Today and yesterday, I am in Vienna.  Grammar check?  I’m here because it was a logical stop on the way to Prague.  About an hour away is the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava.  Today, I jumped on a bus to see what the place had to offer.

I found that Bratislava is exactly what I expected Vienna to be.  Small, quaint, and charming.  Vienna, on the other hand, is very large and impersonal.  The people are nice, but I keep forgetting I am in Austria.  I almost refer to Austria  as Germany over and over again.

One good thing about everyone speaking German is hearing the children shooting off their best infant accents.  Some of them sound charming while some of them sound like Minni Hitlers.  Quite a site.

I met a few Aussies last night who have been traveling through Western Europe on 30 euros a day.  That’s 43 bucks (an ambitious plan indeed).  But I tend to not have much interest in eating bread and water for every meal.  It just puts the $170/day budget that many of my friends from home had into perspective.

I was staring into my half human sized locker this morning in awe. What a wonderful life I live. Everything fits into such a small space, yet I don’t even begin to feel deprived. What does that say for how I used to live?  What did I even need all that stuff for in the first place?  Don’t worry, I’m not about to become a hippy.  I think that people who work extra hard to look like they are not trying are the saddest breed of poser.

I have a new theory: If you can do something comfortably for 6 months, there’s probably not much that could hold you back from doing it indefinitely.

This of course should be applied to things like swimming every morning before work, or volunteering every Sunday at the soup kitchen; not to beating your wife or sniffing cocaine. I’m not even suggesting I travel indefinitely, just limit my possessions to a half man sized locker, even when I get home.

I ran the hypothetical: Would I rater have (almost) nothing to see (almost) everything?  Or Would I rather Have (almost) everything to see (almost) nothing?

America, prepare to be offended: You are (largely) the second.  There are tons of exceptions but I feel that we should embrace the sweeping generalizations if we are to learn anything about our culture as a whole.  Quit hiding behind the iron clad sense of individualism (that the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice or understand about us).

Ok, maybe I’m taunting a little, but I want to challenge each and every one of you who read this to take a little longer to acknowledge the choices that we tend to take for granted.  At every moment of every day we make a choice (believe it or not).  We tend to just make the same choices over and over again, until we are numb.  Then we begin to believe we don’t have any choices at all.

Cliché?  Too preachy?  Righteous? That’s fine, I’ve got it out of my system for now. Just don’t tell me how jealous you are, or how lucky I am, Nike : JUST DO IT!

I’m in Budapest now after suffering though a 13 hour overnight train in a seat (not bed).  The only moments on this trip I’ve ever thought going home are when I was sick and when I spend a night without sleep on a train or bus.

I’ve been bathing in the wonderful baths that this city has to offer for a few days now.  They have 13-15 pools and 10 saunas of all shapes and sizes as well as temperatures.  They even have a fountain in one of the pools that shoots out water at such a rate that if replicates a deep tissue massage.  But let’s not forget the pool that spins people around with jets of water like a giant whirl pool.  I was having a wonderful time in there until I caught one of the jets in the Bollocks (nuts) and paid dearly for it.

The people in Hungary are very nice and helpful, even if they don’t speak much English.  Everyone except for the people who are at the “information desks” in the train station.

Me- “Do you speak English?”

Hungarian Lady- “No”

Me- “But you understood that much didn’t you?”

Hungarian Lady- “Listen, I don’t speak English! All right?”- With little to no accent.

Me- “Ok well were are the tickets sold?”

Hungarian Lady- ” Over there.”

Wait a second, that whole sequence was a Romanian Gal.  I am traveling too quickly now.  All the Hungarians have been great without fail.  The only failure I’ve run into has been my hostel being as anti social as I can remember these things ever getting.  I came here with several people who I met in Bulgaria, but we all had to split up due to hostel availability issues.  We have been meeting up every day and giving updates on our collective hostels and mine has been the dud by far.  Everyone else have met loads of people at theirs, but mine seems to be full of German 6 and 8 packs (groups or 6 or 8 Germans traveling together who are impossible to start a conversation with.)

The only failure on the city’s part is the rampant graffiti.  It seems to be the scourge of Eastern Europe as a whole, but particularly shameful in Budapest because this city is so strikingly beautiful in so many places.  One place that doesn’t have a drop of spray paint on it is the major church in town.  Larger than life, this place provoked one thought when I entered “such a load of shit.”

That’s right, such a load of shit, is what I felt the rest of the world looked like in comparison to the perfection upon me.  It made every other Church, Cathedral, Mosque, Temple, and monument look like a sorry scribbled picture made by a 5 year old.  Where had all the money and talent in the world gone? Here.

If you’re on the fence, you might want to go here.

I was walking home from a night out a few days ago and experienced something that I never thought I would.  This is like seeing a UFO in the world of Car Fanatics.  I saw a REAL F1 race car speed down the road of Budapest in the middle of the night.  That thing wasn’t a car at all.  It was a 800 horse power, over grown, go cart.  It didn’t sound anything like a car.  It made some pitch of noise that was completely foreign to me.  It accelerated around a corner; 10mph to 100mph in under 3 seconds, and persisted to zig and zag across all lanes of the street, showing off it’s more than perfect grip and handling.  A physics professor would be eating his words if he saw this thing do what it did.  Not of this world!  And In an instant, It was gone forever.

That was as illegal as it was impressive.

The reasoning behind the name Budapest comes from the first bridge that joined the two cities together.  A large river runs between two cities.  On one side, Buda, on the other, Pest.  After hundreds of years, the two towns finally built the first bridge and the new super town was named Budapest.

I’m officially in the Lightening Round now. For the Next 3 months I’ll be foolishly rushing through Europe chasing as many stamps as I possibly can as well as trying to get my money’s worth out of my astronomically priced Euro Rail pass.

The dust wont settle until November when I make my way to Morocco and transfer to Argentina. In the rubble, I will have covered somewhere between 15 to 30 countries.

I am now in Transylvania which is actually region of Romania (not a city). The city I am staying in is Brasov (pronounced Brash off).

Before I got here, I stayed in Valinko Teranova (in Bulgaria). Valinko is one of the more beautiful places in Bulgaria. Situated in the mountains, we spent the days wondering around the town eating from wild fruit trees. Several types of cherry and plum trees nourished our journey.

We stayed at one of the most mellow hostels ever named “Hostel Mostel”. It was completely conducive to social gatherings. Instead of a couch in the common room, we sat on oversized pillows. This is an idea that I will undoubtedly take back to the states when I finally come home.

The best part of Valinco was the night time light show that the town has designed around the historical fortress.  But it doesn’t go every night, the town only turns on the light show if they are paid the 800 Lev ($600 USD) that tourist buses will pool together and hock out.  It must have been designed by the Belagio in Vegas, because it was as classy as it was impressive.

We spent a day down at the local river/pool/waterfall.  We could jump from heights of up to 60 feet into the water.  We were disappointed with the locals who didn’t do any crazy flips.  Come to think of it, the locals were very relaxed and didn’t even ever raise their voices.  If this spot were in America you would get people getting ultra drunk and screaming at the top of their lungs.

We took a train to get to Brasov, but first we had to get through Bucharest.  Bucharest is widely known by travelers as the most dangerous, ugly, and run down capitol city in all of Europe.  The horror stories that come out of this city are amazing, but we decided to catch the next train out to Brasov.

Brasov is the most beautiful part of Romania.  Situated in much more beautiful mountains that those of the Bulgarian nature, Brasov is a quaint town.  We have only been here a day so far and have already interacted with amazing locals and enjoyed great meals for nearly as cheap as Bulgarian prices.  I have been consistently seeing the same people from city to city because in Eastern Europe there are several very popular tracks.

The local Cops told us “You don’t have to drink here” (not you can’t drink here) and 4 locals approached us right after and asked us what the cops said, then they said “those guys drink here all the time”.  Don’t listen to them!

Bran Castle is the fabled location of Vlad the Impaler which is the character that Bram Stoker took and ran with to create Dracula.  Tomorrow we are going there.  I am told that it is a tourist trap now and it is not menacingly dark.

The people in Northern Romania are very kind and helpful.  So much for bad ass dangerous Eastern Europe   On the Danger side, we saw a strung out wolf trotting through the town square.  I was fairly sure that it was a wolf based on the size of it’s brain/scull.  In addition it walked distinctively more wild than any dog I’ve ever seen.

A little more danger for you; there is a Brasov sign on top of the local mountain that is set up like the Hollywood sign in LA.  It is a one hour hike to get to the sign.  There are brown bears who frequent the area (at night) and killed a drunken sleeper last year.

We are staying at the rolling stone hostel at the moment and the gal that runs the joint is as eccentric as Dave from Varna!  We think they should get married and start the “Rolling Flag” Hostel.  It seems that Eastern Europe has the very most eccentric hostels in the world (so far).

Bulgaria is THE most corrupt of the Eastern European Nations. Run almost entirely by the mafia, this place is very hard to run a hostel. “When we first came in here, the mafia didn’t know what to make of us. They asked us what we were doing having all these people coming in and out all the time. We just told them that we were bringing in kids to go you your clubs and spend money. The mob bosses said great! And demanded that we start 10 hostels. The towns people kicked us out of our original space because we were making too much noise so the mafia put us in their block of town and told their tenants to let us do what ever. Thats when we started doing free beer and we used to have free shots of Vodka until a few months ago when someone went to the hospital. Before we could start 10 hostels, the mob bosses realized how much money we were making and then doubled our rent, thus making it impossible to be profitable.”

Dave is a character to say the least, but I would sat the bigger character is Bulgaria. The town of Varna could easily pass as downtown Ocean Side which might leave a sick feeling in some people’s stomach. Tomorrow I am heading to a town that is Bulgaria’s medieval capitol. It’s supposed to be beautiful. While I have been here, there have been a bunch of flash rain storms. We have been eating at the same restaurant for quite some time now and I can say that the salad dressing here is just a scoop of water out of the black sea. It’s surprisingly amazing!

So Turkey was technically Asia after all. Now I’m in Bulgaria which is completely Eastern Europe. You will enjoy a sharp decline in the prices here as well as the validity of stereotypes. The funny thing was, going through the country side of southern Bulgaria was very hard. It was hard in the sense that it was the hardest place I’ve ever been to peg where you are. On the third sentence (this one) I’ll say what I actually mean; When you are in Bulgaria, it feels like you could easily be in Nebraska, Italy, Colorado, or even Mane. The landscape here is just so non-unique. And it changes very quickly.

You could pass through a small town that grows grapes in their front yards one moment and then be in a rundown city center the next town that looks almost war torn. You might then find yourself somewhere else in same hour that looks like the outer San Fransisco Bay Area.

I am now in Varna which is on the Black Sea coast. It is a major Bulgarian tourist hot spot, but not for foreigners. I think thats the magic trick to low prices is not having a huge amount of international tourist demand. For instance, I ate on the beach a huge pile of Muscles for 4 Lev, which is equal to $3. Mind you the whole grilled fish was the same price, and you can get a 3 liter (thats right) bottle of beer here for about the same price.

It’s crazy cheap here and although it has a reputation for being dangerous, it is far from it. There are, on the other hand, tourist traps in other towns that are designed for foreigners where the streets are lined with Ferrari driving mobsters. Those are about 2 hours away from here. Here is very funny. After traveling for 20 hours by bus, I randomly found a hostel that you could never actually “Find”, you would have to stumble upon it. I doubt it is a legal organization myself seeing as it is run by an English guy who doesn’t write anything down.

Everything is hectic and micromanaged by him. Everything is cash driven and micromanaged by him. It’s a big trip actually. He walked me to the ATM and told me how much to take out. Then he looked and saw that I still had my small backpack full of valuables and said “oh you wont want to cary that around all night. Give it to me and I’ll protect it tonight. You can get it tomorrow morning.”

What? You want me to hand over my bag? With my i-pod and laptop (valued at $600). And my Camera (valued at $300) and my Eurorail pass (valued at $1,300) and lets not forget my passport (valued at $10,000 on the black market). Thats a lot of value and you want me to hand it over to a “hostel owner” that I just met. But he didn’t want me to miss the nightly group of his hostel goers who were headed to the beach to enjoy some free beer (a ingenious promotion of his). “You don’t want to miss out. You know? That’s what hostels are all about. Getting to know good people. And mine is not a cold one. I wont have any loners at mine.”

Traveling is all about trust. Sometimes you only get an instant to judge whether you can trust someone or not. Sometimes you have everything riding on it. This time, my gut was right. That night I slept on a air mattress without any pillow or sheets. That is the name of the game at this hostel, disorganized. But it was amazing.

Back to the food. If you ever go to Bulgaria, get some sea food. I am sad to say that the single dish I had last night was without hesitation, better than anything I had in Turkey. But there are good foods in Turkey. Though the Kebabs are disappointing, the Chai (tea) is not something to miss. In addition, the rice is amazing in Turkey. It’s a blend of white rise and wild. The tomatoes are amazing in Turkey as well. They are served with the Turkish breakfast which consists of : sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, a boiled egg, toast and jam, and a huge slab of fetta cheese.

The other things that is surprisingly good in Turkey are meatballs and rice putting. Thats it.

The stereotypes about Eastern Europe are not warranted at all. The only accurate stereotype is the women being beautiful. I think the more accurate assessment is that they are all petite. Some of them have beautiful faces, but all of them tend to turn heads from a distance. And to make things more interesting, in Bulgaria only (and India) “Yes” is shown with weaving your head side to side and “No” is expressed by nodding your head up and down. So when I asked my waitress for another Sprite, she smiled and weaved her head side to side. I thought she was being cute with me and sarcastically saying no, but this was not the case; I am was in Bulgaria.

The ice cream here is that of the best in the world as well. Weird…. Right?

I’ve just learned that the “free wifi” here is actually the bar’s from down the road. WOW

I’m hearing the ethos of this hostel as I’m posting this message and I’ll have some great inside details soon!

“On what grounds do you find it ethically sound to keep charging me a $10 fee every month even though I have replenished my account to well over the $1,000 minimum balance? This is your one and only chance to reverse this fee and apologise for the petty nickel and diming act that you call banking.

I’m in Turkey at the moment, livid to see that you keep charging me these grotesque fees. People haven’t been doing banking this way for a long time and you (not the employee that will answer this communication, but the upper management who control the policies) should be ashamed of the complete abuse of trust that you use in your customers.

You should make money the honest way, through sound and prudent investments that are made possible BY YOUR CLIENT’S MONEY. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you and don’t forget who makes YOU possible in the end.

If my needs are not met, my next communication will be an inquire as to how to close this account and transfer the funds to a real bank who appreciates their customers.

Alex Rothaus”

Ok, not being deaf, acting deaf for a week. As Patrick would say “Since you can actually hear but can’t talk, you are technically a mute!”

Were I left you last, I was about to board a 4 day 3 night cruise from Olympus to Fettiey. I spent the next 4 days in a closed environment. The same people were sealed on this boat for a considerable amount of time. My results were interesting though probably not surprising once you read them. For starters, as said before, silence is contagious.

I found that the boat as a whole ended up being a quiet bunch, but particularly quiet when the deaf group was in the same area. If we were in the distance, I could hear them being louder, but still not as loud as I would have expected. It’s almost as if the other 10 passengers didn’t want to make us feel like we were excluded by talking around us. Funny thing was, the 3 real deaf people would have full signing conversations across the dinner table during every meal, so they didn’t feel left out at all. They just went about their life like normal (which it was).

Since I couldn’t sign, I chose to look stoicly out into the Mediterranean, acting uninterested in the three other’s conversation.  Or I would look intently and watch their hands, pretending to get something from the conversation.  I was posing to be the quiet one of the group (if you could ever in your most open heart believe that).  I was living a lie, and doing a terrible job of it (I thought).

Sometimes when the captain was giving important information out, I pretended to read his lips as I stared diligently at the centre of them.  When an ice cream boat drove up to ours, I surprisingly got a whole lot better at reading lips, even from a distance.

I’ve been told more than a few times that I tend to have a good balance of people and place in my posts.  I feel that sometimes the balance is tipped by a particularly beautiful place or person.  I think its only fair that I try and describe my setting for the first time in over a week:

I’m on a boat in the Mediterranean.  The water is very warm and very blue.  It’s hot as balls here and there isn’t a whole lot to do but get tan, swim, and swim some more.  It feels like you are in a Nautica commercial.  The food on the boat is surprisingly bad.  It’s bland and always the same ingredients, most of the time without even a guester of doctoring it up to make it appear to be different. The land around us is completely arid and occasionally has ruins, but our captain is not a tour guide, he just drives the boat.

That’s about enough of the setting, well almost.  We slept out on the roof of the boat all three nights under the Turkish stars.  Every night there were so many shooting stars you would think that the crew took the money they should have spent on food and a proper cook and bought 70 or so stars for the trip.

Speaking of eating, Stacy chews loudly and with her mouth partially open.  I’m not picking on her to be mean; I’m illustrating a point.  Chewing with your mouth closed is feat that is effectively done with the aid of hearing.  She is profoundly (completely) deaf and without hearing the subtle noise yourself, it is impossible to keep your mouth shut all of the time.  I know what your thinking “No, I was raised right, that’s why I don’t chew with my mouth open.”  Wrong, your jaw muscles are naturally more relaxed than what society suggests they should be.

If you don’t believe me, put in your ear phones and have a meal (take your time).  Blast some music and talk to a friend so that your not fixated on the task of beating my point.  Don’t worry about understanding your friend over the music, just talk.  Then ask your friend how loud your eating ended up by the end of the meal, you savage!

I did happen to do something productive on the boat.  I did a Scuba Dive on the second day.  Luckily I had two books full of dive logs and certifications to prove that I wasn’t some crazy deaf guy who didn’t know what he was doing.  I was amazing, as soon as I showed everyone the papers, that was it. No extra tests, no lack of trust.  Sure they may have given me the very most experienced diver on the boat as a partner, but the truth of the matter was, once under water, there was no difference between hearing people and deaf people.  In fact, the deaf people are better off because they can sign back and forth to each other as much as they like.

Everyone was great.  They didn’t treat me like I was stupid or slow, but they didn’t ignore me or try and take advantage of me.  You could sea collective honor in helping me.  A fulfilling sense of sympathetic pride in all that I had accomplished (pretending to be deaf ?)

I want to say that a communities humanity is judged based upon how they treat their members off all sorts and sizes.  I will say that this would would be a better place if we all treated each other like we couldn’t hear.  Maybe that’s the point.  We can’t hear each other, not in the literal sense of, but in the sense of taking the time to understand your neighbour.  When you can’t hear, the would around you gets very Japanese (read my posts on getting directions in Japan).

Really it’s an illusion though.  Deaf people are no different than you and I.  You would know that if you just hung out with a few for a week.  We think that they are disabled, but really they just can’t hear.

By the way, if you ever want to get knocked out by a deaf person, just call them disabled.  They hate that shit.  They also hate Helen Keller by the way because she said in an interview that, given the choice of gaining back one of her two lost senses, she would rather have hearing than sight.  That she could live without sight.  “What the fuck would she know about either!?” Said Dana

When we got off the boat, we spent one night in Fetteiey, a charming port town.  while walking around the town, Dana looked up and smiled at me as she set one foot into the street.  She was distracted by my amazing looks (probably not). A car came wizzing bye.  I a moment of importance, I grabbed her arm and yanked.

All those times I had been catching keys before they had hit the ground (after dropping them) had began to make sense.  All the times I could anticipate the fall and correct my stance and reach down with my peripheral vision began to make sense.  All the years that I didn’t place base ball and didn’t play video games to finely tune my hand eye coordination were void.  It was life saving time.

I pulled and luckily Dana weighs a measly 110 pounds.  I snapped her back like a child, thank God she wasn’t some 6 foot Nordic gal.  My life didn’t flash before my eyes.  My week with Dana didn’t flash before my eyes, but if I didn’t act as quickly as I had, she would have been dead.  She stepped out at the last second.  The car wouldn’t have had time to slow and she would have been pizza.

To be fair, she wouldn’t have crossed without looking unless she was with a hearing person who could warn her.  Her guard was down; she was chewing with her mouth open.

It was the first life I had ever saved.  It felt good.

The next day we went to a town called Pamukkale.  It is known for it’s mountain sized calcium deposits and springs that flow from them.  The place looks like a giant ice mountain, but is actually flowing with warm water and the air temp around us is in the high 90s.  It’s an amazing place where you are not allowed to walk on with shoes.  You quickly understand why when you see that your bare feet mixed with the ultra fine graininess of the calcium causes for a perfect grip.  Even at a steep incline, with a river of water flowing down, you simply couldn’t slip here if you tried.

Tomorrow we are going to Ethesus, one of the 7 wonders of the world apparently.  A place that has so many ruins, it makes Roam look like a half assed side show.  This will be the last I see of my deaf friends for this trip.  But some of them live in California and I hope to see them again when I return.

I’ll leave you with one last anecdote.  Over the 7 days I’ve been with the bunch I haven’t been the best student.  I still get my R’s and T’s mixed up in the signing alphabet and I only have a few vocabulary words.  In the same 7 days, Dana would get frustrated in this fact more than a few times.  She would let little slips of her voice come out when no one else was around.  These were unicorns in the world of a deaf person.  You just don’t talk for fear of how it might sound (not being able to hear your own voice often leads to a distortion in it.)

But every time I heard he voice, It was beautiful, so one day I told her so.  She smiled at me and soon after just talked.  She told me that I was the only hearing guy she has ever talked to after he hearing went (other than her brother, who still has a lot of his hearing.)  She said “Your lucky your too stupid to learn to sign.” But I think she’s the lucky one.  From my own stupidity, she was able to open up and do something that she probably thought she would never do again.

I thought that I would be the only one to learn over the last week.  I thought that it would be business as usual for them.  Just another hearing guy, learning a bit about their world that has always been and will always be.  But I left a mark.  For the first time in my travels I didn’t just do all the taking.  I left a mark.

Stacy, Patrick and Dana.

Stacy’s the loud one of the group. You can still hear her making slight noises as she holds her breath in concentration. It’s a slight hum. The same hum we all make and neglect to hear over the rest of our polluted world. She’s Braun-full in the way she walks at over six feet and red curly hair. Patrick is even taller at 6 foot 3 or 4 and a full build. He’s got dramatic eyebrows and a piercing at the base of his bottom lip, just above his chin. He’s all business, almost even intimidating until you give him a reason to smile. Then he cracks a biting one that would make your best look like a frown. Think of Jack from Will and Grace, but brighter. These smiles are spread liberally through his conversations. If Patrick absolutely needs to speak, he’ll do it softly and just enough for you to understand his over pronounced facial expressions and lip sinking. Then There’s Dana. Standing 5 foot 4 she looks just like Kate Hudson. She is completely silent. Unless you make her laugh, then you get a taste of the past.

If you haven’t guessed already, I am currently traveling with three deaf people I met at the bus stop in Cappadocia. As fate would have it, the two of our buses were combined at the last second and gave us a chance to sit together and talk all night. That is, write and lip sink to each other. But I have to say, sign language is extremely quickly learned if you are immersed in the three. It’s been 2 days now and I’ve stopped talking myself. For someone who loves to hear the sound of his voice as much as I do, not talking is incredible. An experience that I never thought I would get the chance to do.

It is like cheating as you learn a new language. We both speak the same language, but it’s just a matter of transmitting it to each other. For instance, they are way better at reading lips than me, but they can not rely on that completely. I can make up sign language as I go and they will tend to get my drift because they have been following the context. If we just jumped in the ocean and look at each other, they can sign me “cold” and I will understand it intuitively. If they tried to say “cold” when we were in the middle of a hot day, I would be lost. Context is everything in sign language.

It’s a great look into their world because when I am talking to them, people think I am deaf as well, because I am not making any noise. I get to see how people react to it and in Turkey, people are VERY respectful but not treating us (them) like they are idiots or anything. People love to watch us sign, but they don’t form a awkward crowd or anything. Sometimes they get free admission into places which is nice as well.

They don’t have the gift of voice inflection so they have to rely heavily on facial expressions. This means that when they speak, they have over pronounced emotions with their face. That is, unless I am just traveling with an extremely lively bunch!

Dana and Stacy are from a deaf family. It is passed on in their genetics generation over generation and deaf people tend to mary each other. Patrick is the only deaf one in his family. They are all teachers for the deaf in San Fransisco and are out for a month traveling around Croatia, Turkey and Serbia. Patrick (age 27) went on a 1 year round the world trip alone just like me 4 years ago. Stacy (age 30) loves to travel too and Dana (age 26) says she would go around the world alone if she wasn’t a girl (not because she is deaf) (who did I already mention looks just like Kate Hudson!)

Back to hanging out with these guys. Like hanging away from the tourists in a country makes you cringe when you see tourists again, I now cringe when I hear people breaking the sweet silence, even when it’s my own voice. I realize how obnoxious they can be and how much noise pollution we really have out there in the world. Ya that’s coming from me, the loud ass.

I can now enjoy the long forgotten whisper of a coke being poured into a glass. The slightest gulp of air being held when lip sinking and the demi silent moan of someone bearing down when leaning over. Isn’t it a tragedy that it takes their loss for me to appreciate what I have? I enjoy the silence, that is the silence of voices. I can move into the other world back and fourth as I please. I can also hear the sound of the waves crashing.

Dana began to lose her hearing when she was 6 and by the time she was in middle school she stopped talking to here friends on the phone. She can still hear high frequencies like a whistle blowing. Patrick was born with some hearing and is now profoundly deaf (completely) in one ear and almost in the other.

We let Patrick do the negotiating for the 4 day cruise from Olympus (where we are right now) to Fettiay. When he came back, he wrote on a piece of napkin to me “the guy thinks we are all deaf, so he’s giving us a discount because of it. You have to act deaf when we show up and pay.” I wrote back. “I’ll act deaf for the whole cruise!”

It’s a perfect opportunity to get a real different experience; a look into how someone else lives. I never thought I would like the silence so much. It’s like an all day functional meditation. I strongly suggest you take the chance, it you ever get it.

Today I went on a full day tour of the Southern Cappadocia region.  Thanks to Cary Johnson and his generous donation, I was able to have a full day of fun.  We started out by going down into an underground city that was built over a thousands of years ago.  It was designed as a backup city for when invaders came through.

The ironic part of this city is that it has been conquered by 5 cultures over the years.  This means that the second, third, fourth, and fifth culture slaughtered the previous generation in order to have a sanctuary of their own.

This city goes down 20 stories into the ground and housed over 10 thousand people in its hay day.  A true site to see.  Come to think of it, all of Cappadocia is a sight to see as the generations of cultures have carved their history and homes directly into the mountains.  There are so many sights that it is easy to get used to them.

Next we went to a city in the mountains, carved again, only this time partly by man and partially by nature.  Over thousands of years, the wind, water and sand have carved these hills and passage ways to look like a desert version of a ice bar.

We had a full day of fun and heat and the pictures wont do justice.

Thanks Cary!

Only two nights after I had made it to Istanbul, I decided on a whim to go South East to the town of Gorame which is in the Capadocia region of Turkey.

Turkey officially sits on both the European Continent and the Asian one. In fact, the greater Istanbul is split by the two continents and for only a dollar, you can get a ferry across the Mediterranean channel to the Asian side. There is a famous place to eat in Istanbul where you get a fish sandwich served directly from a boat swaying back and fourth in the channel. The boat has been converted into a huge grill. You Pay $3 and get the sandwich which is a half loaf of French bread (wide loaf) Cilantro, Onions, and a Butterflied fish fillet that has been cooked to perfection just seconds ago. To add a little liquid to this sandwich, there are huge bottles of Lemon Juice and salt shakers. Apply liberally and you’ve got possibly the best sandwich ever.

There are lots of little gems in the town when you know what you are looking for. It is also easy to pay way too much for something similar. Baklava is also big in this area. A flaky desert pastry, dripping in liquid sugar and filled with bits of pistachio nuts. All of this was grand, but it was time to see more than just the famous city. I decided to jump on an overnight bus, last second, at the suggestion of Jonathan, my now traveling buddy. The bus bay was full of state of the art beasts. Getting out of the bay was terrifying, as they drove these 60 seater’s like they were mopeds. They cut in line and snaked about each other liberally.

On the bus, we met a very kind 40 something accountant named Akmed (Be prepared because the names only get better). We talked with him for ages about everything from the local history to the fact that many people in Turkey believed that Michael Jackson was a Muslim. He said that on of Michael’s songs had some Islamic connotations and that makes people believe that the king was Muslim.

One of the subjects that was a little tricky was when he asked us what religion we were. He was a very liberal guy, but when Jonathan brought out the Zoastrianism (the 5000 year old religion that Jewdao Christian faiths are based on.) (Yikes, I think I just offended everyone but the Hindus and the Buddhists with that last parenthetical sentence) It got a bit dicy. Johnathan quickly said, “But I am young and have a lot to think of before I decide. Akmed said “But many people don’t believe in religion, but believe in God, are you one of those?” This surprisingly liberal statement was part of why Turkey is so unique. They are a Muslim nation, but still drink quite a bit as an example to their complexity.

Here is Turkey summed up in an easy statement: “Turkey is blatantly complex.” It doesn’t take long to know that there is a ton under the surface to everyone here, and that you probably won’t figure them out anytime soon. The people here are all very beautiful, humble, and deep. You get frequent chances to talk for hours with them as they will invite you in for Chai (tea) without any ulterior motive. Chai is the proper name for tea, even though in America we would refer to a certain type of tea as chai tea, to them we would be saying “tea tea”. Their tea, by the way, is incredible.

Later in the bus we talked about America and Akmed’s fondness to Obama. He, as do everyone else in the world, was not a fan of Bush. As we spoke, a bow tied young man was walking up and down the isle of the overnight bus, serving us and everyone else with chai, water, and the occasional twinky.

Early that morning at 4:30 am, I woke up while the bus was still moving through the dessert. I saw something that made Turkey worth it. I saw something that I have never seen and never thought I would. I didn’t even think it was possible. As the twilight began, the sky was a pale white. It wasn’t partly white, it was completely white. In the foreground were clouds that didn’t catch any light due to the curvature of the hills and mountains. They were completely black. Close to road were hills that began by being black, but as the seconds rolled on, they became more and more white. In amazement, I thought my rods (or cones, not sure which one anymore) in my eyes had stopped working. Never did I think that it was even possible, let alone beautiful.

Within 30 minutes, the sun had peaked its face over the hills and the sky had ever so gently turned apricot. This was markedly not peach as I would grow to find that Capadocia had tons of apricot trees that wildly in both senses of the word. Capadocia is a high dessert that hundreds of years ago was used by the Christians as safe haven. There are thousands of cone shaped caves that poke out of the land here that the Christians cleverly chizzled into their homes. It is now a huge tourist attraction for both foreigners and Turkish.

When we checked into our hostel, we ended up getting into a 3-4 hour conversation with the owner of the hostel. He was a little less fond of America and thought that Obamma was no different than Bush. He told us that he could see that Obamma was lieing during the elections. He was, on the other hand, very interested in our third travel buddy (who tagged along by inviting herself from the hostel in Istanbul) who was an winy, worried, and negatively attitude-ed Austrian girl. We joked with the hostel owner saying that we would sell her for 3 camels. He didn’t think it was funny at all. He was very interested in this proposition. Even though she was carrying around an extra 100-150 pounds, he was very attracted to her.

Though he was not rude or touchy, he was very aggressive charming in his intent. I can understand why they don’t let women traveling alone on the night buses sit in the back of the bus. This culture is very segregated for the women at times, but from what I have seen, it seems to be for their benefit.

The next day, we rented mountain bikes and went cruising around the greater Capadocia area. By cruising, I mean either barely getting up steep hills, or bombing down them at a rate of speed so fast that my 21st or 24th gear on my bike was still not enough to get any sort of traction while peddling.

We went to an open air museum that was a waste of money seeing as we went to a random cave that proved to be much better and completely deserted. There was a man at the second cave that was there to charge the 2 lira (66 cents) to get in. Inside of the cave we found many rooms that were guarded with giant rolling stones that were designed to be implemented in case of an attack. These were something straight out of Indiana Jones. They must have weighed 4-6 tones each.

We we got outside, we chatted with the man who guarded this cave. His name was, yes, believe it or not, Borat. He was 47 and very kind, but with a tragic past. He has lost one wife and 3 children. He also recently received brain surgery in Istanbul, so he wears is hair like a toned down mow hawk to draw attention away from the huge hook shaped scar that covered the left side of his skull. He was very kind and gentle. As we offered him a cookie, he promptly ran off for a few minutes and came back with chai. This is the type of hospitality you will find in rural Turkey, even if it is a tourist spot.

As we eventually left, we were getting back on the road only to hear Borat whistling at as from across the canyon and giving us a huge wave of his arms. He was just saying goodbye one last time.

Later we wanted to do some off-roading on our brand new, shinny, full suspension, rented mountain bikes. We turned off of the road and headed for the dried up river bed. As we mad our way down the hill we saw a black horse. Promptly after that, 4 of the largest dogs I had ever seen came charging towards us, growling and barking in a deep boom. We figured that the beasts were too big and fast to out run and the terrain wouldn’t let us even turn around if we wanted to. We stopped and stood still.

In true doggy form, the beasts slowed and eventually sniffed us as we had gone silent and given them a poor thing to chase. They looked like a cross between a crème Lab and Grate Dane. Around their necks were the absolute most intimidating things. First a sheep skin to protect the dog and then what looked like an our turned bear trap to fend off another. These were the most evil dog colors I have ever teen. Jagged and rusty spikes that were 4 inches long each pointed outwards.

When we got to the bottom of the hill there were two local men that we chated with. It turns out that the dogs were their sheep herders, but I would have guessed bear herders by the looks of the callers. We got back on the road and saw some wild apricot trees, so we decided to pick a few. It if were a day later, they would be rotten, but today, they were perfectly ripened and heated by the summer sun.

We got back to the main town of Gorame after 6 grueling hours, but it was way more than worth the effort. Tomorrow we may take a bus to the underground cities that lie 60 miles away. Then after that, I will make my way down to Olympus, which is a town situated in the south on the Mediterranean.