OLD POSTS from the homepage. A new 27/11/01 post is below!

Cairo, Egypt (13 November 2001)

Well, I'm in Africa. I flew on my first flight since the "Tragic Events of September 11," and I'll admit I was just a tad bit edgy. It was especically strange since I flew Egyptair, a Muslim airline, and, well, everyone on the plane was probably Muslim but me. Reassuring? Certainly different.

Went to The Pyramids today. What an amazing place. Amazing. They are so big as to defy logic. If you are close to them, they don't look real, they look flat. Far away, man, talk about something for the ages.

So we took a camel ride about a half mile from the site and had a great view of all three Great Pyramids and the smaller ancilliary ones too (9 en toto). And it was gorgeous. I guess I'm a sucker for ancient monuments. Just two days ago I was drooling over the aesthetic beauty of the Parthenon (For the second time, because I had to go back and see it again after the first time), and now, the unbelievability that humans somehow put together this marvel, some 5000 years ago. 5000. The Parthenon in Athens, 2500 years ago. So the Pyramids were already 2500 years old when they built that. Its amazing. And I would wager, until about 200 years ago, no one could even fathom recreating it with our so called "modern" technology. Wow.

So Egypt is totally amazing. SOOOO different than anything I've ever seen. But what is really amazing is the people. Friendly and nice. At the Pyramids today, I felt like a circus act - all the schoolchildren coming up to me:

"Hello!"
"Welcome to Egypt"
"What is your name"
"Where are you from"
"How old are you"
"Do you like Pyramids"
"Where you from"
"You beautiful"
"Speak English?"

Well, this was curious for awhile and unnerving in the end as I tried to watch the sunset, surrounded by probably 15 Egyptian youths wanting to practice their english. Say 9-12 years old. All talking to me.

So at one point, after ignoring the onslaught for ten minutes, I turned around quickly and went BBOOOO!

And about 14 of the kids jumped out of their shoes, to my satisfaction.

Then, it was time to imitate the American.

"Boo!"
"Boo!"
"boo!"
ad nauseum

But anyway, its fascinating here. Everyone is very supportive and helpful to Americans. "America Number One" they say when I say I am from America. Crazy.

And safe too. I can't believe how safe it is here. And this isn't the 'I've been here one day and think its safe' thing, although that is true too. But all the travellers I've met have marvelled also at the safety of this country. Its nice. I guess thousands (well, there are a lot) of armed army soldiers on the streets with their Kalisnikov automatic rifles make for safety. And when you walk by, they say, "Hello! Welcome!"

Well, I am not sure of my plans here in Egypt yet. Off to Luxor and Aswan no doubt, but not sure when! Until then, rest assured I'll be enjoying Pitas and Schwarmas and looking forward to seeing the Pyramids again - on my last day - to see the nighttime light show and the sunset again!


Meteora, Greece (29 October 2001)

HHEEEEEEELP!!!! I AM TRAPPED IN A CALCULUS NIGHTMARE WORLD. All the writing here is in Greek. You don't understand, cuz while, yes, Its All Greek To Me, even the characters are greek. Alpha's and Lamda's and Deltas and lions and tigers and bears OH MY!. So all the signs look like complex algebra problems, which are just really Calculus problems, and its driving my SpentWayTooManyYearsInSchoolDoingMath mind CRAZY. So come help me.

But its not slippery like I thought it would be (ya know, maybe its really greasy), but I will say that the Gyros here are NOT GOOD. They are, aptly, and to really overuse the bad homophone, greasy.

Check out the journal for the last fews days of fun travelling in Greece. I hope you find it more humorous than I do.



Dubrovnik, Croatia (21 October 2001)

Well, I've been in Croatia for 2 weeks now. I came here to see how the country is recovering from the war. Well, unless someone told you, you couldn't much tell. Dubrovnik does show some scars from the war....bullet holes in the walls of buildings and fresh stone in some places. If you talk to locals tho, you start to get a sense of the ethnic hatred that exists. These people really hate each other. Not the friendly Kentucky-Ohio rivalry you see in Cincinnati, but the idea that the Bosnians are enemies. Stupid. Dumb. I guess you can't blame them, but its really hard for an American to deal with. We are used to loving our neighbors and using our differences to make us stronger. Yeah, we have racism and some hatred floating around, but your average person is pretty tolerant. These guys tho, they don't have it, and its going to be a long time before they are friends again.

Its weird too, because travelling you try not to label things right or wrong. Only different. Some things, tho, like poverty, racism, and hatred, I think those are wrong everywhere and it was difficult to talk to these people and try to either accept and understand their beliefs or avoid saying how offensive their ideas are to me. So I kinda played dumb and said, Well, I just don't understand. Which is somewhat true. That hatred exists I understand. That they are not working to combat it, or say that it is wrong and we are working on it or something - that is hard to deal with. I wish them well....

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Added some new pics from Oktoberfest (Where my daypack was stolen, with all my electronics and pictures from Poland! Sad Sad day! Bought new dig camera tho) and also Croatia.

Added a few things in the Journal.

Off to Italy. Arrivaderchi????