New photography stuff

How much am I getting into photography? Well, my new tripod costs more than my camera. And I should actually say "my old camera" because I also just bought the new Canon 40d. Amazingly, it was actually cheaper in the retail store here than it is from my favorite internet store back home, even after you do the currency conversion into pounds. It shoots 6.5 pictures per second and sounds like a machine gun going off. That should come in handy for capturing those castles that can dart out from nowhere.

Lord of the Rings times a million

That's about how I would sum up Wales. In fact, I stayed up last night watching The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers since since the B&B happened to have the DVD (reminded me of watching Braveheart in Scotland).

We had one final snafu on the way back when our train was massively overbooked and we ended up sitting out where the train cars connect, but it wasn't so bad.

In the end, I am really happy with this trip. All of the unplanned events gave me the first true "I'm having a travel experience" feeling I've had since Africa. At times, I think we're too good at planning. We're too efficient. We're too calculating. Every once in awhile, things should go wrong. It gives me the character of the place. I couldn't have asked for more.

...though some one is still going to get an earful on the phone tomorrow.

Ewe-phoria

I can picture, in my mind, a game called "World Scrabble," whereby players can use any word from any living language in the world so long as they can properly identify the language and the country where it is mainly spoken. And when someone invents that game, the people of Wales will become the undisputed Scrabble world champions for the rest of eternity.

Welsh is crazy. The maps are crazy, the buses are crazy, and the names of the towns to which they drive are crazy. Pictured below you here is a map, and that charming jumble of letters down at the bottom is the name of a town. It is all one word. Yes, even the tilde in the middle is part of this single word.
In Welsh , one can often encounter anywhere from three to seven consonants strung together without a single vowel (but always with a 'w' somewhere in the middle).

We started today by heading 20 meters up the street to Caernarfon Castle. This started out as a Rome's western most fortress in the year 79. Yeah, there are no numbers missing from that date. What you see today started life around the year 1000.

We got here a bit early as we forgot about daylight savings time, but by the time it opened, we completely lucked out with the weather and saw the sun (a rare treat in the U.K.). We had some time before heading out to see the border collies, so we decided to climb this:
Climbing up to the top of the lookout, one can see pastures far in the distance.
When I decided to move to Europe for the second half of 2007, I had a "top three" list of things I absolutely had to do no matter what happened or else I flat out wouldn't return home until they were accomplished. One was to see a specific castle in Bavaria (which I will not reveal now because it is on the itinerary), the second was to see the Vienna Philharmonic, and the third was to see champion border collies herding sheep across the hills of Wales.

Captain No-Show over at Enterprise (their slogan by the way is "we'll pick you up!") had put one of my top three in jeopardy. I decided that I would pay the $400 cab fair to get an hour and a half out there if that's what it took (how often am I going to be in Wales?).

When the lady at the bed and breakfast where we were staying caught wind of this, she told me that was nonsense and that I should just take her car(!). She was supposed to pick up other guests during that time and this was her only car, so she actually phoned a friend and borrowed their car for herself. Unbelievable. When I guessed correctly that it was a manual transmission and informed her that I had never driven one, she said I could try anyway (how nice can you get?). When we got back from the castle, she went out to show us the car, and then asked if I wanted a quick driving lesson. So there she was giving me a free driving lesson, as I go bucking bronco down the street in her manual and stalling at frequent intervals. After about 30 minutes of stalling, bucking, and repeatedly turning onto the wrong side of the road, she suggested she just drive us out there. So now she was offering to drive us 1.5 hours out there, drop us off, and drive the 1.5 hours back to pick up her guests, and all for no charge. It was unbelievable how generous she was. We said yes, as our options were quickly running out. She grabbed her daughter and her own dog, and off we went.
The farm was great. The farmer started by bringing out 12 different kinds of sheep (which I didn't even know existed). Apparently, there are 70 different breeds in Britain alone.
The demonstration was fantastic (I may get a short video up soon). The demo was given by a two-time world champion trainer, and I got to chat with him for awhile afterwards about the dogs.The whole thing ended up turning out just perfect. The demo ended early enough such that we were able to all ride back to town in time to pick up the other guests anyway. Coming out to the farm, we were late, and as a result missed the part about all the sheep that I wasn't as interested in anyway and arrived just in time to see the dogs in action -- and as a result we were only charged half-price. So the whole fiasco saved us quite a bit of money (especially since we didn't pay to rent a car) although we did have to skip a few things that were on the itinerary. All in all, it was a fantastic day, and I can happily check off one of my top three "must do's."

The Kinder, Genteeler Rick

Old Rick would have marched onto this blog and unleashed a virulent diatribe with the fury of God's own thunder. Newer, kinder, genteeler Rick (version 2.0) waited to calm down and see how the situation played itself out. The "situation" was that the Enterprise rent-a-wreck man flat out lied about coming to pick us up and never showed. This was a problem mostly because in Wales car rental places all shut down on Friday at noon and stay closed all weekend -- which means that our entire itinerary was now forfeit. I'm not going to lie -- I kicked the office door.

But hey, this is traveling. So we can sit there and pout (I admit I came up with some pretty clever insults) or we can do the best we can. We picked up our things and started hiking to the town of Conwy. When you do something like that in Wales, you turn the corner and find things like this:This is Conwy Castle. It was built in the '80s - that's the 1280s - by King Edward I to gain a foothold into Wales because, well, it was next on the list of stuff to conquer. Parking it on the water front allowed it to be safely resupplied by ships from home.

After wandering around here for awhile, I was starting to calm down. I spent a long time trying to be mad at Wales, but I just couldn't. This place is gorgeous. We managed to find a bus that would take us out to our B&B in the town of Caernarfon, which was pleasant surprise #2. Surprise #3 was that our B&B was magnificent -- a five star home some 20 meters from another stunning castle. It turned into a great day after all. I'm still nervous though, because I don't know how we're going to get out to the border collie/sheep farm, which is around an hour and a half away. There are no buses. There are no rental cars. There is no walking.

Off to Wales!

Tomorrow (actually today in about six hours...why am I still up?) I'm off to Wales to do a little sheep herding. You have no idea just how excited I am, and in all honesty I am probably a little too excited. I have been fascinated with border collies for years (I even tried to adopt one, which lasted 24 hours). On Sunday, I get to meet with a legendary trainer and watch him work with one of his dogs out in the sheep fields. Okay, so other 25 year olds may not usually care about this sort of thing, but it can't get here soon enough. I'm taking notes, because when I retire, I plan to be the crazy old man that takes his border collies down to the park and herds geese.

The English Countryside

Today, we did something unusual during our time abroad in London -- we toured England. We've been so busy traveling all throughout Europe trying to see as many countries and cultures as we can, that as of yet we haven't spent any time exploring much of England (or London for that matter). So, today we headed off into the charming English countryside.

First stop was Oxford, or what we at Cambridge refer to as "that other place." Not that I study at Cambridge anymore mind you since I made the decision to drop my class, but there's no sense setting aside a perfectly good rivalry. Here, we saw Christ Church, which I'm told is where the Harry Potter dining scenes were filmed. After visiting Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard's dining hall, I'm starting to think I should watch the movies and see the reason every tourist is shunning the rest of the buildings and history on these campuses to see "the Harry Potter place."

One of the things that really adds to the wonder of Oxford (besides being the oldest English-speaking university in the world) is that it was never bombed during WWII. Adolf Hitler decided that he was going to make Oxford the Nazi capital of Great Britain - an interesting choice given his penchant for book burning - and thus ordered his bombers to leave the town unscathed.

After Oxford was a trip through the Cotswolds -- the charming Olde English agricultural area outside of London. I won't go into it much here because we will be touring this area in far greater depth next month (today we only drove through), but among the sites to be seen are thatched roofed cottages, dobe buildings, and wild pheasants standing out among the sheep pastures (not to mention huge red-tailed deer). It was all quite soothing. I understand now why Kings built hunting cottages out here.

To see or not to see? That was the question as we rode into Shakespeare's birthplace -- Stratford-upon-Avon. It is quite a touristy town, but was a nice stop nonetheless.

Following this was what I was most looking forward to on the trip -- a visit to Warwick Castle.
Warwick Castle is quite simply the best castle in all of England, and along with Edinburgh, one of the two best in all of Great Britain. You can still see the mound where the original structure stood -- built in 1068. The castle as it stands today is circa 14th century, and among the still-standing features are an armory, a dungeon, and a real trebuchet standing outside the walls.

After touring the countryside, we headed back into London, where the tour bus was kind enough to drop me off next to London's flagship Apple Store to attend the release of the brand new operating system.
This store is so cool, and while I unfortunately was able to resist the siren call of a new OS X Leopard loaded laptop, I did purchase a new 160gb Black iPod Classic to replace the iPod I broke the other day. I now have a little device that will play all the documentaries I have stored on my laptop, and will act as a 160gb backup for my photos. Nice.

Adobe Lightroom is awesome.

My photo editing software is amazing. I just realized that I can title, describe, and tag my photos within Lightroom, and it will send all that information to Flickr when I upload my pictures, so I don't need to enter data twice. Well done.

At some point, you just have to laugh.

The death-by-a-thousand-paper cuts marches steadily forward. Today I needed to get a document notarized for my company. No big deal you say? Try having to trek to a specialized "notary solicitor" who performs all sorts of strange notarization rituals and then notarizes your document with special ribbons and a wax seal actually made from hot wax there in the office. Yeah. Total cost: $200. Apparently, they take notarizing documents a bit more serious in the U.K.

When I finally got home, I dropped my loving 60gb iPod photo on the floor. It worked for a good ten minutes and then froze up; now headed to that great Apple Store in the sky. I loved that thing. That was a Christmas present from Mikey. Sigh.

Fun with demographics

Economists love things like this. There is a website which allows you to search demographic information by zip code using census data from the year 2000. The website is Zipskinny. Check out your neighborhood.

Amazon.com

It's that time of year again to begin the holiday shopping, and I have a big favor to ask. Many people do at least some of their shopping these days on Amazon, and you may not know this, but if you click on someone's referral link and then order products (even if it isn't the specific book they linked) they get a referral fee. I discovered this neat little fact when I spent an enormous amount of time linking the books recommended at the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this year and received commissions on random purchases from cookbooks to tablecloths. My favor then is this: I have created a The-Way.com Amazon link. If you are going to be doing some of your holiday shopping through Amazon anyway, if you would be so kind as to just go through my referral link, it will cost you absolutely nothing extra, require no extra work on your part (you shop and pay like normal) and yet it will pay referrals to the site to help with the cost of running this blog. All you have to do is just go to Amazon through my link and then shop like normal. If you have enjoyed my blog, and the pictures and videos, I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to come through my Amazon link if you know you'll be shopping there. Thank you!

Aye, I dinneh see 'ol Nessie!

Today, our final day in Scotland, was a bus tour up into the highlands of Scotland. Braveheart was a great introduction to the area, as we felt like we were in the movie for the entire day. The scenery is just as beautiful as you'd imagine, and they have an interesting species of very hairy cow here called a "Dairy Highlander" which often sports an Elvis do.
For lunch, we stopped at Loch Ness, where the water is a murky black, and I may have captured a picture of the Loch Ness Monster!
Tomorrow, it's back to London, and by the way, the train is wonderful. The scenery is better, there is no overbearing security, there is more room, and every row comes with a power outlet for laptops. But, interestingly enough, these days it is far more expensive to take the train than flying on the crop of super-discount airlines that have popped up in the last few years and allow you to fly all around Europe for as cheap as $2 plus $15-20 in taxes. Thus, trains are a rare luxury. This next weekend we're headed to the nearby country of Wales for only two days, which means we'll actually be home in London for most of the week. It will be a welcome change, and a chance to catch up on work. So long, from Loch Ness!

Castles, Gardens, and Museums

Okay, so I couldn't make it to the end of Braveheart, but we're finishing that one up tonight. Today, we're back to touring Edinburgh, the political and cultural capital of Scotland. We toured the National Museum, and I was again struck by how well Scotland's museums are designed and presented. If I ever build a museum, I'm going to first come to one of Scotland's and try to recruit some consultants.

After the museum was a picnic in the Princes Street Gardens with the Edinburgh Castle looming overhead (see picture from Thursday's post). Following this was a walk through the "new" section of Scotland -- named "New Town" because it's buildings were only made in the 1700s. This "new" Gerogian architecture made me feel right at home as though I was back amongst the very oldest buildings in all of America, on Harvard's campus.

By the way, no one here knows what "the Revolutionary War" is. In Great Britain, they refer to it as "The American War" or "The American War of Independence."

Glasgow

Today we took a day trip out to Glasgow -- Scotland's second biggest city. Glasgow is far more of a professional city and less of a tourist destination than Edinburgh, which makes it a great place to get a feel for the real Scotland. The highlight of today's trip was taking the walking tour provided by Rick Steves' guidebook and touring the Glasgow School of Art, which was designed by Charles Mackintosh -- an architect who clearly must have inspired Frank Lloyd Wright (although I had never heard of him until now).

Now, we are back home, resting, and appropriately enough watching Braveheart on VHS. As wonderful as Scotland is, one of the absolute best parts of this trip is the fact that we are in one place for five nights in a row -- a simple luxury which hasn't happened since Tanzania. While I am having the time of my life, the traveling is a bit much. I fervently believe in the "robo-tourism" model of seeing as much as you possibly can for as long as you can remain conscious - and that does work well for short trips - but after a month straight it is starting to wear us both down. I'm now leaving more wiggle room in our excursions (which means getting back to the hotel before bedtime every night. This is also needed to leave time for me to manage the workload, as I am still working on business school applications, taking a few classes, and running Citadel. As fun as traveling is, I do need to start blocking a few hours each day for just sitting in the room and getting things done -- even if I am a kilometer away from monastic ruins from the sixth century.

Welcome to Scotland

Scotland is so much more than I ever expected. It is fantastic. And if I can just say something -- the people are polite and they are brilliant. I love it here.

We started the day with a tour of Edinburgh Castle, which dominates the skyline of Scotland's capitol. Parts of the castle date to the 12th century. It sits atop a conveniently dormant volcano that left hard rock in a way just perfect for carving a castle into it. This site (called castle rock) has had human habitation on it since the 9th century B.C. Today, the battlements overlook a bustling metropolis.
After this, we walked downhill on a street called the "Royal Mile" which leads past historic sites as it winds its way down hill -- the castle on one end and the royal palace at the other. In between are local shops and historic taverns. I did a little window shopping for kilts but just couldn't find the right one and decided to pass. Notice them in the left and the right window here.
Tomorrow we take a train out for a little day trip to Glasgow.

England Pictures are up!

20070925-IMG_1478.jpg, originally uploaded by Buffett Jr.

We made it safely into Edinburgh, Scotland tonight, after a beautiful four-hour train ride from London. The English countryside is quite charming.

I managed to get the England photo album up and running. It is of course not finished, as I will be adding to it throughout the semester, but there are a few London photos and the rest of the ones from Cambridge up there now.

Mt. Kilimanjaro pictures are up!

Mawenzi Peak - the second highest on the mountain, originally uploaded by Buffett Jr.

I'm very happy to say that while sitting through one of my distance ed lectures back in London I simultaneously got the pictures from our Mount Kilimanjaro expedition edited and uploaded.

Take an armchair visit to the roof of Africa via Once More's Flickr page.

Good to be home

Ah, it is a great feeling to return "home" - or at least as close to home as one can get when one is traveling for five days per week and at at home for two. Truth be told, the traveling is starting to wear on me a bit. It is getting to be a bit much, but I'm just seeing and experiencing so much, I have to keep going while I can.

This week will be the toughest, as we leave the country for the third week in a row and pull another five day trip (this time to Scotland). At least this trip will be by train, so it will be easier to get work done on the computer. And if we can just make it through this, we will get a much needed break, as the next weekend is a close trip to the English countryside (Bath, Stonehenge and Cotswalds), and then the best one of all -- staying in London the week after.

We haven't actually done much touring at all in London because we've been saving it all for the scheduled "London weekend," so it will be great to finally get to tour the city. Sarah's father and stepmother are coming into town that weekend, so I have a feeling we are going to try to see as many sights as possible. It won't be that much of a break honestly, but at least we won't have to travel anywhere.

Ireland

After one day touring Northern Ireland, we left that country and went back to the first one -- the Irish Republic. You don't need to do a passport check in between the two, but they are certainly different.

Dublin is big. 1/4 of all of Ireland lives here. A lot of American tech companies like Apple and Google have big bases here, and the city is now surprisingly the most expensive in Europe, thanks to what economists call the Celtic Tiger economy.

The most fascinating thing we saw in Dublin was the old jail (pictured above) which held (and executed) many political prisoners.

While the pub scene isn't normally my thing, we had a great time listening to traditional Irish music, which included instruments such as this drum. I think the sculptor was a tad lonely when he carved this particular statue of Molly Malone, as this is the most well endowed statue I have ever scene. The locals call it "the tart with the cart."

On the final day, we left Dublin and headed into the Irish countryside, which was far and away my favorite part of the trip. The highlight was a tour up into the Wicklowe Mountains, where we ran into a monastic settlement from the 500s. This church pictured above was built before the year 1,000.

The scenery was fantastic. I'm sorry I can't be quicker about posting the majority of my pictures onto my Flickr site, as I am working quite hard on business school applications at the moment and barely have time to upload a few onto the blog.

One of the greatest days of the year

...is this one. Today I took my last Lariam tablet for Malaria. I am already getting sick again, as I do for a few days after each weekly pill. At a cost of $800 I have essentially had the flu for the past nine weeks because of this pill, accompanied by depression and nightmares, and within seven precious days it will be over. It can't come soon enough.

Welcome (sort of) to Belfast

I'm on the train to Belfast watching the sunrise out of northern Dublin. The country side is fantastic, and I can see now why this place is called the Emerald Isle. As Rick Steves noted in his book, "the gentil rainfall, called 'soft weather' by the locals, really does produce 40 shades of green -- and quite a few rainbows as well. Ancient, moss-covered ring forts crouch in lush valleys, while stone-strewn monastic ruins and lone castle turrets brave the wind on nearby hilltops."

Belfast itself is actually quite limited on tourism sites, but I really wanted to make it into northern Ireland anyway to gauge the modern day enmity between the Protestants and Catholics. Also, I thought that having toured Berlin just days earlier would provide a nice segue into Europe's other famously divided city.

Belfast is where the Titanic was built, and while it is a sensational story and one which makes perfect sense to trumpet while trying to nurture a new tourism industry, the fact that the Titanic sank disastrously seems to be lost on the residents. The result is an odd offering of souvenirs, such as this t-shirt I found in the tourist information center which proudly proclaims that the unsinkable ship that sank was "made in Belfast."

Despite the remarkable history of the city though, Belfast only warrants a day trip from Dublin on your Irish holiday, and so that's what we've done. It is a two-hour ride between Dublin and Belfast, and if you catch the earliest train out and the last train back you can get your fill.

We began our day with a tour of the quite impressive city hall (pictured left). It was a warm welcoming into the city, although we couldn't go on tour because - despite the fact that the schedule is posted right outside saying the tours would be open - the tours were closed (one of five things that would be closed today despite schedules to the contrary).

Bicipital Belfast. You arrive to a scene like this thinking perhaps Northern Ireland really has gotten over its troubles, but the marble floors and stained glass serve as a facade luring you into a false sense of calm.

A tour through the Catholic side of town shows continued support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the separatist movement, along with murals depicting support for causes around the world (usually for independence) for which the Irish Catholics are sympathetic (such as an anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinan movement).

A trip to the Protestant side of town reveals much of the same; such as this mural (painted in loyalist blue) warning all visitors. Pro-Britain members are called "unionists" because they want to maintain the union with England, but the really extreme members call themselves "loyalists." Murals seem to be the main medium for communication with the outside in Belfast, and murals like the one pictured above are a dime a dozen on both sides of town.

The city was far more divided and politically tense than I was expecting. After hearing of the cease fire which has been in affect since the mid 1990s, I had assumed tensions had eased, but in some neighborhoods they clearly had not. This is quite a departure from last week's trip through Berlin. Berlin felt like it was quickly becoming one and the same. By contrast, Belfast now has its own equivalent of the Berlin Wall. Called the "peace wall" by some and apparently the "division wall" by many others such as the man in one of the tourist information shops who sternly corrected me, it still seperates the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

Astonishingly, the cemetery we visited even has a big wall in it to separate the Catholic graves from the Protestant graves.

Touring Belfast was fascinating, and I'm very happy to have had the chance. Getting around town reminded me a great deal of Tanzania because just like in the streets of Kilimanjaro, citizens hop into shared cabs (like the dalla-dallas) and scurry about town. You don't find small, privately operated shared cabs much in the western world. In fact, this is the only occurrence I can think of, and it is a product of the favored IRA tactic of commandeering city buses and using them as blockades during street battles. Eventually, the bus system just shut down, and the Irish dalla-dallas stepped in.

I loved my time in Belfast and found it fascinating, but I'm happy to be headed on the last train back out to move into the Irish Republic. Tomorrow we tour Dublin, where 1/4 of all Irish citizens live.

Youth Hostile

We're traveling to so many places so quickly that despite Sarah's best efforts, these trips are getting a bit extemporaneous for my tastes. She really is doing a great job in planning, but with our limited time it is just hard to see out any further than about ten days. By the time we tried to secure lodging in Dublin, the entire city seemed to be at full occupancy, and as a consequence I am now staying in my first - and last - hostel (pronounced "hostile" on my part to note my disdain) for the next three days. Fortunately though we managed to secure a hotel room on Saturday and Sunday nights so after paying my dues for three nights I will be able to relax in secluded splendor.

The hostile (note again) is quite bad, but it is tough to argue with the price -- 15 Euro per person for a bed and breakfast the next morning. The downside is that there are no luggage lockers, so I am packing out anything of value tomorrow and will just have to hope that my suitcase and clothes are then when we return from a day of touring.

Harvard Summer pictures updated

Martha's Vineyard, originally uploaded by Buffett Jr.

My Once More Flickr - Harvard Summer collection has been updated with the rest of my pictures from this summer spent living in Boston. Check it out for new pictures from Boston, NYC, Harvard, Provincetown, and Martha's Vineyard (shown here)!

Off to Ireland, new Oktoberfest Videos

Here is the spinning disk I mentioned in my last post. This was one where couples were allowed on, and now that there are only a few left they start swinging the ball.



This guy was too big for the ball to knock him off, so they brought out three guys with calf ropes.

Texas, Fight.

Well it didn't take long for Sarah to find the local chapter of the Texas Exes, which apparently gets together every Sunday to watch the football game from the day before. We thought about going, but we're traveling constantly (getting in at midnight tonight and off to Ireland on Wednesday) so I don't think we'll be able to get to the games. It's still funny that the group exists though.

Off to Berlin

You'd think the combination of a drinking festival and an amusement park would be a bad one (and you'd be right) but that's what Oktoberfest really is, and we were fortunate enough to have some local girls who had joined our table show us around last night. There was one particular amusement ride that you couldn't see because it was behind closed doors and you had to pay to get in. We would have skipped it, but the locals said we had to go.

Inside, the entire floor was basically just a huge spinning disk. Everyone piles on, they start it up, and then you see how long you can stay put. They alternate between men and women in various categories (this is only men with lederhosen allowed). If they decide that you're staying on the disk too long, they lower that ball you see hanging from the ceiling and start swinging it around, smashing you in the face until you fall off.

I didn't know what the ride was called, but coming from the country that I do, I started calling it "The Lawsuit." It was a lot of fun though -- I wish we could have these in America (if you look closely, you can see my foot sticking out of that pile).
Yesterday was a pretty good day, but I'm glad we weren't staying for much longer. Oktoberfest was fun, but one day is about all I want to spend there . I'm not much of a drinker, but even if I were there is just so much history in this country and I was dying to get out and see it all.Yesterday we went to Oktoberfest again for the morning and then headed out on the six-hour drive to Berlin in the rental Mercedes. Everything here is a Mercedes or BMW, including the taxi cabs and the police cars.

What's funny is that the GPS navigation system doesn't bump up your estimated time of arrival once you start going 120 mph down the autobahn because the system had already just assumed that you'd be driving 120 mph on those roads.

Today, we toured Berlin. That is the Berlin Wall pictured above. Berlin is like Noah's Ark -- there's two of everything. Two zoos, two central police stations, two parliament buildings, etc.

What I found interesting though is how hushed some people still largely are about some of the events surrounding WWII. The slide you see pictured below is one of my favorite pictures from the trip thus far.
It is Hitler's war bunker. It's where he made his last stand, and where he killed himself. Today, it is just a slide. There's not a monument or even so much as a plaque. German tour groups don't even go here -- you have to take an English/American tour to see it (we went on a bike tour around the city, and it was fantastic).

They say that there is nothing old in Germany. What was old is bombed, and what was really old is rebuilt. I loved the country and would really like to find a way to live her someday. Everything was dynamic, exciting, and clean. The whole of east Berlin is like one big construction zone and that half of the city rebuilds itself after the fall of communism. Tomorrow, we tour around for a bit longer, and then it's back home to London.

Welcome to Oktoberfest

We arrived in Munich late last night. The subway to the hotel was loud and boisterous, and filled with people in lederhosen not carrying suitcases. I stuck out already. There is a group of seven of us, and we made our way straight to the hotel and went to bed.
If you want a table in one of the beer tents (the first picture above is a beer tent) and you didn't have the foresight to reserve your table a year and a half in advance, then you need to be at the tents when they open at 10am to claim one of the unreserved tables, so, that's what we did. We arrived just at ten and basically sat at our table until the tents closed at 10pm.Outside, some of the beer arrives ceremoniously, as each company has its own custom beer wagons pulled by custom-dressed Clydesdales.
Oktoberfest is also apparently considered a family event by most Germans, who tend to drink in open containers pretty much every where around town. The airlines give you free beer, and it's not uncommon to see someone open one up for a subway ride.

Not wanting to be left out of the fun, we had to stop at a clothing shop in downtown Munich to get Sarah one of the local dresses (which can double as a Halloween costume back home!). For the record, I actually wanted to wear the lederhosen - and would have - had it not costs $250.

Welcome to Zanzibar

Whenever I'm leaving for a week or so and I am unsure about internet access, I try to put up a new Flickr album and a lot of posts to fill the void, so I'm happy to say that the Zanzibar photos are now all online over at Once More - Flickr.

Up until now I had only posted one or two Zanzibar photos as bandwidth was quite limited, so it is nice to revisit the trip.

Zanzibar is a former outpost of the Oman empire and today is still 99% Muslim. It is steeped in a fascinating history and still holds fast to cultural traditions from long ago.


The conservative style of Muslim dress is still quite common among most of the island's inhabitants, and adds tremendously to the environment from the Western tourist's perspective.

The island is the largest of the so-called "spice islands." It was an important stop for men trading spices and slaves. Markets for both could be found here at one time.

The island sits off the coast of Tanzania and is in the beautiful Indian Ocean. When our entirely hand-made wooden boat (no nails) arrived back on shore after our snorkeling trip to the private island of Mnemba, our boat was stormed by naked boys who had been swimming at the beach! It looked like a pirate attack.



If you're interested in reading more about Zanzibar, you can see my earlier posts -- uploaded while I was there a few weeks ago:

Off to Zanzibar
Hello from the Spice Islands
Highlights and Shadows

I'm off now to see the castles of Bavaria. Standing in the cold, it will be hard to imagine that just three short weeks ago this was me jumping into the secluded turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. It is still a big world.