Summer backpacking 2005

Whew, Europe in a flash! That sums up my summer backpacking trip 2005. In 24 days, from August 9 to September 1, we were able to cover a total of 20 European cities in five magnificent countries, many thanks to a bottomless train ticket called Interrail. Really, I'd never travelled that fast before, and perhaps due to such speed of setting out from one destination to the next, I swear my brain kind of suffered from temporary memory loss. Changing cities almost everyday, I found that things and time were passing by so fast, that, many times during the trip, I couldn't recall where we'd been to the day before! Thanks to George Eastman for this thing called camera; over three weeks I used up 8 rolls!

Besides the fun, the trip was truly exhausting. Reading maps, walking (a lot), sleeping with strangers, walking in the rain, reading guidebooks and brochures, climbing up towers and cathedrals, locating cheap Turkish/Chinese restaurants, carrying a 10-kilo backpack - these were touristic challenges we had to overcome everyday. So it's true that travel changes you, in the sense that it wears you out. In Den Hague, we ran into an Australian lad who had been backpacking for more than one month. Really, he seemed like he was aging, his posture looked kind of unsteady, his movements fragile, and he talked really slowww...

I was fortunate enough to find a travel partner so things were more manageable. This is Jose Maria, cathedral-fanatic, coin, postcard, key chain-collector, patient travel buddy.

From here on, I will try to capture the highlights of the trip in six different snippets. If your eyes can take it, feel free to scroll down and enjoy!