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The Other Side — 2006 Edition Journals of travels through northern European countries (England, Germany, Estonia, a stop in Russia, then Finland, Sweden and Denmark) On The Way 5/22/06, 3:51 PM     It’s strange, I’m used to airports & I’m used to travel, but this trip is different... Probably because I haven’t done an ounce of real planning for this trip. My husband just accepted a job offer, and he’s excited about it — but the base pay is similar to what he’s making at his old job, and they want him to buy a new car for his new job (which means we’re in the hole for money).     So I’m a but preoccupied.     That and my mother is at University of Chicago hospital again, because her leukemia isn’t in remission, so she’s finishing her first round of the second set of chemo sessions.     I’m complaining too much. Sorry.     But, apparently, I’m a little preoccupied.     And the things is, when I usually embark on a trip like this, I usually attempt to prepare myself for any cultural differences, I get cash in the country’s currency in advance, I read a ton of material about the towns I’m going to visit. And all I’ve pretty much done for this trip is look at the listings from the trip plans to learn about the cities I’m going to.     That and I had a lot of caffeine (Diet Coke) today, so since my stomach was probably already going to be jittery today, the shock of caffeine in my system probably also didn’t help me.     But yes, I’m flying to London, and I don’t even get to spend any time on London (we bus from the airport to the White Cliffs of Dover). But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do at any of the cities (and countries) I’ll be visiting.     John just said to me that people who have been in combat before say that the worst part of it all is the waiting... Once they’re there, they don’t have the time to be scared or to think about the things that make you worry and wonder, while waiting for it to happen.     Which is probably what we’re going through now. London 5/23/06, ~9:00 AM (probably 3:00 AM Chicago time)     When a flight, I know they called it “Economy Plus*” (and yes, there was an asterisk there, I know what they had to point out in small print that really didn’t make it “plus” anything, other than a little leg room), and we tried to sleep (thought two American boys, well, probably late teens, were talking all night, and used my chair as a balance whenever they decided to get up), but I think we each got three hours of off and on sleep that entire flight. But we finally got into Heathrow Airport only about a half hour late (we had a leak in the right engine they had to check out, which made us almost two hours late for takeoff), and John waited with all of the luggage after we went through immigration and customs (which, by the way, we didn’t have to do anything for customs, just walk through an extra hallway and take a few extra turns) and I walked outside to see the streets of London.     Granted, it was the airport I walked outside of (I hear Heathrow is the largest airport, but the ceilings are low, and it makes it seem much smaller and not in as good of shape as O’Hare, sorry), but it was cool. It was cool to see how signs are designed differently — even the stop sign looks different (yes, it’s still that red octagon with a white border and it says “stop” in english on it), but the font was different, and the finish was different, and it actually looked like a stop sign in another country. That and even the taxi cabs were the coolest design (kind of like a 50s style mix between a Volkswagen Beetle and a Chrysler PT Cruiser). I wanted to photograph a row of taxis at the airport, but I thought I looked strange enough photographing a stop sign (and at least with the stop sign, I wasn’t taking pictures of people).     As we waited at the airport in London, I saw a list of cities that had arrivals that morning. I even jotted the list down, so I wouldn’t forget seeing a list of cities including Seattle, Chicago, New York, Calgary, Mumbai, Delhi, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Tehran, Oslo, and Dubai (yes, they had Dubai on their list of arriving flights, and on another page of arrivals I even saw Beirut), and I was just fascinated that such a wide variety of cities of such a plethora of cultures and civilizations could all meet in this one airport (if O’Hare has arrivals from Tehran or Dubai, you surely wouldn’t see them all on the same arrivals screen because they were from different airlines, so with one plane arriving, from what I hear, every 3 seconds at O’Hare, you’ll never see all of these cities from all of these airlines listed in one place — there’s just no room.     We’re hoping to spend more time in London at the end of this trip; John’s even hoping we could get pushed back to a flight the next morning due to demand for flights, because maybe then they’d comp us for a flight and give us a hotel until our next flight brings us home. Dover 5/23/06, 5:54 PM     My mother, well, she’s a great liar. I want you to know the story of when my sister Sandy was little, and she wanted to know mom’s age, but mom wouldn’t tell her... So Sandy figured she could do the math is she asked mom how old she was when she got married. Mom told her she was three when she married, and Sandy knew this couldn’t be right. She said to mom that in their wedding photos, mom looks tall, not like she’s only three. And mom told her that because her wedding dress was long, it touched the floor in the wedding photo, and she told my sister that she was standing on a stool for the photos, so she would be tall. And my sister was young, and she believed this at first, because my mom has the uncanny ability to tell you anything, and you’ll have no reason to doubt her.     In a sense, this was the same thing that happened to me when I visited her in the hospital the day before we left for this trip. I mentioned that we were departing from the White Cliffs of Dover. She told us that “the White Cliffs of Dover” are called that because the bird crap all over the place. John thought it was called that possibly because of the rocks there being lighter, maybe it was limestone, but apparently no, that shoreline area they call the White Cliffs of Dover got that name because of the birds.     Well, no, it’s because of the limestone, I should listen to John, he’s too brainy to not have superfluous information like that, and I should have known that this well-known area didn’t get it name because of excess bird crap.     In the two hour drive on the bus to Dover for the beginning of our sightseeing tour, I watched from my left window on the bus all of the trucks we passed on the right, and you know, it really is fascinating how over half of the trucks drivers (the ones from the UK to begin with) have their steering wheel on the right-hand side. We were taking an expressway those two hours, and like in the States, you’ll have a few lanes of traffic going the same direction. In America, however, you assume that over some grassy strip separating you, you’ll see a few lanes of expressway traffic to you left going in the opposite direction. In England, you’d look out the left and expect to see eventual lanes of cars heading toward you... Then remember that you have to look over to the right to see those lanes of cars speeding toward where you came from.     Like the last time I spent time in Europe, I noticed the greenery was extremely lush. John said it was because it was so rainy (and I shouldn’t doubt the superfluous information that he always seems to retain), but I wonder if there is different vegetation common and grows wild all over the land. Well, whether it’s the same or not, there’s a lot of it, and John seems to be allergic to everything that’s growing around here right now. So in addition to the lack of sleep, he has also become a “mouth breather,” unable to catch any air through his nose because of his sinuses.     Dover has undergone major reconstruction since undergoing German bombing raids and shelling in WW II. The sizeable Dover Castle is a striking example of medieval fortification, that you can see when you view Dover’s famous cliffs, which I’ve been told are best enjoyed from a boat several miles out to sea. It’s nice that on this trip I got that view of the castles and the White Cliffs of Dover when we were sailing. 5/24/06, 12:51 PM (5:51 AM CST)     Went to be at ~10:00 or 10:30 Tossed and turned like mad (I never slept on my back, which I usually do, so I’d flip from leaning on my left arm and facing right to leaning on my right arm and facing left). John apparently never woke up (two generic Benadryls kept him asleep). We woke up probably a little after 9:00 AM (yes, meaning we were in bed ten to ten and a half hours, but I still feel tired). In order to learn about the excursion trips we’re taking (particularly to St. Petersburg, since we didn’t plan to pay for trips to countries that don’t require VISAs), we had to skip breakfast. After hearing Ian talk about different ports (helped me think of places I want to see when we go to different town in different countries), I wondered if we’d really have to take a paid trip to Berlin in order to go to Berlin (because they offer a package where you just get the train — the express train, faster than the stops on a regular EuroRail), so we then waited in lines to learn about getting maps for all of the town we’re going to, and learned that yes, we’d probably have to pay $200 per person so we can go to Berlin.     And I don’t even know if we’ll have time to be able to pick up a six pack of Hacker Pschorr for the two and a half hour train rise into Berlin in the first place.     But I do want to see the art gallery wall in Berlin, which is made of part of the remnants of the Berlin wall. And Yes, I even suggested of John that we empty the camera bag so we can bring cans of Hacker Pschorr on the train for the ride back to port. (I know we can’t take beer onto the boat we’re on, but I can at least get tanked before I get back on good beer...).     Yesterday was John’s day for feeling terrible (blaming it on allergies). Today is my day. You see, after our meeting John really needed to get some food, and sure so did I but he felt a migraine coming on without food. so he walked from deck to deck (because he said the small print on the little map we had didn’t help him find anything), and when we got to the only place that still served breakfast (after 11:00 in the morning), I saw that it was only puffed sugar pastries and coffee. Well, John’s the caffeine addict (no, wait, he says he just actually likes the taste of Yotko-grade coffee that much), so he had coffee, and John’s the sugar addict (I’m the greasy food addict, like potato chips or french fries, but John’s the candy addict, inhaling it down without giving himself much of a chance to taste what passes his lips), so he ate and I had nothing. I suppose I could have steeped some tea if I wanted to take the tine, but I didn’t, and I preferred brooding. So when we finally went to go to lunch some place, the line was so insanely long to just get in that we started looking for other places, and other places were closed (I love it when they give us options here), so we had to go where we snacked on pizzas last night. John had his coffee, and even got a few oranges (one for lunch, one for later in our cabin) so we won’t get scurvy for no vitamin C on this trip (wouldn’t want to be a scurvy dog, as we say, so oranges it is, since I won’t drink concentrate orange juice).     Mentioning concentrate orange juice, it makes me think of how angry I was eating outside, the only place we could get food at lunch time. It’s cold here, and although the clouds covered the sky it was painfully bright. I wore John’s shirt that closer to a turtleneck because my throat’s been sore and our heaviest coat here (and I’m without the gloves and winter headband that I would have had if I took the coat I was originally thinking of bringing, but John talked me out of), I was squinting outside in the cloudy sky, and I was looking at my plate of salad and a little cous cous because I’m a vegetarian and have no options. So yes, it’s a moral choice of mine to not eat animals, and yes (bringing it back to the concentrate orange juice) it’s my choice to not drink concentrate orange juice (because a percentage of all concentrate orange juices is derived from oranges grown on destroyed rain forest land, and it’s really unnecessary to destroy the land when non-concentrate orange juice is better tasting and plentiful), but, I know, I’m in the minority here, but it’s just hard sometimes having to try to adjust to the choices the rest of the world has made.     John’s been sitting here, and while I’ve been writing I’ve had music playing on my computer where I’m typing (I brought portable speakers, and this is the nicest thing to have in our room, our music playing whenever we want it), but as I’ve been typing here John has been laying in bed watching the channel that shows only the view from the top of the ship of the front edge of the ship and the water. I turned around once to say I really like the music, to see John still just laying there in his underwear watching the sailing of our ship.     Okay, so apparently anything can make John relax. 3:01 PM (8:01 AM Chicago time)     It’s time for me to write again, because we just came back to the room and John turned on the television to view the boat moving on the water and said, “It’s time for me to start watching, like Captain Steubing” (yes, from the Love Boat, and not Captain Piccard or Captain Kirk of Star Trek, like we joked about earlier). So I turned on the music here at the computer so he cam mellow out, watching the boat sail without the horrendous winds from the cold weather outside.     Wait, had to turn the music off because he changed the channel and is watching a live fire in Turkey (just heard a man running away saying, “ague, ague, ague”. And unlike the usual news stations we’re used to on cable TV, there is no reporter making any commentary. We just changed the channel and heard another report say that probably a short circuit (this is an unconfirmed report) in the cargo area of the C terminal at the airport outside of Istanbul. They’re using planes to help try to get out the fire, and I think they were also using planes used for stopping forest fires (well, they can’t really use commercial airlines if the airport’s on fire, can they?).     Okay, I’ll stop giving you news about fires in other countries. Um, we just spent time crossing the Kiel (or the Nord-Ostee) Canal, which separates the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (and separating Germany from Denmark). It was vaguely interesting, as we had to be trapped between two closed gates (closed to sea floor), while they lowered the water level from one sea to the other, so we’d be able to cross without destroying the nearby land. It was cold, so after I took maybe three photos, we went back to the pizzeria place (no, not to eat pizza) for John to get Coffee (no, he’s not an addict) and me to get eventually two cups of mint tea. And you know, drinking the mint tea (suggested to me to help my sore throat) seemed to make everything fell better in my world, it tasted so good. So when John offered to get me a second cup of hot water to steep more mint tea, he also get himself hot water and hot chocolate mix along with a packet of mint tea. He put it all together and said his drink tasted like a Frango hot chocolate (because he’s just recently had Frango Mints, to understand the love Chicagoans have of Marshall Field’s mint flavored chocolate candies).     We even stopped at some stores to see if there anything interesting (like vegetarian gloves, or mint lozenges for my throat). I do try to drink more water now than I usually do, though (I don’t have access to water the way I do when i’m back at home, but my skin has been so dry that I have to hydrate myself more now that I’m on the water). We found cherry-flavored lozenges, but I think John thought I wouldn’t like cherry flavorings, so of course, I have nothing for my throat. We even stopped at a jeweler who had Alexandrite stones, and I talked a little about my Alexandrite. Also found out that their largest stone with the diamond band retailed for $20,000.     We leave for Berlin shortly after we get to Warnemunde Germany tomorrow morning. Because it’s only fifty minutes after we dock that we leave via train for Berlin, I don’t think we’ll have the time to get beers from a store in Warnemunde for the train ride to Berlin (but we plan to empty the camera bag for this Berlin trip, so we can have a place to hold the cans of Hacker Pschorr for our ride home). We’ll be in Berlin most of our time in Germany (though I’d rather be there, photographing building and sights, like the art as a gallery on part of the remnants of the Berlin Wall), but maybe we’ll have the time to photograph or spend any time in Warnemunde before we leave for our next country to visit. 4:50 PM     I’ve got cherry flavored throat lozenges now. I’m out of the shower now, and the music was playing, and he’s still out. The “Steubing Cam” (as we now call the channel that shows where the ship is sailing) shows that we’re no longer docked in the Kiel Canal, because, well, we had to be docked for about an hour in the middle of our ride through the Canal. Only so many ships (per weight) can be crossing at any point in the canal at once (and we’re on the Canal for 8 hours, always going no more then eight knots). Well, the captain (which is neither Steubing, Kirk or Piccard) said we had to remain docked for close to an hour because eight freight ships had to pass first. Well, the freight boats must have passed, because we’ve just started moving again.     John just walked in an out of the cabin here, saying that they told him was had to have some sort of proof of our room ownership (other than our room pass, I guess) in order to get the tickets. But he at least got the lozenges, so I’m sucking on one of them right now, while he goes back with his camera to get the tickets for tomorrow, and to maybe take pictures of a bridge we get close to in our journey.     All I’ve got in my pathetic existence right now to worry about is trying to get my hair to stay straight after I’ve showered, because it always wants to curl and get frizzy and do exactly what I don’t want it to do unless I fight with it and eventually force it into submission. And here, I don’t have hair spray, and I don’t have a curling iron I could use to straighten my hair (John said he thought he read something where you’re not allowed to have heat-activated decides like curling irons on board of a ship, because fire is very common, oddly enough, when you’re in water), so I just tried to use the blow dryer to pull my hair straight as I started to dry it.     Yes, hair worries.     John just came back, with tickets. And he took pictures, including one of people standing in the rain under a tree watching us go by. Fun times.     We should get ready for dinner soon, and have an early evening, so we can get up early to have a huge breakfast before we go out into Berlin and have less of a desire to spend money on food (of course, I only want to spend it on Hacker Pschorr). 7:26 PM     Just got back from dinner. I first tore open a roll to butter before we received our salads (it’s been nice here, they have a lot of salads with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, and I’m all over the notion of a caprice salad), and I saw what looked like something was cooked into the roll, into the middle of the dough, before it was cooked and finished. I asked John what it could be, he looked at it, saw a maybe one and a half inch long brown ring, sliced open showing a beige-colored inside, and he said he thought it was possibly a cockroach. I glanced at it once more, then we set \it down. and I just started laughing, I mean, it’s not the kitchen’s fault, they mass buy these things, it was probably just a mistake at the place where the bread was first made. We even looked at it one or twice more, and John finally told the waitress (who was Polynesian, and he asked her how she was in Tagalog, and I couldn’t believe he knew anything of the language Polynesians spoke, but then again, he’s the man who amasses so much superfluous information...) that she should remove the roll, because a cockroach was cooked into the roll. She looked at it, panicked, and said, no, that’s there for the flavor.     I’m serious, she said that.     But then she said that what was a sun dried tomato in the roll.     Oh, I see, I thought, I didn’t know an individual piece of sun dried tomato was usually placed in the middle of a roll for dinner. But okay.     But John kept saying, okay, it’s not like we minded, we didn’t eat it, it’s not the restaurant’s fault, but she was having to run to another table. But I said to John after she left, well, could you have been wrong, could that really have been a piece of sun dried tomato in the roll? And he ate another roll (I told him to do it, because he’s eaten bugs before in his Marines training experience, so he could eat a bug), and saw no bug — and no sun dried tomato — in this roll. He said it was funny, there’s wasn’t the flavor of anything additional thing when he ate this roll, so I was feeling more and more confident that it mist have really been a cockroach in the roll and the waitress was just covering for this problem. John thought that by the end of the second roll, however, that he tasted a hint of sun dried tomatoes. So... I don’t know if the company that made these dinner put sun dried tomatoes, or if there was a bug cooked into that dinner roll and the waitress tried to give me another good lie to cover up for the problem. I mean, at first I believed my mother that the White Cliffs of Dover were called that because of excess bird crap. So who knows. Warnemunde Germany     We saw absolutely nothing, because we paid to go to Berlin.     But we took a bottle of Evian from the hotel room to travel through Germany that day, in case we’d need water on our trip and couldn’t get it anywhere else. We never used it and brought it back, but don’t worry, the people here at the boat tried to charge us for something we didn’t consume. I also started eating yogurt on this trip (it’s supposed to be good for me, I hear), but I thought it was funny hear Germany that the containers of yogurt were called “joghurt” (really funny for someone who is morally and diabolically opposed to jogging, I know it’s just their word for yogurt, but it was still funny to me).     John told me on his way out (I don’t know why this came up), that when he was little (probably around 10 years old) that to look like he was chewing on tobacco (you know, because that looks cool), he’d mix coffee grounds and sugar. I guess the sugar would eventually dissolve, and he’s have rough little bumps of coffee in his mouth to savor (I told you he was psycho for coffee).     Oh, and that morning he went to the WC (he went to use the toilet) in this small little cabin, and I’ve associated the lights for the bathroom turning on like the startup of a nuclear reactor (there are two long fluorescent tubes, and when you turn on the light switch it takes about 15 seconds of these bright lights flickering before they’ll actually power up). Well, it was dark in the rest of the cabin, and he had the bathroom door open with that light turned on. With the light on to this little bathroom and the door open, he said that he felt on display, so he equated himself with and exhibit: “Man Under Glass, Shitting,” is what he said the exhibit would be. Berlin 05/26/06, 10:04 AM     Am writing everything from our day yesterday without a computer to write, I could only take notes while we were out all day.     I should also start by saying that I wanted Hacker Pschorr while I was in Germany, that I wanted to have good beer for once, and, well, I didn’t know that as a country, Germany could be so divided on beer tastes. Hacker Pschorr didn’t exist in Berlin, so we had to search for other beers during our visiting that day (I mean, it seems strange to me — it’s like saying in Illinois that Miller beer is available in the northern part of the state, but you can’t find Budweiser until you get past Champaign, into the southern half of the state. That seems ludicrous to me, that a beer would never be heard of such a short distance away from another place, within the same country.). I’ll babble about the beer later I talk about other things I noticed on this visit to Berlin.     On the way to the train to Berlin, I noticed that all of the women had purses (some relatively big) over their shoulder, or slung over one arm. I had my pack pack, and the only problem I have with it is that after being on my back for a few hours, my back gets hot, so I have to carry it over one shoulder until my back cools off, but at least I have two free hands and don’t have to consciously worry about carrying around my wallet (and cough medicine and lip balm and passport and whatever else I wanted to carry, like the notebook I took notes in to write about). Speaking of the passport I had to carry, when we left the ship to go to Berlin, my passport was actually stamped for me to get in and out of the country (I thought they only did that by airplane, they don’t do it by train). So... I suppose I may have passport marks from London, Germany, Estonia, Russian, Finland, Sweden and Denmark before I return home (John’s got eh better passport, because I had to get a new one, so his passport also list previous trips to Austria and Germany, as well as a VISA sticker and passport marks to China).     But lucky us, it’s Ascension Day in Germany, so all of the stores will be closed. If I shopped, I’d be concerned, but that means that some restaurants/bars will also be closed (I won’t worry about that too much though, Berlin doesn’t seem to believe on Hacker Pschorr anyway...). But if somethings are closed, that probably means more people are out, so it won’t seem so deserted walking on a city street while everyone is at work.     It was cool to see the rolling train to get to Berlin, because I noticed the cool graffiti at major stops (much more creative looking than a lot of a graffiti I see in the States), and I also saw tons of tall but very thin trees lining the sides of the countryside before we got back to a major city. Also, in the middle of the trip (when there weren’t trees everywhere) we saw tons of fields of yellow, and I’d joke to John that it was more pollen for him, but we asked a British guy and his girlfriend from Belgium (actually, his girlfriend was born in Belgium, but she was of Asian descent, so it was a little confusing to hear she was from Belgium), and they said the field of yellow were actually rape seed growing (now, I’ve heard of grape seed, but it’s rape seed they said, that don’t know what it’s used for, and all I could do after that was sing “rape seed” to “Rape Me” by Nirvana, or even sing the Nirvana “rape seed” song in the style of the lounge lizard cover that Brian gave me, which sound hysterical).     And oh, they gave us snacks for the ride, including yogurt, and John inferred that it had gelatin in it (from “Spiesegelatine” in German). And my hands have been killing me, and after talking with John, I’ve learned that the consumption of gelatin can help with any joint pain (like what I feel daily in my fingers, the ones swollen as well as all fingers near arthritic fingers), and there are no vegetable substitutes. Now, I’ve always said that I didn’t like the idea of killing an animal, and I know, I could have paid someone else to produce the meat product, but I chose not to, knowing it would also be healthier that eating meat the way Americans do on average. I’ve thought about this for a while, and I know that in theory us humans are at the top of the food chain and we can do what we like with animals, so I thought that I may actually get sugar-free Jello in the future or something so I could get some gelatin to help my health. Well, this opportunity came up first (and all this time I’ve been searching any paying more for yogurts that don’t have gelatin in them), so I said, okay, and as little as it was, I chose to consume yogurt with gelatin. No, that doesn’t mean I’ve chosen to start eating meat, it means i’m considering my health, and this may help me. I’ve also thought over the years that I may have to start eating fish (or at least consume fish oil capsules instead of flaxseed oil), because it is good for me, and probably more accessible over time than trying to find flaxseed supplements anywhere).I’ve never liked the taste of fish, so... so, I don’t know. It’s just gets difficult making a moral choice the rest of the world doesn’t make, and having to miss out of food everyone else eats (for example, people like trying foods of cultures when they travel, I don’t because I can’t eat anything places offer). But if I have to make choices what are actually better for my health, I hope I can justify the rare meat-eating choices I make.     Okay, sorry, back to Berlin. I used the washrooms both on the boats on in Berlin, and I thought it was cool that the bathroom stalls had doors that always went all the way to the floor. I mean, I know that in the States have doors, but they always leave a foot or a foot and a half of space, you know, and I suppose it’s nice to see people’s feet sticking out of stalls to know how filled the bathroom is, but being the privacy freak that I am, it’s nice to even have privacy for my feet when I use the washroom stall is Northern European bathrooms...     While in Berlin, we photographed a ton of things — including the Reichstag, and I (as usual) photographed a billion up-shots of columns (I’m obsessed, sorry). Went to a place to finally find beer, and since nobody had Hacker Pschorr, we ordered a Berliner Weisse (which was technically a Kristallweizen, a clear filtered weisse beer), and John chose it in the color green (I didn’t know you could normally choose colors for your beer for this beer, but we had the choice of red or green for colors), and it tasted like a Leinenkeugels’ Berry Weisse, but the wheat beer was so much richer... This Berliner Weisse tasted so thick and rich and insanely sweet. It was very good. It was a bit pricey, but it was very good. Since it only came in a smaller glass (I couldn’t order a large glass, it was only half the size of a usual weisse beer glass) I got a different beer next — a Schšfferhofer helles hefeweizen — it was a weisse beer alright, and the head was insanely think, but there was a bitter aftertaste, and the more I drank of it, the more I tried to guzzle it so I wouldn’t have to taste it in so many sips. The Berliner Weisse (the green one was the one I got, actually), although it was more expensive, was much better. Trust me.     And what was funny was that as soon as we got in to have a seat and get something to drink, it started raining harder and harder (because yes, it was constantly drizzling all day already, link when we were in Dachau Germany, though in Dachau it was rain sprinkled with snow half of the time), and since everyone needed their umbrellas (or bumbershoots if we were British people in Germany) outside, people started flocking to this cafŽ to sit down. Everyone was shaking their bumbershoots and dragging their feet on the large mat to try to dry themselves off, and we were sitting right in the front drinking our beers. By the time the rain slowed back down to the light and irritating drizzle it had been previously, we said we had enough of this beer and moved on.     We had to meet everyone for the bus back to the train back to WarnemŸned at the Hilton Hotel, and the first thing I did was go to the WC (man, I had to use the facilities), and I was wearing a knot-tied belt and jeans with a button and zipper, and when I had to go that badly to the bathroom (no, I didn’t have an accident) I was really aggravated that I had all of these layers of clothing to disassemble just go I could sit on the john (not sit on John, sit on the john) and go to the bathroom. But when I was finally able to sit down on the throne and start “letting go,” so to speak, I totally had a flashback to Trainspotting (if you’ve seen it, remember Ewan McGregor in the “dirtiest” toilet in Scotland), because I think I was making the same kinds of noises Ewan McGregor was making when he was using the washroom. I didn’t have a heroin suppository that I lost in the toilet, like Ewan McGregor did in Trainspotting, but I still had the flashback... After the WC in the hotel, we checked, their only restaurant/bar was closed for the holiday. So we couldn’t drink there waiting for people to meet up, so we went to a place that seemed to pretty much be sponsored by LšwenbrŠu beer, there were posters and beer taps everywhere, so we went in there and I had two Franziskaner Weisse beers (which were better than the Schšfferhofer hefeweizen, trust me).     And you know, I’m wondering: what is the guy in the Franziskaner logo wearing on these beer glasses? He’s not holding a beer, I’m confused, so John looks at it and says “He’s ready to meditate.”He’s got his beer and his chicken.” And I’m thinking what? But it does look like what’s in this guy’s right arm is a chicken, even though those things that could look like chicken legs on first glance are actually a pair of long keys hanging in front of him. Strange...     There was a sign at the general seating that said “Stamm Tisch,” but I didn’t read German, so I asked John (since he once took a German class) what “Stamm Tisch” meant. John didn’t know, so he said it meant “Sluts Sit Here” (you know, because I was sitting here). What a charmer. But by the time we wanted a second set of beers at the LšwenbrŠu bar, we couldn’t get anyone’s attention, so we cracked jokes about Monty Python’s sketch “How To Not Be Seen,” saying that how to not be seen is to want another beer and hold your empty glass. The wait-staff will ignore you. Trust me.     So this was the first time on the trip that I felt relaxed, and no, it wasn’t because I was drinking, because I had a drink earlier that day and didn’t feel that way. The first cafŽ made me feel tense, I felt like I could just kick back and relax here and not worry about what anyone is thinking about me. John was assuming I’d be able to relax on this trip, because we traveled by boat once before and I was able to actually relax then, but this time I can’t relax, I’m either eating or working and writing here, I can’t enjoy the outside (unless I want to be cold), I don’t have enough clothing to feel comfortable in my clothes, and I don’t have anything to help my hair (because trust me, after the second time washing your longer hair without condition, you lose more hair than you would believe due to all of the knots in your hair that washing your hair supplies).     While we were walking back to our waiting spot for the bus for the train, I saw a sign that read “AusFahrt”. Don’t know what that means, but I cracked up, saying that’s what John does in Germany. (I know, I’m tasteless, but I’d like to use the excuse that it probably the beer talking.) Then again, I also called John a “Dunkelsglizider,” and he was trying to figure out what that meant... a dart what?, and I just made it up. I guess beer does help you lighten up.     But we had to get back for the bus to get us to the train to get us back to the boat, so while we were waiting with other people on the street, we watched a small red car that was parallel parking drive entirely on the sidewalk to park in that spot — I mean, they drove their car completely on the sidewalk, and then parallel parked from the sidewalk to their spot on the street (why they couldn’t just parallel park from the street and not the sidewalk, I don’t know).     I’d like to end this Berlin journey with a comment about our ride back on the train (sitting with the same charming British and Belgium couple). We got more snacks, including a package of peanuts, which listed on the back of the package: INGREDIENTS: Peanuts, Vegetable oil, Salt. This product may contain traces of nuts.     Enough said. •••     After looking around on this vessel, it has occurred to me that we don’t really fit in here, because there seem to be two types of people here (none of which I hope applies to us), everyone here on average is either about thirty years older than us, or thirty pounds or more overweight. I know this seems like an easier way to travel to places you can’t otherwise easily get to, but it’s strange how out of place you can physically feel sometimes. 10:50 PM     After more Pfefferminztss (mint tea, don’t worry, it’s caffeine free, I’m ready to babble more (you’d think I was drunk, but it’s true, I can have fun without liquor, hard to believe but true), but we went walking around this evening to see what was going on, and I stumbled over to a local art gallery, because they had four lithographs from Salvador Dali (and I was curious on the price of one of them, since I bought one before Dali died). They wanted a ton for the print, but that was okay with me, I was just learning how to research my signed lithograph. Actually, I asked him about the theory of him signing blank canvasses for money (meaning his signature could be with someone else’s art), and Brett (the art gallery guy) said that from a deal he had with a company that fell through, the company said Dali had to give them money. Dali opted to sign canvasses for his work to later appear on. Now, this kind of print would cost less than one he physically checked over and approved of before signing, but hey, it’s still a Dali signature on a Dali print. So, although I didn’t really care because I like the print so much, it’s nice to know that no matter what, the print I have is actually of Salvador Dali’s art.     But anyway, we were just able to laugh a lot tonight, after seeing the art gallery, we started talking about all of our travels, and China was the one place the art gallery guy hadn’t gone to. I was telling him that the beds, in Shanghai or in Beijing, are hard as you-know-what, but at least food and drink was extremely inexpensive (a three-course meal and a few beers for both John and I totalled about $12.00 for the both of us). It was fun visiting all of the places like Confucius Temple, the Jade Buddha, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and more places — the funny thing about walking along the Great Wall of China was even when about eight Chinese girls wanted to take a picture with both John and I separately (you know, because we were a foot to a foot-and-a-half taller them all of them). In fact, at the Summer Palace an older man walked up to me, asking where I was from, that (what I guessed was) his daughter wanted to know. I told him the United States, in Illinois, Chicago. He recognized Chicago right away and said “My Kind of Town,” and I laughed. He then leaned over again and said, “Frank Sinatra sang that.” And I laughed harder, agreeing with this adorable Chinese stranger.     Before we stopped for tea, we heard a woman at a piano bar we passed playing “A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square,” so I put out my hand and John and I danced right at the piano bar’s opening, since that was our wedding song. Then we stopped for our tea (after he had a tea, he went to Decaffeinated coffee, I stuck with the Pfefferminztss (mint tea), and we laughed our you-know-whats off making jokes about little stupid things going on around us. But we picked up a map for Tallinn before we got home, so we’ve got to research our plans for tomorrow now... Tallinn Estonia 05/26/06, 7:30 PM     The capital of Estonia is a living museum that houses more complete remnants than most European cities. It’s a shame I probably won’t be able to see the insides of the majority of homes we can visit when we’re in Tallinn, but it should be interesting for us to walk over their winding cobblestone streets and storybook medieval houses (and they even put on regular outdoor shows, showcasing Medieval dance and costume). As I read about Tallinn, I also read about a vast, ungodly LasnamŠe apartment district, which captured the essence of the Soviet reign, so it should be interesting to see the juxtapositions in this town.     Since I love photographing buildings, churches and spires, I really look forward to witnessing and photographing the potential jumbled rows of spires, steeples, towers and turrets — and hopefully the different styles will hint at the architectural diversity of the invading cultures of the Danes, German, Poles, Finns and Tsarist Russians. I also read that Tallinn is looking to get away from it’s heavy Russian roots by learning from towns like Helsinki and Stockholm, so I think it should be interesting to see the differences from the cultures when I see Helsinki and Stockholm after we visit Tallinn.     And right now we’re only in the Baltic Sea, but give us a little time. We checked our entry information, and we can’t bring any agricultural products to the country, so we’ll make a point to eat our oranges (you know, to make sure we don’t get scurvy...). 05/26/06, 7:11 PM     I’m exhausted, because we walked around all morning, then came back for lunch, then walked around more all afternoon and had a beer and got back in time for dinner. I saw (other than tons of churches and spires) when shopping in one store Russian glassware, I saw a pair for wine glasses that had a figure of a woman in the stem of the glass — and that totally reminded me of antique glasses I’d find at shops north of my house, but the glasses would be $75 to $95 each, so when I saw this pair of glasses I thought cool... even though there’s etching work on the drinking part of the glass... how much? Well, I think it was maybe 50 Euro each, so I thought, well, the price is comparable to what I see in the States, and I don’t like the work on the drinking part of the glass. So I’ll skip it, but it’s good to know the prices for antique glasses in the States are comparable to finding glasses like this in northern Europe — even Estonia.     I think I even said when we came back from lunch to John, “I have to write my notes,” about what has gone one today, but John thought I said “I have to wring my nuts.” So we cracked jokes about that all day, along with other things, because he was once again walking around with a map, so I kept calling him “The man with the map, the man with the plan...” I even watched CNN during lunchtime and saw their weather reports of assorted countries, and I thought it was just like weather.com, which gives weather reports of different cities through the United States (I mean, they’re relatively comparable sizes, it’s just interesting to compare them that way...).     We eventually went to a bar before we went back for dinner, and laughed more. I drank a Paulaner instead of a Franziskaner (and the Paulaner tasted better than the Franziskaner), and then John had a Saku Tume (a local beer called “Saku) and I reverted to a local “Kiss berrie cider,” which tasted so excellent that I had to had another one (and John had another Saku, with a light beer content, and of course he tried to pay with two different credit card and they wouldn’t clear, so I had to pay with one of my own that was not the same number.     So yes, after drinking, everything was hysterical, even how much pain we were in with sore feet and sore legs, that John would even make jokes like calling Montgomery Ward “Monkey Warts” (like how my sister Lorrie would call Neiman Marcus “Needless Markup”). And you know, it’s funny, I didn’t mention this: every time we walk outdoors at this place, there is a gold-colored bar raised up protecting the inside from the outside (probably to ensure that water won’t leak inside). And every time I have to walk over one of the gold-colored risers in doorways it reminds me of the gold blocks that were placed in doorways at the Forbidden City (right behind Tiananmen Square) in Beijing, China. We were told when there that the height of the bar into a given room signified the stature of the person who occupied that room (so the emperor’s gold block at the doorway to their room would be the largest), Oh, and we were also told that it was very improper and disrespectful to actually step on the risers that are in the doorways, and every once in a while I’d see someone who didn’t know better act like it was a game and stand on the gold doorway riser,     But anyway, now we’re just trying to relax (and we lose an hour when we travel there too, so we have to go to bed early, even though we’re on a tour for a half day and won’t have to walk as much as we did in Estonia) before we go to Russia tomorrow. Just hope my feet won’t hurt by the time we dock to Russia and visit St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg Russia 05/27/06, 10:42 PM (before the one hour time change to Russia’s time)     St. Petersburg has been called the “Venice of the North” because the area is filled created from 42 islands, and I’ve heard that it’s one of the most beautiful cities of the world. I think that its aura of imperialism and graceful stillness will be magnificat to see. Peter the Great founded the town in 1703, as a Baltic seaport, including the flow of the Neva River, which flows into the Gulf of Finland, and its channels. I don’t know if I’ll be fascinated by that or by its magnificent architecture, which I’ll never see in any other part of the world. St. Petersburg was officially proclaimed the “Cultural Capital of Russia,” and I hear it’s one of the most beautiful cities of the world.     I was told that is we wanted to venture into Russia on our own during our time there, we’d have to pay for a VISA (like China), but this VISA cost $100 per person. A bit steep, and when we heard that if we went on scheduled tours from this trip, we wouldn’t have t get a VISA (we couldn’t wander around on our own, but I hear that’s not too safe a thing to do in Russian when you’re a stupid American that knows no language or no culture of this communist country). So we ordered two tours, which costs us less than a VISA would.     Granted, I don’t go to the street Ayn Rand’s family lived at for her youth, but one tour brings me close to where she went to school and the other probably will drive us on the main street right by her apartment. I know, that’s retarded, looking to see where Ayn Rand spent her childhood before we was able to leave Russia, and yes, it’s tacky to act like an idiot fan like that, but hey, if I haven’t done any research into the towns and countries I’m going to, I can act stupid like this (especially when I don’t have a VISA and have no control over whether I could even see it). And I know, I know, I’m retarded.     But I don’t know if people in Russia (from what I heard years ago) still value Levi’s jeans.     Wait, I don’t own any Levi’s anyway. 05/28/06, 8:03 AM (11:02 PM May 27, Chicago time)     Just tried to get some food in my belly before we went on our first tour in St. Petersburg, so we had to share a table with other people traveling (people from Toronto, who drank tea for breakfast with their food). I had yogurt, and the waiter knocked into my spoon in my yogurt, knocking my yogurt over and spilling it all over the table. Then we walked away and got a drink for another table, so I had to ask him for a towel to wipe up the mess he made, and be brought a napkin, saying he’d do it, and the blotted up the yogurt while managing to spread it around 600 percent of the areas it first took. Then he got another napkin to cover the soiled tablecloth, so when John went to get seconds, I asked him to get me another yogurt (since the table at over half of my food). He came back with a different flavor (passionfruit with peach and pineapple), and I read the ingredients and saw there was gelatin in this yogurt too. I could really tell the textural difference (if that waiter spilled this yogurt, it probably won’t have spilled out, or at least not as fast). But I suppose this is another attempt I can make to have gelatin in my system to help my physical ailments (so much for vegetarianism; have to revert to the “survival of the fittest” mentality).     The people at the table mentioned World War II and St. Petersburg during breakfast, so I tried to remember — Hitler’s armies got as far in the cold as St. Petersburg, but I don’t think they were able to take it over (I think Hitler really wanted to take over this major city, but they just didn’t have the resources). We watched this busy port early in the morning, and I tried to imagine what this area must have looked like in World War II times, versus what it looks like now.     Everywhere you look, you hear people talk about what a great city this is, and all I can think of is that this is the land of the godless communists (but then again, are we then just godless capitalists?), well, all I can think is that these buildings of the supremacy of this communist government are the things people like me would fight so hard morally against — this is a land where people are reserved to what they’re told is their lot in life, and this is the land where taking from some of help “the state” is supposed to be a good thing. Certain writers I know fought vehemently against this and did everything in their power throughout their life to fight this mentality, and I’m visiting it to take pictures. Well, let the photographs be a testament to the efforts the rulers of the Soviet Union (I mean, Russia) to show their country’s grandeur. Let it be a record. I’m a journalist. Let is be my record. 05/28/06, 3:29 PM     Although we we out for only part of the day, and although we didn’t walk through everything (because our trip was coupled with bus rides to locations), I’m still tired. I know I didn’t get enough sleep (part of that’s probably due to the time chance — again — losing one hour in travel overnight), and I might be feeling tired because because days are getting longer and longer here the closer to the North Pole we head (I even heard that in St. Petersburg, their longest day of the year is on my birthday, June 22nd, which is a day that actually never sees night), but I know I won’t need to get up for visiting and taking pictures of another country tomorrow, because today is only our first day of two days in St. Petersburg.     But it was interesting being here, the day after St. Petersburg’s 303rd anniversary (yes, May 23 in 1703 was when St. Petersburg was founded). I took a few photos of trains near the dock to start my photography expedition in Russia of a town that was first named after St. Peter, whose name was changed to Petrograd in 1916, then Leningrad in 1924, before it was finally changed back to St. Petersburg in 1991.     But one of the many places we visited on our first day of touring (we had to take tours because we did not get separate VISAs, so we have to go with their tours and be a part of the “group VISA” the boat has) included a slew of fortresses and churches - like the Church of Our Lady of Kazanya (I’m positive that’s not spelled correctly, but I never saw it in writing, only heard it once or twice), which was a yellow building with gold spires whose architect was Carlo Rossi (Italian, but live in Russia, that’s why his name sounds Italian). We saw the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortresses (and they told me that one of those fortresses was never actually ever used as a fortress, it was never needed in that capacity, and one of them at different times were used for things like being storage for fruits and vegetables, and even toward the end of World War II housed corpses from war deaths). And speaking of World War II, a lot of buildings, including places like these churches and fortresses, survived wartime attacks for two reasons: one was that they could not be made taller than a certain building, so a lot of buildings were only one story tall (which made them less obvious targets from airplane attacks), and two is that to conceal themselves, they had wither paint or cloths in camouflage colors, so from a distance it was very difficult to spot buildings for attack. So we toured streets and saw a ton of statues and squares highlighting the arts (like opera of other art galleries), and I was able to document chains along pillars over bridges (to symbolize that they were once draw bridges), and yes, lots of buildings that used columns (good thing I’m a column freak in architecture). I couldn’t photograph everything effectively when some pillars and buildings were across the Neva River and everything was a better distance away. I only have so much equipment to effectively show what i’ve seen to everyone else.     And yes, the Russians knew where tours like ours went to, because Russian lined a lot of the street corners (especially at major points at major squares) to hawk their wares to any of the stupid tourists they could manage money from. John was even thinking of looking for Russian Vodka (through a day or two ago he said he only wanted vodka from Finland when I said he could get potato vodka from Russia), and after I mentioned once in passing that it might be interesting the have a primarily gold small nesting doll for the Christmas tree (I probably have some vague interest in that because I bought nesting dolls for Eugene once, who took Russian and knew his name in Russian was — and I have no clue how to spell this, so I’m just writing this phonetically so you’ll know how to say his name in Russian — Yeve-gay- nee), but since I mentioned that John was searching for possible gold nesting dolls for me, even though it really doesn’t quite match the style of a Christmas tree of ours. And looking at that scene, of people trying to get our money, makes me wonder the political leniency of a country that allows its people to do this — are the forced to give half of whatever they sell to their government? This isn’t anything close to a capitalistic society, how does selling like this actually work in Russia? And when I saw this and would walk down a thin street lined with these portable street booths on each side, Russians would say a generic English phrase to try to get my attention, the way people would try to do in the street with either booklets or postcards of Russian military hats, and it made me think of how we would walk down certain Shanghai streets in China, the Chinese learn a select few English phrases to try to lure English-speaking people with money to their booth to purchase their products. I have no idea how bargaining for anything works in Russia, though (I didn’t look to buy anything while there), but I learned from my Friend Jim living in Shanghai that you could look at the price of however many quai they wanted for their product, and you should first ask for half of that amount, so you can then both try to bargain your way to the price you are willing to pay. But I was walking outside down the street in Russia passing all of these books while Russians tried to lure me into their booth to look at their crap, and one person even used the generic phrase of getting “something for your children.” Funny. They apparently don’t know my stance of kids. It mentally made me laugh. seeing the generic and improper ways the Russians would use phrases that don’t work to try to get money from you for whatever they’re trying to sell.     But I probably went through about 240 images in this first day of touring, when we heard from our tour guide that the average family lives in an apartment (not a house, don’t be silly) in apartments of one or two bedrooms, that only have one extra room for a living room (she never mentioned room for a dining room, for example). The rent for these apartments was only on average about $100, but the average factory worker (or mechanical employee) only made about $300 a month, which is why there are no housewives, because women need to work full time along with men so they can afford living (because a third of one person’s income went to rent, and the other two thirds can go to other utilities, like telephone or water or heating), so they needed money for food — especially if they had any children, The tour guide also them told us that (get this) the average social worker, like a teacher, or doctor, made on average only $200 a month (hmm, less then someone who works in a factory), and we look for reasons why Russia’s healthcare might not be in tip-top shape).     I even talked to the tour guide, because I like to photograph stop signs from around the world, since everyone understands the notion of a red hexagon with a white border as a stop sign even if they don’t know the language. Well, I told her that I didn’t see any red octagon signs, so I wondered if the red circular sign with the white horizontal line was Russia’s stop sign. She said no, that was a “do not enter” sign, and the blue and white x on a red circular sign was for a no-parking area. She then explained to me that (other than stop lights) there are no stop signs in Russia — that and you can park anywhere, unless there’s a sign saying not to park on a certain street at a certain time. Fascinating. Well, I guess I should have guessed they didn’t have stop signs when I never saw any red octagon signs with a white border...     John’s been sleeping all this time, after we got back from our late lunch (which was middle-eastern food, a nice change of pace for me to eat wrapped grape leaf appetizers with hummus and cous cous, with the eventual meal of some vegetarian mix wrapped inside of eggplant slices). Maybe I should take a break from reporting my news... 7:53 PM     Just got back from dinner, while we looked out at the shoreline at St. Petersburg. I told John about how I wrote about buildings not being able to be built tall, and that is what protected them from many air attacks during World War II, then I asked him about all of the blue and yellow cranes along the shoreline. John mentioned they were for bringing goods in from boat shipments coming into St. Petersburg, and I noted to him that the cranes, while not even in use, were taller than any of the buildings in the skyline. We sat there, in a bit of wonderment, considering how many ships with freight come in and out of the ports at St Petersburg, considering the heights of the cranes and a the buildings alone the skyline, and considering the success of this communist city, connecting communism to the rest of Europe. 11:53 PM     Needed to let you know that the days last a long time right now, and when we walked outside at 10:20 this evening, it was still really light out (the sun was shining slowly, the birds were flying so low...) so when we walked outside and saw that next to no one else was there, I said we should get our suits on and go into the hot tub (since nobody else was there, and you know, since it was almost 10:30 and still so light out, the weather seemed nicer than it did at 10:20 this morning...), so we went back to our room, got swim suits on, went to the cafeteria to get ourselves hot chocolates, and even brought a change of clothes for after the hot tub and the camera in case we wanted photos of ourselves there. So we sat in the hot tub until 11:00 this evening, saying that we were reveling in the decadence of capitalism by being in a hot tub at 11o’clock at night at the dock at communist St. Petersburg in Russia. We even took a photo of our toes sticking out of the hot tub, with the boat tail and table umbrellas and the evening pre-dusk sky in the background to mark our event. We tried to dry off and change in the shower stall outside, but it was a small stall and there was no front door, so each of us had to hold a towel over the open part of the mock shower stall while the other one finished drying off and dressing. And each one of us accidentally bumped into the shower faucet while trying to dry off and change, turning the shower stall on and getting us wet. But all in all, it was a good way to remember my first night in Russia. 05/29/06, 9:59 AM     Wandered around outside for a while at dock before we go into St. Petersburg again today. Photographed some cranes moving and dumping large boxes of salt into a ship/barge, and photographed other freight ships and boats sailing near port. I’m tired, but although the weather said the high today (or maybe the current temperature, I don’t know) was maybe 52û, but when we walked around outside it was warm (the wind was not strong or cold either), so we took our coats off and tried to enjoy the outside weather. I was stunned because I think the people on this boat own every single CD by Harry Connick Jr, because I’ve been hearing a lot of Harry lately, but then they’ll put some of the song on (sometimes something Enya-esque), and it make all of the surroundings very surreal (I feel like Julie Cruise from Twin Peaks should come out and start singing a slow tacky song, I swear).     So when I’m not traveling from city to city through northern Europe and Russia, I’m listening to Julie Cruise-esque music and feeling like other people here have to be on an acid trip to be enjoying this whole relaxation experience... 11:55 AM     While waiting for our afternoon trip through St. Petersburg, we managed to talk to the captain of this vessel, and we asked him about the chances for seeing the aurora borealis during this trip. He said that it’s hard to see because (a) we’re not north enough, and (b) there are a lot of city lights. I know it’s the wrong time of year to see the borealis, and we talked about seeing it an Fairbanks Alaska, then we talked about Chicago. We then talked a bit able how we usually just take off at docks and don’t follow tours, that we just take our own route, and take lots of pictures, so we can see what the cities and counties are like without hearing a tour guide explaining generalities and hand-holding us. Mr. Nenad Mogic (the captain) recommended Helsinki for having the best chances at seeing the borealis, although after the number of times he’s taken this route he’s only seen the borealis twice. So I don’t know if we’ll see the northern lights (well, I’ve seen it a lot in Alaska when we saw it every night at one in the morning, and even did our own impromptu recorded concert at a bar in Fairbanks), so I’ll settle for the sights in the towns we visit, and the sunlight until midnight every night. 7:16 PM     What a day. On our last day of touring, I hear realize how our Russian-speaking tour guides say the darndest things, so to speak, like how yesterday the tour guide kept saying, “If you have any questions, ask me your welcome,” which I thought was kind of funny, and today I heard the tour guide say a word that totally blew our minds. She mentioned that in Russia it’s usually cloudy out, and today it’s sunny. Then she said “the weather’s capricious,” and I looked over to John and our eyes popped out of our heads, because it’s impressive for someone to use “capricious,” a relatively rare three-syllable word, when English isn’t even their first language.     The tour guide also said that another nickname for St. Petersburg was “the window into Europe,” I don’t know, maybe because it’s a seaport, maybe because in its history it tried to get good architects and designers from Europe to design their major buildings, I don’t know. But beyond that little tidbit from our tour guide, there wasn’t anything new or interesting or different from the smaller tour we had from the day before. This tour was supposed to be of major points about the city, and they took us to the same fortresses and churches as the fortress tour did the previous day (I love paying twice for the same information, but then again, maybe there is nothing of interest in the entire town of St. Petersburg other than their hokey little history religion traps). And what made it worse, compared to the tour we paid for yesterday, was that in yesterday’s tour we were on time for everything, and we were able to do a little more in our tour. Today, in their tour which is supposed to cover more material, the tour guide was late for everything, she’d say we’ll take a break for 10 minutes and 25 minutes later we’d get moving (meaning we could see less), and on one stopping point, she told people to go to the washroom there if they needed to, and all of the old (and retarded) people said after taking too long for their souvenir shopping that the lines for the washrooms were too long so they didn’t go, and they still need to go to the bathroom. So the tour guide told them there was no line now, so she’d wait for them, and then 8 incompetent, incontinent people (some using a crutch, ah the beauty of old age) sauntered their way to the same store to go to the bathroom. One person finally came back and said, well, a line’s there now, so it took me time (and all I could think was that this place had two bathrooms and half of the god-damned bus went to use them so no shit there’s a line now... maybe if you idiots weren’t so slow we wouldn’t be do damn late now). So I then counted until at least eight more people strolled (or hobbled) their way back to the bus, and the tour guide went on with the tour of all of the things I had seen and photographed already.     And as dorky as this sounds, the best I can say for seeing where Ayn Rand spent the first years of her life is that I was three blocks from where she lived, and 2 blocks from where she went to school. But while we were in Russia, John bought some expensive Russian Vodka, and I bought an expensive mock lute (I don’t know what it’s real full name is, it’s a small triangular stringed instrument, reminding me of a guitar, and since John plays the guitar so well, I had to get him one, that’s our souvenir from the Soviet Union, I mean, Russia). We’re back now, and we’re heading to Finland (you know, since we’re in the Gulf of Finland now, it makes sense to stop there). We’ll be in Helsinki for the day, and although I probably took two hundred photos of buildings and statues and columns in St. Petersburg, I’m sure we’ll enjoy the sights of this new country. 9:31 PM (Sushi & Sashimi in the Gulf of Finland)     So as we’re sailing through the Gulf of Finland, we step outside and I photograph lighthouses and former Soviet naval bases along the water. We got cold when I finished shooting pictures, so we went to the Sports Bar (which is actually really well lit and doesn’t have much of a feel of a sports bar at all) to get some green tea, and lo and behold, they apparently have an Asian night, with a free food display of sushi and sashimi. Now, you have no idea how much I love vegetarian sushi, so I asked the chef behind the counter if he had and vegetarian sushi, and he grabbed a bowl for me and placed like 12 pieces of sushi into the bowl for me. I was still stunned, so I asked if he had any wasabi or soy sauce, and he pointed to the side of the counter, where there were a few heaping masses if wasabi and a few bottles of soy sauce I could freely take from.     I was still stunned. And John (I think) was getting dessert at the sports bar, and when he saw me sitting at a table right in front of a sushi counter, he came over and got sashimi for himself. We sat there in high heaven for I don’t know how long, and I even was talking to the check (who is from the Phillipines, by the way). We talked of travel, then he asked me if I knew the story behind wasabi. He said something like this to me, he said “You know, wasabi is hot, right?” “Yes...” “But it’s not hot like chili peppers.” “No, it’s not,” I said. Then I think the gist of what he explained was that with raw fish, like the tuna here (like John was eating), there’s something in the wasabi that either works really well with the raw fish, or have something in it that counteracts something potentially harmful in the raw fish. Either way, I was still just fascinated, and I loved being able to eat vegetarian sushi like this for free (what I ate would have cost me $7.00 in my grocery store, and more in a US restaurant, so this was such a treat for me mentally).     John said to me as we were finishing our food that this probably makes up for anything that bothered me earlier in the day. And he was right.     Then the chef was packing up his belongings to close the free sushi/sashimi buffet, and I asked him if they were just going to throw that food away. He then grabbed a tray half filled with vegetarian sushi and handed it to me, then he handed me two long rolls of daikon sushi. He told me to take some wasabi and get soy sauce later — he said it would last if it wasn’t refrigerated for two days. So I’ve even got another meal tomorrow of this excellent food.     Didn’t know sushi could make my world a better place, but there you go. What an improvement such a simple thing (and such a small surprise) can make on life. Helsinki Finland     Helsinki is city of the sea, built along a series of peninsulas and islands jutting along the Gulf of Finland. I’m really looking forward to seeing the combination of neoclassical schemes of the early 1800’s near the modernist Finnish styles of the mid 20th century; a part of me thinks it will look like a sprawling masterpiece at the water, with sea-bordered parks, boulevards and walkways along the water.     I’ve heard that Helsinki is called the “Daughter of the Baltic” and that it tries to be mechanized and advanced, it still (like it’s combination of old and new architecture) has a small town feel. Neoclassical architecture is mixed with manor homes, and I look forward to seeing it.     The long days of summer, where sunlight lasts past midnight (it’s really crazy going outside at eleven at night and seeing that it’s dusk near this country... should be fascinating when I’m in the country...), are where people can be on beaches, hiking trails and bike paths.     Influenced by the Russian Empire (and we’ve just left St. Petersburg, so the differences should be interesting to see), Finland has a nationalism spurned by Helsinki. •••     Oh yeah, in a guidebook we got that listed useful phrases in Finnish, there was the word for “good day,” and no lie, it was HyvŠŠpŠ•vŠŠ — I mean, how does anyone who doesn’t know the language know how to say that on first glance? 05/30/06, 10:47 AM          We decided to not pay for a tour but to walk all over town on our own — to nat pay to site on a bus to see the sites they decide for you while you take pictures from (usually) inside of a bus. We decided to hoof it, although it would probably be over ten miles of walking during the day (it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is when you’re changing directions and trying to get your bearings from a map and sidetracking to do things that aren’t on the map for things to do). So at one of the places, where we’ve just stopped at now, is a church that was carved out of rock — out of the side of this large rock structure, a church was built. Now, it’s not like it’s a funky rock-shaped building or anything, there’s a perfectly good wall and floor (and a glass front) placed into a hole that was carved out of the rock. But it’s a tourist trap of a church, so see it was did (or see it we saw, or whatever). But at first we decided to walk over some of the rocks and get around it (where at one point I even saw a “don’t climb the rock wall” sign that was along the part what literally had a wall of small rocks along the side), and there was moss and grass between some of the flat granite pieces of rock we were walking along. And at one point I must have stepped on wet grass, then rock — because at one point my foot slipped and I almost wiped out. I regained my stance with my camera in my had, but it reminded me of when I was visiting David in the middle of nowhere in Canada (I don’t know where it was\, somewhere north and between Toronto and Montreal), and we canoed to a place where I could walk over rocks between two points in the lake to take pictures. Well, I walked, and I stepped on a wet rock, and slipped and completely fell. I could only imagine seeing me with my hand in the air (keeping the camera dry) while my ankle went and I fell into the water... After I feel at that lake in Canada, we got back to a cabin, and I kept saying “euf” to groan in pain whenever I applied pressure to my ankle. Dave then told me that “euf” was “egg” in French, so I tried to go around saying “egg” whenever I was in pain. It was even funnier when I drove back toward Windsor (then Detroit) before going back to Chicago, and I got an egg McMuffin at McDonald’s, and the label said “Euf McMuffin.” I actually even framed the portion of that wrapper, and “Euf McMuffin” is even framed in my Kitchen right now. 12:57 PM     We photographed most everything (and walked most everywhere). I think the insanely high arches of my feet might have something to do with my quick foot pain, but there also aren’t many good vegetarian shoes made, so my shoes probably aren’t the best things for my feet. So because my feet were killing me, and because we were still far enough away from our port, we stopped at a place called “Cantina West” (not because we wanted American South Western crap, but because it was the first thing we saw). The menu was even in English as well as Finnish, and the people working there tried to know some English as well (which is probably a good thing, since we made no attempt to learn any Finnish for this trip). I got a FIZZ Original Berry Flavor Cider, and John got a beer called “Olvi.” We bought a 7 Euro salad (I know it’s a lot of money, but I think John thought we’d need some food in our systems to help us nutritionally for the rest of our walk, and the salad was with avocados, really good grilled tofu and even pineapple, so it had a lot of good stuff in it for a large salad), and we deduced that we drank liquor at every port so far (granted, we didn’t go to a bar in St. Petersburg, but before John bought Russian Vodka from a store we both sampled Russian Liquors, and we drank beers at bars in every other country). And my feet were really aching, but having a chance to sit down and unwind with a beer was once again nice.     Now, I don’t drink every day, and I don’t sit around thinking that I need a drink to make my day better, but I think that I’m the most relaxed when I’m at a bar with a beer in my hand (you can say I feel good because I’m drunk, but I feel this way before I even drink what I’ve ordered, I just like the atmosphere you get when you’re someplace where you can feel comfortable with a beer in your hand). Then I wondered if I’m spiritually an alcoholic, if I just like the idea of being around liquor that makes everything better, I don’t know. I mean, I remember when we went to Oahu (visiting Cindy and Dave on base in Hawaii), we found out that there was a weekly hike/walk set up by different people each week over a new marked terrain, and they would leave chalk markings for directions for points to hit on your walk — well, we were there for one of these hikes (they set up a turkey walk and an eagle walk, with one being very physically difficult, but both of these walks are set up with a hope to make it to the end of the walks first), and Dave walked with a 24-pack or two of beer on his back in a backpack, and we were supposed to drink while walking (we walked so fast that I didn’t have time to drink, and the can of beer quickly went flat from the fast walking). They even had stations you’d pass during your walk where you could stop to get a beer. And yes, at the end everyone met together and drank in celebration together. And NO, this was not an alcoholic-get-together, it was primarily a bunch of Marines working out in a hike and celebrating with beer. Drinking was just one of the elements in having a good time together in public with people.     But seriously, when you compare this day to the last day of touring Russia, I can tell you that my feet are killing me, but I saved money on bus tours and saw everything people who paid for tours saw. That and I was able to enjoy three berry flavored cider beers in the afternoon before my return. That, and I can tell you unequivocally that sitting in a bar with feet in excruciating pain with beer is a better way to spend a tour in a city than in a bus waiting for old people to pee. 5:23 PM     Have been back a while, and my feet are still killing me. And we were thinking of going into the hot tub at dock, you know, because our legs and feet are all in so much pain. So we walked over there, and of course there were a bunch of old fat people taking over the hot tub.     John says he hopes they weren’t peeing. 7:08 PM     Went to a restaurant for dinner tonight because they listed that they were serving Indian food. We went there to check it out, and we saw not only that they had no bread for dipping with any of the prepared items (like almost every Indian restaurant would have), and every single one of their mix dishes (every type of food item they presented) had meat in it. The last I checked, Indian food can have chicken or fish in some recipes, but some options are vegetarian — and the food does not have cow or pork in it. We left, disgusted with the restaurant’s heresy. Stockholm Sweden 05/31/06 6:28 AM (11:28 PM 05/30/06 in Chicago)     We’ve slept a lot, but a neighbor’s alarm clock at 6:00 this morning still woke up John. We should go to breakfast before we (sore feet and all) tour Stockholm.     I asked John is the small amounts of gelatin I’m consuming can make a difference in removing arthritis pain (because my fingers are sore along with my feet, but the pain in my fingers is pretty common by now), and he said no, there probably isn’t enough gelatin in the yogurt I’m eating to make a difference. So then I asked him about sugar-free Jello, and he said that probably two servings of that would help. Meaning that my attempts to consume something animal-related do nothing for me. Well, i’ll keep researching this, go to breakfast, and try to see if we can find a map of Stockholm before we go walking an inordinate amount of time today. 7:28 AM     We went to breakfast and they asked if we wanted to share a table with other people, and I said, “Not particularly,” and I think the person working at the restaurant didn’t have a great understanding of the English language, because they immediately sent us to a table with two other people. Well, maybe they don’t know that I don’t like people (okay, I just don’t like to get chit-chatty with strangers) in the morning, so we went to the table and a man was there (the woman must have been at the washroom or something). The woman came back, and while standing (with our table right next to the waiter’s table, with water pitchers on it) said, “Still no water? Then here,” and she just grabbed a water pitcher from the waiter’s table next to our table and started pouring herself water. That’s when a bus boy came rushing over to get the pitcher back, and pour the rest of us water from our empty glasses. When the bus buy left, she said that she had been waiting for water for seven minutes, so it was time to get the water herself, which was pretty funny. 11:52 AM     The weather was overcast, raining at the beginning of the day, and I didn’t have a rain coat or an umbrella with us. That and I’m really starting to get depressed, I mean, I like being a photographer and I like photo journalism and I like travel, but I’m really starting to get tired of walking a lot (especially after the insanely long walks through Finland yesterday), so we decided to walk back to our place and get the rain cost and umbrella, and John decided to get the camera bag too. Of course this meant that we walked the beginning of our trip twice (since we decided to go back and get more equipment). And of course, as we started to walk back, the rain stopped, so it just remained cold and overcast for a good part of the day.     Once we got back onto the road in Stockholm Sweden, we saw from maps that everything we wanted to photograph was in one small district close to where we were staying, which meant our feet and legs could take a little break today (though not much, we were still walking). I also tried to look in a few stores, you know, to check out any cool designs in glassware or anything, but there was nothing I felt a dying need to own. The streets were cool to walk through, and in some of the churches there was no separation between them and other buildings, so photographing them was an interesting challenge. And on the main street were on, people were walking everywhere, and at one point there was actually a car on the street — it was a single, small car, and the street was not much wider than the one car, and people still just walked through the street, so the car had to manage around all of the people. It’s retarded of me to say, but it kind of reminded me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans on a weekend at about four in the afternoon, when there are people everywhere and they haven’t closed off the street to cars yet (and someone is stupid enough to be driving down the street and trying to combat all of the people against them in the street).     And of course, since we have to stop at a bar in every country, we went to a bar called “Glenfiddich Warehouse No 68” (no lie, that was it’s name), because it was an extensive whisky bar, with 150 different kinds of whisky available (whisky, whiskey, I don’t know which is correct since both are used, but it was referred to as whisky on their acknowledgment certificate). Went to the bathroom while there, (went to the WC while there, technically), and down the stairs the door opened up showing three more doors. One had a doe’s head painted on the door, the other two had deer heads with antlers. I assumed the doe was for women (only one bathroom for women, that makes sense), and I went in. No mirror, but no matter. I was just enjoying a drink in a foreign country. I said when I was going to the WC that I wanted a Hoegaarten (a weisse beer, not my first choice, but all I saw for weisse beers). when I came back, John had a sample beer sitting there for me, of a Swedish weisse beer. I had to accept that beer, because (1) John actually thought to look for a different weisse beer for me, and (2) it seemed smarter if I had a beer from the country I was drinking in. So my choice was made. There I got a few rounds of a 5.5% alcohol Swedish Weisse beer called “Vetešl,”and John, after getting a Swedish lager for the first round, got a “GODLAGER” in the second round (which was a sweet stout, and he just liked the idea of having “god” in the beer name). For the last round John decided that he had to buy a $20 shot of a Glenfiddich whisky that apparently was really good, form the cask still (yes, there were even bits of the cask in the bottom of the glass). Since I’m the one who makes final decisions with money, he bargained for this whisky drink by saying that he’s massage my feet and legs and back. I accepted his offer. I also tried an extremely small amount of this particular whisky; I smelled it for a very long time, and it had a great bouquet (or aroma, of whatever you call it). Then I put a microscopic amount if the liquid on my tongue, and... it burned. And actually, I found no redeeming qualities about the whisky at all (besides it’s smell).     Every once in a while I’d see American things in storefronts for sale, like Disney Crap, or Hanna-Barbera crap, or occasionally something from Betty Boop or something. Like I don’t see enough of that crap at home. But while at the bar we heard three people to our left talk about Chicago, so we asked, and two of them live in Blue Island and run a bar there. The third person was Patti, a cruise director, so it was cool to talk to her about her travels to countries like this. It was also funny to see that one of them had a Chicago Bears football logo on their shirt, another person had a Chicago Cubs baseball type emblazoned across their shirt (always nice to advertise that you not a local when traveling). Copenhagen Denmark     The largest city in Scandinavia, Copenhagen (spelled in Danish K¿benhavn, or known as “merchant’s harbor” or “Paris of the North”, is known for cafŽ culture and thrilling nightlife. I even heard a story of my dad taking a stop in a trip once to Copenhagen, and they had to wash their clothes in the hotel they stayed in, and they had to hang their clothes outside to dry before they could get home. And although the largest city (with a population of 1.5 million), has a low-rise skyline, void of intrusive skyscrapers. It should be interesting to try to get the chance to try to check out this sprawling city scattered with parks, gardens and squares, brimming with churches, monasteries, castles, manor homes, monuments and statues—many of which are concentrated in a relatively small area (which should help my feet of when I have to find everything to photography it). I’ve been told that heavy traffic and pollution are noticeably absent, and seemingly high tourists rates seen in other Scandinavian cities do not make their way south as far as Denmark. 5:15 PM     Oh, I forgot to tell you, John got his teeth whitened today (because he needs to worry about that with the job he’ll be starting in a month). Lucky for me, this means he shouldn’t have coffee like it belongs in his bloodstream. 06/01/06, 6:57 PM     Once I look around in all of these northern European countries (and Russia), I don’t see stop signs anywhere. It’s strange, we’re so used to seeing the stop sign in traffic everywhere we go, and in these countries with traffic lights they have a red light for stop, but they don’t use the usual red octagon with a white border in traffic. Half of these countries don’t even have parking rules (you can park anywhere, there are no meters, just don’t park where there’s a sign telling you not to). It’s strange, seeing these differences in rules...     It’s sunny, but raining. Although it’s warmer, our umbrella isn’t with us. John actually left went now for our bumbershoot while I stay under this awning to wait for him. And it’s strange to see a sunny say and hear the rain falling — I mean, I know it happens, rainbows blah blah blah, but it’s still strange to see. And actually, I don’t see sharp shadows, the sun may not be directly in the sky shining overhead (for a really long day, since we’re so far north), but the sky is blue, the sun must be behind a patch of clouds in the shy. But it is sunny, and it is raining. I know I’ve seen that before, but it still is strange to witness. 8:58 PM     Yes, we’ve walled extensively (you know, this walking thing really isn’t fair), and the sun is setting behind the low buildings though it is still light out. We knew it was time to stop for a seat, which also meant that we should look for a bar which had a local beer. Well, as for the beer here, the only ones we saw a lot of were Carlsburg (which I’ve seen like mad in the States) and Tuborg (which I’ve seen like mad in the States), so I felt really let down. We walked into a place that had Franziskaner, and John asked about the beer named after the bar (Nahaven #17), and the female bartender (who had spouts on all of the liquor bottle to measure out the amount of liquor all drinks will precisely get) said the beer was a very dark beer. I thought John would like that, but he declined that offer and went with the Tuborg Classic. We only stayed for one beer, listening to the acoustic guitarist playing (and singing) playing, and the guitarist’s amp/stereo volume was light, so he didn’t interfere with the talking in the bar (which was primarily in English), and it reminded me a little a little of the fact that at the Chicago bar we love to go to, LaSchett’s, usually plays (when it’s not a weekend night and it isn’t packed) German music (which this acoustic guitarist wasn’t playing, the style of music isn’t important in here), and it is played softly enough to not interfere with anything happening in the bar. It is just good background noise that is not chaotic (I say noise, because at LaSchett’s you don’t hear it as music, but you know it is music), that is not tense (like a lot of bars that have active and loud music that competes with any conversation), and lets you just relax. 06/02/06, 6:21 AM     My feet are so sore right now that I’m looking forward to not walking any longer. 8:21 AM     Sorry, I like Copenhagen, and this morning is much clearer, so it is good to go out and take more pictures. I know, I’m a journalist at heart, and that’s my main intention here, and I will take more photos — in fact, we were at a fortress right around 8:00 this morning, and I was photographing the church that was ringing the 8:00 chime, and John told me to quickly make an mpeg of this sound, in case I’d want the bell sounds. So I recorded the chimes for one minute, though I don’t currently have a way to convert mpeg video to any audio. Maybe I’ll get the equipment later if I need that sound for anything, but I’ll worry about that if I’ll need that for probably my last performance art show ever (at least my only full performance art show in 2006). 10:04 AM     There are tons of bicyclists everywhere, bike lanes used like mad, and no one is fat here (not that I’ve seen; I’d only guess the fatter people are the tourists). And even on the way back to our place for returning to England, I saw a bicycle stand with rounded covers over where the seats of parked bicycles go (apparently so the bicycle seats won’t get hot in the sun or wet in the rain for people to use when the ride their bicycle again). wonderful to see the need & use of bicycles here. Sailing 06/03/06 8:39 AM (Sailing past the Netherlands, Holland and Belgium)     You know, I’m sitting here starting to write, and what’s on the television is EuroNews, and they have a section called “No Comment,” which is just like a 5 minute clip of what cameramen record while doing video journalism work. There’s no commentary from any reporters during this time, and there’s just a random set of (on average) 10 second clips of records from different news scenes from different parts of the world. It’s actually fascinating, because we don’t know what country each of these clips are specifically from, and there’s just something chaotic and beautiful about the juxtaposition of different filmed news scenes. I wish there was something like this in the States (maybe if I had the most expensive possible form of satellite or cable service, maybe then I could find this show to record), because this would be phenomenal background footage in a performance art show (you know, just to have this strange combination of things that don’t fit together to keep an audience on the edge of their seats...).     But now we’re heading back toward England now, and I thought about these journals this morning, that I’ve written whenever I’ve traveled to many different countries at once (the 2003 journals are from train travel through Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland, and the 2006 travels are from boat travel through England, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark). In writing these journals now, I think of the differences between traveling by train versus traveling by boat, and I have to say that as a rule I might preferred traveling by boat, only because I liked having the freedom to decide when I was going to go somewhere, and then I would choose exactly how and where. Getting to a train station or getting to a port is the same notion when traveling from country to country, but a train station is probably closer to where I want to go than a port for boat travel. And more importantly, with a boat, travel speeds seem to be much slower than by train (by boat, going from one small country to another took the night, whereas it took part of the afternoon or the morning for the train trip). The only reason I can be pleased that I took this boat trip is that I would not have had access to hotels effectively for a northern European trip like this one, and I would have had to purchase additional VISAs for visiting Russia. Also, there is no EuroRail in these countries (let’s be serious, there’s no EuroRail in Russia, and some of the counties I’ve visited are still trying to get a good enough economy to be a part of the European Union and be able to use the Euro for currency), so there’s no easy transport between these countries except for by boat. I think I would have felt much more apprehensive (or I wouldn’t have done it at all, which is more likely) if I didn’t have a boat that could easily take me to these places. And yes, I’ve traveled throughout the continental United States, and wrote about states in the book “Changing Gears,” where I talk about everything from speeding through Montana to sitting in hot tubs in Las Vegas or Denver or sunning in Southwest Florida or partying in Tennessee or Indiana.     But I do feel bad that I’ve been able to travel to other singular locations, and I’ve never written about it. Some of the travels here reminded me of travel in Canada, Hawaii, or even China, but I think of going to Puerto Rico (which is probably smaller than the state of Illinois, and was, if nothing else, wonderful for going to tropical rain forests like el Yunque — because I like bamboo as much as I like columns — and it was also really cool to go to Arecibo Observatory, the world’s largest radio telescope for astronomy). And although one of my trips was still in the United States, it was great going to Alaska... Although it was cold (the windows in our hotel room were a foot in from the walls, there was that much insulation needed to keep out the cold) near the Autumnal Equinox, we went then because the aurora borealis was strongest then, which was great to see. That, and while we were there we found an open mike, played a set of 8 songs, and even got a deal with the recording engineer (Craig Smith was his name, who was able to record the shows for us) to play our own full show on the Friday night before we left Alaska (I think we did 18 songs, and John even did an instrumental set of maybe 7 or 8 songs too).     So in other words, I’ve only been able to scratch the surface with our travel history and what I’ve seen while going around the world. I love being the photojournalist and photographing the buildings everywhere (I’ll photograph special buildings like high rises and churches, and I’ll also photograph streets and average homes, so people can get a better picture of what the town is like), and I love learning about the understanding of English around the world (every country I’ve been in knows enough English for us to function on a small scale). I thought about it: over history, Britain owned colonies around the world and was the world’s supergiant, and after America’s rise, America has taken over as the world power, so everyone tries to learn English to gain more economic status in the world. London 06/04/06     Disembarkation was over an hour late, but that’s no bid deal, I’m waiting 5 hours at Heathrow anyway. The bus from Dover to London had seat belts, which I thought was nice (it’s the first time I ever saw that), and at around 11AM I noticed that lights going from red to green in traffic (like walking lights in northern Europe)go yellow for a second before they turn green, so people can by better prepared for the green light coming (another cool thing). Even though London’s the only place on this trip I saw a Starbuck’s (a bad point), at least London had cool traffic lights.     I didn’t feel angry waiting in lines at Heathrow by 11:15 AM, but then I had to wait 3 hours to find out which gate my flight was leaving from. They couldn’t list my gate until less than an hour before it departed. So we stopped in the airport bar “Parallel 54” (because I have to have a beer in every country I’ve traveled in this trip)., so I got a Smirnoff (because as a rule I don’t like UK beer) and John got a Carling pint. I buckled under the pressure (for drinking English beer, and for drinking something that was larger and cost less than my bottle) and dealt with Carling for round two. They even had fresh mozzarella sandwiches there, so I felt that great sense of relief I usually feel when I’m at a bar. The sign in chalk at the counter even said “Fancy a Pint?” and I thought, well, okay in this spacious bar (couldn’t believe there was actually room there...). Final Thoughts 06/20/06     I’ve been back a short while and still haven’t been able to go through all of the photo’s I’ve taken. Because of personal family problems, I’ve been a bit back-tracked. But I can say confidently that it’s a blessing that we have been able to travel over the course of our lives to not only every one of the United States and Canada and Mexico (and even the Bahamas and Puerto Rico), but also to thirteen European Countries (fourteen if you want to include the Vatican City, since it is a country, even though its only a portion of Rome), and Russia and China. And most every time I travel like this to places I never imagined I’d visit (who thought when they were little that they’d go to Russia or China?), I slip into photo journalism mode, photographing the buildings and streets to record what life was like in every town. Granted, when we go to countries we now seem to also take a break for local beers (seems like a good idea, and why not? We’ll never get the chance to try these things anyway, and as a vegetarian I don’t usually sample the food from other cultures...), but this also gives us a feeling of what just relaxing in each of these countries is also like. In this most recent trip, we decided to not take tours (unless we had to, like in Russia when we didn’t have personal VISAs), and we found that the tour bus would stop at the places we walked to, and they were behind our walking schedule. Fair trade for us, don’t spend money on tours, and enjoy a beer to get a feeling of the town we’re visiting.     People were extremely nice to us in every country we visited (Estonia was the only one that did not know English, so we managed just fine), and even though these trips were painfully short, every encounter was a valuable one. Exploring new lands (civilized or not, like tropical rain forests or thriving cities) has been enriching, fascinating, and something surely anyone should do if that have any interest in seeing the world. Copyright © 2006 Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.