Mmmm... Budvar

Dublin, Ireland

Boy, time is slipping away fast. At this time tomorrow we'll be on a flight home. So let me get you caught up to the moment. The pictures won't be available until next week, but it'll give you a sense of suspense. From Venice, Italy we traveled by train north to Vienna, Austria. Coming from the absolute madness of India, and the relative crazyness of Turkey, Greece, and Italy, finding ourselves in the organized and sterile world of Vienna was quite a shock. The trains and busses were on time, the subway was on time, it was like stepping into a robotic dreamworld. It's a place where rules are taken very seriously. On our way to find our hostel, we were about to cross the street, when we caught numerous dirty looks from our fellow pedestrians. There were no cars coming, but there was still a neon red hand flashing. It was clear that jaywalking would not be tolerated, and there were several people ready to place us under citizens arrest if this law were breeched. Despite having to get used to the fact that laws were expected to be followed, it was refreshing to be in a place where everything ran as it was supposed to, for once. Vienna is full of cultural things to do, museums, beautiful cathedrals, operas, we didn't go to any of them. Everytime we would try to do something cultural our eyes would cross, our legs would go weak, and a voice would come from nowhere telling us to go directly to the gift shop and buy the coffee mug sculpted to look like the Hofburg Palace, or the tea towel signed by the Vienna boys choir. We steered clear of these places. Instead we took walks and maintained our tradition of taking picnic lunches somewhere scenic.

From Vienna we moved north to the Czech Republic. We first went to a little town named Cesky Krumlov. It's a small medival town in the south, dominated by a large castle and a couple of beautiful churches with tall steeples over looking the town. It was all very picturesque. The whole town is protected as a historical lanmark by UNESCO, as a result very few of the buildings there have changed structurally for hundreds of years. The tourist season had not yet come to this part of the Czech Republic, and as a result we had a hostel to ourselves. We had a double room that was adjacent to the empty dorm room in which there was a kitchen, and a bathroom that had a very exciting feature: a bathtub!!!. It was like having our own house. We spent a week in Krumlov, waiting for Daysha's atm card to be sent to us. As I was about out of money we had to eat and drink cheaply. So we mostly cooked meals ourselves, and drank the cheapest things in town. It just so happened that the cheapest thing in town to drink, cheaper than water, cheaper than coke, at thiry cents a bottle, was the beer. Not nasty American beer either, really good beer. It's really harsh sometimes having to conserve money, but we perservered. When Daysha got her card, we tore ourselves away from Krumlov and moved north to Prague. I was excited, because throughout my travels I've always heard how cool Prague was, a place only discovered by hard-core travellers who sat in dimly lit bars and held significant discussions while listening to hip, jazzy music. We were too late. Bus load after bus load of tourists descended on the city. There were more American accents than Czech. The architecture was very beautiful, but under each building was some guy from California playing the guitar and singing Bob Dylan. It was way too cool for me.

After Prague, we had to get ourselves to London to meet Daysha's friend Maria. So we took a train through Germany to Belgium and took a flight to London. We stayed with Daysha's uncle, who very generously gave us a room to stay in for a couple days. We went out one night with Maria, and took a couple of days to explore the city. We then flew on to Ireland. We only had 10 days to see Ireland, and by now we had finally given in to the fact that we had transformed in to what we had despised for so long. We were tourists. We stayed at quaint bed and breakfasts, went to the tourist sights, ate "traditional" Irish food, and listened to "traditional" Irish music. We enjoyed ourselves. We are now in Dublin and fly home tomorrow. I hope that everyone has enjoyed and have not become too bored with my emails. I've enjoyed sending them, and they have served as sort of a diary for me. I will only be home for 4 days before going back to working on the boat, but if you email me or call me in that time, I would love to hear from you. In about a week or so all the pictures will be up at www.flickr.com/photos/moemntm/and you can take a look. I will send one more message that will follow this one, but it's just a fun little one, nothing too long. Okeydokey, I'll see y'all when I see you. Moe

Cappadocian Dreaming

Rhodes, Greece

Hello once again, boy it's only been a week or so since my last email. I'm having a harder time keeping up on these now that the mail is delivering the pictures faster. Back in India I could count on at least a month or so between emails. Oh well. So let's see when we last left off Daysha and I we're bidding a bittersweet adieu to India. From Bombay we flew to Istanbul, Turkey(with a brief layover in Baharain). Driving in to Istanbul, we coundn't help but notice how clean and organized everything was. There wasn't garbage everywhere, barely any beggars, and the drivers kept, for the most part, to the correct side of the road, it was shocking. Of course, we then met some other Americans who had come from Europe and we're complaining about how dirty everything was and how the roads were just chaos. We had to laugh. Anyway, we really enjoyed Istanbul, it's a beautiful city with mammoth marble mosques, and lots of ruined forts and walls. There were shops on every corner selling Turkish carpets of every shape, size and design. We thought about buying one, but after carefully inspecting the space in our backpacks we decided to wait until next time. And after carrying a surprisingly heavy stone statue, that I had bought in Rishakesh half way across the world, we deemed it a wise decison.

From Istanbul we delved deeper into the heart of Turkey, ending up in Gorme Cappadocia. Cappadocia is a dreamscape that's full of valleys carved out of tuff rock, leaving crazy rock formations, some of which are embarassingly fallic in nature. The tuff rock that these formations are made out of are easy to burrow into, and so for thousands of years people have been carving into the rock, making houses, churches, and monasteries. In fact in some places entire cities were carved out of one massive rock formation. Daysha and I spent a couple of days hiking and exploring all through the valleys of Cappodocia. The churches were especially a treat with beautiful paintings depicting scenes from the bible on the rock walls and ceilings. We had a lot of fun imagining what it would have been like to live back then. We actually had a chance to see what it was like. When we checked into our hostel, they asked us if we wanted to spend the night in a normal room or a cave room. I, of course, jumped at the chance to stay in a cave, but as we moved our luggage into the small unheated and quite drafty cave, it started to snow. After several minutes of careful consideration, commen sense(Daysha) eventually did prevail, and we stayed in the warm and comfortable room.

Unfortunately, because we only have a month or so to explore Europe, we only had time to go to one more place in Turkey. The place that we decided on was a small town named Olympos on the Mediterranean coast. Set amongst craggy rocks and Roman ruins, it was beautiful place to spend our last few days in Turkey. Because of the Roman ruins, people aren't allowed to build out of stone in Olympos. I guess that the government doesn't want anybody to use the already conviently made, and remarkably fashionable carved pillars to make an outhouse or something. So someone came up with the creative idea to use tree houses for hostels. We stayed in one that had several tree houses that were used for rooms, but using our commen sense again, and seeing that it was still pretty cold, we stayed in a comfortable room on the ground. While we were there a bunch of kids from the local universtiy showed up and stayed for a couple of days, and we made friends with them. They took delight in staying up around the fire singing traditional Turkish folk songs and drinking Raki the Turkish national drink. I think they might have annoyed some people who were trying to sleep, but I had a good time staying up and listening to them throwing in a Elvis song or two(after which I had numerous requests, unforunately my AC/DC and Guns and Roses are a bit rusty). Well I think that about does it for now. I think that these pictures are among our best and you, as always, can check them out at moemntm.flickr.com I hope that this email finds everybody well. Our trip is winding down and we will be home soon, but don't worry there's still a couple emails left. I'll talk to y'all later, Moe