Europe tour Interail 2006 : The day when the Europe tour almost stop...

En français
Maybe I should renamed this post : "Europe tour Interail 2006 : The day when I discovered I can actually speak Italian". That would actually be a lot more positive but I think that the actual title fit very well.
First I have to tell you something about Italian trains. I hate them. I think they are the worse in the all world. Not because they are uncomfortable, you'll see how I care for comfort when I travel a bit later but because they are crowded. The basic idea is, sell tickets, if someone ask for a ticket you sell it. It doesn't matter if there are sits in the train or not, or even space in compartment or sits in the corridors. So you see what happens. Night trains in Italy, going from Venezia to Roma, standing in the corridor most night, finally getting a sit in the corridor, having to get your Interail pass out for the controller every ten minutes as he never seems to remember you. And finally, forgetting the Interail pass in the train, and letting the train go before you can realize it. Oups we were supposed to have three more weeks of travel, right ?
Well I guess at that stage when you go see the people in the train station and that they can do nothing for you and that you can only buy a pass in your home country most of people would have give up. I guess we were probably crazy but you'll realized with what follows.

The guy in the train station said he was going to call the train, then said he did and that the controller found nothing... when we had given the all explanation about where it was, not a chance, my guess is he didn't want to bother with that and didn't even call.
So I had to take care of things myself. I was used to trains I had been checking where trains where going in all Europe for a month( maybe more) before going on this trips. The European train lines where my playground and I didn't feel like giving it up just yet.
We bought a ticket for Sebastien to go to Salerno, I still had my pass :D And we followed the train 400 kilometer southern from our destination to get to Salerno. Nobody wanted to eat or drink, we were just trying to avoid a nervous break down I suppose. And we get there and the first thing we saw arriving in Salerno's train station was that our train was there. Thinking about it now it could have been gone somewhere else but luckily, it was there. We went to the train station to find someone to take us to get the pass Interrail and we find a nice girl.
Little summary of my conversation with her : "I can't go anything about it, you need to go to the police station in the train station. But don't tell them it's a train ticket, they are lazy they won't go in just for a train ticket, tell them it's your id."
So we went to the police station and I had to explain to them,
everything again, from the start to make them go look for Sebastien passport in the train (by the way Sebastien didn't have a passport at that time). Lying to policeman all in Italian, because Italy is like France, you have to speak the language, no English. At that time I can assure you I was fluent. It took me forever to make them go, and when the guy finally went, I was half suspecting that he was not going to really look for it. Actually he did, he came back with the pass and we were so happy about it
but we still had to pretend for a bit that we didn't know where the passport was. They finally let us go, making fun of us because we didn't know that we could travel in Europe without the passport. Of course we knew but we were not going to tell him. Secret victory, maybe, huge relieved, certainly, with the pass Interail back we could finish our Europe tour.
We waited four more hours in the train station for the next train to Roma, Italian trains are always late, you know when you'll arrive (kind of) but you will never know when you will be able to get in.

We arrived in Roma and started to look for a youth hostel. That was our first night in youth hostel during the trip. People told us that it was impossible to sleep here because they couldn't have conditioner as the building was too old, so that they needed to let the window open and the cross-road was very noisy. I can promise you that we slept very well.

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content

Japan : 調布市、ゲゲゲの鬼太郎

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I always wondered why there was so many statues of manga characters in 調布, especially in 天神 (tenjin street) and which manga they belonged too. I figured it out few days ago while accidentally watching ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌(Kitaro and the millenium curse). Kitaro was born in 調布 that is the reason why he is that popular there.
It seems I'm still exploring Japan while being away.
Travel table of content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Venezia, the water city

En français
The first thing that stroked me when we arrived in Venezia was the water. Of course everybody knows that the city is kind of floated and that they have basically water everywhere and you have seen pictures just like I did. But I wouldn't have imagined that going out of the train station the first thing I was going to see was water. That is one of the images that will stay engraved in my memory.
We walked around visiting the city, they don't have cars, they have boats. That's probably a reason why Venezia is famous for it's gondolas otherwise you take bridges to cross the streets. I think Venezia is a pretty unique city and I can understand now why there are so many tourist visiting it.
Venezia is also famous for the carnival in February or March and even though it wasn't the season for it we could still see a lot of shops selling masks and costumes, making me want to visit the city again during the carnival period.
We walk to Piazza San Marco from where we could see the San Giorgio Maggiore island.Walking in the city we could appreciate the diversity of the Venetian architecture, especially of Gothic style. The Venetian Gothic style has the particularity of using of the Gothic lancet arch with Byzantine and Arab influences which comes from the crossing of culture from Est and West in the 14th century. The city also have buildings of Renaissance and Baroque styles.

Of course we took pictures from Ponte di Rialto like every tourist, even though I like to see what the local people do, I also like to go into the tourist cliché as well.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content

ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌(Kitaro and the millenium curse)

En français

ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌 (Kitaro and the millenium curse) is a Japanese movie from 2008 following a live-action relieved in 2007 (I hope to see that one soon). The story put in action the main characters of the manga series ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 by 水木 しげる (Mizuki Shigeru) created in 1959.








The main characters are 妖怪 (yokai) or demon spirits. The Yokai and humans have been at war for a long time and Kitaro and his tribe and friends are fighting for the peace. His group is composed of his father, 目玉のおやじ who looks like a walking eye, 猫娘 the cat girl, ねずみ男 the rat man, 砂かけ婆 the sand throwing hag, 子泣き爺, 一反木綿 the roll of cotton who flies the others every where they like, ぬりかべ plaster wall nice to hide behind in case of danger.
In the movie, they are trying to save a human girl from having her soul taken by a evil spirit called nure-onna. They will find out that the curse has to do with the love between a human and the yokai 1000 years ago.

When I started to watch this movie I didn't know what it was about and the first bit was a bit scary but after Kitaro and ねずみ男 appear it becomes a lot of fun. I like the yokai they are funny and ugly.

Voir aussi Japan : 調布市、ゲゲゲの鬼太郎

Casting :

ウエンツ瑛士 as Kitaro
北乃　きい as Kaede
大泉 洋 as Nezumi-otoko
田中麗奈 as Neko Musume
室井滋 as Sunakake babaa
田の中 勇 as the voice of Medama oyaji

Watch it here.

Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Pécs, back to Hungary

En français
We then took the train back to Hungary to visit a city called Pécs. This city is the 5th largest city in Hungrary even though the city center is quite small. It is surrounded by fortification. The main square is called Széchenyi Square in the historical center, there we can see the Mosque and the statue of Hunyadi János on horse back. Hunyadi János was the governor of the kingdom of Hungary in the 15th century and voivode of Transylvania. Twelve streets leads to this square. We also walked around the fortification on a pedestrian road.  This city is interesting because you can see the vestige of some medieval constructions.
To get to our next destination we need to first take a train to Gyékényes, at the border with Croatia where the controller decide to make us pay for a reservation or want to have us leave the train at the next stop as we don't have Euros. Hopefully we will find someone to lend us the money.

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Bosnia and Herzegovina, amazing hospitality

En français
We left Hungary direction Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The train was pretty scary and noisy and we were asking ourself if it was not going to fall apart but we still arrived safe and sound in Sarajevo.
The city was amazing. It contains Synagogue, Church and Mosque in the same area, some people should really take a chance to learn about diversity taking this country as an example of what can be achieved. There are still traces of the war as they are part of history but that is not the most important.
We stayed there a while, walking around and also watching a match of giant chess.
The only think that annoyed me was to be attacked by flying ants in the main place but I think that's part of the fun. I had never seen that many of them and I'm not a big fan of insects especially when they fly.
We then took the train again to go to Visoko. Visoko is a small village between Sarajevo and Zenica, we wanted to go there to see the pyramids. The fact that they are pyramids is a bit controversial, you can discover more about them here.  In the train people were indicating us where we should go and we met someone from the place who proposed to actually show us a bit around. We ended up spending the evening with him and his family. Bosnia offered us one of the best greeting we had so far during our travel.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
Travel table of content 

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Budapest

En français
We arrived in Budapest (Hungary) at 8am, we started with taking a shower and breakfast before noticing that the next train to leave to our next destination was from the other train station. We crossed the city with our bags, I mean the big big ones, I was really dying, so heavy. But we finally made it to the train station where we left our bags for the rest of the day before going to visit the city.

Budapest  is divided in two parts, Buda and Pest. We start to go to the Buda Castle (Budai Vár in Hungarian) then we went down to visit the Pest part of the city with Heroes' square (Hősök tere) taking the Széchenyi Chain Bridge (Széchenyi-Lánchíd).
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction
Travel table of content