Trains (and Tower)

Since I'm so far behind on my posting, I will, as usual, write what I'm doing right now before I go about retelling the past. So, right now, I'm on ferry to Seattle from BainBridge Island after hitchiking for a few hours. As for the past:

On my last day in Cali, I got to the Amtrak train station to board the Coast StarLiner (Huge trains that goes from San Jose to Seattle in 26 hours). The train was an hour late (how typical of trains) and in the mean time I met a nice girl named Mila who helped me through a lot of boring hours on the trip.

The first 8 hours of the trip, which started at aroudn 10pm, were pretty much in complete darkness and there wasn't really anything to do except sleep and talk (and not much talk after everyone's gone to sleep). Naturally sleep was quite awful and scarce, but that's just how I roll nowadays.

After I woke up for the last time (of many) and saw it was finally light out, I started taking picture and admiring the view. MAN! there were awesome views. Soon after breakfast was served. Over breakfast, I got seated with a bunch of random people and everyone told his story of how he got to be on the train. The same thing, pretty much, happened for every meal. The food was nice and it was really fun passing the trip just by talking to a lot of random people.

I met David, Ashley and Havier at the station and they immediatly took me to a Jazz & Swing bar for a few beers (Teh life!). After that we went up the space needle and got a few pictures of racoons. Then David and I drove all the way back to Port Angeles where I spent my next ... 11 days, having an awesome time!

Okay, the ferry's docking so it's time to go.

Salutations,

Nathan

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Pictures : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/TrainsAndTower

They Come in Gallons?

So, after a long long time without update I decided I should spend some of my free time (woohoo for actually having free time) to update the blog a bit, especially about the fun stuff that happened.

So, on my last day in California I woke up, starved as hell, and played some DotA, Woke Ariel (That's the other Israeli Couch Surfer staying with me) up and went out to catch the LightRail to Downtown San Jose.

Throughout the time I was staying in Cali, a few people from the Bay Area sent me SMSs about them wanting to meet me, but I was either too lazy, lame or busy to actually meet with them. So this time, I sent them all messages telling them that I'm going to SJ and asking them if they can meet. At first all of them replied that they're too busy and me and Ariel kinda accepted the fact that we're just going to wander aimlessly around DTSJ.

A few minutes after we boarded the LightRail, thought, I got a message from Matthew Williams that he actually got some time off work and he's coming to meet up with us. YAY!

Basically Matt and his lovely gf Caitlyn took us to some crazy restaurant that served the hottest wings in the entire universe (They were painfully hot). I could only eat two wings before giving up (Ariel gave up after a single bite). Matt and Caitlyn were awesome and bought us a Gallon (1 US gallon = 3.78541178 liters) of beer which made us quite tipsy for the rest of the day. After eating tons of food, drinking lots of beer and talking about all kinds of stuff, Matt had to drop us off back in SJ and go back to work.

They dropped us off at the SJ City College Library (or something) and we started strolling about and taking pictures. Man these colleges looks awesome. Also, a lady came up to us and started talking about how she was in a picture we took (she was in the background) and starting asking us all sorts of weird questions. For some reason it felt to me like she was drunk or something (or maybe that was because I was somewhat drunk at that point :P )

After that we went back, I packed my stuff and set out to the Train station to catch my 25hr train to Seattle.

More about the Train ride in the next post.

Cheers,

Nathan

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Picture : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/CaliforniaPart2

Califail and Caliwin

So, today is Friday 04.09.09 and I'm having a super time in Sequim, Washington. But this post actually refers to how I got major Zondec on the 30.08.09, so lets go.

On the last post I wrote about how I talked to the German dude, Benjamin, and we said I'll join them for a hang-around in San Francisco. I told him to wake me up around 30 minutes before they're off so I'll have time to prepare.

So, on the accursed day I woke up at around 8 as usual because the host lady was doing a hell lot of noise, but I kept lying in bed, wating for her to go away / waiting for the Germans to wake me up. After a like an hour of doing that I decided to get up and check what's up 'cause I heard the Germans are already up. And what's the first thing I see when I get out of bed? Benjamin carrying a huge bag outside talking about how they're leaving in 5 minutes. FUCK. Apparently Hoaquin was joining them becuase he needed a ride to his next host, so I couldn't keep them waiting for long. I just put a t-shirt and some pants on, brushed my teeth and jumped outside with my camera (No breakfast, no extra clothes, no going on CS checking what's up in SF...).

On the way to SF there was a lot of awkward silence and my attempts to get people talking by playing a few words games failed miserably (only Hoaquin seemed to even be interested in making sounds). By them time we got to SF, everything was misty as hell and quite cold. Hoaquin got off at his host and we kept driving for a few minutes while debating what we wanna do.

One of the girls was talking on the phone to someone else in German and I asked Ben what's up? He said they're thinking of taking a scenic drive around town because it's too cold to be walking around. I was pretty down to that but then the NAZI WHORE (ahem) just looked at me and said: "aren't you going out?". I was like: "huh? I'm ... hanging out with you guys." and she was like: "I made plans with two other germans girls around SF so we don't have enough room for you in the car." ...

WHAT THE FUCK?!

They were "kind" enough to give me an old map of SF torn out of some magazine and just left me out there, in the cold, with no idea what I was going to do.

- GONE DWARF -

Well, I didn't to get in a fight with them, and I already was in SF so I decided I'll just start walking around and find something nice to do. And that actually turned out quite okay. I saw a lot of cool stuff, been to cool places and had a great time. I can't really be bothered with writing the description of all that happened, because it was nothing spectacular but it was fun nonetheless.

I took the CalTrain back to Sunnyvale and walked from the station back to my hostess's house. There I met with Ariel the Israeli, had some really bad Instant Thai food and went to sleep.

Okay, I would probably write about my last day in Sunnyvale as well, but Dave is taking me out JetSki-ing and then Hiking, so I guess I'll save that for tomorrow.

Peace.

Nathan.

Sorry for being lazy and rushed and not going into more details. I'm just having so much fun lately that I don't really have time to put into this blog.

Caliwin and Califail

Hey there,

I'm writing this post aboard the Train going from San Jose, California to Seattle, Washington (teh 24hr trip woot). So far I've slept thru half of the ride and for the other part it's pretty cool with tons of really beautiful views (I took pictures for a while and then got tired ... might do more of that a bit later).

Anyway, back to catching up.

I landed at SJC at about 9 or so. Talked to Kathleen (The lady that hosted me) and she said she's in the area and she'll come pick me up in a while. 15 minutes later while I'm telling her I'm at Terminal A and she tells me she's at Terminal 1 I realize that we're in different airports ... yeah. She arrived about an hour later to pick me up and it was a roughly 10 minute drive to her place. Both her daughters (19 and 22 if I recall correctly) were home, so I got a bed in the living room. It was pretty comfortable and I was really tired after about 40 hours with little to no sleep, so I just went to bed.

The next day I woke up pretty early, Kathleen was just leaving for work, and I had the Progressive Nation concert at 6pm. I spent a few hours at home studying maps of the area and the public transportation and then I just set out to town to check things out. Now, the concert was in San Jose and Kathleen lives in Sunnyvale so I had to take the tram for about 45 minutes. I got a Day Pass and took the first tram towards downtown San Jose. The stop was right at the entrence to the Civic Auditorium (where the concert was being held) but the ticket-collection booth was still closed and the informative dude told me that they open 2 hours before the show and the show starts right on time.

I took the rest of my time to walk around downtown SJ and grab a bite at a place that makes McDonalds feel like health-food: Johnny Rockets. Downtown SJ was good. Got back home, changed and caught the tram to dtsj again. Getting my ticket took like 2 minutes and at 6pm exactly Scale the Summit started playing. Now, I'm not a going to write a musical review about the concert, I'll just sum it up. Scale the Summit play instrumental prog metal, it's nice. Next on came Bigelf who play ... something that's a cross between the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin - and it's good. Zappa plays Zappa which came next totally blew my mind with all sorts of crazy stuff. And last came Dream Theater which used their own equipment to literally shake the place from the foundations. They were loud, they were awesome. It was awesome.

At this point I should mention that during that entire day I tried to reach Omer Kornitz (an Israeli guy living in Sunnyvale) who didn't answer at all. When he did call me back, 5 mintues before the concert started, he told me that he and Ohad Benbenishty (another dude visiting from Israel) were going to Outside Lands on the next day to catch Pearl Jam and Incubus. So on that next day, I joined them and it was awesome again.

The day after that was pretty uneventful. Omer was pretty lame and we only met for like a few hours and helped one other Russian Israeli dude living in Sunnyvale move a bunch of stuff to his new flat. When I got back home I met with Kathleen's other surfers. There was Joaquin the Spaniard (whom I've known from the day before) and 3 Germans (Benjamin, Sonja and the bitch whose name I don't remember). Me and Benjamin sat for a while and discussed music. I gave him some music and he gave me some and we talked about how I might join them for a drive to San Francisco on the next day so we can all hang out together.

On my next post I'll elaborate on how everything has gone dwarf.

Feeling the Shuk draw near,

Nathan

---

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/CaliforniaPart1

The end of Gothenburg

So, on the noon of the 24th I said goodbye to Rickard and his lovely gf and took tram #2 to a statue of a man riding a horse (all in green). I don't really remember anything significat from that trip but I ended up meeting with Petra Hall there.

Petra took me to her dorms and made me some tasty food ^_^ and then we took a nice walk around gothenburg while discussing politics :P. Petra is doing her masters in Global Politics and I argued against Democracy and for Monarchy. When we got back I made my famous omlette and we watched Dr. Horrible's sing along blog.

The next day we were supposed to go to Liseberg with Rickard and Lotta but when we got there the park was closed, so we just ended up taking a boat to some island. At this point I should probably mention that a ride on a boat costs the same as a ride on a bus or tram and is covered in the free pass (AWESOME).

On that Island we walked around a lot and had some tasty Makrel ;)

On our way back we stopped at a pub and I drank some local swedish beer (verdict : good). I then proceeded to organize my stuff and take a nap before going to the airport.

I set out to the airport at about 23:15 and got there by 00:30. At this point I should probably mention that my flight wasn't due until 06:45. So with more than 6 hours to kill, I decided to finish watching the second season of The Guild and then catch some sleep on a bench before the check-ins open.

After about 1 hours of attempted sleep on a very uncomfortable bench, some Swedish dude started chatting up three Chinese girls on the bench across from me. I couldn't sleep anymore so I just joined in on the conversation as the dude wasn't going to let me sleep quietly. A few hours, Chinese writing and some Vodka Redbull later, the check-ins opened and I gleefully marched forward towards my many-hour-long flight chain to San Jose California.

I really don't wanna get into details about the way becuase it was VERY tiresome and boring with me falling asleep for a few minutes every now and then and ended up with me buying a Motorola phone for $150...

And by this point I'm getting pretty tired with writing this post so I'll just link a few albums and go away.

Nathan

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The Pirate Ship Revenge.

Me on the rocks.

View from the top.

Grassy Islands.

Alien Lifeform of some sorts.

Gothenburg & Co album : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/GothenburgCo

The Flight Album : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/TheFlight

Lazy Media Post

Walking Around Nassjo : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/NassjoTour

From Nassjo to Gothenberg : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/LeavingNassjo

And ... I'm sorry for my posts being too few and far between ... I'm just lazy AND doing lots of stuff. And when I'm neither, I'm dead tired.

I'm doing my best, believe me :P

Nathan

Counting and recounting

Welcome Back!

I haven't really updated for about a week since I was doing a lot of moving and moving around :) So I'm going to keep this recount of past events as concise as I can.

While I visited David and Linda we listened to some techno music, watched some movies, walked around town and mainly had a lot of laughs. Next time I visit them, I'll have to challenge Linda to an MtG duel :P. Then, they put me on the train to Gothenburg and we said out goodbyes.

Did I mention I love trains? well, I do. So I really enjoyed the 3 hour ride to Gotherburg. I took quite a lot of Landscape pictures (which I will upload in the next media dump). I got off the train at the Nils Erikson Terminal (familiar place, woohoo) and set out to find Tram #2 to Brunnsgatan (Which ended up being quite nearby). A few short moments after I got off the tram I met with Rickard Wikstrom (aka sevenfingers) and we went to grab some sushi. Sushi was very nice and we went home. Home was good.

I got the nice couch as a bed (very appropriate for couch surfing) and took over the coffee table as my workstation. I played some DotA while Rickard finished up his work project and then Rickard, Lotta (Rickard's gf) and I set out to walk around the unfamiliar city (unfamiliar to all of us since they only moved there from Boden about a week before) and drink. And drink we have. First we went to the Texas Longhorn and had spare-ribs with some Samuel Adams. Then we went to a cheap pub and had beers (and the occasional Vodka Redbull).

After we got a bit tipsy we decided to look for cool hangout places around town, so we started walking around. Asking some people around, we got some intel on a place called Sticky Fingers which was supposed to be hip place to be, so we started looking for it. After about 15 minutes of walking we started asking people where it is - it was apparently quite close - and entered it. Entrence cost 100SEK and the drinks weren't that cheap. The music was nice most of the time (Rock stuff) but the crowd, oh the crowd.

We assume this: Once upon a time there was a hip young place called Sticky Fingers and it was good. All the young people enjoyed getting shitfaced and dance to loud music. Then, a few pedophiles heard of the place and came to pick up the young people. And to make a long story short, the place was full of 40+ people with people younger than me nowhere to be found - eek.

After drinking some more there, we decided it's best to head out home and so we started walking. In the habit of making long stories short I'll just say that apparently Rickard lives in a secret neighborhood since no one knew where it is and we ended up going in circles around the neighborhood before some random person pointed out that we just need to take a left at some turn to get to familiar ground. Home was good again.

The next day we went to the movies to see Inglourious Bastards, which was pretty awesome except for the part where around 60% of the damn movie is in either German or French and the subtitles were in Swedish ... grrr. We got home, picking up a DVD of The Man (quite funny) and watched that. And to seal the day, I watched Disctrict 9 before going to sleep. Now just add a lot of walking around to this paragraph and it sums up my day pretty accurately.

Okay, this looks long enough. Soon will follow a Media post and after that the recount of my last days in Gothenburg (which were pretty awesome).

Until then, WRITE MOAR COMMENTS :P

Nathan Dortman

Fortune Favors the Brave?

Comfort favors the wise.

The path favors the trained.

And pain favors me...

My extreme walk to from Eksjo to Nassjo ended abruptly, 5km before it's rightful end, due to a blister bursting on my left foot. I tried to keep walking, but it was rather impossible ...

I tried to hitchhike from where I stopped, but unluckily for me it was a right at a bus station (And everyone just pointed to the bus station when I tried to stop them...) so I called up David (my host from Nassjo) and asked him to come and pick me up.

I gotta say I've surprised myself. I've never walked 15km before AND never walked with 20kg of load, so I think that I fared pretty well for my first try.

Highlights from the walk:

Leaving Eskjo ... no faster than 70kmph.

Signature Greenscapes.

The harbor rest.

A can of the most disgusting Energy I've ever had ... (NO SUGAR!!!) and it's 50cl ....

5km to Nassjo, where I broke down :(

Sunset view from the station where I stopped.

Picasa Album of the walk: http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/EksjoToNassjo

Picasa Album of my 18.08 walk around Eksjo: http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/EksjoTour

Shula (Rest and Ravines)

So ... I've had a few lackadaisical days here in Eksjo, Sweden.

After the Shukness of my first two day, I've decided I need some Zula to recharge. So to recount:

Sunday:

Visited the local Pentacoastal church.

Had lunch with the Forsblom parents.

Listened to Johan's dad play his 5-string bass.

Played some WC3.

Watched LotR : Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) with Johan's huge projector.

Monday:

David came over and we played some WC3

Climbed to Skorogata and Skorohatt with Johan.

Bought some Shrimp-cheese and Lobster-cheese.

Watched some Anime.

Tuesday:

Overslept.

Played some morning WC3.

And now I'm going out for a walk around to see where I shall generate Shuk next.

Word of the day:

Shula (Noun.) Pronunciation : SHOO-lah

Meaning: A combination of Shuk and Zoolah. (Zoola being a state of extreme relaxation)

Anyway, that's it for today. Expect more tomorrow :)

Nathan

---

This one looks like a huge spider.

This is a pretty big Ant Mound.

This is freaking HUGE ant mound.

The way down into the ravine.

The way up form the ravine (or so I hoped ... we had to climb about six of those.)

Easy way or Hard way? (He's pointing to the Hard way, which we ended up taking.)

This is all mine! MINE!

The Mad Cow.

For More Pictures : http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/RavinesAndRevelations

The Media Post

See if you can find Johan's 4 Guitars in the picture

Johan and his workstation.

Johan and Sara Forsblom in their kitchen, where the delicious are made.

The view from the Forsblom balcony (they grow the foods!).

The Vatternfesten Party (Left to Right) : Johan, Linda & David, Linus.

Mattias IA Eklundh of Freak Kitchen.

Christer Ortefors of Freak Kitchen.

Lava Engine performing at Vatternfesten.

.

.

.

And the highlight of the day, Assaf Eats Zondec Live by Mattias IA Eklundh

(Don't worry mate, you won't go to jail for it :P)

A most eventful day (or Zondec)

So, 15.08.09, I woke up. After a quick breakfast (made of, what else but bread cheese and ham) we've decided to head over to the lake to take a dip. The was a cool breeze and the sun was shining. Overall I'd say it wasn't too cold because I walked about with a Tshirt and short pants and didn't feel a chill.

We got to the lake and saw that some people are already bathing in it. "Oh", I thought, "At least the water is batheable". And not before long, the spirit of Shuk rest upon me and I decided to follow Johan in jumping into the lake.

... If the lake was frozen and I would've hit the ice it would probably hurt less. Call me spoiled, but I'm not used to FREEZEING water. Johan said I made a legendary expression of torment but I just swam as fast as I could towards to nearest floating platform. There we jumped a but into the freezing water and after about 30 minutes we go out.

On the way back home we had some Ice Cream and I explained to Johan about Shuk and Shchuna. So for all my non Hebrew-Speaking

readers, I'll elaborate:

Shchuna (noun.) Pronunciation: SHKHOO-nah.

Direct Translation : Neighbourhood.

Meaning: Chaos (in a good way), Crazy stuff.

Shuk (noun.) Pronunciation: SHOOK.

Direct Translation : Marketplace.

Meaning: An even greater degree of shchuna.

So, we got back to the Forsblom house and ate lunch, jammed a bit (Johan's a musician) and generally rested before leaving

for Jonkoping. The story of the drive to Jonkoping is pretty uniteresting so lets just sum it up and say:

• We drove there.
• We've met with Linus, Linda and David (from the Local CS community).
• We've parked out car way too far from the festival and had to walk for about 30 minutes in the rain (no biggie).

It is when we got to the fetival grounds did the Major Shuk commence. As soon as we got there we saw there's a crane holding

a cage in the air with a net below and people were dropping from the cage.

Illustraion:

+

Immediatley I decided that I wanted to do that as well.

300 SEK Later ...

+

To sum it up I can say this:

Now I know how I WON'T be ending my life ...

After my self-induced near-death experience we've hung around teh festival ground and did all kinds of fun stuff.

+

(That's Johan unicycling and A game of Giant Dukim :P )

A bit later we were joined by Daniel (aka Skalle from the Pixelation Forum) and had some Kalzone (IT WAS HUGE). By the time we were done, Lava Engine already started playing. We listened to them and all the while tried to find Mattias IA Eklundh (The Guitarist for Freak Kitch - the reason I came to this festival).

We caught a few glimpses of Mattias but couldn't find him anywhere back stage. And then they came up.

The concert was pretty awesome except for the a drunk chick and dude who kept screaming at mattias and sending him air-kisses

all the while doing some nazi salutes. Surviving this, we proceeded to enjoy the show and when it ended .. well, let's just say that

(More details in a following media post)

And thus ended a most crazy night out. We said goodbye to everybody and Johan let me drive the car all the way back to Eskjo.

I could start comparing Israeli traffic and driving manners to those of the Swedes, but I plan to return to Israel one day, so I wont.

In conclusion of that day I want to say thanks to Linus, Linda and David for the awesome time (you can find them in my friend list on CS).

The Shunk is strong here.

Nathan

P.S. If you want to hear more about certain parts of the trip, let me know.

P.P.S. The festival was organized by the local youth sobriety club and I came with my "I would give up drinking but I'm not a quitter" T-shirt ^.^

Conclusions on Day 1 (or Kock Catering)

So, after I closed my laptop and boarded my flight to Gothenborg everything took a positive turn. The 4 Hours of flight were easy and devoid of that baby crying I've failed to mention thus far but has plagued me on all my flights until this one.

I got off the plane, got to my luggage in 3 minutes (no passport checks AND my luggage was first on the conveyor). Got out and realized I've missed the last direct bus to Jonkoping by 20 minutes (which means I wouldn't have been able to get it anyway). So I decided to take a bus to Gothenburg's Nils Ericson Terminal (The Central Bus/Train station) and see what I could manage from there. The fare cost 80SEK and ride took around 20 minutes or so.

As soon as I stepped into the Nils Ericson Terminal all dwarfs cut loose. I couldn't find the place to buy the correct ticket and the over-helpful lady at the other bus-company counter was under-useful. I almost paniced when I saw that the soonest means of transportaion to Jonkoping was a train at 23:00 so I've decided to just wander around and see what's up.

After a few minutes, in the far reaches of the Terminal, I found a direct bus to Jonkoping leaving in 20:10 (which was an hour from then). Everyone kept telling me that tickets have to be bought in advance, so I started looking for a source of said tickets, but none were to be found. I ended up asking a someone who ended up not being a local anyway. Although she wasn't much help in the ticket department, she watched over my bags as I ran amok between the different counters trying to figure out how to get those tickets.

Things I've learned in the process:

1) Her name was Stephany.

2) Stephany is from Germany.

3) Stephany's mother lives in Sweden.

4) Stephany's a part time MBA student and part time empolyee of a juice factory.

5) She did not know what CouchSurfing was.

6) She does not have a facebook and thus I'll never see her again.

7) Turks in Sweden can't pronounce the word "cow". (When I asked what meat the donner was made of they just kept "Kaw"ing at me...)

8) Their donner looks NOTHING like Shawarma (but tastes good nonetheless).

9) Sweden has a much higher percentage of freaky-clothes-wearing teenagers.

10) Every square in Gothenburg holds some kind of performance.

11) TICKETS CAN BE BOUGHT ON THE GOD DAMN BUS!

Anyway, I got on the bus to jonkpoing, found out that buses have outlets to recharge laptops, pulugged mine in and started typing this post. The Kock Catering part came from the first van I saw out of the window that caught my attention. AND the battaries on my camera ran out the moment I switched it on :(. Now it's time for me to enjoy the view until I reach Jonkoping and meet with Johan Forsblom and his wife Sara.

PART 2:

I've reached Jonkoping and met Johan and Sara (Aww, what a cute couple :P). The drive to their house took about 40 minutes (To a village suburb thing called Eksjo, which translates to OakLake). So we got there, had a quick bite (all these guys eat here is ham with cheese, crazy swedes :P), got my laptop connected to the wifi and set me to sleep.

By the time I'm writing this, it's already the end of day 2, which was CRAZY! So I'll probably write / upload that post sometime tomorrow noon.

And Remember,

The Shuk is in all of us! (expect for the Eladim)

Nathan Dortman

---

Evidence:

Exhibit a:

The Bed I Sleep On ( + Johan's drum set, keyboard AND electric piano)

Everything has gone dwarf! (or how I ended up in Larnaca)

It was all going according to plan. Well, maybe except the fact that I woke up way too early (which means I would be tired earlier) but that's managable. Other than that, everything is going according to plan. Well ... so packing took almost 3 hours and I still managed to forget a few small things, but nothing important. So you could pretty much say that most of the things were going according to plan.

I arrived at the airport at 4am sharp, took 10 minutes to pass the security checks (no time) and got in line for the check-in. And that's when things started to going accoring to some other plan I wasn't aware of.

The flight was overbooked, so I could either wait for people to miss the flight. At first I though it would be an easy choice but then the lady at the counter said it would be very unlikely... So why the hell do they overbook flights?! eh? ... anyway, she said that I could voulenteer for some crazy ass connection flights and in exchange I'd get 200$ or a free ticket to any location within 5 hours of flight (Awesome!), so I did (for the free tickets).

"Well", I thought, "Just a minor set back". And I've waited an extra hour and caught the plane to Larnaca, Cyprus. Now, I should mention that when the 7th lady of the 4th counter gave me my boarding passes, she said something about me needing to hurry when I get to Larnaca. Let's call that today's understatement.

The plane landed at 8:20 and the plane started boarding at 8:25. Which would be fine in theory [But like Yahtzee said: Theory is a trecherous thing that can at any moment disintegrate like a biscuit raft.] but then I saw the line, IT WAS HUGE. So there I am, stading in line, 20 minutes past boarding time and these two Jordanian (Or Syrian) dude decide to torture me. They starting laughing a lot, pointing in my direction, saying the word "Yahud" and "Israel" and every once in a while make a suddent movement towards me. I mean, if you want to grab the railing that's fine, go ahead, but why the hell do you have to do it with a clenched fist flying in the direction of my abdomen only to change direction in the very last moment and chuckle? Damn sadists. (At this point I should probably mention that ALL of the poeple in that line were either Jordanian or Syrian, so that didn't really calm me down).

Anyway, 30 minutes after the boarding time, at about the time when normal places start having last calls, a lady runs into the lobby and shouts: "BRUSSELS? BRUSSELS?". Assuming she's not lost her dog (or god damned mind) I raised my hand, along with a couple other guys stading way outside the line, and she quickly gathered us together and sent us forward screaming something about how the plane is waiting for us. WELL OF COURSE THE FUCKING PLANE IS WAITING FOR US! Nobody gave a shit that we were stuck in line and nobody came to take care of us.

Also, during all the commotion I caught some land stewardess telling one of the other Brussels connection that some conveyer belt was malfunctioning and therefore the luggage might be 2 hours late to arrive at Brussels. Now, I would go ahead that since I have a 3 hour wait for my connection and Burssels this should be a problem. But I think I've learned enough about plans and theories to calm myself down ...

In the end, I made that plane with the pilot giving me an evil eye as I board it (last). So now I'm sitting here in the Brussels airport, 1 hours befopre my next plane take me to Gothenburg. Writing this post in Notepad (becuase the WiFi here isn't free :/ ). I'll upload it as soon as I hit free wifi.

Time to go eat something that will help rid me of the awful taste of a Cyprus Air Breakfast.

Assaf, when you said that my first post should be titled "Everything has gone dwarf" I thought (and even hoped) it wouldn't be as easy as this ...

The Shuk Is Strong With Him,

Nathan

Preparation - 25 Hours Left (And introduction)

Hey,

I'm going to keep this short (because I'm lazy).

In 25 hours I'm going to board the plane which will take me (eventually) to Gothenburg, Sweden (Via Brussles, which appears to be the center of Europe).

I'm writing this blog because I both want to practice my writing and it's going to be easier than emailing (ever so slightly).

Not much more I care to write about now, so here are some (not so) random lists:

Countries I'm going to visit on my trip:

• Sweden (Aug 14th - Aug 26th & Sep 14th - ???)
• USA - California and Seattle (Aug 26th - Sep 14th)
• (Maybe) Canada (During USA)
• (Probably) Finland (after Sep 14th)
• (Maybe) Norway (after Sep 14th)
• (Probably) Germany (after Sep 14th)
• (Inveitably) Belgium (Many many connections)
• Holland (around Oct 10th to Oct14th)

Things I expect to do during the trip:

• Major Shuk
• The rest is secondary ...

Things I've not yet done:

• Cancel my upcoming surgery.
• Get foreign currency.
• Pack my bag.
• Make sure I haven't forgotten anything.

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That's it for the first post :P

Link to my CouchSurfing Page: http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/relvox/

Best regards,

Will try to keep this updated.

Nathan Dortman