Venice

So I waited outside in the cold for Liam for about two hours before turning on my cellular data and succumbing to the assistance of the inter webs to connect. A few minutes after I got on, he signed on as well. The intended bus became a boat and he was on the other side of the island. We decided to meet at our hotel. I looked up directions and waddled through the beautiful alley ways of Venice towards the hotel. I got atrociously lost and was walking in circles. Everything looked exactly the same, I swear. I was starting to get a little bugged out about being lost when I heard someone running towards me from behind. I froze a little, in fear of what was happening, and got a strong hug from behind. Liam found me wandering, lost, and came to my rescue to walk me back to the literally middle of nowhere hotel. I never would've found it. 

We checked in to a large, pretty nice room, dropped off our stuff and headed out to wander and get food. I was so hungry and knackered from being up since 5 am so an 11 am giant beer and margarita pizza sounded like the move. I struggled to finish but Liam egged me on, and the owner of the wee restaurant we sat in loved that 'the lady' finished the big beer. 

We then went back to the train station to get tickets for our journey out the next day and picked up beers on our walk back, to chill and drink in the hotel room a little. Twas so lovely to see Liam again and have a proper catch-up after over a year away. When we were ready to make moves again we headed out to st marks square, with much wandering in between. Venice is pretty amazing. So beautiful, expectedly romantic, and always a breath of fresh (clean) air when there are no motor vehicles moving through. 

We wandered till the sun went down, drinking more beers as we found supermarkets and enjoying the gorgeous waterfront. Venice, like Rome, is filled with Bangladeshi men who come over trying to sell various forms of garbage to tourists. Well, maybe that's an unfair statement. It's not all garbage. They push umbrellas when it's raining, so that's all good, but at other times it's little light up things to throw up and find after they come back down, selfie sticks, and roses (cause Venice). They give you the rose, or bouquet or whatever and then expect money. Anyway, we suckered once and I was carrying around a rose for the evening. 

After we were done with our wander we headed back towards our humble abode, each with a wine bottle in hand. We had stopped at some little grocery and got bottles for 6euros, and asked the nice lady at the counter to open them for us. We were both quite drunk at this point from the various beers all day, but whatever. We rocked up to the restaurant we ate in that morning and I asked if they would be cool with us drinking our own wine and eating there outside. No worries. We got a pizza to split and demoed our bottles while getting to know the owner, who probably thought it was so funny to see us back, less than 12 hours later. We noshed and drank and when we were ready to get out of there the man brought us two limoncello shots to say goodbye with. We headed back to the hotel, still relatively early to catch some z's after some necessary cuddles. 

Come morning we were finally well rested and ready for yet another day of mindless wandering around in Venice. After checking out a half hour late (till this point I had checked out late from everywhere I've stayed) we dropped our bags into a little area and left. We then had some tabs and went to get breakfast at this little shop on the water. Expectedly it was kind of expensive (like, 4euros for a skinny coke. The shape of the can was so weird and thin but we reckoned it could help make packing them easier) but the cost was alleviated by the fact that the lady only gave us one sandwich even though we tried to order two. T was some sort of speck panini with cheese. Everything's so filled with cheese here (no complaints, just saying). 

When we had our fill we wandered around the shore line a bit and looked at a statue of Venice and st mark that we had passed before and Liam had done some reading on that morning. Twas pretty cool how there were two kinds of scenes on the statue, and when seen from the front it tells a tale different from the one on the back. After we ventured back towards st marks square and checked out st marks basilica and doges palace. We didn't go into the basilica at that time because there was a bit of a line, but headed in a bit later in the afternoon. There was one man at he front policing the bringing of backpacks into the basilica. Even though there were multiple signs, all the stupid humans (me included) still waltzed up with backpack only to be told to drop it off at a baggage area near by. I was a little lost in finding up but Liam got us there alright. The basilica was pretty amazing. Crazy ornate gold ceilings covered with intricate mosaic work to show the art and I suppose story of whatever it was about. We stayed a little while discussing the construction and then went back out to hang and drink more beers outside. Being able to drink in public is such a nice change, even if we were the only people doing it. 

So, on this day we looked particularly messy, like a duo of strange homeless gypsies. Much of Liam's clothing was wet and lying out creating a horrific mouldy smell in the hotel room so he was wearing these bright blue sweatpants I brought and a upenn sweatshirt. I was in silly Thai Aladdin pants, boots, too many sweaters and had a jacket dangling at the sides of my backpack. Not so sexy. Because of that we became way less approachable to the bangledeshis trying to pawn off weird souvenirs. Looking like a bogan is definitely the move. 

Doges palace was kinda cool, but we didn't go inside. So Venice. Much arch. Wow. 

Nearby was the bridge of sighs, which Liam explained to me was the last view prisoners got to see before being sent to the jail next door. Kinda intense. We wandered into some weird art exhibit that was little dr suess-like homes that describe Tibetan views on different rooms in a house. One was the house of shit, which had a twin toilet inside. There was also an interesting take on the living room being a space for showing off your worldly possessions, not meant to be touched. Liam didn't like this little art pop up at all, but I found it quite cool. 

We moved along and found our way to some chocokebab to eat. Such a gimmick taking shavings off of a kebab as if it was a meat, but when prepared with a spongey crepe, some creamy sauce, whipped cream and some more chocolate sauce, it was delicious, albeit messy and difficult to eat. They need to work on a better travel device to get the crepe to the mouth.
We were in and out of supermarkets yet again, playing our roles as alcoholics and having beer be our main liquid. 

Once I was absolutely fed up with the amount of pidgeons and seagulls surrounding our area we continued our wanders into the more residential parts of venice. Oh, well also we ended up eating two of the kinder eggs I had been carrying around for a bit by this point [kinder sorpresa!]. I fucking love kinder eggs. those are definitely the junk food of my childhood. Saba and Safta used to always bring heaps of them when they came over from israel since some stupid kid choked and ruined it for everyone in america, making it impossible to buy them. Unfortunately it seems that swtupidity is common and when i was in israel a few months back, the one kinder egg i purchased had a whole new shitty design and was not the same. the chocolate was far separated from the toy, and it was more of a dunkaroo type adventure. I mean, everything kinder makes is delicious, but i just wanted my normal eggs.  So here they were. I got some stupid dinosaur on what looks like the top of a helicopter. it doesn't do anything. Liam got a cool little toy car that has a toy airplane you can take ffrom inside the car. he's been carrying it around in his pocket and playing with it since we then. yeah.

Seriously though, Venice is such a cool city. I really liked it to visit but I couldn't imagine living there though. Getting around seems quite weird as there are just canals everywhere, but the lifestyle seems pretty good. We went by a childrens school a bit which was interesting to see, and later in the night passed by a university that seemed really built up and nice. After sitting on a bridge for a while, absorbing the air, we ventured off to a little pizza joint, Pizza 2000. Now, normally I try to avoid spots like that, even though in Rome I hit up 'super pizza' and we even wandered around for a long time asking people to direct us to it, but there were a bunch of school kids inside and I figured they probably know what's  up when it comes to finding good pizza in the neighborhood. It was also super cheap at like 2 euros for a giant slice. Here you get your slices on a piece of wax paper, instead of a plate. kinda funny. the slices are also like the size of two slices at home put together. seriously so much pizza has been consumed at this point. 

Liam had been in venice for two days back in march before starting work in Greece and he remembered this little corner bar that seemed to get a lot of local attention and was worth checking out. We found it just as it was starting to get crowded in the area. So this little bar has only enough room to walk in and wait with maybe 4 other people at the same time before purchasing a tiny glass of wine, maybe a little sandwich, and hanging out in the courtyard next to it whilst sipping. Then you can bring back your wine glass or leave it nearby because someone will pick it up. I ended up stealing one of the glasses, but first we had 3 cab-savs each. The last time i went in to get more wine it was so crowded and intense with italian being spoken. I felt super out of place but managed to order and also pick up a 'mini mini' porcheta sandwich to munch on. twas quite delicious. the little glasses of wine were 60 cents each. Never a problem for me. [PLACE IS CALLED BACARETO DA LELE]

After we were done contemplating sentience in animal forms and the reason pidgeons walk the way they walk we had enough time to get back to the hotel and pick up our bags to get ready for our night train that was leaving at 9pm.

I finally bought a mask, which was the souvenier I really wanted to get while I was in venice. I got one of the scary doctor masks from the plague with the long nose, not a pretty venitian one. I'll wear it around eventually. 

When we purchased tickets/made reservations the day before I was a bit drunk and kind of confused as to what the lady with the very high pitched voice at the counter was telling us, so i mostly just agreed with the price she offered, got the tickets and left. When looking back at them though to figure out what train we were meant to go on I saw that for some reason we were booked for a train from venice to munich and then another from munich to nurmburg, but nothing about prague. Figuring it was not gonna be such a problem we just got to the station a little early to sort it out. It ended up being that from nurmberg to prague is a bus that we have to book when we got to germany. all good.
On our way to the train station we went to a super market and threw down our bags in the front as to not knock over the entire store with our turtle like shells, and picked up two twistoff bottles of wine and an assortment of highly alcoholic beers. We tried to refastedn liam's massive pack and then trekked to the station to plop down, drink, sort out the tickets, and get into our night journey. I also finally got some gelato from next to the station. Pretty good but i wouldn't write home about it [thta's such a weird phrase, and i suppose in some way or another I am doing exactly that. writing home about it]. ANYWHO two of the beers we picked up were leffe fruit varieties-- one raspberry, one mixed berry, and they were so fucking delicious. would do again. 

When we got onto the train we were in a little compartment, initially just the two of us. Excited and drinking and yarning, but then a third member came in unfortunately and we quieted ourselves down a little bit. it gets a bit fuzzy from here, but the other dude was some sort of MMA fighter and we definitely annoyed the shit out of him trying to offer him wine and just talking about garbage. whatever happened next I couldn't say for certain, but we did make it through all of our wine and beer that night, and I woke up a few times in the middle of the night to see that me and the dude were each sleeping across the seats and liam was fully alseep on the floor. oh well. we had shitty sleeps and felt like garbage, though still drunk, when we got to munich, or munchkin [some might say].

So that train ride was 9 hours long and we landed at 6am, with an hour before the next connection. We tried to go to two closed burger kings but then settled on some random food from a market. I got this pretzal that was split in half depth-wise and treated like a sandwich with holes. Filling the interior was an absurd amount of brie. I just had to have it. LIam got some sort of chicken sandwich. We got to the train and kicked the lady out who was sitting in our seat, and settled. So this train was the intercity express, ice, train and seemed to be filled mostly with commuters, probably largely attributable to the time at which we were venturing. Only an hour long, thankfully, and not too terrible. I was still feeling really shit and we blazed through the last of our water supply and our one peach iced tea, so when we got to the next station we picked up some more drinks. Both were kind of gross, but they worked for their purpose of hydrating us. I got some giant lemony tea something. meh. We also got to subway where liam got a 15cm sub [this was pretty weird. so apparently in  nz the 6inch sub is still called a 6inch sub even though they use the metric system, but here it said 15cm on the menu] and i got no wifi password because the lady didn't know it. I also picked up a bag of bbq crisps and we figured out how and where we were meant to go to get on a bus to prague.
So this bus was called the IC bus, which of course liam found a way to pun twice within our first 10 minutes of being there. As we approached we got the 'I C BUS!' and then inside the sauna that was the bus we traveled in, we got the lovely 'it's quite cold... so IC-y'

The bus was reasonably empty so once our tickets and passports were glanced at, and the long movie detailing our journey had finally finished being presented in three languages, we moved to the back of the bus where liam could sprawl across the multiple seats and i could squeeze into laying on two. I slept for a bit of the 4 hour journey and then snacked on crisps and tried to squeeze some juice out of the extremely spotty wifi to figure out what we should do when we got to prague. Eventually we landed at the main station. As we were journeying it was quite interesting to look out the windows and see the strange land we were traveling through. So different from italy, and so similar to the movie depictions of german and czech villages. The architecture was very quaint and there was always a giant steeple of a church popping out in front of all the other elements of the city.