My New Job! HAZZAH!!!

As I mentioned before I used to work in the apple factory which let me tell you was AWESOME! Hint: See Sarcasm in the dictionary. Not meaning to say to those of you who knew I was already being sarcastic that you are stupid, just sarcasm in text is very hard to read, and I love me some dry sarcasm!

But moving on with the main point of this post. My new job! I worked 1 day in what we call ramps, this is the area located on the back of the kitchen where the trucks come in and drop off food and what not for the kitchen to use. You just sort it all and put it in the proper place. it was wonderful to be outside in the sun and not stuck in the dreaded 46 job, Apple Packing. (If unclear on the 46 reference see post http://mlaucke.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/46/) After my one day of freedom from apple packing, the little taste of happiness they gave me they took it away and put me back into the apple factory, Sad Face… The kitchen was informed the work I did was excellent and a week or so later, Mosche (the guy who normally does ramps) was called to the millitary and I was his replacement all week. I enjoyed work so much I finished early every day. After they saw me working ramps and befriending a couple of the right people I saw the lovely 130 in my worklist which means Kitchen! One of the more desired jobs on the kibbutz for it’s atomosphere and ease of working. It is so nice to work at a place where it matters how fast you work. The faster we work the faster we all get off and get to enjoy the sunshine! We also get off at 3 instead of 4 which is an extra lovely hour in the sun sometimes and an extra hour inside out rooms when it’s raining. But we start at 6! Just gotta add another coffee onto my order of around 6ish a day, with plenty of cups of tea to compliment them. The kitchen is awesome now that I’ve been working there for the last 3 weeks. You make friends fast, I get to practice a little hebrew. י’שכצ’ד oh yeah! Don’t worry that doesn’t mean anything. I can switch my keyboard to hewbrew, the only problem is I don’t know where any of the characters are since I haven’t got the little stickies to put on the keys yet. Fail. I also am working with one boss every monring, so it is nice to build a friendship with him. A couple of interesting observations is. There is 4 people who speak really good english in the kitchen. A lady in the office who orders everything, the two head chefs thankfully, and one of the other members who is 18 who works with us. Besides that it is either Hebrew or Arabic with a splash of english. So, whenever we can communicate on any level with one of the people who don’t speak much english we celebrate it! It soon will turn into an inside joke. So, for the whole day we are shouting back and fourth our inside jokes (around 4 of them) and laughing. They are pretty ridiculous if I must say so myself. But the super interesting thing I thought about was, when I was a kid my friends and I sat around and were talking about how many times you can repeat a joke until it isn’t funny anymore. We came to the conclusion that the first 3 times are funny, then the 7th time. The 7th is because you repeat it so much it becomes funny out of sheer stupidity of repeating it so many times. Then after that you must wait until the right situation usually around a month or so later when everone has forgotten about the joke. Well, this completely does not hold up in the kitchen considering each day each joke is probably mentioned 100ish times. That’s all, that was all I had to write about. Oh and we had an awesome fieldtrip day in the kitchen. We finished early (except for me since I Was stupid enough to request off the day we had a half day and a field trip go me!) We went to Tiberias which is recorded as one of the holdest cities in the world. It’s next to the Kinneret or as we know in english the Sea of Galilee which is the biggest water source for all of Israel. We were right next to the Syrian border, around 100 ft I would say. We went to this hotsprings where they also had a zoo of animals from Africa, which was kind of random but of well. We saw some interesting animals, a parrot show,

It could have been dead for all I know. He didn't move once!

Waiting for their turn to impress us!

basically nothing to write home about, shortly after we were on our way to the nice smelling hot springs! By nice smelling I mean nice smelling if you like the smell of rotting eggs.

The whole kitchen crew!

The lovely rotten egg smelling hot springs!

Night time at Tiberius Hot Springs!

After, spending a good 3ish hours in the water, clensing ourselves we moved onto this amazingly cute little restaurant.

This cute little restaurant overlooking the valley that was rebuild from ruins served us an amazing dinner to not forget.

It was actually a ruin that was rebuilt. very small in the shape of an L the small part of the L is the kitchen and the dinning room was the longer part. sitting around a max of 45ish people. Here is the menu! You can see all the good choices we had to choose from! And no there wasn’t an english version Just point and hope it is good

Kind of challenging for us English speakers, eh?

Great dinner! Amazing appetizers, which basically Gur and myself ate. We kept stealing the plates from each end of the table until we had massed a pile of 7 empty plates on top of eachother right in front of us. Naturally, I ordered a rare steak which melted in my mouth.

Mouth watering steak! Kibbutz food is pretty much the same from week to week so it get's old REAL fast! So a refreshing steak for a change is about 10 times as good as normal! Life was good that night!

And surprising everyone else’s food was delicious as well, there wasn’t a bad dish in the restuarante. Sharing a bottle of wine also could of helped.

A lovely red wine to go with my steak!

Dessert was lovely as dessert always is, although I didn’t get too much because Timor was licking the plate clean…

Dessert went quickly, I could barely get a bite!

And then we had the long drive home. Where I fell asleep for a little while, thankfully there weren’t any sharpies in my car. Trying to keep this post short and simple. So with that! Thank you kitchen staff for being awesome! And Boss… “I’MMMMM SOOOOO SIICCCCKKKK!!!!!”

From a moving bus somewhere in the north of Israel! I Say goodmorning to my fellow Californians!

I hope today is as sunny for you as my day was in Tel Aviv!

-Mike Laucke

46

The most hated number on Kibbutz Bar’Am. I guarantee if you ask any volunteer what their least favorite number is after volunteering for a month on Kibbutz Bar’am they will say “46″ without hessitation.

Now let me explain why. But, first let me explain what a Kibbutz actually is.

A Kibbutz is a collective community only found in Israel. It was traditionally based on Socialism and Zionism. It’s forms of income were mainly agricultural, and although those are still some of the forms used today, the more mainly used forms of income are industries. But there are many changes being made to kibbutz now-a-days, becoming privatized as well as other things making them slightly different then what they were founded on. Multiple kibbutz is called kibbutzim and a member of a kibbut is called a kibbutznik. in 2010 there were 270 kibbutz in Israel.

Now that we are all clear on the conscept of what a Kibbutz is. We may continue on with our least favorite number, 46. Our work schedule is posted every week in the bottom of the kitchen it includes every volunteers name and where they work. Instead of writing out each place of work which includes, Plastic Factory, Apple Packing, Dinning, Kitchen, Ramps, Members club, Cinema, and so on and so fourth. They just abbreviate it to numbers, like 130 for kitchen, 131 for dinning etc… well, as I’m sure you can guess the abbreviation for apple packing is 46. The worst thing to see on your work schedule!

 

As I mentioned above most Kibbutzim have some sort of factory that they use to export some goods to make the majority of their money. Well on Kibbutz Bar’Am it is an apple factory. Doesn’t sound so bad at first eh? Eat as many apples as you want, maybe make some apple pies. I could think of worse jobs, or atleast that’s what I thought before I started working at the apple factory. Which is actually called apple packing by the volunteers. This is because that is what the majority of your time spent there is. Just standing in one spot from 6:30am-4:00pm packing apples 5 days a week. I know this sounds bad. but, infact it actually is worse then bad! It is terrible. imagine with me for a second, that you are standing packing apples into a box.

Like this.

Maybe 8 per container, or 12 or just to the brim pretty boring and repetitive huh, but when you think it can’t get worse you just now imagine that someone comes up and starts yelling at you telling you that you are packing apples wrong! Think for a second, how possibly can you pack a box of apples wrong. Okay, sure you have to sort the bad apples out, natually. Then you must alleign the other apples so they are facing each other, now that is just stupid, because between the machine carrying your packed boxes, the fork-lifts carrying them around then the trucks driving over the windy mountains to take them to the store, (where they just unpack the apples anyways), they aren’t going to stay in the spot you put them in. Sorry, just doesn’t work that way Mrs. Apple Factory.

One other very funny thing that happens in the apple packing factory is the classification levels. There are 3 classes. Class A. a perfect apple you would find photo shoped into an add. Class B. Still edible. Class C. Shit that barely classifies as an apple, basically is used for making apple juice and things of that liking. Well, now that we know what the classification levels are I can tell you one of the jobs is sorting the apples that got put into the wrong line. There is usually 2 lines of Class A, 2 lines of class B and a single line of class C. At the beggining of each line is a person who examinines each apple to make sure it’s in the right class.

If not they put it on a separate conveyor belt that sends it to the next class level. Well, often I find myself sitting there sorting apples peacefully, to have one of the managers come up and say “no no no no like this, these are bad apples, these ones are okay.” I reply with “okay no worries” and switch my sorting to their specifications, shortly after a few minutes maybe a different manager comes up and says “Mike! What are you doing no no no no sort like this.” Not wanting to disagree with one of my bosses and point out the fact that I was told something different 2 minutes earlier I respond with “Okay yeah no worries”. A couple of minutes later the first manager walks by and exclaims “Mike! What the fuck! I just told you how to sort the apples!” Now at this point you prey that the second manager is in yelling distance to call them both over to discuss the actually bad and good apples. But if not, you just have to keep an eye out to who is walking past and switch your sorting style accordingly. This happens more then one would like to think. They will sometimes come over from across the room 10-15 meters and say “Why’d you throw this apple away! It’s good!” To which you just sorta stare at them with a blank look on your face since you are probably about to fall asleep since it is a sitting job and no one sleeps on this Kibbutz. Then they usually walk away shortly after and you go back to sorting your apples “wrong” That is life.

But at least we get some breaks in the day. let’s see. Breakfast, 8:30-9:10 minus the 5 minutes each way it takes to walk there, then a 15 minute break from 11:00-11:15 which you really can’t do anything but sit in the coffee room in the apple factory since the weather usually isn’t nice enough to go outside. then Lunch from 1:00-1:40. so overall a work day consists of 7 hours and 55 minutes with 1 hour and 35.
Now let’s do some simple math fun. If one packs a box of apples let’s say for shits and giggles that there is an average of 52 apples per box and this person packs sorta fast around 2 boxes a minute. That is 104 apples per minute. As mentioned above there is 7 hours and 55 minutes in a work day which is 475 minutes of packing apples at 104 apples per minute that is 49,400 Apples by one person. Let’s say that there is 4 people working per line and 2 on the class C (The Worst looking apples) that’s a total of 14 people at just shy of 50,000 apples per person, we pack around 691,600 apples a day. Those also have to be stacked by usually 2-3 people, that means those people are stacking 335,000 apples each. We know they do around 40 tonnes of apples a day, meaning each person is lifting 26,300lbs if they work there all day. Now Obviously there is a constant stream of apples or not everyone works as fast as I am suggestings simply because it’s depressing, knowing the fact that if you pack 120 boxes and hour or 2 boxes an hour you aren’t getting out of the factory any faster. There is ZERO motiviational factor. Besides of course not getting kicked out of the Kibbutz. To get the more realistic number of how many apples we pack a day you’d have to take off a few hundred thousand apples I think.

Here are some pictures I took of the apple factory! I only actually took these photos after I no longer worked there. Since, no one who has a day off from the Apple Facotry wants to be anywhere near there, or speak of apples at all!

The Conveyor belt that takes the boxes to us for easier access to move less and pack more efficiently.

A couple of facts mentioned above and new:

The apple factory approximately does 35-45 tonnes of apples a day. That’s enough to give every Israeli an apple per month
If everyone working stops for 1 minute, they loose $1,000. (Quoted from Guy one of the Managers)
The apple factory has enough apples, pears and kiwis in their fridges to last all winter long. If you figure they can do over 1 million apples a week that’s a lot of apples stored in some pretty large fridges.
There is an average of 45ish people working in the Apple Factory on any given day
The apple packing machine costs a few miillion New Israeli Shekels (NIS) around $500,000
Coffee is the soul of life of the Apple Facotry. Without free coffee machines, there would be no apple factory.

With love and thanks to the lord for no more apple packing for me! I say goodnight from Kibbutz Bar’Am, Northern Israel, 1km away from Lebanon our lovely neighbors, Israel, Middle East, World, Solar System, Universe and beyond.
-Michael Jacob Laucke
P.S. More posts to come
P.P.S Disclaimer: I have no problems with anyone from Kibbutz Bar’Am or any of the people who work in and/or manage the apple factory, you are all very nice and I miss you. I will come visit again soon.

Ireland!

Ireland has been one of those places I’ve always wanted to travel too, not sure if it’s because of P.S. I love you or everything I’ve heard about the culture and it’s welcoming people but I wanted to go and  see if these rumors were true first hand, I got my answer before I even arrived on Irish soil.
I stepped onto my 16 hour bus ride to Cork from London, it’s a 6 hour ride to the ferry, 5 hour ferry ride, then another 5 hour bus ride to cork arriving at 11am. Sounds brutal huh? It was.

But it was made much easier by my fellow bus travelers. Almost all were Irish and before the first hour had seen its end there was a living conversation going among the better back of the bus, I was doing my best to keep along with all the different accents. I quickly learned how open, friendly and hospitable these people were. I was giving tea after one of them got a large container of hot water, I was offered food and cigarettes or as they would say fags, (Which I refused naturally coming from the states). But the most surprising was how quickly they welcomed me to their home, before I’d even gotten off the bus I was offered a couch and a home cooked meal in a coupe of different cities around Ireland. I was also recommended places to see and things to do. I already knew I would love this country.

First Sight I saw in Cork

Swapping info and saying our farewells I looked around at the city that was Cork, Ireland. I wondered around main street looking for internet, I found enough to get me the address of the hostel. As I pulled out my map to try and find the street an Irish man stopped and went out of his way to ask if I needed help finding something, I was taken aback and when I recovered I mentioned where I had to go. With some words I understood and some I didn’t I was on my way. What an amazing first impression, I open a map and a random stranger stops and helps me out. Amazing. I found an amazing hostel for the 3 nights I’d be staying in Cork since I couldn’t find a couch through couchsurfing, which is unfortunate but I met some amazing life long friends who I stayed with when I went to Dublin and will hopefully be visiting me in California. While in Cork I saw many things including Blarney Castle and Fota Wildlife Park I highly recommend both to those who find themselves in Cork.

Blarney Castle near Cork, Ireland

I caught a cheap bus to Galway next, which is most famously known for The Cliffs of Moher.

 

Cliffs of Moher in Co. Claire. 400ft top to bottom.

 

I left sunny Cork and landed in rainy Galway, but that didn’t stop my fun, I had wonderful couchsurfing hosts. Four girls who were all students in Galway! They showed me much hospitality and the culture of drinking tea… Lots of tea.

It goes something like this. One person wants tea, asks if anyone else wants tea, 8 other yes’s and other forms of yes come resounding back. A few minutes later everyone is happy. When one of those teas runs out, that person gets up and offers to make tea for eveyone who wants another cup, 8 more resounding forms of yes come back… And you can continue the pattern for as long as you wish.

I walked around down town and the whole little city called Galway despite horizontal rain, which didn’t seem to stop no one else either. I saw all the sights in one day and was exciting to get back for some tea!

A Rainy Day On One of the Main Streets in Galway, Ireland. October, 2011

I took a tour bus on my last day seeing all the sights of the county below Galway, County Claire, I believe. Which holds on the publicity like Cliffs of Moher and the rest of the Burren. Right after the tour was over I caught my bus to meet my friends in Dublin that I had met in Cork!

These guys were awesome! We wondered around that night and I ended up crashing on the couch at about 2:30am. The next day sadly was my only day in Ireland so I was going to do it big! On my way out the door a fellow friend stopped me and asked if he could come along and be a tourist in his own city, I laughed a said of course. We were off, he was my awesome tour guide! We saw most of the sights in downtown, Trinity College, Dublin Castle, This Famous Boat, Parliament, House of Commons, etc… After all that walking though one needs a refreshing drink, so naturally off we went to the Guinness Factoy, and boy was it cool!  Basically, you just think of it as you are paying for the most expensive pint o’Guinness in your life and you get a free tour along with it

Pouring my First Pint O'Guinness in the Guinness Factory in Dublin!

After pouring my first pint O’Guiness, I met up with some friends that I met in Krakow, Poland. Sadly my Camera died at this point so there will be no further photos. We pub crawled as they called in Dublin. It basically is referring to the act of getting a beer in a bunch of different pubs and by the end of the night you are crawling to each of them. The definite highlight was going to the smallest pub in Ireland! It was quite unbelievable! It could hold 20 people max! And the bartender didn’t have to move, if he spun in a 360 he could reach all the alcohol.

That night I didn’t sleep in fear I wouldn’t have woken up in time for my flight to Glasgow, Scotland. I’ll be posting about my wonderful trip to Scotland soon!

Thanks for reading, if you would like to see more photos please check out my Flickr, and also please comment with likes and dislikes of photos, I am working on my photography and any input is much appreciated!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlaucke/sets/72157627957339942/

From a warmer place and a cup of tea,

Barcelona, Spain, Europe.

 

-MJ Laucke

Thoughts from Spain

Hello fellow followers,

I once again have to apologize for not posting more often, I however this time have thought about why it takes me so long to post. Y’see I enjoy sharing big posts about super interesting things, and what happens is I get bored, or tired writing this huge post half way through and either forget about it or think it isn’t as exciting as I make it out to be, then I started following some of my friends blogs who post funny small things that happen with their everyday lives. I’m going to try and incorporate both of these styles into my posting from now on.

So, I currently am working on a big post about my trip to Ireland, but for now, I’m writing to you from Barcelona, Spain. It is a wonderful city with lots of culture, very warm weather around 23 celcius, which for those who don’t enjoy math is around 73ish. I’ve been enjoying spanish wine, bread, cheese and grapes. Not a bad country so far. Although, it is once again kind of hard getting used to being in a country that doesn’t speak English as a first language, back to the charades

If anyone has recommendations of places for me to visit while I am in Spain, please tell me in a comment, thanks for reading. Uploading new photos soon!

From a country right below the UK yet still an hour a head of them and home to the worlds most famous pick pockets.

-Michael Jacob Laucke

Barcelona, Spain, Europe, World, Universe.

Arriving in Scotland… Dealing with the Border Patrol

Zero hours of sleep, due to Dublin. Which for those of you who haven’t gone means lots of drinking… I reunited with a few friends of mine that I met on my last leg of my European journey in Poland, Jane and Shane.

As I left Dublin at 5am to catch my Ryan Air flight to Glasgow, which is it’s own story separate from this one. But in short, I couldn’t print my ticket since well, I’m traveling so the lady was going to charge me 40 euros to print it for me. Instead I opted to use their computers for 1 Euro a Minute which is ridiculous! Printing was also another Euro, 5 euros later I got my ticket showed it to her and she printed me a new one anyways… Go figure.

 

I landed in Glasgow grabbed my stuff and started down the terminal to the entrance, In line with the rest of the plane probably around 15 people from the front I was stopped by two people off to the side wearing suits and badges.

“Passport please” as one of the pulled me aside.

I thought in my head  hahaha. Random Screening, sure of course the guy with a beard… I think not!’

They started to ask me all the usual questions that I’ve gone through numerous times. However, after no sleep it took most of my energy to not start making jokes about this whole stupid process. I started answering their questions as normal.

First phrase out of their mouth was “Oohhh… An American Passport…”
I wanted to say “What the hell is that suppose to mean?” But of course I didn’t.

Normal first questions.

“So you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions?” As if I had a choice… (“No sir actually I do mind if you do, may I enter your country now?”)

“What are you doing here?”

“Traveling.”

“Do you have a job back home?”

“No”

“Oh, then how’d you get all this money?”

“I was a waiter, I saved up my money.”

At this point as per normal I start to see looks of shock cross their face, Y’see in Europe waiters don’t receive tips so saving up lots of money to travel isn’t as easy as it is in the states.

“So you had a job…”

“Naturally.”

“Where’d you come from?”

I don’t know the same place that the rest of these people came from… Dublin. But I only said “Dublin.”

“Where’d you land in Ireland?”

“Cork.”

“Plane?”

“Bus from London” Puzzled looks. I continued to explain “The bus drove onto a ferry.” Looks of puzzlement went away.

Meanwhile they are scanning my passport and pointing to things.

“When do you leave.”

“October 25th to Spain.”

“Very nice, warmer weather there.”

I didn’t respond.

They finally handed me my passport back while mentioning “Y’know we have to do this, some people get into this country without going through the system.”

I looked over my shoulder at the 10′s of people walking right past us and out the doors. I decided not to comment on it.

And I’m saving the best question  for last, they asked me before letting me go was “Do you speak English as a second language…?”

It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing.
With a warm cup of tea and great company! (Darren and Halsted)

I say goodnight and sleep well! Or Should I rephrase and say good afternoon California.

 

Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

-MJL.

 

 

 

Traveling Alone

I’ve figured out my ideal travel partner… An Invisible friend. No, seriously. Listen to my argument before you laugh at me.

There are several different kinds of travelers in the world. Some like to travel alone without the hassle of having to deal with someone else.  Some like to travel with a partner, usually being either a close friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, family or random person they meet.

This comes with a few prices though, traveling with a close friend could possibly end the friendship in a big fight, this is usually due to the fact that although you spend a lot of time with your best friend you aren’t constantly in each other’s presence/way. This results in no alone time with everyone needs at some point and also you start noticing all those stupid little annoying things they do that you never noticed before until it bothers you so much that they tie their left shoe before their right one that you just explode and start yelling at them for it…

Traveling with a boyfriend/girlfriend has it’s +’s and -’s Although you do miss out on all the fun travel relationships ( – )  you always have someone to be with in that relationshipy way ( + ). (Travel relationships are the most functional in my honest opinion, y’see both parties know exactly what it is, and when it is going to end, so no body gets hurt and everyone gets what they want.)

Then there is traveling with the family, the only kind of traveling where you can have full out yelling battles and still love each other at the end of the day.

Then comes traveling with random travels you meet along the road, I think this is the best form if I had to choose one, first off you can find someone who likes to travel in the same style that you do, many people like to travel as cheap as possible, some like to travel a little more luxurious, find the person that matches you and go for it! You can also separate and regroup at a later date, this brings me into my next segment,

The worst part about traveling with someone!

I make it out to sound so horrible when in reality it’s just the fact that you don’t get to do what you want when you want, you have to give and take. (Now you all can gasp in horror.) YES! I KNOW! It’s tragic! Well for me it is, since I travel at a moments notice I don’t like having to make sure it fits into someone else’s schedule this is why I would want an Invisible travel partner! Best of both worlds! Oh, geez! I totally forgot to discuss the pros and cons of traveling alone!

Traveling alone! (Pros and Cons)

Pros: You get to do what you want when you want, travel how you want, do stupid shit since you don’t have someone to bounce your ideas off of and I believe it is easier to find a place to stay. It is also easier to make  friends when traveling alone since you are forced to interact with others if you wanna be social.

Cons: You don’t have someone to share moments with, explore new cities, bail you out of trouble, get in trouble with you. it is also less safe to travel alone.  etc…

That is why I choose an invisible person to be my traveling partner!

I enjoy exploring new cities with someone, laughing and sharing memories, however, I hate having to work into someone else’s schedule, being in contact constantly with someone, travel in the same style as they do (which tends to be a little more expensive then myself) and I wouldn’t make half the friends I did if I was traveling with someone.  Just to clarify if you have any doubts I have tried traveling with people, I just can’t seem to manage past 3-4 days, and if they last a week that is a miracle!

Also, a bonus for having an invisible partner to travel with is when people see you walking down the street talking to yourself they don’t bother you.

One last note, I would feel a little less safe traveling alone as a single young attractive girl. If you want tips on how to travel alone as a small cute girl check out my friends blog who is in the peace corps in Ukraine. www.jgrebenstein.wordpress.com

Writing from a bouncy citilink bus from Glasgow to Edinburgh in Scotland I say hello!

Bus, Glasgow – Edinburgh, Scotland, Great Britain, Europe, World, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe, the Unknown…

-Michael Jacob Laucke

Closest Flight in my Life!

A little premise with flying with Ryan Air. Although it is one of the cheapest airlines in Europe they make money in every way they can. It usually goes something like this.

Ticket from the London to Germany = $15
Extra leg room? Yes/No = $10
Priority Boarding? Yes/No = $10
Checked Baggage? Yes/No = $25
Credit Card Processing Fee = $10
Online Check-in Fee = $10
Taxes = $20-50
Transportation to and from random airport = $5

Okay a couple of notes. 1. Why is the a fee for checking in online and printing it off with your own paper and ink! And if you fail to print it off they charge you $40 to print off the ticket at the airport!

Also if you fly before 8am or after 10pm there aren’t taxes… Weird eh?

Now they get the money from the checked baggage fee! If it is over 10kilos which is 22lbs you have to check it, or if it is bigger than a small bag you have to check it… They have people that weigh you bag and force you to put it in the metal box to see if it fits… Else you have to pay even more to check it at the airport…

So sometimes it’s actually cheaper to fly with a big airline. Most of the times not.

Now onto the story.

I was in Sweden, on my way back to London flying with the almighty Ryan Air. We left the house at 4pm, our flight was at 6:45pm. Plenty of time to spare, since Ryan Air only flies out of small airports that are super hard to get to and small there usually isn’t a big line for anything so it’s a breeze to get to the gate. This story will prove how fast you can get on a plane.

We got dropped off at the bus station to catch an Airporter, since we missed our first bus we had to wait 30 more minutes for the next one. Time is slowly slipping away from our side to theirs. Next the quoted time was actually 20 minutes longer than we thought. Time is definitely not on our side at this point… So much that in fact we arrived at the airport with 20 minutes to spare until our flight…

Next problem, we didn’t have a printer so we had to go in and get our tickets printed… Not sure what line to get it we went different ways (Not the best idea). 7 minutes later we had our tickets in hand and were running to the Security checkpoint.

Naturally it wasn’t that easy, we had to go through the weighing checkpoint and the sizing checkpoint first. I failed the weighing checkpoint coming in at 14 kilos. They told me I had to check my bag, I replied I had 10 minutes left until my flight left. They said I could try and make my bag lighter, unloading stuff, I passed some things to Shelbi (my friend I was traveling with) I emptied all my water, I stuffed my pockets full of all my camera gear, flashlights, anything heavy, I put on my jackets, and extra clothes. 5 minutes later I weighed in at 9.5 on to the next challenge!

Security, Smallest security center I’ve ever seen, two lines 4 guards. I now had to empty all my pockets with all the shit I just put in them from my backpack… Fail… I made it through after a couple of minutes, ditched my friend Shelbi to try and stop them from taking off. I started running to our gate, I was watching as the border patrol guy was lowering the blinds to his window! 5inches left, 4 inches left, 3inches left until we miss our flight! The blinds stopped. Slowly they reversed their decision to close and opened back up to the weird expression of the boarder patrol looking at me with that look like are you serious? This is your flight? I had a huge smile! Which translated to a yes to him. I slammed down my passport! He said I literally made it on the flight by 3 seconds! I then informed him that I was traveling with my friend, he asked me where she was, I turned around and watched Shelbi run off in the wrong direction! I started yelling at the top of my lungs for Shelbi! No use… 1 minute went by, 2 minutes, I kept telling him she would be right here.

He told me to get on the plane and she  may not make it, then I saw her round the corner! I went in to them telling me I had to put all the shit I pulled out into one bag! ARG! So I started putting my shit back in, and then they stopped me to say you are taking to long, just go on the plane. We sprinted walked up the stairs and made it on. Everyone gave us the look we walked on. But we didn’t care! We caught our flight within 20 minutes of arriving at the airport!

That’s all folks!

London, England, UK, Europe, World.

-Michael Laucke

Wifi

My first two month trip to Eastern and Central Europe I had my lovely iphone with no sim card in it. So basically it was an overpriced I-pod. I used it to surf the internet, check e-mail, facebook etc… Now on mainland Europe finding free wifi is as easy as turning in a 360 degree circle until you spot a McDonalds or Starbucks. At which point you go buy a coffee and steal their internet.

After having this experience and getting really involved in couchsurfing I found that the Iphone wasn’t gonna cut it. Trying to couchsurf with it would be just short of impossible. So to remedy this issue I bought myself a netbook. Which is a mini computer, weighing in at about 2.5 lbs, 10.1 inches across and 7 hours of battery life. It is the perfect backpacking computer.

I landed in London and was very excited to use it! This was short lived and stomped out my London’s free wifi situation…

I don’t know if this goes along with the whole have like 20,000+ cameras watching you in London or not, but there is no free wifi… Anywhere! Not at starbucks, not at McDonalds, not at any coffee shops. You have to go to the outskirts of London to find family owned coffee shops for your free wifi which is so slow there really isn’t any point, or at the British Library. That is literally it. I know this because I’ve walked around most of the city with my iphone out searching for wifi signal… This has been a very annoying problem for me because now I’m just carrying around a useless computer…

However, there is an alternative option, all over the UK the Government I believe offers wifi spots, for a ridiculous price of 3 pounds for an hour, 5 pounds for a day, or 50 pounds for a month… And I doubt it is really that fast. I feel they are trying to have a monopoly on the wifi so they give people money not to have free wifi…

A few funny stories to go along with the subject.

1. I stayed with my friend Shelbi in London, she has a flat with a few flatmates and they have wifi… Now this wifi is sooooo slow, that it takes about 20-30 seconds to open facebook home page, if you are lucky. So, Ironically when I found free wifi it was this… Fail…

2. I have since left London and traveled to the South West corner of England Land’s End. Because apparently this is where the land end’s… Well at least for the British Empire. It’s kind of funny because they say it’s Land’s End and then have a famous sign saying that there is actually Land 3147 miles away… (New York) anyways back to my story. I took the 9 hour night bus from London to Penzance at which point I figured I would be able to find some wifi and book a room at a nearby hostel or something. My thought process was that in London it was hard to find free wifi but in the Small little towns it would be every where… Well, I got off the bus and started walking along the sea coast thinking that the main town was at the over end of this cover that was probably 2-4 miles long, small little town, smaller than London at least. I was walking looking for a main street of some sort until I found one after 2 miles. I whipped out my iphone and began searching for wifi. No luck. I walked into a bakery and asked where I could buy a coffee and find some wifi, “Find what?” was the response I got, apparently they didn’t know any place with wifi or any local hostels… Not looking good so far. They did give me one piece of advice. That was to walk to the main town Penzance at the other end of the cove. FAIL! Yes I apparently walked through two towns to get told to walk back to Penzance.

I found a police officer and asked where the main street of Penzance was and it was hidden in the back of some church or something. Finally found some free wifi I could use for two hours, booked a room, caught a bus, and wouldn’t find internet again for the next 4 days. But It was gorgeous in the countryside. A nice change from the busy life of London. I will upload photos soon.

From a the best wifi source I’ve found in 3 weeks.

Plymouth, England, UK, Europe.

-Mike J. Laucke

Packing Changes for Part 2 of Europe

Every traveler is currently thinking to themselves that I am going to write a post about how much stuff I got rid of and how much lighter my pack is… I was this was the truth. Although I did find many things useless/unneeded for my travels I did acquire a few more items.

 

Major changes are:

+ New Camera Lens
+ Computer
+  Rain Jacket
+ Extra Layer of Clothing for Warmth
+ Extra Pair of Underwear and Socks
+ Northface Down Jacket
+ New and Slightly Bigger Backpack
+ Photographer Book

- Old Camera Lens
- Camera Flash
- Old Backpack
- Over-sized Lock
- Misc Crap
- Address Book and 2nd Journal

Overall, new pack weight is around 25+ lbs. I am aiming for 20lbs while I travel, yet my camera gear is over 10lbs by itself… I some times am envious of point and shoot cameras.

With a sore back and a coffee.

Penzance, Cornwall, England, UK, Europe.

-Michael Laucke

Absence…

Hello all my readers…

 

I must apologize for my absence from this blog, as of late I’ve been slightly busy and getting re-aclimated to the traveling lifestyle.

Time for some catch up time, in late July after seeing my good friend in Germany I had an epic travel day… If you want to call it that. I left a little town in Germany to head to Nuremburg, after a two hour train ride, I had a quick transfer to my 4 hour bus ride to Prague, in the Czech Republic. After many painful conversations with info guides who don’t speak english I figured out how to catch the right bus to the airport in 4 hours. I decided to enjoy my time in Prague for the fews hours I was there and bought some absinth and Becherovka. (I didn’t drink either until I got home) I walked through downtown, saw a flash mob in the central square, ate some weird fried dough with cheese on top, and killed my back with my stupidly heavy pack. (I knew I should have bought the liquor at the end)

Bus to Prague airport, wait, board bus that takes you to the plane, wait, get on plane, wait, two hours later arrive in London, wait, try to get through customs… fail. Apparently I didn’t do my research very well because to get into the UK you need a ticket out of the UK. As I did have a ticket out of the UK I was in luck, except I didn’t have a printer since I am traveling. At this point she told me she would have to fax a form to the airport which they will have to fill out and then send back saying that infact I do have a ticket. Approximate time was 3 hours!

Thinking of a way out of this, I luckily checked my iphone, and it had saved the e-mail the airlines sent to me! Thank the lord!

Catch the hour bus into Central London, to catch the last Tube out of central London to the outskirts where heathrow lies. Super tired at this point and reaching 1am I was just gonna look for a place to crash in the airport because I was too cheap to buy a hostel. See I believe that if I’m going to spend the money on a bed I want to get my full value out of it, the  idea of spending $35 bucks to sleep for 6 hours wasn’t that appealing to me.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who shared this belief, as I walked into the lobby there were about 100 college students spread out everywhere with their bags next to them. I felt bad for the poor bastard who was trying to clean the floors… I think he walked over, took a look around and just left… I found a spot next to the window and used my pack as a pillow. 7 hours later, I got in line for 30 minutes, to find out I was in the wrong line. Great start to my day!

After getting in the right line, and on the plane, I was off to New York! My flight partner was a New Yorker who just came from a London party… The plane was leaving at 10am, apparently he was still drunk, high and on ecstasy. This guy was bouncing off the walls… But in my head while I was talking to him I was counting the minutes, sure enough five minutes later he was passed out cold.

three hour layover in New York, USA. Home sweet home.

Uneventful flight back to California, except for the sight of the rocky mountains which brought tears of happiness to my eyes. That is truly when I know I’m home.

Grabbed my bag, hoped on the air porter,  and continued to surprise everyone! I forgot to mention that I didn’t tell anyone I was coming back, most peoples faces were priceless.

The reason I flew back was to go a family traditional two week long camping trip in northern California. Was a wonderful time, pictures are on my facebook.

I stayed a few weeks longer to catch up with everyone, now I’m back on my 2nd leg of my journey starting in the UK, London.

With fish and chips, weird accents, new friends, and jet lag.

-Michael Laucke

London, UK, Europe, World.