Part One, The Other Side

On The Way

April 11, 2003

12:12 PM

    Five years ago I quit my job to travel around the United States and then go to Europe. A near-fatal accident stopped me from leaving for Europe, but I wonder if a part of me was afraid to leave these coasts and travel by foot without a car to places where I would not know the culture or the language. I think this is why I made the point to visit Canada and Mexico as well as frequent every single state in the United States before making the move to visit another continent.

    I still feel that fear, even when I have the strong and intelligent John with me. He says he knows some German, so we should be fine in Austria and Germany. I have to look up phrases on other languages so we can show that we’re TRYING to be respectful, if others are willing to help.

05-09-03

2:59 PM CST

    Hi. I’m sitting at O’Hare Airport and we just went through customs and I was held back because there was metal either in my shoes or my in my watch. Either way, I’m out, and we didn’t have to go through the second checkpoint, because we already have seats, and so we had a beer at a Chili’s place (a place genericized even MORE than the original stupid chain), we each were drinking Killian’s, and then we looked at the clock and we thought we had to get on the plane on twenty minutes, so we chugged out beers and paid our tab and booked to the (well, we booked, then stopped that the bathrooms, THEN booked) to our gate. That’s when we noticed the plane was delayed 40 to 45 minutes.

    So here I write.

    You know, I didn’t feel anything about this trip before I left, I didn’t put any thought into leaving the continent, I mean Hell, I had been to every state, Even the ones that aren’t continental, but I’m always worrying now... About life, of our jobs and the future, or our home, or moving, or my future work as a singer or as a performance artist, so my mind has been other places, and I can never get my mind out the rut it’s in now, but once I got here, that’s when it hit me. I was going through customs, and I needed my passport - for the first time in my life. I have had this God-Damned passport for eight years and this is the first time I have really needed it.

    I remember after getting out of the hospital, when everyone moved me out of my home because I lost my home just after I almost lost my life, and I wanted to know where my passport was. THIS WAS IMPORTANT TO ME, I know I could get another one, but I wanted THIS ONE, I wanted to have something of my life back, I wanted to have this little pamphlet that meant I was an American and I could go wherever the Hell I wanted.

    I wanted that back.

    But either way, I’m sitting here Indian style near one of the only outlets in this terminal so I could write, and I wanted to say that this was when it hit me. I’m leaving everything I’ve ever known here. I’m leaving my language, I’m leaving my culture.

    I’ll be back. But right now, I’m leaving.

Austria

Introduction

    Getting this choice for our first week of stay, I got nervous. “Austria? What’s there?” If I wanted to walk on tops of mountains where The Sound of Music was filmed, I’d be thrilled, but alas, there had to be something else... We had to do a little searching, and John found out that Mozart was born in Salzburg, where we are flying to. There are parks and museums for Mozart, and I haven’t mentioned that of any classical music Mozart is by far my favorite and that I have copies of Mozart’s The Dissonant on compact disc in different rooms in my house, in my house and in my car. John found out there was a dinner concert place in Austria, and we could go for dinner and also hear Mozart. I have to see if there are other places that have Mozart performances as well, and we’ll make our rounds and I’ll overdose in Mozart before we leave Austria.

    John knows a little German, and we should be able to scrape by in Austria, Germany and Switzerland on what little he knows. That and we have translations of basic phrases in assorted languages to try to cover ourselves, like “Where is the toilet?” (because the toilet in separate from the shower, so you can’t just ask for a washroom), “We do not speak (the language,” “We speak English,” “I am a vegetarian,” “Do you have an English menu,” or “Where is the (correct) train station?” Hopefully we’ll be able to pull this first week off and learn details about everything before we leave for it...

Salzburg

05-10-03

3:30 PM (7 hours later than home)

    Since the airport, we flew for 8 hours to Frankfurt, then had a one hour layover, then proceeded to fly to Salzburg, Austria. When I went through O’Hare Airport in I figured they’d search through all of my luggage and ask me a string of questions, you know, questions like, “Are any of the items in your luggage not your own,” or “Did anyone ask you to carry anything on board with you,” or “Have you ever left your luggage alone since you have been at the airport,” or “Are you in possession of firearms, contraband or fireworks,” or something. But Everything was fine, they didn’t even bother to stamp my passport when I got through so I had to go back and ask for a Salzburg Austria stamp; they were even surprised I didn’t get a stamp from Frankfurt Germany, but no one seemed interested in stamping people’s passports there...

    I never really even had the chance to think about difference in airports. John commented that he was surprised when he went to Hawaii’s airport, because there was so much open air, but what was different about the airport at Salzburg? Well, we had to take a bus to the terminal, and that is not something your normally see in airports in the United States. And I guess we were surprised the the lax attention paid to security and customs in the airport; I have always heard that in the past the United States was far too lax in its security measures at airports, but I wonder if the United States, comparatively speaking, is overly cautious. No one in Germany or Austria scanned my bags, no one scanned our bodies for metal for weaponry, no one asked us a barrage of inane questions.

    Maybe they figure the United States took care of all that crap before we got on the plane, and maybe they’ll be hard on us on our way home.

    When we got out the airport at Salzburg, we thought that instead of heading straight to Bad Gastein we should visit all of the museums, statues and artifacts from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born in Salzburg). I couldn’t tell you how many pieces of art work I saw and how many sculptures and how many statues of Mozart I saw, but trust me, Salzburg us really pushing the Mozart thing for all it’s worth. We didn’t bother to tour the houses that were up in his honor, and we didn’t bother to see where he was born.

    You’d think it’s weird of me to want to see Mozart memorabilia, but I have to explain that I usually listen to Classical on the radio whenever I’m in the car (instead of pop or rock or alternative or urban or news, or even NPR), but I made a point to make a CD of the music of Mozart in CD quality format at my car stereo, at my bedroom for the DVD, and even at my computer and on my laptop so I can listen to him while I work during the day (I can even listen to Mozart right now on my laptop computer, writing this...).

    You know, I saw Mozart liqueur in round bottles, I got the impression that is was chocolate flavored, but the thing we thought was most funny was that they sold (right at the counter, in a point of purchase display) tiny to-go bottles of Mozart liqueur “shots.” We laughed, John said that we could buy three Mozart shots and a flask of vodka and make a martini, or that it would be fun to just say that we did “shots of Mozart,” but...

    I saw in Salzburg a lot of references to “Salzburger” at little diner signs, and I thought it was a quaint reference to burgers from Salzburg, but John told me that in German that just mean that it was a reference to being from Salzburg. I thought about that a moment and asked, “Does that mean Mozart was a Salzburger?”, and although it sounded a bit funny, John said yes.

    The nice thing about seeing Mozart memorabilia and seeing Salzburg, though, was the fact that we now have a digital camera, which adjusts for the amount of light it sees necessary and adjust a flash accordingly. So I was able to say, “Hey, I like how that one fountain works as a sun dialÑ” and then I’d photograph it. It is nice to have a record of everything that goes on everywhere else.

    I tried to nap in the train ride from Salzburg to Bad Gastein, where out hotel was, but I think I slept in two minute bursts, because there were a ton of stops between the two locations. It was novel to use that camera again, even from inside the train. There were mountains off in the distance, and I was able to capture them on film.

    Seeing sights like this make for a good transition to a week in Bad Gastein.

Bad Gastein

05-10-03

7:40 PM In Austria

I’ve seen rolling hills. I’ve seen the crusts and valleys of Utah’s National Parks. But it still blows you away when you walk from the train station to see your hotel nestles with other beautifully painted buildings with trees at the bottom of a dip where different mountains, and some snow-capped, appear all around the horizon.

    We’ve walked around through much of the day, been to a meeting with staff about what this hotel offers, and received offers from a few locations already. If we can keep out ignorance of German (or a more Austrian dialect) to a minimum to the locals who don’t know English, we’ll be in luck.

    I’ve been stressed with work in the past six months and unable to sleep, maybe I need a little tailoring like this (We’ve been given a quality map of Austria and a bottle of white wine in our first day.) to get me back on my feet.

05-11-02

9:45 AM

    Yesterday was an interesting day.

    We arrived in town yesterday afternoon and the room was available for us for the week. And I am used to traveling in America at small hotels, and most of them come with a television (and most often cable, because us Americans obsess over possessing a multitude of our entertainment options) but no refrigerator, and I was impressed to have a place with a stove (electric, so it looks phenomenal in the kitchen here), a microwave and a refrigerator, as well as king-sized bed (the equivalent of two large twin-sized beds together), 1.5 baths and two foldaway twin-sized beds in the living room. They offered us a bottle of wine (chilled and white, it was a “Kabinett Selektion,” and because at their welcome meeting we mentioned it was our first time in Austria or Europe, they gave us a nice map of Austria (which we may consider framing).

    This place is not like a normal hotel, it is a more resort-like and they have additional amenities and a staff to make sure we have a good stay here. Someone in charge of making sure we have a nice stay, and they even offered to give us a drive to the grocery store because I’m a vegetarian and there aren’t too many options for food in this meat-eating section of countries on the globe. The hotel had a pool and sauna, but they even have a bowling alley.

    Happy Mother’s Day. We sent two glass vases of silk flowers in clear resin (to look like water) to our mothers to arrive while we’re out of town. But the restaurant downstairs (that has an outdoor area) is playing very Austrian music and singing for Mother’s Day. John woke up and asked if these people don’t sleep, but it’s already 10:40 in the morning now, so I suppose we shouldn’t complain. Stores close up here at 5:00 in the evening, and I don’t know how many people hang out in what few bars there are, so people seem to have earlier nights here

    Speaking of bars, we found a pizza/bar place that made a small Margherita pizza for around 6 Euros, which is easily under $10 American, so I was pleased. Had a few bottles of Edelweiss, took pictures of statues and waterfalls at night with cool lighting, and got to bed a little after midnight.

    Which would have been fine, but I woke up with a stuffed nose at 3:30 un the morning in Austria, but I got back to sleep. John stayed up for a while and now his neck is sore, but the bedroom seemed so light through the morning sun through the window. I got up to rest at 9:30 this morning in the pull-out bed in the living room, but instead I have been writing.

05-12-03

11:50 AM

    There are so many little details about this place that you just take for granted after you’ve been here more than one day.

    1. We noticed that the doors here are wider in half of the width of the door, and the door, when sliding into the frame, only goes half way into the door frame. The lock is in the thinner half of the door, and having a door styled like this avoids any light coming from the next room from coming into your room.

    2. The door hinges in this place are styled gorgeously (I know that sounds silly, I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere or if it’s just this place, but I actually noticed the hinges because they were so well-styled). The piece of metal that sits at three spots along the side of a door when closed is actually larger, gold colored, and have decorative embellishments on each end of the hinge.

    3. One thing I am forced to remember is that everything is on such a slant here, there are so many hills and valleys in the mountainside, that john’s calves and my shins are in pain from walking up and down the sharp inclines.

    4. In this hotel room, which I think is styled more like an apartment you rent for a week at a time, has no thermostat. If it’s warm, open a window for a breeze (that’s your only choice). I guess people who work here control the temperature for you (how nice of them). I guess this way they can monitor the overuse of heating or air conditioning to save money...

    5. There’s a Jacuzzi-styled pool here, with a large mushroom that apparently drops water occasionally. I’d go into it, but the temperature is not American hot (ergo the name “hot tub”), so I called it a “tepid tub” to John and have passed on going into it.

    6. There’s a sauna, but you pay to go into it, and the image for it displayed in the elevators shows a man and a woman both sitting in the sauna naked. Again, I’m passing on this one too...

    7. Tipping is more like 10% for food, but you could round up above ten percent to make the Euro number even. And people serving drinks do not seem to expect much of a tip at all (when we’re used to giving a dollar for every drink we get in the United States). When we ordered two drinks and charged it, the bartender did not even leave us an option for giving a tip.

    8. I heard that maybe because there are different pollens here because of different plants, we may be in luck with allergies this spring. Then I noticed that because of a lack of rainfall (more common in the States), there a pools of yellow pollen all along the sidewalks when you walk down the street.

    9. Most people also know English, although minimally. There are English translations for menus, and people in stores will catch your difficulty in ordering or talking in stores and will revert to English to help you.

    John wanted Ibuprofen for a headache, but it doesn’t exist in two places we hoped to find it. John ended up purchasing “dolofort,” and then asked the person behind the counter in English about Ibuprofen, and she said that Ibuprofen is an American term, but dolofort is the same drug as what’s in Ibuprofen, so this should be fine. The drug dosage is also twice what they sell in the States, so he’ll only need to take one pill instead of two.

    10. The radio still plays American music, although Austrians may not know the language so well. John was surprised; he thought there would be German translations of the songs so people could hear songs in their own language. I asked him why they played American songs, and he said that it was because Americans had money. That people want that.

    Then I thought that some countries hate us, in part because we know how to make money and get ahead, like most apparently want, but I try not to understand their hatred when we have what they want.

    11. Mountains are so much higher than anything I’ve seen in any of the United States. Your legs are in pain from just walking around the street here, because everything is on such an incline, and the mountains just past this downtown area take over a good portion of the sky.

    12. Clocks are on 24 hour time, so the PM does not exist on a clock, so you have to gets used to the change and be able to translate what time 22:14 is.

    13. Shopping carts in grocery stores (at least the one we went to) are not locked to go straight, so a cart, when pushed, can turn in any direction. When the stores are so cramped and the aisles are so narrow, it’s explainable that the carts can turn at any moment - because they have to.

    14. Gorgeous cars and names are all over on the road. I’ve taken a few photographs of cars, but Alfa Romeos, Opels, Lancias, Fiats, Pugeots and other excellent names for cars you don’t see in the States are here. When we were walking today, I saw a strip of parked cars including an Audi, a Mercedes, a BMW, a Rover, and I said, “Wow, this must be where all the expensive cars park,” and John said, “These aren’t expensive.” Then we commented that the price for some cars are jacked up for the United States.

    15. There is so much color in the buildings in this town. This may be the case for everywhere in Europe, I don’t know, but I can walk down the street and see a yellow building, with an orange building near it, as well as a lime green building, a white one, or a brick one. I tried to take a few pictures of it, but it is a beautiful thing to see when you’re not used to seeing that kind of variety in buildings.

    I know there are other things, but I haven’t kept track of them. Just trust me, there are things that are different.

    It’s hard to order food here when you’re a vegetarian and you don’t know the language. We asked if there was any meat in the cream of garlic coup (I know that’s a strange question, but in America a lot of soups use a base of a meat or chicken stock, like French Onion Soup, which a vegetarian would avoid), but the non-English speaking waitress said there was no meat in it, so we ordered it. When the waitress left, knowing she may not have understood the reference to animal products in the soup stock, I asked John to taste the soup first to see if he could taste any meat traces in the soup. John then said they probably just use butter, cream, and garlic. That one kind of surprised me, because Americans wouldn’t use something so pure, heavy, or rich in fat or calories, to make a soup, but trust me, the soup was good when we had it.

    The one thing I’ve been safe with ordering for food, however, is pizza. I know, You get that in the States, but you know what’s in it when you order it, and the price really isn’t bad to have a little pizza brought to your table. I even had a cheeseless pizza yesterday for lunch, the crust was lighter than a cracker and it just had pizza sauce and spices on it, and it was pretty good.

    Oh, and you don’t take your food home with you; that is considered very rude. So when we ordered, we’d have to stuff our faces because we couldn’t take food with us and we wanted to save our money and eat all we could so we’d go out to eat less often.

    When we were looking at the sky last night from our balcony, I joked that “wow, they have stars here too...”, but then I said that although things are different here, on a fundamental level things are still the same. No matter where you go, people still behave the same way, there are still regular meals, and the stars still shine down upon us at night. Things are still beautiful; it doesn’t matter where you are when you’re looking out at the stars and the mountains at night, with a nice breeze in the perfect weather. Things may seem a little different, but their similarities bind all parts of the world together.

9:22 PM (or 21:22, as the clocks say in Bad Gastein)

    Last night we were in a bar (playing American music), and a song played that I thought I recognized, and I said, “This song sounds familiar. I don’t know if I’ve heard it.”

    John replied, “It’s Bob Dillon.”

    I was a bit stunned. “Oh,” I said, “I thought this was someone in German.”

    John laughed his ass off at this, because it was a song I should have known, All Along The Watchtower.

    When he started laughing, I said, “Well, it was a voice that sounded unrecognizable to me...”

    Which made him laugh more.

    We went to a bar tonight where everyone spoke German, and I was standing near the doorway reading the list of types of foods they offered. Well, the door opened, right near me and I had to back up, and a drunk old Austrian man came in and started talking to me, because apparently I was sort of in his way. So he started asking me one word questions, in German, and I had no idea what he was saying, and I didn’t know how to respond. John was sitting right there, and he couldn’t understand a single word this old man said, so I’d try to think of a single word to say that might help him understand what I was doing there, and I don’t know German, all that was going through my head were Spanish phrases, so I’d try to say something in English and he’d respond with another single-word question/sentence, and he’d say it repeatedly to me, and I’d look over at John with no idea of what to do, so I’d try to say something in English, then repeat it in English (like that helps) as I was making an effort to sit down. I think once I was seated next to John he didn’t push for a conversation, but within one minute the bartender (who might have been a manager or an owner, I don’t know), told him in German that he had to go, and it sounded like he repeatedly commanded him to leave as he walked the drunk Austrian out of the bar.

    John tried to say “It’s okay,” to him in German (Das ist inordnung, to be exact), but the bartender was probably just trying to get the drunk man who couldn’t say one word cohesively in German our of the bar.

05-13-03

10:05 PM

    I’m tired, but we went to the Gastein Curative Tunnel today - a place in the mountainside where the air temperature go to about 100 degrees, and there was a huge amount of Radon in the air (the hopefully give rejuvenating, healing properties and energy), but also had a humidity level of about 75%.

    Much better than the Tepid Tub they have here for a hot tub.

    I also noted afterward when we went for beer that beer here, even the same kinds of beer as you find in the States (like Franziskaner Weisse beer) just tastes better, probably because it is actually a more recent brew, and because the beer producers didn’t have to put a small amount of Formaldehyde in it to keep it in good condition (or else add some extra hops as a preservative which makes the beer more bitter - and I don’t like bitter beer). It is much better when it is new and without the chemical, thank you very much.

    We looked for mini pizza cutters today at the grocery store, because we saw them at two restaurants here, and then someone at a restaurant told us that you can only but it through a specialty store only for restaurants (which bugs me; I liked little pizza cutters for the table).

    And pizza seems to be the only thing we have eaten when we have eaten out. No, it’s not that we’re trying to grasp onto something from our American lives, it’s that when I, as a vegetarian, try to find something on a menu that I know has no meat in it, it is really safe to go with pizza, where you choose your own toppings. Besides, they are surprisingly less expensive than other meals, so we can have a small home-made pizza and not have leftovers for a meal. They also usually have them at bars, and when we’re so interested in drinking good beer (the weisse beers are so much better here than in the States), it’s handy to have food we can eat too.

    We’ve been walking a few days now throughout Bad Gastein, and I have loved the fact that there is moss everywhere along the rocks that we pass. It’s nice to see that here; you usually don’t see moss so abundant everywhere. We’ve seen a different kind of moss all over the place in the Washington State rainforests we visited, but it is nice to see it along paths near roads in a town, and it’s cool to see moss growing out of all of the cracks in bricks that have been laid near the paths.

    I have to go, but I’ll tell you more about the Gastein Curative Tunnel trip later -

05-14-03

6:58 AM

    Let me tell you about the Gastein Curative Tunnel. Originally used to mine for gold, this area in the “Hohe Tauern” mountains, and later at the “Radhousberg.” In one section, there was extreme heat (98 to 120 degrees, depending on where they were in the tunnel), coupled with humidity (once again 75 to 95 percent, depending on where you were in the tunnel). They also found that rheumatic problems were getting better when there and that they had more energy - they later found that there was Radon in the air in this region, and staying in the tunnel for certain lengths of time helped their ailments, because the Radon in the air helped make their body heal itself faster. People today use this tunnel for curing assorted ailments, and although they may return in later months, they stay in the tunnels for less time because the body remembered how to heal itself from its previous stay in the tunnels.

    So we went to the tunnels yesterday, wore a swimsuit and stayed in them for 45 minutes in silence with other attendants. From breathing training, I tried to take deep long breaths as I lay in the tunnel for the 45 minutes to get all the air I could and soak in as much Radon as possible in the time I was there. I saw someone opening and closing their hands while they were laying on a cot, and it made me wonder if it would help my hands from typing so much on the computer. John noted that although we drank a few bottles of water and were dripping wet when we were done, he wasn’t tired from the heat (as he would expect he would be), which may have been because of the amount of Radon in the air.

    There was only one other English-speaking couple there, and the man talked very loudly (very American sounding to be that loud, was my opinion). And there was one other gentleman there who spoke English as well as German, asking us about where we were from and what our plans were. When I explained to him that Austria was our first stop and we are taking the train to Germany, Italy (through Venice), Paris, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Switzerland, he was stunned and couldn’t believe we were doing so much in such a short time (he thought two months was more realistic than doing that all in two weeks, but we Americans don’t get that much vacation time). We then talked about 37 hour work weeks in Europe and Germany, and that people usually had 6 weeks vacation time every year. We thought that John having 4 weeks a year in America was good, but it’s not as relaxing as Europe, I suppose... He also suggested hiking walks to go on, which we may do, if we have the time before we leave Austria.

    It was nice to hear someone talking about our trip like this; it reminds me of when I traveled around the United States and people were interested in plans and where were were going. This is the first time someone has asked about there plans of ours, and this man was nice enough to comment on places to go and things to do while we traveled.

    John also wanted to climb to the top of one of the Alps today (so we were planning the hike), but when I walked out onto the balcony, I saw that it was snowing. It wasn’t too cold; it seemed to almost be a combination of snow and hail and the snow seemed to fall in thick icy patches. We’re fearing the Alps hike today, so we may take the train to go to Dachau in Germany. John is checking over the schedule and I’m trying to eat my bread and yogurt for breakfast.

    I wonder if they stamp our passports when we get to another country. Well, we’ll see how thing go, so wish us luck.

05-14-03

11:07 PM

    My feet are so tired.

    No, really, you have no idea. We’ve walked everywhere, taking the train from Bad Gastein to Salzburg, then leaving Austria and going to Minuch, then going to Dachau, then walking a few miles to the Dachau Concentration Camp site, walking through the site, then walking it all back home, to the hills in our hotel.

    I’m hoping I can put my feet in a bath to make them feel better for tomorrow, because I’m thinking we’re going to the top of one of the Alps tomorrow.

    But we’ve tried to have a more German-styled meal plan, and I didn’t mean by having more beer than the average American, but I meant by having primarily bread at breakfast. Though we’ve avoided coffee or tea, we’ve purchased bread from the bakery and have had primarily that for breakfast for the past few days.

    Taking the train to Germany was nice, though - John noticed, that unlike trains either of us have been on in the States:

    1. They have huge windows on each side of the train,

    2. They are amazingly quiet trains,

    3. They don’t use wood under the tracks (it might be concrete? We couldn’t tell),

    4. There are private compartments in the cars, even if you don’t have reservation, as long as they we’ne all reserved,

    5. They have a restaurant,

    6. Someone walks around either with a cart of coffees to offer you or push a cart of coffees around to offer you as you sit in your seat.

    And in riding to Germany, I noticed that every small village had one church, with a huge steeple. I wondered if it was there so people would be able to find the church easily, and John wondered if people had such a tall church to show the world how God looks upon them so favorable, because they have such a large church to worship Him in. The value of religion in communities is very evident when you look at the history of these areas, which may make it obvious why they place such importance on their town church.

05-15-03

    Well, I think we’re supposed to be going to the top of an Alp today, because it is no longer snowing hail, like it was yesterday. I’ll let you know how it goes.

10:20 PM

    When walking home today, John noticed a radio station on a car tuned to 88.6, and I thought I’d mention that Europe’s radio stations fall on even numbers, unlike America’s radio stations. Interesting to see.

    Almost as interesting as the fact that there are metal roofs throughout this town - it’s cool to see decaying, or painted roofs that are made of metal (seeing a copper roof is cool). You see how buildings and homes are put together, and you come to understand why building are so old here and last so long here.

    Noticed the pine trees here during our many walks, and the needles in all the tall thin leaves are always drooping down. If trees had personalities, they looked very sad...

    Oh, I learned that in some of these countries that when eating, you should leave your hands above the table until you are done with your food. This was a tough thing to remember to do, but when you’re trying to keep with the customs of the country you’re in, you have to remember all these little details so you’re not looked at as an outsider. I think it’s necessary to try to do as much as possible to blend with what people know; if you don’t, you’ll get poor treatment because you couldn’t take the time to understand their culture.

05-16-03

9:43 AM

    I’m exhausted.

    We walked across town and went to walk up a mountain in the Alps, John said it should be around two miles from what he could tell on the map, but you know, I was thinking the path was two miles, not that it was a four or six mile distance.

    We walked on quote unquote trails, which were really patches of grass that were driven over once last ski season by a big truck (so were still grassy), and we got to what we thought was close to the end (the end of the ski lift was there, for one...). Then John saw that it went up further, so since my shoes and socks were soaking wet from the puddles and mud we had to get around to get to that point, John went ahead to see how far the path continued. He came back and said it was a similar path for probably another 30 minutes of walking, meaning that we were only two thirds the way up the mountain. Since it gets colder the higher up the mountain you go, and since there wasn’t a cloud in the sky to hold any of the heat to the earth. I was really cold, but I knew that if I backed down it would have been a disappointment to John. So after a minute I said we should go, and we started walking. The path was much less visible that it was coming up to that point, and it was more wet because any dew or frost had not evaporated.

    The shoes that I bought for this trip and I planned to bring really hurt my left foot after the first time I tried to wear them, and my left foot didn’t get better for three days after I “test” wore them, so I didn’t bring the shoes I bought for this trip. The shoes I had were sneakers, but they were thin cloth, and they were old shoes with what little traction they came with long removed from common wear. So with the wind and the temperature at this height at the mountainside, and with one layer covering the top of my feet in these shoes, I was cold. And because we planned for a trip that would be warmer that it is in America in May, we didn’t bring heavy coats or gloves or hats or scarves.

    But either way, I said I’d follow, so we started walking, and as I said, the trail was less evident and more wet. Then I looked after a turn in the path and saw that there was a twenty foot wide pool of mud that you couldn’t avoid if you were going to continue. When I saw that and just stopped in my tracks. I knew I was already cold, and my feet were already soaked, but I was not going to walk through mud and have wet, muddy, cold feet for the rest of the trip up - and all the way back down - the mountain.

    I told him then I wasn’t going any further. He looked up and saw the mud and totally agreed and said we’ll just turn around.

    I got a second pair of shoes that we brought in the backpack (shoes with a bit of a heel, but much more comfortable the wet cold old sneakers), and we started to head back.

    John said that he saw from a listing on a sign on the way back that we went about one fourth the way up the mountain, that it plateaus in two different places, and that there is another lift to get higher up the mountain - when the lifts are running (which they weren’t).

    Which made me feel even worse, because we didn’t get as far as I thought we were, or as far as I thought we could have gone.

    Because there was a sister hotel to the hotel we’re staying at in the mountain range, we just took its road back down. Although it was a bit longer, it was a different view of mountains and town. When we got the the bottom of the mountain, we saw that they were doing construction work on the road, and the road was completely destroyed. It was illegal to scale the ridge and cross the train tracks, and the construction workers stopped as we walked back to the construction site and what should have been the road but was now a large muddy hole. John asked if we could pass through the tunnel. They told us there was room there and that we could cross.

    I looked at the room, and it was filled with water. I said to John that I can switch the shoes and wear the wet sneakers through the wet mud, and then he told me to take the backpack (I didn’t know why), and he took the camera from around my neck, and he made a gesture that he would carry me through it. I didn’t know if he could do it, and I was so surprised, but he was insistent, so I got on his shoulders and he started to carry me though what was left of ground and water and mud through the tunnel to the other side, where there was road. Half way he stopped, because we saw something for a photo, but I looked ahead and said I’d try it with my heeled shoes, because I think I can avoid the water and mud enough.

    I followed him out of the construction area and we walked on the road a bit more and took a turn, and found out that the road ended up literally next to our hotel (do we didn’t have to go through town to get back from the mountain).

    So I just got out of a bath to warm myself up, and John just did the same. I guess this was our attempt to climb up one of the mountains in the Alps... But at least we tried.

05-17-03 (Saturday)

7:54 AM

    Went to a bar last night, for our last night in Bad Gastein. There was a big bread bowl on the bar (do they charge of this bread sitting out if you want to eat it?). It’s funny, but here foods do not carry a ton of preservatives, so you can’t keep bread sitting around \for a week or more and expect it to be okay. People buy everything fresh, from breads to fruits and vegetables. John said this is why Europeans eat better, because they have healthier food and do not eat so same processed foods. I asked him if Americans ate so many preservatives, would we stay preserved longer if we were dead, but you’d think that if Americans were so concerned with having healthier lives we’d eat better foods on the whole, and John said that it was probably because Americans rush through life so much and try to do so much in so little, that they don’t have the time for preparing fresh foods.

    Wait, I was talking about the bar. The bartender, because he got a phone call he had to take somewhere else while he was pouring our beers (so the beers sat at the tap for a few minutes), he poured us new beers and drank our old beers - ’the bartender’s mistakes,’ as John put it. We thought it was funny that the bartender could drink while on the job, because that is something bartenders could never do in America...

         Oh, added notes: it was so cool to go into a “pharmacia” when John needed to get an over-the-counter pain medication; unlike a Walgreens or a United States drug store, this place was a small shop with apothecary jars of medicines all along the walls. You actually felt like you were getting medicine, not that this was some generic little coated pill in a generic mass-produced box. I think Americans think that way about over-the-counter medicines, that they’re just harmless for your body and they somehow make your pains and problems vanish. Maybe in Europe they realize that you can’t solve your problems by taking a little pill.

    Well, we’re pretty much packing now. We leave for Villach, another place in Austria, then we got to Venice before we move through Italy. But I’ve got to get moving if we’re going to be on time. Wish us luck.

Germany

Introduction

    John took German class, when choosing a language, he chose German, so I thought he’d be good with wanting to go to Germany. I forgot that he’d probably love the idea of drinking excellent beers too, so I guess we had a few reasons to want to go to Germany.

    We found out that Dachau has museums about the Holocaust, so this is something I so wanted to see. I spent five and a half hours at the Washington DC Holocaust Museum, and I wish John saw it, but John knows more about history than anyone I’ve ever known, so I think he’ll be up for it too.

Dachau

05-15-03

9:18 AM

    Okay, I was exhausted last night. I even took a bath after John, but we used dishwashing soap for the bath because we don’t have bubble bath... Actually, the bubbles hold up pretty well, and they hold the heat in the water pretty well.

    Whatever, enough about the bath last night. We opted to spend the day in Dachau today, because we were interested in seeing the Concentration Camp Museum there. I have been to the memorial in Washington, DC and I thought it was amazing with information and artifacts; it took me five and a half hours to go through it when I was alone in 2002. I figured that if I thought the United States museum was amazing, it should be stunning to see a museum in an old concentration camp. So here was the scoop from our trip to Germany:

    Had to learn that washrooms on trains were labeled WC, for water closet. The journey was fun, because we saw when getting ready to go that it was snowing - but it was combined with rain, making it more of a combination between hail and snow. We had no real coats for this (I mean, it is May, and the weather is supposed to be milder than it is in America, and I don’t expect snow in May in America...), so we wore shirts over and under our sweaters, wore our heaviest pants, and wore socks and shoes (instead of my usual sandals I wore when walking in Austria). We had one light coat and one British rain coat, which seemed more like a short windbreaker with a hood. With cold fingers and noses, we did the best we could in going through Germany.

    I notice taking the train into Munich (MŸnchen, in German), that I finally saw graffiti again - since we have been to Austria, I have seen graffiti only once, and it was beige and black of a painted head. Coming into Munich, I felt like I was in a city again; there was detailed spray paintings of images of people, and very colorful, elaborate type drawings. The graffiti was kind of cool.

    We took the train to Dachau, deciding to come back to Munich before going back to Austria. We got to Dachau and then walked about two miles (I think it was 3 Kilometers) to get to the Dachau Holocaust Museum. It is a much smaller town, versus Munich, and there is not a lot to see there architecture-wise (though it was kind of cool to see German signs for Asparagus, and it was nice to see billboards for Hacker Pshorr, which is a beer I like that I have not seen in Austria).

    I have been to the Washington DC Holocaust Museum before, and it was phenomenal. They had lighting appropriate for being in barracks, and you walk through quarters the size the prisoners were in. You even walk over planks the Jews had to use because the Germans wouldn’t let them walk on the same land as them. There were glass boxes that housed the things the Jews had to give up once there were in the concentration camps for a certain length of time, so you’d see a glass box filled with hairbrushes or black shoes. All in all, it was an amazing visit, and I was looking forward to going to the Dachau Holocaust Museum, because the location was an old concentration camp site.

    Because of that, it was interesting for me to go to the site, and I think it was good for me to say that I have been there. They had the original door to the concentration camp at one edge of the grounds, which said (in German), “Work Makes You Free” (John even saw it and tool a few pictures of it before I got the chance). They left the paint chipped away at parts of the wall so you could see what the walls were like. But they cleaned up a large part of the hall, and when we entered the building, there were a few large posters of information (you’d have to skip ahead to the English translations throughout the museum so we could read them). The entire museum, however, was moving from room to room with large posters and sheets of data to read (which, in my opinion, did not leave much to the imagination, to help you understand what it was like there for these prisoners).

    We did learn the Dachau was one of the first concentration camps in existence, and it was one of the only ones that lasted throughout the reign of Hitler (who, by the way, was not only Austrian and not German, but also was short and had hark hair and dark eyes and was able to tell people that the better people were tall with blonde hair and had blue eyes). Knowing how many people were killed through the concentration camps, all I could think of was how small the Dachau site seemed to be, if it only held 6,000 people (I’d hear how 40,000 would be killed in a day, so they had to come from larger places too, and I know Dachau was small because it was one the first camps). But We did learn that the Dachau site was used as an example for all future sites. The prisoners were even put on work detail at one point to build a new, larger camp, so others could be imprisoned like them. Later, people could be arrested and put into a camp because they were “potential” criminals (if they did not believe in the group’s political views, they could be arrested and brought to a concentration camp with no recourse).

    Only when we got to the last room, where we saw a miniature scale model of the entire grounds as it was during the Holocaust, was John able to point out to me that the only thing were seeing was this small portion of the site (about one fifth of the entire site). Seeing that the entire concentration camp area was that much larger was the only thing that helped me to see how monstrous this place actually once was.

Munich

    We walked back to the train station and went back to Munich. I don’t know what the locals thought of me, other than that I was just another stupid American with her camera on a strap around her neck, but I took pictures of so many pieces of architecture (from churches to the police station to the court house to a bank or two, just because there was such beautiful ancient artwork on their outside walls) and so many statues and fountains.

    Because our feet were getting tired, and because there were so many bicyclists trying to ride through town because everyone couldn’t have a car downtown (and because John wouldn’t hear the bells of the bicyclists that were trying to ride on the path he was on), we found a small bar where the older woman who was the bartender couldn’t understand John when we tried to order a beer for himself in German (and I could just ask for a weisse beer because they didn’t even list anywhere what they had, so I got their Ayinger), and the old regulars there kept yelling in German that they wanted music, but not with American voices. Well, someone put a song on the jukebox with American lyrics, and they looked at us like it was our fault (we never got up from our seats to have any music play; I love being blamed for something we didn’t do, it’s making me feel like I’m at home).

    We got to the train station in unich with some time to kill, but to get a seat we had to get food, so while John ordered sandwiches, we saw that they had Paulaner cans (that cost maybe less than in bars in Austria), so we ordered a few there too to pass the time until our train took us back to Austria (they were 2.60 Euro for twenty counce beer cans and 2.10 Euro for soda cans).

    You know, I said before that beer just tastes better here, with no preservatives, but I couldn’t believe it when the cans tasted good for beer as well. It is great when you see these little differences (like good beer for cheap in cans at train stations) when you’re passing through.

Italy

Introduction

    When we planned this trip, I kept saying that I wanted to go to Greece because I was far too fascinated with the architecture and Greek design (I think there are nine Greek columns seen from one view in our living room, because columns are used for table legs, candle holders and vases). We checked information on whether or not it would be safe to go to Greece in the midst of he Iraq War (which the American Politicians attempted to be P.C. enough to call this war an Operation for someone else’s freedom), and we decided that even though it was safe enough to go there, we’d want to spend more time there than one afternoon. So in looking at records of information on Italy, I read that in Cicely there were still pieces of architecture from Greece there, and it was much more preserved than ancient Greek architecture existing today.

    So, other than searching for excellent image ideas of gondola pictures on the water, I saw hope for beautiful Greek \architecture existing in Cicely.

    So this becomes a new part of our mission.

    I also said I wanted to stop in Naples, just so I could tell my parents (who live in Naples Florida now) that I went to Naples, but to get there I had to go through Austria and stop in Rome before getting through Naples.

Venezia

May 18

    Taking the train was interesting. We passed through TONS of tunnels to get through the mountains, but after that finally stopped the lands were flat and there were fields for growing grapes for wine. Weisse beer was the choice before, maybe I can start trying wines here and in France.

    Passed a massive water tower shaped like a golf tee, and notices that alond the road there were occasional tall poles, and they were completely covered with ivy. That and as the temperature and climate changed, we started to see more palm trees. We looking forward to seeing Venice - or Venezia, because we wanted to see streets that were water, and it would be cool to check out gondolas. I heard that it’s a great place to party in, and lots of people were taking the train to Venice.

    Now that we’re here, we found out how expensive it was to enjoy yourself in Venice. Everyone there knows that people come here to see the sights, so everything has a jacked up price.

    And a lot of the architecture was under construction , so many buildings had scaffolding around it. But it was cool to see the parts of buildings that were accessible to people - and it was cool to see stairs that led from the sidewalk to the water. Water levels rise, and over time that has caused sidewalks, roads, and foundations for buildings to be lost

    I did start to see excellent things here for food, though - like a salad that was just cherry tomatoes and similar sized pieces of fresh mozzarella, mixed together with oil and spices. And because fresh mozzarella was so common to eat here, the price wasn’t that high for the food.

    That and I didn’t care what the cost was, I was just so excited to eat this really cool food that’s normally never served in the United States. Maybe if we ate pizzas a lot in Austria, I can move to other cool foods to eat here.

    Venice is the city that fell into the water, and it was cool to see the gondolas and gorgeous churches. Walking around the streets at night, I thought the stands of merchandise for sale reminded me of New Orleans, with painted masks and liquor for sale everywhere.

    Okay, so maybe Venezia was like this before New Orleans; I guess it’s cool to see where these strange bits of history come from.

Napoli

05-18-03

morning and late evening

    The train ride to Napoli was terrible, the light rattles so we couldn’t rest. Well, I couldn’t rest, I think John could sleep through anything, so he was fine.

    If you think the sports we watch in America are violent, then you don’t understand the violence in audience participation in soccer in other countries...

    After passing Formia, Minturna, S. Santimo and other towns, we saw a field of black oxen, and I think we saw the remains of an old fort. When we got off the train in Napoli (Naples, to us stupid Americans), we saw a man carrying a large cross with Christ on it, and I saw colorful graffiti again.

    We stayed in Napoli for only a few hours total, and I had no problem with that, because from what I could see, it was a very dirty town, and there was not much to learn from or see.

    We started to see more architecture with tops of buildings like castles, and we saw more buildings that were painted - but the paint was old and chipping away.

    John also noted that he saw that the soccer fields we saw while traveling in Italy had concrete walls and THEN the stands, and there would be a fence around the field with barbed wire along the tops of the fences.

    It rained as I wore sandals in Napoli, and no place took credit cards (apparently they’re not a big enough town to see the need to sell their food or merchandise...). Nobody spoke English, and it’s hard to guess what people are saying when we only know a little Spanish (which is only somewhat similar to Italian). We tried pizza in Napoli, and it tasted like soggy cardboard. Street vendors had tables selling crap like belts kitchen supplies, cell phones and sunglasses. Useless stuff on the streets in a useless town.

    And as soon as we got on the train to leave, it got sunny.

    I wouldn’t expect less.

Pompeii

05-18-03

    We realized by the time we got to city number three in country number three that we didn’t need to show our passports to go anywhere (apparently we only needed them when flying from one country to another). Although Europeans don’t condone violence, they apparently don’t worry about it.

    On the train two kids asked us for money in Italian, as well as later in a restaurant (where we saw that every restaurant placed their silverware wrapped in your napkin, instead of just on the table). And after passing Portici, Torre Del Greco, Torre A Citta, and other small towns, and after having two chances to drink a Bacardi Breezer in transit, we checked out the “wheat stalks” (strange plants) shooting up high from the ground. When we got to see in the Colosseum there a stone block with a metal ring on it, which we presumed was for keeping the gladiator in one space there.

    John also saw a family of 4 on a scooter while we were there, so we saw again how scooters were very common versus cars in this part of Europe. I also decided at this point that Europe was not a cat continent, everyone had a love of little dogs to walk around with them everywhere; there was even a veterinarian’s sign on a street that had a picture of a pig, a chicken and a dog (but no cat).

    Even while here I saw two old Italian men, one short and fat, one tall and thin, talking loudly, and it made me think of a strange episode ending of the X Files I saw once where Burt Reynolds was playing God and these Italian men started singing to each other before the credits started rolling for the show.

    We spent the entire day, after walking through town, to get to the Pompeii ruins. There is a complete area of resurrected land from the ruins of this ancient city covered by ashes during the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 AD. It was an exhaustive tour of buildings, where we could see kitchens, eating areas and bedrooms.

    By the evening we took the train to Palermo in Cicily, which was nice, but there was no outlet on the train, so I didn’t have much of a chance to recharge my camera batteries or type notes on the computer. John slept with the light through the train window until there was a knock on our door for breakfast before we arrived in Palermo.

Agrigento

05-19-03

    After being in Palermo, we passed a bunch of small towns before arriving in Agrigento. Once there, we saw additional proof that scooters were everywhere. This was the second time we saw a family of four on a scooter.

    We noticed here that kids can take these trains like they were school buses, because everything was so far away when you lived in a remote location in Cicily. People used the train to commute from Naples to Pompeii, later it started to feel like we were on the el, seeing people take the train the way you take the el in Chicago.

    But once we’re there... Well, it was hard without knowing the language. We found out that we had to get on a bus to be able to see the Greek ruins, so we waited for the bus (the lady said we could take either bus number 1, 2 or 3, so we thought we were set). We got on a bus, and I could see that you had to pull the cord along the side of the bus when you wanted to stop somewhere, but I was searching to find something that looked impressive enough to be the ruins. We had a map that explained that there was some about half way through the route, but there was something much more impressive at the end. So I remember seeing what I assumed was the ruins half way through the route, but then I saw nothing else. So apparently we got to the end of the route and the bus driver stopped to get a smoke and go to the bathroom, and he asked where we were trying to go. (Well, I assume that’s what he was asking, but we don’t know a lot of Italian.) So we tried to explain what we were looking for, and we showed our map, and he said that we passed it and we were supposed to pull the cord when we wanted to get off the bus. (I got that, I didn’t think that was it, so...)

    So he brought us back on the round trip to the same place we got the bus from and we got another set of bus tickets and we made a point to stop at the place we passed.

    Really, I thought (according to the map we were staring at) the site was only part of what we were out to see.

    So we went there, and we spent hours in the sun walking around, taking pictures of anything. I was wearing a tank top shirt and shorts, and John even asked about me getting sunburned because we were much closer to the equator that I had probably imagined. I figured that if I got burned, then I’d just deal with it, and I kept walking around looking for photos. I think there were two times when I had to wait for people who decided to sit in front of pieces of the ruins, just so I could take a picture without people in the way.

    That and although I didn’t feel sunburned, my skin peeled for at least a week after visiting the ruins.

    It was one site with a bunch of building, columns and remains, and they were spread out over a large area. We paid a fee to be able to go through everything and get a better view. Because we got there after the problems getting there, we made a point to walk everywhere in the entire course, and then we repeated the path backwards, so we saw everything once more to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

    There were no food restaurants for our late lunch, so we went to the train station food bar I got fresh mozzarella on a roll, and John got a larger sandwich with meat. We also got four Bacardi Breezers (mine pineapple, his orange), and it was all for 12 euro. All I was thinking was that this was such a great deal - to have that much liquor and food for a meal...

    One thing John noticed while we were traveling in Italy - he said that people were really dirty. John say one guy spit on the floor in the train station, and the both of us even saw a girl throw her trash out the open bus door on one of its stops as we were going to the Greek ruins.

    We never went to the Mediterranean Sea on our journey, and it doesn’t sound as appealing to say we went over the Tyrrhenian Sea, but we did a lot of travel in Cicily... and we found out that when staying on a train to travel through Italy, we had little ladders to get onto beds. We couldn’t drink the water in sinks in separate cabins (because even though there was a sink with a faucet, they didn’t have running water, so the water was not drinkable, but you could at least use the sink for spitting after you brush your teeth in the evening), but they gave us two bottles and three little sealed cups of water so we could drink something through the night and rinse your mouth out after brushing your teeth.

    To take us over the Tyrrhenian sea, they had to stop the train at a station and break it into three parts, so the parts of the train could be taken on boat across the water.

Rome

05-20-03

    The train had nothing to recharge the digital camera, so I couldn’t take as many digital camera photos as I would have wanted to. And when we arrived in Rome, I worried when we dropped off our luggage at the train station for the day that we’d have a hard time because we spoke English. But we understood everything that was said, we said “due” for two bags, used the correct hand signals for explaining what we needed, we paid, and left without needing to ever speak in English.

    When we found out there was no way we could take a train to Piza (the trains wouldn’t let us get there and back to continue sightseeing), we left the station and noticed that there were no street signs anywhere near the train station (making it hard for us to guess which we should walk to see different landmarks). The first thing I saw after walking outside was that even the garbage cans were gorgeously, elaborately designed and decorated. We had pizza for a meal - and we asked for Agilo (garlic), hoping the garlic would make the Italian pizzas taste better (sorry, I know they weren’t Cicilian, but the alternative tasted like soggy cardboard). I couldn’t even taste the Agilo on this Neapolitan pizza (you know, when I head Neapolitan I think Chocolate Vanilla and Strawberry ice cream that I always only ate the chocolate part of...) But I saw a Caprice Salad (fresh mozzarella balls and plum tomatoes, which was an excellent choice (they really should have this in America, it tastes so good, it is so simple and people would love it).

    We walked everywhere and took tons of pictures. The walking was fun in Rome because every sidewalk there was made of three to four inch bricks, but there was no grout between the bricks at all - making them very uneven. I’d look for any chance to walk on a curb, or even the grass touching the sidewalk, just to try to give some relief to my feet in sandals.

    We told some Texans who were visiting that we were going to go to Paris, but we were worried because we don’t know French, and I hear the French hate Americans. Megan (the wife of the Texan couple) told us to tell them with an English accent that we were British, because the French like the British John didn’t think he could pull off sounding British so I thought we could be Canadian, I could pull of that accent with no problem, eh... Then it occurred to me that half of Canada speaks French, so I’d be screwed with that option.

    But later we heard on the television (CNN, actually,) that the French hated the British for some reason, so I thought, “I can’t pull off any of the English types in France...”

    After a long day of sightseeing (it was cool to walk around the Colosseum and see all the gorgeous architecture), we got on the night train from Rome to Paris, and we were on the last train car, making us the car farthest away from the food or drink car. But there were cool doors for entering any of the back cars, and the ceiling has little dots of light to emulate stars.

    I guess being at the end meant we had a nice car, because our bed folded under to a couch, and we had a closet, a shower and a WC (or a washroom with our own toilet).

    Because we didn’t know if we’d have the time to have French wine while in Paris, we made a point to get a bottle of French wine once we entered France. Domaine Da La Remarde produced C™tes Du Rhone Villages, 2001, which was pretty good (and we kept the cork).

    It occurred to me that my food on this trip has always been either pizza or mozzarella sandwiches. Since the digital camera was able to recharge on the train over the night, which was cool.

    In the morning in France before we arrived in Paris, we saw a field of all white cows (which was kind of cool to see), and we decided while looking at the countryside in France that the landscape could have been anywhere - there were fields, far away trees, and an occasional barn or house. Although the landscape was plain, maybe we were just romanticizing the landscape more because we were looking at it in France - versus any place in the Midwest United States. I don’t know, I think you’d image seeing more wine grape fields or something if this was somewhere else.

    We’ll see what Paris looks like when we arrive and see how different it is from other places we’ve seen.

France

Introduction

    Before entering France, I have this mortal fear of everyone hating us. I know, I know, the French sell Americans crap at insanely inflated price (who started the preposterous idea of selling water, other than the French company Evian?), but most Americans think France has class and taste, and I think most Frenchmen think Americans are classless and tacky.

    Well, we may be classless and tacky, but I still have this fear that people will be talking about how awful we are in French (the one language neither John nor I know). A part of me wants to record mpeg files of people talking in another language around us, so I can find out later on what they’re saying about Americans.

    I’m sorry, I just get this feeling that everyone in Europe is going to hate Americans because our president has gone insane about destroying another country, even though everyone else has pretty much said these American moves are going too far. I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that Bush’s decisions are quick and lack real foundation. He says there is reason to believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but we have never seen proof of it. France and Germany were the two countries who more visibly protested America’s decisions, though Germany has come to accept the American decisions, even if they didn’t agree with its base originally. All along, France has been against us (don’ we give them enough money through their overpriced awful products? Can’t they laugh at American’s idiocy for succumbing to their scamming us with their less-than-par merchandise and allow us to make this decision and not get on a high horse about it when they can’t change America?), and I fear they’ll assume we’re evil and ignorant people for just appearing in their country and giving them money to see public places like the Eiffel Tower. They want our money through their garbage they merchandise in the United States anyway, wouldn’t they be nice enough to us to get our money when we’re even in their country?)

    I get offended in thinking they might act offensive toward me. I’m sure the potential way we’ll fell will make me act more snotty toward people in France, so I’m probably going to make it worse because I’ve been assuming from the start that we’re going to have a hard time there.

    Am I having the problem because I’m thinking too much about it?

    Honestly, I am interested in seeing the Eiffel Tower, and we have interest in seeing the Louvre and the Notre Dame Cathedral. I read that it is nearly i possible to get a vegetarian meal there, but I’m willing to deal with bread all day for food if I have to. I even told John I was so thrilled about the idea of eating a Mozzarella cheese and tomato sandwich, which I thought was a French thing (I remember my sister Lorrie saying how much she loved them there), so John’s trying to figure out how to ask for a Mozzarella and tomato sandwich in French.

    And I’m sure we’ll sound foolish trying to ask.

Paris

Wednesday, 05-21-03

    As we were leaving the train, the conductor recommended that we take taxis, because the Metro may be on strike still. So we prepared for taking lots of taxis, and we got lots of Euros so we could make our way though everything while we were there for the day.

    We thought of trying to take our luggage with us as we walked through Paris to go to many sites (the Eiffel Tower was only the first, we wanted to see the Louvre and the Notre Dame, along with a ton of other places), but there was no way we’d be able to carry all of our belongings with us the entire time. In the train station, they scanned our luggage for security purposes (I removed my film from all of our luggage), but we had to use lockers to store our luggage for the day. But we managed to cram everything into one large bin, which only cost us 4.80 Euros (which is cheaper than anyone housing our luggage for us for the day).

    I also wondered if we’d be in more trouble because neither one of us knew any French at all, but I hoped that everyone in Paris would also know English, so I hoped we wouldn’t have a problem. We practiced assorted phrases in French, but I think the only one we’ll end up using is the one in asking where to go in a taxi and how the thank the cab driver.

     The conductor also said that a 3 kilometer ride to the Eiffel Tower should be about 5 Euros, but I think they charge a lot for a ride directly from the train station, because we probably blew 10 to 12 Euros. But at least there was a bus and taxi line, so there was sometimes a convenience in having a line the taxi driver could take. Sometimes, though, there were so many taxis and buses in that lane, the driver would cut into regular traffic so he could get us somewhere faster and we wouldn’t pay for sitting in traffic so long.

    John was walking too fast. My feet were still sore from walking on the groutless sidewalks in Rome, which is why I said we needed to pay for an ATM and pay for a taxi (I couldn’t take the hyper walking...). I just thought, “If you’re going to walk like this, we’re going to take a taxi instead.”

    So taxis we took.

    And I was strange enough to even try to take pictures while I was in the taxi. I think that for a while I was sticking my head out the window to take photographs, like some sort of dog with their tongue hanging out, maybe like one of the billions of little dogs I saw people walk around with in Europe. Once when the taxi driver heard me saying I thought a building was beautiful, he even pulled over so I could take a photo of it. So, I guess Parisians do know English, and people were nice to us. (Granted, I was paying him for a taxi ride, so of course he’d be nice to us, but it was still nice...)

    We took photographs of the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, the Notre Dame, and a ton of other gorgeous buildings. We noted that no pedestrians listen to the “don’t walk” sign at intersections, so I learned to just follow what everyone else was doing. It was also helpful for me to be able to listen for the bell ringing of bicycles, or horns of scooters, which don’t seem to care sometimes if the use the street or the sidewalk. People also sort of drove maniacal on the road too (even though it wasn’t as bad as in Italy).

    So on to the cheese sandwiches, which I thought would be easy to come by in France, I had a gruyøere and tomato sandwich for a late lunch after the Eiffel Tower. We noticed that there were a lot of outdoor cafŽs, and all the seats faced out toward the street. I like that, but it was just kind of funny to see all of these restaurant outdoor seats were in a line facing the sidewalk.

    While sitting and having lunch outdoors, I saw yet another Keanu Reeves poster for some movie he is in, and all I could think was that I could understand why Europeans can think we Americans are so violent. I mean, if they don’t get that from the behavior of President Bush, but I swear, if I see another poster of this Keanu Reeves guy, I think I’ll want to kill people.

    The architecture was gorgeous, and Paris wasn’t so bad when we were willing to pay for taxis. And people weren’t rude to us, probably because we were customers and they could get money from us.

Bruxelles - Belgium

05-21-03

    Now we take the “Thalys” train to Bruxelles in Belgium. But they even served cocktails for the one hour twenty minute train ride. The chairs were even comfy on this mini train ride, and there is a writing table attached to the seat in front of you, like an airplane, but everything is larger, there are foot rests, and everything is just more comfortable. I mean, they even gave you a face towel too for cleaning up. I couldn’t believe the treatment.

    The diversity in the architecture was really intriguing, and John said he was so surprised by my love of architecture. Maybe I loved the fact that a building you live or work in can be a work of art and be gorgeous... but he noticed here that maybe my love of architecture and the fact that my brother is an architect isn’t just a love we as brother and sister share, but he saw that there were a ton of beautiful buildings here, and the countries I came from were known for their excellent architecture and the some of the greatest architects in history came from here. We saw many tall glass buildings there. They were bluish in color because of the glass, and they were sleek and modern, with interesting building shapes. Another large portion of the buildings we saw were “row houses” - they were a few stories tall and had different colored siding on each of the houses, but they shared walls with the adjoining houses. It’s interesting to see a row of houses, all designed differently, that still share sides with the houses right next to them. It’s kind of like town homes, but all of the individual houses looked different, which was interesting and cool. Because they were so old they started to look aged, but it was still an interesting thing to see.

    After taking pictures and seeing sights in Belgium, we had to take a train to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I tried to take a picture of a church in Antwerp (Belgium), but I think the train was moving and I got a photo with a big pole in the way (it got right in front of the church as I snapped the photo).

    The woman came around with meals, and a fish plate with kale in a Jello mold (gelatin has animal products in it too) was put in front of me. I asked if there was anything vegetarian, and she said she’d check ... then came back and said this was their vegetarian meal. So I don’t eat because people don’t know the definition of vegetarian.

Amsterdam

Introduction

    We arrived in Amsterdam at 9:00 in the evening, and we had to find a hotel before we look for something fun to do in what is known probably worldwide as such an incredible party and drug town. Hell, I thought, if people go there for assorted drugs, maybe this is a place we should at least see.

    Don’t think we’ll do any drugs there, so I figured I better check to see if there is anything else in Amsterdam. Saw that Anne Frank’s house and Museum were there, as well as Van Gogh’s Museum, and I can’t help but think that it would be so excellent to go to Museums in Europe, especially ones that are the European country the Artist is from. The Van Gogh Museum has the richest collection in the world of works by Vincent van Gogh. The museum has over 200 paintings, 500 sketches and 700 letters from the artist, as well as his collection of Japanese prints.

    Dozens of museums in Amsterdam draw all types of art fans to the city. There is something for everyone. People know the route to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, but there are other museums and art galleries in Amsterdam as well. Amsterdam has some fifty museums which attract many millions of visitors each year. I’m interested in seeing the Anne Frank house. If you know of The Diary of Anne Frank, you know that Anne and her family hid from the German occupation forces until they were betrayed and deported. The Anne Frank House will hopefully give an impression of the life of Anne Frank, in which the diary takes a central role.

    I read that the Beurs van Berlage is one of the world’s most important architectural monuments, so I’m hoping I can find some good photography outside the building.Ê

    There’s a Biblical Museum there, with a ton of archaeological finds from ancient Egypt, centuries-old models of the temple of Solomon and Herod, and also religious objects from the Jewish and Christian traditions.

    I was interested in the Van Gogh Museum, but I also heard about the Rembrandt house, where Rembrandt lived between 1639 and 1660, that has 250 of the 300 etchings Rembrandt created. Rijksmuseum has the largest collection of art in the Netherlands, so I imagine that all of these places to see (including a ton of additional museums I didn’t bother mentioning in this), we’ll keep ourselves really busy.

05-21-03

Train to Amsterdam

    So the Thalys (which we called “Mach 2,” because it was so fast), gave free mini sandwiches and a fruit bowl (which was orange pieces and currant, and the currant definitely left something to be desired...), with your choice of drink. I tried a white wine (like the French red we had before), and John had the beer they had and recommended (Mae’s). They called it the best Belgium beer, and it was excellent.

05-22-03 (Thursday)

1:34 AM

    Amsterdam is not open late. There aren’t many people in the bar at all - I mean, there are three or four people in each bar.

    No lie

    I mean, I know I’m sounding like a snot, but New Orleans has stuff going on until maybe 3:00 AM on the weekends, maybe at least 1:00 AM on the weekdays, and we had to walk around in I don’t know how many circles and in how many alleys looking for a bar with anything happening.

    That and if you try to look for a bar in Chicago, you can find something open until maybe 4:00 on the weekends without a problem.

    I know, I know, I know, they have legal drugs there. They say Marijuana is legal and ’Magic Mushrooms’ are considered a “soft drug” (I didn’t know powerful hallucinogenic drugs were considered ’soft drugs,’ but what the Hell, I guess that that’s the beauty of socialism), but no one serves Marijuana unless you’re in a coffee shop (the capitalist in me says that makes sense, because if you’re drinking alcohol (a relaxant) at a bar, you don’t want Marijuana knocking your paying guests unconscious, so starting then off with the “I-wanna-get-wired-and-I-wanna-drug-that-will-keep-me-awake-for-hours” drug, caffiene, might be a good idea when you want to mellow them customers out with pot), even through I didn’t want coffee and I wanted to see the Marijuana cycle goin’ on in Amsterdam.

    We ordered drinks at a bar, and we then found out that that only accepted cash. After I ordered a B-52 for me as well as a Long Island Iced Tea, and John got a “Planter’s Punch” (something that he kept saying was better when he was on vacation and the Jamaicans make it for him with every ounce of expansive hard liquor they could find to make the mixed drink taste better). That’s when we got the total (we had to pay in what little cash we had left, after getting cash once on this trip already) of 27.50 Euros.

    This pissed me off, and I said we had to go to a place next that accepted credit cards, and the only place we could find was a Mexican restaurant that wanted us to eat food; we each ordered a soup (Tomato and French Onion, if you wanted the details), and we only got to drink one half liter each of Heineken there.

    So what does that mean for the night for me? It means that I didn’t see any pot (translation: I didn’t see any on any menus, I didn’t see anyone smoking it, I didn’t see anyone offering it, I saw nothing), it means I barely got to drink (I paid almost 30 Euros for two point five weak drinks and I had to spend another 19Euros to buy two orders of soup to be able to drink two Heinekens).

    Interesting evening.

    It was also “cobblestone country,” and I can at least say the hotel was gorgeous, and they had a night breakfast for us. They even held our luggage for the day after we checked out before we left for Luxembourg.

    While we were in Amsterdam for the day, we went to the Anne Frank House, which was really cool to be in the house she hid in and see films and artifacts in English as well as in Dutch.

    Okay, I’m not into the drugs. But At least I saw the place, and hopefully we’ll get to the Anne Frank House and the Vincent Van Gogh Museum tomorrow before we leave for Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

Introduction

    There’s a gong from The Smiths called “Ask.” One set of lines are:

    Spending warm Summer days indoors

    Writing frightening verse

    To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

    And when we were looking for places to go, I saw Luxembourg, and I jokingly thought, hey maybe there’s a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg... We laughed, but we knew it was a place where we could stop and visit.

    Then we saw that in order to visit there we’d have to stay the night there. So, in the midst of our travels to Museums and memorable sights, we’ll stop in this small country Luxembourg.

    Looking for information on Luxembourg, I found this information off the internet:

    Not even big enough on most maps of Europe to contain the letters of its name, Lilliputian Luxembourg makes up in style what it lacks in size. Luxembourg enjoys a prosperity that nations many times larger aspire toward and envy. Visitors to the country pay for their luxury accordingly, but in exchange they find a wealth of spectacular verdant landscapes crisscrossed by rivers and dotted with the sort of rural hamlets that most people associate solely with fairy tales.

    This is not to say that Luxembourg is all swanky suits and medieval villas. And what’s most convenient, the capital is no more than an hour’s drive from anywhere else in the country, so you can truly get a sense of the lay of the land without spending a ton of time in doing so.

    The nation’s motto is inscribed everywhere throughout the capital - Mir w‘lle bleiwe wat mir sin - ’We want to remain what we are’.

    In such a small country, it is probably easy to retain and cherish the heritage that man European countries are known for. But because Luxembourg isn’t as well known as other European countries, it is probably easy for them to do.

    On this train we stopped in Maastricht in the Netherlands on our way to Luxembourg, and since this apparently was a commuter train, we had to listen to two sets of strangers have conversations in Dutch, which we sat there in silence. But John got the feeling that this train didn’t go directly to Luxembourg, so he asked, and he answered in French. John had to ask if he spoke English, and then we found out that we had to run to get to another train so we could make it to Luxembourg. We grabbed our stuff and looked at the schedule and saw that we had to bolt up the escalator, down the hall, then up another escalator to get on a train to Liege. We got to the train thirty seconds before that train left.

    We thought Liege was a stopping point on the way to Luxembourg, so John asked when they checked our tickets if this train goes to Luxembourg, and they said it didn’t. They found out for us that we’d have to go to another train to make it to Luxembourg (our third train for this commute), just so we could get to our next stop.

    Wow, our plans said one train, through these two cities in two countries. Didn’t know we had to guess and change trains a few times to pull it off.

    While in Liege, where they spoke a dialect of French, we saw cool bridges and buildings

    We saw two castles on the road so far, even though I didn’t have time to take a picture before we went to our next country.

05-23-03 (Friday)

12:25 AM

    Oh my gosh, I don’t know what to make out of this night. It stared off really... well, really off, then it got better than a night in Amsterdam for us be the end of the night.

    Let me explain.

    We started off by looking for camera batteries for my Minolta Maxxum 5000, because it couldn’t take a picture with the energy it had (Hell, it couldn’t focus the film or set the film speed or aperture, and it’s battery would die when you tried to manually override its automatic functions). But no places that would sell batteries were open, so we had to return the camera to the hotel and attempt to go out.

    We walked down the one main block and there was really only one worthwhile place to go to for a drink, and it had maybe three people in it and it was blaring a really bad song... so we decided to move on. The next block was literally filled with strip clubs, and I said that even if there was a bar in this block that wasn’t a strip club, everyone that would be in it would be male and I would feel really wrong in the joint. Actually, as we were walking down the strip club block, I felt a few stares from a few men that were also walking down the street.

    When John thought there would be nothing else and we should go back to that crappy bar with bad music, he suggested walking back down strip club lane to get there, and I really did not feel comfortable doing that (I know, I’m a prude, but what the Hell, I’m female, give me some leeway on these things in such a sexist society...). We walked to the next block and saw other shops and bars and strip clubs to check out, but we still opted to go back to the bar with the bad musc we first saw.

    The bartenders there knew very little English, so we managed to order beers, and while I got a standby John got a local specialty that he liked (but I thought was bad). We looked at the menu again and I saw they had Bacardi Breezers there, so I asked for two (because I drink them like they’re water, apparently) and I asked for flavor choices, and she mentioned peach, which I did not know existed (I knew of Lime, Lemon, Pineapple and Orange). So I drank these peach things like they were good-tasting water, and John ordered a scotch and Coke mixed drink that he said he liked. We were getting to enjoy ourselves sitting there talking (maybe it was my liquor? I don’t know...), but after John figured out the reference of the bar name of “Happy Days” to the sitcom and the old music and the pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and James Dean on the walls, we ordered a round of a Bacardi Breezer Peach and he got a J&B mixed drink bottle, and the people that owned the bar gave half of the bar free chaser shots (which were good).

    We got through the last of the drinks, which cost us only about two thirds of the price for one round of drinks in Amsterdam, and we happily made our way. Walking home, John said that for his experience in Luxembourg, the bar prices were better than and there were more people than and the atmosphere was better than his experience in Amsterdam.

    Actually, to quote him, he said, “Actually, I said Amsterdam sucked.”

    Okay, we all have our crosses to bear, but this night in Luxembourg wasn’t an effort at all. By then end of the night we really enjoyed ourselves.

    We stayed in a hotel that, like Amsterdam, had two twin beds pushed together in the hotel room, and we also have an additional thin bed pushed to the side, like a sofa (was it for a child in this room, or a third adult?).

    Because it was the first nice day on our trip, I wore shorts for sightseeing when we walked through Luxembourg.

    Now, I think we did pretty well while not knowing the language in trying to fit in and not cause problems with anyone in any of these countries, but I never knew that “shorts” as clothing was pretty much only an American thing, and that no one in Europe wore short - especially women, who only revealed their legs by wearing skirts. So I was the only one wearing shorts, and I think guys grinned looking at me (were they pleased with seeing legs or did they think I was a whore?), and all the women wouldn’t even look at me (I’m sure they thought I was the whore...).

    We stopped to eat at a bar where only men were taking their lunch break (yeah, I got lots of looks as a woman wearing shorts, and John didn’t understand how I could feel awkward there because I was being gawked at...), but people there did not speak English, so I decided to not even bother trying to eat. John ordered, but they had Bacardi Breezers at the bar, so I could keep myself occupied until we moved on to see more sights and take more pictures of churches.

    I had to think about how lush the wilderness is in Europe once I was walking around here. There was a lot of greenery, and it made me wonder if America had this much greenery and we just plowed it all down to create our urban nation.

Switzerland

Introduction

    Do you have a thing for chocolate?

    Well, John does, so I told him that if we go to Switzerland he could probably have the best chocolate in the world. I should have told him they’re also known for phenomenal cheeses, because I obsess over cheeses the way John obsesses over chocolate.

    The diversity of the landlocked, mountainous country is the essence of Switzerland. Still, it is best known for its fine cheeses and chocolate, watch making industry, and for its scenery. I even have a Swiss Army knife, just because there is something novel about having a real Swiss Army knife and get that Switzerland logo appearing on my own watch..

    The Alps and Pre-Alps cover 60% of the land, is that is not reason enough for the visiting.

05-23-03

    We passed a bunch of towns in France before we got to Zurich, Switzerland, but after a while, all of the scenery started to look the same, like we were driving through the Midwest United States. It started to look like driving from Ohio, to Indiana, to Iowa. Same hills, same foliage... Same expanse, looking for something new.

05-24-03

    after sightseeing, we took a 6 hour night train from Zurich (our stop after Luxembourg) with sleeper beds in shared rooms. We both were assigned the top bunks, and there were customs forms on all the beds. We panicked, because we thought we’d have to claim our beer bottles we had for our last day in Europe (in Salzburg, before we flew back to the United States). We crammed our luggage into what little space was available (we got there first, so I’m sure we took up more space than the other two people had...). I started drinking my beers, even though I didn’t want to drink (for fear of problem with carrying our liquor, although there had been no problems with it before). We then found out that the customs forms were for those people who were moving on to Budapest on the train, so after I opened by liquor, I found out that we didn’t need to worry about it - but I had to drink it because it was open now anyway...

    John slept terribly, but I, oddly enough, slept pretty well. John woke me at 3:45 in the morning (8:45 in the evening Chicago time) so we could get off the train to spend a few hours in Salzburg before we flew home.

Salzburg (again)

    Even though we were exhausted, I photographed more buildings in Salzburg. We even climbed to the top of a hill and photographed the outside of a castle.

But after the plane takes off, we stop in Frankfurt before heading home.

Frankfurt

05-24-03

4:35 PM

    The flight to Frankfurt was short, so guess what - we got a tomato and brie sandwich (which was actually really good) for our one hour flight.

    And there was so much forest when you looked at the landscape from above. Towns look like they took up about one quarter of all the land. Trees were packed everywhere.

    I’m really tired. I may attempt to nap on this flight back to the States.

Part Two, The Other Side

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

    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 Schöfferhofer 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 cafÂŽ 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 Löwenbräu 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 Schöfferhofer 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 Löwenbräu 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 cafÂŽ 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:

    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 Lasnamäe 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 Hyvääpäîvää — 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 “Veteöl,”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 København, or known as “merchant’s harbor” or “Paris of the North”, is known for café 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 it 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.

the Author, sitting outside in Helsinki, Finland 05/30/06

About the Author

    Janet Kuypers graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana with a degree in News/Editorial Communications Journalism (with computer science engineering studies). She had a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. In the early 1990s she was an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and edited to two literary magazines.
    Since she got fed up with her job as the art director of a few magazines for a publishing company, Janet Kuypers, to relieve the stress:
    (a) vents her twenty-something angst musically with acoustic bands called Mom’s Favorite Vase, Weeds and Flowers and the Second Axing, and attempts to learn to play the guitar,
    (b) writes so much that she irritates editors enough to get her published in books, magazines and on the internet over 8,800 times for writing or over 17,000 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and DiscoverU and has been interviewed on ArtistFirst dot com’s Internet radio station, and has repeatedly been highlighted with interviews and readings for years with WZRD 88.3 FM radio in Chicago,
    (c) turns that writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D and Order From Chaos,
    (d) writes so much that in order to make her feel like a big shot she gets ten books published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide to Feminism, Contents Under Pressure, Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), and etc.
    (e) gets tired of thinking about her own pathetic life, so runs a non-profit publishing company, where she does internet work and book design, and edits a literary and art magazine so she can read and broadcast other people’s depressing stories,
    (f) performs spoken word and music, both locally and across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam, in 2003 she hosted and performed weekly at a poetry and music open mic called Sing Your Life, starting in 2002 she was a featured performer, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images, in 2005 she started monthly iPodCasts and an Internet radio station of her work,
    or (g) all of the above.
    When doing all of that didn’t work, Janet decided to quit her job and travel around the United States and Mexico, writing travel journals (collected into a book called Changing Gears) and starting her first epic novel (The Key To Believing). She also released a final collection of poetry called Oeuvre, a final collection of prose called Exaro Versus, and an art book called L’arte.
    But after that work wasn’t enough, she thought she would try to get her life back into order by moving across the country once or twice, getting married and getting a house with fireplaces, a jacuzzi and a sauna. After venturing to Puerto Rico, to nine European countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, the Vatican City, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland), and to China (Shanghai and Beijing), Kuypers thought she would (because she’s psycho on never being at rest) do more design work, master compact discs and Performance Art shows in Chicago, and yes, have more books of hers published. Doesn’t she know how to rest?