the past week

train systems in europe are not as clear-cut as they seem. we purchased the eurail global pass before we took the trip thinking that we could just hop on a train any time that we wanted...incorrect. italy, spain, and france all require reservations which cost extra and you can only make them at the train stations. further, you can't reserve a train from spain to france while in spain. you must take a train to a town just across the border, get off, and purchase the reservation there, hoping that it is available. this was even more complicated for us since france's train workers frequently go on strike. nobody was working at the border station. luckily for us, we were able to just buy them on the train (couldn't reserve a seat though, so spent most of the time standing in the space between train cars.) paris was an alright city, but we only had 2 nights there which is not at all enough time. that place is huge. we took a night train to copenhagen on the 1st. jeff and i went straight out to the music festival at roskilde. roskilde music festival is the wildest thing i've ever seen. completely mental as our UK friends would say. i didn't know most of the bands there but we came across some great new music...hjatalin, friendly fires, fleet foxes, and fever ray to name a few. the big names weren't too great for the most part. kanye sucked and most everyone was disappointed...he actually got booed at one point. we left after 15 minutes of his set. only cool thing was that he played on the main stage (orange stage) and it was always impressive seeing anywhere from 40 to 70 thousand people all crammed around it. roskilde is arguably europes best festival...completely non-profit with all proceeds going to a charity dedicated to reducing co2 emissions. there were areas where you could ride a stationary bike to charge your phone or heat the showers. we had to miss the last night in order to catch our flight to london. the plane was delayed and we didn't get to our hostel until around 4 am. probably wouldn't made it at all without the help of our friend nader, an iranian exile and writer (on issues caused by religion), who drove us to our hostel (probably an hour drive from the airport). anyways, time is out on the computer...