Tim’s Nomad Diaries

After about two and a half weeks of On the Road, from the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and now Slovenia, I have finally managed to get around to writing a post. I do apologize for the long delay; a string of slow computers, an overabundance of castles and Synagogues/Cathedrals, and too many beautiful and kindly Eastern European folk have made it difficult to divvy up time and spend the necessary adequate hours sitting in front of the computer and waiting for all the photos to download on all these historic computers that I’ve been using. Hopefully this photo of new friends Martin and Charlie might begin to make it up to you…

Charlie (right-hand side) and I where wandering around the pretty dead streats of central Budapest on a Monday night when we stumbled into this older fifty something guy wooing a group of Hungarian girls (the group probably around 18 year olds) singing some Frank Sinatra with one of the deepest voices I have ever heard. The girls where walking away from him, and in a last ditch effort to maintain their company the guy yells in his super-course voice “Youse fine ladies wanna hear me Yooddleee?”. The shy girls just kept on walking about their way with the sounds of their giggles getting fainter by the moment, but this encounter is how Charlie and I met Martin, a Montanan Cowboy that has just been wondering around the world. As soon as we tried to goad Martin into a Yodeling Sarinada, he immediately changed gears in the conversation, naturally, towards strip clubs and our urgent need to enter one. (As an aside, Budapest is filled with strip clubs; in fact, approximately twenty percent of the world pornography output comes from Budapest). As Charlie and I are both on kind of a tight budget we declined, but not even a moment later we see Martin handing the bouncer of the strip club a wod of Hungarian bills, tells us that he’s got us covered, and to follow him inside.

The course of events that ensued was nothing short of sheer delirious ridiculousness, juggling massive comic relief from Martin’s constant antics and the cloud of doubt hanging over Charlie’s and my heads as to whether or not the Mafioso management of this ‘find upstanding establishment’ where going to pound us to a new oblivion due to Martin’s non-stop surprises. As an example, picture Martin screaming at all the strippers who can’t understand much more than a few words of English with his incredibly course burly voice (think Marlon Brando in the Godfather but as a bass-baritone opera singer) “Heeeey I gots bigger tiits than Yoouu…Yooouuu waaannnaaa seeeee”. Then he would attempt to jump up on the stage while performing his notorious belly grab and shake, before an employee would stop and kindly ask him to calm down. Variants of this theme continued for the entirety of our stay until finally getting kicked out.

So, there you have the standard attention grabber story; the rest of the trip up to this point has really been quite tame .

The Netherlands was four hazy days in Amsterdam that I can’t quite recall, and two days in the Southern city Maastricht, where I studied three years ago, in which I also can’t recall much. I am quite sure it was fun though; thats the story that the smiles on all the photos reveals at least.

After killing about one quarter of those brain cells that I probably wasn’t going to end up using that much anyway, I left the warm confines of being with pre-existing friends (Paul, Caleb and Liz, and then Erasmus buddy Jelmer) and took off solo to beautiful Krakow Poland. Krakow is a real gem of a city, filled with jaw dropping Cathedrals/Synagogues, a ginormous castle, excellent and super affordable cuisine, several UNESCO World Heritage sites within day trips (including Auschwitz concentration camps and the world famous Salt Mines), and most importantly truly incredibly kind people.

Now I am sitting here in the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, and old Barcelona roommate Ben is pushing me to wrap it up as we have to hop on a train to Zagreb to visit other old roommate Mladen in a little bit. I have nothing but nice big adjectives to describe Slovenia, but as time is of the issue I will return to this entry to put up pics and say a little more.

Hope everyone is doing well and don’t hesitate to comment on this thing!

Signing off with nothing but love from Slovenia, the country with the love,

Tim