Bus and train down, just one boat to go!

Leg 1 of my epic trip has been completed, and leg 2 is just about to commence!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m going to be working in Germany for Bayer (yes, the Asprin company) and living with Mang-Git, who also will be interning here. Since February, we have been diligently budgeting for and planning our route to Europe. Our plan was to leave Detroit on the 5^th, stay in London for a few days, travel to Paris and stay for a night, then finally end up on Cologne. We gave ourselves about a week to find an apartment in Cologne, which we figured shouldn’t be that difficult since it’s full of yuppies and the apartment turnover is pretty high.

This master plan all went to shambles, though, when Mang-Git called me on the morning of the 5^th to tell me that he was checking into the U of M hospital for inpatient treatment. Turns out that his “not-so-serious” fall from his bike on May 3^rd was actually really serious. He had a fractured rib and punctured lung that collapsed 50% by the time he got to a hospital, and they had to keep him there for a week. Oh, it gets worse though! When the doctor told us that he couldn’t fly for 6 weeks after the procedure, we were really bummed because we couldn’t push our internships all the way to July.

For the first few days in the hospital, we kind of moped around and made friends with all the nurses and technicians. By the 3^rd day, everyone on the floor knew about that kid who fell off his bike and walked around with a half-functioning respiratory system for 2 days before realizing something was wrong, and now can’t go to Europe for his summer internship. One of the nurses, Carolyn, was super nice, and stopped by Mang-Git’s room to check in every now and then even when she wasn’t assigned to monitor him. She jokingly suggested that we take a boat over to Europe, since her in-laws apparently cruise all the time between the New York and the UK. Then the cogs in our brain started turning again, and our new travel plans were born.

On Wednesday night, Mang-Git and I said our long good-byes to our families and hopped on a bus from Ann Arbor to Toledo. I learned a long time ago that me and bumpy Michigan highways don’t get along, so Mang-Git and I sat in the very first row and chat with the bus driver, Alejandro. That was actually a lot of fun. Throughout the 2-hour ride, he happily yakked non-stop about his move from Brazil to the US, his other jobs, previous girlfriends and dreams of opening up a Tim Hortons franchise. I had never met anyone like Alejandro before, who is so happily in control of his unpredictable lifestyle. It really was a great example of how everyone’s definition of happiness is different.

Anywho, that was a long post, I’ll continue part I of my epic journey tomorrow.