Sorry about getting cut off in my last post

When I was writing my last post, I was in an internet cafe at 8 or 9in the morning local time, which is about when LJ is down for scheduled nightly maintenence. So, when I tried to post, I couldn't, but it DID autosave properly. So I later logged in through Lis's cell phone, loaded the draft, and posted from there.

I guess the LJ Mobile interface has a shorter character limit than the regular interface. . .

You saw how much I was able to post, and then I left you all in the middle of a story. And, unfortunately, because it DID load up the draft, the draft is lost, so I have to attempt to reconstruct what I was going to say from memory. So, here's my best guess as to what I was going to say:

On our way back [from Ostia Antica], we were exhausted, and, even though I wanted to take the train farther out to go to the beach, we were too tired, and got on the train back to Rome. The train was packed by people coming back from the beach -- women wearing swimsuits under their wraps, with hair that had clearly just been in salt water -- you know what people coming back from the beach look like. Standing right next to me was a pretty young woman coming back from the beach who was just about old enough for me to feel comfortable looking at her every once in a while, so I saw the whole thing, and I got to see how the Italians deal with emergencies.

I saw her rub the back of her neck, and adjust the strap of her swimsuit top which was tied around the back of her neck. And a few minutes later, I saw her eyes roll up into her head, and she fell straght back and collapsed on the floor of the train.

Immediately, I handed the bottle of water in my bag to the woman who was travelling with her, who poured it on her face, as she was elevating the fainting woman's legs. Another woman standing next to her took HER bottle of water, and starting wetting the fainting woman's neck and face, and massaging her hands( Read more... )

A couple things I've learned about travelling in Europe, so far

1) Cash
I didn't even think about this until I glanced at a travel guide in London -- one of those humor books which actually has good points in it. Naturally, I looked up the US in it, and and they had a bit about money. Everyone in the world who comes to the United States is annoyed that all of our paper money is the same size, shape, color, and design, with the only differences being a few numbers in the corners -- written smaller than the numbers in any other currency -- and which basially-similar-looking white guy has his basically-similar-looking portrait on it.

They pointed out that Americans aren't bothered by this (or, for that matter, that we have a $1 bill rather than coin -- I think that other countries believe that, if your average vending machine sells stuff more expensive than your smallest bill and your largest coin, you're doing it wrong) because we almost never use cash.
( Read more... )