Couchsurfing in London

On my past visits to London, I usually filled the time by grabbing beers with coworkers and checking out the outdoor markets. I would also occasionally go out with friends I had made there if there was a part or meet up going on. Josh had strongly recommended that I look into couchsurfing, and I had heard from other people as well that it is a great way to meet travelers and learn about other cultures.

So I decided to give couchsurfing a shot. I went to a "language exchange" meeting at a bar in the City of London, and although I only spoke Spanish for about two minutes with a very patient Spaniard, I met some really cool (English-speaking) people. See the North American photo below:

I attended several meetings after the language exchange and met plenty of interesting people both traveling and living in London. I even hosted a very nice Canadian for a couple of nights and showed her around town. We had some amazing Thai food and saw Billy Elliot (the play about a Scottish son-of-a-miner who wants to be a dancer, but whose father insists that he box). It was good fun.

I'm glad I gave couchsurfing a shot. I now attend the events regularly.

Sweden

The first stop on my "grand working holiday" was a small town in the middle of Sweden called "Norrköping". It took about 30 hours to get there from New Orleans- the longest I have ever traveled continuously- but the moment I stepped off that shit Ryanair plane and saw the Swedish landscape, I quickly forgot about all of the time I spent on planes and in airports. I stayed with my friend Molly and her family, who took excellent care of me. Her family fed me lots of good home cooking and taught me lots of interesting things about Swedish culture. We had a lot of different foods- some Swedish, some Goan- things like: smoked fish, pickled fish, hard boiled eggs, caviar, swedish cheese, prawn cheese, fish paste- much of which sounds a bit bizarre, but is surprisingly tasty. Ok, well I wasn't quite hardcore enough to enjoy the prawn cheese, but at least I gave it a shot.

Some of Molly's family from Goa was visiting while I was there, so I also got to learn a bit about Goan culture. Her cousin Rashel is our age and it was her first trip to the western world, so it was interesting to see the way that perceived European and American cultures.

The house where we were staying was in what I guess is a suburb of Norrköping. I hadn't really been to any houses in Europe that weren't connected to other houses, so it was cool to have a yard where we could chill out and toss the frisbee with Evert.

Molly took me on a few nature hikes through the Swedish countryside, which was some of the most incredible scenery I have ever seen. There were green fields, and the sky was an amazing blue- it almost looked like the clouds were painted on it. The woods were mostly pine trees (I think) and there were wild berries growing everywhere- we ate blueberries and raspberries right off of the bushes. There was also a nice lake nearby that Evert likes to swim in, so we took him down a few times to fetch sticks.

When the weekend came, Molly and her friend, CC, took Rashel and I into town for some good times. The first evening, we went out for a couple of drinks which then turned into a night of discobowling and dancing. When CC told the bouncer that we were visiting from Goa and New Orleans, he hooked us up fat with free admission and the rest was history.

Saturday was our "big" night out; we started by having a few drinks at a CC's house- with ~$10 beers, only the richest can afford to not pre-game in Scandanavia. We then headed down to a "prominent" club in Norrköping where we danced the night away to some of the latest pop hits and classic euro-mashups. One of the things that fascinates me the most about Europe is the club culture. You'd think it's grossly exaggerated in movies like Eurotrip, but to me it doesn't feel that National Lampoon was too far off. After the club closed down, we took a cab back to the lake by Molly's house to watch the sunrise. I was on a mission to see the sunrise while in Scandinavia, and everyone else was down for it as well. Since we were going to a lake, it only seemed appropriate to go for a swim. Surprisingly, it wasn't too difficult to convince everyone else that it was a good idea too, especially since I was the first to go in :) But I quickly learned that there's nothing quite as sobering as a swim in a frigid Swedish lake. Despite the ridiculous amount of alcohol that I had consumed that night, the following morning I woke up feeling like a million bucks.. I'll have to go for a.m. swims more often.

I only had a week there, and that time passed quicker than I had hoped- but it was a week well spent. To anyone who has never been to Scandinavia, I would highly recommend saving up a bunch of money and going there. The land is beautiful, the people are beautiful, and the quality of life is unlike any that I have ever seen. I had an incredible time there with my friends and it is a place that I won't soon forget.

Washington DC

The first destination on my tour of the northeast was Washington DC. I guess many people consider D.C. "the south", but when you're from New Orleans, anything that's not Florida or Mexico is technically "the north". Like most people, the only time I had been before was on a trip with my parents in high school. It was a much different experience seeing it with friends who live there.

When I arrived, Jacob greeted me at the airport, then gave me the grand tour of Old Town(e?) where the only signs of life were some Abercrombie & Fitch-like douchebags that came stumbling out of a bar, causing a ruckus in the street. The buildings were very charming, but there wasn't much of a nightlife on a monday night, which probably makes it a nice place to live.

For the first part of the trip, I worked a lot and ended up hanging out in Old Town with Jacob a lot. We hit up the Stardust restaurant and lounge for happy hour one evening, spent a lot of time catching up and shared stories of life, and even did little P90X together (it was not gay at all).

One evening, I rented a bike from a shop down by the river. When the guy working there saw the address on my drivers license, we ended up shooting the shit about The Meters performance at Jazzfest for a bit, and he gave me a pretty good deal. Jacob and I rode down the Mount Vernon Trail, into the city where we checked out a few monuments- most were overflowing with school kids, so we didn't hang around any one for too long. I did try to take in some of the quotes from the monuments. Since I don't have a camera, I tried to commit them to memory, but I've already forgotten almost all of them. At the end of our bike ride, Jacob and I grabbed some dinner and drinks at Eastern Market. The bugs had gotten so bad at that time, that we just decided to "metro" it back to Alexandria afterwards.

That Friday evening, I met up with Lil Jay, his mom, Kristen, Mike, and Todd at Jazz in the garden. Although, I didn't pay attention to the music, I had a really good time catching up with everyone, and the sites were really good :) After the show in the garden, Todd, Mike, and I hit up a bar on U street for some drinks. On the way there, some really shady guy decided to tail us for a good 20 minutes and try to sell us "double stacks", which I learned is sort of like a drug sandwich. For some reason he couldn't take "no" for an answer, so Todd got the brilliant idea to duck into Starbucks for a latte. He persisted, but was eventually unable to cope with the sounds of Natasha Bedingfield and espresso machine, and silently retreated. Todd, you're a fucking genius.

The next day, I met up with Lil Jay and Kristen at a margarita party in capitol hill (apparently themed parties are really popular in the D.C. area). I traveled to the party by myself and got extremely lost, but fortunately ran into a nice couple in the street that had a sombrero and bottle of tequila, and lead me the rest of the way. I'm not much of a margarita fan, myself, but I had a great time hanging out and met a lot of really cool people.

While in D.C., I had heard a rumor that the female-to-male ratio in the city is 4:1, but I guess the 2000 census must not have picked up on this. Regardless, I met a lot of very interesting and amiable people. I'm not sure if D.C. is the sort of place where I could see myself living, but I'll certainly be up for visiting again in the future.

my first entry

It took me about a week to finally sit down and jot down some stuff about my trip to DC. I have never "blogged" before, but I'm sure I'll soon become accustomed to taking time aside periodically to write some things down about my daily goings-ons. I guess I've never really given this a shot before for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't read many books, so writing doesn't seem quite right, and 2) I'm not sure that I really have anything that interesting to talk about on a regular basis. But what the hell- I'm all about trying new things at the moment.

I've recently started traveling, beginning with the north eastern USA. I hope to make it to Europe, then who knows where. Hopefully I'll encounter an interesting thing or two to write about.