Last Post

3 weeks ago, my brother told me I should blog while I still had the time, which was very wise advice, and which I of course ignored. Now we've been home an entire week and I still haven't gotten the last post down, and I'm starting to feel a little guilty about that. So here it is, the last leg of our trip:

Belgrade, Serbia was fun except for our outrageous hostel hosts. "Hostel" is a bit of an overstatement - we were put into one of two bedrooms in their house. They saw fit to stay up every night drinking and smoking weed until 7 in the morning, sleep in until 3pm every day, and frequently have sex in the room right next to ours. One morning I walked in on the woman sitting naked on the toilet, because of course there were no locks on any of the doors. All of which would've been fine by me if they hadn't been calling it a "hostel" and charging us $45/night for the privilege of living with them for 3 days. Oh well, at least I bought a bracelet from the naked toilet woman which will forever remind me of our happy times in their home.

From there we made our way through Bosnia, stopping but not seeing much in the city of Sarajevo, and finally we made it to Croatia, where we spent 4 days prancing around Dubrovnik with my friend Kelly. We swam in beautiful Croatian waters, ate terrible Croatian food, and went to an island that was inexplicably filled with peacocks and cacti! When I become rich and famous, I want my estate to be filled with peacocks and cacti. It was bizarre and lovely. It was also our first time hanging out with a real friend since we left for this trip, and that was really, really nice. And it reminded us that people who have not been traveling the world for 11 months actually change clothes more than once every 3 days! Silly.

By the time we got to England, we were thoroughly exhausted, and spent our time with Ross's family mostly just eating, drinking wine, singing along to 40s and 50s musicals, and drinking more wine. Ross also danced like a hill-billy at one point. Classic Family-Time Fun.

Then we went to Dresden, where we saw a man eating a cheeseburger with a fork and knife (so civilized!), more attractive men than I'd seen in the entire last year, and more mannish-looking women than you could shake a Birkenstock at. Strange place, Germany. We were there for only 2 days to meet up with our good friend Steve, and then all three of us took a train down to Amsterdam for maximum debauchery at a music festival called Dance Valley. And maybe a museum or two. I can't quite remember.

And after spending our last week in California with my family, we're now finally back home. It feels  strange. It's much cleaner and prettier than I remembered, which is nice, but it seems really unfamiliar. Either way, it is nice to be back home with our friends, my cat, and the lovely Vancouver mountains. Strangely, already the trip seems so distant that it almost feels like the whole thing might've been a dream. Hopefully some of our thoughts, memories, emotions and perspectives will remain with us and carry us through until our next trip. :)