I stayed in the hostel all day today, frustrated with getting stuck in expensive, rainy Nice. I was devoted to getting my plans together. I went ham on exploiting budget airlines, plotted a path that took me to Bucharest to visit my friends Adina and Teo from Culmann, then back to my favorite hostel in Budapest, then to Berlin where, possibly, Muriel might meet me for the weekend.
I also rolled up my laundry as tight as possible because these darn European budget airlines don’t allow you a personal item along with your free cabin bag, so I needed to stuff my backpack into the bag. That was goofy.
Finally I headed to the airport. On the way, picked up this sick SIM card that Morgan had told me about. Only EUR 10 for the sim and EUR 20 for a month of service, 25 GB of data anywhere in the EU. Like, WTF?! I had to go to the mall to get the thing printed out of a big machine, then got help from the yokels there to pry off the back of my phone and test it. Woot! It worked. Crazy!
To the airport! Security was a breeze. I got through and started chilling with some Slate Star links. I got so relaxed, I forgot I had to squash my backpack into the bag. Spent about 5 frantic minutes doing this while everyone else was boarding, much to the amusement of a French family. My bag was now probably twice as heavy as required and bulging like it was full of alien larvae. I sweated it out in line but the person who checked my ticket didn’t even look at the bag. Of course, when I got on the plane I took the backpack out and the remainder fit in the overhead just fine :P
Read more Heuristics on the short flight, got ripped off for a train from the airport to my hostel.
Went to a great pizza place about 2 minutes from the hostel. As opposed to Genoa-style, this pizza was cooked in great square pans and was sitting out in lots of different flavors. It was sold by weight. I got some really good pizza and sat down next to this Sicilian dude. We got chatting about the soccer game that was on. Then a British lady joined us–she was conversant in Italian soccer because Italian soccer was on English free TV channels when she was a kid. She saw me deciding whether to get a beer or not and bought me one :P It was really nice and friendly. I stayed for the whole match, which went to penalties. Dramatic! Then hit the hay.