Let me just say that I really hate it when people say: God, I really had an amazing time in _______, its hard to describe, I just love the people. But god, I really am having an amazing time in Croatia, its hard to describe, I just love the people. But therere a million other things that are awesome about Croatia, too. First of all, if youve been to Italy, Croatia is like the Italy you thought you were going to but never saw. A million of these little towns on the Istrian peninsula. Windy roads and vinyards and 500 year old towns where nothing is open, everyone knows everyone and everyone is really nice. And there are usually one or two guys in town that speak english.

In that last internet cafe, we met a guy named Mladen. Casper was looking for slow food which he thought we could get inland in Mumjan. There is no train to Mumjan, there is no bus to Mumjan. But there was a guy at the internet cafe who lived in Oprtajl who drove us to Mumjan because it was close. He helped us find the slow food. There wasnt any. Or maybe there was, but who knows. All I know is that there was one restaurant that was open, so we ate there twice. And no one there spoke English, so it was all hillarious for everyone. Dobra, good. Everythings dobra. By the way, i still stand by the proper use of punctuation, but I have no goddamned idea where the apostrophe is on this piece. Plus the Y is where the Z should be, so every time I type every, I end up typing everzdeletey. So this has actuallz taken quite a long time to tzpe. ANYWAY: We had to find a place in Mumjan to stay, since thats what you do at night. And we found a guy, Edi, who has people stay at his house. He told us we were living his dream (he spoke English), carrying a rucksack around and travelling like all fancy free. He said he planned to do that but on his way he got married and had kids, so now he ll grab the rucksack and the kids and the wife and go to the next town and go fishing. So we stayed at his house, and then he drove us to Oprtajl, the next day, just because he was a nice guy. And on the way we re like, so, we can catch a bus in Oprtajl, and he s like, no, just hitchhiking is the only way. And Oprtajl was THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE YOU WILL EVER SEE. But eventually we had to truck it out of there, and started walking down the road. And the first guy that drove by took us down the hill, where the road (hiway) to Rjeka (sp) was. We waited a whole 5 minutes before being picked up and taken all the way to Rjeka, which was 65km away. And in the car, the guys had the most amazing classic rock mix going. Chalkfull of whitealbum and house of the rising sun and smoke on the water and the doors etc etc. It was a mix I never would have had the audacity to make.

So now we re in Rjeka. On a map it looks about the same size as Oprtajl, which could have maybe been home to 100 people. But this place is pretty mega. Port city paid in full. And soon we ll catch a catamaran to a little island called Pag. Which is one of the nicknames I have for my dog, Spunky. Spunky > Pongi > Poggi > Pog. Someday Ill make a list of all of the nicknames that that dog has. It might eclipse 1000. Seriously.

The moral is this: hitchhiking in Croatia sounds like a fucking gnarly thing to do. And if someone told me to do that while I was in the US, Id have been like yeah, fuck you. But its actually maybe one of the most pleasant way/places Ive ever travelled. Ever.

5 minutes left and I have to write my parents and tell them that I am most definitely not hitchhiking in Croatia, no matter what they may have heard.

I just got to Croatia. We camped outside of Trieste for a few days. It was 7 Euro for two nights for two people. That’s a lot cheaper than hostels and hotels so I guess I might get home with $$ after all, or at least to Russian and hopefully to Japan. I don’t know where the Euro sign is on this keyboard, or any keyboard.

We got stopped at the Croatian border. They thought we had drugs but thank God I hate 420.

Tonight we’ll try to find another place to camp. My Croatian is a little rusty, I haven’t spoken it in the last 23ish years. I’m going to be 23 in seven days. Fuckyeah.

I am travelling now with my good friend Michael Capser. He would say hello if I turned to him now and said, hey, say hello, but he’s writing important emails so I’m going to just let it be.

I need to register for classes. FUCK. I think I can do that online but I think I need some passwords from my advisor. Dear advisor, I am in Croatia, please tell me what classes to take and then please register me in those classes. KTHANKS.

OhSHIT. I saw a guy in Trieste catch 5 cuddlefish in a row, right out of the harbor where the boats come in. Then MC and I went fishing for like 2 days and didn’t catch but a few large rocks. I don’t get it. I guess there’s a reason there’s a whole culture around the pescitarian adventure sport. Someone has some information on fishing that I need.

I can tie a knot called a Taughtline Hitch. It’s super good for tents. It didn’t rain last night but I was afraid it might. It’ll be light all night long when I get to St. Petersburg.

Okay I should go eat food but OHMYGOD read this below.

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DO YOU READ MY BLOG (YES) AND LIVE IN (OR ENJOY VISITING) THE PORTLAND, OR AREA AND WANT TO HELP A BROTHER OUT? For serious–my buddy Randall has all of my things (bicycles and surfboards and clothes) and I’m not going to be home for a few months and he’s not going to be in Portland much longer. If you wanted to maybe store some of my things in your basement/living room, I could maybe bake you some chocolate chip cookies or compensate you in any other way you might deem necessary. You can contact him (Randall) at dongoor@reed.edu if you really want to help. OMG YOU’RE THE BEST.

I am sitting now in a laundromat in Trieste, reading Ulysses (some of which was written here, though probably not in this laundromat). I bought new slipons in Ljubljana, which is the capitol of Slovenia. They say it’s a miniature Prague, but I have never been to Prague. My old vans, having swam in my bare feet and the oceans of three continents, smelled a little like hell’s handbasket. But I haven’t pulled the nerve to throw them out.

In Italy, all of the cigarettes on the ground have been smoked to the filter. I just saw the new 1098 Ducati for the first time.

I bought a Lonely Planet Europe on a Shoestring guide for 5 euro in Vienna, but it was fucking heavy, so I ripped out the language part and left it in a hostel.

Now I am in the train station. I came to add one line, which is: I saw a seagull eating a pigeon when I first got here.

But it looks like a bit of this post got gone. could be because I tried to post a photo from my phone. ixnay.

arctic

8 hour layover at singapore apt, at least they have sunflowers

coolest mofo in all of bali

—–okay I posted those really quickly because my internet time was running out–but here’s more—–

Looks like in Siberia even the mountains are burried in snow.

Medewi pre-morning. Jet-Lag doesn’t describe it.

More Medewi, I wasn’t lying about the clouds.

Excitapuppy.

Closet accomodation, Dreamland, Bali.

Morning at Dreamland.

One of the tame few at Dreamland.

Sunset @ Dreamland.

Closet from the outside.

Boatride to the Gili Islands.

G-Ride @ Gilis.

Lunchtime

Lunchtime

Lunchtime

Lunchtime

Lunchtime

Entourage, Kuta Bali.

Hotel Sorga, Kuta Bali.

Lots of languages use the same word for from and of. This is a photo from the bridge. I don’t think this is the one, but somewhere there was a person swimming/washing alongside the epic oil slick. Rad.

Photo of the bridge.

The rest is all Vienna, where I am now, with 30 seconds left of internet time. I like crows, they’re photogenic. Bye!

I’m in Bangkok right now. I’m not really supposed to be in Bangkok at all. It’s like art in the scheme of human evolution, it’s just a little biproduct that’s kind of nice. The brain learns to appreciate aesthetic properties in potential mates/enemies/poisonous frogs, and overtime the aesthetic appreciation spirals completely out of fucking control and you get the Louvre. Well I guess it’s not that out of control (not art, the going to Bangkok thing), my sameday connection just never came through. So I got the nextday connection and chicken on a stick. They gave me chickenflavorcoated peanuts on the airplane. Probably not vegan friendly but (like I care and) ohmyfuckinggod were they good. I have the d50 here but I haven’t had a chance to upload any photos yet. Sorry bout.

Anyway. I just flew in here from Bali. Bali is persistant. The heat is persistant, the humidity is persistant, the flies, the hawkers, the youwanttransportboss? guys. It’s all persistant. I met some cool kids though; and I guess that’s what you do when you travel alone: you don’t. A nigga do what he don’t do(?). I met a Canadian kid who’s down for project pat, a Swedish girl whose friend is dating that guy from Teddybears Stockholm who does the youcantaketheskinnygirlcauseIwantthefatone, and a bunch of Indonesian kids that say things like long hair, long life, long banana, happy wife. The kids on Gili Trawangan were fucking bonkers. Fried rice with an egg on top and shrimp chips and cucumber and a tomato costs seventy cents. And the surfing is EPIC which you only care about if you surf and then you already know. And what else.

Clouds, they have really tall clouds in Bali. You don’t believe me but it’s true. I am a spider and you are the white, billowing Sears Tower.

I watched Entourage for three days.

The dogs. They really need to start some humanitarian fixallthefuckingbalinesedogs campaign. All these dogs do is fuck and beg and get hit by cars. There are no dogs on Gili Trawangan, but their absense blows the persistantcat population out of control.

Plus it sucks that Kurt Vonnegut died. I read Breakfast of Champions in Bali, and two Stephen Kings and a Michael Crichton and now a Dan Brown. You can’t help but read trash on the road. Sphere sucked. It’s definitely no Jurassic park. Little cardboard characters and interesting unexplored plot ideas. Like develop the controlling your own thoughts thing; Jesus. The Dan Brown is similar, it’s like they’re so stoked on compiling all of this real live science and real live technology that they forget to make me actually give a fuck. Vonnegut and King of course delivered. Plus I’ve been daydreaming about the magnetic monopole. Shit gets weird I guess.

UM. What else. The thing is that I’ve been away from the internet. I have it on my phone, but I have absolutely no idea how much it costs, so it’s probably best not to load 80megs of lovebryan and come home to a $26k phone bill. But I swear to god I had a lot of shit to say and now I forgot. OOPS. Okay. I’m going to go to wamu.com and what hole I’m pooring money into.

Here’s a list of places you absolutely need to go to if you’re in the general area. Jerry’s at Dreamland: $4 closet to sleep in, fuckyeah; coolest motherfucker in all of Indonesia(?) I have photos. Rudy’s on Gili Trawangan. Get offered amphetamines and told in perfect depressing deadpan “Oh, I come from Canada, I live behind a mountain, I have many cows.”

Okay kids. Have fun at Morning Benders. More from Austria.