January 29th

A month and a half later and I am back in the land of wine and honey.  Over the past two months I traveled a little bit and then came back to the Specific Northwest for a month to be spoiled by my Mom.  Now that I have no more tan and am 8 pounds heavier I have re arrived in Italy and my new apartment in Florence.  Here are some things I saw while I was travelling:

La Pere Lachaise

Steve Zissou Street Art

All over an avenue in Montmarte are plaster faces coming from the walls.

Zurich HB Christmas tree.

Vals, Switzerland

Post snow storm

The process of me getting home was the biggest ordeal of my life.  And I wish to quickly summarize it.  I started in Vals, Switzerland and needed to get to Pisa Airport. The original plan:

Vals to Ilanz
Ilanz to Chur
Chur to Zurich
Zurich to Milan
Milan to Pisa

Here's how it ended up working:

Vals to Ilanz
Train from Ilanz to Chur is 45 minutes late, which disrupted the whole schedule.
Chur to Zurich find out I can catch a train to Milan in Bern
Zurich to Bern, arrives late, I miss my train
Now I got to Brig from Bern to catch the last train out of Switzerland, I make it.
Get into Milan, trains to Pisa are full, have to buy a first class ticket to Florence
Florence to Pisa
Get to Pisa airport at 11:30 at night, my flight is at 6 the next morning, plan on sleeping at the airport,
12:30 I get kicked out of the airport and have to wait outside in the freezing temp til 4 am. Get back in the airport at 4 fall asleep on the floor for an hour.  Get on my plane, it's 35 minutes late to CDG, Paris.  Security strike in the airport makes waiting to get passport cleared take an hour, me and 20 other people arrive at the plane 1 minute late and they wont let us on for security reasons, catch a flight to Boston after drinking a bottle of white wine with OJ, then fly from Boston to Seattle

All of this happened in 48 hours.  The longest two days of my life. What a schlep, a real life version of Trains, Plains, and Automobiles.


When I got home I remade connections with all of my old friends and re-ignited the same humor and amity that we held back when we were younger, it was very refreshing, and may be the last time we are all together for at least another year.  We climbed mountains, stayed up til sunrise, ate loads of exotic meats with beer, built puppet theaters, and ran half naked through ice-storms. 

As well as getting fat and friendly in Seattle, I also bought a shit-ton of new music and some nice headphones, so expect some good playlists in the future dear readers.

For now I must go buy some groceries and restock my apartment, I'll update you more later this week dear readers.