[travel] Recalculating...
May. 20th, 2009 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattbellSince I have an unlimited railpass, I have some interesting options. For example, I showed up to the mountain paradise of Interlaken only to discover that most of the extreme activities I wanted to do were unavailable. None of the four bungee jump lines I wanted were operational, and they only had the beginner canyoning route. In addition, my tour at nearby CERN had to be pushed off until next week. The bungee jump was especially important to me because I wanted to use it to tie my current trip to the summer-in-Europe trip from wheni was 18. That trip was important to my life in a lot of ways, and the bungee jump symbolized how I transformed myself that summer.
I had this idea of doing the exact same experience as a different person as a way of seeing what inside me had changed. I would also be able to get the operators to take the same picture in the same place. It's the only picture from that trip that's online, so I'd be able to get the pose just right.
The premade caption: Same bungee different Matt.
However, that bungee line, like the others, was not in operation..
I thought “Hey, I just have to learn to be flexible... there are lots of other fun things to do in Interlaken.” I booked one of the less exciting canyoning trips and a paraglide. My life isn't so bad.
While drifting off to sleep at 1am, I realized, I can be really flexible. I woke up early and caught the first train out of town. I'm going to spend the next four days around the BeNeLux area, visiting a friend in Belgium and my next two Couchsurfing hosts in the Netherlands. Today I got to see Strasbourg, a small French city, and I'm currently catching my first ride on the TGV, the fastest train in Europe. So far I'm not impressed. We've had some sort of “unplanned event” and have been stationary for the last hour. If this were the Japansese Shinkansen, there'd already be a guy in white gloves handing out notes of apology and vouchers for free travel. Instead we're getting content-free updates from the conductor every five minutes.
I had this idea of doing the exact same experience as a different person as a way of seeing what inside me had changed. I would also be able to get the operators to take the same picture in the same place. It's the only picture from that trip that's online, so I'd be able to get the pose just right.
The premade caption: Same bungee different Matt.
However, that bungee line, like the others, was not in operation..
I thought “Hey, I just have to learn to be flexible... there are lots of other fun things to do in Interlaken.” I booked one of the less exciting canyoning trips and a paraglide. My life isn't so bad.
While drifting off to sleep at 1am, I realized, I can be really flexible. I woke up early and caught the first train out of town. I'm going to spend the next four days around the BeNeLux area, visiting a friend in Belgium and my next two Couchsurfing hosts in the Netherlands. Today I got to see Strasbourg, a small French city, and I'm currently catching my first ride on the TGV, the fastest train in Europe. So far I'm not impressed. We've had some sort of “unplanned event” and have been stationary for the last hour. If this were the Japansese Shinkansen, there'd already be a guy in white gloves handing out notes of apology and vouchers for free travel. Instead we're getting content-free updates from the conductor every five minutes.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-19 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 02:47 am (UTC)