“For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.”

“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.” – Socrates

“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens

I am constantly amazed at the people who actually care about what I have to say. It is not that I am some wise sage or something, but I think it is just that I am blessed to have people in my life that care about what I am doing. When you travel the world it is easy to feel insignificant in this massive sea of people. In this magnificent sea I have felt a glimmer of significance and that, my friends, was only the result of your responses and reactions to my experiences. As I have said before, I believe there is strength in humility and a power that is achieved by having an attitude of gratitude. And for you all, I am extremely grateful.

Anyway, back to the story. We were intensely excited to return to Western culture. Not saying that we didn’t enjoy and respect the other cultures of the world, it is just that we felt that we could more easily navigate a culture that is somewhat similar to ours in the States. So, I think, we came into Europe with a ‘chip on our shoulder’; thinking that after navigating Asia and Africa that Europe would be a breeze. Well, as in many circumstances when one approaches an endeavor with that attitude…we were quickly brought down to size. It was extremely hard to adjust to the cost of travelling in Europe. We had been used to our dollar going very far and living off of very little a day, but in Europe that all changed. We had assumed we could navigate the Eurail system with ease and, again, we were met with disappointment. We were more impressed with train system in India than we were in Spain, as it took us the better part of two days to travel from Pamplona to Interlaken, Switzerland. We could never buy a full ticket from Spain to Switzerland, we kept having to buy small chunks of the trip hoping we could make the next pointless destination on-time to buy our onward ticket to another worthless destination….needless to say the Spanish and French trains were always late and there were many times when we thought we going to be stuck in some random town in the middle of Spain or France. All-in-all, the point-to-point ticket rendition cost us over $200!!! We might have well flown and saved us the trouble but we didn’t expect this beforehand and once you are in the middle of some random town in France…flights are just not really an option. And my last complaint about Europe is the value! Now I don’t mind spending a lot of money if that money goes along way…but in Europe (I am sure this a generalization) the value for your money is crap. You can easily spend $20+ on dinner and it will be just a little tiny dish! Enough of this foretaste, let me tell you a little about our experiences.

We arrived in Barcelona. We were extremely excited because we had two different sets of people meeting us in Barcelona. A friend-of-a-friend contacted Jamie on Facebook and offered to rent us a flat on ‘Las Ramblas’ (one of the most famous areas in Barcelona) for a decent price. We agreed, cherishing the break from the hostel dorms, and secured our accomodation for Barcelona. We were able to meet our first group of friends, Jeremy Heil and Jeff Schwartz, at the same time we met the girl to get te keys to our flat…pretty easy!! We were pumped to have Jeremy and Jeff join us and go running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, in a few days. While Jeremy and Jeff were only spending about a week with us in Spain, we needed to still meet up with our new travel partner, Michael Rossi, who would be joining us for the rest of our tour of Europe. Now Rossi was a little more difficult to meet up with as he was arriving early the next morning and we could not communicate the exact location of our flat (in a random alley) as we had met the host on a busy street corner with no further directions. I emailed Rossi more specific directions but it was too late, he was already in transit and had no convenient access to email. So, Rossi arrived just knowing the same street corner we met the girl with the keys to the flat…not having any idea of which of the infinite alleys we were located on. The night before, Jamie and I stuck an Ozzy sticker on the door in the alley with hopes that it would aid our good friend Rossi in his search to locate the hidden flat. When Rossi arrived he wandered the streets and alleys for an hour not knowing how to find the exact location of the flat. Sure enough, Rossi wandered into an alley and saw a familiar Ozzy sticker on the door, he knocked, we opened and we have been travelling together ever since. But if it were not for that Ozzy sticker who knows what might have been. And that was just what I was eluding to earlier, we are so blessed to have people spend their hard earned money to join us for a portion of this journey and enrichen our lives and our experience. And that is not the end of it yet, we have Jamie’s sister and brother-in-law and our good friend Tanya meeting us in Greece.

Now if you have never been to Barcelona…you simply must go. It is an architectully stunning city set on a breathtaking beach. Looking forward, I must apologize, we might need to skip a post on our epic experience with Running with the Bulls in Pamplona as I do not yet have the pictures to aid me in my description of it. You see, the last time I ran with the bulls, my camera was stolen and I lost all the valuable pictures. This time, with more wisdom, I bought a disposable camera to capture our Pamplona experience. However, technology has far surpassed disposable cameras and it is intensely difficult to find someone that will develop my camera into a CD with which I can share with you all. So for now, we will skip the post about Running with the Bulls but, in no doubt, I will double back to it as soon as get access to the pictures.

Meantime, look for some new posts about Switzerland, maybe Italy, and most hopefully some excellent pictures from Jamie. Oh yeah, I want to have Rossi start writing on the blog…he is a very good writer and it would be nice to have a fresh perspective to our experience.

Thanks again for caring and reading. While this is probably not the most inspiring post I have done, I wanted to keep you updated on the trials and tribulations of our journey.

I love and miss you all,

Ryan

Here are a few pictures I enjoyed from Barcelona (again Pamplona pics are on the way)-

Barcelona at Night

Jamie the photographer

Church Overlooking Barcelona

The Gaudi Church

Our first home cooked meal in a long time (cooking with Jeremy in the flat)

Train from Barcelona to Pamplona

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