The Chronicles of Europia Shawn Westerdale,∗ Stephanie Schmit, and Noah Caplan June 6{June 29 Monday Tuesday, Jun 67 Boston, \Dublin", Barcelona • Left the US from BOS; adventure awaited us • Had a short layover in Dublin, made it to flight to Barcelona fine • Arrived in Barcelona, got on the train to go to the middle of the city and accidentally wound up in Lledia, a small city outside of Barcelona • Ate lunch at a small restaurant; food was really good, and the people were very friendly and helped as we struggled to communicate • Found out we weren't in Barcelona when we tried asking for directions to the Picasso museum, and everyone kept telling us it is in Barcelona • Rode the trains around awhile more looking for Picasso Museum, bought tickets to Montpellier • Finally found the relevant area|nice city, walked through a street market selling lots of fruits, chocolates, meats, and breads • Admired the front of the nearby apartment buildings, and had fun wandered around the streets. Most of the streets seemed like they were made for walking on rather than for driving • Saw an interesting man pretending to be a statue; it was interesting because he was sitting like he was in a chair with only one leg touching the ground; we postulated that he either put a lot of weights in the front of his shoe or has a wire frame attached to his stand that supports his weight • Went to Picasso Museum. Steph thought the museum was really cool because it showed the design process of Piccaso's art: first sketches, then work on the difficult parts, and then the final version • Went to a small restaurant and got a few tapas • It started raining, so we all put on ponchos or rain coats • Went to a grocery store, bought bread, chorizo, cucumber, mango, cabeza de cervo (literally trans- lates to \head of deer"), and lettuce. Ate sandwiches outside of some closed store under an overhang • Went to see Gaud´ı’s La Familia Sagrada; it looked really cool. like something out of Dr. Seuss remade in R'lyeh • Took the metro to our hostel and. the gate was closed. We were locked out of the hostel and couldn't check in. This was an unhappy situation, especially since that means we had $70 down the drain. Long story short, we took the train to the train station where we originally intended to spend the night, but they completely closed down. When we left we found a 24 hour hotel. We considered staying at the hotel, but they only had doubles (not triples) so we would have needed 2 rooms for a total of over $400. The receptionist pointed us to a cheaper hostel that we ended up staying at for a total of $110, which was much better. It was a nice hostel, although it took awhile to get the shower to a nice temperature because it kept alternating between scorching and freezing with a very narrow comfort bandwidth ∗Main writer 1 Wednesday, Jun 8 Barcelona, Montpelier • Woke up, went to see Gaud´ı’sCasa Batll´o.It was cool • Went to train station, ate lunch at the cafeteria (interesting sub that had something on it that tasted like a latke), got on train to Montpelier • Arrived at Montpelier, went to tourist office to pick up maps. I asked the man \Parle vous English?" to see if he spoke English, but he responded with \I am French." Not sure what that meant, but at least it meant that he spoke English • Took a picture in front of an interesting looking hotel building • Found hostel, got Hosteling International membership, and settled in • Wandered around the city for a bit, it had nice streets for walking down, and found a supermarket, bought linguine, gnocchi, pasta sauce, sliced ham, green beans, and fruit and cooked everything in the microwave to make a meal • Figured out details regarding when we can check in at various hostels so as to not repeat Barcelona's hostel incident (we had internet!), and went to bed Thursday, Jun 9 Montpelier, Geneva • Woke up, got free breakfast at hostel • Went to the currency exchange center, but decided the rates were too high • Went to bus stop, saw that the bus wasn't coming for another 45 minutes, so we wandered around the city for awhile • Met two British guys who were backpacking around together • Rode the bus to the beach, there were a surprising number of English words on signs and buildings that we passed (things like \Laser Tag", etc.). Also, the buildings and houses that we passed as well as the trees all looked a lot like Ft. Lauderdale, FL • Arrived at the beach, decided that we were, in fact, at the Mediterranean, and wandered around the beach. We took shifts watching our stuff, and were there for a total of approximately 90 minutes. We wandered around the beach a lot, and went about knee deep into the water at times. There were a decent number of shards of broken beer bottles on the shore, and the sand was a lot darker than what Shawn was used to but it was, in fact, a beach • Took pictures of us standing on the rocky peninsula things that divided up the beach • Met two Irish girls as we were leaving who were spending two weeks in Montpelier. We got the two girls to take our picture in front of the beach • Changed back into clothing and wandered around a residential area until we found an outdoors Italian restaurant that was surprisingly good. Steph found a cat that she played with • Went back to Montpelier, found that we had 45 minutes to kill before we could board the train, so we wandered around the city some more and got a croissant, an ´eclair,and a tart with browned whipped cream on top that Steph and Shawn split from an outdoor bakery vendor thing. We also got a nutty/cinnamony churro-like thing from a more expensive desert bakery that all three of us split • Boarded the train to Geneva, had a layover in Lyons for a bit 2 • When we got on the leg to Geneva, we got on the wrong half of the train (apparently it splits in half most of the way through and the other half goes to Evian). Fortunately, the ticket person corrected us and we later switched to the correct half of the train. We also met a nice man who is from the area and chatted for a bit. • The train ride to Geneva had a lot of pretty scenery • Got off at Geneva, wandered around lost for awhile, since we had trouble aligning our position with the map we sketched from Google • Met a sketchy 'hotel worker' guy who we suspected was a pickpocket on the street who showed us to our hostel. He claimed to own a hotel in the area, and so was happy to help tourists find their hostel, because \that's part of his job." We ended up deciding that he was most likely a pickpocket, but he continued to lead us to the hostel, so at least that worked. It was a little scary when he lead us down a dark alley, but it turns out the hostel was located in that dark alley, so that worked well. He then explained how to avoid being pick-pocketed while touching Shawn's arm, but fortunately Shawn had his hands in his pockets, so nothing went missing, and we got into the hostel and settled in nicely, so we seem to have won that encounter • After we checked in at the hostel, we were all hungry, so we decided to find food. Unfortunately it was 23h00, so pretty much everything was in the process of closing as we approached them. We got to one pizza restaurant that had a sign on its door saying it was open till 23h30, but they insisted they were closed when we asked to be served, despite the fact that they handled the person immediately before us and it was still well before 23h30. Most places that were open were vastly overpriced bars (it turns out Geneva is very expensive...), but we eventually found a pizza place that had good but thin pizza at a decent price. We caught them shortly before they closed, but they let us get to go, so we ate on the tables right outside the restaurant • We then went back to the hostel, checked email, and went to bed Friday, Jun 10 Geneva, Lyon • Woke up, went out to get crepes. We got 1 mushroom and cheese, 1 ham and cheese, 1 spinach, and 1 cinnamon and sugar crepe. They were good • Tried to visit a currency exchange, but they were out to lunch forever, so we went to CERN instead • CERN was awesome|way better than Chuck E Cheese • Went to the Universe of Particles exhibit, stood above part of the LHC for as long as possible to maximize the time we spent close to CERN, visited the Microcosm exhibition, Shawn bought a tie with the Standard Model modified to include a Higgs field, Steph got a postcard for her parents, and we all got a postcard for 4E • Basked in the Glory of CERN a little longer then went back downtown • Went to the UN building, there was some demonstration against child labor going on, but it had good music • A deaf girl came up to us and asked us to donate money for the International Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, but we didn't want to donate anything.