This week I’m going to post a draft of an essay I’ve been
working on for another class The only guidelines were that it had to be a
personal experience and had to be 800 words.
I wrote about the first day of a European backpacking trip I took with a
friend. We talked about the trip a lot,
saved money for it, but didn’t plan it as thoroughly as we probably should
have. Give me any suggestions or comments;
it can only help the next draft. Thanks.
Day 1: Glasgow
We land in Scotland and I realize
almost immediately that we should have planned things better. Garett and I are waiting in the customs line when
we get sorted to different passport-stampers.
The man I’m now standing in front of has a bored expression and he asks to see my itinerary. I don’t
have an itinerary.
Yes, Garett and I have talked about
this trip for the last five years, but the conversations never really got into
logistics. We bought plane tickets to
Glasgow because it was the cheapest city to fly into, and we purchased our
Eurail passes that would let us ride the trains to all the major cities we wanted
to hit. But that was as far as we’d
gotten. I had a dog-eared and
highlighted copy of Europe for Dummies,
but I don’t think it’ll pass for an Itinerary.
“Excuse me?” I ask, trying to
think.
“Your Itinerary… Can I see Your
Itinerary?”
“Well I don’t have anything written
down, but I know we want to see the Louvre”
The Man looks from my passport up
to me and says very flatly, “The Louvre’s in France.”
I let out a nervous chuckle, still
trying to think, “Oh, you just want the Scotland itinerary.”
What are we going to see in
Scotland? Man, I can’t think. Castles… Braveheart…
Highlander… the moors… LOCH NESS!!
“We’ll probably head over to Loch
Ness. You know… See if we can’t spot
Nessy.” I say the words and regret them immediately. This guy must think I’m a complete
idiot. Another American idiot.
Luckily, visiting Loch Ness is a
good enough reason to cross the Atlantic so I get my passport’s first
stamp. I meet back up with Garett, who
got no itinerary questions from his stamper and is probably still under the
impression that planning is overrated and unnecessary. We change some dollars to pounds, and hop on
a bus to the city center. First thing we
need to do is find a hostel and drop off these backpacks.
The guidebook says that most cities
have some kind of tourist information kiosk and that you should check them out
to learn about deals and special events.
They can also point you in the direction of a good hostel.
Lady at kiosk: “Unfortunately, all
the hostels we normally recommend are all booked up.”
Apparently there’s some kind of
convention in town as well as a cheerleading competition. Hostels have been filling up fast. Garett and I look at each other, then back to
the smiling face behind the counter. She
really is trying to help, and seeing that we’re a little worried suggests we go
to the internet café above the chip shop.
It’s just around the corner, and there we can look up a larger list of
hostels.
We do what the nice lady suggests
and come out of the café with a list of 5 hostels and 5 phone numbers. Garett gets the honor of making the calls,
and he does this from one of those red phone booths that I always associate
with Europe.
The calls are stressful. The fist hostel is booked. Second: booked. Third: no answer. Forth: booked. And finally: booked, but you
can sleep in our lounge if you have sleeping bags. We have sleeping bags, we’ll take it.
We hoof it to the hostel and meet
the man on the phone. He’s a nice guy
and a very proud Scotsman. He shows us
to the lounge, which is a large basement room with couches and loveseats set up
everywhere. We pick some couches in the
corner, none big enough for me to fully stretch out on, but at least we’re not
under a bridge for our first night in Europe.
That evening the lounge fills up
with a few more people that also couldn’t book a room. After meeting some of them, we decide to hit
the hay.
At some point in the night I wake
up to what sounds like water being poured onto the floor. It’s not water being poured onto the
floor. Someone is standing up in the
middle of the room and is peeing on the carpet.
I try not to laugh and then I hear:
“Hey man, what are you doing?”
No response, just incoherent mumbles. The man that spoke goes upstairs and grabs
the jolly Scotsman who runs the place, only now he isn’t jolly.
“Oi… Oi, if you need to use the
bathroom, you use the bloody toilet!” He
grabs the rug-pisser and drags him upstairs, never to be seen again.
I’m laughing to myself and shaking my head in
the dark, trying to fall back to sleep.
This is only day one, and we’re gonna be in Europe for a month.
