April 9th-10 Florence und Train to München.... "arrrr me eye!"

Ahhh, at last, an escape from the big city. We finally rode the train out of the capitol city of the ancient Roman empire to the central city of Italy's other division of an artistic age, Florence.

Upon arrival we had a rapid journey into our short-term place of living. Once again we had managed to find a place much earlier that was quite close to the train station, we had no idea how much we would be praising this decision throughout the day to come.

After depositing our luggage (the room was prepped and ready to go this time) we set out to explore all of the masterpieces of stone & metal that are scattered around the city. We had already had a plan not to enter the gigantic, famous museums so well known throughout Florence, but rather to explore the city itself (due to the horrendously long lines that would follow). As we made our way though the city we were greeted by the throng of tourists, street musicians and human statues that we had seen a great deal of throughout Rome. However, the art we saw was much different than what we had seen before. Rather than ancient ruins, there were statues (mostly replicas, to prevent impurities that were so prevalent in the industrial age) lining the roads. Of course, we were able to bear witness to some fantastic sculptures, by whom share names with our favorite mutant turtle fighting force (even if you hate them, are there really any other ones to compare?). Many of these were various greek and roman mythology tales that I was pleased to bask in their majesty.

<3s for greek folklore. We also were able to view another basilica. The architecture of this one was also quite different from what it was in Rome. The buildings took to more of an renaissance style, which was pretty stunning to look at.


quite ornate if do say so myself... I think Ted wants a house just like it



We also perused through the street of gold, which was an overpass filled with a variety of different gold smiths selling their wares. This is where people (tourists) purchase souvenirs if they are either very wealthy, or have some sort of mistress they wish to gain favor with.

Unlike Rome, Florence actually cares about not ripping off stupid tourists. Natural selection imo.


Eventually we had explored most of the city, and we decided to try scaling up to a park to get a nice view of the city, before traveling on a train over to Sienna. Then, something flew into Ted's eye.

When I say something flew into Ted's eye I mean our day was already over, and we didn't even know it. For some reason the item, be it bug or plant particle, could not be dislodged even as Ted zealously tried to get it free. We still scaled to the top, and I took a couple pictures, but then we went back down and traveled back to our room to see if ted could dislodge the item.


"Everything looks the same distance away Jesse".
(Ted) - (depth perception) = sad Ted.

Back in our room, even after trying for hours, he still was unable to get it out. Foolishly, we decided we would try to go to Sienna regardless, and we took the next train there, hoping it would somehow get out on the way while Ted slept. When we arrived, it was still there, irritating as ever, so we ended up walking around confused and unsure of our plans for a while, and then headed back. After that we stayed in our hotel for the rest of the night. We went to bed shortly afterwards as Ted was hoping his eye would be better in the morning.

The next morning, it was not. Rather than magically healing over the night by sleep or the patron saint of hurt eyes as sometimes things do, it had grown more swollen and had even begun to pustulate slightly. Upon realizing this was not a mere eye obstruction that would go away over time, we dashed off to the local pharmacy, to see what could be done. They gave us some eyepatches (yar.) and some liquid to clean out the eye. For some reason, they didn't believe in eye drops, so we were essentially sol on the easy application department. We returned to our temporary dwelling once more. After several awkward attempts, we managed to get some of the cleansing liquid into Ted's eye and patched it up. Then we had to rush out to our train to Munich as we had reserved and bought tickets and had reserved room already, which we were unable to unreserve. We had no place to stay in florence unless we wanted to spend over 150 euro a night.


avast and beware mateys, I be captain Eddhab, scourge of the twin swiss lakes and master of the Florence motes.

After a brief ride to Bologna, we had to wait about 50 minutes or so for the next train to München. To prevent my body from literally devouring itself, jogged over to a local pizzarea, and ordered a "fungi & wurst" pizza roll. Apparently in Bologna, wurst = boloney, blech. Despite my distaste for hot dog like meats, I snarfed it down to temporarily sustain the ever twirling black hole inside of me.



I had officially burned bridges with my stomach after consuming this.

At last, once again on the train. Fortunately, the only other people inside of our compartment were two German girls, who were really nice. Unfortunately, this only lasted about an hour, then a family of Italians came on, with two irritating little ruffians. One of them just slept (praise be, what luck!), while the other just screamed and kicked for almost the entire train ride (unlucked). I would have wanted to strangle him, if it wasn't for the complete lack of discipline of the parents, which turned my strangulation dreams to them. I'm sorry, but "no no no no.." doesn't exactly fit right in a little troll's brain. Despite our hopes of them leaving early, they were there for the entire duration of our journey. For a little while, I talked to the only German girl left (the family had reserved 3 seats, so the other one, her sister, had to get kicked into another compartment). I found out that she was only 17 but was already TRI LINGUAL. Her english was pretty much flawless, and she spoke italian which allowed her to communicate with the family as well. Dang.

After a 7.5 hour train ride, and a complete read through of "Dune Messiah" we finally made our way into Munich. Germany at last! We had a hotel reserved right outside of the train station so it was as easy as can be. Free wifi? Really? "of course!" most excellent.

After dropping depositing our baggage, we made our way to the local artze (doctor) which happened to be open despite how late our arrival was. The local doctor in turn directed us to eye specialist doctors at the local university hospital. Once there, and after some awkward attempts at communication, and some more waiting Ted was finally able to get some attention for his eye. It turns out the object had already fallen out, most likely in the eyepatch during the day, but the eye was still highly irritated. After giving him some antibiotics and cleanser for the eye, we were good to go. At last, time to explore Munich!

Crap. 10:00 PM already? Er.... I suppose explore was too strong of a word at this point. So we "ventured" across a couple streets to a local chinese restaurant (the only one open), and feasted upon chicken and beef curry, giving us much needed sustenance as we had hardly eaten all day. Naturally, a delicious cold brew was also consumed with a meal, as it only seemed fitting and would be blasphemous without one.