messiestobjects

In Which I Am By Turns Arrogantly Condescending And Self-Pityingly Auto-Flagellant; Perhaps I'm Just Having Trouble Adjusting

So I got lost on the way to the Lehigh Valley Mall... Gahh! My life is officially boring. It may be time for someone to mercy 12 gauge me.
Alright then, I'll tell you what I've noticed about this insipidly dull country since I've been back. Toilets; they have too much water in them. Seriously, midgets can have a pool party in there. Why all the volume? It's not necessary, splashback is a real danger, and it's gross. I guess I got used to the European design, if not the middle eastern one. Just enough water not to cause a scandal, and not be wasteful. It has it's drawbacks, I suppose, but it wouldn't be polite to go into too much detail, and anyway after a while you get used to them and it's hardly noticable.
Another thing is cell phones; there is so much wrong with that set-up I get a nose bleed every time I dwell on it for too long. Your minutes get used up whether you are making the call or receiving it! Are you freaking kidding me?! That's double billing! That is the single hugest most obnoxious scam that phone companies have pulled yet, and America is eating it up! No other cell companies in the world do that, to my knowledge. Certainly not in the places I've been to, anyway. Another thing that Cingular did to me: When I signed up for my plan, I asked for International calling and was told that normally they don't allow you to do that for 90 days. Don't allow me? What is this, Kiddie Toy Phones R Us? Give me my f%$^&@# International calling, buttmunch! Sir, call this number and explain your situation and they can maybe turn it on. So okay I called the number and was told (after a suicide-inducing automated directory system, but I'll leave that aspect of American life (and it is an aspect of American life as I bet the average person spends on average a half a day per week navigating those bleepity bleep things, a substantial portion of life, if you ask me) alone as I believe that you are all very aware of that outrage) that if I faxed a copy of my driver's licence and a utility bill in my name, that I'd be good to go. I explained that I just returned to the US a few days ago after ten years of living abroad, and that I hadn't had a utility bill in my name since '96. I offered to send them a copy of my bank statement to prove that I could pay my bill, and they refused! They kept saying no, we need a utility bill, and I kept saying that that was not possible, but I have plenty of money and I can prove it to you, jerkoff, so help me out here. Nope.
There are so many things wrong with that that I barely know where to start. It's just stupid. I'm practically begging to give them my money, and they won't take it because of a bureaucratic nitpicky policy and they are so narrowly focused that they can't make an exception in a case that categorically merits it. No matter how much reason, proof, yelling, or begging I offered, or speaking to managers that I did, they would not allow me to get International calling, no way around it. Again, what the hell is Cingular, my babysitter? "We're concerned you won't be able to pay your bill, so rather than letting you try to prove that you can, we're just not going to let you have a basic service that most adults in today's world are qualified to have. No cookie! Bad consumer!" Ow see! My nose is bleeding all over... my... computer ink...  Ok that's stupid. Sorry.
And now I'm getting a little bit more philosophical, but having brought up the oft-maligned "C" word, I want to add my half-penny to the subject of Consumerism. I am a consumer, for sure. That had always struck me as a stupid label for people to get all riled up about because I'm sorry, but everybody in the world, from the Dalai Lama down to Joe Bacteria is a consumer. Of course when it's complained about, it usually refers to much more voracious consumerism than eating and drinking and clothing yourself and whatnot. Which, after not really having been here for so long, is really visible to me right now. Voracious consumerism, I mean. Yesterday when I finally found the Lehigh Valley Mall, which I hate but my brother got a gift card for some store there for Christmas so I took him, (and the gift card thing? Good God it's out of control!) I saw a little kiosk named "Bears in Chairs" and they were selling, holy crap, little stuffed bears sitting on little wood chairs. Lots of different shapes and sizes and whatnot. Everytime I see something like that, I'm that much closer to checking myself out. And shopping centers, my God! They're everywhere! I hate shopping centers, malls, all that, but you have to go to them all the time every time you go out because that's all there is! I guess what I'm saying is that I really don't blame Americans on a personal level for being voracious consumers, because America itself is set up so that most people don't have any other choice. America isn't so much a nation, or a place of Freedom and Democracy, as it is a huge consumer machine. This probably would sound extreme to most people, if they even understood what that meant, but believe me, after everything I've seen, I've never seen a system as strange and warped as my own home country. I mean, I've been here about ten days now, and I've already realized that if I want to do anything in this country, I have to establish credit, get a utility bill, and eat greasy food, regardless of all the other fine qualities I have going for me. There's almost no way around it. And then, once you ante up and get the stuff you need so that you can get done the things that you need to get done, you wind up having very little choice in where you go or what you do. Do I go to Friendly's or Applebee's? Do I shop at Sears, Big Lot, or Wal-Mart? What DVD are we watching tonight? By very little choice, I don't mean that you don't have a zillion sub-categories to choose from. I was in a Barnes & Noble the other day, and my head nearly exploded. I saw so many books that I wanted to read that I couldn't buy a single one of them and I had to run outside in abject terror. There is so much choice that you could spend all day deciding what book to buy, what breakfast cereal you like, which car defines you as a person, (not to get too Fight Club, but.) where to eat, what to watch, what porn website you like the best, etc etc and suddenly you are absorbed in these things so completely that that is what your life is about. What I was trying to get at was that the only decisions you wind up making are what to buy and where to keep your stuff, which is not a life. But it's seductive... I'm not above it. I bought a car, and I really want my own apartment so I can put my stuff in it and get an awesome home theatre set up. But you know what that means for me? It means that if I ever want to really travel again, I am trapped by that. Sure, I can go to Jamaica for a week or wherever, but it can never be the way it was, unless I check out completely. Sell everything, or throw or give it all away, and run like the wind, Forrest! Most people don't know what else life has to offer, and/or they have families and can't sell them, (ah! For the days of white slavery!) and so are stuck where they are, living the only life America has to offer.
I am a hypocrite. I am aware of this. I'm currently going through the process of buying in. I only hope that one day I will be able to check out, but if I can't, at least I've had the last ten years of actual freedom in my life. That's better than most.

Mark Twain Says That The Overuse of Parenthesis Is The Sign Of A Lazy Mind

So like, Merry Christmas, y'all. My step-family (That's the first time I've ever used that term, and by God I swear it's the last, so feel the privilege and move on please thank you) arranged this thing a couple of days ago where we went to some ridiculously overfunded high school somewhere in the Allentown area, (Dieruff High, I think) and I say overfunded because while there are many American schools that can't afford enough books, this one had a planetarium. Of course, being a space nut, please understand that I'm not complaining. Planetariums rule, and I am totally jealous that my school didn't have one. Anyway the High School planetarium guy, who I'm assuming is normally a science teacher, (and totally %100 reminded me of Frink) put on this show for us where he explained his "scientific" theory about what he thought the Star of Bethlehem which heralded Christ's birth really was... I guess it's a regular program which he does upon request a couple of times a year around Christmas time. It was an extremely long show, and I think most people found it rather interminable, but I love planetariums (except for the whole Pink Floyd laser light show thing they abuse them with sometimes. Sacrilege!) and enjoyed it at least half as much as the local Frink did. Well his theory is basically that the indeterminate number of Wise Men (because there is no actual data stating that there were 3 of them, merely popular myth) were astrologers (the "scientists" of the day) and were checking out the heavenly signs, and so Frink, using state of the art planetarium technology, reversed time in the star charts back to where things were at a reasonably guessed time somewhere around the birth of Christ using shadowy data mined from certain biblical clues in conjunction with Roman lexicographical resources, and showed us how Saturn and Jupiter were doing this celestial dance involving multiple retrogrades when Mars came sailing by, making it a trio of promenading orbs all within the constellation of Pisces, which as any historical starchart nut apparently knows, was the Jewish part of the sky back in those foggy notion days. And so this discotheque of Planets was likely a huge deal to people that noticed such things, and was feasibly interpreted by the Magi to mean that something big was going on yonder Bethlehem way.
Honestly, I don't really care about all that. I like planetariums because stars are pretty.
Other than that, Christmas is business as usual this year... Well, business as usual as Christmas pertains to me being in the US. My past three Christmases in Baghdad were nothing like Christmas in PA. Nor were the previous 6 Christmases that I spent in Germany... So okay there is no business as usual when it comes to Christmas as far as I'm concerned. Moving on then.
So I was inadvertently invited to a party that an old enemy was having, and I even thought about showing up for it just to see how things would go, but I didn't because I'm a nice guy that doesn't want to ruin even an enemy's little party. I am grateful for my enemies this holiday season, as they help me learn my own boundaries. Oh wait, grateful; wrong holiday. Dammit, I should've gone.
I bought myself a car... It's a truck, actually. (And most certainly not an SUV) It's a bit of a gas guzzler though, but it has alot of trunk space which is what I was looking for to help me in the next phase of deciding where I want to live, and moving my stuff there, or if I decide to hit the road and go cross-country visiting friends and what-not. I can easily and comfortably sleep in the back. I figure that whenever I settle somewhere and no longer need the services of a Blazer with a toilet bowl for a gas tank (flush!), I can sell it and get something more reasonable.
This whole trying to find a direction to go in thing really sucks, by the way. Back in Baghdad, Scott would say things like how he was very apprehensive about what he was going to do whenever we were finally forced to leave, and I would poo-poo him saying things like I mean really, come on. We've got more money than we ever in our right minds thought we would have in our lives, we can do whatever we want, and take as much time as we need figuring out what that is! Well, now I get it. I'm a little slower than he is, from time to time. I hate not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing, money or no. Meanwhile, he's got a pretty good plan going, and I'm sitting at my Dad's house wondering whether I should go to school, get some schmucky job, get married, or what. At 34, I'm really too old for this. Of course, it helps that I'm used to it... Some people are lucky in that they've known what they wanted to be from a very early age, and it's something that they can set a goal for and accomplish. The only thing I've known about since then is that Space is cool and I like to go places. Been there! Done that! Not a career! Now what?
Allright then that's enough. I'm not really feeling that sorry for myself, I just felt like trying to express some vague thoughts I had not yet fully formed all over my messy life page. It's my Christmas and I'll keep it however I damn well please. So Merry @%!**@ foggy Christmas and a Happy !@@$* uncertain New Year!!

Oh and by the way, if you're looking for the best drinking song ever of all time for your upcoming New Year's party, I've just added that very song to Messy Radio over here on the right. Track one, play it loud.

In Which I Attempt To Reassess My Role In The So-Called Blogverse, Yet Somehow Manage To Go On About The Same Old Things

Well I'm home... home being a relative term as I'm actually staying in a house I'd never laid eyes on before two days ago, in a town I'd also never been to, but by default I can call it home, nonetheless. My Dad and his wife Erin moved out here several months ago, and I have to say it was probably a good move. It's a neat colonial sort of a design, (you know, like, from days of yore) and the ceilings are all low giving it that extra old-time Sturbridge Village feeling, which I like a lot, having been taken there quite frequently as a child. Now all it needs is a charming old man in 1800's duds and apron selling rock candy over our kitchen counter and we'll be good to go. Having said all that, I do rather wish we were still in Stroudsburg. For all the moaning that gets done about the place by it's residents, both the ones that get stuck there and the ones that get away, it does have a certain unique personality which you don't actually find in too many other communities, and it can surprise you and even be fun from time to time. Of course I haven't really lived in the greater Stroudsburg area in about nine years, so who knows. Anyway we're not actually all that far from there, so I can visit whenever I like.
So you're probably thinking by now that I obviously have no new tales to tell, nothing good to offer because I'm back in dreary old US of A. And I have to say, mostly you're right, although probably that's more my fault than it's fault, as loads of people who have never left our rotund nation seem to have plenty of interesting things to say on a daily basis, and so I should probably not complain and get my act together. I just really miss being on the road... ever since I can remember I was always looking at maps and wishing I could go places; back when I was probably 6 or 7 or so, I remember looking at a full map of the US, and carefully plotting a route to Riverside? or maybe Riverbend? anyway River-something Wyoming, where my second cousins lived, and asking my parents if I could have airfare so I could go spend a week or two with them. For a while I had a sort of a map room in one of the houses we lived in, although as I pretty much took what I could get in the way of wall hangings at age 7, there wound up being a lot of posters of whales or constellation maps from National Geographic hung up as well, and maybe one or two actual cartographic maps. Oh, and one time when I was like 4, I was playing in our backyard and decided I wanted to go see Daddy at work, so I just started walking in the direction that Mom would drive in when we went to go pick him up. Some hippie chicks in a green VW bug picked me up on the side of the highway and asked me where I lived, by which time I was happy to explain it to them because I was only wearing diapers and they were uncomfortably full, and they brought me up to the house where my Mom was cleaning and hadn't even realized I was gone, at which point upon seeing two hippie girls leading me up the steps and hearing their explanation commenced to have a full blown panic attack. Apparently I'd made it like a mile away before someone bothered to stop and ask the toddler in diapers what he was doing walking down the road by himself.
True Story.
Well my point is, I am definitely one of those itchy-footed 'The grass is always greener' types of people, and I think that travel has got to continue to be a part of my life in one way or another or I'm going to go bat-guano barmy.
...And so my first opportunity for travel since coming home has reared it's somewhat unfortunately double-faced head! The cousin of my former- boss- who- is- in- prison has been trying to hold things together for the failing dirtbag company for the last couple of months, and has contacted me several times in the last month to ask for help in GBG's lawsuit against our former dirtbag client, DynCorp. Now, I never received my last month's pay from my former dirtbag company, as the guy who was in charge at the time, the owner's son Chris actually, pulled a disappearing trick during the final act of GBG's tenure in Baghdad and nobody has heard from him since. I explained to the new guy that I understood the problems they were having, and that I'd be happy to answer any questions via email or phone if it helped them out, but that if they expected any really substantial help from me they'd have to pay my salary. Really quite reasonable of me, considering I could probably ignore them completely and just sue them. So the upshot is that I am likely getting an all-expenses paid trip to Washington DC sometime in the next few weeks to give a deposition to dirtbag GBG's lawyers there, and possibly another trip in March to be called as witness in the actual lawsuit hearing. And of course, my salary. So while it's not as exciting as a trip to Giza, it's still kind of neat to be getting free rides. I've never really been to DC either, so it'll be interesting to see the corrupt seat of power that started my whole adventure in the first place.
I actually have a whole lot of other stuff I could expound on, mainly really weird stuff that I've been noticing about the US since getting back, but I think I'll let that whole body of anecdotes build up for a few days, saving me something inane to go on about for far too long in another post.

Sittin' On A Median Singin' About The Middle Of The Road

For those of you who don't already know, I'll be flying home tomorrow for the holidays... it seemed like the best thing to do as I haven't seen my family for a while, and, you know, the holidays are good for that sort of thing as a general rule. Also, after recovering from what is probably the sickest I've ever been, (and being in that state while stuck in a 6 bed dorm room in the hostel that the Grand High Hypertrekking Counsil had stayed in, but I was too sick to leave and so wound up sharing my lovely affliction with total strangers, two of whom were of the prerequisite granola nature I'd bemoaned about in a previous post. argh.) I decided it might not be a bad idea to take a break for a while. I've been sick alot this past couple of months.
Anyway I was feeling much better by yesterday, so I took a train down to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where I worked for three years when I first came to Germany in '97, and pretty much walked the length and breadth of it for a pleasant, melancholy stroll down messy memory lane. I really enjoyed working there; it's a beautiful little sort of cut-off-from-the-world valley surrounded by huge Alpen rocks, one of which is the tallest mountain in Germany.

Major ski town. I learned how to snowboard there, and also how cool lederhosen really are. If Americans weren't so narrow-minded about such things, I'd be wearing calf socks and lederhosen while yodelling from the tops of main street shops all day long. Well... that's rather a stretch. I'd wear lederhosen to work, anyway. Maybe I'll open a nice German beer garden in Strousdburg, make the boys wear lederhosen and the girls wear dirndles, and post a sign that says: "Keine Bayerisch Moden, Keine Eintritt!!"
Right.
So my good friend Christy, who wasn't mad at me after all, but only having me on, (oh you!) will be picking me up at JFK tomorrow. She's taking me to my Dad's new house that I've never been to somewhere near Allentown, where I will lead a low key existence and catch up with him and my siblings for the holiday, which I am really looking forward to. I'm probably going to be around for a while, so anybody that wants to hang out should drop me a line... I'm looking for something fun to do on New Years!
All of this means, of course, that I won't have any more foreign adventure travellogues to blog about for a while, which depresses me when I think about it too much, so please don't stop visiting if this page gets (temporarily! I swear!) dull! I have to find a new subject now; No longer in Baghdad, Democrats are in charge in the House and Senate, no more getting sick in other countries... aghk! I have nothing to complain about! It's the end of the blogging universe for me!
Well I still have to figure out that whole silly thing about where exactly, my life is going, what it's all about, and whether normalcy is really an acceptable answer. And while that may not be exciting, perhaps it'll be enough to post creative lies about it once or twice a month until I can hit the road again.

Egypt Translates From Ancient Egyptian As: The Land Of Really Big, Really Old Stuff

My Krampus 2006 pictures are up! Nothing too spectacular this year, but I got a few good shots of Berchtesgaden and lots of blurry Demons.
So Cairo reminds me of what Baghdad could be if there wasn't that whole stupid bloody war thing going on there. It's full of filth, people trying to sell you something, and old buildings that look like the workers got all the bricks laid, then ran out of money or energy, and if they cared at all slapped a coat of something on it 50 years ago. Pretty much the blueprint for most middle eastern cities, yet vibrant. It had a definite personality. It made me sad because I know that all that many Iraqis want is what Cairo has. The right to go about their daily business, and not finish anything they start if they don’t want to, without worrying about getting blown up.
Anyway, after getting into Cairo in the late afternoon, we headed over to the Egyptian Museum... we got to see King Tut's solid gold death mask! It was cool because I wasn’t expecting to see it… I’d heard that there was a King Tut exhibition in Chicago from Matt, who had just come from there, and he said that the picture of the mask was all over the place, so we assumed that it had been brought along to the US. Luckily for us, apparently not. I've been seeing that thing on educational shows all my life, so it was a trip to see the real thing.
Actually alot of Egypt was like that... everything there has been talked to death about on Nova or Discovery forever, so in one respect it was rather all familiar, but on the other hand you can't actually believe that you're really there seeing it! Another sort of perspective shift that was a neat experience, and for me it's an especially interesting one being an American, was how it was sort of the culmination of going back in time historically. The US as a nation is about 230 years old and when travelling in Europe you're always thinking things like, "The cobblestones in this street are older than my whole country!" Or, "This nation has been mistreating it's own people since before Columbus began the rape of North America!" And then you go to Rome and think "The Roman empire was building roads and irrigation systems while Bavarians were still wearing loincloths and barking at the moon!" And I'm sure you can see where this is going, but then you go to Egypt and think, "Damn, Romans used to come here and stare at these ancient, even to them, ruins in awe." If you keep your eyes open, you can even find ancient Greek graffiti on certain Egyptian temples... "Plato wuz here." Graffiti older than empires scratched onto even more ancient structures… It's something to think about.
  So we did the Egyptian museum in about 2 hours, and saw the mask and a bunch of creepy mummies of 4000 year old Egyptian Kings. I especially liked the mummified monkey we saw, a pet of some ancient Queen or other. The Museum itself is a bizarre construct; it houses all these countless priceless artifacts from Egyptian history, yet the inside of it is rather dirty, unorganized, poorly lit, and has very little security. Things are sort of just dropped wherever, sitting on cabinet shelves or in dusty corners, and you can find yourself next to crates packed full of god knows what priceless items just tossed aside somewhere right before stumbling upon King Tut's solid gold Sarcophagi.
The next day we got up, hired a taxi, and spent half a day at Giza. Let me tell you something that you may or may not know... those pryamids, they're big. Really really big. It's actually a bit hard to perceive how big they are when you're close to them, because obviously, being pyramidical by nature, they rather diminish into the distance upwards, so it's rather an illusion from up close that they're not all that great after all. As we were approaching them in the taxi, from rather far off, you get much more of a sense of their proper size. They tower over everything. Apparently, until the Lincoln Cathedral in England was built, no other man made structure had ever reached that hight.
We also got to go climb about inside the pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, the Great Pyramid itself! There wasn't much left inside, but it was extremely alien in there. We weren't allowed to bring in our cameras, which bothers me very much, and it's rather hard to describe what the inside of a bloody great hunk of pyramidical tomb was like. Tight quarters, rather claustrophobic actually, and a very steep climb up to the small tomb of old Cheops. The blocks were so tightly packed it was hard to see the seams... it almost looked like all of one piece. Almost. It was barren, but awe-inspiring to be inside the Great Pyramid... you can really smell the age in there... I don't mean that in a gross way.
We walked around all three Pyramids, trying to blow off annoying touts trying to sell really cheap souvenir crap and camel rides… The touts that stink up the Giza area are some of the worst I’ve come across. Actually, to be more precise, Egyptian touts as a whole are some of the worst I’ve come across… it takes a lot of effort to get rid of them, and rather detracts from having a nice stroll about the only surviving one of the original Seven Wonders of the World.
  Another totally awesome thing we got to see there, of course, was the Great Sphinx. Again, you've seen pictures of it a million times, but standing in front of it is a little strange and unbalancing. It was a little disappointing to find out that Napolean's troops did not, in fact, shoot off it's nose, but rather it was deliberately knocked off by some Sufi fanatic back in the 14th century.
Then we went to Saqqara, where the step pyramid of Djoser is, the oldest known standing man-made structure in the world, and then Memphis, of which there is little of the ancient city itself left to see, but they have a neat little open-air museum there which includes the alabaster Sphinx of Memphis.
That night we took a sleeper train down to Luxor and ferried over to the wesk bank of the Nile and proceeded to wreak havok on the local taxi drivers... Nimmer is a born haggler, apparently. He would fight over two dollars, even going so far as to telling the poor taxi guy that we'd be happy to walk to the Valley of the Kings, 17 kilometers away... the man laughed, and we started walking. He ran after us and agreed to our price.
So the Valley of Kings was alllright. Of course, there were touts, and their ticketing system was retarded and wound up screwing us out of getting to see everything, but regardless it was cool to go spelunking about in King Ramses' tomb. Also on the west bank is the Temple of Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon. We then ferried back over to the east side to go to the Temple of Karnak... I took pictures of course, but there is no way that any picture will ever get across how insanely huge the Temple of Karnak is. big Big BIG. It's all pillars and obelisks and statues and Temples and Hieroglyphics... nothing specifically that can't be seen in other parts of Egypt, but apparently something like 30 different Pharaohs contributed to it's construction, making it of a size and of an amount of objects that has never been assembled anywhere else. Then we headed back into Luxor proper for a quick tour of Luxor Temple... we walked inside, and in the first main area, I put my bag down on the side of a pillar and laid down on it. After Karnak, and all the other really big amazing stuff we'd seen already, Luxor just seemed rather blah and anyway I was exhausted. After the other guys walked around for perhaps 5 minutes longer, they seemed to have pretty much reached the same conclusion and we took the BEST NAP EVER right there in the Temple of Luxor. Nimmer took this shot of Scott, Matt and I napping in the ancient ruin.

The locals seemed to find that pretty amusing, and when we woke up about an hour later we were barraged with weird questions by the Egyptian students who were there on a school trip. I swear, if I had a dollar for every time I heard an Egyptian say "Americans good! Bush bad!", I could afford to fund a trip to the moon. Not that I'm entirely sure that Egyptians actually even mean the part about Americans good, but they like our tourism dollars, so they play the game. Egyptians on the whole seem to be very nice people, almost too nice. It seemed rather fake to me, but that could be a cultural difference in how they express themselves that I don't understand, so I'll give them the benefit of a doubt. Of course, I have no doubt about the legitimacy of the niceness of Egyptian touts, shopkeepers, or tour operators. Walking dollar signs, is all we are. However I suppose that, if the Egyptians tolerate Americans visiting their incredibly historical country without killing us, especially in today's east vs. west climate, then it's foolish to complain about the very reason that they do tolerate us, after all.
From there we took a 3 hour train ride down to Aswan. Aswan was a much nicer city than Cairo. It seems like a popular vacation area. We wanted to visit Abu Simbel while we were there, but we found out that to get there, you have to leave in a police convoy at 3am for a four hour drive to spend two hours at the site, and then drive another four hours back to Aswan. I was never really clear about why you have to be in a police convoy, but that's the only way you're allowed to go. Speaking of police, it seems that Egypt doesn't have an actual police force. At least, the entire time we were there, all I saw were tourist police. They have this huge force of these guys whose job it is, supposedly, to keep tourists safe. One of them wanted Scott to pay him a dollar to take a picture of him standing next to a statue in Memphis, and when Scott said no, the tourist policeman asked for the dollar anyway, and when Scott laughed and said no what for? he threatened to arrest him! So it was educational to find out just exactly what the esteemed position of being a tourist policeman actually means.
So anyway since we were only in Aswan for a day and were exhausted upon arrival at 10pm, we opted out of Abu Simbel, sadly. We spent our day instead at the Aswan Dam on the Nile where we went to see the Kalabsha Temple, ate lunch at a Nubian restaraunt on a hill with fabulous views of the Nile, and took a Fallucca ride for an hour and a half also, obviously, on the Nile. A Fallucca is just a sailboat with a sharp-lookin' triangular sail. It was a great way to end the day; the Nile is very pretty from a distance and even nicer to sail on while catching the sunset.
We night trained it back to Cairo, where upon arrival I started feeling a bit feverish. We hung out at a cafe near the Bazaar for some tea, and not feeling like hitting the bazaar myself, I stayed back to watch everybody's stuff while they went to buy papyrus and other Egyptian souvenirs. An hour and a half later when they came back, I had passed out completely. The rest of the day was a feverish haze of getting to the airport, sleeping on benches, chairs, tables, floors, stumbling through check-in, sleeping terribly on the four and a half hour plane ride to Stuttgart, feeling a bit better, flight delays, arriving in Munich at midnight finally, and passing out in the hostel. The next day, after taking 800 milligrams of Ibuprofen, I felt a bit better, and we said goodbye to Nimmer and Matt who went back to the States, and hello to Jeff Rydell who'd come back from his trip to Prague to hang for a day or two. Anyway long story short, the worst fever I've ever had since I was 5 years old came back, as well as certain unpleasant stomach problems and various other flu-like symptoms. Convinced I was dying from the West Nile virus, or dengue fever, or what, I went to see a doctor and found out I have an actual case of the flu, an infected lung, and a stomach virus. Triple Whammy! God bless Cairo. I've spent the last two days in bed in the hostel shivering, sweating, performing liquid bathroom operations, and having mild delerium. The antibiotics the good German Doctor prescribed for me seem to be working however, and today I feel pretty good, although weaker than a day-old kitten. I will probably spend all day tomorrow taking it easy also, as I haven't been able to keep anything other than gatorade and water down for the last two days, although there are signs that that may be improving; I ate a banana about 3 hours ago and it hasn't made a reappearance as of yet, so maybe in the morning I'll try out something heavier. It all reminds me of my friend Christy, who is apparently mad at me for asterisking out her spicy language on a previous comment, and all the fun she had in Morocco a few years back. She had it worse, actually. Ahhh, getting grotesquely sick in foreign nations, there ain't nothin' like it.
Anyway, Scott has flown to Thailand, and Jeff moved on to Italy, and I have a few days of downtime, literally, here in Munich during which I will figure out what my next move is. My Egyptian pictures over at smugmug are also now up, as I've had all day to sit around recovering and attempting to regain some strength, and of course putzing around on the Internet. Click on this awesome picture (Which Nimmer also took, for the record) to go see them!

"Do You Have The Sack With You?"

"Do you have the Sack with you?"

I spoke: "the Sack, that is here;

because apples, nut and almond core

eat pious children gladly."

"Do you have the rod also with you?"

I spoke: "the rod, it is here;

but for the children, only the bad,

those it meets them right, upon their part."

(translated excerpt of 'Farmhand Ruprecht' by Theodore Storm)

My last day in Rome was pretty laid back; all I really did was wander around trying to hit a few of the lesser sights I hadn't gotten to yet, but mostly wound up back in my favorite spots, which were The Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. I did sit down and do the whole three-course Italian Meal thing... that was awesome. I sweated, alot.
I've opened my Rome Gallery on smugmug; please remember that I was photodepressed... there's only so much you can do that hasn't been done before in that city.
That night I caught my train, slept really well, and woke up about an hour outside of Munich, in a town called Kufstein. I'd been to Kufstein before, and there's a great German castle on a small hill right by the train station, and when I first opened my eyes and looked out the window, the Kufstein Castle was my first sight of Bavaria in three years...

honestly, it felt like I was home. And then at almost every train station between there and Munich, I had a memory or a story from that town that just got me even more choked up... It felt really, really good to  get off the train in Munich and walk through the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station)... itself an area of many memories. I got there at 8:30am, and wasn't supposed to meet my friends there until 10:00am or so, but I was really happy to just hang out and get a cappucino at one of the kiosks there and smell that good Bavarian air. Granted, Munich is a big city more than 100 kilometers away from the mountains, but I swear you can still smell that fresh Alpen air from any part of town.
And then 10:00 rolled around, and the first person I saw was Nimmer, of course. Then Scott, and Jeff Rydell, and lastly Matt. It was good to see them all. Well, without getting too technical, we checked into the youth hostel right next to the Hauptbahnhof, and spent the rest of the afternoon catching up... we did the traditional Munich walking tour: Bacon Cheeseburger at the Irish Pub off the Marienplatz, a walk through the Dalmyers' shop, and of course Nimmer had to pay his respects at the German war memorial. Then that evening, we killed many hours and many brain cells at the Hofbrauhaus.
I Love Munich!
Next morning we got up and trained it down to Berchtesgaden... talk about fresh mountain air... if it's refreshing in Munich, then it knocks you over and tries to give your lungs an enema in Berchtesgaden! We checked into the Hotel Bavaria. Here's the view from my room balcony:

I love German Guesthouses... they're all very clean, very solidly built, (all of the furniture in them is made of thickly cut, solid wood. Probably hand carved.) and remind one of Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother's house in the woods. The comforters on the beds are soft, thick, and garnished with a flower and chocolate... or so I'm told as apparently a certain roomate helped himself to mine before I got there. Well, no use opening up old wounds.
I don't have much new to say about Krampus fest itself... for a description of what the Krampus festivities are all about and this year's pictures, go here. I haven't made the fest since I came in December '03, but this was probably my 5th or 6th Krampus fest, (and here are some even better Krampus pictures from the ghosts of Krampus past) and it was, of course, as fun as any of them. One thing I got to see for the first time was the opening ceremony. There was some sort of evil anti-santa who the real St. Nick brought into town that I'd never seen at Krampus before... he was kind of creepy. I think he might have supposed to have been the chief Krampus demon, the Berchtesgaden version of Knecht Ruprecht, but really I'm not very sure what he was all about. I got pictures... they'll be up sooner or later.
Long story short, we all got hurt real bad. Nimmer got it the worst, I'm afraid... it wouldn't be polite to describe exactly where he took the worst shot known to any man, but let's just say that it's now apparently a blueish color and he's walking with a decidedly leftish limp, and that the title of this post doesn't only refer to the Krampus poem I quoted initially. Another friend of ours who had moved to working in Garmisch-Partenkirchen when Chiemsee closed showed up, which we were all very happy about. Greg, who some of you may recall was with us on Nimmer's Great Northern Europe Tour 2003, got beat down into the pavement... hard. Scott took a pretty good swipe to the eye, and Matt got it in the throat, and of course we all took the more normal lashes to the backs of our knees... I have a few bruises, I am proud to say. However I actually didn't get it too badly... Scott had picked up a bottle of Jagermeister earlier in the day, (It's good for numbing the pain) and I happened to be holding it for no particular reason at one point when a running, howling, lashing pack of very large demons descended on us. One of them headed straight at me, whip raised, and I thought for sure that I was finally going to get what's coming to me. As he got about a foot away from me, lash still poised to do me a world of much-deserved hurt, he stared at me for a full five seconds, not moving while I stood there frozen in awe, as one would stare at a 50 foot tidal wave of lava about to crash on your head, or a shark with a laser cannon tied to it's fin who was deciding whether to shoot you or not, when he reached out and grabbed the Jagermeister bottle and took a healthy swig. After whetting his thirst, he handed it back to me, growled his thanks, and took off in another direction. This actually happened several times, each time with me getting more and more angry because, while my friends were all coming back with grand tales of the pain that was levelled on them, all I had was a measly story about thirsty demons who apparently were not threatened by me at all. Quite an ego-bruising, I assure you. The demonic word must have got passed around that I was a Demon-juice provider, because even after I'd got rid of the bottle as though it was a plague, they left me alone. It all turned out mostly okay... later on in the night the Krampus devils must have had enough of their elixir that they forgot that I'd apparently been called off-limits, and I managed to get a few of those long awaited punishments.
I bought a Krampus mask! So did Scott. They had them for sale in a wood-carving shop in the middle of the old part of Berchtesgaden, where the festival actually goes down. It's the first time I was really there during the day, and so in past years had never noticed the opportunity to have my very own Krampus mask... I am very excited. It was really cool too, because when the Wood-Carver realized as we were looking at the few masks which he had on display in his shop window that we were serious customers who by the look on our faces would rather die in a wood-chipper than leave without a Krampus mask, he took us down to his basement where he had a more varied selection. I'm having it shipped home in a few weeks, and one day it will be hung on my wall proudly, and very intimidatingly. Perhaps I will use it to teach the local children the joys, and terror, of the true spirit of Christmas.
Now we're all back in Munich, and tomorrow morning, Nimmer, Matt, Scott and I are flying to Cairo. We're going to spend about four days there before heading back here again to go our separate ways. It's getting rather clichéd of me to say that I will be telling you all about it, so I'll try to avoid that from now on.
In the meantime, here's a picture of my mask. It's the one in the middle, and Scott bought the one on the lower right.

 

Flimsy Excuses For Poor Photographs That Nobody's Even Seen Yet, And What I Did Or Did Not Do In The Holy See

Rome is really really big. Like... you know... BIG. I'm afraid I've kind of crapped out in the photo department this time around, because everything is so big it makes me tired just to contemplate trying to fit stuff properly into one shot, and photostitch isn't helping me too much either because it really only works best when you can get some distance from your subject so that during the stitch process the lines meet up without too much skewing of the perspective. Which I can't, really, because of the bigness. By the time you're far enough away from say, the Colloseum, to get a good shot, something else really big winds up partially blocking your view, or it's SO far away (because, you know, it's so big) that the details that make it interesting get lost in the zoom.
You know what else is big? The Vatican. Holy Crap, dude. I spent all day in Vatican City today, and I'm pretty sure I didn't come close to seeing everything. Incidentally, Vatican City is a sovereign state, but I'm not sure if that means that when I'm tallying up my hypertrek points I can count it as a country other than Italy... the problem is that yes, Sovereign State certainly connotates a separate entity from Italy, but in reality, there is no border guard, let alone a passport stamp. (Grumble grumble so and so) There is a security check at both the Vatican museum and at the outer entrance to St. Peter's Basilica (but not at the big Basilica square where the Pope gives his weekly address), but they are no different from any other security checkpoint at most museums with countless priceless pieces of art. So any help in clearing that up there is much appreciated.
Oh, speaking of the Vatican just made me remember another reason, a more important reason actually, why my phototaking here has been so lackluster... Rome is apparently this HUGE tourist attraction, like, bigger than Six Flags. Seriously, I've never been somewhere this crowded. Walking through the Vatican Museum today was insane; I woke up early this morning so that I could get to the Sovereign Nation/State of Vatican City by 8:00 because I read in my guidebook that by the time it opens at 8:30, the line to get in is huge. Well, I should've got there at 7:00. The line stretched back about two blocks; I spent from the moment I got there until I left the museum at around 1:30pm stuck within a massive, mouth-breathing, multi-cellular creature made of tourists, who were busy snapping photos of Raphael's works, Michaelangelo's masterpieces, Roman sculptures of dead Roman guys wearing funny things on their heads, a squished bug that was momentarily mistaken for art by the beast made of cameras and fanny-packs, and basically every little thing that looked like it might be something worth bragging about to their friends back home, whether they knew what it was they were photographing or not. (Which is not what I do at all.) And in the Sistine Chapel... fuggetaboutit. Total. Madhouse. I felt like there might be a security guard waiting on the other side of the exit with a hammer to club tourists over the head with. You know, like they do to cows. Because there were so many tourists packed into such a (relatively) small space, with a glazed look as their eyes rolled upwards, and mouths hanging open, breathing. ... You get it right?  Never mind.
Anyway, my point was supposed to be about why I've done such a poor job with pictures, and I started out using my day in the Vatican as an example, went too far, and now I'm back. See, it's pretty much like that everywhere I've been in Rome, just more concentrated in the Vatican. Thousands of tourists snapping thousands of pictures a minute, all over the city. And that was just today. They say it's like that every day, and I just kind of feel like, every time I pull out my camera, what's the point? I've got nothing new to add to Roman tourist photos; it's been done from every angle a million times over. There's ten guys behind me trying to elbow me out of the way so they can take the exact same photo I just took, which makes me angry even though I just elbowed some dude with a dinky 3 megapixel tourist camera who thought he had the right to take more time than I thought necessary to get a shot which I wanted to get out of the way. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name, but for me, I feel photodepressed. Don't misunderstand, I still took me some pictures, but, whenever I open the gallery, don't expect too much that you haven't seen done better a million times before, you know? Speaking of, I did open my Budapest gallery, and there were much fewer tourists there, so the self-delusion that I took some original photos sustained me for that one.
But as far as, say, any sort of real observational comments about Rome? Well, I have a few: I am dog tired, because walking around this city in particular will do that to you. But it's worth it because it's really pretty and the Sistine Chapel ceiling really is as amazing as everybody says it is. You don't think so at first; you kind of go, That's it? What's the big deal? The ten rooms full of works by Raphael, and even the Hall of Maps which was painted by a bunch of non-famous dead guys was as interesting as this. The Hall of Maps was actually quite fantastic, so I'm not denigrating anything really, just trying to say, clumsily, that Michaelangelo at first glance didn't bowl me over. But give it about one full minute, and it begins to sink in how amazing it is... the paintings look ready to climb down off the ceiling, and the colors make you wonder if the Priests are putting something in the water. They just get more vivid every minute. Actually, that might have more to do with the fact that apparently absinthe is legal in Italy now, too, and I bought a bottle yesterday evening... Now that it looks to be legal all over Europe, it seems as though they're making it purer and stronger than they used to... I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'. I was most certainly not drinking absinthe inside the Holy See; I would never disrespect the Catholic Church that way.
Moving on, then.
So tomorrow is my last day in Rome, and then I'm taking the night train to Munich. Have I said how much I love night trains? I'm sure I have. I'm really excited about it... I have done entirely too much flying in the last week. And then, of course, all Krampus shall ensue.
I'll leave you with a picture of a picture I took in the modern Christian art museum in the Vatican... I'm not sure what they call this thing, but I call it the Holy Finger.