High, Dry and Hassle-Free

DAY 250: In the 1960s, Essaouira, the relaxed ocean city on the north west coast of Morocco, was a hippie haven that attracted the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Bob Marley and their faithful long-haired disciples. Nowadays, the hippies are gone -- along with their big clouds of hash smoke -- but Essaouira still retains its cool, relaxed vibe with ocean breezes and welcoming cooler temperatures than that of the cities inland. A new generation of music goers go there now, both locals and foreigners, more so in late June when the city hosts the annual Festival d'Essaouira, a four-day music festival with international appeal.

OUR SHARED GRAND TAXI STOPPED at a police checkpoint just outside the Essaouira city limits. Canadian Sebastian and I had been riding for the past couple of hours in the old but functional Mercedes with a young Moroccan couple in the backseat and two young Moroccan women up front with the driver. Everyone got out of the car to furnish the police with their national ID cards. A cop approached me and asked in Arabic for my documents -- something that didn't happen to paler-skinned Sebastian. When I reached for my American passport, it caught the officer off guard.

"[Oh, you're a foreigner?]" he said in French.

"Ouais."

He motioned for me to re-enter the car, hassle-free. Meanwhile, the locals had their bags searched in the trunk.

I continued to reap the benefits of a double-identity of a dark-skinned, Moroccan-looking foreigner. We were dropped of in town a cross-town walk away from where all the recommended hotels were. Much to our chagrin, we weren't really hassled by touts like we had suspected.

"Wow, where is everybody?" I questioned. If we were anywhere else that we'd been so far, we would have been rushed by guys trying to lead us somewhere already.

"It's because I'm here with my 'Moroccan guide,'" Sebastian joked, patting me on the back. "Except for your big backpack."

"Well, I'm carrying it for you."

Realizing that during the festival most of the accommodations in the book would be full, we asked the tourist bureau for a recommendation. Sebastian did the questioning in his fluent French like he had done for most of the time I'd been traveling with him. The woman there recommended the Hotel Agadir on the main pedestrian mall and upon our arrival there, we snagged the last room -- available only because a previous prospective client couldn't furnish a passport for identification since it was held up at a rental car dealer.

THE BIG ACTS OF THE FESTIVAL D'ESSAOUIRA performed on one of two main stages, each in a different part of the small city. Sets became around 4:30 when the temperature cooled down a bit. After bumping into and chatting briefly to Hendrik and Tina (from the camel tour in the Sahara) and Jess (from Djebel Toubkal), we caught the tail end of an act called "Barry," which despite my premonition of it being Barry Manilow or a tribute band to the late Barry White, was a Moroccan ska band that played their hearts out on stage in front of a crowd of hundreds of Moroccans, from the religious types in Muslim attire to the Moroccan youth wearing jeans and t-shirts, all moshing along to the rhythm.

"It's amazing to have an entire festival like this without alcohol," Sebastian said. Alcohol in Morocco, like in most predominantly Muslim countries, wasn't normally consumed by the masses.

"The difference between a festival with alcohol and one without is that people will remember it," I said.

With a lack of readily available liquor, we noticed that perhaps a lot of Moroccan youth turned to something else a bit more "herbal," if you know what I mean. While wandering one of Essaouira's many shop-lined streets, we went into one selling shoes (picture above) to find out the price of a pair Sebastian's friend wanted. Some guy came in, seemingly totally high, frantically playing with the shoes and cheering them on. "Wooo!" he'd go, laughing. "Korean?" he asked me.

"Uh, Filipino."

"Philippines! Woooo!" He tried on shoes he had no intention of buying, laughing the whole time, until he was asked to leave.

"[People are crazy,]" the shopkeeper said.

THE SOUNDS OF CUBAN MUSIC FILLED THE AIR near the port as the sky went dark and the festival got into full swing. Hundreds flocked to the big outdoor venues to party the night and to watch the musicians and their back-up dancers wow the masses. Jumping men in fezzes took to one stage and after, women shook their booties at the other -- a pleasantry for guys like Sebastian and me since during the entire festival, a huge majority of the partygoers were men -- most of the women around seemed to just be there to look after their children. Men not only held hands and greeted each other with kisses like I had seen in other Muslim countries, now they danced together, sometimes while sitting atop their buddy's shoulders, the way Western girls mount their boyfriends in a pool to play chicken during Spring Break -- not that there's anything wrong with it.

I suppose in a laid-back place like Essaouira where there's a lack of alcohol, people will resort to other things.

Laid Back In My Galabiyya

DAY 251: The Let's Go guidebook calls Essaouira "one of Morocco's most laid-back cities." Compared to what we had seen in other tourist-frequented places, this was nothing further from the truth. Essaouira's chilled out vibe -- even with shopkeepers -- was just like the book claimed, even with the surge of people in town for the music festival.

The day before, Sebastian was interested in a ceramic spice holder and the shopkeeper quoted him a reasonably cheap price right off the bat, instead of an outrageously inflated one to start a haggle game: 20 dirham (about $2 USD) as opposed to the price a shopkeeper quoted Korean Kim (from the tour to the Sahara) for a similar item -- over 400 dirham!

"[Maybe tomorrow,]" Sebastian told the man.

"[Sure, today, tomorrow, whatever,]" was the gist of his response with a nonchalance not seen anywhere else in Morocco. Sebastian ended up buying it then and there.

That morning, with the hair on my head grown into the shape of a Q-tip, I went to a local barber in town.

"[What would you like?]"

"[Number three here and number one here,]" I said, pointing to the top and sides of my head respectively. "[How much?]"

"[Whatever you like,]" he said like it was no big deal. Whatever I like? Was he for real? I thought I was in Morocco? Not only did he not care about the fee, but he did a splendid job, one of the better haircuts I've gotten on the road. I gave him thirty dirhams (about $3 USD), a price recommended by the manger back at the hotel.

"C'est bon?" I asked him, handing over the money.

"Oui, c'est bon. Merci." Without contempt or hestitation, he waved me goodbye.

EVER SINCE I WAS IN ZANZIBAR, my first exposure to a predominantly Muslim territory, I had noticed most of the men wearing the galabiyya (pronounced gel-LA-beeya), the traditional Muslim garment that looks like a big nightgown. Thinking that they would be comfortable and just cool to wear, I wanted to buy one since I was in Egypt, but Greg (from the felucca tour) told me that I might want to wait until I got to Morocco because the galabiyyas there have the hood on them.

When in Rome, eat pizza, when in Morocco, buy a galabiyya for $18. I wore the brown, cotton garment since I bought it the night before, and was content to wear it all day in the breezy streets of Essaouira. Wearing it was sort of fun; Sebastian got an even more convincing fake Moroccan guide and I got the opportunity to walk around in a cool-looking moo-moo in a place where it was actually socially acceptable. After managing to snag a suddenly available room at the Hotel Smara -- the nicer, recommended (and cheaper) hotel with a roof terrace overlooking the Atlantic and the shops below -- we wandered the ramparts looking like two Essaouirans -- Sebastian looking like a hippie with his bushy hair and me as the dark-skinned Muslim in a galabiyya (picture above). Some people just saw me as a Japanese tourist just looking silly in traditional clothes that their parents might wear.

Regardless of what people thought of us, we walked around town on the sunny day, stopping at the Nescafe sponsor booth for free instant mochachino samples every time we walked by in the Place d'Orson Welles, named after the famed filmmaker who filmed Othello in Essaouira. At the port, Sebastian and I wandered by the port's distinctive collection of blue boats where a middle-aged man approached us with a question I'd heard many times before by people trying to get money from me: "[Where are you from?]"

I made him play the guessing game until "Philippines" was revealed after numerous guesses of other Asian countries. They never seem to guess "America" or believe it when I tell them, so the answer to my game is always "Philippines." (It makes it more challenging.)

"Ah, Philippines! Okay," the man acknowledged. Then he just went on his way in a friendly manner.

"He didn't even try to sell us anything," Sebastian said to me.

"Wow, he genuinely just wanted to know where I was from."

The port was nearby the local fish market, where fishermen sold their catch of the day. Sebastian got a tip from another traveler he met to seek out a fisherman named Humid, who might hook him up with free food and/or a tour of the town. When we finally found the fisherman -- it wasn't so hard given his name was not Mohammed or Hassan -- we had no such luck with free food or a guide. Perhaps he saw me in the galabiyya and assumed Sebastian already had local guidance.

Our luck turned up when we walked by the fresh seafood stands nearby to possibly grab a bite. I had a craving for sardines and perhaps shared this information to Sebastian loud enough that a group of local guys a t nearby table eating overheard me. One passed me a grilled sardine.

"[Where are you from?]" he asked.

"Guess," I challenged them. It wasn't so much a challenge because on the third guess one guy said, "Filipino."

"Here, for you," the first guy said, giving me an entire small plate of freshly grilled sardines. Another added some grilled calamari and a piece of bread. They also shared their Coke, so I sat down with them in a somewhat awkward way, feeling appreciated of the free food, but waiting for the catch. Perhaps they were going to leave me with the bill? Perhaps they were befriending us in order to make a hash deal? Or perhaps there was no catch at all? The four guys wanted nothing more but to share the food they ordered too much of and went on their way to watch the nearby music performance.

"People are so friendly here," I told Sebastian.

"I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO A COSTUME PARTY," I told Sebastian as we hit the streets again after a brief chillout session on the roof terrace. I was still in my galabiyya with the hood on and Sebastian got into the festivities wearing the Berber turban he got in Aït Benhaddou. The sun started setting down the Atlantic, which meant that Day Three of the Festival d'Essaouira would come alive for the locals, tourists and the little blonde kid with a mullet that Sebastian noticed in a crowd. Performances weren't just held on the two big stages but at other smaller venues in town, the closest one to our hotel being in the skala (fort) at the northern corner of the rampart wall. Bob Marley the man was no longer in Morocco but his Jamaican spirit lived on in an awesome dancehall reggae performance where dozens of Moroccans congregated to dance, wave their hands and nod their heads to the rhythm inside, outside, up and down around the fort. Sebastian and I watched the Rastafarian get the crowd pumped (sans alcohol) from the top of the fort wall. A local man trying to climb the wall near us said something to me in Arabic, noticing my galabiyya.

"I think he want you to move so he can climb up," Sebastian told me.

"Oh."

"He thought you were a local." This was the second time of mistaken identity of the day; previously a cop searched my bag near one of the big stages, the way the cops searched the locals (but not us foreigners) the day before at the police checkpoint.

OUR INCREASINGLY SORE LEGS from the Djebel Toubkal trek didn't stop us from our next self-given mission of the day: a booze run -- and not just any booze run, an experimental booze run to see if me, an apparent-looking Muslim in a galabiyya could buy it. Liquor stores are hard to come by in Morocco, it being a predominantly dry Muslim country, and in Essaouira there was only one just outside the medina wall to cater to foreigners and non-practicing Muslim youth. I couldn't wait to see the reaction of me trying to buy a six-pack but to our dismay, the liquor store was closed. Westerners Sebastian and I thought the situation was totally backwards: the liquor store was open most of the time except Friday and Saturday nights.

Saturday night was still a good one without the booze -- I actually remembered after the fact that we had tone to a Moroccan rock concert at one of the big stages, after of which we wandered the streets still crowded with people. Partying continued beyond the performances with locals dancing to this one particular Moroccan rock tune that opened with a distinct bass guitar riff that got everyone excited. Everywhere we turned, the song was being played -- but only its familiar beginning; after the exciting opening measures it dissolved into a fairly lame tune. The Moroccan probably knew this too because they'd always stop the song midway to start it over with the bass riff again to get the crowd dancing again.

"Every music stand is a party," Sebastian said.

Eventually we heard a bit too much of the song's opening until it got to the point of annoyance. Sebastian even timed the interval between hearing it -- less than a minute.

I suppose we could have asked the Essaouirans nicely to keep it to a minimum, but nah, some of them were just too nice.

Jamming in Morocco

DAY 252: Legendary international superstar Bob Marley has had a long lasting effect on the people in Essaouira. Long after his departure not only were people big fans of his reggae music, they also tried to look like Rastafarians with kitschy woolen hats with dreads knitted into them. But the Moroccan affection for Bob Marley epitomized at the Festival d'Essaouira's big finale act: The Wailers, Bob Marley's former band.

Even with The Wailers in town, Sebastian and I almost didn't see their performance. As much as we wanted to that morning while eating homemade olive sandwiches in our hotel room (a favorite sandwich of my creation), we planned on doing the smart thing of making headway northbound towards Spain because we both only had limited time in Morocco and need to be in Europe in three days.

But when we tried to get an afternoon bus out of Essaouira, they were booked solid -- we had no choice but to take an overnight bus to Rabat, leaving us to stay until nighttime to see The Wailers perform. (Oh, poor us.)

THE SUN BLARED DOWN FROM ABOVE, baking the mostly blue- and white-painted seaside city with a beach to temperatures too hot for me to wear my galabiyya. It was a shame I didn't have it one when we stumbled upon the open liquor store, so that we could have done the experiment we wanted to try the day before. However, even without the Muslim attire on, I was stopped by the clerk guarding the back of the store where the wines and hard stuff were.

"[Oh, you're with him?]" he said, seeing Sebastian call to me from behind.

"Oui." He let me and my foreigner ways pass.

We killed the early afternoon on the roof terrace with ice-cold beers until show time. We managed to snag a really good vantage point as The Wailers took to the stage. The band members started playing reggae instrumentals until the lead singer showed up to singing classic Bob Marley tunes (picture above).

"Lots of the Moroccans are wearing these hats [with the wool dreads knitted into them.] That's because they want to be like us! Rastafari!"

The sounds of the trumpet, saxophone, bass, keyboard, guitar and drums wailed through the air from the same group I'd heard time and time again on my Legend CD, only live. I found it funny that I was listening to world-renowned Jamaican music in Morocco of all places, which was sort of like when I had really good Vietnamese food at Tony's in Tanzania. The lead singer ad libbed a bit for the occasion, changing the lyrics of some of the songs. "We'll be forever loving Ja" became "We'll be forever loving Allah," and "We're jamming" became "We're jamming in Morocco."

After about an hour of playing, the band quietly left the stage without a band, the way most bands do in a concert pretending like the audience won't ask for an encore, but knowing damn sure they will. The Moroccan encore call was full of chants that were reminiscent of those in a Brazilian soccer match, with raised hands and waving fingers. It wasn't long until the band came back, this time led by a guy who played with The Wailers of Moroccan descent who had never been to Morocco before, but enjoyed the hero's welcome. He led a whole bunch of more songs, adlibbing as well.

"I remember... when we used to sit... in the government yard in Morocco..."

The encores ran until dusk with more Bob Marley classics like "One Love," "Get Up, Stand Up," and appropriately, "Exodus" when the band was about finished with their set. There were more encore calls, but a festival organizer took the mic and explained that the festival was over, thanking the performers and the sponsors.

Before our own exodus, Sebastian and I killed some time at the beach and at a sidewalk cafe drinking mint tea (where yet another guy mistook me for Moroccan) until we got our bags and walked over to the bus terminal. Inside our bus, the festival was still going strong with most passengers apparently of the Moroccan college crowd going back home after partying all weekend in Essaouira -- complete with their clouds of hash smoke. Singing continued with rhythmic clapping and drumming on the backs of seats, and it was a pretty rowdy time. The 2004 Festival d'Essaouira may have been officially over, but it didn't prevent people from jamming in Morocco.

Funky Old Medina

DAY 253: Founded in the eighth century and declared a World Heritage Site in 1981, Fez is one of Morocco's premiere imperial cities with a "bustling, colorful medina [that] epitomizes Morocco. No visit to the country is complete without seeing it," says Let's Go. With only two days left in Morocco, I supposed at least one in Fez was in order.

"WE'RE IN RABAT," I said, tapping Sebastian on the shoulder. He was the deep sleeper between the two of us, even cramped in an overnight bus from Essaouira. We got our bags off the bus at the bus terminal in Rabat, Morocco's capital city, a place we had been recommended to skip if we were short on time. We shopped around for a bus to take us the four extra hours eastbound to Fez -- one was leaving immediately. We got tickets for that bus but perhaps took too much time for a pee break (two minutes) because we missed the bus. A guy at the bus company led us around the terminal to figure out what to do, leading us to a petit taxi; he wanted us to take the taxi to catch up to the bus, most likely at an additional cost. We weren't sure if it was a scam to get more money from us or not.

"[We'll just take the next bus,]" we told him in French.

The man argued in a mix of Arabic and broken French that our tickets were specifically for the bus that left already and that we had to take the taxi. He sighed when we turned him down and so he put us on the next bus. Both Sebastian and I fell asleep on it.

We were rudely awakened when the bus stopped on the shoulder. Ha, another breakdown, I thought. I must be a jinx after all. But nothing was wrong with the vehicle. It had caught up to our proper bus and we were frantically called to get off, get our bags and get on the other bus. There was some truth in the bus terminal guy in Rabat after all; it's a shame that with all the shadiness of Moroccans that deal with tourists, a foreigner always assumes he's up to something.

FOUR HOURS LATER, we finally arrived in Fez, right outside the old medina wall. Entering inside, we were greeted by the usual touts, one of which had a business card of the hotel we made a reservation for the day before. We trusted this one this time and he led us to the Hotel Cascade, a cheap hotel in a convenient location near the ornately-painted Blue Gate. After settling in, we took to the narrow streets of the medina (old city), only wide enough for pedestrians and the occasional pack mule or horse. Fez boasts the largest media of all of Morocco's cities, with a maze of streets and alleyways so confusing that even the independent traveler-minded guidebooks suggest hiring a guide. A guide would help you find your way through the web of streets where everything looks similar, and more importantly, keep the other touts at bay from hassling you to be your guide. I could have passed as a guide in m y galabiyya, but at 42°C (107°F) it was way too hot to wear it; our hotel manager said Fez had the highest temperature in the country that day.

Forsaking the cost of a guide, Sebastian and I winged it while wandering independently anyway; sometimes it's just nice to get lost. Immediately we were hounded by restaurant and shop touts who were a bit more bitter about tourists turning them down or ignoring them. A bag vendor tried to sell Sebastian a bag he was mildly interested in, in a polite and friendly way telling us he'd give us a good price with no games or pressure.

"I kinda like that guy," Sebastian told me as we walked away politely, not interested in the man's goods. But then the man called to us in English from behind.

"You wasted my time!"

"I take that back," Sebastian said to me.

WE MADE A MISSION of trying to find Fez's famous tanneries, where citizens dried and dyed fresh leather of cows, sheep and camels. Even with a map and a compass it was near impossible to find in the medina's labyrinth and we often found ourselves going in circles or backtracking to familiar sights, like the Mosque Quaraouiyine, the ninth century mosque built by Fatima Al-Fihra that also housed the world's oldest university. The touts took advantage of our lost, confused state -- knowing damn well sure we were looking for the tanneries without us having to tell them -- and tried to either lead us there (with a catch presumably) or have us check out their restaurant (Sebastian mentioned we might be interested in finding a nice place for our last night in Morocco) or sell us souvenirs that we didn't want:

"Sixty for the bag," one said in English.

"That's too much," I told him.

"How much you want to pay for this bag?"

"I don't want it."

"But what price would you like?"

"Well, if I wanted it -- and I don't -- in Marrakesh, they sell it for thirty."

"Okay, you buy it for thirty," he said reaching for the bag to shove in my face.

"I don't want it," I said, walking away.

"Come on, thirty! Thirty! Thirty-five... come on," he said, his voice trailing off as I got farther away. Funny, we was actually raising the price on me.

LET'S GO SAYS TO FIND THE TANNERIES, follow the path of the six-sided cobblestones until you smell the funky stench of fresh leather and dyes. Even with that said, we still couldn't follow our noses (there were walls in the way) and gave up, caved and asked for directions to a secluded storeowner. Immediately his associate came to our aid and it became evident why we couldn't find the tanneries on our own; there's no official entry, the classic overlooking vantage point was only found by entering a store with a balcony nearby the big vats. The catch of course was the hard sell on goods in the store after you take your pictures (other picture above), but Sebastian and I managed to politely decline the offers of the salesman without him getting pissed off. We were led to another guy who brought us to a spice store who was going to give us a whole sales pitch, but we stopped the process before they got pissed for declining them. "We'll just go on our own now. You save your time, we save our time," I told him.

We declined more guidance touts (including kids that we questioned if they should be in school), explaining to them that we wanted to just wander and get lost on our own. Our wanderings led us to a much less crowded area where people lived and other kids played in a small plaza. Our only guidance came from multiple arrowed green signs we noticed that pointed to the "Jardin Snan Sbil." At almost every turn we saw one of the modern signs for this supposed garden and followed them like it was a scavenger hunt for about an hour. The green signs hung from above led us through the maze, passed yummy pastry shops and quiet residential streets -- but to no apparent garden at all. In the end, it actually led us out of the medina in the most indirect way possible to an area near our hotel. And after all that, we discovered the garden was closed for the day.

As a consolation we visited the nearby museum situation in an impressive former palace with a ceramic and perfume exhibition. Tiring from all the walking afterwards, we just vegged out in our room with a bottle of wine we bought in Essaouira and makeshift wine glasses.

"YOU WANT A RESTAURANT?" asked another tout later that night when Sebastian and I went out after an early evening siesta. He, like the owner of the restaurant near the hotel, desperately wanted to do business with us, if only we were hungry. "I can show you one."

"No thanks, we're not hungry now."

The tout cut to the chase. "You want hash? I have hash. Good stuff. Come one, give it a try."

"Why do they always come to me with this?" Sebastian vocalized his thoughts to me.

"I think it's because of your hair," I told him.

"Good stuff. Just try it, come one," the tout continued. "If you don't like it, you keep your money, I'll keep the hash."

"We've heard that one before."

The tout followed us no matter how hard we tried to politely get rid of him. We mentioned we were looking for internet, and that most were closed. "I can show you another one. It's open all day and all night," the tout said. "Come with me and try the hash."

"No, thanks."

Suddenly the guy's desperation for a sale turned him into a less friendly guy. "Are you a homosexual?" he asked Sebastian. "Are you gay? You want a big cock? I got a big cock right here, a big Moroccan cock!" he continued with a sarcastic demeaning tone.

"No."

Eventually he gave up and left us alone, leaving us to find internet at the late hour of midnight on our own. There was in fact a 24-hour internet cafe just outside the medina where we had a session. Hungry around one in the morning -- and wrongly assuming that a snack stand would be open -- we found ourselves with no choice on our last night in Morocco to eat nothing Moroccan, but food from our emergency stashes. I donated a can of tuna and Sebastian a bag of freeze-dried peas. It was our culinary Moroccan anti-climax, but satisfied our hungers in the meantime. It had been a long, tiring day, from bus rides to street mazes to offers of "big Moroccan cocks."

Out of Africa

DAY 254: "It's the end of an era," I told Sebastian as we rode on the last ferry from Africa into Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar. The nighttime ferry ride was the unforeseen final leg of a mad dash from Morocco to Spain.

"YOU WANT SOME HASH?" a grimy middle-aged man asked me at the store near the Blue Gate in Fez earlier that morning. To our last minute in town the incessant touts wouldn't back off.

"No, thanks," I answered. It wasn't unheard of to be involved in a drug deal like that (even without buying it), only to have the seller rat you out to the cops (real or fake) in order to ask you for a bribe.

"Can I give you a kiss?" he asked. I wasn't sure if he was sarcastically mocking me or being gay.

"Uh, no."

"Can I give your friend a kiss?" he called to Sebastian who was buying a bottle of water. Then he turned back to me with his ambiguously sarcastic tone. "I want to give you a kiss because you're so handsome."

"Uh, no."

Yup, it was definitely time to leave. Sebastian and I took the twelve noon bus northbound out of Fez.

WE HAD IT ALL PLANNED OUT: we had just enough time in the day to take that noon bus to Tetouan, then a taxi to Ceuta, a ferry to Algeciras in European Spain and a bus to our target final destination of the day, Cadiz in the south west corner of Spain. The six-hour bus to Tetouan was straight-forward -- I wrote in The Blog, Sebastian read my copy of Dude, Where's My Country? -- as French-speaking Morocco gradually turned into Spanish-speaking Morocco, the northern region where Spain once had a stronghold. At a stop in Chefchaouen in the middle of the Rif Mountains, red Spanish-tiles capped houses and a vendor asked me for "cinco dirhams" instead of "cinq."

Two hours later we arrived at the bus station in Tetouan, a place known for aggressive touts that know that any traveler is only there as a stopping point traveling between Morocco and Spain. Even before we got our bags off the bus, a tout followed us to just "be friendly" and "practice his English" for "no money." Sebastian and I tried to get rid of him politely but he wouldn't go away. I went to make a cash run at an ATM (both Sebastian and I were low on cash) while Sebastian did some guide research in the book. It was determined that the tout's suggestion of taking a shared taxi and not a bus to the port city of Ceuta (about thirty minutes away) was the thing to do, giving the fact that we still wanted to get the ferry to Europe and another bus afterwards to Cadiz.

Getting a taxi out of Tetouan was another annoying in itself though, with the tout trying to lead us to overpriced taxis. The arguments over price went on and on with a driver so much that Sebastian and I considered just taking a bus to the other (and bigger) port city of Tangier.

ENTER FABRIZZIO, an Italian guy in shorts and flip-flops that had also come from jamming in Essaouira. A guy perhaps in his late 20s, he was the quintessential Italian with the talent of argument, even in Spanish with a thick Italian accent. He took charge of the situation, pricing out a ride to our common destination of Ceuta for the three of us for four bucks each.

"I think the Italian guy really saved us," Sebastian told me.

The taxi ride along the northern cost of Morocco took us half an hour to the end of the line, a land border crossing into Spain; Ceuta lies in one of two tiny territories of Spanish soil on the African continent. After changing our remaining dirhams to euros and clearing customs, we walked across the border and into Spain -- without ever leaving Africa. Things were drastically different once we entered Spanish territory anyway; Ceuta (picture above) was a modern developed resort kind of town with a fancy marina, skyscrapers and palm trees.

Another taxi took us to the ferry terminal, dropping Fabrizzio off halfway to his stop -- it was almost as if he crossed paths with us solely as guidance to get into Spain from Tetouan. We hoped to get the next ferry out in hopes of getting into the Iberian Peninsula in a timely fashion in order to get the last bus to Cadiz, only to realize that in our casual stroll across the African land border from Morocco into Spain foiled our lofty travel plan of the day; we had jumped two hours into the future with the time zones. (Spain was one hour ahead, plus another hour for Daylight Savings adjustments.) The sun was still out but suddenly it was nearing 9:30 p.m. instead of 7:30, leaving us with no choice but to take the last ferry into Europe at eleven. In the meantime, we celebrated our long journey across Morocco with something we hadn't been easy to come across in a long time: beer.

"IT'S THE END OF AN ERA," I told Sebastian as we rode on the fast ferry from Africa into Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar. The ride was only 35 minutes, barely enough time for me to digest the fact that my four months in Africa -- "Part II of The Global Trip 2004" -- was actually over and that I was headed back into the Western World. Chances are we had missed all bus services out of the port city of Algeciras so I decided that I'd stay for the night, while Sebastian would find a bus or taxi to at least go halfway to Cadiz in order to save money on the hotel fees of a port city -- he figured he'd just pitch a tent somewhere. The Vancouverite and I just lounged out in a corner of the swanky-looking ferry with final conversations and reminiscence of the past week we'd spent together.

"You're the youngest 29-year-old I've met," he told me. Most of his friends above twenty-four weren't venturing solo into the world with philosophies of cartoons like I was.

"I know, I just wrote a comment to your mom on The Blog that said that I'm not sure if you're just mature for your age or if I can just really relate to 20-year-olds."

I flipped through the Let's Go guide and found a hostel that only cost eight euros, a price that Sebastian could afford -- most other places were no cheaper than twenty, three to six times more than most of the places in Africa. (Welcome to Europe.) With that said, and Sebastian's self-aware ease of being persuaded, he decided to extend his travels with me for one more night. We got off the ferry and stepped into Europe -- a first for me on The Trip -- and wandered the night streets of Algeciras looking for the hostel with the cheap rates. We wandered for about an hour, lugging our big bags, only to get lost in the practically empty but modern town. Eventually we settled on a nice place overlooking a plaza for 14 euros each. I was so tired from the long journey from Fez that I passed out in my bed while waiting for Sebastian to get out of the shower.

And so, as I slept in a bed in a hostel with Western prices, a new era began: The Global Trip 2004 Part III: Europe & Siberia.

Back in the Western World

DAY 255: Being in Spain, I was back in the Western World. On a morning walk to make a reservation at the train station, I saw the familiar images of scantily-clad women on billboards and the sounds of Vespas whizzing by. No longer would I be hearing Arabic, I was back to the language of Spanish, which I learned during the first two weeks of The Trip. However, the main difference between Latin American Spanish and European Spanish (other than some words being used differently) is that the Europeans pronounce their soft C's with a lispy TH sound. I'm told that this was because a former king of Spain had a lisp and they changed the language entirely to suit him.

SEBASTIAN SLEPT IN A COUPLE HOURS later than I did as usual, but was up by mid-day for us to check out. While killing time before my three o'clock train ride to Madrid, we moped around the port city, from its big food market to its pedestrian malls and its Plaza Alta (picture above). It was all still a big cultural shock for me having been in Africa for the past four months, but slowly I came to accept the new Western vibe. I wasn't however, ready for European prices, but that would pass.

In attempts to eat on the cheap, Sebastian and I just bought bread, Laughing Cow cheese and tomatoes at the market and made sandwiches at a lookout point of the Rock of Gibraltar. I had tried to buy fresh basil leaves for an added kick, only to be sold mint leaves instead.

After our minty sandwiches we check out the bus situation for Sebastian's departure. He was about to buy a ticket to Cadiz until a taxi driver offered to drive him and whoever else headed to Cadiz for a cheaper price than the bus since he was going there anyway. I had heard this ploy before in Egypt, but as Sebastian said, "You can trust a taxi driver here more than you can in Morocco." He and an Australian woman traveling to Cadiz split the fee and rode off, but not before Sebastian and I had a final goodbye.

"Thanks for doing all the French speaking," I said to him. "And thanks for calling me the youngest twenty-nine year-old you know. You'll be thinking about me when you're twenty-nine."

"Yeah, I know that I won't be married and I'll still be fun."

We decided to keep in touch and made tentative plans for a rendezvous in his hometown of Vancouver. Perhaps we'd talk about cartoons then.

MY TRAIN SIX-HOUR TRAIN TO MADRID was pretty straightforward as I whizzed by the hills of Andalucia. Second class on a Western European train was nice, with air-conditioning and headsets to listen to the in-car movies, Basic and Hollywood Homicide, both dubbed in Spanish with the lispy soft C's. Once in Madrid I felt at home again, a big modern city like New York where my intuition led me with no confusion or second-guessing at all. I had two hours to take the local city Metro to get from the Atocha station to the Chamartin one, which was safe and easy, despite the fact that it was the Madrid underground was the victim of the terrorist attack in 2003. More Western images filled my eyes, from teen fashions (no more galabiyyas here) to iPod billboards through the subway tunnels.

A sandwich at the Chamartin station staved my hunger for the meantime as I boarded the overnight train to Barcelona, my final destination of a long journey since Fez, Morocco. I took my second train of the night and rode straight on 'til morning...

Second Time, Second Nature

DAY 256: Barcelona, has a particular allure unmatched by other Spanish city. It attracted the likes of wild and world-renowned artists like Picasso and Miro and lured the Olympic committee in 1992 for the Summer Games. It lured me once before and it was doing it again a second time.

I had come to Barcelona in 1999 on a backpacking trip through Europe with wheat and da Rzz, and this time I'd see its sights with another friend, Jack (aka Jackalz on The Blog), my Uruguayan-American childhood friend living in Miami who had once talked his way out of a police bribe when I visited him in Uruguay in 2002. He had actually talked his way into coming to meet me in Spain, telling his hard-to-get-a-vacation-from job in a vet clinic that he had to leave for two weeks to go to his brother's wedding in Uruguay. (His brother got married before and would show those old pictures if need be.)

Jack's flight didn't touch down until afternoon, leaving me the morning to explore and run some errands. I arrived via rail on my overnight train from Madrid at about 8:30 am and kept my bag in a locker in the train station. I made my way outside, where I had flashbacks in my mind of the time in 1999 when wheat, da Rzz and I accidentally stumbled upon what looked to be a parade -- which turned into a violent protest rally. I walked by the forecourt where we had been cornered and almost tear gassed and the dumpster we ran by that day when it was in flames. Five years later, the forecourt and the dumpster were still there in a much more peaceful setting where the smoke had cleared.

Until my rendezvous with Jack, I gave myself the mission to find an English bookstore to get my guides for my onward travel, i.e. Western Europe and the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing. (In the meantime I'd get by with the Let's Go Spain & Portugal that I got from Sebastian.) A lot of bookstores didn't have what I was looking for: Let's Go's Western Europe which, unlike Lonely Planet's guide, included Prague. I went from bookstore to bookstore, using Spain guidebooks to lead me to the next store, and ultimately I stumbled upon Altair, a travel specialty store with a huge room dedicated to just travel guides in various languages. I got Let's Go Western Europe 2004 and Lonely Planet's Trans-Siberian Railway.

JACK ARRIVED BY TAXI TO OUR MEETING POINT, the KFC in La Rambla, Barcelona's tourist-frequented outdoor pedestrian mall (picture above) stretching from the Plaza de Catalunya to the marina, full of cafes, souvenir stores and street performers dressed as statues that came alive if you gave them money. A newbie to the backpacker scene, Jack came with the American vacation mentality with a huge wheeled suitcase that was about the size and weight of a mini-fridge -- his bag for ten days in Spain was bigger and heavier than mine for sixteen months.

"We're not eating here are we?" Jack said, referring to Colonel Sanders' fast food chain. "It was just a meeting place, right?"

"Yeah, there are tons of places here," I said. "Should we try and get a hotel first?" I suggested, knowing we had no reservations anywhere -- right in the middle of the high season -- and that we should find a place as soon as possible.

"You wanna get a drink or something first? Pleasure before business."

"Alright."

We sat at a nearby sidewalk cafe near a street performer sneaking up and screaming at passers-by in a ostrich outfit, and took a break from our travels with some bocadillos (baguette sandwiches), a plate of olives and a big ol' pitcher of sangria.

"[Do you have a dead body in there?]" the waiter asked, pointing to Jack's mini-fridge of a bag.

"[Yeah, I got two kids in there.]"

Jack caught me up on the quality TV I'd been missing in the States, most notably some skits on The Chapelle Show where comedian Dave Chapelle is dressed up as Rick James calling out "I'm Rick James, bitch!" or when he goes out with performer Wayne Brady who calls out "I'm Wayne Brady, bitch!" I caught him up with my travels -- Jack's only an off and on Blog reader -- all over food and drink. After our first pitcher, we went ahead and ordered another. If you do the math, two pitchers for two people equals a pitcher a person. Needless to say, I didn't remember much afterwards.

WHEN WALKING TO THE TRAIN STATION LATER THAT NIGHT, Jack filled me in on what happened during my inebriated state. Apparently I didn't appear to be that drunk when we met a couple of girls from Colorado who couldn't hang around too long since they were on their way to Avignon, France. However, in my stupor I managed to sing them the beginning to the French children's song, "Sur Le Pont d'Avignon."

What's more impressive than that is, in that period I don't remember, I was actually coherent enough to find a perfectly-located hostel not listed in the book, the new Hostel Sun & Moon, so new that part of it was still under construction. I even signed us in under my name and my passport information. I supposed when you've been doing it almost every day for over eight months, it becomes second nature. After that, both of us passed out in our beds and woke up around eleven that night. Hung over, we walked to the main train station to get my baggage and to catch up on what I'd missed that afternoon.

The walk was longer than I anticipated and we ended up getting there twenty minutes passed its closing time of midnight. Starving, we went searching for a place to eat near La Rambla, but most places' kitchens were closed. "This is how we're gonna die," Jack said, starving for food to feed his hangover like me. We searched and searched and luckily stumbled upon a tapas bar that was just about to close its kitchen, and skipped out on tapas by doing the American hangover thing: a couple of greasy hamburgers.

THE NEXT MORNING I discovered that not only did I sing to the Colorado girls, I managed to write their names and e-mail address down in my notepad and that I even took a picture of them. I suppose when you've been taking photos and notes almost everyday of the people you've met, that stuff becomes second nature too.

City of The Phallus

DAY 257: I don't know if it was intentional, but I've heard that Barcelona seems to be obsessed with phallic symbols.

I was up by seven to wake up before my 24-hour luggage locker at the train station expired. I think I was still a little out of it because I ended up totally confused in the Metro systems, even getting on a train going the wrong way. This shouldn't be the case because Barcelona's Metro system is usually easy to navigate with easy to read maps, a good signage system and even a digital countdown at the platforms to tell you how long it is before the next train comes.

DOWN LA RAMBLA is the marina and La Rambla de Mar, a man-made island off the coast that harbors not only sailboats, but a huge shopping, dining and nightclub complex. It was there Jack and I had breakfast at Pans & Company, the chain bocadillo (baguette sandwich) restaurant found all over Spain.

"I'm surprised how much I don't hear Spanish," bilingual Jack said, biting into his sandwich. Most of what we heard was the American English coming out of the hundreds of tourists around, and most of the written language we saw was in the regional language of Catalan, which looks like a blend of Spanish and French.

Refreshed and ready to go, we started our sightseeing of the day. First up, the Montjuïc via a modern funicular. Literally "Hill of the Jews," Montjuïc is the big hill to the southeast of the city -- according to history (and my guidebook), whoever controlled it controlled the city. Nowadays it holds picturesque parks and historical buildings.

Wandering the Park Montjuïc with its exhilarating views, we visited the Museo Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, hosting a permanent collection of regional Gothic and Roman art, as well as temporary exhibitions of Peruvian and Chinese artifacts. We wandered the Olympic Stadium, stage of the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. Seeing the futuristic spire in the Olympic park, along with other free standing column structures in the area, I started to notice the trend of Barcelona's phallic symbols -- even the flowers looked a bit phallic. Surrounded by them everywhere we went, sophomoric Jack and I started singing "Penis Time" to the melody of Semisonic's "Closing Time."

After wandering around the Miro Foundation, a museum in the Montjuïc dedicated to Barcelona-born Modernist artistic luminary Joan Miro and other Modern and contemporary artists, we took the funicular back down the Hill of The Jews and the Metro to La Sagrada Familia, legendary architect Anton Gaudi's famous unfinished cathedral, "the world's most visited construction site" according to Let's Go. A permanent work-in-progress, the cathedral attracts millions to witness its completely unfinished splendor with its unique Gaudi architectural style and its sculpted depiction of the Passion of Christ by Cubist sculptor Josep Subirach. Above all they come for the view from one of its eight phallic towers (eighteen were initially planned).

Jack and I waited about forty minutes on line to ride up the tower's elevator with other American tourists and four teenage Spanish girls who had no idea what they were on line for -- after thirty minutes of waiting they discovered they were on line for the elevator at an additional cost of two Euros and left. Despite Jack's acrophobia, he came up with me on the one of the last lifts of the day to the observation platforms where we enjoyed the view of Barcelona, including the sights of yet another phallic tower(picture above).

FIVE ITALIAN GUYS WERE IN OUR HOSTEL DORM ROOM when we arrived back in the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter) where we lived temporarily. They were in town for a bachelor party, only to find accommodations in a youth hostel dorm of all places, and I hoped the stripper would make an appearance. However, they went out to take out their groom, leaving Jack and I to explore nightlife in the City of The Phallus on our own -- although not really because Jack had a friend living in Barcelona who could lead us. After a delicious paella dinner at the Time Out Barcelona-recommended Taxidermista restaurant in the lively Plaza Real across the street, we met up with Jack's friend Nicolas who led us beyond the American tourists of bars and clubs in the Gothic Quarter and onto the Port Olympic, a big complex of club after club after club, each inviting a casually-dressed clientele of a few tourists and many locals -- which was welcome news to Jack; up until that time, Jack was saying "I think I speak more Spanish in Miami and then I come to Spain and only speak English."

Amongst the locals in the club scene of Port Olympic were the sexy, voluptuous Spanish pole dancers wearing next to nothing, prompting everyone to gawk and take photos, like Nicolas and his digital camera on his cell phone. The pole dancers were a perfect fit to the Barcelonan scene as they sprouted up at least one more phallus -- in my pants.

My First Celebrity Sighting

DAY 258: You never know when you may bump into someone famous in a major city. During my days in New York City, I've randomly stumbled upon Keanu Reeves, Nathan Lane and Sarah Jessica Parker to name a few -- friends and acquaintances of mine have encountered Kiefer Sutherland, Uma Thurman, Andre 3000 from Outkast, Jerry Seinfeld and even the guy who played his TV dad Morty. Being in the world city of Barcelona, another celebrity sighting was bound to happen.

JACK AND I WERE AT THE BARCELONA-SANTS TRAIN STATION waiting around for our number to be announced for service -- the regular train station staff was on strike so getting information about trains were a long and slow process. A voice called from behind me while I stood staring at the digital numbers.

"Are you Erik?" a tall guy said in an American accent.

"Yeah."

"It's Bill from your blog."

"Oh hey!" Bill had contacted me via e-mail that he too was in Barcelona, but we had no definite plans to meet up. He too was waiting around for service amidst the train station strike when he saw a five foot five tan-skinned Filipino-American guy wearing glasses and a baseball jersey.

"I saw you and thought, nah, it couldn't be, but then I saw The Global Trip logo," Bill said. I introduced him to Jack and Jack back to Bill, as I was wearing the familiar outfit as seen in my bio picture on the main page of TheGlobalTrip.com. "I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity right now," Bill told Jack.

Celebrity? Really? Well, if the shoe fits...

"Surely you've been recognized before, traveling."

"Actually, no," I informed thinking about the past eight months. "You're the first." How about that? My first celebrity sighting.

Bill told me he was an avid reader of The Blog since Day One and that reading it was a daily work time activity -- all other travel blogs didnÕt compare because they were updated only every week or so. He and his co-workers at his former engineering firm followed me on all my (mis)adventures thus far and couldn't wait to tell them he ran into me. "You're a legend at the office," he told me. "You have a lot more people reading than you know."

"Really, I keep on asking how many people are our there."

"I think most guys don't post because they think it's just you talking to your buddies."

"Actually, I think there are more people that I don't know now posting." Bill was one of those unknown Silent Blog Readers (SBRs) but that moment it changed; I knew him and he knew me.

Bill hung around waiting for his number to come up while Jack and I left to check out the buses since we had number 292 and they were only up to 112. We made plans to meet up with Bill later on that night and head off to the nearby bus ticket office, managed to get a bus at a time we wanted the next day, and at a cheaper price than a trains that would go just as fast. Afterwards, we had the rest of the afternoon to see more famous Barcelona sights until meeting up with Bill at 9 p.m.

OTHER THAN MIRO, DALI AND PICASSO, the big artistic celebrity of Barcelona is architect Anton Gaudi. His mark can be seen throughout the city, but his wildest designs are best exemplified in Park Güell, a city park to the northeast corner of the city. Originally intended to be a housing development, its sixty projected houses weren't completed before Gaudi's death -- only three were made. The project was transformed into a city park development, which became something out of a fairy tale; Gaudi's Modern, organic style had a minimal use of straight lines, making the colorful buildings near the main Palmetto Gate like something from a Grimm fairy tale.

Jack and I walked amidst the crowds of tourists all attracted to the wonderland, admiring the sounds of live jazz coming from under one of the stone tree caves while feasting their eyes on the sights of the tiled centerpiece statue of a lizard, the Hall of One Hundred Columns and the stone tunnel inspired by a tidal wave. Unlike Bill, no one was excited to come across me. We rested in the Plaza de la Naturalesta, where we took notice of a pair of women reminiscent of celebrities Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie.

From Gaudi's famous park we went to one of Gaudi's famous buildings, the Casa Mila (picture above), arguably the architect's best example of his Modernism style. Also known as La Pedrera (the "Stone Quarry"), the apartment building with no straight lines in its design has an organic undulating facade and houses not only expensive apartments but a roof deck and exhibition space. The free temporary exhibition was of ancient Mexico sculptures, many of it very intentionally phallic -- perhaps an idea they got from the Spanish.

BILL WAS WAITING OUTSIDE the Hostel Sun & Moon when Jack and I arrived from an internet cafe across town. We decided to go out to dinner somewhere in the vicinity of the Gothic Quarter. I stopped to get some cash at an ATM on La Rambla.

"I'll watch your back in case that guy from Cape Town shows up," Bill said, pounding a fist into his other hand. How about that, a fan to protect me from danger. I was starting to like this celebrity thing.

After wandering, we eventually settled on a seafood place in the Port Vell, collection of eateries near the marina where we dined on paella for three, beer and sangria. A post-dinner walk through La Rambla de Mar's island of dance clubs only introduced us to a scene where nothing but American English was spoken or heard. Bill knew of a place he'd been to before that was a bit more laid back, a local bar hidden down an alley in the Barri Gotic with an enchanted forest theme, complete with trees growing inside the tavern. The three of us had a couple of rounds there talking about another bar in the area with a pirate theme. Needless to say, it spawned a whole bunch of pirate talk.

"Shiver me timbers!"

"Walk de plank, matey!"

"Yaaaaaar!"

Pirate talk made the beers all the more merrier as we stood around a barrel repurposed as a table. If anything makes any situation more fun, it's pirate talk. (Go ahead try it now with whomever is in the room with you.)

Bill was tired and went off to get some shuteye. It was a pleasure meeting him, a dedicated fan, and we made tentative plans to meet up somewhere on the continent. Jack and I went off to check out the pirate bar (there are actually two of them across the street from each other), but it was nearing 3 a.m. and they had both already announced last call. Not even my newfound celebrity status could open the door for us. Yaaar, shiver me timbers.

Good ol' American sneaking in (and not the phenomenon of celebrity) got Jack and me into Sidecar, a loud foreigner-frequented club in the Plaza Real -- and one of the few places in the area still open with a long line out the door. Luckily we befriended an Aussie who had been in already and had his arm stamped for a quick re-entry. Following him to the head of the line, we quickly flashed our arms to the bouncer like we had red ink on our arms too. Once in the foyer, we thought the coast was clear and headed down the stairs.

"Hey!" another bouncer called to me in a scolding manner. I turned around halfway down the staircase, revealing my face and my arm.

"Okay," he said, motioning me to just go on in.

Whether it was my "celebrity" status or just the fact that the lights were so dim no one could really tell if I had red ink on my arm I don't know, although I'd like to think it was the former. I suppose if that wasn't true and I ran into any problems, there'd always be a fan like Bill out there somewhere to get my back.

Progression to the Typical

DAY 259: Pablo Picasso, the world famous painter, revolutionized the art world with his Cubist style. However, he didn't always depict his subjects in the sharp angles and loud colors that made classical art buffs at the time what to hang themselves. Like most Modern artists that don't get really famous until they die, Picasso had an artistic history of painting and drawing things formatively, mostly in his younger years in Barcelona. Gradually over time he progression his style into the one he is most famous for today.

Jack and I would also leave our "young days" in Barcelona and progress our travels together onto other parts of Spain, but not before one last day in the roots of our time together.

AFTER PUTTING OUR BAGS IN STORAGE and checking out of the dorm room where the Italian bachelor party participants were still passed out, we headed over to the Teatre de Liceu, the second largest theater in Europe, conveniently just across La Rambla from the side street our hostel was on. I had wanted to see it ever since I saw it on an old episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, so I could roam its huge six-story auditorium (picture from a picture since photography was forbidden) done in classical style to provide seats for the theater-going public. Jack and I paid admission for the non-guided tour, which was guided anyway by a woman -- probably to keep guys like me from hocking a loogie off the fifth floor balcony.

"MIAMI'S LIKE CALIFORNIA," Jack told me. "Nobody walks." Complaints about wandering the city on foot were just one of the on-going jokes Jack had with me, although there was a little seriousness in them. He wasn't accustomed to my backpacker lifestyle. In fact, he didn't even bring a backpack, but a big rolling luggage the size and weight of a mini-fridge -- actually my college refrigerator was smaller than what he had. Not that his luggage was a major problem, just when we had to walk around with it. I suppose the difference in being a "luggage roller" and a "backpacker" is like the difference Miami and New York; in New York, everyone is on the go walking.

The jokes continued as we walked to the Picasso Museum (free on the first Sunday of every month), not too far away from the Teatre de Liceu, at least by New Yorker standards (about eight blocks). We wandered the comprehensive exhibition in several galleries of Picasso's progression from his formative years into his Cubist and post-Cubist years -- most of his most famous paintings weren't there, but I had seen them in New York's Museum of Modern Art. (I walked to that museum too.) Exhausted, Jack staggered around the artwork and the tourists in summer attire.

"Ah, look at this one," I said to Jack, pointing to the painting of a tired figure. "It's Jack after walking for two hours." Another one of a figure lying down. "Here's another." But Jack was more appreciate of the other artwork in the gallery; big breasted women. "Look at that, it's a work of art," he said, sitting on a bench all tired. We both agreed that so far, Spain was a country with awesome bust measurements and a high percentage of MILFs.

A RESTING PERIOD CAME when we found a nearby street cafe to chill out for cappuccinos and (for me and my craving) a plate of olives. We took a train to find the Museum of Contemporary Art, only to find out it closed at three on Sundays. In lieu of that museum we just took a leisurely unhurried stroll back to La Rambla, taking walking breaks every so often for Jack. We used a coupon for a two-sandwich combo at Pans & Company, the chain sandwich shop where I went to use the bathroom in the back, not realizing there was one right behind the table we were sitting at.

"Even when you go to the bathroom you like to walk," Jack joked.

FOR A LAID BACK GUY WHO'S NOT USED TO WALKING or rushing, what happened next was a nightmare. We only gave ourselves thirty minutes to get to the bus station, only to discover it would take thirty-five, even with the rapid progression of public transportation. No taxis were available on La Rambla so we took to the Metro subway -- easier said than done with Jack's big mini-fridge of a suitcase. Transferring from one line to another through underground tunnels was an ordeal going up and down flights of stairs. It didn't matter if I ran faster; I'd have to wait up for Jack to help him carry his big suitcase on wheels up and down flights of stairs. It was heavy enough for two people to carry, let alone one. And to think he was traveling with gear as heavy as me (without electronics or a computer) for just ten days through Spain.

We got to the Estacio Nord around 5:05, hoping our 5:00 hadn't left yet. In a frantic run through the station, I asked around and a bus conductor put us on a bus that he said was the right one -- but when we departed right after I talked to a Canadian couple who believed they might be on the wrong bus too. We theorized that although the bus would go to Valencia, we were on the wrong one. Luckily Jack used his Spanish to ask another guy, and luckily our wrong bus was stopping off at the other bus station to pick up more passengers. Our correct bus was there, waiting to depart and we switched in the nick of time.

"This is the last time I'm bringing this bag," Jack said, sweating. "That was a big mistake." "Big" was and understatement, but at least we were finally in the right place en route directly to Valencia.

AFTER A THREE AND A HALF HOUR RIDE amidst a group of annoying American girls doing their Spanish homework, our travels progressed onto Valencia, Spain's third largest city. I was immediately greeted by pickpocket who unzipped the small compartment pocket of my backpack, who only found nothing of value. Right after we were greeted by good guys in Valencia, Jack's friend Juan, a fellow veterinarian who had worked with Jack in a vet clinic in Miami for eight months before moving back to Spain. He had his friends Fernando and Gonzalo pick us up and brought us to our house for the night, the spare room of Juan's apartment in a quiet residential neighborhood in the city center. It was a welcome change after staying in that cramped dorm in Barcelona: two beds in a single room, towels and a shower you didn't have to share with five other Italian guys. Juan's hospitality was extended some more with horchata de chufa, a sweet milky drink made from a root plant, a typical refreshment originating in Valencia.

"[THERE ARE TWO AMERICANS HERE,]" Juan told a waitress. "[We need to give them typical dishes.]" He, his friends Fernando and Gonzalo and his sister Melina took us to a nearby place serving tapas, the typical Spanish snack-sized portion of food. The waitress brought us an assortment of typical Valencian tapas (picture above), from basic cheeses and cured meats to sardines, paté and mussels. By 1 a.m. we were doing the typical thing of going to a bar for a drink before doing the typical Valencian thing of going to a nightclub. The only place worth going to on a Sunday was Acuarella, an outdoor/indoor dance complex frequented by locals -- frequented even more on Fridays and Saturdays to the point you can't move. It being Sunday, the crowd was relatively small, until 3:30 when a whole group of people apparently off of work got out. By four o'clock the clubs was a fairly happening place with a mix of Spanish and American dance songs.

Uruguayan Jack, with his suave Spanish fluency, chat up some local girls, with only a few bites. "Spanish girls love the Uruguayan accent," Juan told me as we watched the master flirt working abroad (pun intended).

We left around 4:30 after partying the night with toasts after toasts until we left with beer rushing from our stomachs and into our bladders. "You can piss on the street here," Juan informed me.

"Really?"

"Yeah, anywhere in Spain."

With that said, I whizzed on a nearby wall for the sake that I could. Anything to experience "typical" Valencian life I guess. And to think I was in a classy opera house that morning. How's that for progress?

Guidance in the Home of Paella

DAY 260: Every great city can be characterized by its local cuisine. Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, has the American classic Philly Cheesesteak sandwich. The chilled out vibe of the Florida Keys spawned the cool and relaxed Key Lime Pie. And Valencia, Spain, a perfect fusion of things old and new, is the Home of Paella, the fusion of saffron-spiced rice with any mix of meats, vegetables and seafood.

Paella, the quinessential Spanish rice dish is just one of 500 rice dishes made in Valencia, but it is probably its most famous worldwide. For our culinary pilgrimmage to the Home of Paella, we wanted to find the best place to have it. At the recommendation of Juan's girlfriend, we ended up at La Pepica, a fairly famous eatery right on the beach frequented by celebrities old and new: American writer Ernest Hemingway once dined there, as did newly-married King Philip VI and his new queen.

We walked in through the back entrance like a couple of Goodfellas, passed the kitchen (picture above) of culinary masters and sat at a table outside for lunch, the biggest, most socially important meal of the day in Spanish culture, spent during a normal weekday siesta period between 2-5 p.m. Juan perused the menu to look for one "typico" of the region.

"Which one do you want?" he asked.

"The best one," I simply said.

We ordered the "standard" paella marinara with seafood which, unlike paella I'd had back in the States, had more fish than shellfish. No matter, Le Pepica's chefs figured out the recipe for the perfect fusion of spices, rice and seafood that made it all the worthwhile. On the side we had puntillas, fried whole baby squids, another typical dish of the region.

A TAXI TOOK US FROM THE BEACH to the city center, right by the Valencia bullfighting arena, where a wannabe matador stood outside for all to see that he was on a hunger strike until the bullfighting association would permit him fight a bull. Bullfighting is not just a sport in Spain, but an honorable and artful demonstration of man's relationship with the bull.

"There are guys who jump the fence to fight the bulls to show they can fight," Juan told me, playing city tour guide. Meanwhile, Jack was still across the street we had just crossed, distracted by the hot Spanish blonde in stripper clothing posing as some roving reporter.

The hot chick disappeared out of sight and so our city tour guided by Juan continued. We walked the pedestrian malls to the main plaza, flanked by the classically-designed post office and city hall. The architecture around us was a feast for the eyes; in fact, Let's Go says it is "among the few places in Europe where ultra-modern styles are successfully blended with the traditional" -- sort of like its paella.

Juan's guidance only lasted so long when we got lost looking for the main cathedral -- born and raised in Salamanca, he was only a Valencian for five years and had never really done the tourist thing. Totally by chance we bumped into his sister Melina who showed us the way. We wandered the in's and out's of the cathedral, which was constructed in Gothic, Roman and Baroque styles in different sections of the building.

Juan, part guide, part tourist himself, marveled at its grandeur. "You think how could they do this, even today, and back then they didn't have anything," he said.

WALKING AROUND WITH JACK, down Valencia's streets and through its plazas, meant it was time for a break, which I gladly welcomed. Juan and Melina tooks us to Finnegan's, an Irish pub frequented by Valencians, passing Irishmen and anyone else who enjoyed a beer after walking around the city. Our walk continued after a round to the Jardin del Turin, a park built in a river bed where a river once flowed through the city. After a flood, the river was rerouted around the city, but the bridges still remained.

BACK IN JUAN'S APARTMENT, our Valencian guide gave me guidance for our next destination: the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, where Jack and I would arrive the following morning via overnight bus. Juan hadn't been to the famous bull festival in Pamplona, but to a smaller, similar one in Teurel. He described to me his experience with a bull, when he ran away from one, only to be cornered to a 9-ft. fence. He jumped to climb it, but didn't quite clear it in time.

"The bull lifted me three feet in the air... Luckily I landed on the otherside, right on my back. It got all bruised but I was so full of adrenaline that I immediately checked down here," he said, patting his crotch. The bull's horn didn't pierce him; it went right between his legs fortunately, and with the flick of the head, sent Juan flying up in the air.

I was going to Pamplona to run with the bulls, but now I was thinking otherwise. As we departed Juan's apartment to get to our bus (we left our big bags there), I greeted Juan a temporary farewell. "See you Friday... maybe," I joked.

Jack and I hopped on a bus for the seven-hour overnight ride northbound, away from the fusion of architecture and seafood. I knew that if I survived Pamplona, Valencia's paella was something definitely worth coming back to.

To Run Or Not To Run

DAY 261: Most non-Spaniards know Pamplona's San Fermin Festival solely as "The Running of the Bulls." However, the Running of the Bulls is just one part of an eight-day festival that transforms the normally peaceful northern Spanish town of Pamplona into a huge Spring Break party where even wild bulls are allowed to participate. It's sort of like the biggest barbecue where cows skewer the flesh of humans instead of the other way around.

Amongst the other events of the festival is the Txupinazo, the opening ceremony on the noon of July 6th, the festival's first official day, a day when one can really decide whether or not he/she wants to participate in the first of seven encierros (bull runs) on the next morning of July 7th at 8 a.m. sharp. All day I wondered whether or not the adrenaline rush was worth risking being impaled by a bull's horn.

THE SAN FERMIN FESTIVAL, which honors the region's patron saint, is just one of several festivals in Spain where bulls are active participants. It wasn't until Ernest Hemingway wrote about the San Fermin Festival and glorified it in The Sun Also Rises that it became an international phenomenon.

Because of its huge international popularity, making a reservation for an accommodations is highly recommended -- some reserve up to nine months in advance in order to prevent the alternative: sleeping in the park, the plaza or on the street, leaving yourself and your valuables vulnerable to thieves. (That and/or the long lines waiting on the town center's baggage storage office.) My guidebook states that a better alternative for those winging it might be to find a flyer or tout at the bus or train station, inviting people to stay at his/her local residence, although one most be wary that he/she may end up spending a lot of money to sleep on a dirty floor in an inconvenient or unsafe location in town.

This option was our only real choice since every reasonably priced hotel in town was booked and the ones that did have rooms went for 200 euros per person, per night. We called some numbers from flyers with rip-off phone numbers. The first one had no answer, but the second had a ring. Jack used his soft-spoken Uruguayan Spanish to ask about the home stay. The man's voice on the other end gave us an address and told us to meet him them. After accidentally ringing the doorbells of two wrong buildings -- rudely waking up its residents -- we managed to find the real place: an apartment that almost seemed too good to be true.

For fifty euros per night per person (cheap, relatively speaking), we got a room to ourselves with two twin-size beds, towels and coffee in the morning. Luck was on our side again when we found out that our host Marlon, a Venezuelan immigrant, was one half of the gay couple living there. Translation: the place was super clean and with an artistic interior decor fit for a fancy hotel. And if that wasn't enough, the place was located in the most convenient place in town, in the heart of the action, complete with a living room balcony that overlooked the bull-run route.

"Si, es bueno."

We paid the 100 euros and Marlon gave us the keys for us to come and go as we pleased, any time in the day or night. "I'm amaze at how easy that was," I raved. It was the second time in a row we beat the odds; not only did our good fortune get us that place (a sheer miracle), but we had actually made it to Pamplona on the first day of the festival. (I had been warned that all transportation to Pamplona would have been booked solid, but we managed to get the last two seats on that overnight bus from Valencia.)

IT WAS ONLY ABOUT NINE IN THE MORNING when we were all settled into our room. Outside in the big main Plaza Castillo, Pamplona still retained its quite little Spanish town feel to it. It was, as they say, the quiet before the storm. By ten o'clock, the storm started brewing as people started filling the Plaza Consistorial, site of the Ayuntamiento (City Hall) where the opening Txupinazo would take place at high noon. The major of town would launch a rocket in the air, declaring the official start of the festival, thought I think the ninety minutes before that rocket was more of a blast -- the craziest party I've ever seen -- that I dare say was five times crazier than Rio de Janiero's Carnaval. (Perhaps it was just as crazy, only compressed into a plaza about the size of a basketball court.)

Drunk by 10:30 a.m. (our first drink was at 9:30), people poured into the plaza, continuing to drink their champagne, beer and sangria, singing the familiar "olé" chant I'd heard in Brazilian soccer games. Revelers clapped their hands steadily slow and then faster and faster to the chants of "San Fermin! San Fermin!" in the manner guys chant "Take it off! Take it off!" at a bachelor party (or The Jerry Springer Show). Some American guys (including yours truly) just switched to "Take it off!" when a hot chick stood out in the crowd atop her friend's shoulders. When she didn't taker her shirt off, she was drenched in streams of sangria coming from the Super Soaker water guns some Spaniards brought. She laughed it off, dismounted and drank some more.

Women weren't the only victims of alcoholic baths; guys would sneak attack their buddies and just pour champagne all over their heads. Eggs were thrown as were bags of flour. Some guys were covered in mustard.

However, food wasn't the only party favor going around; big inflated balls where thrown out, bouncing from place to place, kicked and hit by whoever was near it. Someone even threw in a real leather soccer ball in the mix, which at times turned the party into a rowdy game of dodge ball. The only thing worse than getting hit by that was the occasional flying champagne cork.

"This is the craziest thing I've ever seen," Jack told me.

Happy and a bit drunk, I put my hand on his shoulder. "Fuck it, I'm running tomorrow! Woooo!"

The sheer chaos (picture above) only got rowdier and more crowded as the clock approached high noon. When the clock struck twelve, the rocket went off, cueing confetti to fall from the balconies of all the revelers who had been watching the madness from a safer vantage point. Partygoers in the plaza raised their signature red pañuelos (bandanas) over their heads and waved them triumphantly. The excited voices of the mob yelled and sang in drunken celebration.

And so, the 2004 San Fermin Festival started with a bang.

THERE MUST HAVE BEEN 10,000 PEOPLE jammed in the little Plaza Consistorial and getting out and along the main road was near impossible. Pushing, shoving, drinking, groping. With shoulder-to-shoulder traffic, it was near impossible to walk independently; the momentum of the crowd behind you would just push you farther. That's good news from an energy efficiency standpoint, but bad news if you fall over -- people just continued to go and walk over you, leaving you "drowned" in a sea of people. I fell over once with the strength of the current, losing Jack in the process like an empty canoe in Class V river rapids. Luckily, Jack and I had already established that if we got separated, to just meet back at the house.

"If that's what the crowd's like now, I can't imagine what it's like when a bunch of bulls are chasing them," I said to Jack, reunited again. Second thoughts of participating in the first encierro entered my mind.

FESTIVAL EVENTS WENT ON throughout the day, from musical performances to small processions, although most people just skipped all that and head for the bars. A sea of red and white filled the small cobblestone streets of the old town as partygoers made their way to every bar in town. I had heard the San Fermin Festival would be populated by nothing but adrenaline-pumped Americans and Australians, but to my pleasant surprise, the majority of people were adrenaline-pumped Spanish or Basque, all wearing basically the same outfit: white shirt, white pants with a red bandana around the neck and a red sash around the waist.

Jack and I passed out from exhaustion early afternoon but were back on the streets by 3 p.m., fully rested for the long haul of partying ahead of us. In between beer sessions, Jack and I roamed town, trying to track down Blogreader Tom (TWH) who was also slated to be at the festival (I just didn't know what day), and to find out more about the bull run.

"So, what sort of official advice can you give me about running?" I asked a woman at the desk of the official tourist information office.

"Officially?" Don't run," she said. "It's too dangerous." She saw a slightly disappointed look on my face. "But if you must run, do it at the beginning [of the route] or near the end. It's easier to get out that way." She showed me the points she was talking about on a map. "Don't go here, it's a long way without a way to get out." She was pointing to the narrow cobblestone street just below Marlon's balcony where Marlon told us a guy had been mauled the year before just across the street.

Okay, fine, I thought, I'll just start really close to the exit point near the end of the route, like a block or so and run out. No one runs the entire half-mile course anyway, not even the professional runners that do it year after year. (Perhaps that's why they can do it every year.)

In my mind, the run was back on.

A BEER HERE, A BEER THERE, EVERYWHERE A BEER BEER. The non-stop party didn't haven't any plans of slowing down. Jack and I casually walked place to place, checking out the scenes in indoor bars playing American dance tunes to outdoors clubs playing Spanish rock, and everything in between. On the way, we stumbled upon a gift shop where a couple of young Americans were looking at a strip of black and white pictures mounted on the wall: a time-lapsed series of photos of a guy getting mauled by a charging bull. The last of the series was the guy's body, presumably dead, left out on the curb. Sure, put that on the wall why don't you?

"I was going to run when I got here, but now I don't think so," the American guy said. My sentiments exactly.

WHILE THE SAN FERMIN FESTIVAL is a field day for partygoers and binge drinkers both local and foreign, it is a huge working opportunity for others. Bar and club owners racked up being open 24 hours a day for the whole eight days. Food places serving tapas, bocatas (bocadillos in Basque talk) and crappy pizza fed the hung over masses, while liquor stores provided booze for those who could handle some more. Basque revolutionaries used the high-profile event to publicize their cause. Tragic-looking Asian immigrants in tiaras wandered club to club, trying to make a buck by selling light up rubber medallions and plastic flowers. Round-the-clock sanitation services cleaned up the incredible mess in the streets.

But the hardest working people in the San Fermin business were the professional pickpockets who did their best to make a score -- although it wasn't so hard when the victim was usually drunk off his/her ass.

After watching a midnight concert of a Uruguayan rock band in the big main Plaza Castillo, Jack and I got separated momentarily. In that short period, I was standing around waiting for him when nothing much happened -- that is, nothing to the casual eye. In actuality, a guy "accidentally" dropped a coin in front of me and went to pick it up -- to distract me from the fact that his partner behind me (pretending to wait up for someone too) was reaching for my back pocket. Since I instinctively check to see if my wallet is in my back pocket three times a minute (a habit from New York), I actually caught his hand trying to open the pocket zipper. He felt my hand feel his and the two of them fled.

I stopped by beer consumption relatively early in the night so as not to have a hangover the next morning. While I was still iffy on the whole bull running thing, I figured I came to Pamplona to run, so I might as well be smart about it -- most people injured in previous runs were either drunk or hung over. It was only about one in the morning and I was fairly sober already -- sober enough to have thwarted those pickpockets. In my mind it was still up in the air if I'd run with the bulls the next morning at eight, but I figured I'd gotten this far following the recommendations for a runner: I was sober, I studied the route beforehand -- the only other recommended thing I was missing was a good night's sleep. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, still indecisive, figuring I'd just have my answer to the question in the morning. To run or not to run, that is the question.

Run Erik Run

DAY 262: The Running of the Bulls. The title has been heard over and over every year between July 6-14, usually on the news in a world report about someone getting gored by a powerful male bovine. Evolved from the old tradition of people moving bulls across town to get them into the arena for a bullfight, the encierro, as it is called locally, is now the most famous (and most deadly) of all of the San Fermin Festival's agenda of week-long events, occurring every morning at 8 a.m. sharp.

By 6:30 there are already red and white-clad people in the streets waiting -- many of them still awake and drunk from partying the night before -- for their chance to risk their lives from charging bulls. Their safety is also threatened by themselves; a majority of injuries in the running year after year comes from being trampled by the rush of people, not bulls.

MY ALARM CLOCK WOKE ME UP at 6:30 and I woke up still indecisive. If I ran, I might die alone; Jack never had any real intention of running since the beginning. I went to the living room balcony to assess the situation below. The cobblestone street was wet from a drizzle the night before, which was in one way a bad thing (it was slippery) and a good thing (at least all the piss and puke was washed away). Street sweepers drove by to make the route spotless anyway as per the mayor's order, shoving the bigger pieces of debris onto the side streets.

Volunteer runners were already on the street waiting, while the spectators above in the balconies of the juxtaposed apartments got their vantage points, some people at a high cost -- tourists paid up to 60 euros a person for the three-minute viewing of the run in someone's apartment (which was ten more than what Jack and I paid for a night of accommodation in the same place).

"Are you going to run?" a woman called to me in an American accent from the balcony next door. Her name was Ennas and she reminded me of actress Rebecca Gayheart dressed down in white and red.

"I don't know yet," I said.

"Are you Filipino by any chance?"

"Yeah."

"So is my fiancé," Ennas said. "He's down there."

Across the street below us was a tall Filipino guy in white attire accented by red, stretching his arms and legs for the extreme session to come in an hour. He was alone too, and I figured I might have a running partner. "I think I'm gonna run," I told Ennas. She picked up her TalkAbout walkie talkie.

"There's a guy here who's going to run with you," she said, which was followed by the "CHHT" squelch-sound that comes out of a walkie talkie. Her fiancé looked up at us.

"Okay." CHHT.

I geared up, woke Jack up and set him up on the balcony with my camcorder. "Just film it, we can make video stills after." I ran down to the street and joined the growing chaos.

"So what do you know about what we're supposed to do?" I asked Delon, the 37-year-old but 28-year-old-looking Filipino-American radiologist from Scottsdale, Arizona.

"Just that we run," he said. Good plan, simple enough. Delon and I shot the breeze as more and more people entered the street, arriving before they closed off the side street gates, preventing anyone (or any bull) from passing through. Ennas kept contact of her husband-to-be via radio. Delon kept her informed with sentences ending in CHHT.

"I love you," said Ennas' slightly-distorted voice through his TalkAbout. CHHT.

"Love you too," Delon answered. CHHT.

Now if that wasn't a romantic goodbye, I don't know what is. At the time, no one knew who would survive and who would be killed. We could only think of one thing: When the bulls come, run like hell.

AT ABOUT 7:30 the police started closing the gates that sealed off the side streets. Each block there was a gate and at each gate there was a crowd soon-to-be runners lining up, and the police had to move them back to let the gate swing closed. It got two crowded there at the last gate before the exit and the police just started clearing the area of people, escorting people on the run route onto the side street.

The clock was ticking. Our only opportunity to run with the bulls that morning was at the entry point one block back, so Delon and I (along with dozens of other adrenaline junkies) dashed down the side street and around the block, wary of broken beer bottles and the occasional pile of vomit. We ran to make it in time before the gate closed so fast that you would have thought the bulls were chasing us already. It was hard to keep track of Delon and his longer leg stride, especially since everyone was wearing the same outfit.

We both managed to make it though before they sealed the perimeter. There were twice as many people in the new crowd with hardly any room to breathe, let alone run from a bull. In the mass of red and white I managed to lose sight of Delon and lost my running partner. No matter, there were dozens of American, Australian, British and Spanish around me with the same built-up anxiety as me. The time was approaching and the crowd was getting hyped.

"SAN FERMIN! SAN FERMIN!! SAN FERMIN!!!" The chants and the cheers echoed through the man-made canyon of buildings. "WOOOOOO!!!!"

The excited was only short-lived because then we all sort of revert back to our anxious selves. It was really too late for second thoughts (Is it second? Who's counting?) but I had them anyway.

Alright, now really, what the hell am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Risking my life for a Blog story? What the fuck? Bulls are going to start running here and the only exit point is now two blocks away, not one. Holy shit, man. What was I thinking? Ernest Hemingway, the American travel writing superstar (and my predecessor?) made the Running of the Bulls famous by writing about it and telling the tale -- by being smart and never doing the run himself. Okay, okay, at least I'm not hung over like that guy over there. Okay, cool. But wouldn't it be poetic, knowing that explorer Ferdinand Magellan, a Spaniard on The Global Trip 1520 only made it halfway, dying in the Philippines, and here I am, a Filipino halfway in my own Global Trip in Spa--

Before I could complete the thought, there was a mad rush from behind me of people yelling and running for their lives.

Oh fuck, here they come.

I ran as fast as I could, trying to find ground to step on. I pushed, I shoved, I did everything I could to advance. At San Fermin, it's every man for himself. Running was impossible though with the mass of people ahead of me and I was actually moving forward slower than if I was walking normally.

Oh Jesus. Must... go... faster...! Increase... rate... of... speed! The mob was so packed there really was no sense in looking around for Delon. Holy shit, I might die here and now. Oh my God. I ran, tripping at every step at the mound of a fallen body that had been shoved over, only to be trampled by a hundred guys. Picking myself up from tripping, I thought for a split second to help a guy up, but realized that fuck it, I'd just set myself up to be gored up the ass. Sorry buddy, but fuck you, it's every man for himself! Get out of my fucking way! Running like a chicken without its head on, I really didn't know where to go but just followed the flow of the mass of people running for their lives. GO, GO, GO! Faster! Oh Jesus! I tripped, the palms of my hands landing on broken glass. A small cut on each hand started bleeding. Fuck! Get up! If there was any a time to get your ass in gear Erik, NOW'S THE FUCKING TIME!!!" I managed to get up and run with the red and white stampede of people. GO, GO, GO!!! FUCK!!! My left contact lens popped out. Fuck! FUCK! This almost never happens! Why now?! For a split second I thought maybe I should stop and look for it, but then the other side of me thought, No you IDIOT! Keep on RUNNING you BULL RUNNING BASTARD!!! I ran some more, this time with no depth perception. Fuck, I'm going to die right here and I won't even see it coming. Holy crap. Oh Jesus! Okay, stop thinking in italics, just get a fucking move on!

Moving on a couple of seconds later was impossible. I tripped again over a fallen body in the street, bruising and scraping my knee on the cobblestone, even through my pants. As I tried to get up, a guy toppled over me, falling down, followed by another and another in a big chaotic domino effect. My arm scraped down the street and there was more bloodshed. In a matter of seconds, I was next to the bottom of what felt like a ten-person pile up.

Oh shit! I can't move! I've fallen... and I can't get up! That's not even funny! Holy fuck man! I can't see straight either. This is it. I'm going to die right here. Erik, get your FUCKING ASS UP!!!"

The official advice for if and when you fall over during a bull run is to stay down in a fetal position and hold your head with your hands to prevent head injury -- ha, like that's going to prevent being impaled by a bull's horn. You are to stay down until you hear the hooves pass by -- not that that advice was much help because I had no choice but to stay down and pray for the best. Above me, people were struggling to get up too, with no luck.

The sound of hooves clomping on the cobblestones came from behind. Closer and closer it came like a stampede.

Jesus! So this is it! This is how my life ends! This is how The Blog ends!

I closed my eyes as the sound of hooves passed by to my left. They continued on into the distance ahead of me as the bodies above me started to clear off. I stood up with a slight limp on my right knee and looked around. Behind me a gate was closed. i was on the side street. I looked at my watch and it was only 7:46. The entire "bull run" was a false one, a prank pulled by the police for crowd control, to clear that block of people as soon as possible before the real run time of 8:00. That sound of stampeding hooves I heard was probably the sounds of sneakers with a MASSIVE power of suggestion.

The bull run route was sealed off. "I guess we're not running," I overheard an Aussie tell his mate. "I really wanted to run too."

WITH ONE GOOD EYE, a bruised knee, a scraped arm and a slight limp, I assessed the situation. Should I try and enter the next entry point? No you moron. What if the same ordeal happened with actual bulls around? Do the smart thing. Be like Hemingway; live to tell the tale. You have an ironic twist at the end of your story anyway -- you ran with the bulls, only to be trampled and injured by the mob of people even before the bulls ever showed up.

In less than fifteen minutes, I managed to make it back to the balcony for the bull run -- the real one with actual bulls. "What are you doing here?" Jack asked. I explained what happened and about the lock out, and went to the balcony.

"Did you hear from your fiancé?" I asked Ennas.

"No, what are you doing back?" she asked. I told her about the cops' big joke.

"Is he still out there? Did you call him on your TalkAbout?" I asked. My running partner was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't want to bother him if he's running."

Down below the red and white mob started running from three blocks away to the first fence to jump over right before the entrance of the bullfighting arena. A group of three bulls was followed by a group of four. The whole thing was sort of anti-climactic; unlike images in the media, the bulls didn't stop and maul people into walls, they just ran the course like they were out for a morning jog to the arena (picture above). Not even the taunts and slaps on the back with rolled up paper from bull runners bothered them.

There were no bull-related injuries that morning. On the news on Marlon's TV inside, there was a man being carried away by the paramedics after being trampled over by people. I suppose I had it lucky after all.

"Where'd you go, man?" I asked Delon over on the other balcony when he finally popped his head out. He had returned after running along side the bulls; the bulls simply ran aside him and passed him before he knew it.

"I was looking for you, but then I ran around the block to the other gate and got in there," he said. "Me and a couple of guys had to sneak behind a cop."

Damn, perhaps I wasn't locked out after all. Oh well, there was still a chance I might not have made it passed the cop, and besides, I only had one contact and a busted knee.

"Don't worry," Delon said. "I still say you ran."

"Yeah, I did run," I said.

Run I did. And that's no bull.

A MARCHING BAND WAILED its horns and drums through the streets while drunken revelers followed behind dancing and singing and cheering them on. Most had some sort of alcoholic beverage in their hands, and all of them had some sort of sangria stain on their shirt. The music and the cheers echoed through the streets for all to hear -- unless that person was partying in a bar or club to other music.

Welcome to the San Fermin Festival, 3 a.m.

Not only at three in the morning, but anytime in the day or night. At any given hour, it was not surprising to see a band go through town. The San Fermin Festival blurred the rules of day and night; like a Vegas casino, time is irrelevant when you're having fun. Unless you were passed out on the street, in the park, in a parking lot, in an ATM vestibule, or in the stairwell of Marlon's apartment building, you were out at a bar or club or munching on tapas or bocatas.

Marlon's place was in an ideal location for the strategy Jack and I had: take a power nap for a couple of hours, go out, party until we dropped, take another nap and start all over. Timing sleep with the hours of bars wasn't necessary because they were always open and busy. During our awake periods, we tuned into some official events: the parade of the giant heads, the procession of the sacred San Fermin statue through town, the Beatles cover band that got the entire Plaza Castillo singing and dancing to "Twist and Shout" (a real life Ferris Bueller moment). Unofficially, we bar hopped from place to place, dancing and drinking to the different kinds of music with others, this time with no inhibitions since I was done with running with bulls. A crazy affair it was, to the point that drunken guys on the dance floors of outdoor clubs had no inhibitions of just whipping out their penises and pissing on the dance floor.

I'm actually surprised how good our nap/party/nap/party strategy worked -- it kept us in a good mood and yet still conscious enough to notice the pickpockets working the crowd. At one point, Jack just flat out heard two of them talk in Spanish, talking about robbing the two of us. "Let's get outta here," Jack said as soon as he heard it.

A MARCHING BAND WAILED its horns and drums through the streets while drunken revelers followed behind dancing and singing and cheering them on. Most had some sort of alcoholic beverage in their hands, and all of them had some sort of sangria stain on their shirt. The music and the cheers echoed through the streets for all to hear -- unless that person was partying in a bar or club to other music.

Welcome to the San Fermin Festival, 6 a.m.

We left for the train station by 6:30 -- it was there we saw a girl with the more tired look on her face that just said, "Oh my God, when does it end?"

King For A Day

DAY 263: "If this gets anymore romantic," I said as the two flautists and solo guitarist serenaded us and the handful of other outdoor cafe patrons, "I may have to ask you to marry me."

Jack took my joke only semi-lightly. "Alright, cut the music, that's enough!"

We were sitting in the Plaza Mayor, a huge plaza in the center of Madrid flanked by beautiful classical architecture. The sides of the inner rim of the plaza were populated with cafe tables and parasols as they were in the perfect place to just sit out with a loved one and people watch. In lieu of a beautiful Spanish loved one, I had my Uruguayan buddy Jack.

WE HAD ARRIVED after a three and a half hour train ride from Pamplona to Spain's capital -- and home of newlywed King Philip VI -- and went looking for a hotel. We found one fairly easily -- tourism in Madrid is down because of the 2003 bombings -- the Hostal Portugal on the ground floor of a building near the town center. We got a room from the motherly Ecuadorian woman running the place, complete with two beds, a television and private bathroom. After settling in, we went out to explore the city.

Whenever we'd get lost in Madrid's web of diagonal streets, Jack would ask for directions -- but only to attractive women. "The way I see it, if you're gonna ask for directions, you might as well ask a hot chick. I mean, what's the point of asking some fat bald guy?"

After our "romantic" serenaded lunch, we went off into to the town information office to see just what we could do in the city. Ahead of us in line was a Spanish-speaking girl with skinny legs and a hairstyle from 1984. Jack brought out his Uruguayan charisma and asked for directions. Her name was Selima and she was a 25-year-old girl from Argentina who didn't know much English. She had scrapped up all her savings for her big trip to Spain, the trip she was currently on.

Pretty soon Selima was tagging along with us to see the sights on the west end of the city center, from the Casa de La Villa to the Cathedral de Almudena to Iglesia San Francisco. Although she was tagging along us, the entire walking tour was merely an afternoon of flirtation between her and Jack, and it was not-fast-speaking-Spanish me that was the Third Wheel. Jack did his magic with his fellow South American and walked the extra mile (literally) -- even up a tremendous set of stairs up to a lookout point.

"I can lose her if you want," Jack said to me.

"Nah, it's cool," I said.

"Cool. 'Cuz I figure why lose a good thing?"

Selima was temporarily "lost" when she decided to save her Euros and wait outside when Jack and I visited the Royal Palace (picture above), home of King Philip VI (where I managed to get a pocket knife passed security that I forgot I had on me). While the king and his new queen were nowhere to be seen, the rooms of his house were, including the all important throne room where the king sits in a chair all royal-like.

"This is where the king does his new wife," I said in the massive dining hall with a 100-seat banquet table fit for a king. Some other young Spanish guys had similar theories, particularly in the billiard room.

"[This is where the king plays pool and smokes joints with all his friends.]"

"Funny thing is," Jack said, "it's probably true."

After a visit to the royal armory, full of the swords, shields and suits of armor of Spain's medieval past, we walked over to the grand observation platform with a king's eye view of the kingdom of Spain.

"This is where the king looks out to his kingdom and says, 'I declare tomorrow is Crazy Hat Day.'"

Funny I said that because right after, we noticed that the royals guards did in fact, where crazy-looking hats.

SELIMA REJOINED US for the continuation of our sightseeing stroll. Passing by the Jardin de Sabatini and a string orchestra playing in the Plaza de Oriente, we made it to the Plaza España where police officers were investigating an abandoned bag on a park bench that they suspected might be a bomb. Nothing blew up though and so we walked over to the north to the Temple of Debod, Spain's Egyptian acquisition during the antiquity rescue mission in the 1960s and 70s, as a result of the construction of the High Aswan Dam.

"Hey 'Rik, you mind if you give me like half an hour with this chick? I want to see what I can get out of her."

"Sure." I had some business on the internet to attend to anyway concerning my upcoming Trans-Siberian Railway trek. I sent made some calls and sent some e-mail messages while Jack sent messages of a different sort to Selima.

"I DID IT MAN!" Jack exclaimed with joy when we regrouped back at the hotel room. He felt like a king. "I made out with her! I French kissed her! French kissin' in Madrid!" Knowing the two of them would probably never see each other, Jack slammed her up against a wall in a busy plaza and stuck his tongue down her throat. She reciprocated and they caused quite a scene to the people nearby.

"Alright!" I said. Not bad for a guy whose pick up strategy was to jokingly call her a prostitute over and over.

"She wasn't even that hot, but it's just that feeling of conquering." Jack the king had completed his conquest of the day.

THE KING IN ME CAME OUT later that night when Jack and I went to a local Galician tapas restaurant just off the tourist strip where one restaurant used the marketing tagline, "Hemingway never ate here." I had the morcillo (blood sausage) and callos (tripe) and washed it down with sangria. The alcoholic beverage slowly transformed me into a slurring buffoon claiming to be the king of Spain and I babbled on with Jack, continually adding to a speech that went something like this:

"Attencion, attencion... Yo soy tu rey Philip sexto... ¿Que tal? Tengo dos cosas de decir... Numero Uno... Number Uno tienne dos partes... Uno A... Soy un hombre... Uno B... Vengo in my wife's FACE! Numero Dos... Yo digo... que hoy... es Craaazy Hat Day... Si tu tiennes un crazy hat... wear it today!" (The English parts are to be annunciated like comedian Dave Chappelle.)

The two wannabe kings of Spain concluded the night at another bar and at the Tablao Flamenco, a flamenco bar more authentic (and far less expensive) than the bigger, 70-euro dinner shows geared for tourists. For just a two drink minimum, we watched a flamenco dance recital of seven amateur dancers whose entire audience seemed to just be family and friends cheering them on. All the dancers seemed pretty professional to me -- they danced for the love of the dance -- moving their bodies to the rhythm of the music through the speakers and the fast rhythmic clapping of hands.

As great it was to watch the centuries-old traditional dance performed in front of me, with that two drink cover, I was less concerned with the dancing and more concerned with Crazy Hat Day. I suppose it didn't matter; when you think you're the king of Spain, you can think whatever you want -- it's good to be the king.

An Invitation For Trouble

DAY 264: Part of the drama of travel is getting into trouble whether you like it or not -- or caused it or not for that matter. On the road, you never know if trouble is lurking right around the corner.

"Hey look!" Jack exclaimed, pointing to the object coming around the corner. It was PT Cruiser, the classic-looking automobile by Chrysler. Jack had a fetish for PT Cruisers (the way I did for olives and key limes) and was excited to see one in Spain.

We were on a casual stroll on the east side of the city center -- not looking for any trouble at all -- after having bought our tickets back to Valencia and leaving our bags in a train station locker. (Jack's big suitcase actually fit!) We walked up the Paseo del Prado, passed the Centro de Arte Reina Santa, the Jardin Botanico, the Palacio de Comunicaciones and the National Library. We spent some time in the world-renowned Museo del Prado art museum where I appreciated seeing paintings (picture above) I remember from art history classes -- Bosch's El Jardin de las delicias and Velazquez' Las meninas -- Jack was pretty much bored the whole time. On a makeshift megaphone I made from a rolled museum map, I declared that the staff of the museum should wear crazy hats to make it more fun.

After waiting to see if Selima would show up after Jack sent her an e-mail invitation for a final farewell (and possible make out session) -- she was a no show -- we strolled over to the Parque del Buen Retiro and sat at a cafe near the Monumento Alfonso XII. On the way there though, trouble found us, or rather, we became the trouble. A man who seemed really distraught approached us with a lecture.

"[Are you Madridian?]" he asked Jack. Jack told him no.

The man went on and on about how dangerous it was for him to be wearing the San Fermin festival t-shirt he bought with a black and white bull's head superimposed over a bright pink and green flag -- the flag of the Basque country.

Many people know of the ETA, the Basque radical group that uses terrorist activity to express their detest of Spain. In fact, the finger was first pointed at them after the 2004 Madrid bombings. However, the ETA is just the representation of the extremists of the Basque people in the province to the northeast of Spain -- most of them were peaceful. The Basque have pride in their regional identity (they use their own language), so much that they wish to secede from Spain. According to Jack's friend Juan, it's not just the Basque who want to stay true to their own identity; every Spanish province want it too, from the eastern province of Catalan to the northwestern people in Galicia. They all have grudges against each other too, grudges maintained for years. The Madridians hate the Catalans who hate the Basque who had Madridians.

The rather vocal man in front of us was a very concerned citizen, pointing out that Jack's wearing of a Basque flag in Madrid was a major faux pas that could get him killed. "[Wearing that is an invitation for trouble,]" he said. He himself had lost family members to Spanish/Basque violence

With that said, Jack put on his spare, plain long sleeve tee.

SEVEN HOURS LATER, we were back in Jack's friend Juan's apartment in Valencia. Since Jack was to leave back to the States early in the morning the day after, this was to be his last big night out in Spain -- Juan had been waiting for us to go out clubbing. After a couple of toasts of White Horse scotch whiskey, we went back to Acuarella, the club we went to the night we got to Valencia, this time on a full blown crowded Friday night. The place was ten times more packed than the Sunday before, with different rooms playing different styles of music. With such a crowd, it was inevitable to get separated, even if we did try and stay together.

"We'll check back here [near the entrance] at six," Juan said.

We partied through the night with farewell toasts and farewell flirtations with Spanish girls. The inevitable separation did happened and at 5:55 I realized it was coming time for our rendezvous update. Drunk and exhausted from being up for about twenty-one hours straight -- I'm a morning person and Jack's a night guy, so between the two of us hanging out there isn't much time for sleep -- I waited for Jack or Juan to arrive back at the entrance. Across the street from me was the beach, the perfect place for a sex romp in the dark -- if clubbers weren't around. A couple that had just left the club started walking down the beach, walking hand in hand towards the Mediterranean.

Those two are going to have sex, I thought. I have five minutes before our meeting time. I have time to watch; I mean, sometimes a guy only needs thirty seconds.

I followed the two down the beach, but they walked way too fast for me in my stupor. I sat on the beach and put my head down for a rest...

I WOKE UP from a tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see the sun rising and the girl who was walking me up.

Hey baby, was it good for you too?

"[I think some guy just took your wallet.]"

I checked my back pocket and it was gone. "Oh shit."

"[I'm sorry,]" the girl consoled.

Damn, passing out on the beach sure was an invitation for trouble. Oh well, it's just money -- I kept all my cards at the apartment. At least I still have my--

"Fuck," I said out loud. My camera was missing too, along with the pictures I took the past ten days.

I ran back to the club, looking at my watch that survived the robbery. Only about twenty-five minutes has gone by. The club crowd had thinned out, but not my much; the DJ was still spinning the tunes. I found Jack right away, who was still drinking and flirting with two girls. I don't think he remembered the six o'clock thing.

"Hey! There you are!" he said all slurred.

"I was just robbed."

And so, the party was over. We found Juan and took a cab back to his apartment.

Whether it was the alcohol or the exhaustion that caused my passing out on the beach I'm not sure, although I still remember the events leading up to me lying on the beach, so it must have been more of the exhaustion and lack of sleep. Then again, I'm sure the whiskey cocktails didn't help much either. In any case, I learned my lesson not to mix the two -- a surefire invitation for you-know-what. On the bright side, at least I wasn't wearing a Basque shirt at the time. Who knows what could have happened to me then?

Last Night Out (Take Two)

DAY 265: I woke up not really much hung over. My brain was too busy cursing myself out for being robbed just a couple of hours before. I sucked it up and just spent the morning on my laptop, attending to Blog duties while Juan and Jack were passed out cold all morning.

"Fuck, I'm wasted," Jack said, finally waking up around one. "I don't think I'm drinking again."

"I don't know how many times I've said that before," I replied.

"What are we doing today?"

"We can walk around... and then go drinking." I joked. In his extreme hung over state, he told me just the thought of beer was making him sick.

MID-AFTERNOON, Juan left us to go with his friends to the lesser-known bull run in the town of Teurel, just a 90-minute ride up north, leaving Jack and I to wander Valencia before our evening train back to Barcelona. Jack was a zombie as we walked the streets; not even his surefire cure for hangovers, yogurt drinks, was helping. I dragged him through the downtown area, looking for El Corte Inglès, the Macy's of Spain, where I eventually replaced my wallet, camera and Memory Stick with no problem -- other than the fact that I had to part with even more money to acquire them.

Soon we were on the only available train that evening we could get bound for Barcelona. Jack passed out in his chair while I wrote and watched a documentary on the monitors about the Ethiopian monks of Lalibela, where I had experienced just a month and a half before. It was around eleven when we arrived -- too early to go to the airport, too late to find a room. Luckily Jack had a hook up in Barcelona, his friend Nicolas who took us out the week before. He gave us directions to his high-rise loft apartment in town, complete with a balcony view of the nighttime streets below (picture above). We could have taken an easy Metro train with no transfers, but Jack's big luggage was back into the mix and so we took a cab.

It was a welcoming thought to hear that Nicolas was too tired to go out, but he had some houseguests over from Uruguay who wanted to go out -- it was Saturday after all.

"[Nicolas] says he doesn't feel like going out either," Jack told me, "but I think we should." Hung over or not, Jack was back. He'd have another last night out, this time in Barcelona, starting off with a bunch of tapas prepared by Nicolas for everyone to snack on before clubbing.

Exhausted, I took a nap for an hour before we head out around two, back to the Port Olympic, the strip mall of bars and clubs, home of the pole dancers. We met up with Nicolas' friend Jorge and the two Uruguayan girls, Majo and Silvina, and wandered from bar to bar, club to club, nodding our heads and dancing to music of all styles, including American dance. I thought it was wrong when the bouncer of this one club denied admission of a black guy simply (for all that I could see) that he was black -- most of the music was performed my black people! No matter, the guy just danced his ass off right outside the club for all to see.

HAVING LEARNED MY LESSON the night before, I stuck to Cokes all night (there was a beach nearby to easily pass out in). Meanwhile, Jack was over his hangover.

"I think it's beer time."

The night went on until the break of dawn. Jack had his international flight at nine, meaning he really should be at the airport by seven. It was already passed seven by the time we got back to Nicolas' apartment because there were no taxis available from the port. Nicolas seemed really relaxed about Jack needing to get to the airport, far away from the city center, while Jack was beginning to really stress out. For the first time in our time together, it was he that was actually more stressed out about rushing over. "You think I'll make it to the airport in time?"

"You're cutting it close," I said.

Jack dashed off in a taxi with his mini-fridge suitcase after a quick goodbye -- "Great time in Spain, man. I'll read all about it on The Global Trip." The taxi took off, leaving me alone again in Barcelona. I walked down the sidewalk, a lone man on a fairly empty street towards the Metro.

The Race to Paris

DAY 266: There is a familiar scene on CBS' The Amazing Race: confused, hurried Americans in a foreign country at a ticket counter, begging for the first ride out of town. Immediately after I parted with Jack, I sucked up the fact that I had only one hour of sleep the night before (only three the night before), and rushed over to the train station as fast as I could, whistling the theme to The Amazing Race. From my experience, it was best to reserve a train seat the day before you plan to travel, and you cut it pretty close doing it the day of, especially for a long distance on a Sunday night.

Number 805 was the ticket number I pulled up at the international sales area. Not bad; they were on No. 802. I sat and waited on a chair, watching the disheveled and hurried Americans -- most still wearing souvenir apparel from the San Fermin Festival -- all apparently trying to get a ride to Paris. No. 806 was this American guy in a red sweatshirt that looked like he just woke up.

A frantic American with a semi-Southern accent came running in. "Is this international? Is this international?" he asked, window to window. "I need to get to Paris! There's an 8:45 I have to get on." (It was about 7:40.)

The ticket clerk didn't seem to be impressed with the guy's inability to even attempt to speak Spanish. "[Take a number.]" Frantic man pulled No. 809.

Waiting took longer than I thought; No. 803 and No. 804 were both groups of three teenage girls trying to get tickets together to I-don't-know-where. No. 806 saw how stressed out No. 809 was and offered to switch numbers.

"Nah, it's okay. They're already at 804."

I stood up waiting for the 804ers to leave, only to be cut by Team No Number, two Italian(?) guys who jumped ahead. I was waiting for the attendant to tell them to take a number, but he serviced them -- perhaps they tried to initially speak Spanish.

"Hey, those guys just cut!" No. 809 said. He was really stressing out. I thought maybe that might offer to switch since he was trying to leave in an hour and I wasn't leaving until that night, but the thought of me losing a spot on a train I really needed to get on stressed me out. In the race for tickets to Paris, every man for himself.

"I might take you up on that offer," No. 809 said to No. 806.

My number came up and I politely reserved, in Spanish, a bed in an overnight train to Paris. I couldn't get the direct train that I wanted; I'd have to take a regional train to the border town of Cerbere and wait for the overnight train to Paris from there.

"I need to go to Paris right now. There's an 8:45," No. 809-turned-new-No. 806 said to the clerk after my transaction.

"[It's full.]"

"Oh, that's awesome!" he said sarcastically.

I GAVE MYSELF ALL DAY in Barcelona to catch up. I did my laundry in a laundromat in residential area of town -- the only one that seemed to be open on a Sunday in all of Barcelona. I parked my ass in a char and my laptop on a table all afternoon at a Starbucks to write. It was drizzling outside -- not really a good day for a sightseeing stroll anyway.

The day flew by and pretty soon I was on the two and a half hour regional train to Cerbere (picture above), a town I had never heard of, one not in my book or on a map. When I arrived, suddenly everything was in French. I guess I crossed the border, I thought, mentally shrugging my shoulders. Nearby a guy was having a heated argument in French with three police officers.

I waited an hour and a half in the little French town in a valley of the Pyrenees. Outside I saw that the town custom was to wait for a train to go somewhere else.

I got to my assigned bed in my assigned train cabin, on the top level of a triple bunk. I was alone in the room when we departed Cerbere, but various people got off and on for their leg of travel between the tiny French town and the big French metropolis. I thought I could stay up for a while to catch up on writing -- I was way behind because I never brought my laptop with me to Pamplona or Madrid -- but as soon as I put my head down I was knocked out cold from exhaustion, with not even the slightest chance to think about The Blog or anything else for that matter. The engineer took care of my journey that night, racing the locomotive to Paris.

I never did find out if No. 809 got his ticket or not. Perhaps he had been eliminated from the race.

Open and Closed

DAY 267: "Attention, s'il vous plaît. Nous arrivons à Paris-Austerlitz en vingt minutes!" came the cry over the PA system, telling us we had twenty minutes before arrival. I woke up in my train bunk all confused. Huh? Where am I? Was that just in French?

It was my abrupt awakening to the hustle and bustle of Paris, France's capital city, a modern metropolis that seems to be perpetually giving homage to his rich historical past. It is one of the great world cities, a place characterized by its classical architecture, its cuisine, its art, its lights, its romance and its people who laugh all nasally. I had been to Paris before and seen most of its monuments already, but this time around I had a different raison d'être: to sort out my visas for upcoming travel on the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian Railways from Moscow to Beijing. After some research I saw that Paris was the most convenient place to do such a thing since both the Russian and Chinese governments had embassies there -- and the fact that since I'd been there already, I wouldn't feel so bad if I didn't get to see much in terms of sights.

After getting a bed in a hostel three blocks from the Louvre, I head out to the Russian embassy in the quiet outskirts of the city center, near the Bois de Bologne -- only to find out it had closed for visa applications at noon. I went off to find the Chinese embassy a couple of blocks off the famous Avenue des Champs Elysées -- only to find out that it too was closed, but would reopen at 2:30 in the afternoon. In the interim, I dashed back and forth through town to check into my now-ready bed back at the hostel.

Back on Chinese ground I asked about visa applications. The Chinese guard spoke neither French nor English but recognized the word "visa" and gave me a flyer for the Chinese consulate in the suburbs, which closed at five. The train there took longer than I thought and I didn't arrive until ten minutes past. They wouldn't deal with visa in the afternoon, only in the morning between 9:30 and noon.

SO I PRETTY MUCH SPENT ALL DAY running errands like I thought I would. However, walking around Paris and taking its Metro, you cover a lot of ground anyway. On my way, I saw the Arc de Triomphe (picture above), the Place de la Concorde (whose central obelisk was taken from the Temple of Luxor in Egypt), the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and Notre Dame. Even the train platform at the Louvre-Rivoli Metro stop had classical sculptures on display for people on the go. As much running around as I did around town, I didn't neglect to make the obligatory stop as a Pulp Fiction fan to get a beer at McDonald's. In lieu of a "Royale with cheese" to have it with, I got a Happy Meal instead.

I was planning to spend the rest of the day writing, but realized it was Monday, one of the two days the Louvre Museum was open late, so I decided to take advantage. On the way, I made the obligatory stop as an admirer of Ernest Hemingway to the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, whose original store Hemingway often frequented during his days in Paris. It is a place that some call "the world's most celebrated English book shop."

Inspired by the original Shakespeare & Co. run by Sylvia Beach in the early 20th century, "Shakespeare & Co." has been the literary embassy for many of the great writers, from Hemingway to Joyce. A tiny store about the size of two The Body Shops stacked on top of each other, it is home of tens of thousands of books in English prose and poetry and a few small beds amidst the bookshelves on the second floor. Syliva Beach always saw her store as a haven for writers -- the tradition is continued in the new store -- letting writers crash (Hemingway amongst them) for a night or two. In the new store, there is even a typewriter in a small writing room (the size of a closet) that the great writers tapped away on. With my copy of Hyenas Laughed At Me and Now I Know Why... in my bag, I went to investigate if I could get a free home stay, or rather, store stay.

"Are you one of the people that stays here?" I asked a Swedish girl retrieving items from her bag in the storage closet.

"Yes."

"How does it work?"

"Well, you just sort of show up and ask him if you can stay," she said. "Are you thinking of doing it?"

"Maybe."

"You have to work two hours a day."

Two hours? Whoa. Did this qualify for medical and dental? Was there a 401k plan? Two hours? I was already thinking of asking for time off. Between having to run around to get visas and catching up on The Blog and seeing stuff, I really couldn't spare the time. Besides, the store wasn't a place conducive to write anyway (for me); open until midnight seven days a week, the place was packed with people coming and going in the summer (including Bohemian types sitting on the beds and singing Beatles tunes with an acoustic guitar). According to the Swede, "quiet time" didn't come until about 3 a.m.

Even with that idea gone, I paid my respects to the owner anyway, a distinguished-looking laid back old American named George Whitman, the grandson of great American writer Walt Whitman, who kept the original spirit of Shakespeare & Co. alive. He was in a small back room in a suit, reading the paper.

"Are you George Whitman?"

"That's me. Where are you from?"

"New York."

"What brings you here?"

"Well, this place is famous. I'm sort of making my pilgrimage."

"Well, you're always welcome."

"I remember seeing you on the Michael Palin show," I said, referring to the former Monty Python's travel mini-series that followed the trail of Ernest Hemingway.

"Oh, that was years ago."

"So," I said, trying to think of something to say. I had met Mr. Whitman's one-time interviewer Michael Palin himself at a signing of one of his travel books in a New York bookstore and drew a blank when I finally got to speak with him one on one and I didn't want the same thing to happen again. "So, do you just sort of sit here and, uh..." thinking, thinking, "...read?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Well nice to meet you."

"You're always welcome."

I left, happy to know that while the embassies of Russia and China maybe closed, the literary American one would be open to me.

THE LOUVRE, without a doubt, is the world's most famous art museum, housing some of the world's most famous classical works of art, most prominently Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. I had missed out on the Louvre on my last visit to Paris and so this time around, I made the obligatory stop as an American tourist to visit it, camera in hand.

Trying to cover four floors in three wings of a tremendous museum is impossible in three hours, so I sort of just went to see the more prominent things pointed out by my floor plan map, in a sort of photographic scavenger hunt. Most of the things that weren't so significant I just skipped over, knowing that I could see similar works anytime back home in the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (and at a lower price). I wondered through the galleries and halls of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Levantian, Iranian, Coptic, Islamic and medieval artifacts, paintings and sculptures. Halfway through my scavenger hunt I discovered that about a third of the museum was closed for the Monday night extended hours, which was okay because there was too much available to see anyway.

Amongst the highlights of my photographic scavenger hunt of prominent works (and others that just caught my attention) were:

• Venus de Milo (chick with no arms)
  
• Winged Victory of Samothrace (chick with no head)
  
• Michelangelo's The Dying Slave (classical porn for women)
  
• Code of Hammurabi (the deciphering phallus)
  
• The Borghese Gladiator (Wow, they had Tae Bo back then?)
  
• The Capital of Apadana (fat woman not included)
  
• Statue of Ain Ghazal (Gumby's Jordanian cousin)
  
• L'Enfant à l'oie (Is that French for "Boy choking the chicken?")
  
• La Mastaba (Could this title be any more set up for a joke?)
  
• The Cycladic Idol (Add glasses and you have Muppet Professor Honeydew!)
  

Down the long hallway of Italian paintings (including Da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks), I saved the most famous for last, the Mona Lisa herself (chick with no eyebrows) and managed to get a fairly decent shot without a flash after working my way through a small crowd. (Flash photography only gets you a photo of your reflected flash.)

THE LOUVRE CLOSED shortly after, leaving me to wander the lively Place de St. Michel, amongst other places. While that neighborhood was open late, the neighborhood I was in closed relatively early -- which was fine because I'd have to get up early and beat the morning rush when the Russian embassy opened in the morning.

Paris Lost

DAY 268: "Une carte Mobilis," I ordered at the Metro ticket booth. Asking for a one-day unlimited train and bus travel pass was the first thing I'd say for this and the next three mornings. The Mobilis card is aimed for tourists who want to zip around hassle-free. However, the sights would have to take a backseat to the errands I had planned that day.

After the included breakfast at the hostel where coffee bowls were bigger than the cereal ones, I was back on the Metro riding to the southeast corner of Paris to get to the Russian embassy, along with Parisians going to work during the morning rush hour. The hustle and bustle of commuters was surprisingly nice; I felt like I was more of a resident of Paris rather than a visitor. I arrived at the embassy around 8:30 to find a line twenty-nine people long already outside the gate waiting for it to open for visa services promptly at nine. The guard, a big Russian guy in a suit, opened the gate on time and led us into an outdoor waiting area with a metal fence around us, like we were cattle in a corral. He gave us each a numbered ticket -- I pulled up No. 30 -- not that it mattered because people cut when groups of ten at a time were allowed passed the second gate and into the building.

The office of the Russian embassy was much like an American DMV office. You went on one of many lines, each one serving a different purpose -- none of them giving you a much-needed cup of coffee. After waiting outside for about an hour I was led along with my herd (Nos. 21-30) out of the corral and into the "Russian DMV" to wait on the tourist visa line. I had all my documents ready for a speedy transaction -- a filled-out application form I printed off their website with photo attached, my passport and a copy of the faxed host invitation from a hotel in Moscow that my friend and wannabe travel agent (and soon-to-be traveling companion) Sam set me up with -- but it didn't really matter because tour agencies had priority over anyone in the tourist visa line, and each tour agent cut ahead with six or more of their clients' passports each. I ended up waiting another hour on that line, even when I was two people away from the counter.

Finally I was in front of the young immigration officer and gave him my documents. I spoke in high school French until he just switched to English with a Russian accent. "Everything is fine, but this must be on one sheet," he said holding up the two pages of the application I downloaded on the internet. He gave me the same applications on one sheet (front and back) and told me to fill it out and come back. I thought I might have to wait another hour, but he said I could cut ahead when I was done.

RUSSIAN TOURIST VISA APPLICATION, Take Two: "When are you leaving Russia?" the immigration officer asked me.

"The thirteenth [of August]," I replied. He pointed at the discrepancy in my documents: it said "13/08/04" on my application, but my host invitation document only had me there until the third. Stupidly thinking that I could just wing it in Russia like I had been doing in essentially every country thus far, I had my friend Sam get me an invitation for only three days in Moscow.

The officer looked at me sternly but let it slide; the duration of time between my scheduled arrival by plane in Moscow (July 30th) and my departure by train (August 3rd) was exactly two weeks, the maximum amount of time one could get for a visa without having to show supporting documents detailing your specific itinerary. I didn't have those supporting documents anyway because I started booking the train on a whim from a payphone in Madrid (while Jack was making out), something highly recommended to do. (Artour, the Siberian travel specialist agent thought it was insane I was booking it three weeks ahead -- the norm is six months.) Any official proof of travel within Russia I wouldn't have until I got to Moscow.

The immigration officer crossed out the "3rd" and handwrote "13th" and initialized it and told me to proceed to another window with another line. I waited some more, submit my documents and went on another line to pay the whopping 106 euros for next-day service.

THE REST OF THE DAY I gave up Paris. I forsake its culture, its architecture, its art, its modern world city vibe -- all to sit on my bed with my laptop to catch up on my writing. As tragic as that was (the weather was nice outside), I kept the words of wisdom bestowed upon me by writer friend and Blogreader matto in my head: "You become a writer when you write because you have to, not because you want to." And so, in the battle going on in my head, Paris lost to The Blog. Blog 1, Paris 0.

THE SOUNDS OF BIG BRASS INSTRUMENTS echoed through the canyon formed by the buildings lining the small streets of Paris and up into my sixth floor dorm room. I had come to a stopping point in my writing, copied the files to my camera and went out to investigate the source of the music. Just downstairs around the corner at a cafe, a group of about a dozen horned musicians and one drummer played for an enthusiastic crowd of cafe patrons and passers-by (picture above) that had to stop and watch for a while, including myself.

In the French summer, the sky really doesn't get dark until about 10 p.m., which is sort of misleading for me because when it feels like it's only six in the evening, it's closer to nine. This was annoying when I didn't get out until "late" to go to the only internet cafe in town that I found with a usable USB connection, three Metro stops away -- only to find it closed.

Tired and frustrated, I just wandered around the still lively pedestrian malls near Les Halles in the center of town until I just went back to the hostel. I could have been our partying or something, but I forsake Parisian nightlife to wake up to get my Russian visa early enough to go to the Chinese consulate right after. In the battle between responsibility and Paris, Paris lost again, but I knew I'd thank myself later.

What A Difference A Day Makes

DAY 269: July 14th may just be a random summer day to others in the northern hemisphere, but in France it is Bastille Day, the independence day of the French republic, a day of national celebration and, as Let's Go so eloquently puts it, "a time of glorious firework displays and equally glorious alcohol consumption." Paris, the governmental center of France had no inhibitions of celebrating the national holiday in a big, big way -- so big that the huge Bastille parade on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées altered the normal morning rush hour Metro service.

My big Bastille Day plan had nothing to do with France, but with Russia and China, as I woke up early to get my passport with new Russian visa at the Russian embassy in one part of town in time to rush over to the Chinese consulate in another part. A straightforward plan, but with one possible glitch: I had applied to be in Russia exactly July 30th to August 13th, forgetting that my travel agent reserving train tickets for me couldn't get me out of Russian and into Mongolia without a night stay over in a town on the way -- the direct train must have been full -- meaning I'd technically be in Russian until August 14th. Whether or not that one day of being in transit made a difference or not I wasn't sure. I crossed my fingers and hoped they'd just give me a standard 30-day tourist visa like my Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway guidebook said.

"I NEED TO EXTEND my stay another night," I asked the hostel's reception clerk the way I did the morning before with no problems. The Centre International de Paris hostel didn't take individual reservations and you had to check each morning to see if there was space available for another day.

"We're full tonight," she said, explaining that a big school group was arriving later on. "But wait until later to see if someone checks out." I put my name on the waiting list and prayed I wouldn't have to sleep out on the street that night (or worse, pay 50 euros for a place to stay). I moved my packed my bags as everyone else was still sleeping, and put my valuables in a locker in case my stay there was over.

Bastille Day festivities closed some roads down, even for pedestrians, and I had to walk around the block just to get to my closest Metro stop. Some Metro stops were closed en route to my transfer point, but it didn't really affect my commute to the Russian embassy. I transferred at Etoile Charles de Gaulle and got off at the Porte Dauphine stop, at the end of the No. 2 line, the closest stop to the embassy, still about a quarter of a kilometer away on foot. The one advantage to it being Bastille Day was the visa line wasn't nearly as long as the day before; I simply went to the passport pick-up counter with my receipt and got it in fifteen seconds. Inside my passport, on a visa sticker taking up a full page, the ink from a dot-matrix printer spelled out: "30.07.04/13.08.04." I went back to the tourist visa line to investigate -- this time around I was only fourth in line with no travel agents cutting head with groups of passports.

"Hi, remember me?" I said to the same Russian immigration officer as the day before.

"Yes," he said in his Russian accent.

"My visa is only until the thirteenth, but my agent couldn't get a train out of Russian until the fourteenth. Does it matter?"

"Yes, you must have the exact dates, but you can extend your visa in Russia," he said. "But if you do you will be at the hands of local police and it will be at their discretion. It's probably better to get it before you enter Russia."

"What can I do? Can I get a transit visa for that one day?"

"You can't have two visas at the same time. You will either extend your visa in Russia with local police or apply for a new visa."

I opted for the safer option. "Um, can I have an application?"

FILLING OUT THE FORM was easy, especially since I had a photocopy of my previous application and just copied it. The tricky part was attaching a passport-sized photo to it -- I didn't have any on me. I thought I could get away with tearing out the black and photo photocopy of my face from a photocopy of my passport, but the immigration officer just rolled his eyes.

"Just get a photo at a machine at the RER station," he said. "All the RER stations have photo booths."

With two hours before closing, I ran off.

THE RER, the other commuter train network in Paris extends out to the suburbs where the Metro doesn't go. Conveniently enough, one of the RER stations was right by the Porte Dauphine Metro stop a quarter kilometer away, so I walked over thinking I could get photos in a snap -- but the station didn't have an automatic photo booth. The ticket desk there told me to go to the next station, so I ran the quarter kilometer back towards the embassy and another quarter kilometer the other way to the next station. Inside was a photo booth. Cool, I'll take it in a snap and walk back. But the screen of the booth had a message on its screen. "Je ne peux pas faire les photos maintenant." ("I can't make photos now.")

Tapped out of RER stations within walking distance of the embassy, I hopped on a commuter train outbound towards the suburbs with less than two hours to spare. I ran upstairs of the next stop to found a photo booth -- but with a taped note on it. "Ne functione pas." I was really starting to hate Paris.

Fuck! What should I do, what should I do... Go one more stop into the suburbs or back the other way beyond the first RER station I checked? Not much time to think, so I decided to go back towards the city, three stops away in a neighborhood across the Seine. The frequency of RER trains was half of the Metro (if not less) and I paced back and forth like a guy with diarrhea waiting for a public toilet to open up.

On the north side of the Seine I finally lucked out and got my picture taken by a machine. I dashed back off to the embassy with less than an hour before closing time. Lucky for me, there was a pair of scissors and some glue in the security office and in no time I was back in front of the young Russian immigration officer.

"You got the photo?"

"Yeah," I replied, still catching my breath. "All the photo booths around here were broken."

The Russian took my documents like he did the day before when it was a lot more crowded -- I was just one of five civilians this time -- and he went through the mental process over again, flipping through my documents. "It says here the fourteenth," he pointed out as if we never had a conversation before about my dilemma of extending my visa a day. "You need to have a detailed itinerary for more than two weeks." He also pointed out the other discrepancy -- my host invitation only had me in Russia for three days -- which he let slide the day before.

"But I just need the extra day because of the train," I begged, pointing out that I already had a visa up until the thirteenth. I showed him a printout of an e-mail from my Siberian travel agent in Boston with the confirmed date of the departure on the fourteenth.

"Sorry, anything beyond fifteen days requires a detailed itinerary."

I caught him on his slip of English (or inability to do math); he said fifteen, not fourteen.

"But it is fifteen days! The thirtieth to the fourteenth is exactly fifteen days."

The Russian counted out the days on a calendar. "Okay, I'll give it to you," he said with his stern Russian accent, "but next time, you should know to have all the documents and details."

"I know, I know," I said with relief. "It's just because of the train situation." He handwrote "14/8/04" on my host invitation form, initialed it, and told me to go to the other window. That window took my passport and my documents and directed me to another window where I shelled out a whopping 122 euro for one-hour service -- sixteen more than what I paid the day before for 24-hour service. The Russians let me wait in the waiting room beyond the 12 o'clock visa office hours to wait for it, and in 60 minutes I had an annulled old visa and a new one on the next page.

As I left the waiting room, I saw on the television that the parade was over. I had missed all the big Bastille Day festivities. It was passed noon so my plan to rush off to the Chinese consulate went bust. Half an hour later, I went back to the hostel to check on the room situation -- nothing opened up and I was evicted. I really hated Paris.

AFTER A MUCH NEEDED LUNCH CHILL OUT SESSION at a sidewalk cafe that had 20 minutes of free Wi-Fi internet service, I went off to the affiliated hostel on the other side of town to find a place to crash for the night.

"Hey!" called a familiar face from the other hostel in the Latin Quarter. It was Evan, my Mexican dorm mate from the dorm I just got kicked out from -- he had been evicted too and was forced to find another place in town. Luckily for us we had managed to snag the last two male dorm beds in the place. For Evan, moving around would only be temporary; he was waiting for an apartment because he was to live in Paris for a couple of months to study at the legendary Cordon Bleu culinary arts school. We chat for a bit and made tentative plans to meet later that night.

I went for a sightseeing stroll that afternoon, seeing some of the standard sights in the city on the Seine: the outside of the Sorbonne, one of Europe's oldest universities; the solar-responsive metal iris windows of the Institut de Monde Arabe; Notre Dame and the bateaux mouches cruising up and down the Seine nearby; the crowds lining up for the other big event of the day, France's opening day for Spiderman 2; and the Quartier Mouffetard, Hemingway's old neighborhood and home of arguably the city's best ice cream at the Octave parlor. A scoop of chocolate and sesame made me happy, and Paris started to grow on me again after a crazy morning.

There were a couple of small Bastille Day-related celebrations around town as I wandered. An army band played amidst tanks parked in front of the Pantheon (other picture above), which houses the tombs of some of France's great heroes, including Victor Hugo, Louis Braille and Voltaire. Another smaller band played in a gazebo in the Jardin de Luxembourg, home of the eponymous palace, trees cut into rectangle shapes, and kids' little sailboats floating around a fountain.

But surely there was some other big Bastille Day celebration I could witness since I missed the big one that morning dealing with Russian bureaucracy. Yes, there was one place left to see to go out of Bastille Day with a bang.

THE EIFFEL TOWER. The former holder of the title, "world's tallest structure," the metal monument was created in 1889 as the centerpiece of the Universal Exposition. Since then, the "300-meter flagpole" (as designer Gustave Eiffel once called it) has become the definitive icon of Paris and all of France for that matter. Every year on July 14th it becomes the centerpiece of a spectacular sound, light and firework show in celebration of French independence.

I was planning to meet up with Evan for the fireworks, thinking I'd just run into him on the Champs de Mars, the park fields underneath the famous tower -- until I arrived and saw the mob of people. I gave up on looking for him and snagged a perfect spot for the show, which started at nightfall. Light beams shot out of the tower as fireworks lit up the sky with tremendous booms, all in sync with Oriental-influenced new age music. After the final boom, the tower continued to be lit, with additional sparkly lights like chasers in a Christmas tree. After a crazy, depressing morning over matters of a day in the future, the nighttime sight that day revived the good in Paris for me all over again.

Dead End

DAY 270: Up by seven, out the door by 7:40. Another "working day" for me in Paris had begun, this time at the Chinese consulate in a nearby suburban area of Paris. It was the last part of the puzzle in planning my Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian Railway trip from Moscow to Beijing.

I arrived at the consulate by eight o'clock and there were tons of people on line already. Some people had gotten there as early as six, and some of them were travel agents with groups of passports to process, meaning there were way more than just thirty people ahead of me already. I got all this information without much effort from Xiaowen, a young-looking Chinese girl from Hong Kong living and studying for her MBA in Toronto, Canada, on vacation for a couple of weeks to visit her friend in Paris. Being Chinese she didn't need a visa herself, but was on line killing time for her friend's visa, who was at work. Xiaowen seemed to have a bit too much sugar that morning or something because she was as restless as a toddler strapped in a car seat with a lollipop just out of reach.

"Watch my place on the line? I want to go look in that store." "Hold my place? I want to see what time the guys in front got here." "Watch my space? I want to see if we're on the right line" (when the line split into three when they opened the gates at 9:30). "Wait here? I want to count how many people are in front of us. I calculate if each person takes five minutes, we will be at the window before noon." And so forth. Each time she asked me to hold her place in line she scuttled off, ducking down underneath the shoulders and arms of people filling out their visa applications. When she wasn't doing that she was back in her spot in the line trying to do the cha-cha in the limited space available. Her vivacious too-early-in-the-morning energy entertained me and this French teenager guy near us until I was near the visa window myself, after having waited three hours.

"Can you help me at the window?" I asked Xiaowen. My French wasn't up to par for an in-depth conversation with an immigration officer and I figured a Chinese translator would come in handy. She happily accepted the task.

"I CAN GIVE YOU THE VISA after you give me a carte de séjour of three months," the Chinese female officer said from behind the glass in English and French. I was unclear about that "séjour" thing so Xiaowen helped out using her native tongue. She found out for me that I needed a residency permit of three months in France -- Chinese policy for tourist visas is that one must apply for a visa into China in his/her home country (i.e. country of official residence). The officer suggested I just go to a police station and apply for the form and come back.

"They won't give it to me," I told Xiaowen as we walked out of the consulate. "I haven't been here three months. It's only been three days."

"I think she said that you apply to ask to be here for three months, but you don't have to stay that long," she said, leaving me to go shopping.

I went over to the national police office nearby and requested the residence permit. The officer just told me to get lost.

DEAD END. Although I already had all my trains and visas through Russia all set, and a train reservation from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Beijing, China, the Chinese government wouldn't let me in. The Forbidden City really was the forbidden city! In a frenzy I sent out e-mails to a bunch of Ulaanbaatar-based travel agents listed in my book, asking if a visa could be acquired there -- I also asked my Siberian travel agent in Boston. With the e-mails going to inconvenient time zones, I had nothing to do but wait. In the meantime, I prepared for a contingency plan: to do the ballsy and risky thing of FedExing my passport back to the States to have my Chinese visa processed there.

"ARRETE. C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT," ("Stop. This here is the Empire of the Dead,") read the sign above the doorway I was about to enter. No, I wasn't at an attraction at the Disneyland Paris outside of town; I was 65 feet underground in the tunnels of Paris' catacombs, a former quarry-turned-mass grave, a place for the bodies of the long departed to Rest In Peace after the cemeteries were overcrowded in 18th century. I figured in light of the dead end of my attempts to get a Chinese visa in France, I'd walk amongst the dead themselves. (It was a real stretch for a pun, I know.)

"Oh cool! Look!" said a young American anthropology student to her aunt(?) when we passed through the door of the dead. She was looking at two skulls in the corner revealed from the darkness by a hallway light (picture above).

"Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from," I said. Down the hall were hundreds of thousands of bones and skulls, all piled up in an orderly fashion. The tunnels of the dead went on for a little over a mile, leading me and several others through damp, dimly lit passageways, the same passageways once used as an underground bunker for the Resistance in WWII.

AFTER WANDERING THE IMPRESSIVE LOWER CHAPEL of the Cathedral of Saint Chapelle and its even more impressive upper chapel, with its tall stained glass windows and statues of saints, I did quick walkthroughs passed the Palais de Congrès, Napoleon III's famous Opéera house and the Bloomingdale's of Paris, the Galleries Lafayette. Then I did my responsibility as a Spiderman fan and saw the movie sequel at the big Les Halles cineplex in the center of town -- with great power comes great responsibility (to see it) -- which was in English with French subtitles (although Parisians asked for tickets in a French accent: "Deux pour [Speed-dehr-mahn].") Superhero Spiderman web slung his way around New York City, my birthplace in my home country. Sure wish Spiderman could swing me over that Chinese visa, I thought.

After watching the ups and downs of the life of a superhero on film, I became a sort of hero myself when I got back to my room in the Latin Quarter and met Ben, an American college student from Georgia who absolutely looked up to me and raved when I told him that I wasn't just traveling through France, or Europe, but the entire world. We were joined by another American dorm mate named Daniel, an interface designer from San Jose, CA (and fellow traveling iBook user) who spent most of his days in Paris just in the Louvre. I entertained them with the stories of the ups and downs of a world traveler and told them about my dilemma of the People's Republic of China and how I was possibly faced with being stranded in Mongolia.

THE NEXT MORNING, my "Spiderman" came in the form of an e-mail; a British agent in Ulaanbaatar said getting a visa into China from Mongolia could be done fairly easily in Ulaanbaatar, and that his company could handle the process for me when I got there. The Dead End was lifted. Just like in the catacombs of Paris sixty-five feet below the surface, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

To See The Bridge

DAY 271: "Where should I go?" I asked dorm mates Ben and Daniel. Having done all that I could concerning Russian and Chinese visas in Paris, it was time to move on -- but where to next? The beauty of the unlimited travel Eurail Pass is that you can go mostly anywhere in Europe on a whim (some trains require reservations). I boiled down my options to two out of many: the northwestern beaches of Normandy to see the World War II memorial sites; or the southeastern town of Avignon, home of the legendary bridge which became subject of the French children's song, "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," which I learned in junior high French class. Figuring I hadn't really taken full advantage of my 17-country Eurail Pass (I only did two so far), I might as well go to Avignon en route to third country, Italy.

From Paris' Gare Lyon, I was off on a high-speed TGV train southbound through the French countryside to Avignon without any real expectations of it other than the fact that there was a bridge there. I had heard from the two Colorado girls in Barcelona that there was some sort of festival going on in Avignon for all of July (even though they never made it to Avignon) and so I thought that maybe there would be things to do other than see the pont (bridge).

However, when I arrived in town I discovered this festival was actually three major theater festivals all going on at the same time, the main one being the Festival d'Avignon, "the most prestigious theater gathering in Europe" (according to my Let's Go book). The July events in Avignon were so big that it pretty much took over the otherwise quiet town, which meant that finding a cheap (15-50 euro) place to stay was near impossible. The local YMCA recommended in my guidebook was full, as were the recommended hotels. A board in the main tourist office listed hotels that were full, but a hostel/campground was on the bottom of the list and I gave them a buzz. They did have space, but didn't take reservations; you just had to show up and hope no one beat you to it. They directed me to take a bus to their location on the Ile de la Barthelasse, an island in the middle of the Rhône River, a popular recreational island for the French since the 19th century.

I dashed off to the bus stop in hopes of getting there in a speedy manner to secure a bed, but the waiting for the bus to come and depart took forever. To make this worse, I didn't know exactly where to push the stop signal button and ended up on the other side of the Rhône in a low traffic area -- I had overshot the hostel by about a kilometer and I had my heavy big bag weighing me down. Fuck, this is heavy, I kept thinking, cursing myself for letting it slow me down. This stupid heavy bag is going to prevent me from getting a place to stay tonight. Damn this bag! I walked across the Rhône on the Pont Daladier to the east side of the Ile de la Barthelasse, then crossed the island passed some rowdy drunk teenagers, one of which gave me wrong directions to the reception office. Luckily I managed to snag one of the few remaining beds in the dorm and immediately started removing unnecessary items from my bag.

"BONJOUR," SAID AN ELDERLY PALE-SKINNED MAN as he walked into the room. I cleared a walkway for him through my pile of junk taking up most of the floor space. His name was Phillip, a theater buff from Mexico City in town for the Festival d'Avignon. "What brings you here?" he asked me in an American accent -- I figured he was an American ex-pat in Mexico teaching English or something.

"To see the bridge."

"Everyone says that. What's so special about the bridge?" He admitted that he thought the famous Pont d'Avignon -- what was left of it anyway -- was a bit kitsch.

"It's in that French children's song. I've known it since the seventh grade. I'm making sort of a pilgrimage."

Our conversation continued, keeping me from rearranging my things and him from taking a nap. Phillip filled me in on current world events and what to expect in town. He had been in Avignon since the beginning of the festival about a week before, when rumor had it that the festival would be cancelled -- which is why he snagged a pas for some of the better seats in the venues at a good price. He had seen everything from big Broadway-like productions to smaller off-Broadway ones to really off-Broadway ones -- each category had its good, bad and downright ugly. He told me that a festival show might not be fun (or worth it) if you didn't know French too well. That was okay, I just wanted to see the bridge.

Seeing the bridge wasn't so hard to do; the Auberge Bagatelle where I was staying on the Ile de la Barthelasse was in the most convenient and scenic place: right on the Rhône, diagonally across from it. This was just one of the bonuses of the French award-winning Bagatelle hostel/campground, a big recreational complex with a cafeteria, a grocery store and a decent outdoor restaurant/cafe right on the bank of the river overlooking the bridge -- the perfect place to write over a glass of wine and a platter of moules frites.

Phillip came to join me after not being able to sleep much in his bed; one of our eight dorm mates was making too much noise having sex in his bunk with a girl and without any scruples over privacy. Phillip had to get up anyway to make his evening play, a five-hour production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and sat with me for a while as the sun began to set on the other side of the island. "Every town has its energy," he said. "You just feel it, no matter where you are." He was no stranger to the Eurail scene, having train traveled through Europe before to experience the different energies of different cities. As hippy as it sounded, I agreed with him -- although I argued that some places (i.e. San Jose de Chiquitos, Bolivia) had no energy at all.

Phillip in his theater blazer went off to see Ibsen's play, while I walked across the Pont Daladier and into town to experience its energy. With the festival in town, there was energy everywhere I turned, from the theater-goers rushing to venues, to the families walking around with ice cream cones, to the guys like me who were just in town to see the bridge. While the theater performances cost money and were entirely in French, free performances were everywhere in the plazas, from puppets lip-syncing Louis Armstrong tunes (picture above), musicians, interpretive dance/jugglers and the inevitable French mime. They all kept me entertained for free on my first night in Avignon while the theater elite got their bangs for their euro bucks.

THE NEXT MORNING I bumped into Phillip in the bathroom as he was gearing up to finally leave Avignon. "How was it?" I asked him.

"Oh, it was awful. I left after intermission."

I suppose it's always a crapshoot when it comes to theater, but that's okay, I was only in town to see the bridge.

On the Roof and Under the Bridge

DAY 272: In the early 14th century, there was a civil war in Italy between those who supported the emperor and those who supported the Catholic Church. Until the smoke cleared, the popes of the Catholic Church picked up their robes, hats and little communion wafers and took refuge in Avignon, France, a town governed by one Charles II, who was also King of Naples and Sicily and friend to the Church. For about seventy years, the popes lived in Avignon and continued performing their duties of the Catholic empire until 1376 when Gregory XI brought the papacy back to Rome after another scuffle between Catalan Rodriguez and the Italians in the Cataluyan War. If not for this decision to move back to Rome, "Roman Catholics" as we know them today might have been known as "Avignon Catholics."

The center of Avignon's stint as the capital of the Catholic Church was Le Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes), a huge stone complex that still exists today. This palace was the first half of a two-UNESCO World Heritage site tour ticket I bought for the day.

With a free electronic audioguide held to my ear, I wandered the palace's major rooms -- its courtyards, its treasury halls and its dining hall -- most of which were very spacious, made with stone walls and high-arched ceilings. I followed the room numbers in chronological order alongside others holding audioguide wands to their ears, passed the smaller papal bedrooms where daily ceremonies where performed for waking up and going to bed, the Grand Chapel, the windows looking outside, and up the stairs to the roof for a view of the village houses below. It was a much quieter, less hectic than the streets of Rome; perhaps the popes should have stayed after all.

BEFORE MY NEXT UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE, I went meandering around town to feel the daytime energy of Avignon, through the main Place de l'Horloge, the trendy stores of Rue de la Republique and by a smiling old woman playing the accordion. Crossing the street from the train station set the tone for the day; the audible cross-walking signal was a happy little tune with bells that make you want to walk like a jolly black and white cartoon character from the 1930s. The town was full of whimsical characters wandering about, trying to pull in an audience for the night's performance. Since the plastering of promotional posters and flyers everywhere just blended into an ignorable mass wallpaper, actors did what it took bring attention to their show.

After a glass of Chardonnay at a sidewalk cafe and a croque monsieur (the French grilled ham and cheese sandwich with melted cheese on the outside) from a local pannerie, I walked through the Rocher des Doms, a quiet and scenic park to relax for a bit with a view of the Rhône. At the other end was a tower of the ramparts with a path that led to the reason I came to Avignon in the first place.

IT WAS MADAME POLLNER who first introduced the children's song "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" to me, back in 1987 when I was in the seventh grade French class (if my memory serves me correctly). Madame Pollner strongly believed in singing as a teaching method (much to our chagrin), for she knew that it's songs that often stand out in your mind above anything else needed to be memorized for a vocabulary test. She made up songs about French grammar that we'd have to embarrassingly sing in class and taught us the classics that kids in France learned to sing.

Her teaching tactic obviously worked because to this day I still remember "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" (MIDI music file) even though I didn't grow up in France. The song, with a popularity equivalency of "London Bridge is Falling Down," goes like this:

Sur le Pont d'Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
L'on y danse, tous en rond.

(On the Bridge of Avignon
There we dance, there we dance
On the Bridge of Avignon
There we dance, all in round.)

"IT SAYS HERE THAT ORIGINALLY it was sous le Pont d'Avignon, not sur," I pointed out to two other Americans as I was reading an information display near the bridge. "Under the bridge." Funny, we never learned that in French class -- or perhaps we did and I just forgot because we never sang it that way.

My new fellow bridge walkers were a wisecracking Lousiana State University law student named David doing a summer study abroad in Lyon, and his friend Cindy, an American physicist who had just landed a job in Paris. The two of them were in Avignon for the weekend for a little sightseeing, and eventually made their way to the legendary bridge.

I say "legendary" because according to the electronic audioguide held to my ear, the bridge was created by a miracle performed by a shepherd named Bénezet -- in fact, the famous "Pont d'Avignon" is actually the "Pont Saint-Bénezet." According to legend, shepherd Bénezet had been summoned by God via the message of an angel to build the bridge over the Rhône. The royal courts called him crazy and laughed at him when he said it needed to be done. "[If you aren't crazy, the lift that boulder over there and place the foundation stone,]" was the gist of their response. But with the Divine Intervention of God, Bénezet lifted the stone and did as he was requested, causing everyone to gape in awe.

By 1185, his 2950-ft. long bridge of twenty-two arches had linked the east bank of the Rhône with the west, providing a great service to those on pilgrimages between Spain and Italy, as well as helping businessmen and sailors prosper -- in the end Bénezet acquired sainthood for his divine service. The bridge extended above the Ile de la Barthelasse in the middle of the river, and it was here that people danced under the bridge and sang songs about it. The children's song as it is known today in American French classes didn't come until much later in history.

While the legend of the Pont d'Avignon survived for centuries, the actual complete bridge did not. In 1226, Louis VIII destroyed it during a siege of the city, and since then it had been repaired and destroyed, repaired and destroyed from the flooding of the river. In the 17th century, the townspeople of Avignon gave up spending money on repairs and just started using other bridges, the way someone gives up an old car and gets a new one. I guess they just don't make bridges like they used to, huh?

Since the 17th century, the legendary bridge has remained a ruin which pays homage to its past -- it also draws the tourist dollar from people like me to see it.

DAVID, CINDY AND I WALKED with audioguides to our ears from the Châtelet at the beginning of the bridge, across to where it ended abruptly halfway across the river towards the Ile de la Barthelasse. In the center of the remains of the bridge was a chapel with a lower level, which served as a meeting place for boatmen and pilgrims. Inside was the scene of the Nativity -- hey, what's that KKK guy doing there? -- and a side view from the just under the bridge (picture above).

After fourteen years I had finally made it to the bridge that I had sung about over and over (much to my chagrin) in French class. Thankfully I didn't have to sing it one more time; track number 8 of the audioguide in my hand played it for me.

Three Flavors of Alps

DAY 273: The sun came up over the Rhône as I waited for an early morning taxi on the riverbank. I was the only one awake in probably all of the Ile de la Barthelasse at 6:30, other than security guards or groundskeepers. I was the only one on the island trying to get an early train out of Avignon to move onto another destination.

Usually I just make a reservation the day before for a train I want to take, but for the past three days, the French national TGV train network reservation computer system was down, forcing anyone who wants to get a train pray for a seat the day of departure. I knew I had a long day of train travel ahead of me, so I wanted to get the first train out -- my early awakening paid off and I got the train I wanted that departed at 7:31.

My ultimate destination was Florence, Italy to the southeast, but with the Sunday schedules, the only way I could work out getting there by sundown was to actually go northeast first, via Geneva, Switzerland. My early morning train took me to the French city of Valence on the way, where I switched trains to one bound for Geneva. After an hour layover in Geneva, a train took me to Milano Centrale where I hopped on yet another train for Florence. I spent about three more hours in transit and arrived in Firenze (Italian for Florence), where I managed to find a place to stay a couple of blocks away from the Arno River.

Spending all day on trains wasn't too bad. Most of the time I caught up on writing, although a lot of times I just spaced out the window. The four trains took me through the Alps, and I traveled over the borders that separate them into three flavors: French, Swiss, and Italian (picture above). The French were nice, as were the Italian -- the Swiss ones I was pretty neutral about (pun totally intended).

Most of my train trip I kept from starving eating panini sandwiches from train stations, the cheap but decent way to get by in the area. That frugal diet all changed when I met an Aussie named Val at the hostel, who had been traveling all over Europe on a severance package from Oracle Systems in Dublin, spending most of his time crashing at friends' houses. In fact, when he checked into the hostel at the same time I did, it was he first time checking into such a place.

"Do you usually worry about your gear?" the hostel novice asked me.

"Nah, most people are usually worried that you're gonna steal their stuff," I said.

Val had really lived it up with his package from his former employer; in just about six weeks, he had blown about the same amount of money I had spent over eight months, splurging in fancy hotels, bars and clubs across Europe. With a cheap place to stay this night -- after deducing his funds wouldn't last forever so he better start toning the decadene down -- he didn't scrimp on a place that just served paninis. Instead, the two of us went out to a nice outdoor restaurant/cafe in a piazza to swap travel tales over risotto, gnocchi and a fine bottle of chianti.

As far as the flavors of the fine Tuscan food and drink went, they were rich and robust, the way real Italian food should be, and there's nothing really neutral about that.

Memories of Tuscany

DAY 274: Firenze, more commonly known in the English-speaking world as Florence, lies in the scenic hills in Tuscany, the northwestern province of Italy. Florence has attracted many people for centuries, particularly in the 14th and 15th (A.D.), when it became the center point of the Renaissance, a place where the masters of thought, astronomy, literature, art and architecture came to be. Nowadays, the city of 376,000 residents attracts tourists from all over the world, each bringing home his/her own personal memory of Tuscany.

"What do you have planned this morning?" Val, the Australian novice to the hostel scene, asked me.

"I'm gonna check out the Duomo."

"What is that again?"

"The big cathedral," I answered. "It's meant to be the cathedral. Have you been already?" Val had told me the night before that he had previously been to Florence with a group of others -- including some high-maintenance Australian girls -- but his memory of it sort of blurred in with other Italian places he'd been. I suppose when you get an overload of cathedrals and churches, it's hard to remember if you've seen a particular one.

"I'll know when I see it," Val said. He tagged along.

After a quick breakfast of Italian proscuitto croissant sandwiches and authentic cappuccino, we waited on the long, but not overwhelming line in front of the cathedral entrance. Even in front of the large and impressionable building, Val's memory hadn't been jogged.

THE DUOMO (MAIN CATHEDRAL), whose technical name is the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, was an architectural marvel of its time. Filippo Brunelleschi devised of an interlocking brick technique that supported itself, which provided for the creation of its enormous dome. The dome was topped off with Michelangelo's "lantern," a structure with terrace views of the entire region. Both the cathedral and the lantern were under renovation, with scaffolding getting in the way of classic shots.

Half an hour later Val and I were inside the duomo's nave -- the third largest nave in the world -- along with the hordes of tourists that just kept on pouring in at no entrance cost. I witnessed its religious statues, its high ceilings and its incredible frescoes painted high above on the ceiling of the dome. "Do you remember this now?" I asked Val.

"Yeah, I remember. I was here. What do you think?"

"I don't know. I sort of expected more," I said. True, I had seen churches that were more impressive. We left the nave after ten minutes and walked over to the other entrance, the stairwell up the dome at a cost of six euros. Up the staircase of 463 steps we went, like two guys on a Stairmaster that wouldn't shut off. "I definitely didn't do this [before,]" Val said. "The girls wouldn't have allowed it."

The stairwell went up and up, passed small ventilation windows, and led to an indoor walking platform just under the colorful frescos of the dome's ceiling. Down below the not-so-impressionable nave suddenly became something to marvel about. "Okay, now it's amazing," I raved.

"I guess you have to pay to appreciate it."

Our six euros a piece eventually got Val and me not only a good workout of the thigh, leg and butt muscles, but a spectacular panorama from Michelangelo's lantern on the top of the dome, with incredible views of the red roofs of Florence and the rolling green hills of Tuscany just beyond.

FROM THE LANTERN OF MICHELANGELO, we decided to go to the Piazza Michelangelo, with another view of the city from the south. Val had a vague memory of having gone there before, and so we decided to go for a leisurely stroll across town to find out. Passed the Neptune statue at the Piazza della Signoria and across the jewelry store-lined Ponte Vecchio (Florence's oldest bridge) Val and I walked, stopping every so often for a break -- once at a trendy outdoor cafe for iced teas and cappuccinos. "It's funny," Val said with his memory of Florence coming back to him. "I think I went this same exact way last time."

Beyond an "old random tower" (as we and some other nearby American girls called it), we walked up a hill to the Piazza Michelangelo where Val and I took more pictures of the incredible view of the bridges across the River Arno and the nearby replica of Michelangelo's David. All impressionable things to behold, but for Val, the sights might one day be forgotten again; a self-proclaimed glutton, it was the finer things in life and travel that stood out in Val's mind instead.

"See, this is what I'll remember of Florence," Val said as we sat down at a fancy restaurant overlooking the city and the countryside for a lunch of risotto, panzerotti, champagne and a fine bottle of classic chianti (picture above). "This couldn't be more perfect; good food, good wine, a nice view, good company. Of course, you could be a girl."

We ate our fancy Tuscan dishes over conversations about life, drank and were merry. A good memory of Tuscany, I agreed.

VAL WENT OFF ON A BUS TO GROSSETO to meet with friends, leaving me to have memories on my own from that point on. Being a Monday, most of the state museums were closed so I took advantage of my unlimited travel Eurail Pass and hopped on a train westbound to Pisa, one hour away. Pisa had always stood out in my memory since I was a child when I saw a particular classic Warner Bros. cartoon where a stray dog (voiced by Mel Blanc) that was leaching off of Italian restaurant owners had to hold back the famous leaning tower. There's something about him yelling "HELP!" day and night that sticks with you.

I had forgotten to bring my map of Pisa with me and was disoriented upon arrival, until I saw the famous tower leaning behind some buildings. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, whose south side started to sink in into shifting soil in 1173, was a lot smaller than I had visualized, but impressionable nonetheless. In 2001, engineers reinforced the structure via cables, retaining the awkward angle for historical purposes -- and so unoriginal tourists could do hackneyed poses as if to hold up the tower. (I thought of photo of a bunch of them doing it was funnier than doing it myself.)

I wandered around Pisa's duomo and laid out on the nearby Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) to write alongside my Leaning Bottle of Water.

By nightfall I was back in Florence, with memories of Tuscany of my own -- although at the rate I've been zipping around Europe, I'm sure they may just blur in with the other sights I've seen.

I'll always remember that Warner Bros. cartoon though.

Mr. Big Head

DAY 275: Florence holds one of the world's most famous sculptures, Michelangelo's David, which one art critic hailed, "Nor has there ever been seen a pose so fluent, or a gracefulness equal to this, or feet, hands and head so well related to each other with quality, skill and design." I don't know what that guy was talking about; all I focused on was how disproportionately big Dave's head was.

David stands tall -- and totally nude -- in the Accademia museum, which, needless to say, attracts long lines of tourists and art lovers to its entrance. Waiting on line can take up to four hours, but the way to circumvent this is to call ahead for a reservation. I did this the day before and for just a three euro charge I skipped passed the hundreds waiting outside under the hot Tuscan sun to be amongst the hundreds inside the museum (picture above, found off the internet since the "No Pictures" rule was strictly enforced; photo credit: Robert Burke) marvelling at the sublime nature of David and his enormously big head. Seriously, if David was in grammar school in America, do you know how brutally teased by his peers he would be? Never mind that he defeated the giant Goliath, just look at the size of his noggin!

"Hey Dave, your head is so big that when you walk by the sun, there's a solar eclipse."

"Hey Big Head, move out the way, I can't see the screen."

"Why don't you take your lips off and shut up, Mr. Potato Head."

You can imagine how much of target he'd be in a game of dodge ball.

In all seriousness, David did have a big head, sculpted that way purposely as Michelangelo intended it to be viewed from a disproportionate vantage point just beneath it. David has been revered since its creation, serving as a symbol of Florentine pride -- his pose emphasizes his defeat over Goliath not by brutal force, but by graceful intellect and cunning.

Damn, his head is huge!

While the original David stands proudly in the Accademia museum, replicas of him have been made and appear in other places in Florence. A replica is in the Piazza Michelangelo, as well as another outside the Palazzo Vecchio protected for a renovation project. The replicas also have enormous noggins.

THE REST OF THE DAY I wandered around Florence before my night train that evening. I wandered down its quiet streets, passed the Santa Croce church, the synagogue, the reflections in the Arno River (HiRes, 1632x1224), the Renaissance-styled courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio and the other statues in the Piazza della Signoria.

With time to kill I waited the two hours to get into the Uffizi gallery whose insides hold Botticelli's famous Nascita di Venere, known more popularly in English as Birth of Venus. (The "No Pictures" rule wasn't as strictly enforced as in the Accademia, although it didn't matter because the paintings had highly reflective glass over them. I'm sure better photos are on the internet somewhere.) Outside the Uffizi Gallery where the (normal size-headed) statues of Florence's historical heroes like Donatello, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Raphael, the other namesake of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was nowhere to be seen, possibly under cover for a renovation project.

After a slice of pizza and some homemade gelati at Vivoli's -- who I think rightfully claim having the best ice cream in the world -- I was off on my train to Germany, working on the top bunk of my couchette cabin. I left Florence with memories of seeing David himself, big head and all -- although some souvenir-makers emphasized another big part of David instead.

Overcoming Dysfunctions

DAY 276: Germany, like most countries, is not without its historical dysfunctions. However, Germany's dysfunctions of the past may be just a tad more obvious, you know with that whole Hitler/Nazi/Holocaust thing. That's not to say Germany doesn't have its good things in history -- the classical music of Bach and Beethoven, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, beer -- but upon my approach via overnight train into Munich, the German Bavarian city in the south, there was a bit of a snag.

"Are we running late?" a passenger asked the conductor in his little room at the end of the hall of the sleeper car.

"Someone killed themselves," the man said with a tone of melancholy and a look of seriousness. An attempted suicide had succeeded just half an hour before (when most of us where still sleeping) when someone jumped off the platform at a station in front of the train.

The passenger and conductor had a look of grief, but I had other concerns. "So," I said to the conductor in a manner like George Costanza on Seinfeld, "I'm not going to be able to make the 7:45 to Berlin, am I?"

"No."

"Okay then."

Perhaps it was me who was a bit socially dysfunctional.

MY PLAN WAS TO SKIP THE BIERGARTENS OF MUNICH, a city I had been before, and head straight on up to Berlin, Germany's unified capital in the north since the reunification of Germany in 1990. After a quick, traditional Bavarian breakfast of weisswurst (veal sausage) and a pretzel, I hopped on the InterCity train bound for Berlin. It didn't really matter that my train from Florence was late; a train to Berlin left every hour. Better yet, the train had an awesome first class car -- Thomas Cook Travel Services in Egypt had issued me an adult first class Eurail Pass -- with electrical power outlets, individual TV monitors, tables, coffee and beer service. The roughly seven hour ride flew by as I recharged by batteries at one seat's outlet, and attended to Blog duties at another.

By mid-afternoon the high-speed train pulled into Berlin's Zoo Bahnhof ("Zoo Station," near the Berlin Zoo), namesake of music group U2's "Zoo TV" tour -- the U2 Metro line runs through it. I grabbed a quick currywurst there (curry sausage, a popular Berliner snack) before taking the Metro to the Mitte's Backpacker Hostel in the Mitte neighborhood, the former bleak East Berlin part of town-turned-hippest neighborhood in unified Berlin.

BERLIN IS DEFINITELY NOT A TOWN without its own dysfunctions. It was a center point for the Prussian empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the capital of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s and the main playing field of the Cold War between the Russians and Americans until the 1980s. Nowadays, the walls have come down (literally) and "new Berlin" is the country's most progressive city -- one of the most progressive in Europe -- with a general attitude so liberal that other Germans don't quite see how Berliners fit the traditional German mold. (In fact, I'm told it is the third largest gay city in the world.) With its blend of sleek, post-modern architecture juxtaposed to remnants of history, it is a city of the future with a turbulent past.

Mitte's Backpackers Hostel was in tune with Berlin's new hipness, a chilled out place with a lounge bar with bean bag chairs that played electronic lounge and drum and bass music, another component in modern Berliner culture. It was in the lounge that I met two American girls (not traveling together): Sara, an industrial design major from Vermont, and Cindy, a German studies major from Seattle. Sara, who had been in Berlin a couple of days already, gave Cindy and I tips on what to see amongst the overwhelming amount of sites to see in the German metropolis, over liter glasses of German weissbier (wheat beer, literally "white beer").

"Do you feel guys feel like going out tonight?" Sara asked.

"Sure," I answered, loving the fact that in hip backpacker hostels it's fairly easy to meet people.

The three of us went out for dinner at Dada's Falafel, home of what I've got to say has the best falafel outside the Middle East -- it's no surprise; Berlin has a huge Turkish immigrant population. From there we took the Metro to Delicious Doughnuts, a popular lounge bar of Berlin's renowned DJ scene, where breakbeat DJs spun for a late-night crowd.

"I'm pretty much fluent in German," Cindy told us in conversation.

"Quick, say something in German!" I said with a rude excitement.

"I hate it when people ask me that."

There went my social dysfunctions again.

Sara, Cindy and I sat in a booth over rounds of weissbiers and left just as the place was getting crowded passed midnight. Our early departure didn't really matter because our hostel lounge was pretty happening anyway (picture above), with dim lights and music to make any night a party.

In a modern city with a turbulent past, it was heartening to see that for the most part, it had overcome its dysfunctions. Perhaps it was me that should follow its example before opening my mouth sometimes.

History On Wheels

DAY 277: Berlin might have been a less overwhelming place to tour around in the 1980s because back then only the sights of West Berlin were open to American tourists like myself. But after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, marking the end of the Cold War between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., the east side of the wall was open, making "New Berlin" a bigger and much more overwhelming place of historical sights to tour around.

Taking Sara's enthusiastic recommendation, Cindy and I decided to join up with Fat Tire Bike Tours, owned and operated by a young American ex-pat named Wolf Schroen who, after seeing the movie Office Space, quit his American software job, moved to Germany and got into the bike tour business. I met him and his barrage of wisecracks at the Fat Tire Bike Tour meeting place under the TV tower at Alexanderplatz before he passed the floor over to an equally funny personality: Nicole, a former cowgirl from Arizona-turned-my bike tour guide for the day. There were only eleven of us that day -- more might have been present if it wasn't drizzling -- but Nicole put the sunshine into our tour with her own barrage of light-hearted wisecracks, poking fun at all the sights on our tour. Not only that, but each of our beach cruiser bicycles had a little extra "sunshine" mounted on front: a squeaky toy in the shape of a cartoony animal head.

"If a pedestrian is in your way, just wave and say, 'Guten tag,'" Nicole said. "Or give your little squeaky toy a squeeze and watch as you put a little happiness into the lives of Berliners." Nicole also had the habit of using her squeaky toy to "torture" little dogs on the street, but making squeaky noises over and over until they turned around and looked.

While Nicole rode a special golden tour guide bicycle cruiser, I rode a bicycle with coaster brakes named "Rusty." Along with the other ten young clients -- nine young Americans and one Mexican woman -- I followed the trail of Nicole, squeezing my squeaky toy at will. From Alexanderplatz and its TV Tower -- the former East German tower constructed to show those on the other side of the wall that East Germany did have technological progress (even though it was constructed by Swedes) -- we rode around in our groovy beach cruisers, stopping at sites on the way for Nicole's often hilarious historical commentary:

• the statues of Communist forefathers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels -- sit in Karl's lap and he becomes "Marxy Claus"
  
• the former East German parliament building-turned-museum (featuring a recreation of China's terracotta warriors -- "No, this isn't a really big Chinese restaurant... As you can see, not much of an interest to see fake terracotta warriors."
  
• the cafes near the gate between the east and west sides of the Berlin Wall, where American spies in cafes had cameras pointed at Russian spies at the cafes across the street, resulting in both parties having nothing but pictures of other guys taking pictures of them
  
• the German Hall of Questions, "where people ask the questions people are dying to know about, like 'Why do Germans like David Hasselhoff so much?' and 'Why to Germans hang onto 80s fashion with such a death grip?'"
  

Despite the drizzle, we pedaled on with the free disposable ponchos Fat Tire provided to the Babelplatz, former site of the Nazi book burning rallies where Nazis burned the "subversive" books of (Jewish) authors like Henrich Heineand Sigmund Freud (and where Indiana Jones got his father's grail diary autographed by Hitler in The Last Crusade). Nicole pointed out the interesting and creepy foreshadowing fact that Heine, over a hundred years before the Nazis burned his books and commenced the Holocaust, had once written "Nur dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Wherever books are burned, ultimately people are burned as well."

Germany is sensitive about its turbulent and persecuting Nazi past, and the Babelplatz is just one place in which they wish to bury their former horrors -- the plaza was undergoing construction to make way for a new underground parking garage. This attempt to forget the past was also evident in the site of Hitler's bunker, where an expensive condo complex now stands. In fact, if not pointed out, one wouldn't know that Hitler's bunker stood beneath him/her. That was the point of course, so that the area wouldn't become a Neo-Nazi shrine. The only thing remaining of the bunker were two sealed access doors in the ground -- although those attempting to enter would only face a wall of cement, as the first chamber had been sealed off already.

AMONGST THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE GROUP other than Cindy and Nicole were John and Mike, two of four brothers from Maryland backpacking around Europe (the other two were in Amsterdam), another Mike from Michigan and Tantra from San Francisco who Nicole dubbed "Butt Babe," when she volunteered to stay in the back of the group to keep the back end head count. Butt Babe and I swapped cameras for photos of our respective selves at Checkpoint Charlie -- the former entry/exit point of the former Berlin Wall where American and Russian soldiers inspected and questioned those passing through -- and a soon-to-be-demolished, graffiti-painted remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, where the entire group, inspired by the graffiti, posed as the Fat Tire Posse of the day.

However, the Berlin Wall wasn't always pretty pictures and wannabe gangstas; during its hey day of the Cold War, it was your life if you tried to escape from the east into the west illegally -- a solider in the "Death Tower" would open fire and leave you for dead.

"GIVE YOURSELVES A HAND, you should be proud of yourselves. You've just done what every army wanted to do back then, and that's pass through Brandenburg Gate," Nicole said after we rode through the gate built by Wilhelm II during the age of Prussia and served as a symbol of the division of east and west during the Cold War. "And directly behind us is the Hotel Adlon, which also has some historical significance. That's the balcony window that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from." It was evident to me that Berlin's history would continually be written, even in the tabloids.

From the site of the atrocities not from the Nazis but from the King of Pop, we zipped through the forest-like Tiergarten, Berlin's big central park, where the rain started to pick up. The coming downpour didn't bother us that much, for we knew our next destination would be worth the trip: a biergarten for a beer and lunch break.

"What's the local beer here?" Chicago Mike asked Nicole.

"There's Berliner Red, which is sort of a raspberry beer and there's Berliner Green, which is kind of hard to describe, but the name translates to 'Master of the Forest.' It's the Conan beer."

"Well, here we are in the forest," I said. "So I might as well be the master." Cindy and I ordered a couple of Berliner Greens and wondered just how the Master of the Forest beer would be. Chicago Mike pointed out that with Germany's strict beer making laws, it'd be something formidable. However, when the drinks came we discovered the "Conan" beer was the girliest beer of them all, served with a straw -- literally green, it tasted more like a sour apple Jolly Rancher candy than beer.

"I guess I was wrong about the beer laws."

THE RAIN STARTED CLEARING UP by the time we left the biergarten (with a little buzz of course), giving us clearer skies to see the Siegessäaule, or Victory Column, the symbol of Prussia's victory over France in 1870, and cruise by the Spree River to the Reichstag, the building of the various German governing parties through the decades. By 4 p.m. we rode back to the Fat Tire office at Alexanderplatz, when the clouds finally cleared for a blue skied sunny rest-of-the-day -- after our tour. Most of the tour group went their own ways, but Nicole pulled me aside for a moment as a normal person, like she did a couple of time on tour. She was a much different person "off camera" when she wasn't performing as an offbeat bicycle tour guide.

"You won't believe how many people don't get that David Hasselhoff joke. It's sad; I guess I'm showing my age," she said. "Sometimes we get a bunch of guys right out of high school and they look at me like 'Who?'"

"Don't worry, I get it." (I was one of the few that chuckled at the former Michael Knight wisecrack.)

Perhaps it was my understanding of the humor of David Hasselhoff references that caused Nicole to ask me if I wanted to work at Fat Tire when I was done traveling. They were pretty understaffed as it was -- it was just her, Wolf and another guy named Mike -- and they were looking to expand around February 2005, about the time The Global Trip 2 would end. It was something to think about in a day in the future, but not yet -- the day hadn't ended just yet.

AFTER SEEING SOME OF THE SIGHTS AGAIN on foot in a different light (sunlight) -- including Brandenburg Gate (picture above) and the site of the upcoming Memorial of Murdered Jews -- I joined Fat Tire on a nighttime pub-crawl, which was run by tour affiliate New Berlin, also run by an American ex-pat. Tantra (a.k.a. "Butt Babe") and Cindy, whom I had asked to go where no shows, but that was okay because Maryland John and Mike came out, along with what seemed to be thirty students from the University of Toronto, all in Berlin for a summer study abroad session. It was a night of heifeweizens in bars, clubs and pubs -- none of the "Master of the Forest" nonsense anymore -- and shots of New Berlin's homemade cocktail while walking the streets. (No problem with that; drinking in public is legal in Berlin. It's not uncommon to see a guy downing a cold one on the Metro train or a cop drinking on while on duty.)

"What's up Toronto!!" was one of the things I remember saying that night, toasting a table of young Torontonians. However, there was a period of the night I don't quite remember, a period that I misplaced my glasses -- talk about a city trying to bury old memories. Luckily I had time-stamped photos of my little digital spy camera, which helped me track them down the next morning. The cleaning woman at the Oscar Wilde Pub had found them and shined them up for me nicely. She was an older German woman that I didn't speak much English -- it was all hand signals and body language through the window -- but I'm sure she was still old enough to understand the humorous nature of David Hasselhoff -- or to even to have loved him in the 1980s.