My name is Ross and I will be your tour guide today: 01/01/2008

So I know what you have all been thinking for the last month or so. If you’re like me, you’ve been getting up every morning and going to work/class/living room couch and immediately checking Rossleboss.blogspot.com and thinking what the hell happened? Why hasn’t Ross updated the blog? Is he still alive? Did he run off with some European Princess? Did he join the French Foreign Legion? Is he really STILL IN AMSTERDAM? Well I was lucky enough to speak with him for a brief moment upon his return to the states (yes he did make it back to the states) and I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. The good news is he did make it back in one piece safe and sound. Even better, he still looked and acted relatively the same and lucky for us he wasn’t the Eurotrashy pretentious ass that we all feared he might be upon his return from Paris. He seemed to be really excited about everywhere he had been and with everything he had experienced. Personally I’m kind of sick of hearing about it. One thing that seemed a little weird was that for some reason would not stop dogging Australians. Strange. The bad news however is that he wasn’t so eager to jump right back into the working world as many of us had hoped he would be, especially his parents. (Hang in there B&T, he’ll come out of it soon…surely). It seems Ross had a few ideas of his own for which I can’t really blame him. Though he did go home for the holidays he wasn’t there for long. He has since migrated up north a bit and now calls the great ski town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming home. Here’s a little something he wanted to share with everyone.

"First of all I want to apologize to all of you avid readers out there for leaving you hanging on the edge of your seat like the end of a 24 episode. Once we stopped traveling and I got back home I just got a little tied up.
Though it looks like it from the last blog entry, Amsterdam was not the last stop on the trip. From there we went on to Belgium, Berlin and Prague. Bruges, Belgium is a very medieval city that’s a little less touristy that Brussels and was highly recommended to us from many fellow travelers. Overall, it was a cool place and very relaxed. There are however a few things that they take very seriously there; Chocolate, Beer and French Fries. Makes for a tough crowd as you can imagine. So for this reason we went to the chocolate museum, a local family owned brewery, and ate plenty of “frites” with all sorts of random toppings. As usual, we also climbed the tallest thing in the city; the Belfry from the 13th century. One night we went and sat a beer house and tried as many different types of beers as we thought we could handle; a learning experience if you will. They had over 250 different types of bottled beers so we had quite a task ahead of us. We got through enough to pretend like we had accomplished something but by no means impressed anyone.

Bruges from the Belfry

Other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot going on in Bruges for us to do so we kept on moving on. Next stop was Berlin. As far as Germany goes, I found Berlin to be quite different than Munich, especially in the way they handle their history; particularly the monuments. The monuments in Berlin are much more gargantuan and in your face than the much more subtle versions you’ll find in Munich. The whole attitude there is much more focused on its history and its mistakes than southern Germany. We saw everything from the remains of the Berlin Wall to the only Schlotzky’s in Europe. For our last stop we would keep heading east from Berlin to meet up with some of our fellow tour guides and roommates and one of our managers in Prague. We had a few things to look forward to at this point. Apart from this being our last stop and being a week away from finally getting back to Texas, we had heard that Prague was comparatively cheaper than the rest of Europe and on top of that we would not be sleeping in a hostel. Lisa, our manager, had rented an apartment for the 5 of us to stay in for our last stop. It might just be due to the time of year we were there but to me Prague was just like a huge Christmas market. Everything seemed just so done up and pretend-like almost like a movie set or something. It was great to have some familiar faces around for a change and people to laugh at. The tallest thing we climbed in Prague was up to our apartment everyday. 6 floors and no elevator, awful.

From Prague we took a 12 hour train ride back to Paris for our last 2 nights in Europe. It was strange because at this point, just getting back to Paris almost felt like going home. We spent our last full day riding bikes around in the rain and getting any last minute keepsakes and taking any photos we hadn’t captured just yet. That night we went to our favorite communist restaurant “Bo Bun” and went out one last time with the remaining crew in town. The next day we were to be heading back home. As much as I loved every minute I spent abroad I will admit I couldn’t wait to get home to Texas.

So now I find myself here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If there are two places on this earth that are complete opposites of each other, I can now say I have lived in both. The people, the weather, the size, the people, the pace, the attitude, the people, etc. Just two completely different worlds. I’ve only been here a little over a week and I can’t tell you the number of people, better yet the number of strangers, that have told me “welcome to Jackson.” I spent 3 months in Paris and I know for a FACT that no one besides my managers welcomed me to their city. I mean I even know Sheila, a cashier at the local K-mart, because she might be one of the friendliest old ladies I have ever met. It’s like the town of Jackson is my Grandmothers house and Sheila is my Grandmother and wants to have me over and bake me cookies. As for work, I am waiting tables at a resort on top of one of the buttes here called the Amangani. As for skiing, im trying to fit in as a local as much as possible. Ski during the day and work nights. It’s gonna take some getting used to but I’m up to the task. So thats it for now I suppose. I hope that I can still come up with some good material to share with everyone these days. Something tells me there might be some more tour guidin in my future, especially with all of the opportunity up here so I will try to keep up the stories.

And lastly I think its fitting that I start my best of list. This will just be a list of a few things worth noting from my travels and the lessons learned throughout them. Some of it serious, some of it not so much. Some of it you will get, some of it is just for the Paris crew."

Best Hospitality: Munich