Oh, no, no -- I was talking to the ticket machine

Last night I was pulling into a parking structure I'd used once before, and I realized that last time I'd very adamantly flicked off the car behind me for no reason at all.

The first time I drove into that parking structure, I pushed the little button and just as the ticket came out of the slot and I was about to retrieve it, the car behind me honked. This made me very annoyed, and frankly, angry, so I flicked him off. Then I realized it was dark and he might not have seen my basic, inside-the-car finger, so I stuck my arm out the open window and flicked him off some more.

Last night when I drove into that parking structure, I pushed the little button and just as the ticket came out of the slot and I was about to retrieve it, the car behind me honked. Only there was no car behind me.

And that's when I realized the ticket machine makes a little honking sound as it dispenses the ticket.

And that's when I began to feel a little bit like a bitch.

Maybe *I'll* buy gooooooooogle

Do you realize that on top of buying everything else on the Web, Google also owns www.gogle.com, www.gogole.com and www.gooogle.com? Yup.

A tribute

As I noted before, Slate has had some of the best political stuff during the elections. Here's Slate's tribute to Rumsfeld, and if you don't want to click on the link, here are some of my favorite parts:

(The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld... taken directly from press conference transcripts)

Glass Box
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it. It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it, But—
Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

What's this 'competence' you speak of?

I was interviewing Linda Stender yesterday and we were talking about why she decided to run for Congress in the first place, and in the midst of a pretty standard rant about Bush, she said the following:

"The president has finally realized that he's got a problem on his hands, and that's long overdue. There's no accountability; there was no demand for -- competence."

I liked that. It didn't fit in the context of my story, but I liked it.

It seems to have happened...

But I'm still not completely convinced Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Frist, Foley, Abramoff, Ney, Weldon, Sherwood, and for good measure, maybe Jesus, aren't going to jump out of their respective hiding places and yell, "SURPRISE!" because this last year has just been a big funny, and none of it really happened at all. Meaning come 2007, the GOP would still have control of Congress, Rummy would still have control of the military, and Hastert would still be third in line for the presidency.

Now that the results are in and the campaigns are over, I'll share with you some of my favorite moments:

• The National Republican Congressional Committee's ad about Michael Arcuri and the sex hotline. Click on the picture to the left to see it on YouTube. Personally, I'm impressed with the footage the NRCC found of Arturi lickin' his lips and making eyes at something in front of him. When Tim Russert asked NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds about it on Meet the Press last weekend, Reynolds' response was, "Politics isn't always fair."

• This graf from an article in Slate, which had some of the best writing throughout the entire campaign.

If there were an Oscar for political slime, it would go to "Twilight Zone," a spot run by Vernon Robinson, a congressional challenger in North Carolina. In 60 seconds, the ad manages to tie Democrat Brad Miller to Osama, gay marriage, "lesbians and feminists," activist judges, infanticide, flag-burning, racial quotas, space aliens, illegal immigrants, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. In another ad, Robinson stamps "XXX" across Miller's face, claiming that his opponent refused to support body armor for troops in Iraq but that he "pays for sex" and that he "spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia."

• Today's first press conference in which Bush announced that Rumsfeld would step down. Specifically, the following quotes:
--->The question was why did Bush say he intended to keep Rumsfeld on as long as he was president. The answer was...

Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was: You going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president? And my answer was, you know, they're going to stay on.
And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.
And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer.

In other words, you... outright lied?

--->During a long-winded answer to the same question:

Actually, I thought we were going to do fine yesterday. Shows what I know.

• Republican incumbent Richard Pombo losing to Democrat McNerney in California's 11th District, AKA Tracy, home to the reddest group of H2-driving, environment-killing elephants I've ever lived among.

• Jim Ryun, who I love and respect when he's wearing running shoes but want to strangle when any words come out of his mouth, losing his bid for a seventh (?) term in Kansas' 2nd District.

• Ferguson's Stender-is-a-spender-and-a-double-dipping-pension-padder campaign ads. Personally, I think he should have kept with the rhyme scheme throughout, though. Maybe, "Stender is a spender, a double-dipping pension bender, and a mean and slutty big rear-ender." Sure, it doesn't make sense, but who needs to make sense when it's Rhyme Time? It also would have given me something interesting to write about the race, which then might have allowed my article to run in full in this other paper and not get cut off in a place that makes it look like I never bothered to address the double-dipping pension padder's side of things.

• This photo to the left, of Ned Lamont at the polls.

• And finally, in the end the reason for the extent of the Dems' win was Foley. Voters in Utah voted against the Republican because a congressman in Florida has a thing for teenage boys. Democrats made huge gains and defeated Republicans, often by significant margins, throughout the country.

Meanwhile, in Foley's 16th District, the Democrat barely won. Tim Mahoney got 49 percent of the vote while 48 percent went to Republican Joe Negron's, who joined the race barely five weeks ago.

Best kitten ever update

Although I haven't received any direct inquiries, I'm assuming everyone's been wondering about how Fiver is doing. Thus, I will post below some pictures I just got from his new (or I guess not-so-new anymore) Mom. You may remember I gave him up a year ago this week.


At left, on top of a dog 20-times his size.

Below, on his new Mom's lap (she thinks his name is Jimmy, but it's Fiver).


At bottom/left (depending on your screen size), curled up with a fat cat, like A.M.

Now, let's be honest here: the cutest kitten on the face of the earth or the cutest kitten in the history of the world?

What I'm covering tomorrow:

A Pop Warner cheerleading competition and a chili cookoff.

1) I thought I got away from cheerleading when I got away from sports, as cheerleaders in Tracy always seemed to assume they belonged on the sports page.
2) I love that my work makes a difference in the world.
3) Anyone who wants to swing by and kill me before tomorrow, please do.

Stop bothering me

People are bothering me about posting on this thing more, which, well, is bothering me. So I'm posting on it more. Even though I have nothing to say. See what you've made me do? I've now written a boring and pointless post. That'll teach you.

I'm sorry, you'll have to call back after 6 p.m. today

What happens if there's a fire when all the area firefighters and fire engines are in a parade?

Wait, you're not a cat...

I was covering a small group of women who gathered to talk about politics and the upcoming midterm elections, and all of a sudden a small child came up to me ("that lady") and reached her arms up in pick-me-up fashion. I told her I didn't think that was such a good idea, but all the ladies around the table assured me it was a fantastic idea. I'd run out of arguments.

Here the child sits in my lap, and I look at the photographer with a what-the-hell-is-going-on-here smile. He perceives it as a boy-do-I-love-when-small-children-sit-on-me smile, and continues snapping pictures. He gives me the picture the next day.

Now. If you'll be so kind to notice, the kid, in her infinite wisdom, actually had no interest in "that lady" at all. There are candies on the table in front of me. She is eyeing them very closely.

A few minutes later she asks me, "Can I have a candy?" Before I can answer that maybe she should ask her mother, she nods to herself an emphatic 'yes' and reaches forward to take the candy.

Breaking News: Erica is correct

In the past, my Southern friends (OK, so Brian, and sometimes Eric) have criticized me for referring to what they call "toboggins" as "beanies." For all the non-Southern people out there, I should mention they pronounce it TOE-boggin.

With respect, I would like to note that the United States Supreme Court happens to agree with *me*.

In an oral argument yesterday about the constitutionality of a victim's family wearing photo buttons during a murder trial, none other than Justice Antonin Scalia addressed the issue of "beany hats."

You don't allow people to come into most courtrooms in tank shirts, and we
don't allow people to, you know, to wear beany hats. Everything that is
inappropriate for a courtroom is not necessarily inappropriate because it would
prejudice the trial; isn't that right?

Now, I'm no law expert or anything, but I'm *pretty* sure this means I'm right and you're wrong.

Phone on fire

Today I plugged in my phone, which had been sitting in a box for about eight months while I was in Europe, China, Va., etc., and I'm 99 percent sure that if I hadn't unplugged it when I did, it would have blown up. Daniel says it's just dust that gathered on the phone, and that I should just get one of those dust-blowing things and clean it off. But the idea of plugging it back in still scares me. Ideas? Do you, as loyal readers, agree with Daniel's lack of concern and think I should clean it off and plug it in? Disagree and think I should toss the phone? Agree but want to see me blow myself up? What's the verdict?

Delaying the torture

I'm sitting on Brian's couch in North Carolina right now, putting off the inevitable: locking the cats in their carriers, loading them into the car and driving the 11 hours back up to New Jersey. This procrastination is not a very good idea, because the longer I wait the later I'll get back, and the more likely I am to run into huge amounts of traffic in D.C. But here I am, posting on my blog for the first time in weeks instead of driving.

But I don't wanna.

I already drove down here from Jersey, but at least on the way down I got to stop and spend the night inVa. so it wasn't a straight shot. I also didn't have two miserable cats in the car with me, which generally strangles the fun out of just about everything -- and certainly strangles the fun out of something that didn't have much fun in it to begin with.

And I'm just getting my cats to love me again. They've essentially forgotten who I am (the only time Giz comes when I call now is when I have a comb in my hand, and that's just because he's a combing hoar. So if I trap them in little crates for 11 hours, they're going to be sad and annoyed and just generally dislike me even more.

Also, Gizmo is very cute, lying there happily on the chair, with no idea that he's about to face miserable-ness. Blast.

Maybe they mean Utah Highway Mileage

When gas mileage estimates say "highway mileage," they *so* aren't talking about New Jersey highways. Gas mileage here bites.

Ethics and baked goods

I'm still confused about how it came to be that I wrote this story. And I'm even more confused about how it ended up on the cover of the Metro section.
Conflict in Cookies?

Happy Birthday, or--

Today was my birthday, and I was very excited to walk into work and find a paper bag sitting on my desk. I wondered what it was. I assumed it must be cookies.

I was wrong.

It was an empty bag from someone's Chinese food. All that was left was a little baggie of those crunchy noodles.

And behind it was a plate of brownie crumbs.

Apparently there had been a party and my desk and I hadn't been invited.

My Hallmark moments

I'm not sure what's more pathetic:
1) That I spent my Friday night with a farting dog watching a made-for-TV movie on the Hallmark Channel; or 2) That I realized as the movie was ending that I'd already seen it.
Anyone?

In other news, here's my Clinton story. I'd like to inform from the outset that I had *nothing* to do with the lead. (Whereas the rest of the story is pure genius, of course).
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060908/NEWS01/609080474&SearchID=73256338015529

Now. Some Bill Clinton quotes I wasn't able to fit into the Clinton story that I was moderately amused by or interested in:
• On fear mongering: "If you're full of anxiety, it's hard to think."
• On acting unilaterally: "One of the reasons the world gets mad at us is they think we act allone whenever we can and only cooperate when everything's gone to the devil and we need 'em."
• On his term "Home Improvement," which he cites as the things the U.S. needs to do: "Hillary says I shouldn't use that phrase because it's a show on cable television."
• On the lack of universal healthcare (not that he had a better answer): We spend 16 percent of our income on healthcare, while no other country spends more than 11 percent. Only 84 percent of Americans have health insurance. No other rich country has less than 100 percent of its citizens insured.
• On bombing countries quickly to avoid appearing weak: "When we think about using violence, we ought to talk first. ... When they told me if you don't act today, you're going to seem weak, I would always ask one question: 'Can we bomb them tomorrow?'"
• When talking about his federation that raises money for healthcare and AIDS prevention and treatment in Rwanda, he referred to himself as a "bleeding heart cheapskate."
• On the current administration's approach to crime (i.e. cutting funding to hire more cops and letting the assault weapon ban lapse): "Having fewer cops and more guns in the hands of criminals is not a very good anti-crime strategy and I doubt it will work in the long run."
• On minimum wage (which, he raised only once in his administration, and that raise didn't even keep up with the rate of inflation): "We should raise the minimum wage immediately."
• On offsetting additional spending with budget cuts: "We've got to stop pretending that 2 and 2's not 4. It's still 4. The truth is all I did was bring arithmetic back to Washington."
• On tax cuts for the upper echelon: "We shouldn't be growing these huge deficits to fund tax cuts that I don't need. I think Bill Clinton should pay for our soldiers in Afghanistan."
• On saving energy: "I personally changed all the lightbulbs in my house to compact flourescent lightbulbs." (I'm picturing this as a team thing between him and Hillary)

So that's Clinton. It was a good time, even though the woman next to me seemed to think that it was an interactive event. She whooped, cheered and often called out, "THAT'S RIGHT!" But I had to put a stop to it when she *raised her hand* and screamed "I have something on that!"

I can't wrap my tiny little brain around this one, but maybe you can

I've already received two e-mails from people with this link, so I figured I'd nip it in the bud before more people send it to me.

http://www.slate.com/id/2148759/?GT1=8592

For those of you who don't want to click on a link, the gist is that a new study was released suggesting that perhaps short people generally get paid less because short people are generally dumber.

And as far as my friends are concerned, short people are apparently more violent, too, because the two e-mails I got with the link had the following subject lines:
• Don't throw the nearest thing on your desk
• Don't kill me please

Am I really that scary (and dumb)?

Masterpiecing

For those of you who haven't been keeping abreast of my whereabouts, I have been very diligently creating such masterpieces as this:

Dinner's on newspaper contest winnerHome News Tribune Online
09/2/06STAFF REPORT EAST BRUNSWICK — Stanley Pich isn't one of those people who
wins things. So when the 79-year-old East Brunswick resident was chosen
yesterday as the winner of the Home News Tribune's monthly Win A Grand contest,
he was more than a little surprised. "I was greatly surprised," said Pich, who
said he's been entering the contest ever since it began. "It was the best news I
heard in a long time." Pich, a retired postal supervisor who has lived in
Central Jersey his whole life, has been reading the 001 ? 0015.07paper and its
predecessors for "a good 50 years." The father of three and grandfather of four
said he'd use the money to take his family out. "I guess I'll take the entire
family and some friends out for a good dinner," Pich said. "I'll put it to good
use — that's for sure." Pich's entry was chosen from among about 60,000 entries
by Joseph Cavone, the newspaper's vice president for marketing.

It's like poetry, isn't it?

In other, and slightly (only slightly) more exciting news than Mr. Pich's winnings, I will be covering a speech by Bill Clinton at the State Theater in New Brunswick tonight.

Ultimately, the story's just going to be a boring recap of what was said and who was there, much like covering an elementary school performance. But still -- Bill Clinton.

It'd be better if I had a cat to pet...

Dude. I forgot what it was like to sit at a desk for eight hours. I also forgot what it was like to have everyone saying, "don't quote me on any of this," regarding issues with the political sensitivity of my big toe.

Snakes in the woods!

I like to think that in the likely situation of a gang boss releasing venomous snakes on a plane, I would be a hero. I would save babies and puppies and walk away victorious.

But over the weekend I was running in the woods in Greensboro, N.C., and I discovered that I would *not* be heroic at all. In fact, I would make girly noises and sprint away as fast as I could possibly go.

I know this because that is exactly what I did when I saw snakes in the woods in Greensboro. After seeing two different snakes slither across the running path, I spent the rest of my run dodging tree roots like they were going to eat me and screaming whenever a) a squirrel ran by, b) I saw a suspiciously curvy root, or c) the sun peeked through the trees and made a slithery looking shadow.

And here's the other way I know I'm not that brave:

I was driving in New Jersey today when a very large bug started darting around on the inside of my car. I screamed and swerved, then got my bearings and opened the window. The bug did not want to leave. I tried to coax him out the window by poking near him with my Mapquest (I didn't want to actually poke him, as he might fall on me). He still wouldn't leave. Eventually, I had to pull into a McDonald's parking lot and get out of the car. This was not easy, as I was driving on a highway. I also had to climb over the parking break and out the passenger-side door since I had seen the bug on the driver-side door.

Then I couldn't find the bug. So I opened all four doors and all of a sudden he came running out from under some boxes in the back seat. He disappeared again.

I stood in the McDonald's parking lot for 15 minutes trying to find the bug. I even got the McDonald's trash guy to move a box because I thought the bug might be under the box. He didn't understand English and was very confused at my request. He thought I might want him to carry the box inside, and then he kept staring back at me as I stood in the parking lot, smacking a towel around in the car, banging on the seat and doing other strange things.

I never found the bug, but I think he may have left when I wasn't looking. If he didn't leave, and if I get into a car accident in the next few days, you'll know why.

Snakes on a plane!

I saw it last night. There were snakes. On a plane. Biting people in very bad places. It was a good time.

Why they should teach grammar/vocab in schools

Well, I've decided to try to sublet a room for the first month and then spend that month looking for a one-bedroom, and in my search I've run into some real fun.

Why they should teach grammar in schools:

hi its a room in my house so it is furnished the rent
depends on if you will help out with the place like cleaning and
whatever are u in la now i would really have to trust you so you
need to tell me as much as possible about you why only workin here for
a month what will u be doing tell me as much as you can thankls

Why they should teach vocab in schools:

Hi, I have a room 5 minutes from East Brunswick. Please let me know
how long you pretend to rent it for and what you're looking to pay.

Apartment fun

Well I've finally found a job, which means the apartment hunt has begun. So far, I've discovered that I will have to either a) live in a town called "one of the best places in the country to retire," a few miles outside of the city where I'll be working; b) Not eat, and instead use my entire paycheck to pay rent; or c) Live in a cardboard box until the affordable apartments open up on Sept. 15 or Oct. 1.

My other option is deciphering e-mails such as this from Craigslist posters:

My e-mail:
I'm writing to inquire about the one-bedroom apartments you have available. Is one still available? When's the earliest possible move-in date? What isthe square footage? Are any utilities included in the rent?
Thank you.

The response:
Dear Erica,
The apartment is very nice and clean. I would like for you to see the apartment to see if like the apartment. You could move in any time and date.... But you would have to fill out an appilcation.
Thank you

Honing my brokeness

When unemployed, it's best to spend as little money as possible, since you don't have any coming in. To conserve your most limited resource. It's just smart.

That is why I locked myself out of the house today and had to call a locksmith to pick the lock for $75.

How Cool I Am

So I took one of the last metros last night, around midnight. Since it was a Friday night and all, everyone on the metro was wearing nice, stylish, going-out clothes, and talking loudly with their groups of friends.

I was wearing ripped jeans and carrying an apple, a pear and a book.

It actually worked

Last night I suggested to the people I was hanging out with that we make snickerdoodles. And we made snickerdoodles.

I've reached a conclusion:

I'm never going to find a job, ever.
Also...
I don't remember this paper rejection letter thing from last time around. I've gotten this flurry of nicely typed letters in the mail telling me how un-qualified I am to work at Buttfuck Times A, B or C, but how they'll certainly keep my resume on file in case Buttfuck Weekly A, B or C needs an unqualified person like me. Is this a new fad, or have I just become less qualified in the last year and a half? It's like they're telling me, "We dislike you 39 cents much."

So yesterday I sent out five applications -- three online and two via snail mail -- and I'm hoping for five rejection letters to come in the mail within the next week. I'm thinking about making a book out of them. The good thing is The New Republic gives out three-month subscriptions with their rejections (which they, incidentally, send by e-mail -- they don't even dislike me 39 cents much), so if they keep rejecting me I'll eventually have a lifetime subscription.

I had a tryout in Jersey about a week ago, but I got into an I-can-talk-louder-than-you fight with the editor, so I'm not so sure they'll "be in touch," as promised.

And I guess that's about it. Now, I'm going to go for a run, because in addition to being broke, unemployed and unqualified, I'm fat.

Never go to Utah.

So I've successfully made my way across the country, and am in North Carolina with Brian. I'll drive up to Virginia tomorrow, at which point I guess I'll be officially living again on the East Coast.

The cross-country trip took seven days with a very long detour to Bozeman, Montana. We passed through 16 states, in the following order: California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina.

Between the two of us, we only accumulated two tickets; Brian for running an invisible stop sign in Kenab, Utah, and me for passing an invisible cop at 91 mph about five miles before getting the hell out of Utah. So the consensus is we're never going back to Utah.

Along the way, we saw the Grand Canyon; a place in Bozeman where Lewis and Clark camped for four days while figuring out how to pass through 10 waterfalls in the Missouri River; Yellowstone; Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse in South Dakota; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Louisville Slugger Museum in Louisville. We also went to a couple of bars in Kansas City, where we stayed with Kansas Paul, who I met in Brussels. Here are some things we learned along the way:

1) Wyoming is so far to the right that even its roads are red.
2) Never go to Utah.
3) Waffle House is too good for the good people of Western Kentucky. They prefer "Waffle Steak."
4) Montana has the hottest girls (this is Brian's verdict), and Kansas City the hottest guys (go figure).
5) Even the people in Kansas think the people in Kansas are bigoted. You pass by myriad cars with bumper stickers that say, "Kansas: it's as bigoted as you think."
6) There are at least 17,000 places called "Bear Country" in Montana and Idaho, but you will never actually see any bears.
7) Valium doesn't work so well on cats (The vet gave me a prescription for them, I swear).
8) The people carving Mount Rushmore had to buy new expensive equipment to avoid delays caused by dirty laundry.
9) Looking for the Gateway Arch, which towers over the rest of the skyline in St. Louis, could very easily leave you en route to Chicago.
10) Brian fails as a motivator to do pushups and situps every night.

So that's it. The trip. I'll post pictures as soon as they finish uploading...

The plan

So, just to keep everyone updated, I'll be leaving to drive across the country on Friday. I'm staying in Fairfax, VA, a suburb of D.C., until I find a job, which I'm going to go ahead and assume will happen immediately, because the only possible reason that these East Coast newspapers I've applied to aren't knocking down my door is that my door's too far away -- it can't possibly have anything to do with me, cause I'm great. But you all know that already, or why else would you be reading my blog?

So Brian, the best person ever, will be flying in tomorrow, and we'll drive up to Modesto and load my stuff into my car on Thursday. Then, on Friday morning, we'll go to the apartment of the two other best people ever, Sara and Kirby, and pick up my cats. Then we'll leave from there.

We'll make some stops along the way -- specifically, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Bozeman, Montana, and Kansas City, before dropping Brian and the cats off in North Carolina (the people I'm staying with in VA are allergic).

That's it. The plan. Now stop wasting time and go find me a job.

Nomadding around

I don't wanna hear it, Aviva. I'm making it a verb.

So I returned from China on Wednesday, and I'm in Santa Monica now. But it looks like I'll probably be driving across the country very soon... looks like beginning July 7. Now let's not get too excited here. This isn't because I have a job, or, for that matter, any prospects. It *is* because I believe I will never, ever get a job on the East Coast if I don't move to the East Coast. So that's what I'm doing. Nomadding.

For now, and into the future, I can be reached on my cell phone, the same number I've had as long as I've had a cell phone, which I think I e-mailed to just about everyone who ever checks this thing. If I haven't sent it to you, feel free to e-mail and ask (Gotta keep the number away from all my crazy fans who follow my every move, of course). And I can also be reached at my brother's number till July 6.

So that's the word.

I'll keep everyone updated.

Some keen Shanghai salesmanship

I was looking at a skirt in a store in this mall under the train station in People's Square, and the woman comes up to me and says, "No, big." This led me to look more closely at the tag on the skirt that I had simply been glancing at, and I saw that it was a size small, which is, in fact, my size. So why was she telling me that this was too big for me?

She wasn't.

When I realized this I looked at her and asked, "I'm big?"

"Yes," she said. "BIIIG," and she made the fatty gesture, like the circumference of my waist is approximately equivalent to that of Jupiter's largest moon.

"I no big," I said, and then started laughing because a) I was being called a fatty by a salesgirl, and b) I had just used broken English to match her broken English.

"BIIIIIIG," she said, not understanding why I was arguing this obvious fact. Then she looked through the row of skirts and took out a Large for me. "Big," she said again, and then looked at the label. "Laaaaarge."

"No," I said. "Small."

She was very confused by this statement, apparently thinking her English vocabularly may be deceiving her. So she put her hands on my waist to see what size I truly was.

I removed them.

"No. Big." I said. "Just. Looking."

She looked confused.

"Just. Looking." I repeated. "You. Leave."

"OK, OK, you look," she said, at this point realizing she'd done something wrong but having no idea what it was.

I left, too, and have decided not to do any more shopping in China. I mean, I did put on a few pounds in Europe, but I ain't no Large-- I don't care what country I'm in.

Things I've learned about the Shanghainese

1) They talk. Loud.
2) They perpetually honk their horns. There could be one person on the road. And that one person would still be honking his horn. In Shanghai the traffic lights turn yellow right before they turn green, and I had a bus driver the other day who would honk his horn when it turned yellow.
3) When you're trying to figure out how much things cost, instead of showing you the numbers with their fingers like in every other country I've been to, they make strange hand gestures, like their fingers are doing a little dance. Then they absolutely don't understand why you don't understand.
4) People with motorcycles ride along on the sidewalk, and honk and pedestrians. This is completely legal.
5) At least half the cabbies have no idea where they're going.
6) They like their humidity. They even make sure that it's humid *inside.*
7) The hospitals are dirtier than the train stations.

In any case, I'm going to take a big stride here and not go up to 10. That's right. I'm going to leave my list at seven, which is not only *not* a multiple of 5 -- it's an odd number. And I'm OK with that.

Anyway Shanghai isn't so bad. I've been to the zoo, where I had to flip out on a couple of people who were harrassing the cougar and the leopard (it was fun -- I finally had to show them the throat-slitting gesture to make them understand). I've been to a couple of temples, and I've been to this market, where you can get any name brand product for about $5. They're all knock-offs, but they're made by the same people who work for the companies anyway.

So that's Shanghai, so far. Today there's not much to do because a huge portion of the city is closed off because of some conference. Apparently you're allowed there but they don't recommend it.

Shanghai

So it looks like I can update my blog, but I can't view it from behind the great firewall of China. Anyway I got to Shanghai last night, and I'll be here through the 20th. Haven't done anything yet, but I'll keep you guys updated on things as I do them...

Shoulda been a zookeeper...

So I'm headed to China for two weeks on Monday, and I had to apply for a Chinese visa. Well everything was all set, the place told me I could pick up my visa on Friday, and all of a sudden I got a call from them yesterday.

Apparently the Chinese consulate was very concerned about my career, which is listed as "journalist."

I hadn't even thought about that, especially since I had kind of thought of China as a much more progressive place than, say, Morocco, where I decided not to write "journalist" on the visa application. I wrote "sportswriter," Nicole wrote "zookeeper," and neither of us ran into any trouble.

As for the Chinese consulate, I had to go back in yesterday and write a letter saying that I did not plan to practice any of my journalism while in China. I wonder if I would have had to write that letter if I'd listed my profession as witch?

Back...

Well I'm back in the States. It took more than 48 hours and I'm going to bitch to American Airlines until they give me a) flight vouchers or b) a LOT of cookies. So I'm going to go to sleep now, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I survived it. I'll write a more detailed post about Morocco and the trip as a whole when I get a chance. And of course post some pictures.

Heads up for anyone who wants to reach me -- I haven't turned my cell phone back on yet and I'm not sure that I will until around June 20 (although I haven't decided for sure). So if you want to reach me (and seriously, why *wouldn't* you?), you can call on my brother's home phone. I'm not posting his number on his blog (he gets enough calls he doesn't want, and in the end, he's bigger than me), so you can shoot me an e-mail if you need the number. For Samo guys, it's the same number I had in high school.

Madrid/Casablanca

Well we had to slaughter some shrimps, but we finally got the good paella that Nicole was hoping for. Apparently the paella varies throughout Spain -- the kind in Barcelona and Cadaques is different from the kind in Madrid. We went to a place that was recommended in my Let's Go book (thanks, Ben), but what Let's Go said was about 12 euros per person ended up being about 20. And eating the shrimp required cutting off the heads, etc., but once we got past the beady little eyes staring at us, it was really good.

The second day in Madrid we went to Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which has a really diverse mix of 19th and 20th century art (ranging from Spanish to Dutch to samplings of a few others), modern art, and impressionism post-impressionism. I mostly went to see the impressionism, since I've kinda gotten my fill of the rest for now. There was one room filled with Monet, Van Gogh and Pisarro, which was pretty awesome.

From there we went to Parque del Retiro and lay out in the sun by a waterfall at the lake for a while, and I finally convinced Nicole she wanted to rent a rowboat with me and row around in the lake (it was 4.50 euros for 45 minutes). I eventually got the thing floating along in the right direction, and it took about 15 minutes for me to realize that I was getting very seasick on the rowboat. We didn't stay out the whole 45 minutes out of fear of me throwing up. So I can't really do things like that.

Anyway, it was hot as hell there, and we ran out of energy before making it to the modern art museum, so we pretty much just chilled in a tapa bar and ate tapas until it was time to leave.

Casablanca

I still haven't completely processed that I'm in Africa -- it's pretty cool. One one hand, you have these women walking around dressed in djellabas and headscarves, but right next to them you have younger girls dressed in jeans and tee-shirts (although it's pretty standard that women keep their legs covered here). Apparently, cleavage is more socially acceptable than leg.

And the headscarves are optional. Girls decide as teenagers whether or not they're going to wear them, and girls who decide on the scarves never leave the house without one after that. It's a big life decision for them, I think. It's not a religious requirement or anything here; it just sends a message -- I'm a good girl. Any Moroccan girl who goes out at night is essentially considered a slut, and men whistle and make obscene comments at anyone who shows any skin. (this includes elbows and calves). But from what I can tell, they seem to respect the women wearing the djellabas.

It's really interesting being here though. Casablanca isn't a very touristy town (and certainly isn't a big American tourist destination), so the locals seem to automatically assume that we're French. I haven't really felt unsafe at all (although it certainly helps that we have Nicole's friend Emmy, who teaches English here, telling us where to go, etc.) -- it's just been a little frustrating hearing all the mating calls from the locals. They learn to say "hello" in like five languages, apparently in hope that one will be right and we'll, I dunno, have sex with them?

Today we went to this Moroccan marketplace, and had Emmy guide us around and tell us what everything is. She said it's more fun to go shopping in Marrakesh, because there are more options and you can haggle there. Tomorrow we're headed to Rabat, and then Marrakesh on Sunday.

But today was cool -- after the marketplaces we got lunch at an local place that Emmy's boyfriend recommended. Apparently Friday is Coos Coos Day, so we got coos coos. Then we went to Mosque Hassan II, or The Great Mosque, which is right up against the ocean and is really stunning. It's one of the biggest mosques in the world, either the second or third biggest depending on what book you look in. We couldn't go inside though, because they don't do tours on Fridays.

So yeah. Casablanca's been cool. I expected it to be a lot more touristy than it is, and we certainly saw some tourists on the ferry, but it's not a big American or Canadian destination, which is a nice change. The cabs are pretty awesome, too -- the cab drivers all play their own kind of music (as loud as they want), so we've listened to everything from authentic Moroccan music to LL Cool J. And apparently everyone here is obsessed with Celine Dion -- Emmy's Moroccan boyfriend was singing along to it in the restaurant last night.

Anyway I'll post again at some point... I can't believe this trip's almost over. We leave for Valencia on Monday and fly out from there.

Cadaques/Zaragoza/Madrid

So we got stranded in Zaragoza (or as Nicole's been calling it, Zoolander) for a night. We had to get a bus from Cadaques to Barcelona, and then were going to take a train from there to Madrid. So we got to the train station and were told that all the trains to Madrid were full, but that we could simply get a train to Zaragoza and then connect to Madrid from there.

"Can we make the reservation from Zaragoza to Madrid?" I asked in my best version of Spanish.

"No, regional train, regional train, regional train, can't make reservation here, regional train."

He also told me I wouldn't need a reservation with my rail pass, and that we would just have to wait in line for Nicole's ticket since she has no pass. He lied.

We got to Zaragoza, bought Nicole's ticket, and then I asked -- just to be sure -- if I needed a reservation with my rail pass. Not only did I need a reservation, this assclown said, but he also said he'd just given the last seat to Nicole. More lies.

There were more ordeals (like another ticket man telling me the only seat left on a train to Madrid was on a 10 p.m. train in first class), but long story medium-length, we ended up changing Nicole's ticket and crashing in Zaragoza for a night.

The man at the hostel there had a thick accent and instead of just speaking more slowly for me, he instead tried to speak some strange combination of English and Spanish and flustered himself to no end. At one point he asked if he could photocopy my meat. Took me a while to figure out he was talking about my passport, but I can see how one might get the two confused.

So, yeah. Apparently some month-long festival began in Madrid yesterday, and that's why everyone was going. In the end, we think, it all worked out for the best, because we assumed that the first night of a festival in Madrid would include costumed people, and Nicole is very, very afraid of costumed people.

But now we're in Madrid. And we already made our reservations to leave. We had to take a number at the train station, where there were 150 people ahead of us. But we're all set. And tonight we're going to drink sangria. Lots of sangria.

I spent most of today in the Prado, while Nicole went shopping, and tomorrow we're going to two more museums and then maybe renting a rowboat on the lake.

So that's it. One more day in Madrid and then we're headed to Morocco, where it's about 90 degrees but we're not allowed to wear shorts. But I'm excited.

Barcelona/Figueres

So Nicole and I have been together more than a full day and haven't killed each other yet, although I'm not sure we'll both make it through two weeks...

In Barcelona I convinced Nicole that she wanted to go to the zoo, but it ended up being not the best day ever because a) the cats were all sleeping, and I wasn't completely confident that all they weren't drugged, b) the food we got for lunch didn't appear to be very... cooked and c) the ice cream had peanuts, but mainly it was the cats sleeping. What was cool was they had a dolphin show, although when I understood absolutely nothing the dolphin trainer was saying I started to think my Spanish was even rustier than I thought. Then I realized they were probably speaking Galician, and I felt better.

At the very least we got to see baby dolphins, so the zoo wasn't all bad.

We also went to the Picasso Museum, which wasn't as good as the Musee Beggruen in Berlin, but was still interesting. We were going to go to this modern art museum after that, but got distracted by the zoo and then wanted to hit Parc Guell, which was all designed (but not all completed) by Gaudi, before it got dark.

Now we're stuck in Figueres until our bus leaves for Cadaques, and whatever Web site Nicole found that described this city as a "donkey's ass" was pretty right-on. But we've only got about another hour and a half, and the Dali Museum here in Figueres was worth the stopover -- despite the obnoxious Spanish kids who thought it was OK to repeated shove into me until I told them otherwise. I need to learn how to say Fuck Off in Spanish. Anyone?

Anyway, Cadaques should be cool tomorrow... I'm not planning on leaving the beach.

The French Riviera

So apparently, even though it was a bank holiday and the reception guy at the hostel called the museums for me to double-check that they were actually closed, the museums weren't actually closed. I know this because someone else in my rooms went to the two museums I wanted to go to that day, that day. And of course since the museums *were* actually closed on Tuesday, because they always are on Tuesdays, and those were my only two days for Nice, I didn't go.

But the weather did get sunny and I did take a day trip to Juan les Pins, which has beaches with actual sand instead of rocks that leave salty white marks all over you. That's not to say the beaches in Nice weren't pretty -- they were -- they're just not much to lay out in.

So I was at the beach in Juan les Pins with Deona (How do you spell your name? I'm guessing this ain't right), who is from Canada and was backpacking through France for three weeks and actually knows some French. We were in the water, not very deep at all, with the water just past our waists, maybe (it was damn cold) and all these little silver-colored fish were darting around by our feet.

Then Deona looked out into the distance and saw what looked like a ray of some sort swimming around pretty close to us. Of course, we weren't sure that it was a ray even though it was moving like one, because it seemed to be this aqua-blue color... but maybe that was just the water. So we were maneuvering around, trying to get close enough to see what it was but not so close so that it could attack us. Deona even threw a rock next to it to see how it would move, and it just floated about. Then she asked a woman in French what she thought it was, and the woman said she thought it would bite.

So after about 10 minutes, an Australian guy came into the water, and we asked him if he thought the creature was a ray. Without hesitation or warning, the Australian guy dove into the water and made a beeline for the creature, and we were immediately terrified that we'd be responsible for Australian Man Loses Hand to Amputation After Stingray Attack, American and Canadian Women Watch. But as abruptly as he'd dived in, the guy emerged from the water like a sea lion would (heavily creating waves all around him) and held something up in the air.

It was a light blue plastic shopping bag filled with sand.

And we had our "ray."

Juan les Pins and Nice were both pretty, but Deona said they could just as easily be beach towns in Florida, and I'm inclined to agree. There was nothing spectacular about either place, although Juan les Pins seemed somehow more authentic and less touristy, and I think it's a little weird that Nice somehow became the heart of the French Riviera when there are a million other towns with, well, sand.

I did end up lying on the rocks in Nice the first day, but the weather never got much better and I had to wear jeans and a windbreaker, both of which were covered in the aforementioned white salty spots by the day's end. Of course, there was a particularly helpful French guy who was very eager to brush me off while I was walking back to the hostel. I had to convey to him that I liked the white spots to make him stop, and I imagine he was thinking that I'd missed the point.

Now I'm at an Internet cafe across the street from the train station in Montpellier, where I have a two and a half hour layover (is that what they call it with trains? Maybe stopover?) en route to Barcelona. I'm pretty excited about going to a country where I know more of the language than hello, goodbye, please and thank you, although how much more remains to be seen. I did understand a surprisingly large amount of Italian while I was in Italy, just because of its similarity to Spanish, so maybe I'll surprise myself again.

On that note, I think I'll use the rest of this time to answer e-mails and read the New York Times.

Venice/Nice

OK, so I have the utmost respect for other cultures and all, but I'm getting a little tired of all these so-called "bank holidays" that screw with my trip. In Naples I would have had a hell of a time trying to get from the port to the train station with all the public transportation shut down because of one of these alleged holidays if it weren't for some Italian kids who walked me the two and a half miles from the tram stop I was waiting at (for nothing) to the station. Now I'm in Nice, and I only have two days, and one of their holidays has left everything, including the museums, shut down. And since the museums aren't open on Tuesdays, and this was supposed to be my museum day, well...

AND the weather's not quite shitty, but certainly not sunny.

So.

I don't want to seem like one of those typical American tourists who only likes thing that don't feel foreign, but Venice was amazing. I know it's got more tourists than residents, and I know that half of the conversations I heard around me were in English, but I liked it. And there's nothing you can do or say about it (although I imagine Aviva will bring up something about perpetuating stereotypes).

It's just such an interesting city since there are no cars or buses or anything, and the only way to get around is by walking or boat. Even the cops have their little police boats that they float around on. The taxi stands are boat docks, and people just row or motor along these canals from island to island. It's pretty awesome. And expensive as hell. If anyone would like to send me some money, they should feel free.

I went to a few art museums in Venice, but I'm hungry and don't feel like describing stuff, and anyway I think I left my journal in my other bag, so I won't. I will say the Peggy Guggenheim collection is cool, and you can even visit her and her dogs' graves. She had a lot of dogs.

I went to Palazzo Ducale, which used to be where Venetian government was carried out, and also has a prison, with this bridge called the Bridge of Sighs leading the way from the sentencing area (it's not a courtroom, so I'm going to stick with 'sentencing area') to the prison cells. People think it's this romantic thing because of Casanova, but it got the name because prisoners could get one last glimpse of freedom from the barred windows of the bridge before heading to their death. It was kind of interesting to walk across, but would have without question been better without the massive French tour group that kept getting in the way.

That said...

Nice
I just got into Nice this morning, but so far the people have been really surprisingly, well... nice. Maybe it's just Paris where people are mean to me.

I've even been trying to speak a little French with people who are helping me, like making looking up in my little phrasebook (thanks, UK Paul) how to say "aisle" when making my reservation to Barcelona or even just asking "Do you speak English?" in French instead of English. People seem to respond better to that, but maybe it's just because they're not from Paris.

I'd heard that Nice had rock beaches, but I was picturing more of a Paradise Cove-esque kind of pebbles (sorry, non-CA people)... instead they've got these big rocks that you really can't find a comfortable nook in (not that I've tried yet, though -- I've been wandering around all day under the overcast skies).

So that's about all I've got for Nice, partly because I've only been here a few hours and partly because everything's closed and I can't go where I want to go anyway.

Finally
As for Aviva's comment and the e-mails (OK, e-mail) about my not posting a lot, that's got something to do with lack of time, something to do with laziness in finding an Internet cafe, and something to do with my policy against spending more than 3 euros an hour on Internet. All over Venice it was 6 euros, and in Rome I was too busy chillin' with the Pope (we're so tight he has me calling him Benedict now).

Florence/Ischia/Rome

So you know how sometimes you're wandering around, looking for the Sistine Chapel, and all of a sudden you pass thousands of people crowding behind barricades and you hear the word 'Papa' every few seconds, and you realize that the Pope's about to give his weekly address? I like when that happens. It sorta like finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your winter jacket the first time you wear it that season.

So yeah. It was a pretty good time, although the Pope was so far away and there were so many people that I could barely even see the big screens they had up around the Vatican courtyard. I knew the Pope was supposed to be in his chair in front of this white tent-like thing, and I could hear him talking, but it seriously could have been a little white puppy in the chair instead and no one there would have noticed, as long as they showed some video of the Pope on the screens.

Anyway Rome's been pretty awesome. I got here Monday afternoon and have seen the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel (and Vatican Museums), St. Paul's Basilica and about a million other things. It's also really strange, because nuns are walking around everywhere. AND they're the worst line-cutters ever, because no one's gonna bitch out a nun for cutting in front of them in the hour-and-a-half line to St. Paul's Basilica.

There's something amazing about standing inside the Colosseum, looking down at it, and about standing in the Sistine Chapel, looking up at it. The Sistine Chapel experience is tainted a little by the masses of tourists pretending not to see all the signs and taking pictures of it. One poor security guy is in charge of trying to stop them, so he runs around yelling NO PHOTOS NO PICTURES in seven different languages (seriously, I counted) and pokes people who don't listen. A lot of them even take pictures with a flash, and then when Poor Security Man walks away after yelling at them they take another picture. People suck.

Oh, and I figured out the real end to the "When in Rome..." saying. It has nothing to do with doing as the Romans do. It's all about waiting in line. For the museums, the churches, everything. That's right. When in Rome, you wait in line. So now you know.

There's so much more to write about but I have to get going soon to see if this girl I met in Poland wants to meet up tonight. So I'll move on...

Ischia

I was walking around the streets of Florence a few days ago when I realized I was dead tired. Florence is this beautiful city but all I could think about was not walking around anymore. So I figured I'd put off Rome for another day and head to Ischia, this small resort island about an hour and a half into the bay of Naples. I figured I'd take a day, relax on the beach, read and generally do nothing, then be completely energized when I got to Rome.

The rain started about 10 minutes before the ferry docked. The downpour started when I got off the ferry and started walking to the bus stop, which was not, as the books would lead you to believe, right near the docks. And on a little island with no sidewalks, walking in the dark on the side of the road in a storm makes you very wet, very fast. I finally made it to the bus stop after about 10 or 15 minutes. It wasn't covered. The bus arrived about 5 minutes later, and I told the driver where I wanted to get off.

He knew no English and I know no Italian, but I think he liked me. I think this because he knew where I wanted to go, but still proceeded to keep me on the bus all the way to the end of the line, despite my repeated reminders ("Ostello Il Gabbiano? Soon? Pronto?") He just kept nodding and pointing forward.

Finally, after going the whole way there and turning around and going halfway back, he told me we'd arrived at my stop. All I could think was he wanted to drop me on the right side of the road.

It stormed well into the next day, but the sun came out around 1 p.m. so it wasn't a complete bust, although I'm not sure it was worth what amounted to a full-day trek to the island.

With a massive hangover.

Florence

That's because I capped my two and a half days in Florence with a bottle of wine while watching the sun set over the city from the Piazzalle Michaelangelo. My tolerance has gone down considerably on this trip, because for the last month and a half I've been much too tired to go out much at night after a full day of stuff.

I was feeling good after half the bottle of wine, but then I got to talking to this kid from Chicago (the one who made a comment on the last post, who despite what he wrote was very, very tired of hearing about cats by the end of the night), and over the course of the conversation I finished off the bottle. Then it was getting a little cool out, so we went for a nightcap at a bar, where I had two Guinnesses.

The sunset over the river was amazing, and the conversation was a good time, too (although I get the impression I did most of the talking), but the head hurtiness the next day was less fun. Much less fun.

And on that note, Jamie should be finishing with work now so I'm going to find a phone and give her a call.

Next stop is Venice, then Nice and maybe Cannes, and I meet with Nicole in Barcelona in a week. I can't believe that this trip is almost over.

Vienna/Florence

Well there's absolutely no way I'll be able to get in everything about my three days in Vienna or my first day in Florence, but I'll try to hit on the best stuff.

Vienna
First off, everything went *so* smoothly when I got there -- too smoothly, I thought, so I was waiting the whole time for Hell to break loose and when I didn't I was very suspicious. I immediately found an ATM to withdraw euros, it worked, and (and this is maybe the first time this has happened all trip) I found my hostel without any wrong turns or getting-losts. It was very unnerving.

In the end, nothing bad happened in Vienna, and the weather was absolutely phenomenal. I even bought shorts because I didn't have (and hadn't needed) any up to then, but of course it's raining in Florence so I still haven't used them.

Now that I'm actually sitting down to write, it's occurring to me that since I don't have my journal with me I'm not going to remember most of what I did... my memory's been shot for the last month. But here's me trying...

One of the museums (I think it was the Leopold Museum) had an exhibit of Robert Hammerstiel, a Holocaust survivor. His stuff was amazing, abstract-type paintings with this feeling of impending doom in every one. His earlier work is all dark colors, but I guess a trip to New York in the 80s convinced him that bright colors were the way to go, and his later stuff is brighter and seems less fitting to me, but sometimes the juxtaposition between the dark and the bright works perfectly. Hammerstiel believes that as one of the few survivors, it's his duty to record the history through his art; here's his quote:

I overcame the life of a rat in my childhood and youth; many of my friends were
tortured to death. I often herar their warnings at night, I ought to do
something for them, I am the one who survived and I am responsible for ensuring
that we do not forget.

Anyway, some of my favorite paintings were "Tragedy, Dignity and Finally Bread," a triptych that reminded me of the stories I've read about smuggling into the ghettos, and "The Conversation," which depicts and kid standing in the shadows, overhearing a conversation of two adults. Obviously there's more to both than that, but I guess if you're interested you can look it up.

The Oberes Belevedere (I think) had a painting I liked by Josef Danhauser called "The Game of Chess." It depicted a young woman beating an older man in chess, and in the background was a sculpture of Omphale and Hercules (because Hercules was Omphale's slave). I like when art depicts women in control... doesn't happen enough.

On my last day in Vienna I went on a tour of the Parliament. The tour was given in both German and English, which they do a lot here, so you just kind of wait while the guide is speaking in the other language. On the German/English tour I did of the synagogue, the guy would keep his explanations to about two minutes before switching to the other language, but the woman giving the Parliament tour was all about the long stories. In German. Seriously, the German part would always last twice the time the English would last. I feel like I should have gotten it for half-price.

And finally, the Haus der Musik. It's this really interactive museum where you can do things like add sound bytes to the "Brain Opera," this strange amalgamation of sounds and music that you compile with big computer chips generated by visitors throughout the museum; conduct your own virtual orchestra; and create music based on your voice. As for the brain opera, one way to generate sounds is through a word association game. I think my words ended up being Bush, Monkey, Force, Head. But it's their fault because they said "evolution," which clearly made me say "monkey." Then when it looped around again I couldn't help but say "Bush," and in the end I had Bush Monkey Force Head. Apparently that's my subconscious.

Now, Florence, but I don't have much time.

I got here on an overnight train at about 6:30 a.m., so after checking into a hostel, I figured I might as well get an early start on the day since I'd read about long lines getting in to some of the places. I got to the Galleria dell' Accadamia before it even opened, and was in the first group that was let in to see Michaelangelo's David. I was kind of expecting a similar experience to the Mona Lisa, where it's been played up all your life and then you get there and think, "So that's that." But in reality it was amazing. You turn into the second room of the museum and see it at the end of this corridor, towering above everything else that lines the walls leading up to it. The detail is so precise and amazing; you can see the veins on his hands and feet and the creases around his knuckles. I also read that if you stand in the same position he's in, with a sling over your shoulder the same way, your muscles will react the same way Michaelangelo sculpted his. It's pretty amazing to see.

I also saw the Uffizi, which I guess is one of the most famous art museums in the world. It has the work of all the Ninja Turtles, and a lot more. Unfortunately I was so tired after the overnight train, two other museums, the Duomo, and an hour-and-a-half wait throughout which the two people in front of my in line made out non-stop, that I could only spend two hours there and wasn't taking much in.

Anyway, I've gotta get this thing posted before this place closes. More from Florence another time...

Political/social stuff no one else is interested in...

I feel like the comments are stopping... You people should do something about that.

OK so I've been talking to different people, and learning, you know, things and stuff:

1) Foster care in Hungary
The foster care system in Hungary is even more fucked up than the one in the United States. A lot of kids are placed in these dormitories (the girl I was talking to kept referring to them as colleges, but I think this is what she means), places that make group homes look like livin' it up. Some kids live there from birth until they turn 18, and this is often not because there's no one who wants to adopt them, but because there's so much red tape that kids constantly get lost in the system.

At these dormitories, one nurse has 20 kids/babies to tend to, and this is the closest thing to a parental figure that any of the kids grow up with. There's a similar teacher-to-kid ratio, and I got the impression that they all go to school together instead of being integrated into schools with kids in normal family situations. I didn't have time to ask too many questions because the bus was leaving. In any case I'm sure these schools get about as much funding as my toe.

Anyway a huge segment of kids who can't get adopted are gypsies, the largest minority in Hungary and the most discriminated against. There are about 10 million people living in Hungary, and half a million of them are gypsies. But gypsies are often poor, many live without water and electricity, and people tend to stay out of their parts of town.

2) Healthcare in Hungary/Poland
Doctors in both Poland and Hungary generally get paid shit. But in France at least, money is still among the benefits to becoming a doctor (the other is prestige). Since France has universal healthcare, the way these doctors make money is through tips. Huge tips. This means if you have a $20,000 operation, you tip $5,000. If you don't, next time you get sick... well, just don't get sick again.

That's why there's a push to privatize healthcare in Hungary, to reel in the money-grubbing doctors, but we all know that presents a whole new set of problems.

So basically, it seems that even with universal healthcare, the poor people are the ones getting screwed. I feel like the system in England is better, though... UK Paul, any thoughts?

3) Education in France
Teachers in France who work in the poorer public schools actually get paid more than the ones who work at middle-class schools. Initially, that sounded like a really good idea to me because I thought the bad schools might be able to retain good teachers and sort of narrow the gap.

But it doesn't work that way.

The young teachers generally work at the poorer schools because that's the only job they can get, and then they move on as quickly as they can. Since salary is based on a sort of sliding scale (similar to how they do it in California, with increases based on experience and education, but in France it also takes into account the neighborhood of the school), young teachers are able to move to wealthier schools and not lose money because their salary increases with experience anyway.

In France you get your first sort of degree at 14, then at 16 and then the high school diploma at 18, and at the poorer schools only about 5 percent of kids even receive the first degree.

So...
I guess that's it for my social issues. I'd elaborate more but a) I'm limited in time, b) I don't want to bore you *too* much, and c) I don't know all that much about this stuff, since all my conversations have been relatively short and I couldn't learn everything I wanted to.

But if you're interested (haha), you can always look it up and tell me more stuff.

And finally...
I never told my arriving-in-Budapest story and I feel it merits a short blurb.

I took an overnight train from Prague and arrived an hour late, which stressed me out because for the first time this trip, someone was actually meeting with me at a tram stop. I hate doing this because things always go wrong and I'd rather have as much time as I need, since there are always delays and I often run into problems when I get into a new country.

So I got to the train station, all stressed out and grumpy anyway since I never sleep well on the overnight trains, and I needed to withdraw money from the ATM. Hungary uses forints and I was coming from the Czech Republic, which uses crowns. Well the first ATM I found, on the train platform (I knew that was too easy) was locked in a glass box. Then I found one downstairs, but it spit my card back out at me and said I couldn't use it since I wasn't a customer of a specific bank. I finally walked a couple of blocks out of the station and found one. But at this point I was so flustered that I wasn't thinking straight and couldn't figure out how much to withdraw (one forint is about 200 dollars). Suddenly I felt pressured to choose an amount, so I pushed a button and immediately became terrified that I'd withdrawn the equivalent of 1,000 euros (I hadn't, but it took me a few hours before I was sure of this). Now the thing about ATMs in Europe is they tend to give you the Biggest Bills Possible.

So now I had a 20,000-forint bill.

I waited in line at the ticket booth for the metro, placed my 20,000-forint bill in the little spinny thing that allows you to pass things through the glass window, and acted out "one ticket" for her. She promptly pointed to the bill, spun it back to me and sternly said NO, or whatever the Hungarian equivalent of 'no' is.

I tried to tell her this was all I had, but she a) didn't understand and b) didn't care. So I then tried to act out, "Where can I get change?" But she just kept saying NO and then punched some numbers into her calculator, apparently to show me NO. After telling me NO a couple more times she brushed me off and called for the next person in the line, which was not a short line.

Well, I was frustrated. And grumpy. And at this point very, very indignant.

So I bitched her out. Screamed at her, cursed at her (of course, she understood none of it, and still really didn't care), and in the course of my little rampage spun the spinny-thing as hard as I could while yelling "FUCKING BITCH!" and really hurt my nail.

Then I stormed off.

And was actually so stirred up that it took about 20 minutes (about as long as it took for me to figure out where to get change) to become really embarrassed by how ridiculous I'd been. I actually tried to change my appearance when I went back again half an hour later to buy my metro ticket with a smaller bill, but she'd been so indifferent throughout the whole process that she wouldn't have recognized me anyway.

So that's my story...

Budapest

So I've got quite a few stories, so I think I'll separate this post that way, beginning with... (think of the TROJAN MAN voice on the commercials)

Bright red tattooed Hungarian Man
(wearing a Speedo)
I was at Szecheny Furdo, a place with a huge collection of warm swimming pools surrounded by fountains and statues. Buildings adjacent to the outdoor pools have an icy whirlpool and saunas. Well I was sitting on the edge of the icy whirlpool, swirling my ankle around in it for 15 minutes and watching the other people climb in and out very quickly, and all of a sudden, this mountain of a man with gold watches on each wrist, a gold chain you only see on the Crips and the Bloods in bad movies, and a bright red sunburn covering the entire front of his body plunges himself into the whirlpool, displacing all the water so that what used to be up to the middle of my shin made waves up to my stomach. In one motion he drops his entire body under the water and throws his head back the way girls in bikinis drop their hair into the water when they want to look sexy. He lifts his head halfway above the water, so that his mouth is still sort of underneath.

And he makes a sea lion noise.

At this point I was in shock. When it sunk in I wanted to laugh but he was one of those men that used to be a body builder and is now just a sack of softened muscle splurging out from everywhere, and I thought he might eat me. So I sat there, averting my eyes, waiting to see what would happen next. Would he storm out just as quickly, making a new wave up to my head? Would he make a different noise, like a goat or a whale or maybe a kitten? Would he start singing "Macho Man" in Hungarian?

In the end, it's possible that he did any or all of those things, but I had to leave the minute he started pounding his chest like a gorilla.

The Hungarian Wax
I'm not gonna lie -- it had to be done. So I figured this was a good place because a) I'm staying with someone, so I was able to ask her where to go, and b) things here are dirt cheap -- I paid what came out to just over $4 for The Hungarian Wax.

First off, the woman didn't know any English, so this woman I'm staying with (who seriously is the nicest person in the world) decided to come with me to translate. When we got there she realized that the woman doing the wax was the mother of a girl in her daughter's class, so throughout this whole thing they were talking and having a good time.

But when the woman said an entire bikini wax would take five minutes, I knew it wouldn't go well.

What happened was this: The woman used a rolling dispenser thing and just covered the entire area in wax. Now, keep in mind that when I say 'entire,' I'm not exaggerating at all. There was the front. There were the sides. There was the little man in the canoe; you know, the one with 10,000 nerve endings. Everything. Then she placed the strips on the wax and ripped them off. Over and over and over.

It was phenomenal.

The Night Bus
Last one, and this one's got to be quick because the person I'm staying with needs to use the computer (although at some point I totally have to tell you guys about the foster care system in Hungary, because it's even more Fucked Up than ours).

I'd been excited because all the buses here had clear annoucements about which stops to stop at, along with electronic boards that have them written out. Well last night I was hanging out with a bunch of Hungarian kids at an outdoor concert and then a bar, and one was telling me that they don't always have those announcements.

That night, of course, I encountered this.

And rode the Night Bus all the way to the end of the line. I couldn't ask the driver to stop at my stop because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it and didn't have it written down. I couldn't see anything on the street because it was dark, and the names of the stops weren't posted.

I probably would have just ridden it back and forth all night but finally I asked a guy next to me, "Do you know English?" in this pathetic, beaten tone, and he looked at me and said, "Of course, what do you need?"

Really should have done that earlier.

Prague

First of all, scroll to the next post for photos of Paris. Secondly, what's Scott McClellan doing resigning before I get back? I missed him and had been looking forward to hearing his press conferences again. Without him, who won't comment about an ongoing investigation? WHO? Third, maybe my friend Ari Fleischer will come back.

Now. Prague.

I'll begin with the fact that I really should have done the swimsuit shopping *before* having the dark-chocolate-covered-strawberry-and-banana-stick, and the double-scoop of Cream & Dream ice cream, quite possibly the best ice cream in the history of the world (Sorry, Haagen Daz). In the end, I decided not to buy a bathing suit, because it was altogether too depressing to see. I've also decided that the European stores don't do the same tricky shit with the dressing rooms that they do in America. I miss the tilted mirrors and happy skinny lighting in American dressing rooms.

But the rest of Prague is absolutely phenomenal, definitely one of my favorite places so far. I'm only at an Internet cafe and not wandering around more because I know if I wander around more I'll buy more chocolate-covered happiness and cinnamony-twirly-things and maybe Cream & Dream. And I don't need that. At all.

Today I watched the changing of the guard at Prague Castle. Had gone all around Prague Castle yesterday, but I happened to be in the area looking at St. Nicholas Church (which is gorgeous) at 11 a.m. and the changing of the guard is at noon, so I figured I'd check it out. It's entertaining, but such a huge process. I think eventually they're going to have to discover that changing shifts can be very simple, and doesn't need to involve trumpets and drums and tubas and marching around in circles. The two new guards just need to go up to the old ones and say, "Dude, your shift's up. I got it from here." And then that's it. I think one day they'll figure that out.

The castle itself is pretty amazing, which more than makes up for the fact that the National Gallery here is not so impressive. It has all these different rooms and areas you can go into, and you can climb a tower to look down at the whole place and the city. The cathedral there is also pretty awesome. Not sure what else to say about the place without avoiding boring and not-very-detailed descriptions (I forget specifics when I don't write them down), so I'll move on.

I spent the day before at the Jewish district, a place called Josefov. They've essentially turned the whole neighborhood into a museum, where you buy a ticket for all the synagogues, etc., and they scan it as you walk into each one. The Spanish Synagogue is, without question, the most impressive. It's the first synagogue I've seen all trip that compares with some of the cathedrals, although I'm sure the Neu Synagoge in Berlin was amazing before being burnt down.

I guess that's about it for Prague. I spent most of my time just walking around, looking at everything. The most impressive thing about Prague, I think, is that you can look down just about any city block and see these gorgeous buildings lining the way. My hostel is in a kind of dumpy neighborhood, behind the train station and surrounded by train tracks, but somehow every block you pass on the way is amazing, with these great buildings and vibrant colors.

Oh, two observations I've been meaning to share: 1) McDonald's are EVERYWHERE in Europe. I got twisted around in Warsaw and passed three different McDonald's just trying to find my way back to where I started (and I'm completely sure they weren't all the same one). And the map I have of Prague lists different places, like sites and restaurants, and it actually lists McDonald's under "International Cuisine." Cuisine. That ain't right. 2) Everyone in Europe wears Yankees hats and everyplace in Europe sells them. And someone I was talking to said she's pretty sure people don't even know what they mean. She saw one guy wearing one and said something like, "Yankees, huh?" and he had no idea what she was talking about. I think they think they're just American hats. So in Europe our country, essentially, is represented by George Bush and George Steinbrenner. Again. Ain't right.

I leave tonight for Budapest, and if the last two overnight trains I took are any indication, I won't sleep at all. The trains bounce around a lot and like to come to jerky stops. It'll be great.

Paris pics

I'm currently in Prague, but I finally got to a computer that allowed me to download and then upload files, so I'm posting photos of St. Patrick's Day in Paris. The first one is of me, a Danish guy named Roon (although I'm sure I spelled his name wrong), and a Brazilian girl named Liliana.
At the right there's
me, English Paul and
two very drunk Irish girls whose names I've since forgotten. Finally, there's English Paul and me at the Catacombes. Oh, and Paul wants credit for these things, so consider the credit ... brought.

Oh, and I'm attaching a picture of Gizmo at Sara's, because of course there has been a very high demand for photos of Gizmo.

The Plan (Prague)

I've decided to move to Prague and live off of the chocolate-covered fruits they sell in the square. That's all.

Krakow/Auschwitz

I figure I'll start with Krakow and then move on to Auschwitz. Like I was writing before, Krakow's actually a really nice city. It pretty much escaped WWII unscathed (comparatively at least, and only in the sense of buildings -- not people), even though 60,000 Jews lived here before the war. Only 5 percent of the Jews survived, and now Kazimierz, the old Jewish district, is essentially a shell of what it used to be. The town has preserved the history, but there are almost no Jews there. So many synagogues, but I couldn't find any that were open for worship.

Way outside the center is Schindler's factory. It's in this dingy corner of town across the river, surrounded by train tracks and run-down buildings. Schindler, of course, had structured everything so that it was cheap. He got the factory in a police auction after the previous owner -- a Jew -- had had it taken from him; he employed Jews because they were cheaper labor. He bribed the SS not to fuck with his workers, not because he cared about them, but because the snow-shoveling detail Jews were forced into was making them late to work, and he was losing money. No one's sure when Schindler -- initially this selfish, greedy, womanizing ass who wanted to become a racecar driver -- found his conscience and started seeing the Jews as people instead of his slaves.

Schindler was a complete failure at everything he tried after the war, and still not a very good person in the end. He moved to Argentina, I think it was, and tried to start essentially a rat farm to make fur coats out of this animal that sort of a cross between a rat and a beaver. That failed, everything else failed, and he eventually ditched his wife and his girlfiend and left the country. He tried and failed at businesses for the rest of his life, and he was broke for the rest of his life because of drinking, gambling and women. No one really knew anything about him until an Australian writer was shopping in L.A. somewhere, and the salesman at the store started talking about how he'd survived the Holocaust because of Schindler. He was one of 1,098 Jews who Schindler saved. Anyway that's where the book came from.

The factory itself is nothing -- you can walk up some stairs and watch a seven-minute slideshow that isn't particularly informative, and then walk up another flight to Schindler's old office, and look out the window at the outside of the factory. I got lucky because an English-speaking city tour was coming through right after I did, and the guy let me listen in.

Before the Schindler factory, I was at the Jewish Museum, which talked a lot about how so many Polish towns have forgotten the Jews who lived there before the Holocaust. One synagogue near Krakow turned an old synagogue into a furniture warehouse. It also talked about how we hear so much about camps like Auschwitz and Birkenau that we forget about others that executed thousands of people, too. One camp, Belzec, murdered 600,000 Jews. 10 survived.

Before the Soviets came in, the SS demolished the entire camp and planted trees over it to cover their tracks. All that's left is a sign indicating what it used to be.

And on that note:

Auschwitz/Birkenau
The camps are two completely different experiences two miles from each other. Both were preserved as they were upon liberation -- for Auschwitz that means a maze of bunks and barbedwire, with the gas chamber and incinerators still intact. For Birkenau that means very old bunks with leaky roofs, the same maze of barbedwire, and six piles of ruins. The ruins used to be gas chambers. Five were burnt down by the SS right before the liberation, and one was burnt down in October 1944, during the only prisoner revolt in Auschwitz. 450 Jews whose job it had been to move the dead bodies from the gas chamber to the incinerators finally decided they'd had enough.

The bunks in Birkenau made Auschwitz look like the Ritz. Hundreds of people would pack into stables that had been built for 52 horses. The only heating system came through a single chimney, and it often wasn't working, so the inside was as cold as it was outside. The roofs leaked so rain and snow poured down onto the people on the top bunks. The people on the bottom bunk didn't have it much better, because they were sleeping each night on concrete instead of wood. The best spot was the middle bunk, because all they had to put up with was overcrowding and lice.

Seeing everything -- the well-documented artifacts at Auschwitz and the ruins at Birkenau -- made me think about the whole Holocaust denial movement. I wonder if the people who deny the Holocaust happened have been there. I wonder if they've seen the six tons of human hair that would have been sold to companies for making mattresses and blankets. I wonder if they've seen the tallises taken from the men who hoped they'd still have the opportunity to pray. Or the casees of shoes -- the cloth shoes people brought with them and the wooden ones they were forced to wear as part of their uniform.

Or the gas chambers. The scratch makrs on the walls from when people tried to claw their way out of death, holding on to a thread of hope long after the last glimmer had disappeared, despite the labor and the torture and the starvation.

I wonder if they've seen the crematorium that other Jews were forced to work in, carting the bodies cfrom the gas chambers to the ovens until one day it was their bodies in the ovens. Or Gas Chamber No. 4 at Birkenau, where the 450 Jews finally decided to do something about it.

Or the heaps of suitcases, clearly marked with people's names and nationalities, that prisoners took with them to the camps, but turned over immediately to the SS.

The barbedwire fences surrounding every nook didn't even face feedom for the 30 percent who were spared upon arrival (the others were sent directly to the gas chambers). Barbedwire separated different parts of the camps, not just the camp and the outside world.

Those who didn't give up on life, those who didn't end it by running toward the fences and either getting shot by a guard or electrocuted at the fence, often died facing the wall of death. Nazis forced them to kneel against this wall as they shot them all in the backs. Those who resisted were beaten into submission.

Everything I saw there was this documented Hell. So how can anyone deny that? And does the fact that there are people who can, who do deny it, mean that this can happen again?

Warsaw/Krakow

I went to Auschwitz yesterday but I've got 11 minutes till I get booted off this thing, so I'll save that description for next time, and stick to Warsaw and Krakow.

My second day in Warsaw I went to the Russian Market, an enormous outdoor market situated around an entire coliseum. It wraps around the coliseum twice, and you can buy everything from Nike and Adidas shoes to batteries to shaving products to underpants. I didn't buy anything, but the girl I was with (Whadup, Jamie) needed underpants. It was a good time trying to bargain for underpants in Polish.

We also went to Pawiak Prison, the prison for the Warsaw ghetto. There were cells built for one to two people where they would cram 15 in. Looking at it, I tried to imagine where everyone would sleep, and there's absolutely no way they all were able to lie down if they didn't pile on top of each other like sardines.

I did more I can't think of now, so I'll move on...

Krakow
Krakow is actually an amazing city. I spent a lot of time roaming around Kazimierz, what used to be the Jewish district. I also ventured into a cafe there, which turned out to be the most American place I've been in the last month and a half. In Poland. Go figure.

Easter here is huge though... everyone's running around to the gazillions of different churches, Easter baskets in hand.

Well, the computer's telling me it's about to log me off, so I should post this before I lose it all. I'll probably write a substantial post about Krakow and Auschwitz tomorrow, since just about everything will be closed anyway on account of Easter. Otherwise, I'll post from Prague...

Warsaw/Berlin

So you know how sometimes you hear a noise, and you turn around and around and can't figure out what it is? So you think either you're crazy and are hearing things, or you aren't crazy and someone's making noises near you and then hiding? Well, the mystery is over. Those noises are the pigeons in Warsaw. It's true. Every faint noise you hear in the United States is a pigeon in Warsaw.

So now you know.

Now I'll back up to Berlin, then skidaddle back to Warsaw and get all depressing on you. Now that I think about it, parts of Berlin will be a little depressing, too. Gah.

BERLIN
Not counting the Pissy Man and my encounter on the U-Bahn, Berlin was absolutely amazing. I spent just three and a half days there because I feel like I'm running out of time, and crammed five or six things into each day.

I stood at Brandeburg Gate (or Brandeburger Tor, to keep the tradition the fatty seems to admire so) and went to Checkpoint Charlie. I sat in the stadium that was the site of the 1936 Olympics but is now a modernized, cosmopolitan arena revamped for this year's World Cup. I saw the area of the stands Hitler had built for him so he could shake the athletes hands after they received their gold medals, and then left the area when he realized Jesse Owens was going to win a gold medal because he didn't want to "shake the hand of a negro."

I walked through the area, now essentially a pit in the ground called the Topography of Terror, where the Nazi headquarters were located. There was all kinds of controversy about what to build there, and proposals went from a public park to a practice driving range for people without licenses. In the end, they decided on a memorial, but ran out of money early in the project, simplified the design and still didn't have enough money. So they kept it as this pit, which seems fitting. The exhibit housed there, an outdoor exhibit with signs posted about the camps and the Nuremburg Trials, was supposed to be temporary but drew so many visitors that they decided to leave it up.

I walked around inside the Rotes Rathaus, which essentially translates to Red City Hall. There are sculptures and artwork everywhere, and it feels a little more like a museum than a place of government.

I stood inside the Reichstag, which was burned down pre-WWII, and Hitler used that as validation to imprison all communists. The building was only recently unveiled in its current state, which is this amazing glass structure with a dome on top that visitors can stand in to look down on the Parliament floor.

I went to the Neue Synagoge, which was almost all burned down, but was partially rebuilt very recently. What was left of it after the war was actually torn down around 1950, I think it was, because it wasn't stable. I think it was the late 80s when they rebuilt what they could from what was left.

Next to Checkpoint Charlie is a museum, that was actually opened while the Berlin Wall was still up, chronicling different escape attempts. It exhibits cars that people escaped in, two hollowed-out surfboards that a woman hid between, a hot-air balloon that a family escaped in, and more things I can't think of right now.

I'd write about some of my favorite paintings at the art museums, but my time is running a little thin and I want at least 10 minutes with the NY Times. Some of the art at the Gemaldegalerie and the Alte Nationalgalerie was amazing, though. I think I might really like Louis Cranach, especially this one painting of the fountain of youth. It's like a whole story -- you see these old women (saggy boobs and all) climbing feebly into this pool and get out on the other side young and beautiful (and, of course, perky). The middle of the pool has a small statue of Venus and Cupid, which I guess means that the fountain of youth is really just love, but cheesiness aside, the painting was pretty amazing. I really wanted something of it, but they didn't have a postcard, so I bought a slide. So now I have one little slide.

Oh, one more thing, Berlin kinda reminds me of the Big Dig.

ROOMMATES IN BERLIN
Samo people will appreciate this one. Arika, a girl I met in my hostel in Berlin is from Japan, but she went to Peninsula for a few years of high school. Her brother even ran cross country there. It's like when I was in Brussels a girl I met went to high school with my friend Dari, who I don't think reads this thing (because she's clearly not as cool as the rest of you). Maybe there really is something to this six degrees of separation.

WARSAW
I arrived in Warsaw at about 5:30 this morning on an overnight train from Berlin, and after dropping my stuff at a hostel, basically sat in a coffee shop staring at the wall for a few hours before I could finally get moving. But once I did...

Warsaw's a pretty interesting place. I think I read that something like 80 percent of it was destroyed in 1944(?) on Hitler's orders after the uprising, but it's been rebuilt since then. The weird thing is, most of it still feels and looks really old. There are aspects of modernization all around, and parts of the city are more modern, but the centre (suitably called Old Town) is all cobblestones streets and old buildings.

The Jewish Historical Institute here is wrenching. It's a whole exhibit about the lead-up to the ghetto uprising and then the uprising itself. (the Warsaw Historical Museum covers its aftermath, but most of that's in Polish) After the exhibit I watched this video that showed clips of emaciated kids begging in the streets, rolling around and making themselves look as helpless as possible, and other hungry people walking right by them. Street vendors, who were just as poor as anyone, had to start putting barbedwire around their food so kids didn't run by and steal it.

The video also showed the guards throwing these stringy bodies, basically piles of bones wrapped in flesh), on to wagons. The limbs would flop over the side violently and the guards would swing another dead body on top. Sometimes a body would flop over the edge and fall on the ground while they were wheeling the carts away. They wouldn't notice until the back wheel hit a bump in the road, which was maybe a knee or a head or any other body part. Then they'd sigh (tough job to wheel bodies around), walk around the side, and throw the body back atop the pile.

And on that note, I'm about out of time, but I'll try to pick it back up a little -- there was one synagogue left standing in Warsaw after the war, the Nozyk Synagogue. The doors were locked when I got there so I couldn't go in, but I did get a picture of the outside, which is painted in front a yellow color that I'd call tacky on any other building. About five minutes later some police yelled at two other people who took pictures of it, so apparently that's against the rules.

I'm not sure why I thought that would pick it up, except maybe because yellow is happy (unless it's wallpaper and you're surrounded by it), and at least something's left.

One more day in Warsaw before I head to Krakow, where I actually have someone to stay with (Thanks, Kansas Paul!).