Elephants Are Big, Reeeaaallll Big

I may have had a mini heart attack. Kristen saw her life flash before her eyes. All while hanging out with a bunch of elephants whom all of the sudden decided to start a fight with each other while we were standing next to them. This is Kristen’s story.
　
We thought it would be a good idea to visit an elephant sanctuary today. We heard stories about it from others, saying it was “life changing”. People told us that they had “left a piece of their heart there”. Awww, elephants are cute and gentle, right? Sure, they can be gentle. But they also weigh 10,000 pounds and have the capability to crush you with one stomp of their gigantic foot. After learning a bit about the elephants, and receiving a two minute “safety lesson”, we got to feed the elephants. There was a small barrier, however, and we were somewhat above the elephants, so although they technically could have pulled us off the feeding dock with their enormous trunks, there appeared to be no real threat.

Yeah, the elephants seemed pretty darn cute. Then, we left the safety of the dock and were lead out to the river. With the elephants. Wild elephants. As we stood there with maybe thirty other people, more and more elephants began entering the river, coming closer and closer to us, and freaking me the fuck out. All I kept thinking was, “What the fuck are we doing out here? Thirty elephants, each weighing ten thousand pounds, and we’re walking next to them. That ain’t right”. I tried to hide my fear as everyone else seemed to be having the time of their lives, splashing and touching the elephants in the river as if they were playful dogs.

The attempt to hide the fear quickly came to a close as we heard one of the elephants loudly trumpet, and our teeny Thai leader yell, “Over here, come over here!”, as she ran away from the group of elephants. Fear in her eyes meant, ohhhhh fuck. As we ran towards our leader, the elephants became more riled up, trumpeting and stomping their feet. My life literally flashed before my eyes. I could see the headlines, “Stupid American tourist gets stomped on in wild elephant habitat…they had it comin’.” This is not a zoo, man, this is a wild fucking sanctuary filled with wild fucking elephants. Who are angry. And we are within five feet of them. We are going to die. What a shitty way to end our trip…..these are the thoughts that were going through my head. I needed a bag to hyperventilate into. Tiffany tried to remain calm and offered to hold my hand. I gratefully squeezed as my heart continued to pound through my chest. Just when we thought the elephants had calmed down, we heard a few of them start to grunt. A deep, incredibly disturbing grunt that could mean nothing but doom. In the distance, we could see another elephant heading toward us. “This is it, we are dead”. Our teeny Thai leader reassured us that the elephants were just moving towards each other, not us. Suuuureee. She told us that they were trumpeting to communicate to one another. Mmmm hmmmm, keep talking, Teeny. We stood together, a short distance from the elephants for what seemed like an eternity, when finally our leader gave us the word that it was safe to walk back to the dock. I didn’t let go of Tiff’s hand as we made the trek past the elephants into safety. We were told that a new elephant had just been introduced to the sanctuary yesterday, and apparently the other elephants weren’t havin’ it. Perrrhhappps it wasn’t the best idea to introduce this new elephant to the others when thirty people were in death crushing distance. Or, more reasonably, perhaps we humans shouldn’t have left the dock at all. I went with number two, and stayed at a safe distance for the rest of the day.

Just when we thought the drama was over, as we were standing peacefully on a viewing platform just above the elephants, we heard sounds of chaos. Branches snapping, pop, pop, popping, like a gunshot, and frantic Thai words being yelled out to the other workers. The elephants below us began to grunt and trumpet, and we suddenly realized that a domesticated elephant, one that had been trained to give “rides” to humans, had escaped from its camp and entered the sanctuary. The elephant, with the seat and harness still attached (luckily without any people in it), came stomping through the fence, breaking it, and anything else in its path.

It quickly crossed the river, and ran into nearby farmland. The elephants of the sanctuary were not pleased with this intruder, and made it clear that it would not be welcome in their home. Can you IMAGINE if that would have happened while we were “playing” in the river with them? Ohhhhhhhh, hell no. It was yet another reminder to me that humans and the largest walking animal on Earth do not need to “play” together. We were later told that in the 15 years that the sanctuary has been around, nothing like this has ever happened before. Oh, what a great day to be here, right?

Drama aside, the sanctuary was actually a wonderful experience. (Honestly). Lek, the founder, began the sanctuary in 1995, with only two rescued elephants. There are currently thirty-six elephants that happily reside in the sanctuary. Lek purchases them from their owners, who have abused and mistreated the animals for years. Some are totally blind, some have broken legs and broken backs, and many remain mentally and emotionally traumatized. Lek is giving them a second chance at life in this sanctuary, with no fences or barriers. The elephants are free to roam, but they stick around for the daily feedings. The camp costs $250,000 a year to run, and is funded completely by eco-tourism. So while I still felt more comfortable watching the elephants at a distance, I was content in knowing that I had contributed to sustaining their freedom.

Ever Been Stuck on a Plane?

Famous last words from Tiffany while sitting in the airport tonight: I’m probably going to jinx myself, but I’ve been pretty lucky that I’ve never been on a flight that got completely cancelled, where I had to fight lines of people to try to get on a new one.

Present moment: I am trapped on a plane. Trapped I say. And I might just kill somebody.

So. Today’s itinerary was supposed to be: Berlin to London (Stansted), London (Heathrow) to Dehli, to Bangkok - a solid 24 hours of traveling. Brutal. Hot weather awaits me though, so I am prepared to make the best of it.

Well, it was snowing and the first flight was delayed, but no big deal because we had plenty of time in between flights. Then we were at Heathrow. This flight is delayed a bit because they had to “clean it.” Okay. We have a 2:45 layover in Dehli, so I can handle a 30 minute postponement. It’s easy to make up that time in the air. We board around 10pm (our flight was supposed to take off at 9:30). Then we start backing out. The plane is making crazy noises. We stop. For a while. They announce that we are having mechanical difficulties and that we have to pull back in for someone to look at it. They say it’s going to take a half hour. Then an hour. Then they serve us snacks. Then we get dinner - read: we’re not taking off anytime soon so get comfortable.

Three hours later they announce that ‘regrettably’ they can not fix the plane, so we are not going to fly out tonight and that it was a fuel problem and that safety is their number one concern, blah blah blah. Okay, okay. I’d rather not fly then have my plane blow up mid-air. It’s 1am.

Deep breath.

P.s. This means that we are missing our connection to Bangkok. But wait. It gets better.

Theeeeennn, they say that they’ve called all of the hotels in London for us and everything is booked because of the weather. It flurried today. There should be no reason that all of the hotels should still be booked because of the flight delays/cancellations from yesterday. THEN they tell us that because it is so late, and Heathrow is essentially closed, and immigration won’t let us hang out in the airport, that we have to stay the night ON THE PLANE. Whaaaaattt??? I’m not kidding. We are not allowed to get off the plane… until sometime maybe between SIX and EIGHT in the morning. Maybe. Maybe, because they have no idea how long it will take to fix the plane. People are (rightfully) pissseeeddd off. I’m taking deep breaths - of recycled air.

Then they made an announcement that if you live in London you could go home and call back at 6am to see what’s going on. Strange. Then they changed that time to 8am. I just wanted to sleep in the terminal and they said no. Why would I want to sleep on a plane that is having it’s fuel-something-or-another fixed? Now, I understand that things happen. And I’m trying to be calm. However, the man in charge of this shit-show should jump off a bridge. He is clearly not telling us the entire story and is beating around the bush with his stupid answers. For being in charge, he doesn’t know shit. I want to punch him.

Deep breath.

Back to the fixing-of-the-plane. So. This flight is not cancelled. Only delayed. Delayed indefinitely. In a roundabout way, he basically said that the plan is to spend the night trying to fix the problem. If they do, we get to fly. If they don’t then they’ll try to put us on other flights. Buuuttt, there is only one flight to Dehli a day. And tomorrow’s is full. And it’s not until 9:30 at night. And they don’t fly directly to Bangkok. And there are no employees in the airport right now to help anyone try to get on a different flight. That is why we are sitting here. Still. At 3:30am. I’m going to be stuck on here for over TWELVE hours. Is this legal? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? I feel like this should be a story on CNN, about human cruelty.

I’m phone-less, internet-less, and probably will get sick from being on this plane for so long. Dammittttt, the lady in front of us and behind us are hacking up lungs.

P.s.s. Even if they do get this plane fixed, why the F would I want to fly on it for 8+ hours halfway around the world? I hope the don’t fix it so I can fly on something else.

Stay tuned.


Update 4:29am: Kristen is sleeping on the floor, in the aisle. Oh, and some jackass keeps smoking in the bathroom and no one is stopping him. I’m gonna freak.

Update 6:30am: They turned on the lights and let people going to Bombay & Bangkok get off the plane. Hooray!! We had no idea where we were going, but we were getting of that plane. That’s all that mattered at that point. Then we were told to go to baggage claim, go through customs, and go to the Air India desk so they can put us on another plane, to somewhere. Literally - somewhere. Nobody knows….

Okay, by boarding the evil plane, technically we left London, meaning we had to go back through immigration and get our passport stamped, yet again, in order to access the airport to get another flight. Thankfully the few of us in a hurry were whisked to the front of the line, where we had to try to explain to the agent why we were entering London, if we just left. Too many questions. It was reeaalll confusing for them.

Update 7:00am: At baggage claim. Watching the bags go round and round. Ours is no where to be seen. Okay, now the belt just broke. There will be a delay in getting our bags. Nice.

Got bags. Ran to ticket counter.

Update 7:45am: First we were told that the best they could do was a flight to Delhi at noon, then sit in the airport for 13 hours until we could get a flight to Bangkok. We’d be losing another entire travel day. Then they said that we could take a flight to Bombay at 8:45am, have a one hour layover, then head to Bangkok. Okaaaaay. Me likey. Problem: Flight is in less than one hour…

Update 8:22am: Finally got checked in. Ran to security. Ran to the gate. The farthest gate by the way. Literally the last one at the end of the terminal. They held the plane and now we’re boarding.

Update 9:53am: Still haven’t left. Toilet is apparently clogged. We were supposed to leave at 8:45, but instead I’m staring at Heathrow crew members with hoses sucking out shit from the toilets. Awesome. And, mysterious air freshener is being sprayed throughout the cabin. If we all pass out, I’m blaming it on that. We finally leave sometime around 10:20am - an hour and a half late. We only have a one-hour layover in Mumbai. Not good.

Update 2:15pm: Mid-air announcement - A passenger needs medical attention. If anyone can help, please come to the flight deck.

Update 5:14pm: We find out that we get free wine. Excelleeeennntttt. We just got reeeealll happy. Keep 'em coming.

Update midnight: Landing late… have 25 minutes to make connecting flight. Stay tuned, yet again.

I’m sorry - we didn’t have 25 minutes. Apparently Mumbai’s time difference is 4 and a half hours, so we had negative-five minutes to catch the plane. Awesome. Thankfully we hear that they were holding the plane for us, but we were told to cut security lines and run. Here we go again.

We made the flight. It left late too, but whatever. We are so tired.

We left our hostel in Berlin at 7:15am on November 30^th.
We got to our hostel in Bangkok at 11:15am on December 2^nd.
Almost 48 hours of traveling.

Bedtime.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Germany. What can I say? It’s Germany. And it’s winter. Think gray skies and freakin’ cold temps. I wasn’t really sure what to expect in Berlin, but everyone I talked to about it loved it, except for our friend Christian. He wins. Berlin wasn’t all that fantastic. EXCEPT for the Christmas markets. I loved them.

We still had a great time. It just wasn’t my most fav. The first night was the best. We went to see Chromeo, a fantastic band I saw in Chicago over the summer and fell in love with, who just happened to be playing while we were in town. They put on a great show, and even though we had to wait in line in the freezing cold for over an hour to get in, it was well worth it. Gotta love Berlin’s clubs.

We saw the Berlin Wall - which is covered with art & graffiti, something we orginally thought was the Berlin Wall,  some Christmas markets, ate some sausages, drank some Hefeweizen… and that’s pretty much about it.

Oh, at this market, we found a one-legged, pregnant Barbie doll for sale! So creepy, but it made us laugh real hard.

Berlin was our last stop in Europe.  We had such a fantastic time there.  Now, off to Thailand!

Thanksgiving in Prague

We took an Orangeways bus from Krakow to Prague. It’s like our Megabus. Cheap and comfy. We ended up spending Thanksgiving here. Even though we were away from home, we had a darn good time. The plan was find a bar that was showing football - NFL football, not the soccer crap - and to make hand-print-turkeys out of construction paper. That we did. Google is magical. Kristen found a few places online and we checked a couple of them out that morning. One of them was showing the games, serving a turkey dinner, and taking reservations. Done and done. We ended up meeting some guys at our hostel who tagged along, then since the bar was crowded, shared a table with a few other people and we had a blast. Even the arts & crafts session was a hit. People got creative.

Oh, and the dinner was actually really good. They gave us a huge plate of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, vegetables & croquettes.

It probably sounds like all we do is eat. It’s kind of true. What can I say though? We love food. We usually go to a grocery store the first day in city and buy enough to make most of our meals at the hostel, then try to find a good recommendation for a meal in each city. So far, those have been sooo good, and sooo much fun. Prague’s tasty meal was at Café Louvre. Recommended by a friend and two of the receptionists at our place, we had what I consider my third fav meal of the trip: pea soup with garlic, mashed potatoes, & bacon, an avocado tomato mozzarella salad, then potato gnocchi with salmon. It was delicious!

We spent a lot of time walking around the city, surprise surprise. It is super beautiful. We skipped out on the free walking tour here because we were scarred by the ones in Poland. As with every other city, there were lots of cathedrals, castles, etc. We saw the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra one night, which was ah-mazing.

Pierogi, Vodka & Poland

I really really really liked Krakow. This city was prettier than Budapest. It was a bit cold though, especially on one of the three-hour walking tours we did… that sucked so bad Kristen and I left in the middle of it. We tried a second one the following day that was much much better. (We got to see some places where Schindler’s List was filmed.) A different day was spent doing laundry at a fantastic place that was laundromat/café/bar. Yes, if you wanted, you could order drinks while doing your laundry. That night we hit up a jazz bar.

Our hostel was great. Voted Best Hostel in Europe, it was basically like having our own apartment, furnished by IKEA, with a flat screen tv. It even came with free meals - fantastic.
The food here might have been what made this city. The pierogi were ah-mazing. And we found this restaurant, U Babci Maliny, full of locals, that is competing with our Il Latini meal in Florence as ‘best meal so far.’ We had amazing soup called Zurek: it was a sour rye soup with mashed potatoes and sausage in it; cheese pierogi, Hungarian potato pancakes (Placki po wegiersku), and a fruit boiled water. Everything was soooooo so so good. So good, we went back the next night.

We embarked on a vodka tasting one night that was organized through our hostel. It was a bit of a disappointment, with he highlight being a shot they lit on fire. (sarcastic oooooohhhh, aaaahhhhh) We had our own (better) vodka tasting the next night. There was a bar called Tiffany’s that I begged Kristen to go to. And they had a drink called Drink Tiffany: It was wodka cranbeery (yes, that‘s how it was spelled), Bailey’s, Malibu & pineapple juice. Kristen made fun of it. I typically would have too, but I liked the name. I made her drink it. She loved it.

Zubrowka vodka might be my most favorite vodka, ever… or at least, it’s a tie with the cucumber vodka that they make at Beat Kitchen in Bucktown. You mix the Zubrowka with apple juice and it’s to die for. Kristen emailed Binny‘s to see if they carried it and they do! We tried a honey wodka which was interesting, but I wouldn’t have it again. They also carried a vodka that was 95% alcohol - yes percent.  Not proof.  They apparently put in tea. We didn’t want to die, so we stayed away from it.

The HUF

We opted for a 13 hour overnight train from Venice to Budapest. It was the quickest, the cheapest, and we wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel that night. The train itself looked to be from the 1970’s, but it was comfy and we each got our own 2^nd class double seat on which to sprawl out. Yeeeah, I said seat. We were too cheap to get the 1^st class sleeper beds. All in all it was a good trip. Much better then I thought it would be. We even got in on time, after a short delay where we all thought the train broke down because it was making some crazy noises. The only qualm I had with the trip is that because we passed through Slovenia & Croatia, we were woken up four times by “Passport Control” to check & stamp passports (yes, they stamped us four times), and numerous other times by police to check our tickets. As Kristen said, “It feels like we‘re heading to Commie-town man“…

Alas, we made it.

We are finally done with the Euro, for now. And, thank gawd for that because it destroyed my bank account. According to books, specifically Rick Steves, we are now on the HUF, or forint. Therefore, prices are listed in HUF or ft. Assuming they meant the same thing, and not knowing what a HUF was, when we asked how much something was, we’d ask, “How many “huffs”?” Sometimes we’d get an answer, but mostly we’d get strange looks. The kicker was when we were paying for our hostel, and Kristen asked how many “huffs” it was. The girl was so confused, so Kristen repeated herself. The girl had no idea what she was saying; “Hoof? Hoff?” Kristen tried saying, “forint”, and the girl understood. Kris thought maybe her pronunciation was off, and didn’t think twice about using “HUF”.

I’m not going to lie, we would giggle every time we’d say the word because a.) it sounds funny, and b.) we had no clue what it stood for. Apparently one night at dinner I jokingly said to Kristen, “I wonder what “huff” is short for, maybe huffington?” Again, we laughed reeeeal hard because obviously I just made that word up. Even spell check is trying to get me to fix it right now. Anyway, by day three we were still calling it that, and later found ourselves on a free walking tour of the city. About 2/3rds of the way through, our tour guide was telling a story and says something about something costing x-amount of “Hungarian Forints.” It clicked. I looked at Kristen and said, “Oh my god… HUF. Hungarian. Forint.” We stared at each other like we were nuts then laughed harder right then and there than we have this entire trip. I’m pretty sure the entire tour group thought we were insane. All I kept thinking after that was what I would think of a foreigner calling the USD (US Dollar) an: oo’-said.

Budapest was fantastic. We liked it enough that we ended up spending an extra two days there. We saw most of the main sights while on our walking tour. We spent one evening at the Opera - for $2.50. Even though it was sung in German, had Hungarian subtitles, and we had to look on Wikipedia when we got home to see what it was actually about; it was pretty to listen to. The next day was spent at the Szechenyi Baths - basically pools that are naturally heated from thermal springs. It was pretty amazing. It was so cold out, but the water was so warm, and there were waterfalls & jets, and, it was just fantastic…minus the large, burly, extremely hairy, Hungarian men wearing speedos.

Of course we had fantastic Hungarian food. There was a huge Market super close to our place that sold lots of authentic goodies. We had some amazing goulash, stuffed cabbage, some sort of cauliflower lasagna, this fried doughy thing that I don’t know the name of. I don’t even remember what else, but it was all tasty. Hungarians are big into hot wine. They just heat up red wine and add some spices - usually cinnamon & cloves - and serve it. Perfect for cold weather. Their beer wasn’t too bad. It just made for a crappy hangover. I’m more excited for the Czech beers in a few days.

Our hostel & the people were what made this city though. Our hostel was small - only slept 25 - but it felt like home. The employees were fantastic. They karaoked with us, (at a cowboy and Indian “exclusive dress up” karaoke party ), cooked us breakfast, & gave us superb recommendations - for Budapest and cities beyond. The people staying there were pretty darn cool too. Without sounding too dorky, it was a little sad leaving them.

Capisce?

We took the train from Florence on the 14th - a quick three hour ride - and spent a day and a half in Venice. We sat by these cute little Italian kids on the train who were apparently just learning how to speak English, because they kept asking us questions like: What's your name?  How old are you? What's your favorite color? Do you have pets? etc.  It was pretty fun-slash-interesting trying to talk to them, being that we didn't know a lick of Itailan.  We had to refer to my Italian Phrasebook which wasn't all that helpful.  The little 4 year old kept saying things in Italian, then looking at me like I was nuts because I wasn't answering, and just couldn't comprehend the fact that I did not capisce.

We stayed in a cute hostel about five minutes from the train station right in the middle of the city.  We had our own room there which was a nice change.  There wasn't a whole lot to do in Venice, but we saw a few sights and ended up taking a gondola ride, which was actually kind of fun!