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Vesuvius & Pompeii photos

2008-07-25T12:00:00Z

Vesuvius was cool, but it was very cloudy on top of the mountain, and made it a bit difficult to find anything worth taking pictures of:

stray dog in the mist:

Pompeii:

Obama cartoon

2008-07-22T09:46:00Z

The editors at the institute pretty much nail the Obama cartoon hubbub:

I further suggest that “A Modest Proposal” would not actually be improved by putting the whole thing in the blood-drenched mouth of a Tory industrialist named “Dasterdly McBabyeater von Evil” and/or renaming it “An Absurdly Broad Caricature of Aspects of Contemporary Society which The Author, In Truth, Deplores”. True, the idiots being satirized won’t “get” the joke - that’s the joke’s value to those who do. I may be a horrible elitist, but I don’t think jokes are improved by pitching them to people with no sense of humor....

The problem is that the New Yorker - like me - is not an organ of the Obama campaign, and so is under no obligation to justify what it says on the basis of whether it may be misconstrued by idiots to the detriment of that campaign. That’s why some people read the New Yorker and blogs rather than horrible anodyne focus group-tested campaign statements - because reading PR is boring and turns you stupid. We are adults in a free country, and we are allowed - I would say almost obligated - to have, to the best of our abilities, free, adult discussions, even into the very teeth of unfalsifiable theories about how these discussions will bring about armaggedon. Similiar concern troll theories have explained to me that using bad words, employing a mocking tone, lacking respect for media elders, and generally behaving in a way which might upset someone’s pilled-up granny will bring about terrible calamity, and I’ve ignored them, too, because A) they are all silly, and B) this is fucking America, so fuck you and your stupid fucking wingnut grandma.

derailed

2008-07-17T09:44:00Z

I'm writing this on one of a series of trains taking me from Malmo to Munich this afternoon. Unfortunately I was originally set to arrive in Munich 18 hours earlier than my present ETA

Yesterday afternoon I was on the train from Stockholm to Malmo, with a connection to Berlin and then an overnight train to Munich. The plan was to crash back in Munich for a day and then get a train to Switzerland. About an hour into the trip I was chatting with the girl sitting next to me, and randomly said "I hope this train doesn't have any problems, I've had some bad luck with trains lately," referring to a couple delays I'd had in Germany and Denmark

10 minutes later the train slowed to a stop in the middle of a field. A crew member quickly announced they were experiencing a minor technical problem, and would get back to us shortly with details. The main ventilation system shut off

After quickly making a few more vaguely worded announcements about the minor problem, we had an information blackout for a couple hours. During that time the situation on board began deteriorating. Sitting in the sun with the power out, the train was like a greenhouse. There were arguments as the crew kept half-heartedly trying to prevent people from opening the doors for fresh air. A bunch of the young children seemed to think the whole ordeal was much more fun than a normal train ride, took off their clothes and acted like they were at a playground. There was no running water, so the toilets grew more full and the contents more stomach-churning by the minute

Finally after around 3 hours the train was dragged to the nearest station and they began to repair it. After 20 minutes at the station the inside had cooled down and a bunch of us passengers climbed back on board, where anarchy had finally set in. The crew had been haphazardly offering up a variety of small snacks and beverages, but at this point a sort of group decision was made that everything in the cafe was fair game, and the looting commenced. I started going through the refrigerators, debating with fellow passengers whether the lasagna would still be good after hours without functioning refrigeration. Requiring less debate was the stash of booze. I eventually wound up with a small bottle of wine and 13 of the one-shot liquor bottles, a variety of jagermeister, whisky, gin, vodka and bailey's. The swedes I was hanging out with followed suit, and we shared the plunder as the train, finally repaired, continued to Malmo

In Malmo I was told I would get a free hotel room, because by then it was past midnight and there were no more trains to Germany. After getting off the train I went to pee and then went to the designated meeting place for the hotel, which was deserted - I'd somehow missed the meet-up and figured I was now stranded with the homeless people in the mostly-shuttered Malmo station

Luckily I found a couple train employees and explained the situation to them. Even though I'm sure their shift was over they went out of their way to help, making some calls on a cell phone until they got details on the hotel, and then walking me over to find a free taxi to take me there. While looking for the taxi we even added this random old man to the group, who volunteered some advice about where the taxi might be and then tagged along to help find it. The Swedish are great

The total delay was over 5 hours, and cost me some Munich sightseeing and yet another lost pair of sunglasses, abandoned on the train amid the madness; a reasonable trade off for the experience :)

We also heard that our delay and New Orleans SuperDome-esque conditions were big news in Sweden. I just need to learn Swedish to try to Google it

Santorini photos

2008-07-14T17:11:00Z

Santorini was ludicrously gorgeous - the entire island nearly screamed "picturesque"

red beach:

straight down:

volcanic rock:

rocks on the beach:

me on the edge:

my hot ride ( stick-shift! ):

sunset:

sunrise on the beach:

The rest are here

mental health break

2008-07-09T00:59:00Z

great song, perfectly matching video:
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Also, I'd never heard of "Reindeer Section", but it's great (as is this video):
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more Reindeer Section... it's like finding a secret stash of Snow Patrol CDs :D
<object height="344" width="425"><param></param><param></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_z9lz9iaDuw&hl=en&fs=1" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>

Athens (Athina) photos

2008-07-07T22:12:00Z

Acropolis:

Temple of Hephaestus:

sunset:

me on a hill:

Spartan? ants:

delicious pomegranate juice and cheap, greasy pita:

The rest are here

going north

2008-07-07T00:34:00Z

Writing this on a train from Berlin to Hamburg, on my way to Copenhagen. Unfortunately some sort of signaling issue(which the crew was universally unable to explain in English) delayed our train by about an hour, netting me a free Pepsi from the on board cafe and a missed connection in Hamburg

I'll only be spending 2-3 days each in Copenhagen and Stockholm - they're a somewhat unexpected detour that I added to the itinerary at the last minute after I realized I had some time to spare. Both cities look to be budget-wreckers, so the brevity of the trip is probably a good thing

The real problem is I should have stopped in Switzerland in between Italy and Munich. I misjudged my time remaining and the possibility of finding reasonably priced hostels and skipped it, and now after Sweden need to find some way to get back down there

I quite liked Berlin. It was an interesting change to tour a city where most of the sights are a part of modern rather than ancient history. The quick succession of visits to the Pinkas Synogogue in Prague and then the Holocaust memorial and Jewish museum in Berlin left me feeling emotionally steamrolled though. I'd also just read the book 'Plot Against America', which left a pretty chilling feeling that it perfectly well could have happened here, too. The holocaust is endlessly depressing on so many levels. "Why war still? Why hunger still? Why a world still?"

I'm hoping the trip north will be a good break from all that.

On the train to Denmark now, a steal at 5€ for the first-class reservation. Times like these Eurail really pays off. The Danes do first class the right way, with a free snack and fruit, and unlimited coffee, tea, and bottled water

Naples (Napoli) photos

2008-07-04T17:06:00Z

I was quite sick by the time I arrived in Naples for the first visit, and combined with the lack of sights and extreme stupidity that would be necessary to flash a DSLR on the streets of the city, I don't have too many pictures from the visit. Vesuvius/Pompeii pics taken on my return visit will be coming up later, but for now:

cannonball lodged in the door of the castle:

down into the first subterranean area:

napoli sotterraneo:

pitch-black tunnel:

funny sign in hostel shower (read the two hand-written additions):

Florence (Firenze) photos

2008-07-03T20:36:00Z

Photos from my first trip through Florence. Most of them were fairly meh, but I'll toss a few on the blog anyway:

inside the Bapistry:

inside the Duomo:

Duomo painting:

Duomo & Camponile:

view from the Duomo:

me on the Camponile:

I'll toss in a Pisa pic (day trip) too:

The rest are here

Venice (Venezia) photos

2008-07-02T22:14:00Z

Piazza San Marco:

random canal shots:

market:

indeed:

The rest here

Seville (Sevilla) photos

2008-07-01T21:41:00Z

I just hit Berlin, where it looks like I've found one of the rare hostels with a blazing fast internet connection and available USB ports, so its hopefully time to start a photo dump. Going through the old ones (pre-Athens) still...

Seville was a great, relaxing pit stop city, with a lot of cool things to see and do outside the standard museum/church litany that awaited me in Italy:

La Giralda by day:

La Giralda by night:

view from the top of La Giralda:

inside the Catedral:

my trusty bike:

Plaza de Espana:

Torre del Oro:

Alcazar gardens:

Alcazar garden ducklings:

The rest are here

path of destruction

2008-07-01T13:22:00Z

A message from a friend got me thinking about just how much has been lost, destroyed or otherwise damaged so far this trip. Not much better to do on a stuffy 3 hour bus ride to Prague (yeah, changed my mind), so here goes:

• 20 euros - dropped from my pocket in bordeux, where I'd stupidly kept money next to my much-used city map
• ~7 euros in coins - went flying from my pocket sprinting from the Vienna eurocup fanzone in the rain
• GPS USB cable - lost, details unknown
• sandeman corkscrew - my sole personal souveneir, confiscated by airport security in Munich
• souveneir coffee mugs from Seville - left in Seville hostel
• bottle of cheap French wine - left in a Paris hostel
• sunglasses from Dublin - left in a different Paris hostel
• sunglasses from Lacanau - left on a bus in Rome
• sunglasses from Rome - fell apart a few days later on cinque terra
• electric razor - brought from US, destroyed in santorini by improper voltage
• electric razor bought in Rome - thrown in trash after two barely successful uses during which it made jackhammer-like rattling noises (mental note - everything bought in Rome was junk)
• towel - left in Bordeaux hostel
• towel - destroyed in Plus Florence hostel. while drying on the balcony some welders a couple stories up managed to light it on fire
• pair of shorts - left in Dublin hostel
• pair of shorts - flew from balcony in Athens hostel
• pair of socks - worn threadbare, tossed in trash
• peanut butter and two boxes of cereal - left in second Florence hostel (later ran into a girl from the hostel in Munich, where she mentioned she'd "ate peanut butter I think some American left")
• 3-4 bottles of shampoo, left in various hostel showers
• arm - possibly fractured, the result of trying to demonstrate a roundhouse kick in flip-flops in Seville at 5 in the morning. it still has a bump and sore spot 5 weeks later
• 2 Eurail timetables - destroyed riding around in my daypack
• Canon XTi camera + lens + memory card - stolen off Cherbourg to Paris train
• Casio z1080 camera - destroyed in the Wombat's bar in Vienna, exact cause of death unknown
• passport - intact but quite warped after being soaked in sweat in cinque terra and water in vienna
• headphones - earbud cracked apart in munich, but mostly repaired using a bandaid as tape

Lisbon (Lisboa) - Oceanarium photos

2008-06-30T09:16:00Z

The Lisbon Oceanarium was quite a random but enjoyable stop. A bunch of these photos could use some work in Aperture, but no chance of that right now:

The rest are here

FISA fisking

2008-06-29T11:58:00Z

For a good, detailed run down of exactly what disgusting, spineless, lying sacks of shit the Democratic FISA flippers are, read this

As Ezra Klein summarizes:

Julian goes through the changes to the bill one by one, and demonstrates what an absurd, and even insulting, farce it's been for the Democrats to call this some kind of victory. They opposed the original FISA bill because it allowed for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. The revised FISA bill, as Julian explains, allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. So there are two options here: Either the Democrats were lying about why they opposed the bill in the first place, or they're lying about having extracted meaningful concessions on the bill now. Whichever you choose, it's been a shameful, saddening performance.

Lisbon (Lisboa) photos

2008-06-29T10:44:00Z

Going back through these photos reminded me what an enjoyable and varied experience Lisbon was - quite a contrast from many of the later cities I've visited

The rest are here