Greetings from your favorite mzungu!

Written Oct 30. I finally got the pictures up! See you all soon!

Today is the 2-week mark of my time here in Malawi, and life is good. I live in an electricity-free beach camp with 8 other volunteers ranging in age from 22-30, plus Liz and Geoff Furber, the English couple who run Ripple Africa. We have a solar-powered fridge, a wood-fired cookstove, and a cold-water bathroom block (which is actually really nice). We sleep 2 to a chalet, and my chalet-mate is a feisty little South African girl called Robyn. I have found my match in the sweet-tooth department—she has been known to eat six chocolate bars in a single sitting, and we are hot chocolate buddies (around here, that means half a scoop of cocoa, hot water, and some sugar).
To be fair, the nearest real chocolate is an hour and a half’s walk away, so you have to grab it while you can! Robyn and I have the best chalet, about 10 yards from the beach, and we get the most gorgeous sunrise views from our porch (when there are no electric lights, you tend to go to bed at 8:00 or 9:00 and get up around 5:00).

Lest I make life here sound frightfully rustic, I will mention that we have two women who do our laundry every day (Martha and Geddes, some of the sweetest women worldwide) as well as two cooks, Harry and Nephia, who make our dinners each night. I thought coming here might be a bit of a ‘fat camp’ type experience, and definitely there are days when there isn’t much to eat during the day, but the evening meal is always really nice. We are all learning to appreciate plain rice for lunch!


Though malaria is very common among the villagers here, none of the volunteers have caught it yet, and to be honest, the mosquitoes here are nowhere near as bad as they were in SE Asia. I’ve heard it said, though, that it’s not a matter of if you get malaria, but when—even if you’re taking meds like doxycycline, which we all are. So I guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

Here are more things I love about Malawi so far:
1. The children (when they’re not pestering me for money, empty bottles, or pens). When we’re walking along, they’ll run up to us, grab our hands, and stare adoringly up at us. They start helping around the household at a really young age (I’ve seen 3 and 4-year-olds leaving the borehole with heavy buckets of water on their heads), so they generally don’t get a lot of affection. We have small-group reading sessions at the school in the afternoons, and they are generally really happy times for me, with little kids running after me to carry my chair, my book, my water bottle, or whatever else I may have in my hands, and then they sit in the dust in front of me smiling and participating as much as they can understand. (Children get taught exclusively in English from standard 5 and up, but their comprehension is often very very low. The native language is called Chitonga, and mzungu is what they call white people—not derogatory.)

2. The lake. It’s nearly the size of Malawi itself, so living next to it feels like camping at the ocean. It’s nice to be able to swim whenever we want and to listen to the waves, and there’s a big deck overlooking the water where we sometimes eat dinner and I often do a bit of sunrise yoga. So it’s a very peaceful place to live.

3. The other volunteers. They come from England, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, and the US, and I really like them all. After these past nomadic months, it’s so nice to settle in with some friends.


Okay, so here are some things I don’t like about Malawi so far:
1. The flies. They are everywhere and are disgusting. The worst is to see them land on children’s noses or lips or eyeballs, and the kids don’t even flinch. It’s like National Geographic around here with those damn things.

2. Women do, almost without exception, all the work. In the villages, it is rare to see men doing anything besides sitting around, and it irritates me to no end. And this is subsistence farming country, so it’s not like there are proper jobs to be had (unless you are employed by Ripple). So the work that needs to be done are things that feed a family and keep a household running, which falls to the women. And they all work so so hard. It’s a different culture, of course, but I blatantly cannot stand the male-dominatedness of this place. Women do all the work and men have all the power. Men won’t wear condoms and women with more children than they can handle already take birth control in secret (if they can get it) because it’s a sign of the husband’s virility to have loads of kids. If they get caught, they are beaten and raped. In the national newspaper you see front-page headlines like “Sex-starved man in for injuring wife,” a story about a “poor local man” whose wife wouldn’t sleep with him (because she’d given birth two months prior) so he “allegedly injured her private parts.” It is appalling, and actually probably surprising that the husband had any punishment at all. The good news among all of this is that part of what we’re doing here is setting up systems that are multi-pronged (like projects that empower women, positively affect the environment, and allow people to go into business for themselves), and many of them get people to work that would otherwise be sitting around. So hopefully, on some level, we can change the customs a bit so women aren’t the only ones working around here! And the power balance… well, that’s something that will probably just take time.

In terms of the projects that we’re working on, here is a list of my favorites (if you didn’t know what a little list-lover I am, you do now!):

1. Mboulas. These are small clay ovens that cook more efficiently and use less wood than the traditional open-air fires. Mboulas use one-third the amount of wood than an open-air fire, a fact which is incredibly relevant in Malawi these days. Deforestation is a major problem around here. The population is rapidly growing, trees aren’t getting replanted, women are walking over 3 km each way to get enough wood for the day, and the distance between their villages and the trees is growing each year. When the rainy season starts, women have to light the day’s fire inside their huts, and the amount of lung-related illnesses seen in the health clinics, especially in children, explodes. Mboulas create less smoke and can be set just outside under the eaves during the rain, eliminating this problem. Ripple sets up mboula workshops in the villages where local women have expressed a desire to start a business. The charity pays for a kiln to fire the mboulas in as well as a shed where they can lock them up. The women collect the clay, make the mboulas, fire them, and sell them in the villages. I am so in love with this solution to four major problems: women can make their own money (which is much much more likely to go towards a family’s needs than money a man makes), Malawi’s trees are cut down less frequently, since everyone is using one third the wood they normally would, health issues are sidestepped during the rainy season, and a self-sustaining business is created.

2. Tree nurseries. Each village, at the request of its chief, can have a tree nursery set up by Ripple. The charity buys the seedlings for the trees and the villagers plant them when they are ready, take care of them, and are paid with any profit they may make from the fruit from them. I don’t know quite as much about this project as I do about the others, but I know the nursery next to the beach plants a mixture of softwood trees, which are fast-growing and can be used for firewood and building, as well as fruit trees.

3. Vegetable gardens. Enterprising Malawians contact Ripple about setting up a vegetable garden. If they seem up for the task, the charity sets them up with seeds, a couple of watering cans, some garden hoes, and leaves them to it. We visited some the other day and were majorly impressed. Thriving gardens generate income for their owners from the fruit and vegetables grown and support themselves in years to come. We’re also hoping to address issues of nutrition with this project—many people live on a diet of nsima, which is a dough-like dish made from cassava flour. Very occasionally they’ll have fish, and more often they will collect and eat lake flies (more on that later). So though fruit and veg are kind of a new idea, we’re hoping to get some demonstrations going in the markets of how to prepare them, so hopefully the people will learn to like them and their health will improve.

4. Fish ponds. The fish population in Lake Malawi can’t keep up with the rising demand of the growing human population, and fishermen that used to catch fish near the shores are having to paddle over an hour into open water to catch anything. Because the fish population is decreasing, the lake fly population is exploding. Usually lake flies lay their eggs on the surface of the lake, where the fish eat many of them before they hatch. Now there are way too many lake flies, and it’s actually happened that fishermen have been suffocated when the eggs hatch and the flies swarm around them. There are days when you can look out at the lake and see a gigantic black cloud that actually looks like an approaching thunderstorm, but it’s actually a zillion lake flies. People collect giant baskets of lake flies and make patties of them to eat because they can’t afford fish anymore. Ripple is just beginning a fish pond project, where we’ll help enterprising villagers set up the ponds, the fish will breed, and they’ll be sold in the villages. More farmed fish equals cheaper, more available fish, more fish in the lake, and fewer lake flies. (This is, selfishly, one of my favorite projects because when we eat dinner on the deck we get absolutely infested with lake flies. We don’t even bother picking them out of our food and drink anymore.)

This has already been such an eye-opening experience for me. If I had three suggestions to give to people at home, who would probably never come to Africa but are interested in helping, I would tell them this:

1. Don’t be ignorant. Learn about African issues, talk to people about them, and vote for people and issues that share your views. If you are interested, act like it. And be aware that money is not always the answer. Big NGOs, for all their good intentions, have all but created a culture of dependency in Africa. People expect handouts because that’s what they’ve been given all through their lifetimes. Throwing money at the problem does more harm than good. (Parenthetically, I would advise people to not donate clothes intended for African people. The whole garment and textile industry has collapsed because of cheap imports—an entire portion of their culture—and everyone dresses in western rags. I actually saw a kid the other day wearing a ratty t-shirt with the Dairy Queen logo, except that it said “Drama Queen—San Francisco.” Funny at the time, but sad in the end.)

2. If you do want to send money, be very aware of who you are giving it to and how it is being spent. Corruption is a way of life in Africa, and often money stops with corrupt government officials and not a cent gets to its intended recipients.

3. Recognize that we cannot fundamentally change African culture, and nor should we aspire to. This will probably never be a place with a chicken in every pot, at least not in our lifetimes. The key is not to aim for running water, paved roads, and cable television for each Malawian, but to help them help themselves in the ways that they want help (a hand up, not a handout, as the Ripple saying goes). If you ask 10 children what they like best about living in Malawi, 8 of them will say nsima, the food they eat morning, noon, and night (the other 2 will say soccer). They don’t sit around wishing they could live in New York City—they are happy here. But these post-colonial countries with slim to no healthcare, virtually no natural resources, and exploding human populations need help setting up systems in which they can support themselves.

I know it kind of sounds like I’ve been drinking the kool-aid over here, but you can’t spend time here without feeling first extreme frustration at the seeming futility of trying to do anything in this place and then looking for practical ways to improve it. It’s a beautiful country with really beautiful people, and most of them are extremely happy. I’m just so glad I can be here to help further projects that really seem like they can make a difference in the manner of living that Malawians want.

On a lighter note, we have adopted a little kitten, who Geoff saved from the malicious intentions of a spitting cobra he found in his backyard (and yes, I did say spitting cobra… apparently its venom will blind you if it gets in your eyes!). We’ve named the little guy Johnny Durex (because for the first week of his life he drank milk from a nipple fashioned out of a condom), and, though he cries an irritating amount, he’s very cute (when he’s sleeping).

Miss you all! Love, Sheri

Hello from Malawi!!

Sorry friends-- no pictures on offer today. Not sure if there will be a card reader at all while I'm here, but it's possible the resort where I'll be able to get on the internets once I get to my new village will have one.

So I arrived in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, two days ago. The flights were uneventful, but I have to say I was expecting a bit more modernity than I've found (apparently the capital is not the main city here). I'm staying in a nice enough place run by a young English expat, and a 15 minute walk away takes you to a small complex with an Internet cafe (where I am now), a bank, a gas station, and a small supermarket (you would not believe the produce section.. basicaly wrinkly tomatoes and some garlic. I am looking forward to the mango trees I've heard about in my village!). All the houses around here have razor wire around their 10-foot walls and at least two nightwatchmen. (It reminds me a lot of your neighborhood, Mom and Dad.) But people have been really lovely to me so far-- every time I walk into 'town', everyone on the street smiles and says hello, and all the guards call me 'madame.'

Possibly the coolest thing so far that I've seen, that really made me realize I am in Africa (!!!), was on the cab ride here from the airport. We're careening down the road, no AC, no seatbelts, my window won't roll down, and I see a woman up ahead walking along the road carrying probaby 4 dozen eggs on her head. My driver started honking at her to make sure she knew we were coming, and she kind of whips around to look, and the eggs don't move an inch! Such skill!

I leave tomorrow morning for my new home, on the shore of Lake Malawi, at a place called Mwaya Beach. I'll be working with a charity called Ripple, living in a hut on the beach, asssisting in a primary school. If anyone's interested in the charity (which seems to be really well run and sincerely interested in the wellbeing of the village), you can find out more about them here: www.rippleafrica.org. Not sure when I'll next be able to post, but time is flying and I'll be leaving for the Dominican Republic in just 8 weeks, so I'll definitely catch up on pictures at least once I get to my parents' house. Hope you all are well!!

P.S.
I realize I pretty much skipped out on posting about my Italy leg, but it was such a lovely place and it was pretty much heaven to have a week with my family and stay in such a gorgeous place (our villa in Tuscany had a huge patio and pool overlooking vineyards all around). Rome was busy and beautiful, and then I had a few days down on the Amalfi coast which were really relaxing and breathtaking as well. I'll try to find a way to get pictures up sometime in the near future!

Shaking my Tailfeathers in Turkey

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Sorry this has been such a long time coming—Turkey was a blast and I meant to post when I got to Italy, but Venice was kind of the black hole of wifi, and once I met up with my family life was too busy to get to a computer. So I wrote this about two weeks ago and haven't had a chance to post it until now.

I had such a great time in Turkey. I flew into Istanbul at 2AM carrying no cash for the visa that I wasn’t aware I needed to buy. Of course ATMs are on the other side of customs, and the office doesn’t take credit cards. This was not a problem, however, as an incredibly nice airline worker walked me to the ATM, apologized for the trouble, and made sure the guy selling me the visa was nice to me.

So of course I’ve flown here from mainland Europe, where almost everything useful closes at 8:00 or 9:00, so I’m thinking the airport will be dead—I’ll have to sleep there and bumble around until I can figure out how to get to the bus station (I planned to get down to central Turkey by that evening). However, I clearly underestimated the helpfulness of the Turkish people—a bus was waiting right outside the door, which deposited me at the bus station (otogar). By now it’s 3:00 AM and now I’m thinking no one will be there—I’ll sleep on the sidewalk until 8:00 AM and then buy my ticket. Wrong again. A guy met me at the bus, grabbed my backpack, and led me to the ticket office, where he banged on the window until someone came to open the door. This guy let me in, turned on the lights, sold me a ticket, and offered me some tea. I had no idea Turkey would be so hospitable!

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So after a 6 hour wait in the bus station and a 12 hour bus ride, I finally made it down to Goreme, in Cappadoccia, central Turkey. This place is like nowhere I’ve ever seen—the landscapes are incredible. Everything is a dusty brown, the sunsets are dusty pink, and every few hours you hear the call to prayer from the mosque—haunting and exciting every time. I stayed in an amazing pension, run by a woman from Scotland who’s lived in Turkey for 25 years. I promptly met up with some nice American kids who were staying there as well, and we ended up running around together for most of the rest of my time in Turkey. The best part of the pension (besides the delish food) was my balcony—one morning I got up to see the sunrise and all the hot air balloons that take off for sunrise flights (for the low low price of 160 euros… I passed on that one).


One day in Goreme my new friends and I went on a daylong bus tour, which was really cool—we ended up seeing some crazy caves that have been used for about a zillion years, first as a monastery and school, and then eventually as a motel 6 for travelers on the Silk Road. You can still see frescoes from when it was a religious center, but a lot of them are covered in campfire smoke from later times. We also toured an underground city—there are 35 of them in the area, but the one we went in was 8 levels deep and super interesting. People used them as defense shelters when Arabs came invading, and some of the corridors were so small we had to basically crawl on hands and knees. I guess the people only stayed in there up to 2 weeks, but after about 1 hour I was ready to see sunlight again! Our last stop on the tour was at Pigeon Valley, and instead of taking the bus back with the group my friends and I decided to hike the 4 km back. Our guide said the trail was kind of hard to follow, since it’s unmarked and there are lots of other little paths leading to people’s vineyards, but she didn’t seem too concerned, so we took off. It was a nice walk and the landscape was really cool, but eventually we got to a point where we had no clue what to do. The trail kept on straight, but it was too dangerous to take—sheer cliffs going up and down, and the trail only about 4 inches wide. We couldn’t figure out how to get down to the valley floor, and above us was straight up. Plus, it was starting to get dark, so we were getting a little worried. All of a sudden this guy probably in his 70’s shows up (wearing dress shoes, naturally) and starts showing us the way. We gathered that he lived on the side of the mountain in a little camp we’d passed through earlier, and he told us he had 20 dogs (about 7 of them followed us around). So he starts climbing straight up the side of the mountain and we follow—it literally felt like we were climbing up the side of an egg. Once at the top, he helped us climb straight down the other side—holding our feet so we wouldn’t slip. Eventually we’d climbed around the scary part of the trail and met up with it on the safe side. It took all of about 10 minutes, but this guy seriously saved our lives. So we go to tip him—Todd hands 5YTL (which is nearly $5), and this guy acts like he doesn’t even see. He looks off in the distance and waits. So we give him 10YTL, he takes it, and walked off without a word. It was hilarious! And really, I probably would have fallen off the cliff if he hadn’t shown up.

So the next day we rented scooters to explore the area on our own, and we had a bit of a time convincing the rental place to hand them over. The day before, 3 Americans also staying at our pension had taken some out and gotten into a little accident right at the end—they scraped up the scooters pretty bad and actually had to go to the hospital for some scrapes and cuts. So we show up the next day, scooter virgins, and the owner was really wary about giving them to us—he kept trying to get us to rent a car instead. True, none of us had ever driven them, but we knew we’d be careful, and eventually we talked the guy into it. Then we go in the back room to pick out our helmets, and found that nearly all of them were seriously cracked! We ended up having to wear batting cage-type helmets (my brother saw a picture of them and called them 'swimming caps,') and that definitely solidified our resolve to take it slow. Scooting around was a lot of fun and we saw lots of little towns in the area. The funniest part was that in all the small places we would see tons of men in the town squares, just sitting around. We didn’t see any women—just men—and they just sit around, apparently waiting for people like us to show up so they can stare at us and laugh at the way we park our scooters. It was funny, but I was definitely glad I wasn’t there by myself!

That night Kiley and I took a night bus up to Istanbul, and got into town the next morning. We right away got some sightseeing done, seeing the Aya Sofia (gigantic and impressive), the Covered Bazaar (4000 stalls and probably 7000 carpet salesmen), and the Blue Mosque. We stayed in a really cool hostel right next to all the big sights that had a great rooftop terrace with a view of the Bosphorous.
It was cold and cloudy most of the time in Istanbul, so that’s why I’m all bundled up! It was probably a good thing, though, since we had to wear jeans and sweaters—girls attract enough attention on the streets there; I would hate to be there when the weather called for shorts and tank tops!

Since it’s Ramadan, the town really comes to life at night—there are tons of food stalls and lots and lots of people out—it felt like a carnival.
One night we sat down at a restaurant that had a live band and a singer playing Turkish songs, and it seemed like everyone else in the place knew all the words, they were all singing along, and random people from the audience would get up on the stage and dance. Everyone had their cups of chai and were smoking hookahs filled with apple tobacco, and it was just such a cool atmosphere—it felt like we weren’t tourists.

So the funny thing about Istanbul is that you get propositioned to buy a carpet about 45 times a day. It’s usually kind of irritating, because you’ll tell them you’re a backpacker, have no money, and no home in which to lay a carpet, and they tell you ‘oh no problem, just come in my shop, have a look at the nice designs, have some tea’ and if you’re dumb enough to step inside, they pressure you to buy until you have to leave them mid-sentence. There was one funny guy, though, who called out to us on the street, “Hey lady! You have $20,000? Want to buy a carpet?”

I also went to a hamam, which is a Turkish bath, which I was pretty excited about, but it turned out to be a little underwhelming. I think I was expecting more of a spa-type experience, and it was more of a ‘sit stark naked in a room full of strangers and have a fat hairy Turkish woman soap you up’ type of thing. The room was really beautiful, though, and this particular hamam has been in use since 1741, so that was cool. (Note to fellow travelers: if a site has been featured in the book ‘1000 Places to Go Before You Die’, it’s probably a good idea not to go. This hamam was apparently in the book, which we were reminded of every time we turned around, and it felt pretty tourist-trap-ish because of it.)

Probably my favorite sight in Istanbul was the Cistern, which apparently was the water source in ancient Istanbul. It was a really beautiful place, wish gorgeous columns and big fat fish swimming around in it.

I was sad to leave Turkey! It’s definitely a place I’d like to go back—I heard great things about the southern coast.

So after a long journey, I finally made it to Italy. I’m in Venice now, which has been… cold. The canals are really beautiful, but it’s been pouring sheets of rain, and the hostel I’m staying in has been laughably bad (they kick you out of your room at 9:00! In the rain!) I think especially after the warmth of Turkish people, I am amazed at how rude I have found Italians (well...Venetians) so far. Up until now, it’s seemed like they’ll go out of their way to be unpleasant, which is probably just a cultural difference, but it kind of sucks. I had my first real Italian gelato yesterday, which was delish, and the woman who sold it to me didn’t spit in it or my face, so I guess they’re not all bad! =) Tomorrow I meet up with my family, so I’m probably just antsy for that. I’m ready to stop living in hostels and see some loved ones!

Berchtesgaden und Interlaken

Well, the bad news is that I finished the latest Harry Potter in 22 hours, leaving me slightly panicky about what exactly I was supposed to do for the next day and a half in Berchtesgaden, a small small place where I heard no English and absolutely everything closes on Sunday (of course... I got in on a Sunday and nearly starved). The good news is that the next day I took a bus to a nearby lake called Konigsee and took some lovely pictures and a great video, which I strangely can't seem to figure out how to put up just now. So you'll have to be satisfied with these. =) Berchtesgaden was a nice break from the massive amounts of sightseeing I've been doing, and when the stores opened, I bought some really nice cheese, bread, and fruit and had a little picnic on the riverside. These were my first real views of the Alps on this trip, so that was exciting.

After a couple of days in Berchtesgaden, I took the train into Switzerland, to Interlaken. I've been there before, with my family years ago, but I didn't recognize a thing. Apparently I was too busy with the chocolate and fondue to notice my surroundings the first time around! Interlaken was really lovely-- great weather, nice walks, and beautiful views. I'd already done the expensive stuff like going up to the Jungfrau with my family (that's the white mountain in the picture--thanks Mom and Dad!), so I wandered around in the valley a bit. The first day I went to the nearby village of Oberhofen and visited a castle that my family had gone to, and it was even nicer than I remembered. The bus ride to Oberhofen follows Lake Thun, and the whole 40 minutes there I was glued to the window.
Once I reached the castle, I literally gasped in awe at the view-- the green gardens with flowers everywhere, the blue of the lake, and the mountains in the distance.



I had a nice afternoon sitting on the shore, eating grapes and reading a fashion magazine that cost me a laughable 12 francs (everything in Interlaken/maybe all of Switzerland is about 3 times what you'd pay at home. I never thought I'd say it, but I couldn't wait to get back to the euro).

The next day I took the train up to Lauterbrunnen, which may just be the most beautiful mountain valley on earth. I took a nice long walk through the valley to some waterfalls that are inside the mountain-- you pay 10 francs and they take you up to the top in a claustrophobic elevator, and then hike down. They were pretty interesting, but the views outside were much more impressive.

More to come in a couple of days about Turkey! I've been here less than 24 hours and I'm already in love with the place. However, I haven't taken any pictures yet and goodness knows I can't make a post without visual aides, so I'll write more later. Ciao!

I could use some rays (as in... drops of golden sun)

Guten tag from rainy Austria! In the past week that I've been in this lovely country, I have noticed exactly 6 precipitation-free waking hours, not that that has stopped me from playing the tourist. My first stop was Vienna, which was lovely and clean and had excellent public transport (I'm noticing a European pattern here...) There were a number of highlights in Vienna, the first being that I found the Euro version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the supermarket and proceeded to eat nearly the whole box in one day. I also came across tons of traditional Viennese coffeehouses that first day, so you know, to be cultural and all, I had to stop and try some gooey cake and coffee (and hot chocolate.. and apple strudel-- not all in one sitting, though). I also went to Schloss Schonbrunn, on the edge of the city, and was truly amazed by the immensity of the palace and the beauty of the grounds. That second picture is the view from the Gloriette, at the top of the grounds.

The best stories from Vienna are these, though: the first involved the pharmacist at the drugstore. I haven't been sleeping through the night for the last month or so because I have this weird old lady back pain (I blame my ginormous backpack), and I ran out of Aleve, and apparently in Europe you can't even buy Advil equivalent in a regular store but have to go through someone in a white coat. So I was explaining the situation to this sweet white-haired (and white-coated!) man who spoke passable English, and he kept asking me if I had someone who could give me a message... I'm thinking.. does he need to consult with someone and get back to me? Turns out he meant 'massage,' because he had some cream to give me to rub into the hurting area. So cute! Then he gave me some real drugs, too, so I'm happy.

The second experience involved another Viennese man. I was walking around the museum district and this guy my age, wearing brocade pantaloons and a long jacket (and yes... I said pantaloons) came up to me trying to sell me tickets to the ballet. (It's a costume, he wasn't a lunatic). I tried to get rid of him by saying I had plans with some people at my hostel, and he asked me if I would invite him along to 'show him my moves,' at which point he did a faint bump and grind. In his pantaloons. I nearly died laughing. I think the funniest part of that story is that the exact same guy tried to get my friend Jen to buy tickets just days before (Jen and I were in Prague together, and she went straight to Vienna from there).

So now I am in Salzburg, where I am possibly one of 10 people roaming the streets who is not qualified for AARP membership. That may be an exaggeration, but it seems like perhaps there is an age requirement to visit Salzburg that I was not aware of. Regardless, I've been getting my music history on with visits to Mozart's childhood homes (I roamed the rooms where he was born! and composed operas! and I saw the clavichord on which he composed The Magic Flute!). My childhood piano and voice lessons have come to haunt me, stealing any ounce of coolness I brought with me to this town. =) Also, today I watched 'The Sound of Music' and then wandered the palace grounds (in the rain, of course) where Fraulein Maria and the von Trapp kids frolicked around singing the 'doh a deer' song. This picture was taken from the steps where they jump around singing 'doh me me, me so so...' Yeah I know, you guys are all green with envy. =) The next photo is me honing my self-portait skills in the archway where they do more running around and singing.
Last night I went to a string quartet performance of works by Mozart and others in the castle on these grounds, which was really nice. Again-- I was the only one under 50 in the room, but the music was really beautiful and the musicians were these cute white-haired guys who all seemed like good friends.

Tomorrow I'll leave Austria and go a whopping 25 km north to Berchtesgaden, which is a little town in south Germany that's meant to be really quiet and beautiful. I've decided to finally join the 21st century and read the latest Harry Potter, so I went to the bookstore, and 20 euros later, I am well-equipped for 2 straight days of reading. I'm looking forward to it!

Czech it out!

I’m writing now from the teeny tiny town of Cesky Krumlov, in southern Czech Republic, right near to Austria. I’ve been here for about 24 hours, and my biggest accomplishments so far have been to walk into the town to buy bonbons and sit around talking with two funny Irish guys—this is a rough life I’m leading, I know.

Before here I was in Prague, and before that, Berlin. Berlin, as I was repeatedly told by German friends in Thailand, is a superhip town; and I don’t disagree. I took a really funny and informative walking tour (where our guide insisted that he needed ‘someone from Seattle’ to demonstrate ‘west side’ at the Berlin Wall… so it wasn’t my idea =) and fell in love with Berliners’ self-deprecating love with David Hasselhoff (the bar sign cracked me up, even though a German friend insisted that ‘hof’ means ‘fun’ in German.) The bar in the basement of our hostel did have an extensive shrine to the Hoff, including the book “Did David Hasselhoff end the Cold War?” Perhaps! To be perfectly honest, the highlights of Berlin were the breakfast at the hostel (fresh fruit!), the bratwurst stands near the tourist sites, and FINALLY seeing the Simpsons movie. You know, in between seeing Hitler’s bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the former HQ of the SS and Gestapo, the square where the Nazis staged the bookburning of 1933, and the Brandenburg Gate. I loved Berlin!

From there I went to Prague for about 4 days, which was really nice. I met up with an English girl and we spent the days together running around, seeing the sights. We went to the Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, St Vitus Cathedral, the Old Palace, the Jewish Cemetery, saw the Astronomical Clock, and took in a string quartet performance. Czech food, by the way, is delicious (if you’re a meat-eater, of course). I had some really wonderful beef-based meals in Prague. Mostly I liked Prague because it was really unpretentious, had lots of water and pretty bridges, had excellent public transport (Seattle needs to take lessons!!), and had some delish restaurants.

I’ll leave Cesky Krumlov tomorrow and get into Vienna mid-day. After I get my Austria on, it’ll be off to Switzerland and into southern Germany to the Black Forest, then on to Turkey, and then Italy! I meet up with my family in just less than 4 weeks in Tuscany, which I am super excited about. Hope you all are well!

Ahhhhh Brugge

It seems to be that I love each European city a bit more than the last. I spent three days in the small north Belgian town of Brugge, and it should have been three weeks. It’s very small and laughably charming. Walking around felt a bit like being in a storybook, one tailored to my personal interests (big surprise—they mainly involve eating!). There is a chocolate shop on nearly every corner, wafflehauses nearly everywhere, and enough windy streets ending in pretty courtyards or city canals to keep a normally direction-oriented person pleasantly lost for most of every day. I spent a couple days just wandering around the town, delighted to find old churches to poke around in and random windmills on the edge of the city, and took a really funny and informative walking tour from a guy at my hostel. One night there was a really long parade that celebrates the marriage of two royals way back in 1600something, an event that happens once every five years (I was going to see the Simpsons movie that night, but thought I should perhaps have the twice-a-decade cultural experience instead). Another night my hostel put on an all you can eat barbeque, which is just about the best news a poor meat-eating backpacker can hear. We all stuffed ourselves on the pasta, veggies, and kebabs that came out first, and then they started cooking the cutlets. So we all tried those out too, complaining that we were already full, and then we learned they still had sausages and ribs to bring out! I probably ended up eating more meat on that night than I have for the entirety of my trip so far, but it was delish. Of course we all went out for waffles afterwards, though!

Another nice thing to do in Brugge (besides eating your weight in meat and sweets) is to take a bicycle around the canals and explore the surrounding area a bit. I biked into the nearby village of Damme, which is teeny tiny and totally charming. The road there is along a canal, and there are fields and windmills along the way. I had lunch in a little courtyard café and walked around inside one of the churches.

Now I am in Berlin and am having a great time, but I think I’ll post some pictures and stories about this city once I leave (I have a couple days to go here). Hope you all are well!!