I am much better rested now, thanks to sleeping in a bed for the last two nights as opposed to a bus that stops every hour and turns all the lights on. Amazing, eh? We spent about 3 hours in Milan and that was perfect, we saw the Duomo, walked around a bit and mostly sat in the piazza, where I read and Kara curled up and slept. Genova has been a great experience. The people here are amazingly helpful and eager to strike up conversations with foreigners that speak broken Italian, and most know English as well. For example, while walking into the center of town yesterday we passed a 60 something year old woman sitting on her wall with her cat and a bowl of food. I said bongiorno, and she replied with, 'I'm just waiting for him to eat'. So we stopped and chatted for 5 minutes in a mix of english and italian and she gave us recommendations on where to swim. Genova, unlike Paris, is build on one big hill rising up from the port. Stairs run up and up and up the hill, making a much more direct route into the city that the narrow roads that form winding, narrow switchbacks. The hostel, which is the only hostel here, is at the very top of the hill, a 20 minute walk down but a very long sweaty walk up, so we take the bus up. But the reward for that is a stunning view of the city. We have walked around quite a bit, eating pizza, pasta, gelato and vino. Yesterday we took the bus out to the edge of the city and went swimming in the sea. the water was warm and the beach was packed with people, all of whom seemed dead set on getting as tan as possible with no regard to the possibility of skin cancer. It was wonderful. Now, we are getting ready to head to the train station to get on the bus for the cinque terre. We are staying slightly out of the area, in La Spezia, because when I thought I booked us a room in a hostel almost a week ago, the email response 'room is fully booked' I read that as we were set and I had booked the room. But no, when I opened it again it was abundantly clear that it meant there are no available rooms. All I can say is that I was tired...oops. So Kara has taken over hostel bookings now, she is very good at it, very organized. Really so much better at it than I am it is pretty amazing. The other great move I pulled was buying our tickets online from Milan to Genova. Everything was great except for the fact that I booked them for 26/8/12 not 26/7/12, so they were perfect for the 26th next month, but for this month we had to buy tickets on the train at double the price. Ouch. Anyways, live and learn! Double check your tickets and your reservations!!

Buona Sera!! Checking in from Genova, Italy, where it is HOT. Just a bit sweaty all of the time, ideally with a few cold showers thrown in a day. Since the last time I wrote Kara and I have 1. Left Berlin via train 2. Arrived in Paris to stay for 4 nights 3. Took an overnight bus to Milan 4. took an intercity train to Genova 5. Rode all around the city of Genova with our backpacks on figuring out the train system.

Kara and I spent our last two nights in Berlin staying with a friend of hers, Craig, a 29 year old New Yorker who just moved to Berlin. He was super nice and went with us to treptower park, where we walked around and explored some more huge soviet monuments and sat by the lake enjoying patchy sunlight.

We went to Tacheles, an urban artmovemnt?building takeover/cool art studios that are controversial because they attract about 500,000 visitors a year but the city wants to kick them out and re do the building so they have shut off electricity and water and sent in private security forces to close the building but were forced to reopen due to public protest. That night we went out! To a club called E4 near Alexanderplatz and we stayed out until 530 am, the metro ride home all I could hear in my head was the '5 oclock in the morning song'...very fun going with Kara's language studies friends. Next day, to the train station!

We arrived in Paris at about 930pm and followed directions to my friend Kyra's apparment. She lives in the historical/jewish/gay section of town, a very cool combination. Their building is super old, on the 5ht floor with a wooden winding straircase that is all worn down in the middle from ages of people stepping on it. Their place was tiny but very picturesque, with exposed wooden frames and hardwood floors, and from the window you could see the Church of Sacre Coure, sacred heart. In Paris we walked and walked and walked and walked, saw the Eifel Tower, the Lourve, walked along the Seine, had a romantic dinner with Vin rouge, fromage, baguette et salami along the canal. We saw the Moulin Rouge, the Lafayette gallery with it's free and gorgeous view of the city, the Hotel deville, the arc of triumph. Paris is great because you hardly have to try to find something beautiful and cool, because there is something everywhere you go, so it is easy to just wander. A fun city, but very hot and very full of people and very expensive! So far it has been nice to get to Italy so it is easier to communicate. It makes life so much easier...

Berlin

I won't lie, it just took me 10 minutes to figure out how to write a new post, because everything on the site is written in German, and after 36 hours here in Germany, I still do not speak German. I am at City Hostel in the center of Berlin, it is overcast and just finished the buffet breakfast that consisted primarily of bread meat and cheese, which seems to be the big thing in German cuisine for all meals. But let me start at the beginning of my travels and then lead up to the present. So on Monday evening I flew out of Seattle with a direct flight to Frankfurt, a 10 and a half hour flight. I sat next to a very interesting and chatty 31 year old man, who told me quite a bit about himself in the hour after take off and before the movies began. He is a successful entrepreneur who with his brothers started up his own software something company, he and his brother fly all over North America meeting with their clients, while their younger brother went back to Harvard to finish his degree. Their younger sister is midway through Law school at Stanford. He is a 100 mile marathon runner, and likes to run at high altitudes on mountains. At 15 he went to Berkley school of music in Boston and at 17 release an album. He recently became single and has been constantly propositioned by women ever since he noted 'single' on his facebook, and when he puts things up on facebook, approximately 80 people 'like' or comment on them. Clearly very successful and clearly is very proud of his accomplishments. He told me multiple stories about personal experiences with women, with an unabashedly condescending attitude. He told me multiple times how 'women are'....Thanks man, I've been waiting for someone to tell me how I am for so long. All in all, a very interesting fellow. I arrived in Frankfurt and had 30 minutes to get to my train, so I had enough time to change some money and get some water and a snack. I then had a beautiful train ride through the countryside for 6 hours, with one changeover in Naumberg, which was a bit stressful because I had 2 minutes to change trains. That neeeevvvver would have worked in Italy, because the trains were so erratic, but I am in Germany, so it was not a problem. Compared to my experiences in South America and other European cities, it seems quite safe here. People sit on trains with Ipads and leave there things at their seats in trains while they go use the bathroom. Wow! Kara picked me up at the main train station, Berlin Hauptbahnof. Our hostel the first night was near the Augsburger Strasse, Southwest of where we are now. We woke up and saw so much! We went to the DDR museum which was a really cool hands on museum of life in Eastern Berlin before the wall fell. After, we went to Checkpoint Charlie, the main point of entrance/exit into East Berlin and saw part of the wall. I felt like it should have been bigger for how much it divided the two halves. We saw the crazy TV tower, the museum Island, the Holocaust memorial site and the accompanying museum-really cool memorial, really sad museum. We went past the Berliner Dom and through Tiergarten and went to the Soviet monument. I had currywurst and Doner kebab and Berliner beer. We went out to have a drink with Kara's friend Peter from the UK who is taking classes here and had a very jolly metro ride home. All in all a very pleasant day. The only sad part is that is rained quite a bit yesterday, and my shoes got soaked through, and they smell really bad now. They were already on their last legs: holes in the bottoms, holes in the inserts...I'll keep my eyes out for replacements. Tonight we are going on a pub crawl with students from Humbolt University (here, not Northern California). I hope I can stay up late enough!!