Hamburg to Paris

I arrived in Hamburg to the company of an old friend from Germany named Vanessa, who has also been a pen pal of mime for years. She has far better English than I, and speaks with an Australian accent so it indeed felt a bit like Australian home in Hamburg.  She made some delicious meals and I got to meet her boyfriend and a slew of her smart, hilarious German friends who made me feel the most welcome. We spent a few super relaxed days wandering Hamburg, complete with Ferry rides, beers on the beach, The world's largest Train set world and tiny world. Seriously, it's like three floors, complete with an airport, planes flying in and out and day turning to night, with the most famous cities in the world and at least a million miniatures. It's a dorks paradise and so worth a visit if you ever stumble through Hamburg.

 I love having people who love there homes show them to me, it comes from such a different place, and Vanessa loves her Hamburg, so she was a perfect guide to have for my few short days there.  In the evening we ate yummy home cooked food, drank wine and talked about the million and one things that had happened sense we last saw each other. Travel time is such a stranger faster thing than stationary time. Russia felt like a million years worth of experience, and before I could blink I was leaving my wonderful Australian/German mum and the lovely crew of Hamburg on a 14 hour overnight bus ride to Paris.

Let me tell you a thing or if you have ever done a number of long overnight buses, all and all they are not bad.  Time moves quickly if you can sleep anywhere like I can and It cost me 9 euros, I could not complain. The company was called minibus, it was clean and decent and had a phone charger, I was golden.  I sped through the night dozing and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, a book on Buddhism and Wild a nice trifecta of interesting to dabble between.  My goal is to read two books a month, as of this point I had only finished a small collection of Yates, but I finished Wild around 7 in the morning as the sun was coming up on the rolling hills of the french countryside. It was such a good story of travel, for those who have not read it, its an incredible story of a woman getting over death and hiking the ACT. It is more a story about managing and surviving when life is hard, I loved that.  I have been thinking over my travels how much sometimes its just about getting through difficult things, we don't have to do them well, hell we can do them poorly, but as long as we are honest and mindful, we will learn and draw alot from it.

I stumbled into mid day Paris, tired, smelly, but so excited to be re-united with the one the only Emily Freeman.  For those of you who do not know this rock star of a human, she is my sista from another mista, a dear friend, Vermonter and NEYT groupie from days of old.  She is also a wine lover, incredible cook, and silly human being.  She is among those folks I can talk about anything in the world too.  We met with friends of hers in a lovely little french cafe, and what promised to be a chill night, turned into most likely the only french Cafe late night Coolio dance party happening in Paris. Drinking wine and smoking cigarettes on the streets at 2 am, wearing a red clown nose with Gangsters Paradise on repeat for the fourth time that evening, Welcome to Paris ya god damn clown.