July

July was a welcomed month off. I did some serious traveling. YiChun and I spent the first week with Steve and Mike in Tuscany. Nothing against my Italians, but I only went because of my buddies wanted to go to Italy. Although I must admit that the house we rented was really really nice. I loved it. Tuscany really was beautiful. I really enjoyed it there. The Italians had better luck than the Argentines as the World Cup continued during our stay in Italy. They were certainly no less crazy about football than the Argentines. We were in Sienna for the Germany match, and in Florence for the final match against France. I must admit that I was kinda in pain during the final match suffering from hangover from the previous night’s drinking.

We made a quick stop in Vienna then headed to Ireland. Upon arrival in Ireland, YiChun and I were stopped at passport control. With my US passport, I didn’t have a problem, but they didn’t accept YiChun’s Schengen visa. Huh? Ireland is a part of the EU, right? Yes, but they don’t participate in the Schendgen. Well, how would I know? We called our host there who is a Taiwanese diplomat to seeif he could do something. Since he had just arrived in Ireland a couple months ago, he wasn’t able to help. So we stood at the passport control at midnight, waiting for the guy to tell us that we need to spend a night at the airport and take the next flight back to Austria. But he was nice, he gave her a landing visa, and we were let in. We talked to the Taiwanese ambassador the next day and he said he had never seen this before. So, what else could go wrong? Anyway, we went to collect our luggage. Well, Ryanair screws up yet again (they should have stopped us from boarding the plane when they saw YiChun didn’t have an Irish visa). YiChun’s bag was no where to be found, and mine was still sitting on the luggage belt. Ryanair’s counter was unattended, and we couldn’t get anyone on their customer service desk either. Through some kind of magic, YiChun convinced a guy to go to the loading area and found her bag.

Heading out of Ireland, and we flew back to continental Europe. The original plan was to fly to Paris, see how it is and how we felt, and maybe stay in Paris. You won’t believe how hot it was in Paris. We sat in the taxi to go to the train station, and it was 41 degrees in the taxi! 41 degrees! That was it, we are going back to Lausanne.

After a few days’ rest, we headed into the Alps with a classmate of mine. YiChun left a week after. It was a good July, a lot of traveling, a lot f time spent with YiChun. It wasn’t without problems but we made it through know each other a lot better.