Backpacking (Central/Eastern) Europe

August 13th, 2008:

I stole away from work 2 days earlier than I was supposed to.
Ah, the guilt-free life of an educator.

I took the Fly Away bus to LAX on my way to meet Adam (college roomie) and companion for this upcoming backpacking adventure. We'd never traveled together so this was going to be an interesting experience... for him. Ha.

I wasn't too worried though since we did live together at one point in time. How bad could it get? Worse comes to worse, I figured we could always part ways and meet up in some other part of the country if we needed space. Well, that was my part of the plan, anyway.

--At the Fly Away Shuttle--
The bus attendants thought it amusing because when they picked up my luggage label and asked "So, what airline?" I was still looking for my itinerary and the Tourettes in me responded with an "Oh sh*t" to their inquiry. For the next several minutes, they thought it extremely hilarious to say "Is this the girl going to the 'Oh Sh*t' airline?", then proceeded to die laughing. I would've been more amused if I wasn't in a rush to get to the airport.

12:18pm:

Was hanging out at LAX, waiting for Adam, and decided I would break my non-smoking streak of about 5 yrs, to kill some time with 20-yr old Johnny, aka "Tattoo boy". He was on his last cig, so he bummed one for me (Translation: I kinda like you too). Johnny is from San Jose, had just flown in from a week of heavy partying in Arizona and kills termites for a living. I instantly liked him. We just had enough time to smoke a cigarette, then he was off to his connecting flight home.

Three and a half more hours til our flight... I am bored. Where the frick is Adam?

Finally, we boarded our connection into Frankfurt, Germany. Adam and I were looking through the Sky Mall magazine and cracking up at all the weird and useless contraptions, especially, the guy with the Hannibal Lecter-lookin face strap/oxygen mask designed to keep your neck in place while you slept. We wondered what a turn-off (turn-on?) it would be if you were married to someone that wore that thing every night.

August 14, 2008:

Just landed in Frankfurt. Lucky for us, we made our connecting flight! We are on our way to Prague...

So far, phrases I have learned that have come in handy are:

Toiletten: Toilet
Abstand Halten: Keep your distance

Achtung, baby!