That’s right, never goto Hollywood in Sicily. There’s a place that rents motorcycles and cars about 100 meters from the train station called “Hollywood.” Let me tell you why I spurn them so.

When they rented the scooters to us they accidentally mixed up the keys to the scooters. Now, this shouldn’t be a big deal right? Wrong. Because I was driving (and subsequently crashed), not the scooter I rented but, the scooter that Lewis rented we ran into problems.

I knew that I would have to pay the insurance deductible, which was like 250 euros (336 US). I was happy to pay that, I mean the accident was my fault and all; it was only right. But when the guy at Hollywood added up Lewis’s bill it was 290 euros (40 euro extra for being late). We realized what had happened and I went to pay for Lewis.

This is when Hollywood rentals earned my hate.

Rather than simply taking my credit card to pay for “Lewis’ Bike” they said that he had to pay with his card, or in cash. We told them that that was just silly because it was really my accident and it wasn’t our fault that the person helping us mixed up the keys. They refused. They told Lewis to just pay and have me reimburse him later.

We passed, and I’m not exaggerating 3 hours there trying to get them to just let us pay for the bikes that each of us were driving and they refused. It was ridiculous. I finally, bleeding, limping and very tired walked to three different ATMs. All of these ATMs had been blown up, or smashed in (thanks Italy). I went back to Hollywood where they were holding Gary and Lewis hostage and one of their guys “escorted me” to a working ATM farther away.

We got an overnight train to Rome and tried to sleep the anger off.

Vespas in hand we hit the road. Lilly agreed to come with us and we set off to shred Sicily. We had a big day planned, lots of ruins, lots of driving. To be honest we saw tons of stuff and I don’t want to write everything about it. So uhh…eat pictures.

Great, so we drove around to a bunch of places, Piazza Armeria (or something like that) and this old Roman Bath house. It was rad, then I ate @#$! on my Vespa.

All looked bleak, would I survive? Yes.

Ok, so here’s what happened. I was riding second around a corner going too fast. I went wide and hit a strip of sand and glass. I slipped out and laid my bike down. Gary stopped behind me and watched me stumble around in shock. He was totally stoic “you ok?”

I fell back down on the ground and laid down. “Every part of my body hurts, actually to be honest none of this feels good” was my reply.

Lilly was there pretty quick and started cleaning out all of my new orifices. She noticed that my shoulder was dislocated but apted to let the ambulance workers put it back. She really took care of me.

A really nice Sicilian guy stopped and called for an ambulance. He was making jokes and when the medical pros showed up they sprayed iodine everywhere. Which…guess what, hurts like hell. I was yelling things like “oh yeah, more, just keep doing that, that’s great! Awesome!”

The sicilian guy figured out what I was saying and grabbed a bottle of iodine to join in the fun. Whoo! Gary made friends with the guy and while they carted me off he offered to let everyone stay at his place while I was recovering.

Lillian and her family were nice enough to let us stay an extra day while I recovered a bit. We might have made it back that night but I was a little hopped up on morphine. Plus…hey, why leave when Lillian was perfectly willing to clean all my wounds and stuff. Thanks again. I owe ya one.

Yeah so…tomorrow we’d better leave or we won’t make our flight in Rome.

Curious to know how much my medical visit was? Me too, they didn’t give me a bill. I think it was free. Thanks Italy.

Europe Day 20 – Stick Shifts and Saftey Belts

The fact that the temperature dropped about 20 degrees in the morning made us wake up early. Plus I was afraid that guards were going to show up at some point.

We had breakfast at a little cafe right on the coast, it was really good and the service was great, a first for Europe

A lot of people seemed to have a hard time finding the train ride to hell story that was referenced to a few posts ago. Here is a fail safe link to the post. Train Ride to hell.

Getting back on the train for Sicily was basically the best idea any of us had ever had in our entire lives. The ride was beautiful though we spent most of it passed out. We were still tired but we took the train all the way to Catania on the eastern coast of Sicily. The train actually went directly into the boat at the shore

We stepped out of the train station and figured we could pick up some food and go to the beach. On our way to the kebab shop we walked through a bunch of people selling stuff. One guy was even offering a laptop. Lewis wanted to see how much it was. Just 200 bucks! Wow, it was probably stolen or broken right? Wrong.

I checked it out and it was a good computer. It was probably brand new

For anyone thinking of a great european voyage taking the train through the Alps is a must. First of all, swiss trains are really nice, second of all the mountains are gorgeous. I felt like such a dork for telling a swiss girl the day before that she needed to see Colorado because we had beautiful mountains. I wish I had a better picture but alas.

We stopped in a little

Stepping off the train in Venice was an amazing site. The city is so beautiful and old. The thing that I’ve come to realize about Venice in retrospect is that Venice is essentially Disneyland. It is only a tourist town, I don’t think it has any indigenous economy. The other thing about Venice is that, while you could spend days exploring after you’ve walked a few miles everything is pretty much the same, amazing and beautiful but the same.

We found a restaurant

When we arrived at the Suisse border we looked at where all the trains were going and hoped on a train to Bern. Neuchatel is by there as well as Bienne. I’d heard of both these cities from a swiss friend. We got to Bern and headed to Bienne. Bienne is a town populated by prep school students from all over. My swiss friend, Cannonica, told me that lots of Canadians go there, get drunk, smoke weed and party like lunatics.

Sounded like a pretty good place to find a bed. We walked around scoping out spots to sleep and had a hard time meeting anyone. We ate in the cleanest Kebab shop I’ve ever seen with a nice Iraqi kurd. He told us that the war was stupid but that arabs were stupid. I had my Iraq’s most wanted deck of cards and he told me all those people were…uhh…”crappy.” He also showed us a picture of Condalesa Rice and revealed that he had a secret crush on her.

Since we didn’t meet anyone in Bienne we headed back to Bern. We found a corner in the train station to sleep.

We were kicked out an hour later. We found another spot by a bank and slept until 40 seconds later a security guard kicked us out. It was already 2-3 in the morning and we got to a park and slept on the benches there. In the morning we caught an early train to Venice. It was so cold in switzerland that we needed to head south.

An Aside:
When we were walking aroudn Switzerland Lewis and Gary asked me if “Suisse” meant bank. I was so confused at their question. Suisse is just what the swiss call switzerland. It was funny and I laughed. I’m so funny.

The area around the woods is very unassuming

In the morning we were all slow to get up. I headed off by myself to the bunker to take some pictures. Looking at the entrance made me realize that coming here by myself, even if it was during the day, was still scary.

The bunker is deep in these woods

The difference was that now I could see the swastikas spray painted on the walls. The area we were staying in is actually known for having a lot of neo-nazis.

I crept slowly into the shelter. All I could here was light rain and water dripping off of the leaves behind me. The bunker splits into three directions after about 10 feet. To the left and right are rooms and straight ahead and up are stairs.

I took a few pictures in the rooms to discern just how abandoned it was. I finally started climbing the stairs. Just like the day before I discovered that very quickly the stairway narrowed. There was no room to turn around or look behind. My shoulders scraped along the walls and pretty soon I heard something behind me. I rushed foward exploding out of the top.

I whirled around to see if something was chasing me. Nothing. It was just my jacket scaring me. I stumbled around some more in the woods before walking back to the house and drying my, now wet, clothes.

Lewis called and confirmed that he would be coming with. We picked him up at Patrick’s place and Lauren’s Mom dropped us off at the train station.

Next stop: Switzerland