Post by Graedius on Aug 27, 2005 4:32:54 GMT -5
What was only a dream...
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words -- well then, in my case, the past month-and-three-days of my life would be worth roughly two-million, four hundred-thousand words. But that doesn't begin to cover the amount of words neccessary to fully describe the unforgetable experience that this has been to me. And I assure you not just me -- but as well with the two who accompanied me, housed me, and gave me the time of my life, the greatest of friends that anyone could ever hope to attain. I'm sure that compiling this thread wil take me a great deal of time, heh.
Now I'm sure that some of you are likely wondering what in God's name I'm rambling on-and-on about, but I think the majority knows about what was going on here -- starting on July 20th, I took a series of plane flights all the way from my little nowhere town in western Canada to visit Mailtroid (henceforth referred to by his real name, Dennis) in Switzerland, for two weeks, both a vacation and gift paid for entirely by him. Following those two weeks in the land of the Swiss, Dennis and I both flew over to teh yoshi (henceforth referred to by his real name, John) to stay for seventeen days more. upon the very first mention of this idea to me, I saw it merely as a pipe dream -- something that would be amazingly nice, but would never happen. I mean, what are the chances of visiting a friend online who you met through a video games forum, who's also all the way across the world? what are the chances that every parent involved would comply? Quite obviously it was meant to be -- too many thins worked out to perfectly to be just coincidence, methinks. It really did happen, something I never would have imagined in a million years -- but recently I've realized that a lot of things you'd never imagine to happen do, and often will happen.
The Switzerland Trip
What can I say, I don't even know where to begin... wait, yes I do. In any following pictures -- I'm the one with the brown hair, Dennis is the tall one with the blonde hair, and John the filipino chap. ^^;; Anyways, as mentioned before, I was always just some kid in nowhereville, Canada, who had never so much as left the continent once, not so much as even ridden in a city bus. The experience that I was blessed enough to receive was one I can hardly begin to express in words -- In Switzerland, we visited ruins, mountans, castles, villages, caves, cities with architecture and culture the likes I had never before witnessed. Everywhere that Dennis took me, showed me, was something new and fresh, everything was worth it's own picture to forever keep -- and we did get a little happy with the picture taking, as we have over a thousand pictures form the two weeks in Switzerland alone, heh. Everything to me as so different, down to the cars and the styles of the roads. It was something I likely would have never ben able to experience without Dennis' intervention.
We went to all sorts of restaurants, and ate what was to me rather extravagant and elaborate meals, from restaurants of equivalent impotance. But the most memorable to me would have t obe the Joshi's Pizza & Kebap Pizza Kurier -- perhaps some of the older members remember some olds posts that Dennis made regarding this little restaurant. Well,when he reminded me that he was the one who took those pictures, I demanded that we go there -- and I of course took additional pictures for my own purposes, heh. Included here are a few shots of the restaurant itself:
I think what I find most funny about this restaurant is the fact that there's a Joshi Pizza -- Mmmm. Chopped-up mascot on a Pizza. It doesn't get more official than that! Watch your back, Joshi -- there's only so many Joshi-Yoshis in this world. Well, that and the fact that two lines up there's an Erotica Pizza. We just didn't ask. Regardless of the horrible ripoff Yoshi art, and the strange pizza names, the food they served was pretty bloody good. I'd eat there on a regular basis if I happened to live evne the remotest amount close to the restaurant, heh. Blast you Swiss people and your availability of Kebaps!
Of course, throughout the trip we visited several well-known landmarks in Switzerland, in turn going into many of the country's important cities, such as Bern, Lucerne, Gruyiere... within each laid spectacular images, pictures that are postcard-worthy.
I really appreciate that Dennis had a digital camera on-hand -- otherwise our picture quality and selection would have been so limited, heheh. In any case, what we found even more funny was a lot of the weirder things at these famous atractions -- graffitis, and a bike that someone just abandoned in the middle of an important river, as well as a house who's windows were plastered with the weirdest words -- perhaps a goth house? without a limit to the amount of pictures we could take, we just went wild and took shots of everything that we saw fit, significant or not, hahah.
We were rather at a loss of words in terms of the house with the papers plastered in the windows -- we just didn't knowwhat to make of it. "Buy", "Sleep", "Conform", "No individual thought", "Honor Apathy"? Sounds pretty goth-ish to me. Makes me think it was a good thing we didn't run into the house's owners, heh. As for the "Fack" -- it became a running joke of ours, because if you're going to graffiti cuss words somewhere,why spell them wrong? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? In any case -- everywhere we went had things magnificent, beautiful, outrageous, and weird -- all things beyond the likes of anything I'd ever seen myself before, and likely would have ever seen.
As I mentioned before, we visited all sorts of Swiss historical monuments and attractions -- castles and ruins of all sorts, much thanks to Dennis's parents for taxiing us all over the place, every second I experienced was a moment I would never forget. It's impossible for me t omanifest the feelings and experiences I was blessed with over the course of this time into mere text -- doing so is becoming increasingly difficult and frustrating, hahah. I try my best... but nothing can quite compare to having actually been there. I shall conclude this portion ofthe trip with pictures of particular interest ^^:
*************************************
The California Trip
After the two weeks had passed in Switzerland (all too fast, but yet not fast enough at the same time), me and Dennis had to pack our bags and get our stuff together, and get ready to fly over to John in Sunny California -- the experience in Switzerland was one of the best in my life, and something I certainly hope I can experience once more in this short and mortal lifetime. In any case, we woke bright and early on August 5th and got our stuff together, and then took a series of Bus and Train systems to get the the Airport in Zurich, and get ourselves on the plane headed for Toronto, Ontario.
It was a fairly uneventful flight there, and it took nine hours to complete -- they showed some pretty bad in-flight movies, too. However, in spite of that, the food they served was super-excellent -- veal and potatoes for lunch, with cheese and bread rolls. For dinner, one of the best pizzas both me'n Dennis have ever had, heheh. We complimented the chefs on such a good job -- and they gave us each another, heheh. ^^ Although in my haste to eat, I broke my fork and ended up looking really stupid:
But enouhg of my pizza misadventures on the rather long and uneventful flight -- the fun part began when we got to the Toronto Airport. We had to fil out Canadian claim forms, involving the stuff we were bringing with us, and go through Canadian Customs, have all of our stuff X-Rayed and checked.... then, to the US, where we had to fill out a bunch of sheets to mrely pick up our baggage, and the forms asked us the very stupidest of questions: "Are you a terrorist, have you been involved in espionage, are you bringing disease agents, are you entering the country with the intent of creating criminal activity, are you bringing snails into the country", each with a Yes or No checkbox. Well, yes, of course, Dennis is a Swiss terrorist with lots of disease-ridden snails, and also a member of Al-Qaeda. then we had to get X-Rayed and magnetically checked and fingerprint marked again, and as a result mised our flight -- so had to take one several hours later. But all worked out well, and we made it to the LAX airport at about 11:30pm.
However, me and Dennis passed out shortly after getting there -- we had suffered massive jetlag, so we had no effort to do anything but to go unconcious on the bed until the next morning -- It was all good though, as it was nighttime anyways. Upon the next morning, we went out to a Korean Market and got to look at some of the foods we'd be eating over the course of the next two weeks, and the culture we'd be largely experiencing.
We found a lot of interesting products with even more interesting chibi-style art on them, and got pictures of them -- althogh one we found particularily interesting was the last picture, on the right, shown above -- doesn't it look like it says "TEH" on the container? ^^ In any case, over the period of time that we were in California, we went to all sorts of interesting places -- commercial disricts, mals, extremely good asian restaurants, and naturally a ot of great asian food cooked by John himself. We visited the Third Street Promenade, the Santa Monica Beach, the Universal City Walk, Chinatown, and so many other very interesting places:
On the note of very interesting food,we went to an asian-restaurant in whic hthe food was cooked "Teppenyaki" style -- as in, it ws prepared right before you but a professional chef woh normally performs a bunch of incredily skilled looking tricks with the food whilst cooking, and you ge it right then and there -- certainly an interesting experience, most likely cost a lot, too. ^^ Much thanks to John's paents for funding these exquisite excursions, heh. But that wasn't the best part of it all -- the best part was that John came up with the idea that we would tell the staff that it was Dennis's birthday, but it wasn't - and we all knew except Dennis, and so after the great meal, a staf member brought out a delicious cake, and we all sang Happy Birthday as he was dressed in a rather silly-looking outfit. Needless to say, he was more than surprised. ^^
Another interesting event that came to pass was when we were going through a mall to the third street promenade -- we found a little kiosk that engraves images onto dog-tags -- ANY image, allowing the use of a laptop to find your desired image. After some deliberation, we all decided to each get one, and we each got one engraved with our online personas on them. I wear mine all the time now, heh. ^^ (Mine on the left, John's in the middle, and Dennis's on the right, as you can plainly guess if you know our personas at all).
As well as having an extremely messed up sleping pattern, we had apenchant for making the weirdest of foods at the strangest times of night -- everything from oriental dumplings and noodles, to quesadillas, crepes, you name it, John made it at any hour of the morning. Below are some pictures of the crepe adventure (Yes, I look horribly fruity in the one picture -- but it does look hilarious. XD)
The last part of the trip that I will go over in paticular detail is the trip to Disneyland that we made near the very end of our trip -- I hadn't been there in over eight years, and as john's dad told me, "Whenyou go there again, it will have changed once more." -- and indeed it did,the place was more magnificent and entertaining than I remember, and had brought back some fond memories of the years long since passed. It was highly enjoyable to ogo there once more, and go on some of the rides, particularily Space Mountain, heheh. John showed t ous some of his DDR skills in an arcade within, and performed the very hardest of difficulties perfectly -- but almost got sick afterwards from exerting such effort after having not done it for so long. He also met a group who apparently meets thee on a regular basis to talk and play the piano, and as a result he ended up getting to play the piano before a live audience at Disneyland! You'll never be able to buy tickets to that! ^^ The fireworks at the night were the most spectacular I'd ever witnessed, stunning and from all angles of the park. It, like this trip in it's entirety, is an experience I shall never forget.
(more continued on next post)
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words -- well then, in my case, the past month-and-three-days of my life would be worth roughly two-million, four hundred-thousand words. But that doesn't begin to cover the amount of words neccessary to fully describe the unforgetable experience that this has been to me. And I assure you not just me -- but as well with the two who accompanied me, housed me, and gave me the time of my life, the greatest of friends that anyone could ever hope to attain. I'm sure that compiling this thread wil take me a great deal of time, heh.
Now I'm sure that some of you are likely wondering what in God's name I'm rambling on-and-on about, but I think the majority knows about what was going on here -- starting on July 20th, I took a series of plane flights all the way from my little nowhere town in western Canada to visit Mailtroid (henceforth referred to by his real name, Dennis) in Switzerland, for two weeks, both a vacation and gift paid for entirely by him. Following those two weeks in the land of the Swiss, Dennis and I both flew over to teh yoshi (henceforth referred to by his real name, John) to stay for seventeen days more. upon the very first mention of this idea to me, I saw it merely as a pipe dream -- something that would be amazingly nice, but would never happen. I mean, what are the chances of visiting a friend online who you met through a video games forum, who's also all the way across the world? what are the chances that every parent involved would comply? Quite obviously it was meant to be -- too many thins worked out to perfectly to be just coincidence, methinks. It really did happen, something I never would have imagined in a million years -- but recently I've realized that a lot of things you'd never imagine to happen do, and often will happen.
The Switzerland Trip
What can I say, I don't even know where to begin... wait, yes I do. In any following pictures -- I'm the one with the brown hair, Dennis is the tall one with the blonde hair, and John the filipino chap. ^^;; Anyways, as mentioned before, I was always just some kid in nowhereville, Canada, who had never so much as left the continent once, not so much as even ridden in a city bus. The experience that I was blessed enough to receive was one I can hardly begin to express in words -- In Switzerland, we visited ruins, mountans, castles, villages, caves, cities with architecture and culture the likes I had never before witnessed. Everywhere that Dennis took me, showed me, was something new and fresh, everything was worth it's own picture to forever keep -- and we did get a little happy with the picture taking, as we have over a thousand pictures form the two weeks in Switzerland alone, heh. Everything to me as so different, down to the cars and the styles of the roads. It was something I likely would have never ben able to experience without Dennis' intervention.
We went to all sorts of restaurants, and ate what was to me rather extravagant and elaborate meals, from restaurants of equivalent impotance. But the most memorable to me would have t obe the Joshi's Pizza & Kebap Pizza Kurier -- perhaps some of the older members remember some olds posts that Dennis made regarding this little restaurant. Well,when he reminded me that he was the one who took those pictures, I demanded that we go there -- and I of course took additional pictures for my own purposes, heh. Included here are a few shots of the restaurant itself:
I think what I find most funny about this restaurant is the fact that there's a Joshi Pizza -- Mmmm. Chopped-up mascot on a Pizza. It doesn't get more official than that! Watch your back, Joshi -- there's only so many Joshi-Yoshis in this world. Well, that and the fact that two lines up there's an Erotica Pizza. We just didn't ask. Regardless of the horrible ripoff Yoshi art, and the strange pizza names, the food they served was pretty bloody good. I'd eat there on a regular basis if I happened to live evne the remotest amount close to the restaurant, heh. Blast you Swiss people and your availability of Kebaps!
Of course, throughout the trip we visited several well-known landmarks in Switzerland, in turn going into many of the country's important cities, such as Bern, Lucerne, Gruyiere... within each laid spectacular images, pictures that are postcard-worthy.
I really appreciate that Dennis had a digital camera on-hand -- otherwise our picture quality and selection would have been so limited, heheh. In any case, what we found even more funny was a lot of the weirder things at these famous atractions -- graffitis, and a bike that someone just abandoned in the middle of an important river, as well as a house who's windows were plastered with the weirdest words -- perhaps a goth house? without a limit to the amount of pictures we could take, we just went wild and took shots of everything that we saw fit, significant or not, hahah.
We were rather at a loss of words in terms of the house with the papers plastered in the windows -- we just didn't knowwhat to make of it. "Buy", "Sleep", "Conform", "No individual thought", "Honor Apathy"? Sounds pretty goth-ish to me. Makes me think it was a good thing we didn't run into the house's owners, heh. As for the "Fack" -- it became a running joke of ours, because if you're going to graffiti cuss words somewhere,why spell them wrong? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? In any case -- everywhere we went had things magnificent, beautiful, outrageous, and weird -- all things beyond the likes of anything I'd ever seen myself before, and likely would have ever seen.
As I mentioned before, we visited all sorts of Swiss historical monuments and attractions -- castles and ruins of all sorts, much thanks to Dennis's parents for taxiing us all over the place, every second I experienced was a moment I would never forget. It's impossible for me t omanifest the feelings and experiences I was blessed with over the course of this time into mere text -- doing so is becoming increasingly difficult and frustrating, hahah. I try my best... but nothing can quite compare to having actually been there. I shall conclude this portion ofthe trip with pictures of particular interest ^^:
*************************************
The California Trip
After the two weeks had passed in Switzerland (all too fast, but yet not fast enough at the same time), me and Dennis had to pack our bags and get our stuff together, and get ready to fly over to John in Sunny California -- the experience in Switzerland was one of the best in my life, and something I certainly hope I can experience once more in this short and mortal lifetime. In any case, we woke bright and early on August 5th and got our stuff together, and then took a series of Bus and Train systems to get the the Airport in Zurich, and get ourselves on the plane headed for Toronto, Ontario.
It was a fairly uneventful flight there, and it took nine hours to complete -- they showed some pretty bad in-flight movies, too. However, in spite of that, the food they served was super-excellent -- veal and potatoes for lunch, with cheese and bread rolls. For dinner, one of the best pizzas both me'n Dennis have ever had, heheh. We complimented the chefs on such a good job -- and they gave us each another, heheh. ^^ Although in my haste to eat, I broke my fork and ended up looking really stupid:
But enouhg of my pizza misadventures on the rather long and uneventful flight -- the fun part began when we got to the Toronto Airport. We had to fil out Canadian claim forms, involving the stuff we were bringing with us, and go through Canadian Customs, have all of our stuff X-Rayed and checked.... then, to the US, where we had to fill out a bunch of sheets to mrely pick up our baggage, and the forms asked us the very stupidest of questions: "Are you a terrorist, have you been involved in espionage, are you bringing disease agents, are you entering the country with the intent of creating criminal activity, are you bringing snails into the country", each with a Yes or No checkbox. Well, yes, of course, Dennis is a Swiss terrorist with lots of disease-ridden snails, and also a member of Al-Qaeda. then we had to get X-Rayed and magnetically checked and fingerprint marked again, and as a result mised our flight -- so had to take one several hours later. But all worked out well, and we made it to the LAX airport at about 11:30pm.
However, me and Dennis passed out shortly after getting there -- we had suffered massive jetlag, so we had no effort to do anything but to go unconcious on the bed until the next morning -- It was all good though, as it was nighttime anyways. Upon the next morning, we went out to a Korean Market and got to look at some of the foods we'd be eating over the course of the next two weeks, and the culture we'd be largely experiencing.
We found a lot of interesting products with even more interesting chibi-style art on them, and got pictures of them -- althogh one we found particularily interesting was the last picture, on the right, shown above -- doesn't it look like it says "TEH" on the container? ^^ In any case, over the period of time that we were in California, we went to all sorts of interesting places -- commercial disricts, mals, extremely good asian restaurants, and naturally a ot of great asian food cooked by John himself. We visited the Third Street Promenade, the Santa Monica Beach, the Universal City Walk, Chinatown, and so many other very interesting places:
On the note of very interesting food,we went to an asian-restaurant in whic hthe food was cooked "Teppenyaki" style -- as in, it ws prepared right before you but a professional chef woh normally performs a bunch of incredily skilled looking tricks with the food whilst cooking, and you ge it right then and there -- certainly an interesting experience, most likely cost a lot, too. ^^ Much thanks to John's paents for funding these exquisite excursions, heh. But that wasn't the best part of it all -- the best part was that John came up with the idea that we would tell the staff that it was Dennis's birthday, but it wasn't - and we all knew except Dennis, and so after the great meal, a staf member brought out a delicious cake, and we all sang Happy Birthday as he was dressed in a rather silly-looking outfit. Needless to say, he was more than surprised. ^^
Another interesting event that came to pass was when we were going through a mall to the third street promenade -- we found a little kiosk that engraves images onto dog-tags -- ANY image, allowing the use of a laptop to find your desired image. After some deliberation, we all decided to each get one, and we each got one engraved with our online personas on them. I wear mine all the time now, heh. ^^ (Mine on the left, John's in the middle, and Dennis's on the right, as you can plainly guess if you know our personas at all).
As well as having an extremely messed up sleping pattern, we had apenchant for making the weirdest of foods at the strangest times of night -- everything from oriental dumplings and noodles, to quesadillas, crepes, you name it, John made it at any hour of the morning. Below are some pictures of the crepe adventure (Yes, I look horribly fruity in the one picture -- but it does look hilarious. XD)
The last part of the trip that I will go over in paticular detail is the trip to Disneyland that we made near the very end of our trip -- I hadn't been there in over eight years, and as john's dad told me, "Whenyou go there again, it will have changed once more." -- and indeed it did,the place was more magnificent and entertaining than I remember, and had brought back some fond memories of the years long since passed. It was highly enjoyable to ogo there once more, and go on some of the rides, particularily Space Mountain, heheh. John showed t ous some of his DDR skills in an arcade within, and performed the very hardest of difficulties perfectly -- but almost got sick afterwards from exerting such effort after having not done it for so long. He also met a group who apparently meets thee on a regular basis to talk and play the piano, and as a result he ended up getting to play the piano before a live audience at Disneyland! You'll never be able to buy tickets to that! ^^ The fireworks at the night were the most spectacular I'd ever witnessed, stunning and from all angles of the park. It, like this trip in it's entirety, is an experience I shall never forget.
(more continued on next post)
