Well, I saw my share of museums in Stockholm on Tuesday, including the most impressive maritime museum I have seen to date: the Wasa Museum, which one can find by looking for a large oak building with three masts sticking innocently out of the roof. This giant building has as its center-piece what may be one of the most stunning archaeological feats in history: A 17th century warship commisioned to be the flagship of the armada by the then-king of Norway. The reason that it still exists is that because of the King's insecurity, he insisted in the middle of the boat's construction that a second gun deck be installed, much to the protests of the ship's designer. Well, hearkening forward to the Titanic, on the ship's maiden voyage, not 20 minutes out of port, the ship ran afoul of some largish waves, began rolling uncontrollably due to the added topweight of the second gun deck, took on water, and sank with all hands lost without ever having fired a shot. It sank in about 30 meters of water just outside of Stockholm in the Baltic Sea, with the masts still above the water. The King had them chopped off at the waterline to spare himself the embarrassment, and so the Wasa became lost at sea for 333 years until an underwater archaeologist stumbled upon it. It took three years to raise the ship to the waterline in 1956, and it is still being refurbished. It is an awesome sight to behold.

Well Tuesday night I slept surprisingly well on the night train to Trondheim. Once there I had to make a decision quickly, whether to venture above the Arctic Circle into Northern Norway and meander around, or to head South to Oslo. In the end I decided that someday North Norway should be a trip of its own - it has become increasingly clear to me just how expensive Scandinavia is (i.e. $11 for a hamburger meal at McDonald's) and that I should get out while I still have my wallet. So I made my decision: I was hopping the next train for Oslo, which as luck would have it was leaving in ten minutes. This train ride took nine hours of beautiful scenery and the only thing of mild interest to happen was the one stop at which the ladies in the seats in front of me stood up, did something to the platform to which their two seats were attached, and bam out of nowhere both seats swiveled around and were now facing me. I looked on in confusion as other passengers followed suit until one woman explained to me, "The train is changing directions." Oh. Okay. I joined in. To the French girl seated next to me I shared my observation: "C'est foutou."

So I stepped off the train Wednesday at 9:58 PM, after about 24 hours of off-and-on train travel, to find that I had about one option for sleep at this hour of the night, and that was to pay the fifty bucks for a quasi-real hotel room (I ended up staying here tonight also - due to a rock festival in town the hostels are dead full on through the weekend). This cemented my need to escape Scandinavia - therefore I am booked on Friday's train to Copenhagen at 10 tommorow morning, with a connection at 10 tommorrow night to Amsterdam, which will make for another 24-hour train ride.

Anyway, Oslo is a nice town (Norway's largest city at 472,000), but money just seems to get sucked out of your pocket no matter what you do to stem the flow. Today was a walking tour of the city, through the Parliament building, the University's Law campus, the Radhus (town hall), and finally to the Akershus Fortress, a peninsula in Oslo given over entirely to a stone fortress dating back to the 10th century. Among the sordid details of the keep's past is the fact that when the Third Reich occupied Norway they used this fortress to interrogate and execute resistance leaders. But you can still get a nice view from the top.

It certainly is financially refreshing to have left Scandinavia, but Amsterdam has so far failed to impress me. There are basically four attractions to see here: The State Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Anne Frank House (a must-see) and then, finally the renowned red-light district along the canal with its brothels with the "services" sitting in the windows supposedly enticing you. Personally I am not aroused by forty-year-old overweight Guatemalan women in their underwear, but there must be someone out there who goes for it. Eeeewwwww. This seems to be a much more "active" district here, as the proprietors of the various live-sex joints pick out groups of unsuspecting young men: "Hey - you speak English?" he asks in a nasally Australian voice: "Well I've got some really disgusting sex in here, I can tell you - these people screw like bunnies, they're absolutely mad. It's real family entertainment..."

Also here you can find the drug-pushers, who, if they aren't legal, then they are at least tolerated. Also not to be missed are the numerous "coffee-shops" with strange fumes wafting out into the street, in whose window displays one can find all sorts of paraphernelia, ranging from hookahs to bowls. And then within walking distance of each other you can find the Cannabis Museum and the Erotic Museum.

Had my only suspected theft so far of the trip today: somehow my flashlight and my Lonely Planet guidebook made their escape. Annoying, but not critical. Also I looked back over my schedule - in two weeks of travel, 168 hours per week, I have been on trains for 18% of those hours. That blew me away: that's averaging about five hours a day per 24. Maybe I'm going a little too fast here.

I leave for Brussels tommorow.

I did not in fact end up in Brussels. I teamed up with an Australian named Matt who convinced me that there was little reason to visit Brussels, and also joined with a flighty girl from California named Cory, one of the sorority-types with the cigarette voice and no personality to speak of1. So off we went for Antwerp, where we looked out of the train windows at the bleak cityscape and just decided not to get off until Gent. In Gent we booked beds in unused rooms in a university dorm. We ate bloody expensive steak and wandered the town for a bit before settling down and sampling a few beers on a veranda overlookinga beautiful flower arrangement commemorating the 50th anniversary of WWII. I drank just enough that I fell asleep without a pillow or sheets with no trouble.

Tuesday morning we split up with Cory, and Matt and I followed our hearts to Brusges, where we expected delight. Delight is what we got - Brusges is a lovely little medieval town with a friendly youth hostel and a group of people (including yours truly) who just seem to keep waking up in this town and plunking down the money for another night.

The first day in Brusges, Matt and I went to a horrifically expensive restaurant right on the Markt, blew a wad, and got a couple beers down to boot. Had another beer mid-afternoon. After supper we heard about a Bierhuis in the center of town that had over 300 different brews in stock. So here I was, alchohol neophyte, taking in my 3rd, fourth, fifth and sixth trippel (12% by vol.) Belgian beers. By 10PM I had a serious buzz, by midnight I was flat-out piss-drunk. I had the sense about me to realize that this party might continue for quite a while and that I should cut my losses and go home to begin the recovery process. So genius that I am I stand up and announce that I'm leaving - by myself. On the way out I accidentally knock a chair over - later I am told said chair contained a person. I step out the door and begin the mile-long walk back to the hostel, which was an eternity of hellish disjointed images and confusion as to whether or not I was in the right part of town, going ten doors down past the hostel before I realized it, and somehow I found my way through the maze of corridors to my bed, where I collapsed, dead asleep, fully clothed and with no sheets on the bed.

Wednesday began with a hangover. Actually, everyone in the dorm room, male and female, had a hangover. We were quite pitiful, actually. My particular hangover seemed inmmune to the volleys of Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol that I threw at it. I made a vow that morning not to drink like that again, and so far I am proud to say I have kept it. Not a beer yet. Oh I may have one here and there, but I've done my experimentation and I've come to the conclusion that I don't *like* not being in control of myself.2 Unfortunately, the day before I among others had prepaid a bike tour that was to start at 9AM. Uggh.

So we set out on the tour, which started in Holland and wound down the coast of the North Sea through the Netherland/ Belgium border (a small white post by the side of the road saying "Please don't smuggle anything") to Brusges. Some amazing scenery of dikes and old German bunkers. But it pissed down rain in buckets, and by the time the tour ended at 2PM we were all soaked and covered with mud. That night pulled in early at 11PM with not a drink in me.

This morning woke up bright and early, and today's been a run back and forth to the film developer's, the laundry, and the chocolate shop to pick up a gift for my hosts in Paris.

With any luck I should be in Paris on Friday night.

Well Friday (9th of September) I hopped all of my trains and ended up in Paris at about 7PM to a warm reception by the Gourmelons, with whom I was to be staying. Yannig took me out to a Mexican restaurant off of the Place de Bastille, and I think he was trying to fix me up with his friend who accompanied us. Walking through Paris I realized that after Brusges I was not at all prepared for the hustle and bustle of the big city. Yannig said that he had some American and English friends staying in Normandy and that they would be happy to have me.

So Saturday was sort of a token fling around Paris to visit the free bits of the Louvre and the free bits of the Centre Georges Pompidou with another female friend of Yannigs'. He has many, apparently. Anyway, I caught a train at 5:45PM to Dieppe, Normandie, and was bored out of my socks on the way there.

Upon my arrival at about 8PM in Dieppe I was greeted by a young American couple who ushered me into a Renault and whisked me off to a small town just off the coast, where inside a big friendly house I was introduced to a young English couple. So I was literally the fifth wheel in this story. But it turned out for the better - the people were very friendly and it had an atmosphere about it of a youth hostel where you had your own bed. The English girl and I had a common affinity for old showtunes so we were up until 1AM or so.

Sunday morning arrived and we went to the beach. That is to say that we started walking to the beach until it pissed down rain on us and we decided that a car was in order. Very interesting beach along the North Sea where we observed fallen German bunkers sitting uselessly on the beach, 50 feet down from where they once stood on cliffs long eroded away by the relentless tides.

Well it rained some more so we went back and basically just hung around. Had some interesting lunch: spaghetti noodles with onion and garlic sauce. Mmmm. Off to the International Kite Competition in Dieppe for some great scenery, then on to the station to hop aboard the 2.5hr express train to Paris. Once there we wisely chipped in for a pizza as the Gourmelons were fast asleep.

Oh yes. I have a train at 10:40. sh**. Well the Gourmelons have already left so I leave them a thank-you note and go into hyper-pack mode. I hop the Metro for the four short stops to Gare du Lyon, where I barely make the TGV before it grumbles into action (for the uninitiated, TGV stands for Train a Grande Vitesse, or Train of Great Speed). In Paris I start a Francis Dick murder mystery, and it is finished well before I pull into Nice (with some computer games interjected). Once in Nice I set out along the Riviera towards Monaco, towards a place that had been recommended to me by the Australian I met in Amsterdam. When I arrived at Cap D'ail I was stunned at the sheer waste of the "summer homes" around, and the Relais International des Jeunesses turns out to be a $5 million piece of property in which one pays $11 dollars a night to stay. Well it isn't like a normal youth hostel, it edges towards a commune. Anyway suffice it to say that none of the locals like this place in the slightest. We are an oasis of practicality in a sea of luxury.

So basically I have been staying here for three days and I may stay here a couple more. Who knows? I have been shuttling back and forth between Nice and Monaco, and enjoying the beaches here, which I must say I enjoy immensely - they are top of the line. Don't know when I'll leave, don't know where I'll go, but this place is bloody great.

Well, Thursday at Cap D'ail was rough because of the remnants of the storm that passed through Wednesday. Got smacked up against the seawall by a swell, but I fared better than the guy behind me, who almost got dragged back out to sea and broke his foot on the railing to boot.

Friday morning I was convinced by a lovely South African girl named Debbie that she would feel much better on the night train to Italy if she had some male company. After a long and soulful internal debate, I grudgingly agreed. Soon we were joined on this mission by a guy from San Francisco and we settled on the midnight express from Monte Carlo to Verona. Friday was uneventful for the most part as it rained mightily and we were stuck under a tent because the sadistic people in the hostel had the place locked up. Good bonding experience though. We checked out at around 7PM and set off to Monte Carlo to stow our luggage. Then we went and visited the small fisherman's village of Villefranche-sur-mer, where we found a jewel of a church and a street festival full of cruise-ship Americans where we consumed our share of free wine (courtesy of the cruise-ship company). Afterwards we were off to a small pizzeria for a long dinner. Caught the local train back to Monte Carlo and hopped the densely packed overnight to Verona.

Saturday morning we pulled into Verona almost completely bereft of sleep and grumpy to boot. We dropped our bags at the youth hostel and set off to explore the town. Verona is a lovely little tourist trap, with the Coliseum, countless Romeo & Juliet rip-off attractions, and shopping opportunities galore. We had a little "breakfast" of Cappucino & pain au chocolat, then set off to a lovely Catholic Church and a siesta in the magnificent Coliseum, where I was not the only one moved to sing aloud. We picked up a bottle of cheap white wine, and...

(OK so I'm kinda behind in my journals) ... some pitas, and had a picnic by the river. Later we wandered Verona and had many cappucinos in a row, before returning to "the best youth hostel in Italy", where Debbie fell hard asleep and was unheard of for three hours until, my patience exhausted, I went up to ask her if dinner sounded nice. She said yes, then fell immediately asleep again. A half-hour after, she emerged, and we headed off to eat some excellent pasta in a cheap restaurant with a wandering minstrel. After a very thorough sleep and a wonderful boiling shower we hopped the morning train to Venice.

I will say one thing to those people looking to visit Venice for the first time: If you didn't like the crowds at Disneyworld, you aren't going to have an easy time of Venice. The moment we arrived we were assailed by tourists in such numbers as to be incomprehensible.

In Venice we attended Sunday Mass at the San Marco Basilica, after which Charles was intent upon a museum tour. Debbie and I abandoned him to try and find a gondola ride. Well, we found one - for $35 a person! That was about as good as they got and we declined on financial grounds. The rest of the day was spent wandering back to the train station, where we decided that Venice would not be a nice place to try and find last-minute beds. So we hopped the three-hour train to Florence with no reservations. As in the Berlin-Frankfurt train, this was a Bad Idea. Charles actually had a seat for the entire trip, but halfway through I was relegated to the hallway (there was compartment seating) where it was obvious that the train had been way-overbooked: it was impossible to walk down to the bathroom, which would have been futile because people were sitting in there, too! Since Debbie had a first-class Eurailpass she went way up front to 1st class, where she had a seat all to herself. But as the train pulled into Florence hundreds of people poured out of the train and it was about four or five minutes before a frantic Debbie rushed out of the crowd, leaped onto me with a fierce hug, and exclaimed, "Thank God I found you!" She was considering the implications of walking out of a train station alone at 9:30 at night. It gave me a warm feeling of being needed.

So we searched for a youth hostel with vacancies, and after about a mile and a half and a river crossing we settled in to the Santa Monica Youth Hostel. By this point I think the shoulder straps on my back had actually bonded to my collarbones. We ran into a few people from Cap d'Ail there, if you'll believe that. We set out for some dinner at a lovely little Pasta place down the street from the hostel, where I had some rigatoni and between the three of us we had about a half-liter of wine each. I was above a buzz and below drunk, but I was concentrating so much on one conversation that I did not notice that the mosquito bite that I had been picking had now started to bleed profusely. When I did finally notice I experienced the judgment delay associated with a buzz: Blood....Bad.... Stop....Napkin....Bandaid. Well we made it home with little fuss, and I left a big tip because I saw the busboy cleaning blood off the floor. Well I guess part of me will always be in Florence.

That night was a good sleep. Spent most of Monday with my computer trying to print out my journals so that if something happened to the notebook I would at least have the hardcopies. Did a little sightseeing but not much - that bloody thing was heavy after three hours! Spent the evening eating with Charles at a nice restaurant (Debbie had already eaten) and then later watching news broadcasts of US Troops landing in Haiti. As Charles said, "Well, we invaded another small country. It's Our Way®."

Tuesday I decided to set off for Rome at 5PM. Saw Debbie and Charles off on separate trains before I set off in Florence for some serious sightseeing and a little shopping. Decided I had seen what I wanted to see, so I hopped the 4PM train. I pondered the time that we three had had together, and thought that I would not soon see better company.

Stepped off the train at 7:30PM in Rome. Wandered around the hotel district for a bit discovering that every single room had been taken. The reason? There was a Pink Floyd concert in Rome that night. f***, I thought, just like Copenhagen. Well I hopped the train again, this time hoping to head out one or two stops from central Rome, and find a hotel out there somewhere. Well I won't go into details, but at 11:25PM I stepped off the train in Rome again seriously entertaining the thought of skipping Rome altogether and getting a night train anywhere. However, the last train out of the station left at 11:30, from track 3 - I was on track 27. Well I ran like hell, only to miss the train. Inside me a voice sounding suspiciously like David Letterman said "Well Luke, yer pretty much screwed now." I slept in the train station's waiting room along with 125 of my closest friends. Actually, sleep is putting it generously. I nodded off once or twice. Come 7:30AM me and an American guy searched for and paid for basically the very first bed we could find. It turned out to be a big double bed, but at this point it would take a bit more than that to make me blanch. He turned out to work for AMD (one of Intel's chief rivals in the microprocessor world) so we ended up talking computers over breakfast. Anyway after a bit of a nap I arose to see Rome (at least a few bits). During this trip I saw the Spanish Steps, the Palazza di Venezzia, and the Colosseum, among other things. I think I'll have some great pictures out of this, but don't quote me. Later on me and the American guy went to a pizzeria and had pasta, and then headed home for a solid 10-hour sleep. This morning I set off in search of cheap accomodation, and I found it at this Pension. After that I spent the day at the Vatican, but I don't know if that was enough - boy, there is a lot to see in such a (relatively) small place. St. Peter's Basilica impressed me with its magnificence, but the Sistine Chapel blew me away with its beauty and emotion. It helped that they had Gregorian chants playing in the background. Also on exhibit in the Vatican Museum were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So here I am now, for the first time in a week caught up in my journal to real life. Now if I could only remember to send those old postcards...

Friday I woke up and went down to the Roma Termini station and caught the train to Milano, where at 5PM I hopped the train towards Bern and Zurich. Got off in Interlaken, a lovely little resort town, expensive after Italy but (so I hear) inexpensive in comparison to the rest of Switzerland3. Walked the 15 minutes or so to the welcoming expanse of Balmer's Herberge. This is like the Blockbuster Video of Youth Hostels, except that it's not a chain (if it were, it might make decent money). It has nightly movies, a currency exchange, a restaurant, a general store, a game room, several rooms with cable TV (MTV, if that is your bent, is a constant), a laundromat, a post office, an abundancy of beds, and a continental reputation as a party zone. I came to Interlaken based upon the fact that so many people had said how great it was; only in retrospect did I realize that for the most part I had been told this by American sorority girls. It's apt, really, because this is like a little island of America in a sea of Europe.

But this is precisely why I don't like it. You're in a place run by Americans, showing American movies at night, playing American TV and serving American food, surrounded by American hostelers interested only in alcohol, cheap sex, and "the comforts of home". When I came in to the hostel I was assigned to sleep in the overflow tent (rows and rows of bunks), and I immediately noticed that there were all these little cliques of Americans hanging around outside posing for one another just like we were at some frat party back home. I mean, why come to Europe to avoid Europe? I have a problem with this philosophy, but to avoid hypocrisy I will say that it is a bit refreshing at the same time. In moderation.

Today (Saturday) I felt guilty because I was the last person to awaken in the tent at the ripe old time of 7:10 in the morning. Grabbed a ferry ride out into the lakes, to a set of natural caves said to have been used by the Irish apostle St. Beatus as a sanctuary. Then in the afternoon I went on-task and did a little neccessity shopping and a bit of laundry. Hung around with a guy from Ohio and we attended the showing of "The Terminator," after which I hit the sack early, this time in a real bed.

Woke late this morning (8AM) and hopped the bus for Grindelwald, the starting-point for a number of Alpine hikes. Got together with the Ohioan and an Aussie and a group of sorority girls and we set off to conquer the local peak (called First). The going was tough and the sorority girls dropped out after ten minutes. The reason for this is that from bottom to top the hike takes about three and a half hours - seems like you would cover a lot of ground, right? Well I think you only actually walk four K, but you rise one K during that distance. So that's like an average 22 degree slope. We were very tired when we reached the summit, where we met all the tourists who had paid the $35 to go to the top via a 45-minute cable-car ride. We felt like walking around saying, "Thank you, thank you, yes, we are morally superior, no autographs please..." At the top we sat and watched paragliders run off the side of the mountain and generally enjoyed the view, until we realized that we were in danger of missing the bus back, which was to leave at 4PM. At that point it was five minutes to two. So we basically ran down the mountain, taking shortcuts through steep passages and generally getting off the beaten track. At one point we were walking through a small pasture and a bull charged us, bucking wildly. The Aussie and the Ohioan bolted down the road and over the fence, but for some reason I just stood there dumbly as the bull passed behind me and settled down to stare at us again. But we made good time and caught the bus back to Interlaken, where I popped some blisters (smack! smack! mmmm, yummy) and slept hard. Woke again and rejoined the Aussie to watch the night's movie, "Fatal Attraction", and then we tried to hit the bar scene, which was nil. So here I lay, I think for the last night - tommorrow we hit Bern.

(this is just to clean up the last bit of Switzerland) We went to Bern Monday morning and wandered around, drinking in the atmosphere of the city and the sight of the beautiful women. The little Olypus gasped and sputtered and gave out so I shall have to pick up a new camera ASAP. Got my friend an Eurailpass and I made plans to set off that night for Salzburg, which I had heard was beautiful.

The train from Bern to Zurich was hellish, as the "sleeperette" chairs seem to have been engineered by Dante himself. At five in the morning I arrived in Salzburg, went to the youth hostel and slept on the tile floor for two hours before arising for a decent breakfast and a long nap in a real bed. Then got some sightseeing in and vigorously avoided buying and "Sound of Music" merchandise.

Last night I got a little buzz going with two Aussies who were trying to help me with my accent. The party got wild here at the hostel bar and as 11PM rolled around most of the bar's patrons could be found dancing. On the tables. Actually by that point not a few people were falling off of the tables. This is the fourth of five "legendary" European Youth Hostels that I have visited, the others being the Af Chapman in Stockholm, the Bauhaus in Brugge, and Balmer's in Interlaken.

Today I was going to day-trip to Munich but it's pissing down rain so perhaps tommorrow will be better.