No more pictures, no more tourism
@@ -104,3 +65,55 @@ description: >-
- 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!