done

this is my last night abroad. ive flipped flopped all day wondering whether or not i really want to come home at all. but ive decided i do. its time to take off. my plane leaves at eight in the morning tomorrow. i'm going to go and pack soon. i meticulously packed my bag three days ago in hopes that i wouldnt have to mess with it much. but at the israel airport they tagged me as a suspiscious character and i was searched five times. they made me take my whole bag out and went over every last article of clothing to make sure it didnt have powder explosive on it. then they interrogated me for a while, made me walk through a metal detecter six times, then i was escorted by an armed guard to the plane itself. i dont believe i'll be going back there for a while. trips over though now, heres some things ive done. Ive..
held a scorpion in china
had my beard freeze in mongolia
spent four days on a train in russia
been bored in austria
went to a lake in switzerland
saw an old friend in france
drank spiced wine in czech republic
went to a mall in slovakia
saw a wild parrot in hungary
got almost kicked out of a bar in romania
drove through serbia
went to dive bars in croatia
was broke in bulgaria
watched the sun rise in turkey
saw a bag get blown up in israel
and saw a guy get shot with a rubber bullet in palestine
i'm tired, i'm glad to be going home. i'll be in olympia soon. then back to San Francisco.

whoa

theres too much to really tell at this point. i know i should keep a better handle on this sucker but it always eludes me. though i'm glad i don't stick my head in the computer as much as my traveling contemporaries do, let me tell you yeesh. i was in tel aviv, guided by a few friendly soldiers with absolutely massive msixteens over their shoulders, the guns are completely exotic to my suburban eyes. anyways, i spent the night in tel aviv, i walked out onto my balcony in the middle of the city and watched probably a hundred bats, skittering through the air catching bugs. it made me want to run away, but i forced myself to watch them for a while. the next day i went to jerusalem, i've met many a messianic complex and jerusalem syndrome(people who think they are jesus, or in a womans case, sometimes, the virgin mary) the hostel is old. the tiles move under your feet while you walk around the comfortable couches. i found a good bed in a dorm next to a corner, i have my own shelf. mark twain stayed in this hostel, and herman melville too. today i went to the west bank, and that is too much to tell here, i'll have to do that in person.

istanbul

ive just returned back to istanbul after a few days in the south at the ruins of ephisus. yesterday as i ate my daily kebab, i counted seven stray cats staring at me in hopes of scraps, one actually jumped onto the table to help me finish my dinner, i pushed the officious fellow off of the table a few times. yesterday i hiked the two miles into the ruins from the center of town, and scrambled all up and down the ancient sites that were riddled with greek symbols. then i took another bus back to istabul because i had an idea. i have until the third of april left of this trip, which i suppose will never really end because i'm not going back to live in my little hovel of olympia again. so the adventures will certainly continue, until i finally gain financial stability through a consistent income again. i plan on moving to san francisco straight away and finding whatever job i can muster. in the mean time, i was feeling a bit of boredom at the prospect of spending my remaining days in turkey. i do like it here, but something about spending my last three weeks here didn't enthrall me. so, just a moment ago, i booked a plane ticket to Tel Aviv. i will be in Israel for two weeks, then istanbul for another three days and then back to the states. i plan on going to jerusalem and bethleham. i met a guy who works over there the other day and he said he would show me around. im' really excited, slightly apprehensive, but feeling good about the decision. love to all.

croatia, serbia, train

after leaving serbia, we drove to Zagreb croatia. the city was sleepy and cold, it snowed off and on and we had a small earthquake. through couchsurfing, we ended up staying with an incredibly nice family of girls. they put us up for a few days, feeding us and taking us around, mostly to the cool dive bars in town. ben gave me a haircut thats sort of like a fohawk, it built my self esteem up a bit. the smallest of the family ,a fifteen year old girl, asked me about the US and how it was, i told her a little bit of what i know then she asked if everyone was fat. i looked it up and the US is only ninth fattest, not bad. i met a girl who told me she was devestated after she met me, because id been all over the world and had nothing to say. it just kind of made me smile, she hadn't asked me anything anyway, and she didn't deserve to know outright. finally i took my leave of my car companions and took a train to istanbul. it took 30 hours with a night layover in belgrade, i spent the night hanging out with tweaky canadians who wouldn't stop talking about getting drugs, when i woke up at six in the morning they were sitting up still tweaked out teeth grinding and drinking beer staring at the wall, it sort of freaked me out. i met a hungarian on the train who really ameliorated the proccess of border crossing and showed me some spots in the city afterwards, if i hadn't met him, i'd probably be in bulgaria sulking right now. as usual i forgot to pack a lunch for the day long trip assuming everything would be fine. i ended up not eating at all the whole day and having to beg sips of water from other passengers like an invalid. i always say i've learned my lesson, but i probably will forget it again and starve. my plan when i got here was to go farther east into iran or syria, but they both don't like Americans having an easy go at it. id had to have planned it six months in advance to go in, and i didnt, so i can't go, drag. i have a little under a month left and i'm wonderin what to do, i'm not going west again thats settled, so i'll probably go explore turkey. leroy says there is a town named Batman, that i can't miss. today i walked around the city a man introduced himself and brought me to his leather shop to show me jackets and gave me some coffee, which wasn't bad. but leather jackets(fancy ones) really aren't my style and when i told him that he was more than dissapointed. i spent the rest of the day looking at the giant mosques and listening to the prayers, chewing on multiple kebabs and watching the fishing boats and barges on the ocean from the terrace of my hostel.

goth

i finally got sick. in Sibui transylvania, i caught a cold which turned into a fever and i was laid up for a few days. i had one of those evenings with nightmares that turn into you waking up shivering your so cold, even though your fully clothed, in a sleeping bag, with blankets right next to a heater. so i slept all day like an invalid in a dorm room as the people in the other beds looked at me in horror. today i'm much better. romania was also complicated because apparently my bank doesn't allow banking from there? so i had money in the bank, but none at hand, because of fear of fraud. i called the bank, and my atm card works in serbia and croatia, but not romania. that was complicated in itself. it was even stranger to walk around half dead through the winding gothic streets of the town, i felt like i was hallucinating the entire thing while i stumbled around looking for cheap food. i've got some medicine now and should be fine shortly though. i'm in serbia now, which i was advised not to go to. but in belgrade its very placid, despite the recent anti-western riots, it seems rather normal here to me. granted its not the border of kosovo, which i will not be going to at the moment. the romanian border was packed with people trying to leave and nobody trying to get in, we skirted right through, and drove through a rain storm into belgrade last night down roads that go in and out from being one lane to two. headed to zagreb tomorrow.

transylvania

last night i was pulled off a table i was dancing on by a monstrous bouncer who looked none to pleased with my amazing dance moves atop his glass plated decor, i left soon afterwards. a club who does not let you dance on top of tables isn't a club in my opinion. the hostel i'm staying at has probably two lights, those lights aren't in the bathrooms, so i have to take a shower in the dark. it also smells and the receptionist stares at you in a mean way when you ask him a question. but its not so bad, lots of people speak english here and its been fun. we played telephone pictionary with some locals last night and trashed our room.

east

when i met with my friends, they had rented a car and surprised me with it. which is the most amazing thing, because, frankly, i am a bit tired of train travel after the transib, and ive never had possession of a car in a foreign country. it is amazing, we can leave whenever we want and go to places way off the tourist circuit. we drove to bratislava after a few days in prague, finally escaping the massive crowds. then we drove to budapest. you have to drive fast, people come up behind you and don't slow down, you have to get out of the way. then all of a sudden there will be a speed trap and a bunch of cars will get busted. not us though, because we are too scared and drive under the insanely high speed limit. today i saw a wild parrot in the park in the center of town, then had possibly the best gyro i have ever had in my life. the hostel is small and the people are nice, we played drinking jenga til four in the morning with a girl who works here last night, which in retrospect was a terrible idea, but a memory nonetheless.

praha

so i was on a plane again, for an entire day. i'm an official jet setter now, and it feels good to be certified. i am now in prague, which is better than i remembered it. the charles bridge smells like hops from the brewery thats near and cake from the bakeries around. i found an english bookstore today and promptly spent a weeks worth of money on books. i bought some hot wine and nursed it on a bench overlooking the river while i watched giant white swans swoop their necks around like a pack of brontosaurus with the little gulls harassing them. its a touristy place, the hordes are somewhate unbearable especially near the castle, i think i've been in multiple pictures that i'm unaware of because people take them in the oddest places. i'm meeting my friends tonight, we have an apartment rented near the river.

the scratch

sorry for the delay. a lot has happened over the past few weeks, and ive been around the world so to speak. i got word that i would have an interview with the grad school i applied to, so i decided to come back and do it in person. i changed my ticket so and came back early to san francisco. first i went to visit a very good friend whom i havent seen in four years. the last time i saw him i had just dropped him off at highway 101 in washington. he now lives in the north of south france. i went to a party where people harrassed me about hippies, nirvana, and other essential american icons. we rode bikes to the lake, and ate endless baguettes and cheese. it was a small town with no other tourists and it felt like the most authentic experience id had traveling in a while. got to watch some society of the spectacle which thoroughly warped my mind for a few days, then said goodbye to allen after promising to not let four years pass again. then i flew to SFO, my watch broke and on my layover in DC i almost missed my plane because i thought it was five thirty for four hours. then i came to stay with CC near alamo square. my friend leroy suprised me and we spent these last few days together walking around, though his foot is busted so we couldn't walk much. i think the interview went alright, im nervous about it and wish that i knew that i was going to get in, ill write more about the actual interview later, it was hard. now i'm going to the airport to continue jet setting. i'm flying back to prague then going around east europe, slovakia slovenia croatia, then flying out of istanbul in april. everyone write me please i miss and love you all.

eric

rush

spent some time in moscow, met two amazing new friends, who showed us around the city for a while and let us sleep on their floor. she is a screenwriter and he is a director/writer and so forth. they took us around to places that tourists hardly frequent. it was incredibly nice to have them show us around, because russian is usually the only thing spoken, or written, and cyrillic is not my game. i took me forever to finally figure out the metro stops. the metro itself is this massive tendon like structure of the city, with line after line, the cars are so crowded you can't move your arms. a train comes every minute. the hallways are adorned with chandeliers and statues of lenin and other archetyple ruskies. after moscow we took a train to st. petersburg which has very little face control if you can find the cool bars. we eventually met some girls who showed us where to look. but before that we ended up in a club,that we realized to late, was for teenagers. they were all drinking and making out, which was odd. there was a dance off competition that i watched. after i saw one of the kids who won it walk by me I deduced that he was probably not even thirteen yet. slept on a floor of house of eight people and three rooms. then caught the train with exactly one minute to spare, back to moscow, (we had to sprint to the platform). i bid my transib companions farewell and now i am in vienna, rather lonely, despite the fact i am in a hostel with a bar and thirty obstreperous travelers drinking in it. i'll just read borges, and maybe shave my beard .i'm not feeling sociable.

moscow

the hostel of residence is full of unique characters such as the roomate who sits in bed all day and types things on his strange electronic device giggling to himself, he is a veritable creep doctor. there is the large german who talks to you incessantly, and a russian who gave ben an unsolicited massage then explained to him the importance of timothy leary. moscow is full of unbearably beautiful women, but i don't speak russian so i have no way of communicating my adoration to them. in red square their is a man with a monkey dressed up like a child and a giant golden eagle. people give him money to make the eagle flap its wings. thats all for now,

trainsliteration

oh to be off the train, yet i still haven't loosed its remnants from my system. i still catch myself rocking about at times like a consistently did for ninety six hours of my life. i succesfully broke my record for travel distance in one swoop. the last was three days spent on a greyhound bus from portland to new orleans, this was four days from ulanbataar to moscow. at one point we found ourselves in the dining cart(see picture) and we were soon surrounded by amicable but persuasive russians and mongolians. they bought bottle after bottle of vodka. i didn't keep track of how many times we shot a drink, but it was plenty. after a while i was cheersing to ghengis khan too the delight of the mongolians, who gave me mongolian money and ordered me two beers at once. eventually i escaped, after four more shots coupled with that feeling of danger i knew i had to dissapear if was going to survive the train. the next day i spent attempting to keep care of the hangover and vowed never to go into the dining cart again. someone stole our own personal cache of vodka from our cabin while we were out, which was just as well, we suspected our sneaky neighbor. now i am in moscow, i am told the police will fine you for bueracratic reasons, i spent the day walking around and attempting to look very serious and russian so as not to be stopped, it worked well enough. they have face control here at the bars and clubs, meaning, you are not allowed to go in if you are unnatractive, unkempt, or don't appear rich. we got denied a few places and given a rather dubious table in a bad part of a sports bar. its alright i still find myself attractive enough, even if the russian bouncers don't

train living

continuity

beijing was incredibly interesting but also very dirty and depressing in ways. i have talked to a lot of other travelers who are coming and going from there, and they seem to like it much better than i; so don't take my opinion as definitive. the great wall was sincerely a pleasure to see, but the city of beijing feels stifling alot of the time, the smog is opressive, the black soot collects in your nostrils, i saw a blue sky once, briefly, everyone spits everywhere and blows snot rockets, the food is good, people push you, they yell at you to buy things. granted i was only there for a short time, and the focus of this trip is mainly on russia and eastern europe,and i was also in beijing in the winter so it wasn't as hospitable. i still had a nice time there, but i've liked mongolia much better. tomorrow the train leaves for moscow, i'll be on it. i bought some leather mongoliaslashbiker boots with camel hair lining, that are warm, the steel in my other boots would refrigerate my toes to the point of complete numbness, these boots do the trick. my beard has ice caked on it when i walk outside, this is the coldest weather i have ever seen.

border crossing

finally found a ticket to the border of china mongolia via overnight bus. the bus was made up of short beds instead of seats and it was completly full. i had an ok sleep though, not one of my worst bus journies. at the border town of ehrlian it was a walk down this solitary road\. my hands had never been so cold, they ached they were so cold. the gloves didn't do a damn thing. the border guards said we couldn't walk across and that we would have to take a minibus over. so we started to trudge back until a mongolian man with his family pulled over and kicked his family out-they weren't upset- and offered to take us. the border crossing took about an hour with a lot of driving around huge trucks and snow piles and over curbs in the all terrain vehicle we were in. after the chinese border we looked behind us and realized we'd just smuggled some girl across behind our luggage. she and the driver laughed, "stupid china". spent the rest of the day waiting for the train to come at ten at night. the desert surrounded the whole town, it seemed an inhospitable place for civilization. we had lunch at a cafe and a local worker who was missing a finger bought us a round of beers and we toasted a few times. i learned quick that when you cheers, you have to slam the whole beer, so we did that until the train came. ullanbataar is very cold its negative 10 degrees. there is an ice sculpture slide that sits in the park and i slid down it with the local kids for a few hours, the people here are lovely, most people are nice and trusting, i'd stay here longer if it wasn't so damn cold. leaving for russia on tuesday. i'll update later on some of my thoughts on china, not all favorable,i'll explain.

aarg

second trip to buy tickets out of beijing was a failure this morning. i got up early and took the metro with foggy eyes out to the beijing international hotel. the ticket center is on the second floor and ridiculously tiny, even moreso when i realized how many locals were packed into it. i got into what i thought was a line, only to be shouldered out of the way numerous times by people. finally i decided to push back and made my way to the front, the guy at the desk told me that that the tickets were 5000 rmb per person. (about six hundred fifty US) which is about 500 times more than the other prices we had been stated. i have also been told that the train leaves only twice a week, that it leaves three times a week and one time, that it leaves on mon tues wed and that it leaves on saturday sunday. so, none of that can be completely right i'm sure, but im irratated and cold. its twenty degrees here. and i'm quite tired of beijing already. i'll let you know how it all works out.

well..

the chinese internet system is somewhat bogus, i can publish things on the blog but unfortunately i cannot read my beautiful musings of yesteryear. so i hope i dont repeat anything. did i tell you mayhaps...that i held a live scorpion??! and it started to crawl up my sleeve but the man who handed it to me grabbed it by the tail before it could. then they fried it and i ate it. the stinger stuck the roof of my mouth but apparently the frying proccess demolishes any truculent poisonous qualities, so never fear, i was unharmed. there were a lot of other things that i did not try, such as beetle, squid and grasshopper, my favorite was sea horses which still looked quite elegant even when skewered through with a toothpick and dried up eyes, i couldn't bring myself to nosh on such beauty. my traveling companions at the moment have fallen in with some gypsies, leaving me to the sidelines with their talk of gypsy dates and gypsie parties. that is no concern of mine though, i suppose i'll pat them on the back with some vague words of encouragement as they undoubtedly face some weird times ahead. trying to get to mongolia this week, hopefully all will work out.

aha!

well, for the past couple of days i had thought that blogspot was restricted in china, as every time i tried to go to the domain i would get a screen full of chinese characters that seemed to say blogspot did not exist in china, but here i am, fourth attempt back on. i've been staying in a hostel about five minutes from tianemen square(guy in front of tank) the city is cold and crowded. its been around twenty degrees here at different points in the day. i bundle up accordingly but after about a half hour of walking i'm so sweaty from al the layers i take some off, then the sweat is dramatically cold, its a fluctuation of uncomfort. but not unbearable. when i arrived at the sanfrancisco airport i realized that i had forgotten my passport. after going back to the house and getting it the line was amazingly long and there was only an hour to flight, cutting in front of the line works beautifully however, made it to the plane with five minutes to spare. yesterday i hiked to a hidden part of the great wall, run down and completely seemingly completely ignored since it was built, me and a group hiked along its curvy spine, scrambling over stairs that disintegrated under our feet and peering out of castle like windows in the different look outs we came to. my chopstick skills are back, i bet i could peel an orange with them already, the food is good unless you order a western dish, and in that case it is very bad. i've seen to very intense fights in the neighborhood i am in. a man got a chair smashed over his head and then he fought a girl and a guy, lots of blood, then last night when i was reading before bed i heard a fight outside. i could just see it out of the corner of my window, they were yelling at eachother and tussling til the sound of one of the mens heads hitting the concrete reverberated off of the hutong walls. the locals around were meandering past stoically seemingly unimpressed. i was lost in the hutongs, which are labyrinth chinese neighborhoods for hours today after unsuccesfully attempting to buy train tickets to mongolia at four different places, i have a plane ticket out of moscow on the sixteenth of february to vienna, so i have to get out of asia to there somehow. we'll see.

last evening

i'm about to eat some cheese toast and pasta at bens grandparents house, i'm planning on eating about four bowls. i'm packed up now, initially i told myself i would bring only two books, but now i'm bringin upwards of seven or eight for fear of lack of bookshops. it is twenty degrees in beijing, i will be there the day after tommorow. its a sixteen hour flight from here soi'm going to drink free beer and try to read an entire book so i can get rid of it. i just read martin amis's House Of Meetings, its about a man and his brother in a russian gulag, its intense and you never quite understand if you like the narrator, but its beautiful, made me miss my brothers. i'll write you all when i get there.

santafrancisco

i went to the chinese visa place today and the woman at the counter scolded me for having a dirty passport. its been traveling with me for a couple of years, mostly saddled tightly up to my stomach slash crotch area in a valiant attemt to avoid pickpockets. so its seen the view from my pants mostly, but its been around i assure you. i'm currently at my friend charlies house, whom i havent seen in three or so years since we lived together in santa cruz, actually its been five, i'm old now. i really do love california, its like washington with less mold, even when its cold and polluted here it smells fresh to me. yesterday ben gave me some lamb curry from his restaurant and it was exquisite, afterwards i sat and watched the bay and read a book. not having a job is almost too much freedom to bear. hopefully the visa application will go through so i can actually start this trip, i keep having odious daydreams of the consulate barring my admission, but i'm sure thats just needless rumination. my friend honora told me she hopes wolves with genital warts attack me in russia, you can hold that mental image of me for a while until my next update. theres not much more to say, me and a pack of friends will burn around the city tonight listening to rag time jams and drinking prohibition rag time city whiskey.

love to all