The Wandering American: Volume II

"Goodnight, and Good Luck."

A famous journalist always used that sign-off when concluding his weekly narratives aimed at condemning the paranoia and fear-mongering that the McCarthey-era conservatives conjured-up.

This Blg has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything remotely linked to that sign-off. :)

....Anyways.....

There is wise ancient Arab proverb that says, "All things only happens once...

(Exhibit A):



(i have never felt the breeze tickle THERE before. except when Cyrus....)

...but if something happens twice, it will most definitely happen a third time."

Exhibit B: Me and Ed's mom. :)

(ha. 3 blgs. 3 ed's mom jokes. i'm hitting 1.000. which is about 1.500 better than the colorado rockies. ugh the red sox...more like RED-cause-i-wanna-bleed-to-death-if-i-have-to-listen-to-one-more-self-righteous-boston-fan-say-how-they-deserve-it-SOX. $144MM payroll. still love ya Colin. :)

...WELCOME TO BLG #3!!

For all those readers out there living weekend to weekend, crack fix to crack fix, or blg to blg, i sincerely apologize for the delay in producing this trilogy. i hope this installment is the antidote to all of your problems. except yours mitch. no matter what i write in here, nothing will make the dodgers/lakers/trojans/bruins anything better than shitty. and NOTHING will give you the 10 minutes back that you will spend reading, and instead could have spent _ _ s _ _ r _ a _ _ n _. :)

So why the long delay you wonder? Well, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: While taking a beautiful hike in Romania...


I was attacked by a pack of gypsy-trained black bears in the heart of the Transylvanian forest, "hickied" into a state of dileria by dracula, and then hauled off and locked in Vlad the Impaler's castle!!!!!!....

...only to be stuck on a wooden pole while a bunch of customer service workers from the Romanian restaurant, taxi, hotel and post office industries walked by glaring and un-helping me to death...






(oh wait. she's not romanian at all.)

I escaped only when they let me down cause i said something about how nadia comaneci looked like a perfect 10. :)

Of course, only the last part of that is true. And the second to last part...

And and the first part. fuck it - all of it was true. except they were brown bears. tricky gypsies.

i just wish dracula had been a girl. from downey. :)

Overture for this blg: since we talked last, i went to Scotland for a wedding, and to pay respects to the last decent thing mel gibson ever did; then followed my favorite choreographer to Barcelona; journeyed to Athens to see young balkan choreographers be "abstract" and consume Mythos on a beach with the j-hath; ventured east to romania...i think the story above pretty much sums that country up. now headed back to ljubljana, slovenia - where they have strudle, but, where they also have the euro. gross.

like the sonics.

In honor of Halloween - Saint Hallow's Eve for our Pagan Brother working the library desk at Union - let's run-down the 31 things that I have discovered in the last 2 months.

wait. that's a horrible idea. 31 is SO many! how about 10? much better. :)

Top ten reasons why scotland is better than england:

10. Their national drink contains 40% alcohol.... CORRECTION: their national drink IS alcohol.


9. Their national food is pig intestines.

8. They wash one down with the other.

7. Their national sport is a game in which 14 people obliterate whomever has the ball. without pads. for an hour. (...can we hand the ball off to either mitt, fred, or rudy and just sit back and enjoy?).

6. The northern region of the country is called the Highlands.
















That is where Highlander came from.


He was awesome. In the I-have-a-sweet-black-pony-tail-and-it's-gonna-swish-in-the-wind-when-i-brandish-my-claymore/samauri-sword-and-fight-off-evil-spirits on TBS every Thursday night kinda way. He is the ancient man's steven segal. And the buddhist MacGyver. Right mitzi?! :)

5. They wear plad skirts from heather. Like some sort of sexy female Kurt Cobain-inspired halloween costume... Or like Jed.




4. Sean Connery is a citizen. He broke out of Alcatraz. Then brought back something called humor to SNL for a night.

3. They sell-out tickets to sport's bars just so they can root FOR South Africa (who they hate) when South Africa plays AGAINST England (for which hate is not a strong enough word.) Of course, by the end of the game, no one has any clue who actually won because they are all either a) passed out on the floor b) passed out on each other or c) fighting someone. did i say "by the end of the game". my bad. i meant the first commercial break.

2. The current Scottish flag was originally the flag of the Fergueson Clan.

My great-grandmother was Buela Ferguson. ....Honestly, I am so confused as to where i came from, my mom could tell me i'm part Aborignie and i would just nod slowly.

1. And the number one reason??....They drive on the CORRECT side of the road, unlike the bloody english!!! oh wait. nevermind. they drive on the retarded side of the road just like everyone else on that sun-starved, mad-cow infested, pound-paying island. That's why we left about 300 years ago and started our own freedom-loving country with the help our friends, the "Native" Americans.


Happy Thanksgiving and God Bless America!!!

...and now....

Top ten reasons why Athens 2000 years ago was more civilized than Athens today:

10. Today, everyone rocks fake armani and versace. Back then...well, actually, nothing could have been tackier than now. Even draping over-sized bed sheets across their bodies from Linens N' Things would be a step in the right direction.

This is what I deserve when I dabbled in modern Greek Fo-ashion:



9. Today, I have never seen so many stray dogs in my life. Someone get Bob Barker over here to Athens to control the pet population. It is Ridiculous people.

8. Back then, they waxed eloquent about subjects such as about democracy, human existence and religion. Now...

Wow.

7. Back then, the only "performance-enhancing" drug for olympic athletes was called an orgy with 6 naked maidens up against some olive tree. hard to "unknowingly" take that drug, huh Barry Bonds?

**(picture of orgy not available on Google Images)

6. Back then lamb was lamb. as in cute, cuddly, little, adorable, SLAUGHTERED BABY SHEEP (for all those vegetarians.) :) chicken was chicken. beef was beef. and pork was pork. ...Now, you order, "some of umm...that stuff....please." and hope it isn't human.

...actually, that second picture isn't mystery meat at all. in fact, i am somewhat positive it is pig.

5. Back then, the road to Marathon was 42 km of dry, arid nothingness. What a feat that was to run! ...Now, it is 42 km of dry arid, nothingness - with a lot mini-marts. Think how much faster he would have run with a little Arctic Shatter Gatorade to get his drink on with! Is It In You?!

4. Athena's temple has no roof.....she's the goddess of build-me-a-fucking-stable-temple one time!! ...someone get IKEA on the phone, and we can turn this aging relic into a reclining-loveseat-assemble-it-yourself-if-don't-lose-the-little-fucking-screws temple. if the swedish weren't so busy raping and pillaging long ago, they could have built a semi-attractive, practical, long-lasting structure for the greeks....and a matching one for the turks!! :) they could be like sister-countries! ...or just slaughter each other. yeah. let's just do the latter. sweet.



3. The street signs look like fucking math equations. Alpha-this, beta-that...gamma-here, delta-there.....death.


2. I talked to Richard Dreyfus in a Tiki Bar. And he was wearing a v-neck white undershirt that hung off his shoulders, a huge gold chain. and a sailor hat, all while greek groupies draped themselves over his 74 year-old Mr. Holland's Opus body.

1. I stayed at the "Hotel Zeus"...which became the "Hostel Zeus" when you got closer. (Literally, the sign on the street says "Hotel Zeus" to lure you in like some Siren trap. and then when you get closer, the sign on the door reads, "Hostel Zeus"...and when you get even closer and see all the hair on your bed and the creepy guy above you....you realize it was the setting of the crappy Lions Gate* movie.) ....*If Katy was in it, i would have loved it :)

0. Buxton was there. Why did i even need the 10 reasons above???


Top ten reasons why Romania is worth going back to. In 20-200 years.

10. When global warming really comes into its own, Romania won't be cold as shit.


9. Their money won't fold in half because it is made of plastic - like right now. Yup.

8. Their dance center won't be in a building that will "surely fall down in the next earthquake." good thing bucharest (the capital) doesn't lie on a fault line. oh wait. it does.

7. Same delicious food. But there will be more self-service buffets. Less waiters. Less interaction with "customer service" people.

6. I paid 20 euro for a cab ride from the airport. It should have cost 5. When I go back in 20 years, they will have devalued my 20 into a 5 and I can steal it back. Wait, did I say 20 years? ...My bad. I could go back in 20 minutes.

5. They will have even more ridiculous stories about Vlad and how he ate luxurious dinners outside while dozens of people were sliding down a wooden pole to their agonizing death. damn. THAT is cold-blooded.


4. I will know before my 5th day there that the name ROMania came from the ROMans. Note to self: you are a dumbass.

3. They will have 57 more gold medals in women's gymnastics. That's just how they roll - by cornering the market on 4'7" underdeveloped, flexible athletic girls.

2. Bucharest will be grayer, colder and more industrial. Oh wait. That impossible.

1. I should have gone to Bulgaria. It is different, but it rhymes. :)

I kid, I kid. Romania was actually a great place. But Bucharest actually not so much.

p.s. - jen huang won last blg's "p.s." contest for naming the most words. congrats!! it looks like it took a lot of work....which means her employer is getting about 60 cents on the dollar for her effort on the job. a postcard is on its way miss huang...

note: Brian, i know you "technically" gave the most words, but google cannot substitute for your brain. and if it didn't, then quit whatever you are doing right now and go win the scrabble championship back from the Thai...you could be our modern-day rocky. :)

BRRIIIIIAAANNNN!!!!!!

p.p.s. - i am uping the anti for this next one just because you have already read so far. And by "you" i am using the 2nd person singular. thanks for reading mom. :)

...A postcard and some delicious Slovenian dessert for whoever answers this question soonest and most accurately...and without google:

Does 0 degrees feel colder or warmer on top of mountain or at the sea, assuming no wind and no precipitation?




Much love everybody. I miss you all. So come to Elia Beach. :)

The Wandering American: Volume I

"...Welcome baaaack, welcome baaaack, mrak is baaaack!!...
See the names have all changed since i've been around....
but the game ain't the same since i left the town..."

As I sit on the train heading back to vienna conversing with Mase, i decided my theme song should be blasting when i step out of the train station.

If not, all the street cred i assembled in the Slovenian countryside slingin' strudel (3 euros a gram for cheese or cherry, but 3.75 euros a gram for apple - mainly cause the re-ups on the 35 kilo apple stash deliveries are wire-tapped like a goddamn recording studio) would have been totally, completely, utterly, 100 percent, most definitely, absolutely, invariably, blatantly, truly, obviously, entirely, wholly, clearly, no doubt whatsoever, in vain.



i didn't even use a thesaurus. except for "wholly." that is a big word. a $1 dollar word if you went to the Evergreen School for the Gifted. :)

...Trevor. Eva. Ron. Zachary. Dylan.

Before we start, a few words of appreciation to all who took the time to post on our sweeeeet-ass facebook group:



"Thank you, thank you, thank you. You far too kind
Can i get an encore, do you want more? Cook and brawl with the Sea-town boy
...Get 'em Elia Rubin Mrak-Blumberg!"

SHIT!!! that doesn't flow at all!!! It anti-flows. I guess my name is bad for rap. dreams. crushed. :(

Unless i renamed myself LaElia.

Anyway, honestly people, all of your kind words truly means a lot to me. Like boobs to mitch.

[way too easy to put a picture here....easy. like Ed's mom] haha.

And now a few words of dis-appreciation concerning other responses to the Epilouge: Yes, Jen, that is how it is spelled. If you were a second generation american maybe you would be able to spell correctly, like the native English speaker that i am. Do you hate freedom!? Jeeeez. :) ...And to all others who haven't written anything, it's really nothing personal, but go have a good life and burn in hell.

SIKE!! :)

but seriously, at least go blanch yourself in hell.

...anybody who gets that is either sleeping with Emeril Lagasse (BAM!), or...well, hmmmm, yeah. actually, that really would be the only valid explanation. (nevermind the fact that i wrote it..............

WHAT!?! Emeril's a good provider!!....just look at that passion!!!!



......uh....i mean....hmmmmmmm.......moving on...

BREAKING NEWS: I have scrapped my initial plan to study dance and have dedicated the next 11 months of my fellowship to a Pro Americans-are-not-all-complete-fucking-retards public relations effort in hopes of undoing this: WATCH AND CRINGE AND LAUGH!! THEN CRY.

This clip is the working definition of Shit-Show, Train-Wreck and Hey-world-i-just-ruined-my-life all wrapped up into one. And now I have to answer questions about this girl to everyone of my European friends. Thanks South Carolina.

Now this is the sentence where i would normally call out my friends from South Carolina and tell them how much their state blows. This is the space that this would happen...

If had friends from South Carolina. But I don't. Which makes me feel better about myself. Anyway, to all Gamecocks: Feel free to secede whenever you need to. Fucking Lincoln. The next Civil War is all yours.

This picture NEVER gets old.

So, to no one's surprise, I have said almost nothing at all about my last 3 weeks. So because I have blg ADD and will invariably start rambling if I stick to this traditional, capitalist-imposed-Microsoft Word-mandated-word-processing-6-sentence-to-a-paragraph form that is suffocating our literacy creativity and choking all other forms of written communication that don't fit into a 1" margin and a 654-word page, i feel it necessary to revolutionize!! let us move to a bulleted list.

Here, for your reading efficiency and in honor of the beginning the college football season, is the top 25 things that have happened to me in the last 3 weeks, listed in order of random importance:

0: "Zero." The Middle East invented it. European hostels perfected it. You are assigned your room, and suddenly become ecstatic. you are thinking that because your room is located on the first floor, you are the blessed one that doesn't have to take the stairs, and can actually just do somersaults all the way to your beige-breakfast (cornflakes, bran muffin, white bread, a splintered 2x4.) hahaha... just kidding. they don't actually have bran muffins.

Anyway, you are walking on water, floating in the clouds, thinking that you the first person in European history to actually live on the first floor of ANY building, especially when you have 2.8 tons of luggage like I do. Why? I have no idea. This excitement lasts until you realize that they have named all of the first floors "Floor 0." WTF people. That is anti-math.

And yes, this was the most important thing that happened to me. By far.

1: times i correctly spelled any Slavic names I heard. The name was Elia.


well that pretty much seals the deal... :)

2: times in each European contemporary dance performance that someone gets naked. I think Europe is involved in some sort of revolutionary textile boycott. Just a hunch. Sell your LaCoste stock short, Wex.


I have never wanted to be a camera Flash more in my life than right now.

3: seconds it takes me to eat any form of Eastern European pastry.

4: seconds it take me to buy another one.

5: times i have ordered a cappuccino at an alternative artists' beer bar at 2am to stay awake and got weird looks. "HEY PEOPLE: YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE GUY THAT ORDERED A PINA FUCKING COLADA AT AN IRISH BAR IN FREIBURG, GERMANY AND THEN WATCHED IN DISBELIEF UNTIL 4 IN THE MORNING AS THE SEAHAWKS BLEW A 21 POINT 2ND HALF AND A SOBBING DICK VERMEIL WALKED TRIUMPHANTLY OFF THE FIELD AS OUR PLAYOFF HOPES VAPORIZED, ALL THE WHILE TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY TO DROWN MYSELF IN A MELTED SOUP OF PINEAPPLE, COCONUT AND ICE, BUT ULTIMATELY SUCCEEDING IN GOUGING OUT MY EYES WITH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE MINIATURE DRINK UMBRELLA."

you know what? make that a venti cappuccino. hvala.



6: times each minute an average guy thinks about sex.

7: times each minute i thought about what to include in this blg. which is embarrassing. (see #6)

8: consecutive times i lost in foosball in one night. joel, you are good, but these guys were INCREDIBLE. honestly, i haven't seen that kinda wrist action since i walked in on mitch freshman year.



9: countries i will have visited from august 1st to November 1st. actually not that hard. europe is the size of East LA.

10: words i know in German.

11: words i know in German, Slovene, Croatian, and Hungarian combined.


I ordered off this menu. Unsuccessfully.

12. entire pigs i have consumed in 3 weeks. too bad pigs are smart.

13. number of times i regretted #12.

14: postcards I bought at one store. that better be a record. if not, then someone else is more successful than me at making friends think i am trying to "stay in touch." :)

15. times a day i have been tempted to grab the cell phone out of a European's hand and stomp on it mercilessly after it blasted some horrible techno song at about 110 decibels. death to technology. or bad techno. or my eardrums. whichever comes first.

16: days of rain. which is sweeeet, cause i get to walk around town in my rain jacket, middle finger to the umbrella game, showing people how we rep it from the 206. we are like ducks and the rain just sheens off our backs. y'all heard!! (for those of you from Mill Creek, Bellevue, Kamiak, Goldbar, etc., now nodding in agreement claiming the 206, nice try. that includes you nate, tracy, j-dash, shefali, ridge, tracy,) :) whew, got 6 more off the list.

17: number of rat-tail mullets i saw every 0.000078 seconds in spain.



18: number of weird looks per day from other Vienna subway goers as I practiced my popping and locking waiting for the trams. I think 87% of Eastern Europe now thinks I have Tourette's.

19: glasses of wine i drank in 36 hours while in the Slovenian countryside....or was that 17? or 21? wait, where was I? what am I talking about? am I still drunk?



...okay, so i like wine. i want a vineyard :)

20: facebook messages/wall posts I wrote while #19 happened.

21: number of dance performances I have seen in the last 3 weeks. 4/21 = the number that I understood.

22: times a week a local asks me, "wait, what are you doing here???" Also the number of times i respond with, "what are YOU doing here???"

23: happy almost birthday nhkb :)

24: consecutive revolutions on this steel ring, making this dude pretty much the coolest person ever. he has the advantage that when he gets hammered and the room starts spinning, he's like, "been there. done that." . (this is why i have a PICTURE, and he has a VIDEO).




25. University of Michigan's current ranking in Div III football. Having fun Jakle?? :)

Infinite: number of amazing people, dance classes, foods, wines, conversations, festivals and experiences i have had the past 3 weeks.


By the way, this is why Eastern Europe has no Hip-Hop Scene.

A gas station mini-mart?! Really???!!!


Well, as they say in Austria, and in semi-right-of-center-republican-
pro-big-business-racist-father-checkered-history-steroid-induced-
but-overall-not-as-bad-as-could-be-circles all over california...

Hasta la vista, baby. :)

~ Elia


P.S. - personal postcard contest for everyone but Mitch and Eva: the first three people to tell me all of the two word combinations in the English language that are spelled the same but pronounced differently gets a personal postcard from me. :) For example: Bass and Bass (the music and the fish - spelled the same but pronounced DIFFERENTLY). hint: there aren't that many.

Too bad only 2 people actually read this far.

The Wandering American: Prolouge

"All the bodies break
And the blood just spills and spills...
But here we sit debating math...

It is just a shame my hand kills and kills
....There's gotta be an end to that."

Welcome to Dance in Eastern Europe.

:)

But seriously, go download "Low" by Breaker. Great melodic song, and it is way cheaper than Valium. As my sis' says, "it's respirator music." 2 minutes and 53 seconds of Pure Vegetative State. ------------------------------------------>>>>>

And free if you have Limewire Pro!! Unless you have my version, and then every file is a prank phone call from Steven Spielberg. WTF, people. Can I pirate a little music one time? Damn.

As I sit here on the train headed for Ljubljana - btw, if you know either a) where that is OR b) how to pronounce it, then you need to make other friends besides Rand and McNalley. And if you know both, well shit. Then you DEFINITELY should have been that kid running around putting plastic poles on the various countries of a particular continent at the end of the show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego." Buxton, we all know you watched the show religiously, sparking your (some people here would say "toolish", but I am NOT saying "toolish") obsession with knowing all the capitals of the world. That and you loved the music from the Rockapellas. Me too. Come clean.


(This was the actual puddle formed when i spilled my glass of water. AMAZING!!!)
Anyways, I always felt bad for the 6th grader on that show that got Africa as their final map challange. That's just not fair. Show me one ADULT that could name all the countries???. Seriously. Especially when the poor kid is scrambling around on the verge of tears because a) he/she hasn't run 50 feet in the last...well, ever, and b) there was always a 20-25% chance that as the poor kid was searching for the last pole placement, his/her dreams in the balance, the seconds clicking off the clock, that a nation like Zaire would have a revolution and it would suddenly become the Democratic Republic of Congo during the taping of the show. Life's a bitch for future cartographers.

If it was me, I would have put all my poles randomly, and waited for the West to come fuck/carve it all up around my markers.

Wow, that was off-track........So, welcome to my Blog. Or Blg if you are Slavic. :)

...Okay, Sorry. But I really gotta get this off my chest:

The Slavic language needs to do a little sign-and-trade with the Hawaiian language, trade a couple of expiring consonents for 1 All-Star vowel and 2 other vowels to be named later. Then we could combine the Mlkypk's with the Aioaula's of the world and end up with normal words like Tree. Food. Sara. Seat. Road. (I'm looking around the train for more 4 letter words...) ...ah, Book!
...I have a dream where one day vowels and consonents can live together, in harmony, equal and balanced, and my mouth won't cramp up.

Anyways, back to the Blg. I have been thinking lately about all those mass emails that begin with the author espousing his or her hatred for mass emails, apologizing for being so impersonal, making sure to note that if anyone writes a personal email back, then he/she will respond in turn with a personal one as well. But secretly, they don't want very many people to write back, cause then they will have a shitload of personal emails to write, and the whole point of economies of email scale, achieved beautifully by the mass email in the first place, is rendered useless. Cause they have to write back the same shit with a different "To" address 2-50 times. Efficient? I think not. Thus I've searched the icy, dark, lonely, stone-hearted soul of my economic training to come up with the quintessential question of email philosophy:

How can I make my emails as IMpersonal and efficient as possible? With cell phones, internet, television, and iPods we have arrived at an astonishing level of impersonalness. And supplied Harvey Mudd graduates with an endless supply of jobs. (And yo, for those of you - (read: Mudders) - who think playing 72-hour sessions of Halo or World of Warcraft with other mercenary cyber drones trained to kill violent aliens in foreign solar systems with people from Japan, is the personal, intimate side of globalization. it's not. in case you were wondering.)

....by the way, what's up with hosting fun parties and not inviting us. Fuck Mudd.

So, in this new era of true impersonal interaction, I pondered another question: How can I achieve an unprecedented level of distance from any personal human interaction? So impersonal, in fact, that I might now even know the people reading what I write?...And at the same time ensure that I will never have to write an email back to anyone? Especially Mitch.

So I invented the Blog.
Al Gore claimed the internet. I'm claiming the blog....Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me where I'm wrong! :)

Look at it this way: I am saving the 1.8 calories and the 2.1 seconds it would have taken you to acknowledge my apologetic mass email, think, "oh yeah, he's in Europe, cool" and then dragged it to the trash***, returning to poking or hugging or peeing on (hopefully the next application from The Good (Face)Book ) whatever under-aged high schooler you were involved with before my email distracted you. Jed.
[ **Or if you are cool/not-a-tool-like-Joel, you could have keyboard short-cutted "apple-delete" on your vastly superior Macintosh personal computer.]

Now that I have wasted about 800 words and 10 minutes of your time, read a little more. Please???

I will try and make this blog funny, entertaining, and informative (in that order.) If I end up with that order reversed, feel free to send hate mail, letter bombs, anthrax, under-aged boys (Ed, share the wealth.)...anything to occupy my time and convince me to stop writing. :)

With that, let us commence my Blg: The Wandering American: Prologe.

Quick Note: For those of 3 of you that read my emails in 2004 when I was "studying" abroad in Freiburg, you might remember that I also titled my emails "The Wandering American." But since then, I have realized that back then I was not wandering at all, but in fact lived a very structured, quaint life with my life-partner Jordan. Now that Jordan has left me for that dirty home-wrecking slut named Microsoft Excel, I'm on my own in Europe and it's all about the Benjamins Baby - more accuratly, wandering around Eastern Europe and researching how far this fellowship money will go on strippers and coke. (Originally Charlie Sheen's idea, shhhh.)

Unfortunately, due to the dropping dollar, I had to settle by "dropping" Listerine Strips and watching the Call On Me music video on repeat. It is really a great substitute Cyrus. My breath is fucking clean.

So, like I said about 25 paragraphs above (exactly 25 actually, i just counted, but I'm pretty sure Timmy "Rain Man" Greenman did that calculation instantly - instantly...almost as fast the Brewers fell out of the playoff race), I am on a train headed to lube-lee-AWN-a, the capital of Slovenia.

To catch you up quickly: I spent the last 3 weeks in Vienna attending the Impulstanz Dance Festival. 2300 dancers. 2290 girls. C'mon guys, we can do better!!



Took amazing workshops with some incredible teachers from around the world. Took the best hip-hop class of my life from Bruce Ykanji. Watch this and be prepared to be amazed, attracted, obsessed with him. Pretty much the working definition of cool.

I like him almost as much as the Yufka Kebap place around the corner from my apartment. Mit salat. Mit pepfer. Mit alas. Fucking Delicious. Yay for immigration. Someone write the US government and demand that we open borders to all Turkish kebap chefs. Now. Seriously, go do it. Really people, I'm not remotely close to joking.

I went to the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, where Sacher Torte was invented and paid 4.80 Euros for a slice.

...Now this would be the normal time for Elia to wax eloquent about how it was worth it cause "you only live once" and "carpe diem" and "when in rome." But I'm not saying it. That's right. I'm not. And not because it wasn't delicious. It was. But 4.80 Euros is approximately $503,260,197,834 dollars. And now I have to sell my kick-ass quick-drying underwear in order to eat. Which is tight, cause there is a huge underground black market for sweat-wicking textiles in the East...Polypropalene is now the modern day banana. (Communist-era joke) :)



So I wear damp clothes a lot. And not cause I enjoy culturing mildew, but because Maytag needs to invade Europe, storm the beaches of Normandy, and deliver some f-ing dryers. This sums it up: I am talking with my French-German roommate two days ago, who speaks PERFECT english. And I say to Pierre, "It is crazy, why the hell does no one have a dryer here!" He responds, "A what?"

Sounds about right.

Before Vienna I was in Spain with Mitch, Rory, Ed and Jed. To sum up or travels, Mitch Cowgirled Up in Pampalona to run away/with the bulls as did the rest of us, Ed was on the endless search for "soft evening light" - found usually bewteen the hours of 9:34pm and 9:34:30pm.







Jed rode buses and Rory ate pu...hahaha.I couldn't help it!! ....Actually, Rory got the sweetest shirt ever.











Before that I was in Croatia with my family. Everybody in Croatia is about 6-4". What the fuck genes did I get?!?!?!?!?!?!??!???!??!??!?!?!

Not only that, but I was so excited to be in a place where people could finally pronounce my name correctly. No more "Eli's" or "Uh-lee-ahs" or "Ee-LIE-uhs". No, this was the place where bad Elia pronunciations go to die and everyone will understand.

I get to the hotel, tell them my name, and the lady responds with, "interesting, i've never heard a name like that before! How do you say it?"

death.

Croatia was truly beautiful, and we spent time on the surrounding islands, especially Mljet, where Odysseus spent part of his 7 years "trying to get home to his wife" or more accurately "having three-somes in beautiful, warm crystal-turquoise lakes, surrounded with endless wine, cheese and lamb." Shit, for all we know, he was probably stealing wi-fi from the Serbians, facebook poking Helen of Troy, commissionering fantasy Greek Olympics, watching The Sopranos on Demand and playing flip-cup with naked mermaids.

Homer could have been so much more creative. I wish I was a bard.

Moral of the story: Croatia rocks; Spain is hot, and unpleasant if you get gorged by a bull; Vienna/life is better if you are Bruce Ykanji; Slovenia is a nation, supposedly.

…Smile lots. The world needs it….

~ Your Wandering American

p.s. - i'm gonna try and mention/joke about everyone in the email list over the course of the year. but some people are easier than others. like Ed's mom.

p.p.s - i know, i know!! ..i went the entire email without a mom joke, but it was sitting there asking me to write it. i had to. the joke laws said so.


p.p.p.s - i didn't put an extra space in by accident. that white nothingness represents Michael Vick's intelligence.

p.p.p.p.s – please write back…. (sheepish smile)….pretty please??? ☺

p.p.p.p.p.s .... :) food for a ninja :)