Saturday, April 25, 2009

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane, Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again

Well today is the faithful day for my departure from Tanzania. Soon I shall begin the next leg of my journey, backpacking through Europe for two months. Yesterday was my 21st birthday and I couldn't have thought of a better send off.
Last night all the volunteers at CCS went out to dinner at Indoitaliano (a resturaunt that served Indian and Italian food and local haunt for most CCS volunteers). Of course, because it was my 21st birthday everyone was trying to get me as drunk as possible, but I held my ground and am happy to say that I only had three beers and a glass of wine that night, I was definatly a goofy person but drinking to the point of having a hang over the next morning is never something that seemed appealing to me. After dinner we all went out to the Glacier bar. Glacier is mostly a wide open field sprinkled with occasional tables and chairs, then there is an open air bar and a stage for live bands that come to play every Friday. Seeing as how this is Tanzania the live band is always, ALWAYS regea, but I've never had "Happy Birthday" sung to me in a regea style before so it was pretty nice.
When we came back to CCS popcorn had been made by the cooks, a regular occurance late at night, and we all sat down and chatted while munching on popcorn. Then without notice everyone started singing "Happy Birthday" for what must have been the fifth time that day, but then they handed me a birthday card signed by everyone. In conclusion though I dearly missed celebrating my birthday with all my friends back home, my 21st birthday was a wonderful and touching moment with the best gift ever, backpacking in Europe for two months.
So I'll be arriving in Amsterdam airport April 26th and for the first few hours I'll be enjoying the city with my friend and fellow volunteer, Deveny, who has a seven hour lay over in the Amsterdam airport. Then I plan to look for a hostel and then who knows. I've tried to plan only to the point that I'll be prepared, but flexible enough for me to do and go wherever I want. The basic structure of my plan is to go from Amsterdam to Berlin, to Hamburg, to Prauge, to Vienna, to Salzburg, to Munich. I might also possibly pass through Amsterdam again to cross the English channel and go visit some friends I made here at CCS in England.
If anyone has recommendations of something I should do or see, please let me know. I'm hoping that my camera, which broke two weeks into being in Tanzania, can be fixed in Amsterdam. I'm also quiet happy because instead of paying an arm and a leg to ship out my Bushmen bow and arrows, one of my masai spears, and a hand carved wooden bowl from Kilimanjaro the safari company that I went on safari with, Bushmen Expeditions, is going to pack them all up and I can just check it as my other piece of luggage and I can ship it all out of Amsterdam, which will be much cheaper.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you've had a wonderful time in Tanzania! I wish you the best in Europe....take lots of pics once you get your camera fixed
<3