July 6-8, 2003

At 6:30 a.m., standing underneath the giant flip-board train schedule in Paris' Gare du Nord, a shiver went down my spine.

I love the way it sounds. When a train pulls out, all the white block letters individually flip to black cards, an of out-of-sync clacking that kicks off a symphony as every other listing bumps itself up a notch on the list. The noise of the board threw me right back to my youth, standing in Heathrow airport, which back then used those exact boards to announce incoming and departing flights. I associate them with being an excited pre-teen, bounding around the arrivals area on tenterhooks as I waited for the board to say "Landed," then "Baggage In Hall," the latter of which signified that whoever it was we were meeting � Alison home from college, grandparents, relatives, friends from The States � would soon be pushing a cart of luggage out the double doors and into sight. I loved the way it clacked then; I love it doubly now.


Crossing the oceanParis � Bruges � AmsterdamNight TrainPrague
Dispatches: From PragueFrom MunichFrom Rome

Train travel as a whole thrills me a little. Not just the boards, but the marvel of looking around at myriad platforms that are either empty, waiting for its arrival as it glides across the rails, or home to a train that's filling up slowly as it inches toward departure. It's so impressive � a well-regulated and on-time network of trains shuttling around Europe, weaving its disparate countries tightly together, carting around commuters and visitors alike.

Airports, I suppose, are just as amazing � maybe more so, what with their nifty aerodynamics � but they're simply less fun, probably because they lack the spontaneity inherent in train travel. There's something interesting about perching on your suitcase amid a crowd with its collective necks craned up toward the board, waiting for a platform number to flip up next to each outbound train; watching other passengers dash through the maze of platforms with briefcases and cell phones, or a passel of suitcases, leaping on board the 6:22 to Ghent just seconds before it pulls away; staring at grubby, fatigued-looking backpackers leafing through Eurail schedules, screwing up their faces in either thought or frustration as they calculate the best route to their next destination. It's awfully freeing to realize that you can take any one of these trains, if the spirit moves you. Just grab a ticket and hop on board, and off you go. Half the people around probably just felt like going away, getting out, without the rigamarole and high cost of booking a flight, ferreting out the best air fare, and showing up at the airport for long lines and languid security stops. And train stations let you watch people come and go in an almost intimate way that air travel can't really rival � there's such a powerful sense of how many people trains displace each day, dropping them off in other countries and then picking up a fresh batch to cart back.

The seconds tick off, the conductor blows his whistle, and doors slam one by one, loudly, echoing up and down the station. Slowly, the train chugs away, and eventually one shows up to replace it. The board clacks. It starts anew. The steam engines are gone; the women in fur-trimmed coats bidding tearful, red-lipsticked farewells to men in hats and trenchcoats no longer run alongside the carriage waving and wiping their eyes with posh gloves. But the very sensation of being a train station is a commingling of classic romance and modern technology, such that you can almost see the ghosts of those old travelers even as you set your watch by the new digital clock.

My train was the 6:50 a.m. to Brussels, where I'd hop off and connect with one heading to Bruges.

Brussels is the major city in Belgium, but by all reports, also the most missable. Apparently it's all modern bleakness and dirt, and the train station certainly didn't do much to disavow me of the notion that it wasn't a pleasant place. Bruges, on the other hand, is billed as a charming and peaceful little Medieval town that sounded to me like the perfect contrast to bustling Paris.

Initially, I'd considered skipping Bruges altogether to make time for Amsterdam, but then I remembered that half the point of this trip was to discover, and Bruges seemed like it would be more of an unexpected gem.

I wasn't disappointed. Bruges is an absolutely gorgeous place, a colorful assortment of jagged roof lines lining cobbled streets and a network of canals. Back in its glory days, Bruges was a major port city and a thriving, teeming hub of commerce. But then the estuary silted, and all its traffic drifted to Antwerp, leaving it with nothing but echoes of its former prosperity. Now, it mostly attracts people like me � seekers of a hidden (except less so, now) hamlet that offers an escape from bigger, more imposing cities.

The center of town is the Markt, an enormous open square lined with buildings and cafes and ornate architecture, plus a belfry tower with 366 steps to the top. On day two, I climbed those, and reveled in the views of Bruges' red roofs against a perfect blue sky.

A narrow jog east connects the Markt to the smaller Burg square, which boasts mostly official buildings � still beautiful � but also houses a small basilica that claims to have coagulated drops of Christ's blood.

As it turns out, Christ's blood looks exactly like an urn. Who knew.

The rest of the city fits snugly amid a network of canals. All the streets are lovely, each house boasting a variation on Bruges' unique look. It's a city for amblers, as you can cover most of it in two days of leisurely strolling, and that's precisely what I did. I didn't feel pressure to squeeze into my itinerary a bunch of imposing museums or landmarks; Bruges was truly my city to discover on foot, without expectation of what I'd find. It was perfect.

My hostel was a welcoming and recently remodeled place called Snuffel Sleep-In. The lobby area was large, with four or five tables on the right side, a small registration desk in the front left corner, and a large bar on the rest of that side, boasting three beers on tap and over thirty in bottles. The back, up three steps, had an Internet terminal and tons more seating. Click here for pictures; the far-right shot in the middle row is the best shot, it seems, of the lobby/bar.

I ended up in a room of twelve beds � six bunks � that, thankfully, had people in it when I arrived at 11:30 a.m. and shrugged off my backpack. Quickly, I began talking to a Canadian girl named Lindsay � from a small mining town in Ontario called Sudbury and who would be looking to get an advanced degree in soil composition � and we agreed to spend the day walking and talking.

Later that night, we ended up with a group of three Australians, one Belgian, and three Canadians, sitting in the lobby getting drunk. It's amazing how backpackers really do just form their own groups � a few people here, another few tacked on there, and suddenly you've got a loud posse.

It was here that a few things happened:

1) I informed them of Barry White's death. We responded by requesting a Barry White tune the bartender didn't have, and so we sang it instead, glasses raised.

2) I introduced them to "Marry, Fuck, Kill," marking the first time I took that game onto international soil. Sad, I know, but nothing was more satisfying than hearing the Australian guy named Tom kill Cameron Diaz because he thought her face looked like an accident.

3) Once we got really loaded, we played "I Never" briefly, until it became apparent that the just-nineteen Canadian girl named Katie had never heard the word "no" in her life. She got drunk very quickly, because everything we could think of, she'd done. It was clear she wasn't a liar, but rather the kind of girl who lives her life with little sexual self-restraint simply because she thinks that's what people do when they get to college, and so that she can later impress people with stories of her rampant rapacity � all the while shrugging her shoulders and insisting her antics were really "no big deal." We should have started saying stuff like, "I never met a genital I didn't like," just so she'd stop drinking.

4) A crazy old coot of questionable hygiene dropped by to comment on the collective loveliness of the ladies, then started hitting on Tom, calling him "The Guy" and "a fine-looking man," and saying, "I used to be The Man." This person had stringy long hair, may have missed a few teeth, and wore a hat and a disheveled flannel. He spoke average English with a heavy accent, making it difficult to grasp his meaning instantly, but that only added to the intrigue. Robin, the resident Bruges native in our midst, assured us he was a regular and a harmless one who would end up leaving quietly soon enough, but before he left, he entertained us mightily.

"I am for a man or a woman," the man intoned. "How old are you?" Tom, 21, bit his lip and then smiled, "Eighteen." Old Man Belgium looked taken aback, then crestfallen. "No!" he argued. "That's so young. I'm forty-four. Oh, too young. You are beautiful. You're The Guy."

The next time he wandered by our table, he complimented Tom on his beauty and then talked about blue eyes are one of the eight signs of a beautiful man. When we asked what the other signs are, he shouted, "A HUGE CANNOLI," and thrust his hips out at Tom -- who was mercifully seated across a table that provided a buffer zone. Because the man's zipper was open, and he was going commando.

We didn't see too much, luckily, but just enough. To his credit, the man didn't seem to know he hadn't zipped, and he started cracking up as he remedied the problem. "Are you sure you're eighteen?" he asked Tom suspiciously. Tom nodded vigorously and chugged a bunch of beer.

On his next trip, Old Man Belgium informed us that he is a freelance "jonnycolologist." We blinked, confused. "Gynecolawa," he tried again.

Gynecologist is what he meant. We were torn between gaping and chortling, especially when he illustrated his imagined profession by making a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then pushing his other hand through it and waggling the fingers while making screeching, alien noises. We weren't sure if his sign language was an illustration of his gynecological skills, or his way of telling us that he'd seen his fair share of otherworldly fetuses.

Sadly, we didn't find out. He wandered away, grinning madly, and we didn't hear anything of him until a half-hour later, when he was entertaining other hapless backpackers by biting the seat of one of the barstools and attempting to lift it.

After the bar closed, we decided we hadn't had enough beer, so we wandered over to the night shop and picked up more brew. We carried it to the Markt and sat in the giant square, now deserted, and guzzled. At about 4 a.m., we eulogized Barry White with a stirring rendition of "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Baby," and as I sang backup between swigs of Duvel, I figured Barry would be pleased.

The next day, I shamed myself.

I'd risen early and spent most of the morning walking. The steps up the belfry were narrow and crowded with people going both up and down, not a terribly efficient method of passage, but the only one. It was a hot and sweaty exercise; even the breeze coming in the windows at the top of the tower couldn't cool any of us, and we all sweltered from our own body heat and that which emanated from everyone else. Then, I sat outside and wrote postcards while munching on frites with curry sauce.

In sum, I was not looking my best. My hair, pulled back, was getting piecey and frizzy in the front. I was glistening. I suspected I didn't smell as fresh as I'd like, and I was rumpled. So when I walked into the post office, you can imagine my horror when I saw Adonis standing in line ahead of me.

Yup. My Aussies from Paris were just a few bodies and 180 degrees away from seeing me at, arguably, my ugliest.

Or that's how my brain processed it. Which explains why I pulled a Disco Stu and quietly backed the hell up and bolted.

I'm not proud that I ran, but it was my brain's first response. When faced with the kind of immaculate beauty of Pavel, who would look gorgeous even if dripping with sweat and cloaked in odor, I was totally intimidated and felt really, really repellant. So, to this day, I lack their contact information, and it's all because I was completely terrified that they'd take one look at me, react with horror, and remember only the perspiring creature they saw in the post office rather than the showered and largely composed, if buzzed, girl they hung out with in Paris.

I guess I'm vain, then. So be it.

There are some people I will never understand.

I met one such guy in my hostel. He is a UCLA math Ph.D. candidate, and interestingly, his friend Dave � a computer science grad student at UCLA � knows the husband of our beloved Kim. But I digress.

Lindsay and I were hanging around having a beer in the lobby, waiting for our evening walking tour with Robin to begin, when the maths whiz joined us and began writing postcards. I had been scribbling in my journal, but I became fascinated with what he was doing and eventually abandoned all pretense at doing anything but stare at him.

First, he wrote minutely � the letters were small and cramped, and the whole message took up only a third of the available space. Second, he was writing gibberish. Laid on the table was a piece of paper with the alphabet written vertically; next to it, a strip of paper bore a jumbled version of the sequence.

"What is that?" I asked, puzzled.

"It's a code," he replied. "I'm writing my postcards in code."

I blinked.

Apparently, he worked out the message, then translated it. He lined up the paper slip with the alphabet, went to the first letter of the word he wanted, and wrote down whatever letter corresponded on his code strip. But then, for the next letter of the word, he slid the paper strip up one before writing down the letter. And so on. This baffled me, and has proven kind of hard to explain.

"My friends will get a kick out of this," he smiled.

"So where are you writing down the key?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm not," he replied. "They'll just get the code and they'll have to try and crack it. That's why it's so fun!"

"And� they'll enjoy this? You think they'll be able to solve it?" I asked.

"Definitely," he said. "It should only take them a day or so to figure it out."

Again, there are people whose brains I will never, ever be able to understand or keep up with, and I think this guy is one such person.

My last night in Bruges, Lindsay and I got drunk again, of course.

The beers there are just so good, and each one comes in its own glass � the logo etched or printed onto the glass, a unique shape, and sometimes an extra pattern. The bar would only serve the beer if it had enough of its special glasses, and if not, the bartender would make you wait until he had one he could wash and dry for you. For those familiar with Belgian beer, my favorites were Duvel, Karmeliat, and Hoegarden.

I met a couple more interesting characters. One adorable Canadian guy, a 20-year old track athlete, chatted with me until his friend sat down with us and took over the conversation.

The guy said he was from Botswana, and made a crack about how I should be nice to him if I ever want a diamond. Sarcastically, and having no idea what he was talking about, I cracked something vague back at him; I don't remember what I said, but his drunk ass decided that I was sassing him and he launched into a diatribe about how I'd be sorry that I made fun of him, because Botswana controls the world diamond supply and he'd make sure that I never got one. He was putting my name in with some gang or other, which confused me a little. I was like, "Okay, I prefer emeralds anyway," and he then railed on me for insulting diamonds.

"But I'm never going to get a diamond. I've already pissed off Botswana and ruined it for myself," I said, still fairly sarcastic, as this was the stupidest conversation I've ever had.

"Botswana's not like that. We don't hate people," he said. I reminded him that he just said I'd gotten on The Shit List, and he reaffirmed this fact. "So Botswana does hate me," I pointed out. "No, we don't hate anyone. I just said, be careful, because if you try to buy a diamond, you probably won't be allowed," he said.

"Well, I'm safe � the only way I'd ever afford a diamond is if someone bought it for me, so I'll make sure I hook up with someone who isn't on Botswana's shit list," I said. "We don't have a shit list," he slurred.

"But you just told me..." I said, confused and not even that entertained any more. "Don't brush this off. I don't like your attitude," he said. "You'll be sorry that you made Botswana your enemy."

Um. Okay. I hastily quit the room.

Earlier, I hung out with two couples from San Diego, overseas on a joint honeymoon. They'd seen Martha Stewart, flanked by bodyguards, in the Duomo in Florence ("She looked� puffy," one of the girls said carefully) and had begun their trip in Sicily, searching for long-lost relatives of one of the guys.

It's a pretty neat story. After a 15-hour travel odyssey, they arrived late at night in Sicily, far later than they'd planned. The taxi driver took them around, but they couldn't find accommodation, and they were starting to get discouraged. Kindly, he asked if they knew anyone in town, and Geoff desperately produced the names of distant family members he'd never actually met, and who didn't know he was coming, or maybe didn't even know he existed at all.

"Hang on," the cab driver said suddenly. He dashed away, and returned ten minutes later with someone by his side.

"This is your cousin," he said.

Elated, Geoff's cousin embraced them all and arranged for them to sleep in a nearby church, which had a fully furnished apartment that sat empty. The next day, they met Geoff's entire extended family, went to his grandparents' graves, and stopped by the records office to get birth certificates and other paperwork to bring to his Sicilian parents. Overwhelmed, Geoff � not usually an emoter � bid them a pretty tearful farewell, with promises to return with his mother and father.

It's stories like this that make backpacking really interesting. I met a lot of great people along the way, each of whom had a tale that was uniquely their own. And their stories became my stories, just as mine became theirs. It's fun to think that they might go home and tell someone that they met a reality-TV writer and learned a little bit about how those shows come together, or might see an ad for my show this winter and think, "Oh yeah, we met a girl who worked on that!" And maybe they'll watch.

Just as I retell their story, because hearing it and meeting them was an affecting part of my own experience overseas. So it's not just people who define your trip, but the things they say and the stuff they've done that you carry away with you, and which add a little color to the memories that flood back at the mere sight of a photograph.

Someone got here by searching for: Boggle is such a great game Reading: Screening Party Watching: Melrose Place reruns � in just two days, I saw Kimberly tear off the wig to reveal her alien-like head scar, Kimberly trying to kill herself and Michael almost calling an ambulance until he decided he'd rather let her die, and Amanda scheming to snatch back the agency from a bitchy Alison. Brilliant show. But Dan Cortese looks so awful with long hair. What was he thinking?


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