Start of the Adventure

Day 1 Denver > Chicago > Warsaw, Poland > Istanbul, Turkey
Today was a lot of flying.  18 hours and 3 stops, but my 8 hour flight from Chi-town to Poland was pretty legit.  Watched Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight rises. Then I landed in Poland.  At the airport I walked out of the bathroom the same time some dude did.  We both double did a double check and it turned out he went into the women's restroom! Ha, what an idiot tourist!!!! 
Finally made it to Turkey.  I got change from Euros to Turkish money to ride a train at the airport.  The security guard helped me figure it out, but I think he screwed me over.  I have some cash, change, and a random red token that looks
like it came from Chucky Cheese.






 

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Day 2 Istanbul

Ha, I was hoping to just kind of ease into traveling but this first day of a new country was near disaster.  After landing in Turkey (day 1 and 2 kind of blend together), the plan was to meet Tanner at the airport since his flight landed a couple hours after mine.  Turns out there is 2 airports in Istanbul and we didn't realize it.  We don't a have phone so we have no way of contacting each other besides messaging on Facebook.  So you figured it out,  we flew into different airports.  Not knowing this, I waited for a couple hours at the Airport expecting to see Tanner.  Finally I just decided maybe we will meet me at the hostel.  This is where the "fun" begins.  Istanbul is a city of 22 millions people and is spread out like 3 times the size of Chicago.  That alone makes it hard to figure out where you are going.  So I took a train a few stops, then went to a coffee shop to get Wi-Fi and see if I could communicate with Tanner.  Had no luck so got back on the train.  My train card I bought didn't work and some local who was tired of waiting behind me, graciously paid for my fare.  As I am waiting for the train I notice something weird.  The map route was different and there were no tracks on the ground.  Turns out I'm getting on a bus instead of a train.  Ah what the heck lets see where this goes.   30 minutes later I'm on the other side of Istanbul.  I stop at coffee shops looking at maps and actually think I'm pretty close, but unfortunately I'm not.   I am lost in a foreign country!  Hours go by.  I try to get a taxi to drive me to the hostel but they don't even understand how to get around this damn city.  Finally just past midnight I get a taxi driver who knows where he's going and drops me off near the location.  Another hour of searching/walking around and finally I am at the location!  Tanner is waiting on the top floor balcony laughing his ass off.  He had a similar getting lost experience as well.  In all his different cities he has been in, Istanbul was the worst he has been lost in.  Oh yeah, and his bag never made it here from his flight to Israel.  Other than that things are great :).  

Day 3 Istanbul
I was dead tired from the past couple days and slept until like 3pm.  Then Tanner and I went and threw the football around in some random alley.  I almost go ran over by cars while running routes but made a sweet one handed catch then ran into a tree.
Conversation while eating dinner.

Me: So yeah I'm glad I bought that water bottle.  I don't want to have to spend money on water here.
Tanner: Have you been drinking tap water?
Me: Yeah, why?
Tanner. Ha, you're not supposed to drink that.  Even the locals don't drink it.  Have you been drinking it the whole time?
Me: Ah, crap.

 

 

Routes n' Shout Outs

I am leaving tomorrow to Turkey and this will be the last pre-trip blog.  We have a change of plans in our itinerary.  Actually, we never had a schedule in the first place.  Tanner's Aunt wants to meet us for a week in September and Tanner's buddy, we'll call him "CY" because he's an Iowa State fan (super lame!), wants to hang out with us for a month in October.  Now we have to get from Turkey to Italy in the matter of about 3 weeks (Route #1).  Then CY will meet us in Italy (Route #2)

Route #1

Istanbul, Turkey > Greece or Bulgaria >  Macedonia > Albania > Montenegro (ha, I never heard of it either) > Bosnia > Croatia > Slovenia > Italy

Then we will hang out in Italy for about a week or so with his Aunt.  Hopefully she pays for everything...just kidding ( kind of :) ).

Route #2

Italy > Switzerland > Germany> Amsterdam, Netherlands> Belgium/ France/ England/Ireland

CY will likely meet us in Italy, then we will head to Germany for a lot of October.  That's right, we're going to Octoberfest! 

Basically that is about the first 2 months of the trip.  We still plan on making it to every country in Europe so we will be backtracking to hit up countries that we may have missed along the way.  If anyone wants to meet up or has a friend we can stay with, send me a Facebook message. :)

Shout-outs

Thanks to anyone that bought a tie!  I sold a total of 146 ties in 3 weeks and that money is going to shelter, food, and extracurricular activities for the trip.  Also big-ups to anyone that donated! I had one person with a huge donation!  He will be receiving an 8x10 "Crushing Europe" autograph photo.

Let the fun begin!  If this blog blows up then I am going to buy the rights to crushingeurope.com.

Ideas and Updates

In this 2nd blog I'm brainstorming ideas and updates of the trip.  As I mentioned in the first blog, I am heading to Europe on August 29th and traveling with my buddy Tanner. My excitement level is through the roof!  I can't sleep at night and I have dreams about people speaking in languages that don't even exist. I was going to talk about what I am planning on taking on the trip but then realized you guys don't really care how many pairs of socks I bring, so lets get this party started...!!!

Ideas:

So Tanner and I Skype and have discussed a few random ideas for the trip:

1.  One potential project is video taping me trying to pick up girls on the streets of each country. Tanner will hide in the bushes like a creep taking video of me using a microphone and spitting game.  The catch is I can only speak in the country's native language.  Example:  If I am in Spain I will approach a girl and try a pick up line in Spanish :

"Ojala fuera bizco para verte dos veces".  Translation: I wish I was cross eyed, so I could see you twice.


So I need to do some research of pick-up lines in other languages (as well as Spanish) and we will put these to the test and see how well I fare in each country.  This has YouTube video written all over it or at least just a lot of rejection.

2. Tanner suggested getting a motorcycle and sidecar so we ride around like Batman and Robin in Europe.  At first it sounded like a great idea, then I pictured us driving in the Alps.  Tanner has a French supermodel groping him well I'm riding "Han Solo" in the sidecar complaining about leg room.  Talk about 3rd wheeling it (pun intended)!  Also I don't want the sidecar to become unnattached at 80 MPH.  I think we'll stick with hitchhiking for now.

3. Dress as a gladiator in Athens ,Greece and be a street performer.  Have tourists take pictures of us while we take in a little income.

Updates:

Here are some things I'd like to share:

1.  I received a great gift from a buddy (thanks Seth). It's a new shirt of a map of the entire globe!  I plan on wearing this everyday of the trip that way if I am lost or I am helping someone with directions, all I do is have to look at the shirt!

2.  I'm doing some last minute fundraising for the trip.  I'm running a black market neck tie business out of my parents van as a 2nd job. I picked up a couple of interns off the street (my nephews). What these guys lack in sales skills they make up for in heart and hustle.  Tanner did the business transactions to get the ties and I am just the blue collar sales man.

So far I have sold 54 ties.  They are $10 each and 100% hand made silk! I have 400 left in 35 different styles.  Let me know if you are interested.  I can mail them to you.  Business motto: 100% customer satisfaction. :)

3.  I am getting a lot of questions in regards to when we will be in certain countries and what our itinerary is. We don't plan on mapping a route out just because anything can happen!  Like for instance after Turkey, we will likely head to Greece, but if 3 hot girls want us to go to Romania with them we're probably not going to turn that down. :)



*****The last thing is a little trivia: Guess the population of Istanbul, Turkey.  Comment below without looking up the answer.  Anyone with-in one million of the actual number will receive a small gift from the country of their choice.  I'm cutting this off after 5 people guess.  Also if you have any clever ideas for the trip/blog feel free to give feedback. :)