Greetings from the land of food poisoning! That's right. I got food poisoning this past week. Let me just tell you how wonderful it's been. I started feeling the symptoms Tuesday night. This worried me because Wednesday we were going to Budapest for a day trip, and I did not want to be sick. Nevertheless, in spite of my best efforts to get better (crack is a great painkiller let me tell ya), Wednesday morning comes around, and I am definitely feeling under the weather. However, I decide to go because, five years from now, I would rather say I went to Budapest instead of just staying at the hotel. We begin walking around the city, and I'm doing ok. We decide to go up to a lookout hill, and that's when things start deteriorating. We walk over to an old church, and I sit down to take a breather. I'm sitting there for a little bit, not feeling so hot, and then we decide to go somewhere else. I stand up, and I can hardly take a few steps without having to stop and bend over. Had my stomach not been so empty, I probably would have thrown up. I was told there was a bathroom nearby, so I start walking to it. Well, I call it walking. More accurately it would be referred to as "stumbling". In addition, my vision starts to go. Aka, I was blacking out. Fortunately, I reached the bathroom before that happened. I stumble in and head straight for the toilet, thinking that my insides were about to be on the outside, when I hear two men shouting at me from behind. Apparently there was a toll fee that I had not paid. After looking at me, though, they just let me go in without paying. The guy told me to splash water on my face (he didn't speak English, he told me through a series of motions). So did that for ten minutes, and never once did I throw up. After that, I just went and sat in a Burger King for two hours until it was time for us to head back to Vienna. I am not the only person ill, however. My current roommate in Barcelona has pretty much the exact same thing. Hence we are roommates. They decided to stick the two walking viruses together. We aren't completely healthy yet, but each day we are getting better and better. We were healthy enough to go to the FC Barcelona game on Friday. Oh my goodness watching that team play is incredible, and watching Lionel Messi play is like watching a soccer god fraternize with mere mortals. I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch MLS again in quite the same way. Barcelona has been easier to get around than the other cities since we all know Spanish is my first language. We are just trying to take things chill here. Everyone is so burnt out from going hard for the past month that we have no energy left. And behing in close quarters with the same people for 5 weeks causes friction. Everyone's ready to be going home. Speaking of which, my flight lands in Salt Lake from Paris at 1:40 on Thursday. And that evening, you will probably find me in Red Robin, enjoying a double patty, 100% beef burger, along with all the free water I can get while sitting inside an air conditioned building. Europe's been great, but there are some amenities that it desperately needs. God bless 'Murica.
The End
Written and Directed By
ANDREW POTTS
Written on location in London, Paris, Geneva, Venice, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, and Barcelona
Travels Provided By
BYU, INC.
Funding Provided By
THE POTTS ASSOCIATION
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