Brannon's Euro-Trip

Final Post

I'm back home in GA! After a FULL day of traveling on Wednesday, I woke up (at 5 am, I'm still a bit jet lagged) in my own bed. I left London on the train to Gatwick at 10am. My first plane left at 1:30 London time (8:30 GA time) and arrived in Michigan at 5:30. It was possibly the best plane I've ever flown in. First of all I went on the night before and managed to score window seats for BOTH my flights. The food was really excellent, though they fed us constantly and with no regard to proper times in either time zone. AND we had our own little personal TVs in which we could watch movies, or TV shows or listen to music for FREE. I've seen this before but usually they activate it for a $5 fee and its not as cool. I spent most of my time listening to music and flipping through the British trash magazines that are SO much better than American trash magazines. Twice the trash, twice the...funny terms. Then I watched at terrible movie version of Lady Windomere's Fan. And talked to the British guy next to me who was flying to Michigan for a meeting and going home the next day. Which is insane. The flights went very well. Between flights I was accosted by the hostile security lady who was very puzzled (and a little bit angered) by the fact that I had spent 3 months out of the country and all I could say for myself was "I was travelling". Traveling? Where did you stay? Hostels. Who paid for it? Me. What do you do for a living? Ummm waitressing and I work at Barnes and Noble. How much money do you make? Uhh the trip cost me about 5,000 dollars. Where did you get that money? I worked... and drug dealt on the side.
Or that's what she must have thought I said because even though we had approximately 40 minutes to get our baggage on board and find our gate, she went through every single thing in mine and Carla's bag. I met Carla in the terminal in London. It turned out that we were both going home to Atlanta. Her parents live there and she went to high school there... but she's been at Uni in the UK and spent this semester studying in Florence. We didn't have seats near one another on the train but we buddied up for the transit. She has a lovely British accent, so I figure between that and my having lived out of a backpack for 3 months we read a bit dodgy. I felt a little revenged as the lady muddled through all my trash. Poor Carla's bags were packed neatly. But I was a bit annoyed when she READ my diary. I guess its a good thing I hadn't written "Death to the USA." or "Praise Allah". I even got my bag sniffed out by the drug dog. Welcome home to me.
My parents came to pick me up at the airport at 9pm when my flight landed. Lil had her last exams the next day and so had to stay at home to study. It was a huge relief to see them. Its always nice to have your travels end in home. And not y'know death, I guess. Ha.
The last couple of days I have spent being kind of stranded. My parents and sister have the cars. But still I've managed to see several friends from Shorter and high school. I've figured up that the total cost of my trip including EVERYTHING, plane tickets, Eurail, the camera I bought for it, food, housing, souvenirs, stupidity and activities cost me: $6,461.61. I just spent a few hours figuring it up. It was a little more than I anticipated (obviously, see above) but its less than I prepared for and I came home...well, not destitute. And, honestly, it was worth every red cent. One hundred days touring England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, and Ireland...Actually its quite a bargain. Sixty five dollars a day? How much does ordinary living cost a day? With Cable TV and electricity and house payments/rent and dog food. Well, much less you might say and you're making a bit too. Well not enough I say.
If I had it to do over again I would have forgotten the cell phone, taken some spray on smell good (instead of having to be bothered actually bathing), brought a full tube of toothpaste (turns out I go through that stuff), taken one more day in Rome and one less in Corfu but that's tricky because my favorite days in Corfu were the first two, NOT gone to Munich on a Sunday, NOT missed my train in Madrid, known the REAL ferry times but some how not missed out on the day in Ignomensia, NOT let it rain so much in Barcelona and NOT lost several things along the way. But I would have still followed my "crazy" route (it makes perfect sense, thank you very much) and kept everything else, the people, the sights, the experiences, exactly the same.
Well, this is the conclusion of my Bran's Eurotrip blog. I will leave it up for a long time. Possibly until the end of Cyberdom. I will probably start a new blog so you can all keep up with my latest mad project. I'm also going to download the rest of my pictures and label them very soon. Promise.
Signing out. Au Revoir. Adios. Ciao. Cheers.

posted by Brannon @ 8:49 AM