On The Road

Wow....where to begin. First of all I am at a library in Amsterdam and it is sort of hard to type because the keyboard is a little different and  I am using a mac which is always kind of funky for a PC girl like myself. So I have been traveling for... 7 days now and it's been pretty fun.  Missing our train to Amstersm was a lowpoint, but we were able to get onto a later one without problems. Ok...Paris sucks ass. I have never felt more depressed than I did in Paris. If I wasn't almost getting scammed by gypsies I was fending off unwelcome (extremely unwelcome) advances from sleazy men who spoke little English and probably wanted to kill me. If I wasn't hearing homeless women begging for money on the street,  I was seeing homeless people so deep into their addictions that one man sat all day in his wheelchair in front of a grocery store drinking half pint after half pint of vodka. If I wasn't fearing for my life in my hotel, which ironically was named Hotel Perfect, I was walking past pimps on the world's biggest road full of sex shops, strip clubs, peep shows, and God knows what else. Needless to say I was glad to get out of there. City of Lights, my ass. And it looked so much nicer when Whitney and Lauren went there on The Hills.  Caen was cool. We were able to take a 5 hour tour of the landing beaches at Normandy. Because the beaches cover 60 miles, we weren't able to see them all, but we were able to see Juno (British) and Omaha (U.S.) and the U.S.  cemetery. Omaha was the bloodiest beach and we were able to walk down on the beach so I got some sand. It was also raining for a little bit before we got there so when we got on the beach there was a beautiful full rainbow over the Channel. Even though it was at high tide (the Allies landed at low tide) it was an amazing experience and one of those things I wanted to do before I died. Which is ironic considering the beach was the last thing that some young men saw. The cemetery was awe-inspiring and seeing almost 10,000 graves is so much more captivating and emotional than any book or movie about World War II can ever be. Though we could only stay at the cemetery for about 45 minutes I was able to see the chapel, and the memorial as well as walk among the graves. As I was walking I read each name I saw to myself so that those men (and boys) could be remembered by someone, even if just for a moment. It was a humbling experience to see the names of soldiers who died at 20 (my age) or younger and it made me more appreciative of the things I have in my life, especially because the things I have now, those guys never got to experience. Microwaves, computers, the Internet. I have so many things they would not have even imagined and I do things they will never get to do. All these men and women who served and died really wanted to see was the war come to an end so they could go home. I hope that someday that happens. I hope that someday the ideals that they fought and died for will come back to the U.S. Just the thought of it all is completely staggering. 

I found a Newsweek in Caen and was reading all the political crap. It makes me so tired sometimes. I just want to shake some people and say WAKE UP. Look around you, look at the world. People are talking about this election in London, Paris, everywhere. And now I am beginning to hope. My asbentee ballot is in the mail marked with Obama's name. The polls say Obama is ahead. They are posters of Obama in the London underground stations. I had hope before when George Bush was re-elected. But this is a different kind of hope. It's the hope of desperation. The hope that is so broken that the only way to verbalize it is to say "God, don't let it happen again." With less than two weeks left, I am still hoping. 

Well it's getting late and I am getting hungry. I have no money so I should probably find an ATM. I will blog later about specific events on this little vaca later. Tomorrow we have a sort of full day buying sex toys and weed so I'll blog again when I get back. Mackenzie and I have also been video blogging during our trip so those will be posted when I get home (London) as well. I would say goodbye in Dutch, but I don't know how to pronounce adlaaowersgyurtz.