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.