Europa Series: Interlaken

Our last city was Interlaken, Switzerland. We didn't plan on it being last because we had planned on going to Paris. This was a rookie mistake; if you ever plan to go to Interlaken, make sure it is your last stop. I'll use the receptionist of our hostel's words, "Once you get to Interlaken, you won't leave until you have to... and you never really have to leave."

It's almost pointless to describe Interlaken; you have to experience it for yourself to understand. Think of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine, multiply its awesomeness by two and you might be able to capture the ambiance of Interlaken. If God created a heaven on earth, he hid it somewhere in Switzerland.

In Interlaken, you can do whatever you want and be happier doing it there than if you did it anywhere else. If you want to sit around and do nothing, it's awesome in Interlaken. If you want to do some extreme sport, it’s awesome in Interlaken. If you want to eat some cheese, it's awesome in Interlaken. If you need to take a... you get the point.

Chadly and I did a little bit of everything. At this point in the trip we were exhausted and all we wanted to do was rest. This was the one city where we had absolutely no agenda. The chocolate and cheese were both ridiculously amazing and is a must if you are ever in Interlaken. One day we were riding bikes through the town, and we pulled over to sit on a bench for about 30 minutes just to relax and enjoy the scenery of this little town that sits in the middle of the Swiss Alps Mountains. We did do one extreme sport while we were there, and it just so happened to be the most extreme thing to do; canyoning (I’ll devote an entire blog to this later).

The whole time we were there we were hanging out with a group of seven from the University of Dayton in Ohio. They were also the ones that told us about canyoning and went with us. I could write an entire blog about how cool these people were and how much fun we had hanging out, but this is already getting super long so just know that they were awesome. We still keep in touch with a few of them on facebook as well.

We did stay longer than we planned; we skipped Paris and limited our time in Amsterdam. We extended our stay at the hostel; which the receptionist had already done for us when we checked in without our asking because apparently everyone ends up extending their stay. We stayed as long as we could without missing our flight. I feel like I would be beating a dead horse if I tried to convince you to go to Interlaken. Just go while you are still able to enjoy it.

My final thoughts and conclusion to the “Europa Series”

Whoever created the concept of retirement had it all wrong. After you get done working your way through school, you have to jump right into working your way through a job. There needs to be a way that you can have 5-10 years after school to do whatever you want (expenses paid), and it not hurt any career possibilities. If you try to do that now, employers look down on the fact that you've been "goofing-off" for the past few years. The way it's set up, you could work your whole life just to save up enough for the final few years you have left. I know this doesn't hold true to everyone, and there are a lot of people who get to retire early (before 60). But the average person can't afford to stop working before they turn 70; especially after the most recent eco-crash. On average retirement is around 15 years, but one might argue that work doesn't stop there. That's whenever you start working for your family; your kids and grand kids start consuming all of your time. Then, your final years are usually spent working to fight off diseases and bad health. There is a pretty well known superstition in the oilfield that once you stop working, you only have about 3 years left until your time on earth is up.

I make you think about all of this because I want you to realize that "work" consumes our lives. Regardless of your employment status, there is always work to be done (just ask my step-father). Make sure that you take time to see and experience all of God's wonderful creations while you are still young enough to enjoy them.

What a waste life would be if we just worked until we died.

Europa Series: Roma

Only two more cities to go! I'll run through Rome pretty quick because I have a lot to do today, and then, I've saved the best city for last (mostly because we went there last).

Rome (Roma) was amazing! You could stay a week in Rome and still not be able to see everything. However, we did hit the highlights in two days.

But before I jump into all of that, I don't think you quite appreciate how much walking we've done up to this point. My feet were literally bleeding because of how much we had traveled. It was getting hard to notice anything on our tours because every step led to excruciating pain. So my first order of business was to find new shoes with better padding. I bought a sweet pair of Zebra print shoes from a street vendor for about $6 American money. Then, I went and bought a $23 set of Dr. Scholl's inserts for my sweet, new shoes. Then, I went to a pharmacy and bought bandages and cushions for my bleeding calluses (I won't post these pictures, I promise). After all of this, it feels like I'm walking on clouds; pretty sure I almost started crying from the relief.

Our first order of business was to see the Vatican after we checked into our hostel. Since it was a Sunday, we figured there would be somewhat of a larger crowd than normal. We got to Vatican City pretty early for this reason, but had no clue what we were about to experience. Neither Chadly nor myself are practicing or familiar with the Catholic religion, so you can only imagine our shock when we arrived at the Vatican to find out that coincidentally we chose to tour the Vatican during the Pentecost Festival. I'm not talking about, "Oh, it's Easter Sunday so we should go to church." kind of crowd; I'm talking, "Holy Crap, U2 is playing a free concert!" kind of crowd. I could go on and on about the festival but regardless, we got blessed by the Pope (who is pretty much a rockstar), toured the Vatican, and saw the grave of Pope John Paul II.

On the second day, we went to see all of the buildings and monuments of Rome. This included the Colosseum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Sistine Chapel. One of the smartest things we did this entire trip was make a reservation to see the Colosseum; this saved us at least 5 hours of waiting in line. We also didn't have to wait in line to see the Sistine Chapel because we arrived right before they were about to close (remember that if you visit Rome, and remember you can't tour the Sistine Chapel on a Sunday). We pretty much ran through the entire Vatican Museum just to get to the chapel before they closed. This was another "No Photo!!" monument, so naturally...

The last night we went out with some people that were in the room next to ours; I think they were from Michigan. One of the things that we wanted to do on this trip was go to a European rave. Between the both of us, we only had one glow stick to share, so we weren't very prepared. However, we ended up at a 5 story club full of fellow ravers; loads of glow sticks and techno music. I don't really know what we expected, but we can now say we've been to a European rave. It’s like they say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do!"

I would love to go back to Rome some day when I had more time to see everything. There is so much history, monuments, and art that you really need longer than two days to appreciate everything.

Europa Series: Firenze

Ahhh I'm ready for this series to be over. I have so much other stuff to talk about BUT its almost done. Sooooo....

As soon as we got to Florence (Firenze) we found our hostel and dropped our packs off. Then we went and had a pretty interesting dinner. The restaurant was in a square that had various shops, clubs and other places to eat. We were sat at a table in between two couples. The couple on our left was in their own world; obviously used to this sort of arrangement. On our right was a young Holland couple on their honeymoon. They were not so familiar with this set up. In fact, at the beginning of the meal, the guy asked our waitress if there were any individual tables available, but luckily, there were none open. Their names were Bart and Coralie and spoke very good English. I'm not sure what the turning point of the evening was (probably when they had to order for us because the waitress didn't speak any English), but by the end of the meal we were all laughing and having a blast. Bart grabbed our waitress at the end of the meal and told her that this was a great idea for seating and that they had made life-long friends. We finished the night by having a few bottles of wine with our new "life-long" friends at a couple different places. We have actually stayed in touch with Coralie via facebook.

The next day we hit up all of the typical tourist activities which included climbing the Piazza Del Duamo; which is ranked as the number 1 thing to do in Europe by a lot of travel guides because of the view. We also saw all of the Florence art works like the Da Vinci Museum, the Birth of Venus, the Medusa shield, and we went to the museum Galleria dell'Accademia where we saw the David. You're not supposed to take pictures of the David, so naturally EVERYONE tries to take a picture and then act like they were just cleaning their camera. This gave Chadly and me an arsenal of new jokes because of the security screaming, "NO PHOTO!!" at tourists.

After we were done touring for the day, we went and found a hill that overlooked all of Florence where we enjoyed a bottle of wine and another breath-taking sunset.

Florence was kind of a blur. It seems like a lot of Italy gets blended together when I look back. All of the architecture and art was very similar through the entire country so that was probably a major contributing factor.

Bart and Coralie

Europa Series: Venezia

(MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011 - Been a while, hasn't it?!) Yeah, someone's behind a desk again. I know there is a lot that has happened since July, but first, I really need to finish this Europe series. Chadly has been guilting me into finishing it forever because he wants his future children to be able to read about the adventures of his younger days. I have no such longing for children, nor would I ever want them to know about my "younger" days.

About this point in the trip Chadly and I were starting to get a little temperamental with each other. This was put to test when I booked our train to Florence instead of Venice (I kept getting those two mixed up for some reason). Because of this little error, we had to jump off of the train in some random city outside of Venice and take a night bus into the city. This put us in a DESERTED Venice at 4:00 in the morning.

I don't know if you are very familiar with Venice (Venezia), but it's most commonly known for being the city with all the water canals and the maze like alleys. This was probably the most stressful part of the trip, and by far one of the most memorable. We had no map, no hostel, no clue about where we were supposed to go. We were in a foreign country, no one was on the streets (I mean NO ONE), we didn't speak or understand any of the language, and we were exhausted from having zero sleep. We had these 50 lb back packs strapped to our back, our feet were killing us, and we had just shared a train car with some very interesting nuns followed by a pretty sketchy bus ride. We were tired.

Luckily, after about an hour of doing the ole heel-toe through the mazes, we stumbled up on a bakery that was just opening. Actually, we followed the scent of his crescents from about half a mile away. BEST CRESCENTS I'VE EVER EATEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

This was the turning point for our Venice trip.

We stayed in the bakery until the sun gave us enough light to do a little self-touring. After we got a map, we made our way to the center of the city where we got to experience a sunrise at St Marks square without any tourists around; a very RARE occasion. Venice was really fun to tour because of the boat rides through the canals. While in Venice, we did all of the typical touristy things: toured the entire city, climbed the famous Campanile tower of the St Mark's Basilica, got a bottle of wine and pizza to watch a sunset over the ocean on the side of the canal, saved two girls from getting sold into sex trafficking (true story but too long to tell), then take 1 million pictures with the saved girls in St Marks square at about 3 in the morning. Yeah, it was a long day; we probably had the best sleep of the entire trip that night in the worst beds of the entire trip. I always slept on the top bunk in our hostels, and I'm pretty sure that this night the bottom of my mattress was only hovering about 5 inches over Chadly's face.

I loved Venice. The way of life there is just so different from the way we are used to living. A visit to the city-on-top-of-the-water should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Europa Series: Wien

Yeah, I didn't plan on spacing these out so far apart, but I haven't really been able to sit down and write. But, as promised, this one will be short and sweet.

After Prague we took a 5 hour train ride to Vienna (Wien). We had heard rumor from some people that Vienna was a smaller town and easier to get around. That was a bold face lie.

When you ride into Vienna's main train station, you think to yourself, "Why in the world did we come to Vienna?" The station is located in something similar to a ghetto. So we immediately started walking towards what we thought was the inner city. When we grabbed a map, we realized that Vienna is not a small, relaxing town. The map kept unfolding, and unfolding, and unfolding, until finally, we were staring at not just a town, but a metroplex.

I don't really know why we expected the city where the U.N. building is located to be small. Once you get into Vienna's square, you really start to notice the beauty and history located in the city.

We also met up with some fellow backpackers that we met in Prague and went out to explore Vienna's night life.

Europa Series: Praha

This is going to be the first of a series about my travels through Europe. I don't know how long it's going to take for me to finish the entire series because I rarely get to sit at my computer and write. I can already tell that I'm extremely rusty because it has taking me forever to write this first paragraph. My plan is to take you through each city, one blog at a time.

If you have never been to Europe, I highly suggest that you make it one of your top priorities for the future. Chad Harris and I just got home from backpacking for two and a half weeks across Europe. Our original (slight changes were made) itinerary was to fly into Amsterdam, then head to Prague, Vienna, Venice, Florance, Rome, Interlaken, Paris, and then fly back out of Amsterdam.

Chadly and I both agree that Prague (Praha) was one of our top 3 favorite cities (probably number 2). If you are making any plans to visit Europe, make sure that Prague is on your list. I don't know if we liked Prague so much because it was our first city to visit, and we hadn't seen much of Europe yet. Or if we liked it so much because it was just an awesome city. Either way, Prague was a blast.

Located in the Czech Republic, Prague is one of the only famous European cities that still has a lot of its original architecture in tact. Only one building in Prague really suffered from the World Wars, so most of the old sculptures, buildings, and castles can still be visited. We did take the typical walking tours and saw the old town, the St. Charles Bridge, the Prague Castle, and the square. But one of the coolest things about Prague is that any random street you walk down, you are bound to run into a huge, Gothic, elaborately sculptured building.

Another thing that puts Prague at the top of our list is the atmosphere. The friendliness of the locals, the insomnia night life, the safeness of the city, and the eagerness to attract tourists all contribute to making Prague an easy favorite to any one's experience. We never had a problem with language barriers because most of the locals speak English. Czech is only a language spoken in the Czech Republic, and if you only speak Czech, you are confined to the small republic, so most Czech citizens are bilingual.

I could write a book about the people we met and the memories we made in Prague, so instead, I'll just highlight one of our favorites. Isaac is a history major from California that started a very successful pub crawl (pub crawl - you pay about $15 and they give you free drinks and take you to a lot of popular nightclubs). He used to be a free walking tour guide that would make up stupid random facts about Prague and pass them as truth during his tours (look up "Isaac Prague Tour Guide" on YouTube, hysterical). Since they run a pub crawl every single night of the week, he rarely stays past the first two bars. Long story short, he liked Chad and me so much that he hung out with us until 6 am in the morning, taking us to random hole-in-the-wall "locals only" bars. We had to show ourselves around the Prague Castle because we missed our walking tour time, and you'll rarely see us smiling in any pictures of the second day (and I'm holding a Redbull in every 2nd-day picture), but it was definitely worth it. We had so much fun that we did the pub crawl both nights we were in Prague. One of our favorite memories of the entire trip.

I know this is getting long, so I'll end with what makes Prague so safe. While we were hanging out with some locals during our all night venture, we were given a little inside information from one of the bar patrons. He is currently a street magician, but in is youth, he was a gypsy; a kid who ran around pick-pocketing people and begging for money. You will rarely find any violence in Prague. The last shooting in Prague was somewhere around 3 years ago, but it didn't involve any locals. The worst crime that plagues the city is theft; mostly pick-pocketing. At it's core, Prague is run and protected by the Russian mafia. There's a very old agreement and understanding between the mob and the gypsies that allows the gypsies to continue there thievery, as long as, there is no violence during the process. If you catch the gypsy after they've stolen from you (unlikely because most are pretty fast), they are not aloud to fight you back and have to endure whatever beating is given to them. If violence ever occurs and the mafia finds out, that individual "disappears," along with his friends and family. Rumor is that the individuals involved with that shooting were never seen again.

I, obviously, don't know if any of that is true, but I can attest that one night while walking back to our hostel, we met two girls walking down the middle of the street without a care in the world. They were passing drug dealers (legal in Prague), random men, and homeless people completely oblivious to any sense of danger. They were Americans living in Prague and said that they've never had trouble, nor had they ever heard of any acts of violence caused by the locals. I thought that was pretty interesting.

Like I said, Prague was one of our favorites, so there is a lot of things I wanted to say about it. The rest of these won't be so long. Bottom line: go to Europe, and go to Prague.

Same Ole Momma D

Well, Mother's Day was just last weekend and I wanted to dedicate another blog to my mother. I know that this might be considered taking a short-cut, but I really like what I wrote about Momma D last year so I am just going to copy and paste.

Mom, sorry this is late, but I know that it means a little more to you since I'm staying true to my character of always being fashionably late. I LOVE YOU!!!

Momma D:

Since this weekend is Mother's Day, I figured that I would tell you some of the wonderful things about my mother that I am thankful for. My mother, Marilyn Davis, has to be one of the all time greatest mothers in history. My entire life she has always been extremely supportive of everything that I do. Whether I was playing in a sporting event or performing in some play, my mother was always sitting in the crowd. I don't use the word always lightly; I can't remember one event that she ever missed. She never complained about being there, and I always knew that no matter what the outcome (even if I was getting thrown out of the game she came to watch) she was pleased with me and proud to call me her son.

It was never a question in our house if something was right or wrong because my mother made sure that my brother and I always knew how to behave and what was expected of us. That's not saying that I never screwed up, but when I was doing something wrong it wasn't in ignorance. She was a firm believer in corporal punishment and exercised her right to do this on a daily basis; whether it was a paint stir-stick, a fly swatter, or her high heel shoe (only happened once, and I deserved it) we were disciplined appropriately. I know there are some who might look down on this sort of parenting, and to them I would say, "You are not smart (in this case, I would use another word but because of Mom, I know that it is impolite to call someone retarded)." I am a much better man today because of the way that I was parented in those situations.

She is known to all of our friends as Momma D, and it fits her perfectly because she is just as much of a mother to each and every one of them as she is to her own children. Our door was always open to anyone who wanted to walk through it, and anyone who came in, wasn't going to leave until they were miserably full and loved. She only had one rule and all of our friends knew it: if you're going to stay in her house on Saturday night, you're going to church with her on Sunday morning.

I could ramble on about how amazing my mother is to me and how much I appreciate her, but I will leave you with the most important lesson that I learned from her. My mother is one of the most God loving, God fearing people on this earth. She has always made it clear to us that we should make God the number one priority in our lives, as He is in her life, even before her own children. At an early age, she was forced to be the mother and the father to my brother and me, and she never once blamed God. Seeing her reaction to such a devastating event has taught me more in life than any lecture or sermon could ever do. She has a passion for the Lord that surpasses any desire or addiction known to man, and through the way she lives her life, she motivates me to want to do better.

When it comes to that unfortunate point in my life that I have children, I never plan on missing one of their events, they will know right from wrong, they will be spanked, their friends will be loved, and they will know where God fits in their priorities.

Welcome to the Future

If you're reading this, please send someone to Tulsa, Oklahoma to save me. I'm sitting through some sort of training class for a new computer system that NOV is switching over to. If you're wondering how I'm making it; not well. Don't get me wrong, I'm taking in all the information and comprehending every word, and I will be able to apply everything that is being taught. The problem lies in my neighboring classmates. 20% of this class is designed to teach us about our new system. The other 80% is designed to teach the Baby Boomer generation and older how to use a computer. It's like pulling teeth having to sit through all this again; the first time I sat through this was in Mrs. Bowen's computer class in elementary school. Anyways, my break is almost over (yes, NOV Tech nerds that are forced to read this blog, I'm writing this on my break), and I have to get back to my intense games of Words With Friends while they teach everyone else how to use the "clicky button thing, that moves the arrow on the screen".

My Best Friend was a Fish

Work. Work. Work. Work. Work. Work. That's what you've been missing out on in my life lately. I did get to go to the Arkansas Derby a few weekends back and came out about $10 ahead! That's been about the highlight of my life the last couple of weeks. This week has been pretty hectic. I started out in Oklahoma City, and drove to our Fort Worth location on Wednesday; which is where I am now. I am staying in Dallas through the weekend because I have a bachelor party for one of my oldest friends, Casey Fisher.

One of my oldest friends? He IS my oldest friend. Casey "Fish" Fisher and I grew up together. I'm not talking about going to the same school and living in the same town. I'm saying that we had pretty much the same parenting, same childhood, same religious teachings, same battle wounds, and same punishments (mostly Charlotte making us go pick out and clean a switch off of the tree in his back yard). Without question, he is my childhood best friend; my oldest friend.

We went to the same high/middle/elementary school. Before that, we were having sleep overs (some not so successful because we would end up fighting over who won a game or the rules of the game, and we would have to call our parents to come get us in the middle of the night because no other conclusion would be made except for the fact that our friendship was over... until tomorrow). Before that, His mother babysat us when we were not old enough to go to school. Before that, we were playing with puzzles and jungle gyms at the nursery of the Gunter First Baptist church. Before that, we were laying in cribs right next to each other in the same nursery.

I don't want to say that Fish and I grew apart as we got older, but we did start hanging out less as we both established new friendships. I say we didn't grow apart because through our childhood and upbringing we established a bond that was closer to brotherhood than friendship. Fish and I could (and have in the past) go years without speaking to each other, but every time we do speak or see each other, it's genuine. There's no uncomfortableness often experienced by old friends; it's as if a day hadn't gone by since we last saw each other.

I'm looking forward to this weekend because this is one of those instances when Fish and I haven't seen each other in a long time. He has decided to take that giant leap into adulthood and get married. I couldn't be happier for him, and I cannot wait to hug him and tell him congratulations in person.

Tonsilminus

I have another day of sitting in front of a computer, so I thought I would take the time to say Hello. I mentioned in a previous blog that I'd write more about my experience with tonsil surgery. A few weeks ago I had my tonsils taken out...

My entire life, I've always had problems with Strep Throat. Ever since I can remember, I was always hit at least 2 or 3 times a year with some sort of throat related illness. It has always been suggested that I should look into getting my tonsils taken out, but I never gave the idea a second thought until recently.

Almost like clockwork, I could predict when I was going to be hit with Strep. The past few years, the number of occurrences started increasing, so I finally decided that I would get on the offensive side of things. While I was still on antibiotics from this last wave of Strep, I went to an ENT specialists and plead my case.

He informed me that for older patients, the entire experience tends to tip towards a painful outcome. I told him that surgery has never really bothered me and that I wasn't worried about it. He was the first of many to tell me that I should be worried. Really worried, actually. With my stepfather being the only person saying that the surgery wasn't going to be that bad (he was 55 when he had it done) and everyone else telling me it would be one of the most painful experiences of my life, I decided to take my chances and get the little devils removed.

I am happy to report that the surgery went well and that the recovery process wasn't bad at all. With the support of my mother, my aunt, Dave and one of the coolest gift baskets ever from Tara, I recovered faster than expected... AND not to mention, a fine helping of liquid codeine!!!

I was on a strict liquids and soft foods diet for about a week. I only had one incident where I thought the pain was going to get the better of me. I took a customer out to eat about 5 days after the surgery and was a little too tempted by the Cajun Seafood menu. I ended up tearing off a scab and bleeding (this also happened to be the day that I decided to stop taking the codeine; I took a double dose right before I passed out... for a LONG time).

Needless to say, I would recommend the surgery for anyone. Being down after tonsil surgery for a week, compared to being down with strep for a week a couple times a year is a no-brainer.

For your viewing pleasures:

BEFORE

AFTER