Please don't fart!

Maria!

We met a donkey on Amorgos in Greece while walking to dinner. We named her Maria and sang to her.

Paris

Has the City of Light every failed to entertain? Sitting on the second floor of a cramped french restaurant, sipping Bordeaux and eating veal, it's hard to find any fault at all with Paris. Our dinner companions, a Norwegian/Spanish couple who live down the street, echo the same interest in American politics as many Europeans have: Is Obama going to win? What do you think? Do people hate Bush? Did you know that we hate Bush? Here, let me lecture you again on what Europeans think of America.
Our dinner discussion was entirely by coincidence since the restaurant was too small for seperate tables. The 2nd floor was more of a loft, about 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, with 20 people and waitresses crammed into the space. It was one of the best meals I ever had.
We wandered the streets afterwards, slowly making our way to the Eiffel Tower. The public paris toilet, a crude, box-like structure you can use for free, is a poor substitute for bushes. I realised the toilet closes so it can soak the entire bathroom space with water for cleaning, leaving a wonderful film of scum on the floor and lots of curious things on the wall.
We walked the stretch to the Eiffel tower, coated in blue light and wreathed by the golden stars of the E.U. in celebration of France's six month presidency of the Union. I find it slightly frustrating to only have a point-and-shoot camera, I know too much for my own good and just what I can't do, but my lack of pro equipment on this trip is surprisingly liberating. I spend more time looking than I do shooting, and more time enjoying than working.
After a short metro ride back to our hotel, we drank scotch and smoked cigars in our room, our last night in Paris.

Leaving Switzerland

I didn't think leaving Switzerland would be this hard. After getting our butts handed to us by the swiss alps and climbing down the mountain, me with tendinitis in one knee and each of us with a little less ego, we retreated to sanctuary. My Aunt Kate is my mom's younger sister, and lives with her husband Bob in a two story white house with long bay windows. She cooks a mean leg of lamb and the house, rented from an ex-pat family currently living in Abu Dhabi, is just 5 minutes walk from the shore of Lake Geneva.
Recuperating from the hike and licking our wounds, Brett and I spent our last few days at the house reading books and watching movies. After winning 4 straight rounds of Mexican Train Dominoes, my ration of scotch was restricted and I became public enemy number one.
We bought our tickets to Paris and finished our last days in Switzerland in peace.

6 seconds

So here we are at 6000 feet, trapped in our tent on the south side of a Swiss Alp in a thunderstorm, yelling hail marys over the rain. We spent all morning climbing up from the valley to Verbier, a small mountain town near the french border, and all afternoon hiking to the foot of Mount Fort. Two days into our Alpinian excursion, both of us are cold and wet, exhausted from an 1800 meter ascent and the thought of thousands to come.
But the only thing that matters in a thunderstorm at 6000 feet is those terrifyingly clear, silent few seconds between the flash of lightning and the crack of murderous thunder. I remember being told on Boy Scout campouts how each 3 seconds of eerie silence was roughly a mile, and clinging to this rule, we painstaikingly calculated the distance between us and the strikes.
Peeking my head out of the vestibule, the sky seemed clear and calm in the distance. A wide frame of dark gray clouds surrounded soaring white alps of snow and black rock long vistas of dark green forest thousands of feet below. Fleeing the advancing storm in the late afternoon, we pitched tent next to the rocky foundation of an old cottage filled with knee-high weeds. The spot was the best we could do at the time, but with each advancing strike of lightning, we became more anxious.
"We should make for the cabin," Brett said.
Swiss trails had cabins staffed round the clock and furnished with restaurants, beds and hot showers. We preferred the free tent over the expensive accomodations, but with 40 pound packs, too much wet gear and trapped in the storm, the little cabin was looking like the Hilton. So we counted strikes and waited for the rain to let up. Six. Nine. Five. Eight.
A bright flash behind our tent and a simultaneous slap of thunder that shook the tent settled the matter for us: we were going.
When we strapped our packs on our backs, threw on wet socks and booked it for the cabin, raingear and all, we were inside of a cloud with 20 feet of visibility. We abandoned the tent at nine thirty at night when there was just enough daylight to see the trail. We yelled to each over the fall of the rain as we jogged down the trail, hoping to see a light. The cabin was a lot further than we thought. It was at least a kilometer walking, and we didn't know it then, but the last half of the trail was all rock and narrow, flooded trails.
Desperate and scrambling, Brett spotted a small house a few hundred meters down the hillside. We scrambled down and knocked on the door of a worn, white barn-like house.
Four startled farmers stared at us from inside. One of them must have been no older than 20, and cocked his eyebrows at me and shook his head. The other frogs(french-speakers) at the table, were older and stared at us with their mouths full of food.
The man at the door was Julian, a 35ish, brown haired man with hands like worn brown leather and broken english. Brett had hoped these cattlefarmers might drive us up the road, or at least let us sleep with the cows, but after two minutes of bartering with Julian it became clear he was not the viturous mountain man we had hoped.
"Just 30 minutes," he said, pointing to the road and into the black sheet of falling rain.
We thanked him and walked off. We were soaking wet by now and it was dark enough to see the lights of the towns below. Lost and out of options, Brett and I trudged back in the rain to find our abandoned tent. A flash and a distant rumbled echoed in the canyon.
"12 seconds," Brett said. "Storm's moving out."
We climbed back into our tent and into what dry clothes were left, and let the rain sing us to sleep.

brett finds a handy bib for eating a juicy Athenian peach

Look at that, son

Call me creepy, but I like taking video of life. This is of a father and son in our train car, talking as we go through the Romanian Carpathian mountains. I can't understand Romanian, but I know what he's saying.