misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

Florence, Italy -- Our intuition was right. We got out of Rome, and Italy got a whole lot better. Took a train to Siena in Tuscany, and the next day took a bus to the small medieval town of San Gimignano ... Both were much smaller, more local, and natural. Got great views of the wine-growing Tuscany area. Siena has one of the best churches we have seen yet. Made of black and white marble, high spires ... best of all, Reyes and I were the only ones checking it out. No tour groups. No pigeons. We owned the place. It is a simple truth that these sort of towns are better than the big cities. Tomorrow, we move out of Italy into Switzerland. Interlaken is first on the list. Then Gimmewald, and onto Southern Germany. I am looking forward to this part of the trip ....

Interlaken, Switzerland -- Okay. The hostel in Interlaken is about as cool as it gets. There is a bar and club in the basement. Food on the first floor. Internet on the second floor. And my room is on the third floor. Drink all you want, internet, and then go to bed ... all within five feet of itself. And, I have the Alps as a background. This is, my friends, about as perfect a location as I could imagine. I will blogg more tomorrow. As for now, is is 2 am here and I am a bit fatigued. So, goodnight.

Interlaken, Switzerland -- Switzerland (Interlaken and the surrounding area) has to be as good as it gets. This is definately the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. The Alps are as cool as the pictures have always shown .... Adding to everything is the fact that it is fall, so the trees are turning colors I have never seen before. Also because it is fall (November specifically), it is dead season, so nobody is around. But since it isn't winter yet, the weather is still nice. We own the hiking trails. This area is still very rural, which suprised me. You walk through the valleys, and all you see are old-school farms, cows, and farmland. And I haven't seen a pigeon yet. It is a good break from the museum and church life of the past few weeks. The hostel here adds to everything, as it is sort of an American sanctuary in the middle of Switzerland. It is more like a resort than a hostel. They have a bar and club in the basement with live djs, a restaurant, satellite tv, movies every night, piano ... all for 17 bucks a night. The hostel is one of the few places in Interlaken right now that actually has people. We spent yesterday hiking into the alps to towns with populations of around 100 people ... towns of an elevation of around 8,000 feet just sort of sitting in the middle of the Alps.
The best part of the trip at this point is the simplicity that I have been able to reach. It is such a break from life in the bay area. All of my possessions are in my backpack. I wear what is clean, not what I think matches with my shoes. Breakfast and lunch is always some variation of cheese and crackers. I don't spend 12 dollars for a ham and cheese sandwich at some overpriced deli on California street. Shower when you get a chance. Sometimes, in cold water. This place is the first place with a tv. You come back at night after a long day hiking and have to invent new games to play, cause my old standbys of cable and computer games aren't here. When you get bored of a town, you pack up a few things, and move on to the next town. Every country is new. Switzerland borders with Italy, but as so far as I can tell, they don't have a thing in common. Anyway, tomorrow we move on to Munich, Germany. From there we are spanning out to check out some of the smaller German towns. Kind Ludwig's castles are supposed to be the cool thing. I'll let you know.

sound of music lover

M�nchen, Deutschland -- Someone really must be looking out for us here. Everywhere we go seems to top the last place we went. It stared off at the McDonald's at the Zurich train station, filled with families, playing Snoop Dawg and Jay-Z (let us just say the songs weren't edited for the radio ... I love the freedom here ... none of that anal retentive Puritan thinking that dominates the idea of free speech in the states). It continued with the train ride from Interlaken to Munich, which brought us through the Alps, glass-topped lakes, intense forests colored in full fall colors, and rolling hills. We get out of the train in Munich and are immediately approached by a local, spewing this story about his three-star hotel just getting a cancellation, and how he needs to fill it, and since it is so immediate it is a great price, and how breakfast consists of museli, fresh fruit, bacon, eggs, tea, rolls, meat, cheese, and how there is cable with american channels, free internet ... blah ... blah ... Full of german crap, we figured, but we had time to kill so we checked it out. And Lord bless this man, he was telling the truth. A three star hotel with free internet and nice rooms and hot showers and CNN and a helpful desk attendant ... for 17 American dollars a night. Cheaper than the hostel. So we check in, still thinking maybe we just signed some Army recruitment note or something. At this point, we are hungry, so the desk attendant sends us down the street to a beer hall with cheap German food where "the locals eat". This place was amazing. Not drinking beer here, and lots of it, is a deadly sin. At 2 bucks a litre, this was no problem for us. They bring it out faster than American restaurants bring you water. I think instead of water pitchers, the busboys carried beer pitchers ... A statue of fresh pretzels sat next to us, waiting to be sampled. Best of all, the way these beer halls work, you sit at benches and long wooden tables filled with Bavarians (not to be confused with Germans) drinking steins of beer. Loud and lovely. We order food, not knowing what we ordered. In two minutes, Reyes gets a platter filled with a full pig and dumplings. I get a mess of meatloaf, gravy and potato salad. We finish everything off with a plate of apple streudel. All this for 12 bucks each, including a lot of beer. They take their food seriously here. The difference being that in every place we have been so far, the food has been 'dandy'. Pretty portions on small plates. Spanish have tapas (small), French have baguettes and ham (small), Italians have antipasti, a first plate, a second plate .... all served taking time and in small segments. Here, they bring it out on a platter in a few minutes, with more food than Taj eats in five weeks ... And accompany it with steins of cheap, tasty beer. All with people laughing and drinking and enjoying themselves. And the service was better than it has been anywhere. To complete the deal, we wake up this morning to find out that, indeed, the free breakfast was composed of bacon and eggs and beans and bread and cheese and meat and tea and apples and fresh orange juice and cucumbers and rolls and all this with great service. Tom Petty on the radio. This is my kind of culture. And Kenta, I know you look Japanese, but I am quite sure you are Bavarian in blood. Here, if you don't drink beer (a lot of it), you are exiled from the land. Makes me wonder if it woulda been better for the Germans to have won WWI .... we freed the French from two Wars, and they hate our guts. We beat the Germans twice, and they love us. I can't figure it out ... maybe you can add some insight for me.

If there is one thing that travelling has brought to mind this past week, it is that I am closer to adulthood than I gave myself credit for before leaving. Or maybe travelling has made me realize just what "being an adult" really means. It is not just the fact that German youth hostels don't allow you in if you are older than 26 years old (giving me 10 months left to be an official 'youth'). It was the past three days at the hostel in Interlaken, which was more like an American frat party than a hostel. I spent two hours listening to a girl in the bar talk about the benefits rushing of Sigma Nu vs Alpha Epsilon Omega ... how her ex-boyfriend could balance three beer mugs on his head while taking a shot of 151 .... Amazing, I tell her .... I was never such a man ... Other people telling me how they don't know whether to go to Georgetown law school or Northwestern ... Well, I certainly cannot tell you that, oh ye of greater intellect .... Dance on the dance floor to Will Smith, and I get freaked by some girl from Notre Dame ... uhh, that whole freak dancing thing went out about five years ago .... We see people spending daddy's money like it ain't nothing .... they don't have rent payments to make .... Mike and I almost never drink too much, so we can enjoy the day without being hungover. I am actually waking up consistenly early out here ... I am talking 8 am with being tired. This is as shocking to me as it is to you. Hanging out with the college kids and recent graduates made me realize how non-college (and the few years after) my interests are. I listen to the people talk, and think, I have been down that road already ... time for something different. I don't have the same illusions and fears about responsibility I had a year ago ... Funny that I came out here looking for direction, and somehow it was direction that seemed to be looking for me instead.

And, if you are wondering why this Blogg is so long, it is because two hours of internet here costs me 80 cents.

God Bless Germany.

Vienna, Austria -- Yes, I am here ... home of the Vienna Sausage. It is a very powerful experience to be here at the home of the greatest sausage ever invented.

Needing to take public transportation to our hostel, we were suprised to see that the subway and bus systems work as they did in Switzerland and Italy -- on an honor system. You can walk onto the subway or a bus without hinderance even if you don't have a ticket. Nobody checks, and you don't need to buy a card to walk through the turnstyles .. I guess they just hope you pay. Of course, Mike and I wanted to test the integrity system to ensure that it was as we were told, so we bought no tickets. We will leave that to the other tourists. I am not sure how this system would work in the States. My intuition tells me not very well.

Salzburg was a very nice ODC (One Day City) ... not much else to see after you check out the few Sound of Music sets and the fortress on top of a hill overlooking Salzburg ... The fortress had a pretty cool dungeon and torture museum that made me thank the heavens that I wasn't born at any point during the Middle Ages ... I will take my ergonomic chair and workstation anyday over the nail chairs and thumb wrenches we played around with.

It is a different experience watching the election turbulence through the eyes of BBC World (the only station we had at the hostel tv room) ... With so many nationalities around in the room, there were some interesting conversations ... It is amazing how interested everyone seems to be in the outcome of the results, regardless of what country they were from ... they seemed more into it than us ... I don't feel bad not voting, as I don't think my Ziggy Marley write-in vote would have affected the outcome at all ...

I have received some healthy feedback regarding my last blogg's statement that I am now waking up early. Essentially, nobody believes it. To clarify, I should be a bit more honest. Most of my early rising has more to do with my surrounding environment than with myself. Let demonstrate some of the factors leading to my average 8 am rising every morning:

1) European cities have churches. Lots of churches. These churches have bells. These bells ring loud and often, usually starting at around 7am. And they don't stop after 7 rings. The bells keep going, making sure all of the lazy bastards like myself get out of bed.
2) We sleep in dorms. Dorms mean that there are lots of people in the room sleeping with you. Actually, I am quite sure that some of the beds are rented out to lawnmowers, which they start as soon as the lights go out and hum all night long. I cannot believe within my current system of logic that there is any human alive that can snore as loud as what I have heard in these dorms. Therefore, it follows that there are lawnmowers in these dorms. Adding to the pleasure, these lawnmower-men have a habit of waking up around 6 am talking loudly to one another and banging doors and zipping bags, usually as close to your ears as they can get. As a result, you are up because they are. Another phenomona is the make-out couple, which I was treated to for a third time in Munich. A guy on the top bunk right next to mine (literally about 12 inches from my head) decided to bring home a girl from the beer hall. I was very happy to meet the challenge of trying to find sleep amidst the lovely slurp sounds of drunken kissing and pillow talk. This guy was quite a charmer. After three hours they went to sleep ... leaving me to battle the awake world all by myself. Come 7am I was more than ready to get up and get as far away from the place as possible.
3) Hostel checkout averages 9am ... Even if you aren't checking out, they lock you out so they can clean. In any event, sleeping in isn't an option.

All these factors have led to my lazy body getting used to the prospect of getting up no later than 8 am. Who knows what will happen upon my return, but for now it is interesting. I see shades of light and things in the morning I have never seen before.

Now, I must break this blogg to search for some Vienna sausages ... I hear them calling me ....

MC sleep

Vienna, Austria -- Vienna's major feature is the intense amount of opera, theatre and musical events they every night, so we are taking advantage of that. Last night, checked out the Barber of Seville for $3.50 .... I think it had something to do with a barber, and I think he lived in Seville or something .... other than that, my Italian was a bit too rusty to make out much more. The standing room only was a nice touch ... I felt like I was some peasant in the pit at an original premiere of a Shakespeare play ... Now if they had been passing out mead or something during the first quarter (errr, I mean first half of the opera before intermission), it could have gotten rowdy. Tomorrow morning, we are going to check out the Vienna Boys Choir ... The idea of a mass of young boys singing in falsetto isn't usually appealing, but this is top of the line ... the cadillac of boys' choirs, so we should check it out.

Funny how your perspective of art and history changes over time. After the immersion in both over the past two months, you stop finding stuff impressive. Vienna is your traditional European template town. Lots of old churches, museums, and palaces ... they are like the internet billboards on 101 ... in other words, they are everywhere ... none of these even make us turn our heads anymore. I wouldn't look up for a 10th century church if it was right in front of me, and I wouldn't cross the street to see an original Da Vinci ... we are moving on to new interests now ... opera ... sitting in Mongolian Buffets for hours ... taking a break, in essence. Being that we are moving on to Eastern Europe and Poland soon, we should get enough diversity to break into a new realm.

The Salzburg train accident was a big scare for us, especially when details were hazy. A lot of the people we hung out with in Salzburg at the hostel could have been on the train ... Some of the people we spent the last few days with in Vienna were heading to Salzburg, or surrounding area ... We didn't what was what ... still don't ... but it brings all that "you never know" line of thinking back ... you change your plans by a day or two, and you can find yourself on that train.

we will check in at Budapest,
the cadillac of travellers

Budapest, Hungary -- Forget about Budapest. Forget about Europe. My Fantasy Football team, in the thick of a playoff battle with few games left, lost a one point nailbitter this past weekend. The outlook for success of my team is looking bleak. Because fantasy football superceeds all other experience, I find it essential to pass this misery on to you, my readers. You wanna hear about castles and churches and budapest and blah blah blah. Well, come here and look for yourselves. Who am I, Walter Kronkite? I fleed to Europe to escape the grips that American football has on me, and yet it found me. It will always find you. You cannot run. You cannot hide. It is the all-knowing. Help us all.

One effect that travelling has on you, over time, is to make you more patriotic than you were before. This is ironic, because when you first get out of the country, all you notice is how cool foreign countries are, and only remember the lame things about America. But slowly your mind starts to notice the more subtle differences. Part of this is forced upon you. You get attacked from so many different people and places, you find yourself getting defensive, and debating with others about all the good things about where we live. People just like to knock America. You sit down in the toilet of your hostel, and there is anti-American propaganda all over the walls of the stall. In the tv rooms of the hostel recently, all the foreigners love bitchin' about our election process and how messed up it is and we are looking like fools. We sit down in a McDonalds and, once a group of people finds out we are American, they start putting us on the defensive. It is amusing to me how these people bitch about America and capitalism, while they are sitting in McDonalds wearing Levi jeans, a Gap shirt, and Nike shoes, drinking a Coke. They go home and watch Bay Watch and then go out to see 'Hollow Man' (playing everywhere overhere). Granted, plenty of Americans over here are representing us poorly. I have seen one to many loud, annoying Americans in the hostels blabbering on to the locals about phone cards and coffee and this and that. The loud frat-boy college kid hurts our image worst of all (and that is the crowd most locals see during the summers). The thing the locals aren't putting together is that these Americans are annoying even in America. We got about 300 million people, and you are letting these five represent us. And every country has their crap, ours is just more in the world eye than anyone else's. So it is more subject to scrutiny. So the Canadiens can keep wearing the flags on their backpacks to show everyone they are not American, the Europeans can keep talking about how we are loud and uneducated and obnoxious, and the Australians ... well, the Australians are cool and chill as can be, so I won't say anything here ... the others can bitch to me all they want, I am gonna close my ears and keep munching on my Big Mac ....

Tomorrow, on to Krakow, Poland. But all this is unimportant. My trip has taught me the truly important goal of life: To win fantasy football. And, I have failed at that goal. I am, for all practical purposes, a disappointment to humanity. I apologize.

loser

Prague, Czech Republic -- I have finally arrived. The city of fifty cent beers and three dollar feasts. The hype is well-deserved, as this is exactly what we have found in Prague. We are staying in a hotel room (not a hostel room) for ten bucks a night. People are particularly friendly here. The guy that sold us this room at the train station drove us to the hotel, but first took us on a little tour of Prague. Not bad. Here are some other thoughts from the past few days of travel:

-- Eastern Europe takes the whole passport thing a bit more seriously than anywhere else I have been so far. On the way to Prague, I got my passport examined by toughass looking soldiers three times. The Romanian couple in the train car next to me was hassled relentlessly ... I am starting to see the true benefits of being an American citizen. They looked at my passport seriously, but gave me no trouble at all. The other people around me were forced to fill out cards, declare exactly what they were travelling with, how much money they had, and basically were treated badly. Funny ... Romania is so close to the Czech Republic, and yet they still get messed with more than we do.

-- Czech tabloid magazines on American actors and pop culture figures is the thing overhere. The Czech woman sitting next to me had a National Enquirer looking magazine in Czech ... I could see stories and pictures about Harrison Ford, Jennifer Lopez, Emma Thompson ... That is about the tenth time I have seen someone reading something like that. Why are they interested in this stuff?

-- The honesty system I talked about for the public transportation system over here came to a crashing halt. They caught me in Budapest getting off the subway without a ticket. I tried to play dumb American, but they weren't having it. The guard was pretty nice ... apologizing to me the whole time about stopping me, but she has to and this and that ... why was she apologizing to me? I was the one without a ticket. Then, she issued me a fine that I had to pay on the spot. A whopping four dollars. The fine for travelling on BART without a ticket is only about five hundred times more than that.

-- I introduced Budapest to Juice Newton. At the KFC we ate at, they had free jukeboxes at every table that would play the song throughout the restaurant. I gave the locals a tour of the 80's American music scene ... they were intrigued. We started with Juice Newton's "Queen of Hearts" and ended with some Billy Ocean ... I felt proud to bring some of my culture to the locals. East meets West. After Juice, they will never be the same.

-- I am going to have to agree with my foreign friends on this one. The American election mess is amusing to watch ... the two parties look like a bunch of monkies throwing their poo at each other. Yesterday was the highlight, as I watched CNN with some Brazilians while Bernard Shaw talked about "dimpled" ballets and "chad", the untorn pieces of ballets that indicated a voter's "intention" ... I had no explanations for this stuff. It was comical. Does it look as amazingly stupid back there as it does from over here??

That is it for now. We are shaking up our travel plans a little bit, and doing some stuff out of order. We are adding some new destinations and taking some others away. Stay tuned to find out what is in store ...

Juice

Krakow, Poland -- I consider the tour of Europe that Reyes and I have taken so far the equivalent of getting the sampler appetizer platter at Chili's ... we are trying to get a taste of everything to see what we like the best. With that being said, Krakow goes into the list of cities that I have to come back to someday (and when the time comes, I won't stay in a hostel with a 12:00 curfew). It is a great mix of history, vibrance, and culture that made the eight hour train ride from Prague worth it. It definately has the eastern european feel to it, as it definately isn't as developed or western as most of the places we have been to so far. It took us almost two hours to find our first McDonalds (at a 2 hour McDonalds ratio, that puts Krakow in the same market as Penang, Malaysia) .... Nobody really speaks english here either so we have had to be a bit creative. This city is cheap enough to keep Lee entertained for years, as well. Krakow has the best $1 gyros I have ever had (another beauty of Europe is the cheap food stands that dot the city landscape ... eating on two dollars hasn't been a problem anywhere I have gone) ... And I need not mention that the women here are every bit as beautiful as in Paris, yet with a much more approachable and friendly attitude. They play by different rules here. You look at them, and they look right back and don't look away. It kind of makes you uncomfortable ... I challenge them to a staring game and they win. I usually get scared and run away. The fact that none of them speak no English makes no difference ... I would still run away.

We checked out Auschwitz today. It is the kind of experience which is better had in person than told through me, but I will relay a few observations .... Essentially, the museum and actual concentration camp go to great pains to demonstrate the magnitude of what happened there. The don't hide anything. They particularly focus on what it means when they report that hundreds of thousands of people we killed there. They put faces to the idea of "hundreds of thousands", and try to get you to get a view of how unspeakable the reality of that place was. All I can say is that they succeeded. You walk into a room where one wall is entirely made of glass. Behind the glass is tons and tons of human hair, the very hair the guards cut off off the prisoners before executing them (when the Russians liberated Auschwitz in 1945 it was left in good form ... tons of articles and evidence of what happened there was left ... including this hair, which had been stuffed in bags). You walk through other rooms, with walls of glass. In one room was thousands and thousands of eyeglasses of the executed ... the baggage ... the shoes of the babies .... Entire rooms filled with these things, just stacked in endless piles. And this was only a fragment of what they uncovered there. Lined on the walls of the entire museum are thousands and thousands of pictures of people who were killed there (they took mug shots of everyone there up until 1943). In any event, you leave having a sense of what humanity is capable of, and being confused by it. Reyes and I took the two hour train ride back to Krakow without saying a word.

We are on our way to Berlin (taking the Night Train tonight). We are pretty excited for that city. And, as my loyal reader know, I have not spoken of my war with the pigeons recently. Stay tuned for my next Blogg, which will tell the tale of life and death experienced early today with the Krakow Pigeon Coalition (and the help from a local human pigeon sympathizer ... traitor).

The saga continues ....

Traveller

Stockholm, Sweden -- In the beginning of December of 1944, months after the successful AEF (Allied Expeditionary Force) Landing at the beaches of Normandy, the lines were beginning to be drawn on both sides to wait out the harshness of the Northern European winter. The AEF had pushed as far as the Ardennes Forest, which ran along the border between Belgium and Germany. Realizing the difficulty in pushing forward in one of the coldest winters in memory, and content with how far they had advanced, the AEF settled down to wait out the winter storms, planning an advance to Berlin in the coming months. The Germans were badly losing the war, and the Allies knew it would be suicide to attempt an attack. Well, Hitler never played well with logic, and attempted a counterattack. The attempt resulted in the Battle of the Bulge, which, catching the Allies off-guard, pushed a bell shaped curve into the center of the AEF line, causing initial retreat and confusion. Ultimately, it was suicide for the German Army, and the AEF regrouped and made the final push into Berlin several months later.

I describe this scene in an attempt to draw a parallel with my current war with the fascist pigeons of the European world. The cold and rain of the Eastern and Northern European countries I have been to the past week (Poland, Germany, and Denmark), mixed with a sunset that occurs near 3 pm, forced me into a lull. I assumed the pigeons had drawn their lines for the winter to live off the fat of the land in Southern Europe. Of course, I had seen the occasional pigeon scout patrolling the airspace above my location, yet i was fully aware of aversion these pigeons have towards this intense cold, and was confident in my ability to respond in case of attack. In a sense, I was the AEF, and was caught unaware.

Earlier this week, an attack of a pigeon force of a size never before known to man set upon Reyes and I in a local town square. Reyes kept his wits enough to photograph the chaos, which will provide evidence to you all of the intensity of the attack. In an astonishing twist, the pigeons had the help of human pigeon sympathizer, who actually supports these vermin by running a feed stand at the foot of the town square. Humans actually pay for food that supports the pigeons!! A capital offense, as far as I am concerned. This was the source of the large pigeon force, as they knew they could survive long enough in the cold, with the help of this man's food, to launch their vicious offensive. They sprayed feathers, A-3 pigeon poo-bombs (which is a a newly developed combination of several poos of a pigeon into one larger, more threatening explosive. A terrible weapon, indeed!) , and wing-blades across the entire square. To say the least, I was taken off-guard, and was attacked from every direction for several minutes before gathering my strengh and organizing a full-scale retreat. Proving that the hand of God is on our side, Reyes and I emerged with a minimum of battle scars, although we had to set off for a laundry shop not too long after. As if that wasn't enough, the pigeon warriors, unable to keep up with our retreat, moved attention to a small Polish girl, who had set upon the pigeon force in an attempt to feed them. Screaming in fear, we were able to gather enough courage to swoop in and pull out the survivor, keeping our causalties down to a minimum. Suffice to say, it was quite an encounter. We now have a bulge in our line running from here, to our headquarters in Nice, France (where Thomas is keeping a watchful eye). We are also currently planning our own military response from the safety of an Ally's homeland, Sweden. We will temporarily move headquarters to Oslo before launching a full scale attack into the United Kingdom, in a final attempt to rid this world of the horror and terror known as the PFF (Pigeon Fascist Forces).

Godspeed, and I hope Thanksgiving will bring much grace and peace to you all. Reyes and I will spend it at a local Swedish Pub, which is kind enough to broadcast the NFL games tonight for their plotting American Allies.

Mark Anderson, Pvt. 1st Class, IV Army Corps

Oslo, Norway -- Oslo, which in English roughly translates to 'expensive as crap', has the feel of a sleepy fishing town that drunkenly stumbled into being the capital of one of the richest oil producing nations in the world. This is certainly the most expensive place I have been to during my entire trip, probably my entire life. Oslo makes Palo Alto look like a good deal. The Big Mac index here is as high as I have seen -- it is over eight dollars for a Big Mac meal (not supersized, of course). We have been eating at McDonalds and Burger King at an alarming rate ... in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, this was the only place we could even come close to affording. Even the street side food vendors are expensive. I could buy a hot dog for cheaper at Pac Bell Park. Oslo is suprisingly small (about 500,000 ... although it seems even smaller than that). It is a pretty drab city from an architectural and cultural persepective, though it is very beautiful terrain which the city is built upon. The islands and trees and water surrounding the city make it seem as if I am in a small Alaskan town (Haines, for instance). Of course, I have never been to Alaska, so I have no idea how I drew this comparison in the first place. How can I compare one place to another place I have never been. Who cares. That is what Oslo is like -- Haines, Alaska.

I have a substantial amount of Norwegian blood in me, so I was excited for Norway. I don't know what region of Norway my bloodline stems from, so I was curious to see if I looked like those in Oslo. I am definately much smarter and good-looking than those here, however, so I must come from some other region that I haven't visited yet. I'll have to ask my father upon my return. Tomorrow, we are taking the train across the country, stopping for four hours to take a cruise up the famous fjords. They are supposed to be amazing (we have heard about them since getting to Norway), though I don't really know what a fjord is, so I cannot provide a description ahead of time. Apparantly, they are glacier-carved canyons and streams on a monumental scale. Reminds me of Alaska.

Edinburgh, Scotland -- I remember my first time as if it were yesterday. I was only eighteen years old at the time and had just gotten to college. I was a good Catholic boy, and never would have thought of doing such a thing so young. But everybody around me kept telling me how great it was ... how it made you feel so good ... how I was not enjoying one of the best parts of life. Eventually I gave in. My friend Kenta made it his personal mission to make sure I did it, he was so utterly and fully in love with the act. His persuasive speaking and enthusiasm sold me. One night, he took me to Mike Parket's beautiful Palo Alto house for a party. He told me to be ready, that at the party I would finally do it. And I did. It was even better than everyone said. By now, you should all know what I am talking about: Drinking Beer. That night -- the first time I ever drank a beer in my life -- I enjoyed four cool, frothy, deep brown Newcastle Brown Ales. Since then, it has remained my beer of choice. So smooth, so dark and inviting ... it is almost a sensual experience. Therefore, you can imagine that it was imperative that I visit the home of it all: Newcastle, England. It took some doing and some effort, but today, we made it to the home of my past, present, and future. Unfortunately, the brewery was not open to the public. But sitting at a Newcastle Pub sipping on a freshly brewed Newcastle brown ale had to be the highlight of my trip. Had Kenta been there with me, it would have perhaps been the highlight of my life.

In case you are curious on how I ended up there from Bergen, Norway, here is the deal:

A twenty-five hour ferry cruise ship filled with drunk eighty-year old Norwegian couples breakdancing to Van Morrison brought us across the North Sea to the United Kingdom. It was my first real cruise (the ship had gambling, bars, clubs ... all of the trimmings), although the North Sea in November isn't what I would call tropical. And I am not joking about the average age of the ship inhabitants ... I haven't seen so many elderly people gathered in one place since I worked at the Remington Club Retirement Home as a busboy in high school. For awhile, Reyes and I were convinced that we had crashed and died on our train ride to Bergen, and we were actually on a transport to heaven, as we could come up with no other reason why we were the youngest people on the boat by seven decades. We pulled into the Newcastle upon Tyne port, and after a few hours of looking around (it is nothing more than a fairly industrial port town, aside from being the home of the Holy Grail of beers), we got on a three hour bus ride to Edinburgh. This is supposedly one of the prettiest towns in Europe (although everywhere is supposedly the best something or other in europe). So far, we cannot complain. This is Europe as I pictured it before I left. Castles perched on the hills over Edinburgh (castles like in Braveheart) ... cobblestone streets ... old school cemeteries with headstones from centuries ago. As I am coming upon the end of my trip, we are considering going out with a bang and taking a three day tour of the Scottish Highlands and Isles through a local tour company. I will even get to visit the home of the Loch Ness Monster. After that, on to London for the remainder of the trip.

For those of you who want to honor the final week of my trip, go to Safeway and buy a six pack of Newcastle Brown Ale. Sit on your patio and drink a few, knowing that, though far apart, you and I are one and the same.

We will be in touch.