Lost in Translation

6 Fellow Ramblers

In the short 17 years of my life, I've camped on three continents: North America, Australia (or Oceania if that's what makes you happy) and ofcourse my own continent, Europe.
Of all three, Europe is the one that has caused me the most trouble. Yes, I am bored with my own continent, but that's not the reason why camping here puts me through so much trouble. So I present you: Envy's list of awful things on European campgrounds.

The Wild Animals

I was eight when I camped in the US. We were on a campground near the Grand Canyon and at night I could hear the coyotes howl. They howled loud, it sounded as if they had surrounded our tent.

I was sixteen when I camped in the Australian Outback. I woke up at night to hear something creep between our swags. The Chinese next to me woke up and began talking to his fiancee in rapid Kantonese. The only word I understood was 'Dingo!'

But the thing is: you expect these things when you go camping there. You know about the coyotes and dingoes. But in Europe, the most dangerous animal you can encounter is the campgroundowner's cat. Or at least, that's what it feels like (especially the Dutch tend to forget that the wolf has made its comeback in the Netherlands, or that bears are still living in the Pyrenees).

You don't expect 'dangerous' wild animals that might bite you, not in the safe heaven called Europe. So what happens if your tent almost gets washed away in a storm and you wake up to the sounds of a fox trying to enter your tent? You scream, fall of your air mattress and shake the entire tent until the fox leaves. That's how we handle unexpected encounters the Envy-style.

The Sanitary Buildings

I'll never forget that my tour guide in the Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia, told me to check underneath the toilet seat for redbacks if I had to go to the toilet.

No such things in Europe. Cobwebs: yes. Dangerous spiders: no. Snails: everywhere. Sometimes there were snails on the bathroom walls. At least they're not dangerous, only gross. But as disgusting as that is, it's not the big problem with European sanitary buildings on campgrounds.

Then what ís the problem? They're dirty. More often than not the toilet hasn't been flushed. Don't even ask when it was cleaned for the last time, just don't. And in the really bad cases, people crap literally on the toilet seat and just leave it there. It's so disgusting.

Yes, I've seen this in Australia and the US too, but not half as often as in Europe.

And to increase the fun of going to the toilet, the French have invented those toilets which aren't much more than a hole in the ground. Missed the hole? No problem, there's a garden hose to wash it away- if you're lucky. Otherwise: run and don't look back.

The Language Barriers

With Dutch language education at a miserably low level, camping in Europe isn't as easy as it sounds. In Australia and the US English is enough, you're good to go wherever you want. But Europe is a patchwork of languages. Going to France? Make sure you speak French. Going to Germany? Better learn some German.

But the worst of it is not being able to communicate with your neigbors. Asking them to be quiet will have to be done in their language. English isn't an option, unless you start dropping F-bombs, which will only make things worse.

The Pink Toilet Paper

Sometimes you're at a campground that doesn't provide toilet paper and you'll have to get your own. Which isn't a problem. Just get the cheapest toilet paper available from the supermarket. And then you see that the cheapest toilet paper is pink.

Going to the toilet just got at least a hundred times worse. Walking to the sanitary building with toilet paper under your arm is like screaming: 'Look at me, I'm a big girl, I'm going to pee and poop all by myself already!'

The same thing with pink toilet paper is like screaming: 'Look at me, I'm going to have a Disney Princess Tea Party on the crapper!'

I can stand the noisy neigbors, I will survive the animals and dirty sanitary building. But PINK toilet paper? That's it, Europe, you've crossed a line. I'm out.

10 Fellow Ramblers

Ah, home sweet home... Nothing feels as good as taking a shower in your own shower, sleeping in your own bed and going to the toilet whenever you want without having to walk a mile to and from the toilets.
Yup, after four weeks of European-style camping, I'm back home :)

My parents love camping the way it was back in the '80s, when they were young. So this means that for four whole weeks I haven't touched a computer, tv, my crappy old Nintendo DS, not even a radio. The big exception is my crappy old digital camera, which I've barely used, but my parents are in love with it.
We don't have an RV or caravan, so we slept in a tent. It was cold, sometimes wet and always to low for me to stand up and put my pants on the proper way. In the end I gave up, walked out of the tent with my underpants for the whole wide world to see and put my pants on in front of the tent.
To give you a picture of what I'm talking about, just look at this:

Our tent, our table, our 'dinnerware'. As you can see, it's all pretty basic. And all very different from my awesome trip to Australia last year. The most exciting animal I've seen this year was a dead fox...

A always write a diary when I'm away from home, to keep the homesickness at bay. Sadly, I was too lazy this year, so it looks a bit like this:

Day 1: We've arrived at our exotic destination of this year: Spa, Belgium

Day 2: I'm not a morning person. I'm not an evening person either. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a person at all.
Day 3: It's too hot for activity, or moving or... Oh hell, it's even too hot for thinking.
Day 5: I hate ponchos. They make me look like a colored penguin.

My dad and I went to WWI trenches and
cemetary. Except for the cobwebs, it was an amazing day

Day 6: I felt like Bilbo Baggins when our guide began to mumble like Gollem during our tour through the caverns of Remouchamps. It was pretty creepy sitting in a boat with that guy.
Day 7: Ponchos that are supposed to be used once shouldn't be used twice. The ridiculous colored penguin has returned...
Day 10: Moved on to the next campground in Waxweiler, Germany.
Day 11: Acted like a 4-year-old today: I colored in a coloringbook with smurf pictures in it and ate tons of pancakes.
Day 13: Moved to a campground in the middle of nowhere in the east of France.
Day 14: We're in the middle of a thunderstorm and what do we do? Right, go to the highest peak in the area...
Day 16: History is awesome. Untile you get a cobweb in your face...
Day 18: The tent almost washed away last night. Yet again we found ourselves in the middle of a thunderstorm, tough I felt a lot safer when I was in the car. Staying in a tent in that kind of weather is totally not awesome.

Climbing rocks isn't one of my talents

Day 20: Moved to another campground near Xonrupt-Longemer, France.
Day 22: Went to an adveture park with my dad. We climbed the hard parcour. My mom thought it was fun to make pictures of the horror on my face. Let's just say it's not very charming...
Day 23: Every muscle in my body aches.
Day 26: Walking to this mountain, walking to that mountain. I haven't walked this much in years.
Day 28: Going home. Stuck in the third traffic jam since we've crossed the Dutch border. It's hot inside the car. Chocolate is melting :(

After all, I had a fun four weeks. On the last camground we had neighbors from Germany, who spoke English pretty well, so I had a chance to practice with both English and German. They had a fifteen months old daughter who loved balloons and dogs. She called everything 'wauwwauw' (the sound of a German dog barking), including my dad :P I was sad when these people left. It was nice talking to them and playing with their little girl. She woke me up every morning, because as soon as she woke up she started 'talking'. It was weird when I woke up without hearing 'Wauwwauw, Ball!' coming from their caravan.

I like being home again, though it means having to work for school again and worry about a friendship gone wrong. I thought I was making a smart move, but immediately after I did it, I knew I shouldn't have... Oh well, I've got my entire senior year to fix things :)

And just because I like dumping pictures in the internet: my two favorite pictures of this year's vacation. (Please ignore the disgusted look on my face, I didn't know my dad was taking a picture)

Me on a rock. Wasn't very
comfortable

Kangaroo shaped chips :)
Gotta love Germany

No Fellow Ramblers

So... I'm back!!! Eight days seems like nothing, but after six days you start to realize that if your friends aren't there with you, eight days can be a long, long time.
I guess it's a little too much to tell in one post, so I'm going to stalk you with my stories twice :) besides, there are some pictures that I want to show you, but M. and S. haven't sent them yet. Anyways, I present you the cultural part of our Rome trip!

On our first day, we flew to Rome. Most people didin't count it as a day, ssince we went to the airport at 2.30 pm and arrived at the monastery where we slept in Rome at 9 pm. So we didn't do anything that day except for sitting in a plane and watching A Very Potter Sequel with M. Nothing cultural so far, but I can show you the pic of the airplane, which I'm totally gonna do even though I know that no one cares.

Yay, our amazing plane :) Seriously, flying with people who've never flown before is funny.

So we arrived in Rome in the evening. It was dark, but we saw illuminated buildings and monuments everywhere. When we looked out of our window we saw something 'big and important'. After two minutes in Rome I started calling every building I saw 'a big and important building', because I had no idea what I was looking at.

The next morning we woke up to this amazing view (though my camera kinda ruined it):

It was really impressive to see those angels on top of that building emerging out of the fog. Then, after staring at this for way too long, we went to Vatican City! It was also our first encounter with Italian traffic and it was scary as shit. Literally everyone and everything tried to kill us out on those streets. It's a miracle that my entire class survived the walk to the Vatican.

Yup, that's me in front of that big and important building in Vatican City. It was our first full day in Rome and we climbed way too many stairs. We climbed the St. Peter and some staircase that Bernini made and more stairs that I don't even remember. After that we went to the Vatican Museum where we almost got kicked out because our teachers couldn't prove that we were a school group. Luckily M., S. and I had our schoolcards with us. In that museum we saw the Sixtine Chapel, which was crowded and we weren't able to enjoy it very much, because our feet hurt like hell.

On our second day we visited the Forum Romanum, which was pretty cool and way bigger than expected. On our way to the Forum we came past the big and important building we could see from our window. I still don't know what it was for, but it looked even better in daylight.

After that morning the Visiting of the Churches began and thus everything became a blur. The first church you visit will be remembered, but after a while you can't tell one from another anymore. I'm just going to skip past all those churches. They were really impressive and stuff, but if I can't even remember their names I'm not going to try to describe them, because I know I can't. Except for the Pantheon, but that's just because the Pantheon became our favorite place to hang out in the evenings.

We heard a tourguide tell a group of baffled tourists that you could draw an imaginary circle in this building. Really? You're not kidding? Is it true that you can draw a circle in a freaking dome? I honestly didn't know that interesting little fact.

So, churches and museums. I learned a lot. I learned that E. totally screwed up my brain, because I was making bad jokes about penises all the time, which I've never done before. It was kinda embarassing, but at some point I couldn't help myself. Especially not when I saw a statue of a woman with a dick, while all the male statues in the room had their man-parts removed. That's just wrong. I swear there must be a room somewhere in Rome filled with the dicks of all those statues, because it's a little too coincidental that none of the male statues had a dick.

Anyway, moving on. There were some more churches and museums and then... the Trevi fountain! We fond it by accident. There was this huge mob of people (not the mob, a mob) all trying to push forward, so we got curious and when we had pushed ourselves forward far enough, we found ourselves at the Trevi fountain.

One of the very few pictures in which I look close to normal :P

So we threw a coin in the fountain and made a wish, you know, all those cliche tourist stuff. I usually try to act like a local, but I couldn't resist acting like a tourist this time. And yes, I am wearing an 'I <3 Rome' hoodie.

The absolute highlight of the trip for me was the day we went to Pompei and the Vesuvius. I'd expected more of Pompei, but it was still awesome. The Vesuvius was down right amazing. We clinbed the volcano and M. and I wrote our names on some kind of information panel that clearly wasn't meant for people to write their names on it.

It was so amazing to be on top of that volcano and look down on clouds and... well, I guess you have to be there, since I can't properly describe it.

In the last two days we went to the Ara Pacis and some kind of castle-like thingy and... the Colosseum! I'd been looking forward to that for ages, but sadly it rained...

M. and I walked around with glum faces, but at least we walked around, most people stayed inside and didn't even look at the Colosseum. We took some pictures, but they look a little stupid since we couldn't smile anymore; we were too tired.

And then... we went back. I was glad we went back, I couldn't stay with some of those people for another minute. I even thanked all the ancient gods for giving me a chair next to strangers on the plane; I finally had some rest.

Rome was totally awesome. I definitely want to go there again. And next time, I'm going on my own, so I won't have to act as if I like people :P

2 Fellow Ramblers

The Wild Animals

The Sanitary Buildings

The Language Barriers

The Pink Toilet Paper

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