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!).

Don't try to skip the fare in BERLIN

For those of you who don't know, the public transportation system in Germany is sort of based on the honor system. You don't pass through a turnstile or anything; you just buy your ticket and step on to the train. The catch is that a very small percentage of the time, people come through to check everyone's tickets, and anyone caught without a valid ticket faces a 40-euro fine.

But the people I stayed with in Munich said they get checked about once every month and a half of riding the U-Bahn every day, and that I should just buy a day-card, not validate it (it's not valid until you stamp it with the time and date, so you can plead ignorance if it's not stamped) and use it my whole time in Munich.

Not the best idea in Berlin.

A minute after I got onto the subway, the ticket-checkers stormed into the car and yelled, GUTENTAG!, and everyone else starting getting out their tickets. When the guy got to me and I handed it to him, he started explaining to me in German that it wasn't the right ticket. I began my dumb tourist act, and he told me I had to get off the train at the next stop. This seemed easy enough -- I figured I'd get off, stamp the card and get back on.

Other Ticket Checker had another idea.

The two men followed me off the train, and the other guy, who from here on our will be referred to as Pissy Man, started lecturing me.

"Wrong ticket! Wrong ticket!" he said.

Apparently in addition to not stamping it, I had also bought a child's ticket, which I thought might be the case but also thought "reduced fare" might have meant it was for off-peak travel, like in London.

"Oh?" I asked. "What's wrong with it?"

"This is a child's ticket! For aged 14!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know," I said, as innocently as I can, but we all know how great a liar I am. "Will you show me the right ticket to buy?"

The other guy was much nicer and seemed more inclined to help the confused tourist. His English wasn't so good, but he tried to explain to me that I also hadn't validated the card. But Pissy Man cut him off.

"40-euro fine! You pay 40-euro fine!"

I could see the dumb tourist card wasn't working with him, so I shifted to the compassion card:
"I'm really sorry," I said. "I didn't understand the instructions because they were in German. Can you please make an exception, and I'll buy the right ticket this time?"

"You pay 40-euro fine!" he said emphatically. "The instructions are also in English."

I knew this (it's all in German in both Munich and Hamburg, but Berlin has an English option), but the button for English was pretty small and near the bottom of the screen, so I figured I could say I didn't see it. Still didn't work.

At this point he'd asked for my passport and was typing something (my passport number?) in this handheld touchpad, and repeating "40-euro fine! You pay 40-euro fine! You pay 40 euros or we call the police!" over and over again. But 40 euros is like a day's budget.

"I don't have 40 euros," I said.

This was actually a true statement.

"Then this is a problem," he said.

Now, with him threatening to call the police anyway, and after the dumb tourist card and compassion card didn't work, I figured I had nothing to lose. So I got angry with him.

"NO," I said firmly. "It isn't a problem. The rules are not that cut and dry. I didn't know I'd bought the wrong ticket. I just got on at the last stop, and I got off at this one when you told me to. I will buy the right ticket. But I will not pay a fine. You can make exceptions, and this is one of the times you make exceptions."

At this point the two men turned to each other and started conversing in German. I, meanwhile, was trying not to piss my pants because at this point, I was actually very worried I'd spend my first full day in Berlin at the police station. Finally Pissy Man turned back to me.

"You drive now?" he asked, and I thought he was referring to the ride in the police car.

"What?"

"The train! You get back on the train?" he said, apparently annoyed that he wasn't making any sense.

"Yes," I said.

Then he hit the right buttons on the ticket-buying machine, said, "Buy ticket!" and walked away.

It was a *really* great start to the day. Later I discovered that the S-bahn trains accept the Eurail pass, so I think from now on I'll be sticking to them (I got ticket-checked again on one of those later in the day).

And that's my really long story about a near run-in with the law in Berlin.

Which means I have very little time to actually write about the rest of Berlin, which is unfortunate because it's a pretty great city. So far I've been to the Gemaldegalerie (16th- through 18th-century art), The Neue Nationalgallerie (they had an exhibit called "Melancholy," which was pretty much what it sounds like, and was actually pretty interesting), Reichstag, Brandeburg Gate, the Berliner Dom (huge Protestant church that, if built today, would cost something like 120 million euros to construct), Bebelplatz (the site of the first Nazi book burning), the Alte Nationalgalerie (old national gallery), the Deutscher Dom (German history museum) and Hamburger Bahnof (modern art museum with a Minimalism exhibit, and weird as hell).

On top of all the weirdness at Hamburger Bahnof, which had "artwork" like a neon sign that spells out "Neon" and a white plaster wall that says and defines white, plaster and wall, I had a very strange confrontation with one of the employees. Museums station employees in just about every room at museums in Europe, and in Germany in particular they stand in the doorway and eye you suspiciously, like you're going to suddenly run off with a painting under your shirt.

Well one guy in Hamburger Bahnof said, "Guttentag!" to me as I walked in the room, which was very strange given that they usually just give you the don't-fuck-around look.

So I responded, Guttentag, and he laughed and said, "America!" but it wasn't quite America because he pronounced it Ah-meh-REE-kah. I smiled and said yes.

At which point he started following me around, so I thought maybe the conversation wasn't over. I smiled and said, "California."

He laughed and said, "California! Ah-meh-REE-kah"

He kept following me.

"Yep," I said. "Um. Los Angeles?" This time it was more of a question.

Again, he laughed.

"Ah-meh-REE-kah!" he said again, and reached in his pocket and handed me a cough drop.

I had to leave that wing of the museum to get him to stop following me.

On that note, I'll write more about Berlin when I get the chance. I'm still going to see the Fernnsehturm, Rotes Rathaus, Checkpoint Charlie, Olympic Stadium, Marienkirche, the Picasso Museum and a few more things before I leave for Warsaw on Monday night.

Hamburg

So this is cool: I met a Swedish girl at my hostel in Hamburg last night (who might be reading this, in which case, Hi, Hanna) and a couple of guys from Virginia started talking to us later. One had his own construction business, and he was telling us all about how he dodges paying taxes by keeping a significant percentage of his business in cash. His justification was, "It's OK because only about 30 percent is in cash, so that means I pay taxes on 70 percent of the money I make." We were telling Hanna how many small businesses fail in the first year because it's nearly impossible to compete when the rest of the market is crooked. The guy (who had a rented BMW outside, three houses and way too much money for his own good) inadvertently converted Hanna.

In Sweden's next election, she said, she's voting Socialist.

I don't have too much else to write because it's still early in the day and I've only been to St. Nikolai Church (a church that was bombed during WWII, so all that's left standing is this huge tower, the crypt and some walls surrounding an empty space) and Rathaus (the place where the German government operates). Unfortunately, Rathaus isn't doing another tour till Saturday, and I'll be in Berlin by then, so all I could do was wander around the lobby a little.

I'll leave off by mentioning my last night in Amsterdam, which was pretty sweet. I went to a coffeeshop that was less touristy and more low-key, and ended up talking to a couple of Dutch guys all night. I'm pretty sure that at least 50 percent of everything that came out of this kid Casper's mouth was a lie, but it was still fun.

Now I'm headed to Deichtorhallen. I don't remember what it is though -- all I know is it's next on my list where I write down directions to each place I want to go. I think it may be a contemporary art museum...

Amsterdam

Haagen Daz Vanilla Caramel Brownie Ice Cream and I cordially invite you to their wedding, to be held at a time and date to be determined. That is all.

Seriously. That stuff's amazing.

OK I just noticed this keyboard has the following label on it: "WARNING: Some experts believe that the use of any keyboard may cause serious injury." So confused.

Moving on... Amsterdam is almost as amazing as the vanilla caramel brownie ice cream I plan to wed. I already wrote about the Rembrandthuis, Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk, Sexmuseum and Nemo, I think. Since then I've been to the Hash Museum (really not worth the 5-euro admission), Torture Museum, Anne Frank House, Joods Historisch Museum, Dutch Resistance Museum, Van Gogh Museum, Portuguese-Israelietsche Synagogue, Hollandsche Schouwburg (a Holocaust Memorial housed in an office where Nazis used to work) and the Old and New Church. I don't have time to go into detail about all those places because I have a free pass for a canal tour later and a limited amount of time on this computer, but I'll try to hit on the big things for me.

Which means I'll start with the Anne Frank Huis. It's basically as it was when everyone was taken to the camps, sans the furniture. You can walk up the same stairs, behind the bookcase, they used to get to the hiding place, and stand in the common area, which is surprisingly big and bright, although I'm sure it didn't feel that way when eight people were essentially trapped there. Anne's room still has all the photos and magazine cutouts she pasted up to make the walls more "cheerful." A display in an adjacent area holds the original first diary, and post-war letters from Otto to his cousin chronicle his search for his daughters. You read one after he's found out his wife died, and how he's still hopeful that Anne and Margot are still alive. Then you read another from after he's learned they died. A video of Anne's friend, who saw her and talked to her from across the gates shortly before she died, is showing in another room. I really don't know what to say about it, except that it was somehow more powerful than standing in the gas chambers at Dachau. So I guess I'll move on...

If you've been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. or the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. you remember the huge cases of shoes that had been taken away from prisoners in camps before they were killed. At Hollandsche Schouwburg, they had something a little different -- display cases told the stories of a few individual kids, and sitting there next to each story and photograph was a single pair of shoes, each smaller than my hand. The massive cases full of shoes are jarring because of the magnitude, but the single pair of shoes is striking in a different way -- I guess for the same reason Anne Frank's story is so important in documenting history.

Anyway I'm depressing myself here so I imagine that I'm depressing you as well, and since I already wrote about all this in my journal, I'll move on to art (yay, art!).

The Van Gogh Museum was pretty great -- it gave a lot of his history to go along with the art, and after looking through the collections I got really drawn into the letters he wrote to his brother, Otto. The guy probably could have been as good a writer as he was an artist... it's weird that some people have talent like that and others have nothing. Although he did hack off his left earlobe and send it to a brothel wench, and then kill himself before age 40, so I guess it wasn't all fun and games being Van Gogh.

Well I think I'm going to leave it at that. I was Yahooing something and saw a brief about DeLay resigning, and have decided I really need to spend my last 15 Internet minutes reading the news. It also occurred to me that I don't know who won the national championship yesterday.

My next post will probably be from Hamburg or Berlin... Till then...

Bruge/Amsterdam

I'm going to keep this thing as concise as possible because this keyboard is crap. The buttons only push in sometimes so I feel like I'm on one of those old-school typewriters. Gah.

So I'll start with Bruge, where I was a couple of days ago, and then move on to Amsterdam. Hopefully I will also stop eating this bag of gummy candy once I get into my stories, because it will inevitably make me sick. I like gummy candy. (and I haven't even been to a coffeeshop today -- I swear)

Bruge
It's a cute city. I always make a list of every museum I want to see in the city before I go there, but Bruge didn't really have much that interested me. So I guess it was lucky that in the hostel I met some kids from New York who were planning to go to Amsterdam the next night also. We all hung out in Bruge and then took the train to Amsterdam together, where we promptly hit a coffeeshop and, well, you know.

At Bruge we went to a hospital museum, which I guess I expected to be kind of like the Cork City Gaol, which was a converted jail and told all about the history of it. But it was more of a building that used to be a hospital and then had some art added to it. We also went to a chocolate museum (best free samples ever) and mostly just walked around town.

Sidenote: I'm finishing this gummy penis and then I'm putting the candy in my bag. Right... now.

Amsterdam
So we took a weird backwards route to Amsterdam, and got there so late that I had to squat in their hostel room, which luckily was a private room they'd booked well in advance.

I had to smack a guy in the head on the train to Amsterdam.

He was greasy and gross and maybe Italian and thought it would be cool to stick his head out while I was walking down the aisle of the train. He said, "Hey Sexy," or something similarly original, and placed his face at a perfect level for me to run into it with my crotch. So I had three options, 1) Stop and tell him to move, 2) Run my vagina into his face, or 3) smack him in the head. I chose the ladder, but I wish I would have thought of Option #4 at the time: uppercut or knee him in the nose hard enough to draw blood. Because the smacking in the head option left me feeling dirty from his Steve-Lavin-hairgrease.

That experience aside, Amsterdam itself has been pretty great. There are so many museums here that I want to see before I leave that I'll probably spend close to a week here. Right now I'm crashing with a friend of my mom's in Wagenhengin, about an hour away from Amsterdam, but tomorrow night I'm going to a hostel in the city because it makes more sense.

So far, aside from the coffeeshop on Night #1, I've been to Rembrandt's old house and studio, the Rijksmuseum (older art), the Sexmuseum (I had to), Nemo (Science Museum designed for kids and awesome) and the Stedelijk (modern art). From here I'm headed to the hash museum, but I may swing by a coffeeshop first and get some space tea.

Now picture a nutshell...
I listened to Dutch phone sex and had a very scary ceramic fatty jump out at me in the Sexmuseum. ... Saw an amazing painting at Rembrandt's house that experts are saying has the qualities of the Mona Lisa (it's called "Girl in a Picture Frame" -- look it up if you're interested). ... Saw "Night Watch" at the Rijksmuseum. ... Smoked a joint in a coffeeshop. ... Played Super Mario at the Stedelijk. ... Made a bucket of clean drinking water at Nemo (had to fight a lot of little kids for that bucket, too). ... Saw the hotel where Canada and Germany signed the agreement ending WWII in Wageningen. ... Eaten Belgian chocolate. ... And smacked a grease-laden European guy on the head not nearly hard enough.

So
Tomorrow will sort of be my Jewish day, because I'm going to Anne Frank's House, the Dutch Resistance Museum, and a few other Holocaust-related places in Amsterdam. I may also check out the Homomonument, just for good measure. I'll probably leave Amsterdam on Wednesday night for Hamburg, where I'll spend two or three days before heading to Berlin.
Until next time...

Brussels

Brussels is gorgeous but I missed the European Parliament tour. I could have waited three and a half hours for the other one but opted not to on account of the rain and the nothing-else-to-do-in-that-area. I also couldn't find NATO. Stupid hiding NATO. So basically, today, I went to the European Parliament, found out there was no tour for three and a half hours, looked around the lobby thinking to myself, So this is the European Parliament, walked back outside and snapped a picture. It was generally anticlimactic, unless you take into account the picture snap.

But yesterday in Brussels was pretty great. The town square is absolutely amazing, and I just sat there for a while looking around at it. I also went to a beer museum, a chocolate museum and an art museum, and seriously, is there anything else in the world that matters? (I'll hit the sex museum in Amsterdam)

The beer museum itself was pretty poorly planned. It's just this brewery you walk into and watch a video on a big screen. The catch is, whoever gets there first gets to pick the language, so I sat there and watched this half-hour video in French. Then after everyone walked away I decided to put it on in English, got bored and left. But at that point there was a whole crowd of French-speaking people whom I'd condemned to watch an entire video in English. I felt a little bad, but then I went to get my free sample of beer and all was well.

A jolly old chocolatemaker did a demonstration at the chocolate museum, and there were free samples there too, which is important. After that I got a Belgian waffle, which they eat here as snacks instead of breakfast.

The art museum was called the Musees Royauz des Beaux-Arts, which translates into Fine Arts Museum, I think. It was pretty small because they were renovating a whole wing, but some of it was cool. Louis Artan de Saint-Martin had some pretty amazing seascapes, where the movement of the water is kind of mystifying. In a painting by Prosper de Troyer of a seamstress, you could see all of the seamstresses movements through this series of geometrical shapes and color. I guess those were two of my favorites.

I'm noticing that in the modern art section of just about every museum they have a corner of neon lights, a sort of stack of brightly colored shelves mounted to a wall, and strings. I really don't get it. But the modern art section of the museum was the one being renovated, so most of it was closed off.

Last night I drank a lot of Belgian beer. It was 2 euros for a pint, which isn't bad at all, but my buzz went away pretty quickly when someone in the bar fell to the ground and started having a seizure. It was really strange.

On that note, I'm going to head to the train station and go to Brugges. Maybe it isn't raining so hard anymore...

Munich/Dachau

So I'll start with Munich, and then end on the depressing note...

First of all, I would like to mention that last night I got carded. In Germany. Where the drinking age is 16.

Yep.

But it didn't turn out all bad -- the woman trying to card me didn't know English, so she enlisted the help of some guys sitting nearby to translate for her, so I knew that they knew English, so I had people to talk to. I was at this beerfest thing, which I absolutely can't do justice to in writing. But I'll try. First, imagine a big school cafeteria, just a room full of long tables lined up against each other. Now imagine that someone replaced the little milk cartons at that school with liters (that's right -- I said liters) of 12-percent-alcohol beer.

It was pretty great. There was a band playing German music, and about 15 percent of the people there were dancing on the tables and singing. A couple of girls were doing this elaborate swingy dance, and a little old man joined in, and they just went along with it, swinging him around between them.

Anyway my two new friends turned out to be this really nice gay couple, one from Germany and one from France. The one from France said that most people in France hate Americans, and that it's not just an isolated thing like the faction of the U.S. that eats freedom fries instead of french fries. He said he was surprised I didn't figure that out after three days in Paris. But I kinda did. I just hoped maybe I was running into a lot of mean people, but that it wasn't the norm.

I accidentally started an argument between them when I mentioned that I'd gone to Dachau. The French one had really wanted to see Dachau, but the German one didn't want to go at all because he didn't want to think about it. His argument was that other cultures and nations aren't forced to constantly relive their predecessors' mistakes, so it isn't fair to make Germans relive it. I think it's amazing that there's still so much guilt there, even two generations later.

The argument got pretty heated I think (they apologized and then started arguing in German for a few minutes), but I think it ended up OK because at the end of the night the German one bought the French one a chocolate heart to wear around his neck that said, "Someone loves me" (in German, of course). He also bought me a chocolate that says "Someone's thinking of me," but the French one said his chocolate was better and we traded. So now I have a chocolate heart saying, "Someone loves me" from a gay German guy. It's pretty great.

Now Dachau...

The front gate the prisoners all had to pass through on their way in says, "Work will set you free," probably part of the guise the Nazis put on for the media who toured the facilities. But the tour guide said it could have also been just to taunt the prisoners.

The rooms were really amazing to see... the furniture inside the rooms is actually a re-creation, because after the war the rooms were used by non-prisoners and spruced up. After the those people left, former prisoners said they had to change it back. So there were three different types of rooms: the first was what the rooms were like before the war started. It had three levels of beds, all spaced out. The second type of room, right after the war started, had the same beds, but pushed together in pairs so they could fit four or five people in two beds. They also eliminated the ladders leading up to the second and third levels. The third room was all bed. Just a bunch of beds all pushed together with no space in-between. People just piled on top of each other, with no room to breathe or anything.

The gas chambers there were all set up, just like the ones in Auschwitz and the other death camps, but as far as anyone knows, they were never used in Dachau. No one's sure why. But they did use the incinerators, which were in the room next to the gas chambers to make for easy access. In front of the incinerators were hooks mounted along a strip on the ceiling. They used to hang people there, right next to the incinerators, and then they could just drop the bodies into the ovens.

I'm not sure what else to say about Dachau, except after that I can't imagine what it'll be like in Warsaw and Auschwitz...

So I'll jump back to Munich for a minute. Before the drunken night (and it was a very drunken night -- two of those massive 12-percent-alcohol beers will *kill* you), I went to the Pinakotheke Modern. The Pinakotheke actually has three different museums, but I got distracted on my way there by another museum with all this gold and then spent too much time in the Pinakotheke Modern and then it was closing time. So I didn't do everything I wanted to. But the modern one was really interesting -- it was mostly modern art but not all (they had a Rembrandt exhibit and a Picasso room). It also had a lot of weird shit, like a room full of flourescent lights with a warning on the outside to only stay in there for five minutes or wear sunglasses. I'd like to know who stands in a room with a few flourescent lights for more than five minutes. Then there was one artist who had at least two paintings with dogs sliced in half. It was very strange.

On that note, I'll sign off. Right now I'm in Brussels, and in two days I leave for Bruges. After that, Amsterdam, which I hear has (among a few other things) a cat museum.

Munich

Today I went to the site of the 1972 Munich Olympics. There wasn't much in the way of a memorial for the Israelis who were killed, but being in the stadium was pretty surreal. It doesn't look anything like it did back then... the rubber track is covered in some kind of protective covering and the field is half-blanketed in snow but, well, it was still the Olympic stadium. On the way to the stadium I walked past the pool, where Mark Spitz won five gold medals that year, I think it was.

I also took an elevator up the Olympic Tower, which is the highest point in Munich. You can look down and see the Olympic stadium right below you and the entire city in the distance. While I was at the top, I also spent too much money on this...

See, I'm patting him on the back.

So do you guys think I'm the only one who goes to Germany and has my "picture taken" with Bill Clinton? Because that's the goal.

Before Olympic Park I went into a bunch of cathedrals. The cathedrals here are amazing... they feel different from the ones in England, France and Ireland -- they seem to have more color on the walls and ceilings (whereas in England, France
and Ireland the only color is in the stained glass).

Anyway I've got two more days in Munich, except tomorrow I'm taking a day trip to Dachau to see the concentration camp, so that'll probably take most of the day. That leaves Sunday for the art museum and the science museum in Munich.

All right. It's dinner time. Peace.

Leysin

So today I went snoeshowing in the Swiss Alps. (which are absolutely beautiful... from the train you can see the Alps and the lake right up against each other, like two worlds colliding. Or something.) Anyway I shoeshowed for about four hours, and spend at least two of them lost. I've finally become competent at reading maps (I had to - the people in France didn't want to help direct me at all), but this newfound skill does not come into play when there are no road signs on the trails or landmarks on the map.

But despite my utter lack of direction there and a few unfortunate and terrifying instances of wandering into the ski slopes and nearly getting steamrolled, it was absolutely amazing. Switzerland is such a gorgeous country. People say we have everything in the L.A. area with the beach and the mountains for hiking and the slopes for skiing, but we have nothing like this.

Tomorrow I'm going to Munich, but I have to change trains in Zurich anyway so I'm going to spend the day there. I'll be a little sad to leave Switzerland I think. Obviously the museums in London and Paris are amazing and wonderful, but accounting for the rest of it (the landscape, the culture, the general feeling you get somewhere), I think Switzerland's been my favorite country so far.

That aside, I'm sure Munich will be awesome.

Lausanne

I finally saw the crazy people art museum today, also known as the Musee de l'Arte Brut. Some of the stuff was pretty damn amazing... some of the stuff could have easily been in the Tate Modern or the Pompidou -- in the end, I guess, all artists are at least a little crazy.

One guy carved these intricate designs into the wall of his room while he was in solitary confinement. He used the broken end of a spoon. Then there was a woman who went crazy after her kid died and stayed up all hours of the night using a pen to draw on this massive piece of fabric. She covered the entire area (I estimated about 40 or 50 feet long and 10 feet tall) with women's faces mixed in with this architectural design.

One man created these wooden carvings that looked like little rooms or buildings, and he liked movement so he gave them all moving pieces, like windows or doors that open to little wooden people standing inside. Seemed like an interactive exhibit to me. It wasn't. And I got yelled at in French.

If I hadn't already been reprimanded I most certainly would have played with another wooden exhibit -- these Erica-sized Eiffel-Tower-like structures with moving parts that allegedly make all different sounds when you touch them. The artist was blind and he used the sounds made from the moving parts to figure out when he was done. I really wanted to play... but I was too scared o' the little old lady.

Other artwork looked like it was done by little kids who had just discovered crayons. One woman used toothpaste. One dude thought spirits created his art through his hands and that he wasn't personally responsible for it. But he was also the only one I noticed made a concerted effort to sign each picture neatly at the bottom right-hand corner.

So that was that. I also went to a cathedral and the Olympic Museum, but the cathedral was a cathedral and the Olympic Museum was nothing particularly exciting. Although I did get a photo of the spikes Lasse Viren wore in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But Brian's the only one who will appreciate that.

Tomorrow I'm going hiking in the Swiss Alps, and the next day I'll make a four- or five-hour stop in Zurich before heading to Munich.

Bern

So I didn't go to the museum I mentioned in my last post, because apparently everything here is Lausanne is closed Mondays. Instead I went to Bern, so I'll check out that museum tomorrow before spending Wednesday hiking in the Swiss Alps.

Anyway Bern is a really interesting city, with light rail lines running all over the place to the point where trolleys, cars and pedestrians all seem to share the same roads. So you can conceivably be hit by three different modes of transportation all at once. It's like a fun game.

The other fun game I played was sitting in on a Parliament session and seeing if I could decipher anything at all as the people all spoke in German. In the 45 minutes I spent there, I understood a total of two things: "Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science;" And that's because the dude said them in English. I also thought I caught the word 'communist' in there somewhere, but I'm not sure.

Despite my complete lack of understanding of what was going on, it was still interesting to be in there. The room itself is actually very small (but so's Switzerland), and it has sculptures on the higher parts of the wall near the ceiling. It occurred to me that it'd be fun to see Congress in session (not on CSPAN), and I also decided the U.S. government should follow Switzerland's lead and conduct business surrounded by sculptures with boobs and major nippelage. Give Teddy Kennedy a little something to look at.

But I digress.

I mostly just wanted to see the place anyway. I actually thought I was in line for the tour, but all the signs were in German and French and by the time I figured out it wasn't a tour the Parliament was already in session.

The rest of Bern was really pretty (although it's got nothin on Geneva). It's got a fountain of an ogre eating small children too, which I thought was good stuff.

Now here's the bad stuff:
Bern was founded in the 12th century by a dude named Berchtold, and was named after the first bear that Berchtold hunted there. So the bear has become a sort of mascot there, and to commemorate it they have a place called the Barengraben. These "Bear Pits" are just a cement hole in the ground that houses brown bears, who have been reduced to literally begging the tourists above for scraps of food. They literally drop to a sitting position and press their paws together to beg. The cement hole has a few shrubby plants and a horribly dirty smaller cement hole with dark brown water. It's completely wrong to keep them there like that. And the other tourists were oohing and ahhing and taking pictures and teasing them with scraps of food. They ddn't get it.

On that note I'll wrap up, because I want to hit nytimes.com before I go to sleep so I can read up on the Bush administration's latest missteps, as I've been completely detached from American politics.

But bare in ,ind the next posting will have to be less depressing -- I mean, I'm spending tomorrow looking at the artwork of schizophrenics. It'll be great.

Paris/Geneva

DISCLAIMER: I am currently on a computer in which the q and a are switched, the z and w are switched, you have to hold down shift to type numbers, the m is where the semicolon is supposed to be and the comma and question mark are where the m is supposed to be. And I just realized you have to hold down shift to make a period. And I can`t find the regular apostrophe anywhere. In short, this post will be likely be wrought with typos, and will be severely lacking in the grammatical correctness that generally defines my writing.

That said...

I passed a newsstand with USA Todays the other day, and realized the NCAA clearly doesn't know I'm gone and started the NCAA tournament without me. And on top of everything. they gave UNCW the highest seed in school history. And I missed it.

But I did see the Eiffel Tower, so at least I have that.

So the Catacombes:

In 1810 the bones from Paris’ overflowing cemeteries were exhumed and stacked underground through about a mile of tunnel. The mile of tunnel is now known as the Catacombes, and visitors can shell out €3 to walk through. Everything is stacked so specifically, with arm and leg bones lined up perpendicular to the wall and the skulls forming very neat rows in the midst of that.

Anyway there are a lot of gaps in the skull rows, which means visitors have been smuggling these 200-year old skulls out with them. We saw that there were no cameras or security of any sort, so it seemed like it was almost too easy to steal the bones. And then we reached the exit.

“Open your bags,” a uniformed man said suspiciously as we made our way to the door.

That’s when I noticed the two skulls and a femur sitting on the table behind him.

That’s right – three people had tried to steal bones by 10 a.m. on that day alone. I love to think about how those discoveries went down (OHMIGOD how’d that get in there??? This place must be haunted!)

Anyway we went from the Catacombes to Musee d’Orsay, which, despite its modest exterior (especially compared to the crystal-looking pyramid that is the Louvre) was amazing. Obviously the Monet stuff was phenomenal and the Van Gogh stuff was great, but I kept getting drawn to Camille Pissarro’s work, and I’d known almost nothing about him before. Impressionism is so amazing to me, because after all ,y years of art classes I still can’t comprehend how the artists make it work.

I know I already wrote about the Eiffel Tower (but did I mention you cqn purchase what I’m sure is a wonderful meal up there for the bargain price of just €40?), so I’ll move on to...

GENEVA

I’m in love with that city.

It’s like this international melting pot of people and cultures, and everyone I met was amazingly nice (and knew at least some English). I got lunch at this sort of outdoor cafe on a little pier jutting out on to the lake, and then sat down at one of the cafeteria-style tables to eat. Well apparently, everyone says “Bon Apetit!” every time someone new sits down.

And the lake itself was gorgeous. It was a kind of hazy day, but instead of making the scenery bland it created this pastel-like effect, making the lake and the houses and buildings on the other side look like artwork instead of real life. Plus since it was a weekend, everyone in Geneva was out for a lakeside stroll. I can’t even imagine what that place is like in the summer, but I do know that I want to go back and jump off those diving boards, and go waterskiing.

Before the lake I went to the Red Cross museum, which was basically a huge maze of old photos with information boards scattered throughout. Near the beginning of the museum, there was an entire rool filed with card catalogues (I think it said all the cards stacked together would take nearly a half-mile) that chronicled the prisoners of war from WWI. The museum also talked a lot about what led up to the Geneva Convention, and how the condition of the the victims in the Battle of Solferino led up to it. There were quotes from the Geneva Convention all around, and of course the United States military doesn’t violate these things. Ever.

From there I was going to make it an all-political day and go to Europe’s U.N. headquarters, which used to house the League of Nations. But it was Sunday and they don’t do weekend tours until April, so I settled for a picture of the front gates.

LAUSANNE

I arrived in Lausanne tonight and tomorrow I’m going to the Musee de L’Art Brut, an art museum featuring the works of psychiatric patients and incarcerated criminals, and I’m more than a little excited.

I’ll let you know.

Paris/Geneva

Well I've got about 10 minutes and a really weird keyboard so I'll make this quick. Yesterday I started my day walking amongst the dead in the Catacombes... really, really strange. I have a good story that I'll have to remember to post when I'm on a keyboard where the z and y aren't switched and all the symbols in weird places (typing is taking me forever). I climbed to the middle deck of the Eiffel Tower (it was just €3, where it would have been €11 to go to the top) and got an amazing view of the city. I also went to Musèe d`Orsay and saw a lot of Monet stuff.

Now I'm in Geneva, headed to Lausanne very soon. Geneva is absolutely gorgeous. I want to come back in the summer someday and jump off one of the diving boards into the lake.

Well my time's almost up and this was a pretty pointless post. More soon...

Oxford/Stratford/Paris

There's a lot to cover here, so I'll make subheads so you can effectively skim for which city you're interested in. Note to Brian (who hasn't posted any comments since I've been gone -- what gives?): This is mostly for you, because you'll want to read the part about Oxford.

PARIS
Well I've been wandering around Paris all day, and so far I've seen the Louvre and the Notre Dame Cathedral... from here I'm going to the Centre Pompidou and the Picasso Museum. This place is confusing as all hell, and I *really* wish I'd spent more than half an hour with that learn-French-book-and-CD set I got. All I know is how to count to 10 (but I still can't understand when they're telling me a price, and how to say "Do you speak English?" for which the answer, almost every time, is "Noon."

Anyway the Louvre is amazing -- I hate that I don't understand the little descriptions next to the paintings, because that's usually one of my favorite parts of an art museum. So after looking around for about an hour I went back downstairs and shelled out the 5 euro for an English audio tour. Of course the tour doesn't cover every painting, and didn't have descriptions for most of what I was interested in.

The Mona Lisa is in this small-ish room, behind glass, a rope and a parade of security. In the midst of all that, it seems very, very small. The largest painting in the museum, "Les Noces de Cana," is on the wall opposite the Mona Lisa, and it takes up almost the whole wall it's on. It's huge and detailed and intriguing, and everyone in the room crowds in front of the barrier on the opposite wall, as the security guards scurry around the crowd reminding them in every language to please put their cameras away. It's all pretty strange.

The Notre Dame Cathedral is gorgeous, but it's about the fifth or sixth cathedral I've seen so far and I don't know what else to say about it. Except that they charge 5 euro to light a candle. It's on the honor system -- just drop the money in the box and take a candle, so I wonder how many people cheat the church. I like to think about that.

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
This place really knows how to capitalize on Shakespeare. They charge money to get everywhere (Shakespeare lived near here, so he most certainly would have walked on this square of sidewalk: Pay 2 pounds to pass.) That aside, it was pretty cool being there. I saw Shakespeare's birthplace and his grave, different houses he and his family members lived in, and the church he was baptised and probably married in. That's where his grave is, and they charge 1.50 to get past a point in the middle of the church before the grave. So I told them I was 14 and got to go in for 50 pence. That's right. I lied to a little old lady in a church. And I'd do it again.

During the day I went on a little self-guided walking tour of Stratford, and toward the end I still had plenty of time to kill before The Crucible so I wandered into the Butterfly Farm, which says its the biggest butterfly farm in the world. The brochure made it look all exciting, and the sign had drawings of pretty butterflies all around. I walked into the lobby/gift shop, and saw that it was 3.99 (for a child, 'cause I'm 14, you know), more than I wanted to pay for anything but I was already in there and I had all this time so I shelled it out.

I stepped through the passageway into the butterfly farm and a massive insect came flapping violently directly toward me. Which is when I realized I'm *terrified* of all insects, even the pretty ones. But I'd already paid. So I huddled my head in my arms and made my way through the little path, making very screechy girly noises when exceptionally large butterflies came dashing toward me all the while trying to evade the others just sitting on the path. It was horrifying. Although I had enough good sense to avoid the Arachnoroom, which boasted it housed the world's largest spider (seriously).

At night I saw "The Crucible" at the Royal Shakespeare Theater (they weren't showing any Shakespeare plays). It was about the Salem witch trials, and was really well-done. As the girls were rolling around the stage acting like they'd been possessed by spirits it all seemed utterly ridiculous that this happened at one time and that so many people were executed. But there's a line in there that's "You're either with us against us," nearly word for word, and the judge in charge of putting these people to death reminded me a little too much of, well, you know. The play would have been even better if it weren't for the obnoxious class of high-school kids in the entire area in front of me. One had a cell phone go off toward the end, right before death. The ringer was that song "You had a bad day."

At the bus stop to go back to the hostel from the theater, and drunken English truck driver decided my idle waiting was an invitation to talk. After about a minute of talking (and him figuring I was from the U.S. from my accent), he said, "I'm just gonna be blunt: I got the best blow job of my life in New York." He proceeded to suggest maybe he could get a California blow job too. I like that there are icky people everywhere. Makes me feel more at home.

OXFORD
Well, most importantly, I stood on the track where Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile. It's so ordinary (actually pretty crappy... it's this old, worn rubber track that looks like it needed replacing about 50 years ago). Of course when Bannister ran on it, it was little pieces of cinder, which makes the accomplishment that much more amazing. There's this tiny little sign that says "Site of the first sub-four-minute mile" or something like that -- I have no doubt that people walk by it every day without noticing it at all. A mini-shrine with a photo of Bannister crossing the finish line, some cinder from the track and the stopwatch used to time it sits behind some glass inside the athletic building, but you technically can't get through the gate into it unless you're a student (they let me look, anyway), so I'm guessing it doesn't get many visitors. So there was that.

Other than that, I walked around to a bunch of different colleges, went inside, saw the quads, etc. A lot of them charge non-students to walk onto the campus, but I had a student showing me around, which was cool because he also was able to tell a lot of stories about the different colleges. One of them allegedly has the oldest college quad in the world, but rumor has it some guy saw an older one in Morrocco which makes this one just the oldest in Europe. Another college has deer just chillin' in their little area in the middle of campus. Eventually the deer are served to the faculty in the dining hall.

I also ate in a dining hall (looks like the one in the Harry Potter movies) and had a beer in a the pub where Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis used to meet and read their stories to each other. The drinking age there is 16 and I was carded. (but I have been getting child's tickets to everything in England, so I guess I can't exactly complain.

CONCLUSION
So that's it (or a fragment of it, at least). In conclusion, in the last few days I've stood on the track where the four-minute barrier was broken, drank in the pub where Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis used to hang out, saw a play on the stage where Shakespeare's plays were performed right after he wrote them (and where he acted), been asked for a California blow job by a creepy English truck driver, and been scared shitless by butterflies.

London

I would like to begin by extending my congratulations to Becky (or as she now likes to be called, Dr.-Fatty-to-be). She just got into NYU for grad school, and will eventually be a doctor of theater education. But I digress.

London's been amazing; I only wish I had more time here, but I leave today for Bath (maybe) and then Oxford (definitely). I'm still deciding whether to do Bath, because while it's easy to get there from here, I'd have to take three trains and a bus from there to Oxford and I don't know that I want to do that with my backpack. So I'm deciding. Either way, I'm going to hit the Science Museum today before I leave London.

In my two full days here, I went to the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tate Modern and two shows in the West End. The Tate Modern is really like no museum you've ever seen before... it was essentially designed to draw hoardes of non-museum-goers (that's right - I made up a word). It has windows everywhere, many overlooking the River Thames and many just looking down into rooms of people a floor below. So if you want a break from the art, you can sit anywhere and just watch other people looking at art. The museum was completed in the last few years, and has been credited with drawing a generation back to museums, I think. And the place was packed.

The first exhibit there was a room full of white boxes. It was incredibly strange. Apparently some woman made hundreds of white molds of cardboard boxes and then just stacked them into these massive walls to create a sort of maze. Here it's art, but I like to think about the fact that on the street corner, she'd be the crazy box lady. I still think she's the crazy box lady.

The exhibit I really liked was of Thomas Schutte, who made sculptures of sort of awkward and disfigured heads with varied looks on their faces, wrapped them strangely in scraps of his clothing and then tied them together in pairs. Then he took pictures of them from different angles, which were up on walls in the room (with some of the sculptures in the middle). They are supposed to represent corrupt politicians, in Germany I think, but I couldn't help but see the Bush Administration scheming against everyone.

Yup.

Well I've got to wrap this up soon, so I'll move on to the National Gallery, which was also amazing but in a traditional sort of way. There were rooms full of paintings depicting biblical scenes and also mythology, plus it had a few rooms of impressionists like Van Gogh and post-impressionists. They even had some paintings by Diego Velazquez, which was cool because I studied him in high school.

Tower of London: Took a tour given by a beefeater (apparently that nickname stems from the old days when they were some of the only people who could afford to eat beef, and people were very bitter about this), and he talked mostly about death and execution. Lots of kings and royalty being beheaded and then placed on a stump. Now I don't believe in capital punishment, especially in the absence of due process, but the thought of slicing off the heads of certain people in modern times following their indictment amused me a little.

St. Paul's Cathedral: You can seriously stare at the ceiling for hours. And once you stop doing that you can climb up something like 500 winding stairs to the top (they have little benches to take breaks in the middle) and see London from way above everything. You can walk around it 360 degrees, but the other people up there were much happier to stop at the doorway and clutter up there.

British Museum: There's really nothing British in it, but there are lots of artifacts from ancient cultures, and pieces of what were once giant statues. There was a stone arm that was literally bigger than me; it's hard to imagine how big the entire statue was. They also have all these headless statues, because apparently the heads fell off over the course of hundreds of years... although I think it's fun to think that the ancient cultures enjoyed constructing these massive statues with no heads, like they spent so much time on the bodies that they just figured, 'Eh, I'm gonna stop now,' right after the neck.

Shows: Stomp and Dancin' in the Streets. Neither had a plot but you can only get so much at the half-price ticket booth.

Well according to the timer on this computer I either have four minutes left of 39, so just in case it's four I better post this thing.

Cork/Canterbury

Two days ago in Cork, after going to the Cork Municipal Gallery and the Cork City Gaol (I guess that's how they spell 'jail' here, or how they did when that thing was built), I went to a pub with the UCC women's soccer team. The pub allows you to order pizza from a specific place into the pub, and then the pizza's half-price. So we got three large pizzas for like 20 euro, which was cool because a) the pizza wasn't worth more than that and b) I didn't pay anyway.

Anyway. We were talking a lot about the education system in Ireland, which bases college admission exclusively on one test. Nothing else -- grades, extra-currics, etc. -- matters besides this one test, which covers seven subjects (English, Irish, I think math, and then four others of your choosing). Before taking the test, you make a list of your top 10 choices of schools and majors (except they call majors 'courses'), and you get into them based on your score. You have to go to the top choice that you get into, and from there you're locked into studying that area. Each course has a certain number of points out of 600 you have to get, so things like medicine and dentistry are the highest, and things like a certificate in fish farming are on the low end.

What's interesting is the girls I was talking to all felt like it's a good system (of course they all got into UCC, which is one of the top three schools in the country), and that our system is weird. I asked about the class issue, and if they have a problem here with the test being catered to the upper-middle class (like the controversy with standardized tests in the U.S.), and they said they don't have that issue at all.

OK I've got eight more minutes on this pre-paid computer, so I'll talk about Canterbury before I get booted off (but I still think this college stuff is fascinating.. there's a lot more I didn't go into).

The Canterbury Cathedral is amazing. The oldest part dates back to the 1100s, but about 300 years later the rest had to be rebuilt because of a fire. That's about the time they figured out that Gothic arches (the kind that come to a point at the top) can hold more weight than rounded ones, so they were able to build it much higher the second time around. Since some of the earlier cathedral survived the fire, you get this mix of Norman and Anglo architecture under the same roof, which creates a pretty amazing dynamic.

The cathedral also has two stained-glass windows that were designed by a Hungarian Jew right after WWII, and if you look really closely you can see a tiny swastika on a padlock of a prison door on one of them. The guy who made it is buried in the cathedral's memorial garden.

Well I got distracted by a dog and now my time's almost up. I'll write more from London.

Cork, Blarney

I kissed the Blarney Stone today... didn't want to, but the little man helping people kiss the Blarney stone made me do it.

But the castle is amazing, albeit a lawsuit waiting to happen (has anyone ever sued the Blarney people for slipping off a rock and cracking their head open?). Plus at the top you get this amazing view of the area, which is all hills. Very steep hills. And I walked up all of them today. And it's only 3.45 p.m. (apparently there's no colon on this keyboard... it has an @ there instead)

On that note, I'm going to go relax a while before heading to the pub tonight to watch a soccer match. The people I'm staying with are very excited about this particular soccer match, so I am pretending to be too.

Onward...

Dublin/Cork

So Dublin was cool... Last night I saw a comedy show at a pub and got back to the hostel by around 1 a.m. In a room of 10 people, only two got back after me -- I beat the two American girls by like 10 minutes. It's really strange -- everyone gets in early at night and wakes up before 8 a.m. Then they loudly dig through their stuff. Which means I wake up before 8 a.m. It's fantastic.

My first crisis has been averted -- Bank of America decided to put a hold on my account (I told them before I left that I'd be using my card in Europe but the woman yesterday explained that just because they put a notation on my account doesn't mean the automated system that puts holds on accounts understands it. I'm hoping this doesn't happen again.)

So in Dublin I did the National Gallery, Temple Bar, a few pubs, walked up and down the Liffey, the Dublin Writers Museum, and was going to do the Guinness Storehouse tour but read in my tourbooks and heard from a few locals that it was a waste of 9 euro, so I just walked around the outside, took pictures, and drank lots of Guinness in pubs. It's so much better here. Seriously.

I also found out that a friend here's dad is a senator in Dublin, and she asked if I would have been interested in him showing me around the government buildings. Yes. But now it's too late, because of lots of things, namely the fact that she's in the middle of finals and I have a flight to London in a day and a half. She said she'll try to work something out, but... yeah.

So my first day in Cork has been pretty lax. The train was delayed and I didn't get in till around 2:15 p.m., and didn't get back to her place and settled till 3 p.m., and most things close at 5 p.m. So I did the Cork Public Museum, which had a lot of historical artifacts, but I knew very little about Irish history short of the potato famine, and I still know very little about Irish history short of the potato famine.

Tomorrow I'm going to see the Blarney Stone, and also check out an art gallery in downtown Cork. I also might swing by the workplace of a very hot Irish guy I met at a restaurant last night. Given the fact that I look like absolute crap, smell bad and have very fluffy hair, I was very confused about him talking to me. And given the state of the hostel showers (or at least the two I've stayed in so far... one where you had to hold down the button to keep the water going, and the other that barely dribbled water), I've also determined that for the next three months, I'm going to have very hairy legs.

Right now I'm in a cafe at University College Cork, which has an absolutely beautiful campus. It's sort of a mix of old and new buildings, and green hills with little houses as its backdrop. It's a nice change from the metropolitan feeling of Dublin. I'm also clearly taking advantage of the free Internet I get with my friend's password.

Now I'm going to figure out the bus schedule for Blarney, and book hostels in Canterbury and London. I'll write more at some point...

Dublin

I'm on my second day in Dublin, and so far everything's running pretty smoothly, my drunken stumble from a pub across town back to my hostel last night notwithstanding. I went to the Dublin Writers Museum on the first day, and other than that just did a lot of walking around. The city's separated by the River Liffey, and I somehow crossed it without realizing it and got very confused about where I was last night -- that's when I was sober, so finding my way back proved incredibly difficult, even with a random guy on the street I turned into my makeshift navigator.

Today I went to the National Gallery, which was amazing, and I think I'll go to the National Museum later, if I have time. And then the Guiness Storehouse. But honestly after last night I don't want to think much about beer. I bought my first two Guinesses in the pub, and then these two guys I started talking to ended up buying the rest. I've determined that people here are much smarter... they didn't even walk away when the conversation turned to politics.

So. So far I've had Guiness at a pub in Dublin, been to a museum and a gallery, and walked approximately nine million miles.

Tomorrow I'm taking the train to Cork, where I'll be for two days before going to Canterbury. I'll write more when I can -- I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath.

Here goes...

Well, I leave at 5 p.m. today for Europe. I'm starting in Dublin, then probably Cork and Galway, before getting a flight to London. I'll try to keep this thing going as I travel, so keep checking it if you are interested (or if you just want to make sure I still exist and haven't gotten lost somewhere in Europe).

For everyone who sent me their addresses (Josh, Sara, Kevin, Inez, Toni, James, Aviva, Audrey, Kim, Cady, Becky, Lisa), I'll try to send out postcards when I can. For everyone who didn't, will you be missing out on my tokens of wisdom.

Wish me luck...

Sprinkles and wrinkles

Becky and I were at a diner in Long Island, and the waiter was shamelessly hitting on Becky. First he thought she was 16, and tried to set her up with several of his sons. (He also told plenty of awesome jokes that began with "Who here is Catholic?" and ended with "'Fuck the children' ... 'How much time do we have?'") He even gave Becky a plastic condiment container full of rainbow sprinkles.

When Becky stepped away for a minute, the waiter asked me how old I was, I told him to guess, and he said, "26."

"Wait," I said. "You thought she was 16 but you think I'm 26?"

"You know how I know?" he said. "You have all those wrinkles around your eyes."

She wasn't lying

My friend Becky just said, "Well then we started playing with our love dolls."

Yeeaaahhh...

I sent my resume and clips to 35 newspapers last week, and today I was dutifully following up with a few of them. Since I'm going to be in NY anyway, I was trying to set up informational interviews with the five papers that are within an hour of the city. Now, I mostly got varying degrees of "We're not hiring again, ever," but the best was from the managing editor of the Courier-Post, a 75,000-circulation daily in Cherry Hill, NJ.

Me: Hi, my name is Erica Harbatkin, and I'm calling to follow up about a resume and clips I sent in last week. I'm going to be in the New York area next week, and was hoping we might be able to set up an informational interview.

Her: Yeeeaaaahhh, your resume and clips. Remind me of your experience again?

Me: *Reminded her of my experience*

Her: Yeeeaaahhh (think of the boss in Office Space), I think we're gonna have to pass.

Me: You're gonna have to pass on an informational interview?

Her: Yeeeaahhhh.

I mean, I've been shot down plenty. But this from a generally dinky 75,000-circ paper in Southern Jersey? Really?

How I spent my Valentine's night:

Scrubbing 6-month-old kitten poop from the walls in the pantry. Seriously.

Come here! We have coffee shops!

Sometimes I look at the postings on journalismjobs, just to see what I won't be applying for while I'm in Europe. There are plenty of crappy newspaper jobs in crappier towns around this country, but just imagine if your biggest selling point was this:

The Homer Tribune is seeking an experienced feature writer with experience using quark and photoshop for a half-time design, half-time writing position. The Homer Tribune is an award-winning weekly newspaper covering a thriving community on the Kenai Peninsula filled with outdoor opportunities, arts and entertainment and more coffee shops per capita than Seattle. Call Carey at (907) 235-3714 or send cover letter, clips and resume to cjames@homertribune.com.

Of course, we only have three people living in this town, but I mean, that puts our person to coffee shop ratio at three to one!!!

Kitties and boxes

You know kittens? They totally love boxes.



(I had some of A.M., but she's dark and the box is dark and you just can't see her. So you'll have to take my word for it.)

C'mon, don't you think he's cute?

I was at the bowling alley tonight, and when the guy I was with left for a minute, an old-ish guy approached me.

"Hey, you should talk to that boy over there," he said, gesturing toward a very young kid.

"Why?" I asked.

"He has a PS2," the old-ish man responded, in a sort of braggy way. "And he's a very sweet boy."

"I believe it," I said. "But why should I talk to him?"

"C'mon, talk to him! He's a freshman; he'd love to meet you."

And that's when I realized that a father was trying to set me up with his 13-year-old son.

I am the girl who digs through your dumpsters...

I went box-hunting again today, and was told by many people that there were "lots" of boxes behind the stores, next to the dumpsters. What they all failed to mention was that these boxes were inside the dumpsters, mixed in with all kinds of fun stuff. I am also rather short, so I couldn't reach much of anything without climbing around on the dumpster. Other people in the parking lots looked at me a little funny. But I'm OK with that... I am the girl who digs through your dumpsters.

A.M.

I think A.M. just likes to sit in her litter box and claw through the liner. Like it's her fun game.

I will not give out my number to random guys in bars...

I will not give out my number to random guys in bars... I will not give out my number to random guys in bars... I will not give out my number to random guys in bars.

You'd think I would have learned by now. Instead, last night I gave out my number to a random guy in a bar. And in the space between 2 a.m. when I left the bar, and 5:26 a.m., he called four times. The messages went from, "Hey, we met earlier in the bar; just seeing what you're doing" to "Me again, I'm bored, thought I'd give you a call to see what you were up to."

Really? At 5:26 a.m.? When he called at 5:22 a.m. and I didn't answer that time either?

I will not give out my number to random guys in bars... I will not give out my number to random guys in bars... I will not give out my number to random guys in bars.

I get bored...

So I get very bored and look at who visited my blog from where, and there's someone who regularly checks it from Middletown, New Jersey who uses AT&T Internet service... who is it?

On petty theft

So I needed boxes for my upcoming move (If you're one of the three people who actually reads this thing, I imagine you already know, but just in case, I'm moving all my stuff into storage and taking off for Europe for three months), and after visiting seven different places and not getting anything, I finally pulled to the back of Wal-Mart. There were a bunch of crushed and unusable boxes, but there were also some that were stacked nicely along the wall. On them, they said, "RETURN FOR CREDIT. BOXES COST WAL-MART AN AVERAGE OF 75 CENTS. DON'T THROW AWAY." I took 10. That's not stealing, is it?

I scared the shit outta someone yesterday

I did. I was running along, minding my own business, when I started to approach two teenage girls who were walking on the sidewalk. I passed them to the left, and the girl on the left side screamed, this high-pitched, piercing, long-lasting scream. Then she did a double-take, meaning she looked over at me a second time — and screamed again. Yep. I'm terrifying.

In other news, how the hell are you supposed to write a 750-word critique of an entire magazine?

The Wal-Mart that is my car

So last night I was at a friend's house and I needed two things from my car: a toothbrush and a tampon. When I began my search, I wasn't sure if I had either, but in the process of looking, these are some of the things I found in there:
• A stuffed monkey
• My mom's ex-boyfriend's Air Force jacket
• A NY Times from Oct. 31
• A cat fishing pole toy
• An Economics textbook from sophomore year in college
• The program from my dad's memorial service
• An empty bottle of listerine
• A WNBA media guide
• A bag of cat food
• A toothbrush and toothpaste
• My high school letterman jacket
But...
no tampons.

Financial breakthrough

Did you know my I can wear a boys size 4 shoe?? They're waaaay cheaper *and* they're not pink. This is all very exciting to me.

The last month and a half of my life...

Tell me what you think, keeping in mind the first sentence of the "Life in poverty" section didn't suck when I turned it in — we have one really crappy copy editor who likes to fuck with other people's work.

http://tracypress.com/local/2006-01-09-children.php

Happy hippies

Yesterday I got flipped off (emphatically — it wasn't one of those subtle finger-raises) and tailed by a guy with "PEACE" and "LOVE" stickers all over his Volkswagen.

Why People Kill.

At 7:15 this morning I woke up to two concurrent sounds: One was the sound of a hammer against a wooden fence and the prying of wooden planks off the fence (think MRI banging and then nails against a chalkboard). The other was the sound of two pitbulls barking and growling incessantly because they, too, had been woken up by the hammer and the prying. After about 15 minutes, I finally went to the window and asked the bearer of the hammer if he might please wait an hour to create this racket, as it was 7:30 in the morning. (I *swear* I really was that polite)

His response:
"Are you serious?" With a little bit of a laugh.

"Yes," I said. "It's 7:30 in the morning and I have about another hour to sleep. It's a little early for all this noise."

Him: *chuckle* "No. This is the only time I have to do this."

Me: *glare*close window as loudly as I could*

I think next time I get back from work around midnight, I'm going to start banging things around and making all kinds of noise and having cats growl loudly to wake him up. I think that might be a good idea.

This is why people kill.