b0neman’s Greece Trip 2K6

Somebody asked me yesterday if I was happy to be back and I told her, “That was a stupid question!” Why though? Why **shouldn’t** I be happy to be back? I’m working in a field that’s perfectly suited to my addiction: the Internet. I can breath in air that isn’t totally clogged with smoke and dirt. I can almost walk across the street without thinking. I’m in FREAKING America!! **EVERYONE** wants to head here and if they don’t they hate us because they’re jealous of us.

I guess it’s just the old after trip blues when all of life hits you at once. Bills, work, having to be here, there, everywhere. Being reconnected to the Web isn’t much help either. I was called on this last night and there might be some truth to it. It’s taken me about 12 hours to get over the shock of hearing it but maybe I’ve got a real Internet addiction problem going on here. The Web sure gets in the way of just plain old life.

I don’t know. I think I may have to rethink my living habits. I’ve just dumped Starbucks and am quite happy with that decision. Maybe keeping my Web exposure down to less than 23 hours a day is a good thing???

I’ve started the long and tedious process of uploading
some of the goodies from my SD cards to the Web.
Sooo, if you wanna see live-action shots of the
Kick-Greeks-In-the-Nuts Tour 2K6, point your browsers
here:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=dab0neman
I’ve managed to put up Week 1 of the trip. So that
takes you from Washington D.C. to the Tournament…
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I’m in Philly’s Airport and I’m in a really kick the AAAAAIIISH out of EuroTrash Internet Cafe’s Internet Center. Basically, I have my own cubicle all to myself with a nice, maybe 1 year old computer at the most. The Internet speed is back to my expectations so maybe I’ll throw a video your way.

I gave the shoes that have served me faithfully for the last three weeks a warrior’s death: I left them in the smelly hostel that I rented in Amsterdam. BTW, I decided to play it safe and NOT shower there. I think this counts as another bonerman tip to Euroboy Travel. You *really* have to choose your level of comfort/sanity when you choose what kind of room you want to bed down in. I thought I was going to like hosteling but I’ve found it a smelly inconvenient mess for the incredible discount you get on price. I would rather pay 30 - 50 bucks for a dirty flophouse room of my own instead of the 15 - 30 bucks for a shared bathroom/bedroom/dorm.

Well. I’m an American again. A dumb lazy, uninformed, find the closest spot to the gym, football loving UhMareIckCAN. But, don’t worry, I’m still going to be the crazy man you all know and hate!

If you feel the need for more of these ramblings, I’ll happily take donations and just hit the road for the rest of my life. My personal hero, Leif God of Thunder on the www.bootsnall.com message boards has done just that. Do a search on him. He gave up a real job for a round the world adventure and scored a job with Lonely Planet to boot. I figure $60000 - $70000 a year should cover everything on the road plus another $100000 in incidentals. I *don’t* know what they are!!! That’s why they’re called: INCIDENTALS!!!!

Well, see you soon.

bones

CLIP0105.ASF

I did it. I finally satisfied one of my carnal urges here in Amsterdam and I cost me less than 30Euro: I finally got some Asian…. food! I’ve been thirsting for some good Thai food and you can’t really get any better Thai in Europe than here in Amsterdam. Actually, I tried Malaysian and it was outta sight.

So, my other EasyJet flight worked out ok. No “normal manuveurs” to worry about this time. I’m in a hostel on the Warmeostraat. That’s pretty much dead center of all the coffee shop action if you’re into that. I don’t need that kind of greif tomorrow at the airport. They already freak out as it is when they find out you’ve been to another country but Amsterdam sets off all the sensors like crazy. I hate that part of it but for a cheap ticket, it’s a small price to pay.

Sooo, if you feel like having Boneman-like adventures of your own, I’ll make some suggestions:

1) Get both a Lonely Planet Guide to where ever you’re going and a Lonely Planet Language guide. I discovered Lonely Planet when me and my friends made our trek to India to see Sai get married. I became the instant “expert” even though I didn’t know a damn thing about India. The language book is context sensitive so you can go right to the section on buses or food or “hey I ordered a blonde girl but you’ll do fine boy!”

2) Protect your FEET! I have followed the advice of all the recent war movies and have really paid attention to them. They are your life blood around Eurotrash land as everything is not as convenient to get to as it is in the US. But in the US we don’t need to walk, just drive our fat asses around. Here it is an entirely different ball of wax. Expect to walk your ass off.

3) Bring clothes you don’t care about. You want to blend in but you don’t want to loose your best digs because of a poorly timed laundry trip. I lost 5 shirts in Castellamare because they got stuck in Alcamo. I kept telling the lady that I needed them now but she kept saying I could come back later.

4) Enjoy being lost. You’ll loose yourself in even the best laid out cities. Just go with it. Luckily there are bars and cafes all over the place and you can chill out and use your map to find out where you are. Unless of course if you’re in Venice. Then all bets are OFF.

5) Find about 30 suckers willing to read your ramblings that you type in Internet cafes all around the place. If you don’t type away for a few days, maybe a few of them will wonder where the eff you went and try to find your dead carcass…

6) Get a cell phone. I got one that worked in Greece and it saved me more than a few times. Unfortunatly that didn’t help in Italy and I had to resort to credit card calls. Beeelaaah. Make sure you can find good support: I didn’t.

7) Have fun and go you damn Yankee!

So that’s it for now. I may tap away from the Airport tomorrow so I’ll paraphrase Black Hawk Down, “You Americans can go back and live your long dull uninteresting life now!!!”

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I’m on a layover in London Gatwick Airport. This is the UK. The U… FREAKING… K. Things are different around here. I flew with EasyJet and on approach to the airport the plane made a sudden course correction upwards. The stewardess calmly called this a “normal procedure” and that the captain would explain this to us when it was conveninent. Turned out the “normal” bit of it was that we were going to fly into a slow moving plane that hadn’t taken off our runway!

Anyways, I’m here… it’s weird… I don’t think I like Brits much either. Maybe I’m turning into a stinking Yank before I hit the shores of the States?

Either way. I’m makeing this short because Internet access at the airport is 10 pence a minute and for us Yanks, thats EEEXXPENSIVE!!! So…

Toodle Ooo you Ragamuffins!

Enough of the Sud-European style stuff. I’m off to where I began my Poser transformation in Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. I’m NOT spending the night in the airport. I found a flophouse/hostel and will bed down there trying not to get too buzzed from all the “coffee” being served in those coffee houses.

If you come to Venice, be prepared. At any time of the year Venice will step on the throat of your wallet and stay there until the last blood curdling screams have gone out of it. *EVERYTHING* costs here. Plus, you get lost easily here. Even with the best of maps it is very easy to lose your position. I made sure I bought an Italian Venice map so that, at least, I’d have somewhat of a local’s point of view.

This place gets a pass on my Piss-On-You-American-Tourist-Trash attitude just because it’s Venice. It’s like Disneyland and Vegas rolled up into one big beautiful bundle. It’s impossibly beautiful and if you can’t take a good picture here then it’s probably because your camera is broken.

It’s a trip to know that people work, go to school, pee, poop, get haircuts, and just live here as if it were normal. I don’t think they know how good they have it, otherwise they’d come up with a solution to the city’s doom: It is sinking. I think the figure goes something like in 10 -15 years the water table will rise 2 - 3 meters. That’s enough to flood the EFF out of Piazza San Marco. They can kiss all their tourista money goodbye after that!

I hope they figure it out. It’s a great city even though you constantly get lost, raped of cash, sold substandard food at outragous prices, and happily pay $200 for a room with your own bathroom. Oh yeah, Internet costs you up the ying yang as well here!!!

Well, Ciao e’ bouna notte!!

After an 18 hour train ride from Palermo to Venice, I’m finally back to the world of real computers. That’s one weird ride once your train get’s loaded onto a ferry. I felt pretty vunerable, if the boat went down, it would go down like a rock what with 15 or so loaded traincars.

Oh yeah, Palermo still sucks to me at least. In my whole trip, I never felt like I was in danger except in Palermo. There’s just a seedy feel to it and I was waiting to get stabbed in the stomach like some unlucky sap in a jailhouse flick. Luckily I was looking crazy enough for most of the Palermo dudes to give me a pass.

So the pics are of Rome, one of me in front of Trevi fountain that looks like some spy took it. One of Mt. Etna, that *really* is an impressive sight. All too impressive when you consider that it is still an *ACTIVE* volcano.

So, Venice is cool. I’m going to get lost and then get lost and then get lost and then find Piazza San Marco because that’s what you do here. The people seem ok here and I like my room. It’s a dinky dinky old room in an oooooold place but the location is pretty ok and the people that work there are cool as well. Residencia del Doge next to the Santa Maria Formosa Church.

ciao!

I HATE EYEtalians!!!!! I don’t know what is causing this feeling this trip because the last time I couldn’t get enough of the greaseballs. I think I’ve met maybe *one* friendly Italian this trip: A barista(coffee jockey) at a roadside cafe/bar. She genuinely was interested in why I was here and who I was. Everyone else has been for the most part businesslike.

But… today in Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples (a really KICK ass display of Roman architecture) I found my fellow Sicliani downright RUDE. I was leaving and had noticed a few people were getting their pictures taken so I decided to what I’ve been doing this whole trip and ask for someone to take my picture then I’d take theirs. Works great with couples… so I ask (in italian) the first couple if they would take my picture and they said “No!” “No!!?” “No No” and they ran off. I thought that it must have been a fluke so I saw another couple and asked them again in italian first and they gave me the shrug off too. What a crap ending to an otherwise ok day.

I’m thinking that Castellamare and on the whole Sicily explains the Duh Bone Uh’s *A LOT.* I thought that when I first got here and this trip confirms other things. These are the ugly DuhBoneUh things though… I don’t think I reached out as much as I did the last time and that’s what ruined the experience. Sometimes you’ve got to shake a DuhBoneUh by the neck in order to get them to react and interact with you. Otherwise they’ll just stare at you curiously or lock themselves away. It’s quite an ugly part of myself that I’m not proud of and to see it in action in an *entire* city is quite maddening.

I don’t know how to get rid of it. Maybe you’ll have to keep shaking the crap out of me until I wake up!!!

Well tomorrow I’m outta here and will go on a looooong train ride up north. I’m hoping the northern Eyetalians are friendlier…

bouna notte biccotti!

Today, as a result of a DuhBoneHeaded navigational error, I drove to Taoromina. It is a *very* pretty town slapped onto the side of this steep “bowl” next the ocean. The views are fantastic and, as I feared, it is tourist trash hell. I parked my Punto in the for-pay lot and took the free shuttle bus up to the town center. To my horror there were Americani with their huge cameras dangling from their necks speaking da EEnGleesh. Also, once in the center of Taoromina there were PLENTY of Italiano tourists as well. You could tell that they went to a lot of trouble to appear rich because they chose the most expensive pieces of clothing they owned and threw it on reguardless of what color it was. Most of them were rich but the clothing choice really gave it away. They’d probably get laughed out of the “Babies on Board” club in Thessaloniki but here they make the scene…

Once I got out of there I decided I was going to navigate around Mount Etna. It’s an eerie part of Sicily: All lava rock/dirt everywhere you can see. Etna looms over all of it and it just looks like it wants to cause some more damage. This drive I chose, happened to be a really bad call on my part. It took me through some of the more unknown towns in Sicily, Randazzo, Cesaro, Fiumefreddo <–That’s “Cold Smoke” for you non-eyetalians. I got some good shots of Etna but it took me through some lonely country. Parts of it were snowed on still. To top it all off, I was running low on gas(benzina if you don’t want to blow your car up!) and I didn’t know if any of the gas stations would be open for the end of Carneval. I lucked out and got some gas and drove a long way home.

It’s still a dull dull place for the second to last day of Carneval. My bar, S@iling, was open but Internet access wasn’t. So I had dinner there anyways. All the “cool” kids were there watching a soccer game. That’s IT, that’s the Party!!! It’s funny, I think the Mob could move back here and snatch up the whole lot of kids. All the Mob would have to do is promise them some excitement and they’d be in. I’m half thinking of joining up now for the next few days I’m here just to break up the monotony…

AND *I* WASN’T INVITED!! And it was at my favorite place here: S@iling, a bar/Internet cafe but more of a bar in our sense of the word. Yeah, the club was only inviting the 15 cool people left in Castellamare tonight to some birthday party. Guess the Thessaloniki cool police finally caught up with me.

So I’m back at the el cheapo old ass computers here at Hotel Cala Marina. I will have to hold my judgement back on this place because I’m getting two stories about how things are going r.e. my bill! Go figure, the Italians would start screwing with my bill. It is cold and gloomy here today. When I drove in, the first thing I did before checking in was to visit La Mia Familia DiBona � Gioia. Had a creepy feeling when I couldn’t find Dominico DiBona for a while. I thought they had moved his body somewhere else, but I finally found him.

I’m having to *literally* switch gears(I’m driving a stick shift Fiat Punto now) here in this backwater town. It’s a quarter to 10 and only two restaurants are open. A few bars(in the Italian-European sense of the word) are open as well. There is no hustle or bustle. Right now in Thessaloniki, I’ll bet they’re setting fire to Aristoloeus Square. Right after that video I shot, the Greeks pulled me into their dance line so I *had* to dance for a bit before I could escape and find my beautiful bearded lady.

Here they just watch the cars go in a big circle. Karneval here is just for the kids. They dress up in costume and spray each other with these foam cans. They also go house to house looking for goodies. I’m going to look up Sciaci as I saw that they have a Karneval for a few more days. That may prove interesting.

Well, so long for now… bored out of my mind Bone MAN!