I rode the train for over 15 hours, the car temperature swinging between frigid-cold and sauna hot. I arrived in Budapest, with two friends from Nashville, found a hostel and sulked. That night, we ate a fantastic meal together and told travel stories, mine ending, their’s just beginning. The next morning, after a couple hours of restless sleep, I caught a flight, 3 hours to London, 2 hour layover, then 11 hours to Philadelphia.
Friday night in Philadelphia my oldest brother Josh was waiting for me. He told my parents, my middle brother Jake, and his fiancee Michelle, that his good friend Tim was coming in from Los Angeles and we should all go to a late dinner. The meal was at POD (on Penn’s campus), which raised fears that the joke was on me and that this was an elaborate family-prompted intervention to get me to return to school. But when I knocked on my family’s car door as they were parking, and heard their collective spastic yelps of joy and astonishment, I was pretty sure this was a great surprise for them. And this idea was sealed when my mother got out of the car and screamed, “Oh my god, Jimmy’s here! Where’s Tim?”

So it’s over.
Why did I return early?
Sarajevo was too special. I needed to end there.–that’s the romantic notion and the one I hope endures.
But it’s not quite true. Actually Josh said “enough is enough” and I took a deferential bow and said, “Yes, my sire” and bought a ticket as soon as possible.–this is the story spread by my family.
But we all know that’s bullshit. The truth. Sarajevo was phenomenal. I missed my family and friends. I was tired. Oh, and my passport ran out of pages and I didn’t want to risk deportation from the Balkans.

It’s been a terrific ride, not one worth expressing in words. I’ll just deliver a knowing smile and give an off-kilter look into the distance. That type of ride.

So “Jim Abroad” might be dead, but the site is not. I’m thinking of changing it to “Jim, A Broad.” Will Jim maintain his scruffy brunette hair or bite the bullet and get icetips?
Or perhaps, it can be “Jim: Ab Road.” Can Jim chisel out his mid-section and make himself physically suitable for society, or will he continue his downward spiral and crack open another one of those cheap Lithuanian beers?

Thanks for reading.

In Croatia’s Plitvice National Park there is water everywhere. In between the wooden planks of the walkways, it spurts out in frothy bits; in the myriad lakes it shines azure in the epicenter, jade in the shallows; it tumbles down stories high-waterfalls and, when it hits the ground, it spreads as a light mist over small bunches of tourists. This place is heaven, and to think, not two decades ago, in a war prompted by Croatian Serb nationalists, it was hell.

I left Plitvice for Split. You can see why cynical guidebooks and fashionistas love to proclaim Croatia as “the new Greece.” How nice it would be to forget one’s thoughts dipping your toes into the pebble-lined coastline. Or taking a walk through the Diocletian Summer Palace, in miraculous condition, and hiding several boutique-y stores. I know why people like this place so much. Too bad I came to the Balkans to study history, not enjoy myself, so I got out of resort-y Croatia as fast as I could.

The busride from Split, through Mostar, Bosnia towards Sarajevo revealed some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen: the road twisted through the green mountains, down into a rocky cragged canyon, along a wide river that beamed teal in the sunlight. Refugees, the victims of Serbian ethnic cleansing in Eastern Bosnia, walked these mountains, sometimes for days, to find shelter from the bombs.

Within my first five minutes in Sarajevo, I thought I was going to die. After stowing my bag at the hostel, I took to the streets. Suddenly a convoy of 15 black BMWs and Volkswagens stopped in front of me, flanked on all sides by machine gun-packing militarymen, shouting at the gathering crowd. After soiling myself, I joined the throng of excited Bosnians to wave hello to the visiting Turkish president.

You hear about the cities of seven hills: Istanbul, Rome, Lisbon. They’re nice, no doubt. But Sarajevo, a city in a valley, sits at the base of dozen of hills, rolling, green, and gorgeous, and spotted with the shiny clean mark of tragically new cemeteries. From 1992 to 1995 the city was under siege by invading Serb nationalists. 11,000 people died. And, after living through this nightmare, what has become of the Sarajevan spirit? Well, for example, when I asked the young girl at the frontdesk how to say “nice to meet you” in Bosnian, her boss interrupted and laugh-mumbled something at me. The frontdesk girl blushed, and said, “No! Oh, don’t listen to her. That’s my boss. She’s so bad!” This 60-year old Bosnian woman, the owner of this popular hostel and yet another survivor of the siege, was teaching me how to say “pussy.”

A favorite joke of the Bosnians during the war was: An old man is swinging on a chair on his front porch one day, when another man walks by. The walking man, confused, asks, “Old man, what are you doing? Why are you swinging on the chair like that?” The old man responded, “I’m so bored. There’s nothing to do during the siege, so I’m fucking with the snipers.”

What a remarkable people.

The hostel in Sarajevo attracted a fantastic group of travelers. At night, 8 of us went out, essentially the entire foreign community in the city, and drank and shared travel stories. It was the mythic hostel atmosphere I had always imagined. And the bar where we started the night, with its dangling crystal chandaliers and carved mahogany tables would’ve been kitschy anywhere else, but in Sarajevo it was real, a relic of another time.

One morning wandering around the Turkish Bazaar with a small group of great people from the hostel, I decided I wanted to buy some CDs. I found a small shop and asked the tall, long-haired vendor for some recommendations. For the next tenminutes, he explained in brief his fascinating history with music as I tried desperately to maintain consciousness. But then he asked, “Why are you in Sarajevo?”
“To study history.”
“What type of history?
“Well, the history of Europe is the history of war, so…”
He turned his face downward and cleared his throat. Then he looked up at me with eyes welling.
“Look, man. There are a lot of people who ask the questions, ‘Who started this thing?’ ‘Whose fault was it?’ There’s a lot of people trying to figure that out, even still. But I’ll tell you, I was just a kid when they came here. The ex-Yugoslav Army lined up on the hills and they had missiles and choppers and tanks. We were just civilians, man. That was, for me, the most fucked up thing.”

Sarajevo was always a multi-ethnic city. After Spain expelled its sizable Jewish community during the Inquisition, Bosnia, like all the former Ottoman-Muslim states, accepted them with open arms. In World War II when the Nazis invaded, the Sarajevan Jewish community needed to hide one of their people’s holiest books in Europe, the magnificiently-painted Haggadah (a book of rites, which dates from early-14th century Spain). After hiding it in their mosque for the duration of the war, the Muslim community then without question returned the book, worth some $700 million, to the remaining Jews.

What a remarkable people.

After two hours, bearing the whipping winds of passing cars and the coastal chill, I grew exhausted of hitchhiking. Thirty kilometers from the nearest town, and only a tinted windowed-black Beamer with Russian plates stopped. The besuited drivers informed me they were going towards Kaliningrad and I could go with them to Nida, and I informed them I prefer riding in the car, not gagged in their trunk, so I needed to pass. Lithuania was fun.

Vilnius’ airport is situated in a Lithuanian ghetto, a land of dilapidated concrete blocks and conniving gypsies. I didn’t know this, and when I boarded the sputtering bus and a vodka-toting giant had to maintain his balance on my shoulder, I knew I had found the town where my carefree travels would end. Of course I was wrong. Vilnius might define “rough around the edges”, but like nearly every city I’ve passed through, its core is gorgeous.

In the 14th century, finally buckling under the pressure of neighborly Poland, Lithuania became the last country in Europe to renounce paganism. But shuffling your feet through the immense Hill of Crosses in Sialiau or looking up at enormous folk carvings in Witch’s Hill in the Curonian Spit, you’re left to wonder whether it really has died. The Hill of Crosses, particularly, confused me, but only at first. The Hill, the origin of which is stated as “unknown” but many attribute to a pagan ritual site, features thousands of crosses, some standard 3-inchers, some made of copper tubing, and then some huge, carved beautifully and folklorically of oak, jammed into the dusty earth. Many people under Soviet times planted these crosses in honor of their loved ones who where wisked away by an oppressive communist secret police. I tried and I tried, but I could not understand how these crosses, incredible as they may be, could possibly offset the strife caused by their family members’ murder. And then Asta, a girl I met in Vilnius, explained the exceedingly simple answer. In Communist Lithuania all religion was suppressed, and these crosses defiantly pronounced that the Ruskies, try as horrendounsly as they might, would never kill the Lithuanian spirit.

You see, my mother informed me just a few weeks ago that I am of partial-Lithuanian descent. What I didn’t know, however, was the Jewish museum in Vilnius would be named for my great-great-great-etc grandfather, Vilna Gaon (”The Genius”) . Standing on the precipice of the Moses Mendelssohn’s Enlightenment-enforced reform movement, Vilna Gaon was considered the last great thinker of classical Judaism and a relic of what was once the richest Jewish community in Europe, Vilnius, “The Jerusalem of Europe.” And for me, seeing as I’m on track to amount to nothing, he provides me with a most coveted smart-by-association bloodline.
Mapping out the intricacies of Vilnius’ Jewish community, the Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum revealed to me a people obliterated by eager Nazi hands, homes and synagogues dynamited in World War II, and then later drowned in Soviet concrete. That the Nazis whiped out 90% of the community was painful enough, but it was all the worse after coming from Vilnius’ much-vaunted Museum of Genocide Victims (a museum about Lithuania’s 51 years under oppressive communism). And not worse in the way you would think.

Stationed in the former KGB headquarters, the museum–with its torture cells, the straightjackets, the padded wall to muffle the screams–was harrowing. I crept out of the museum’s basement cellars and discovered its sole source of inspiration, the Lithuanian partisans, the freedom fighters. These men, mostly uneducated farmers, or country teachers and their pupils, took to the woods–bringing only scarce weapons and their unextinguishable Lithuanian spirit–to resist Stalin and the brutal Soviet army for ten years of guerilla war. But, as the museum casually admitted, “The Partisans at times turned their weapons against the Lithuanian people, as tends to happen in war.” Hmmmmm. Later in the day, at the Jewish Museum, in various diaries of ordinary Lithuanian townsfolk, I discovered that these same heroes took up arms to fight for, not against, the invading fascists of Hitler’s army, sometimes getting so caught up in the glory of it all, they would rip the limbs off of those pesky, fleeing Jews. This most egregious example of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” no, my HERO, should be force-fed to those moralistic American conservatives who have so embraced our Pakistani and Saudi brothers-in-arms.

In Vilnius I stayed with Lukas, a quirky but enlightened Lithuanian, with a peculiar penchant for erotic films (our first night we went to the film festival to see a Taiwanese movie, which began with a woman being, um, pleasured with a watermelon; still, Lukas was so cool I could overlook this absurd film selection and the fact I had to sit through it with his squirming female roommate, Asta, whom I had met 5 minutes earlier).
And after she realized the psycho-porn wasn’t my idea, Asta was able to share much insight about communism with me. Sandwiched between the skyscraping church spires and the color-drenched facades of Old Town Vilnius, there are Dolce & Gabbana outlets, Wi-Fi maintenance shops, and Argentinean steakhouses. Before, to get food, they had to wait in endless lines, rations in hand, and accept whatever measly items the Soviets would bring; or in springtime head to their allotments, socialize with neighbors, and dig up the yield of their paltry gardens.
Now, they have entire aisles dedicated to tea.
Asta explained to me that things have has improved greatly, with the one silly exception of “relationships between people,” which are far worse. This was a sentiment I would find echoed in much of fast-changing Eastern Europe.
And for me, it has been a hard one to ignore. What is this correlation between making money/gaining consumer options and disintegrating relationships? Are we so caught up in the menial choices of life that we forget to make the big ones? A vast majority of the educated American class believes that selecting so-and-so first-tier university is a choice, or aquamarine trimmings or teal, Colgate Advanced Whitening or Crest Whitening Expressions, George W Bush or John “Easter Island” Kerry; that all these are real, verifiable choices. And they hate anyone who suggests otherwise. Do you?

I left Lithuania for Warsaw, Poland, where I met up with Paula Bialski. Paula, a Polish-Canadian studying social theory at the University of Warsaw, is a bonified rockstar host. Over the next four days we bounced around her inspiring apartment, performing spastic dances for her voyeuristic Polish neighbor; handpicked groceries at the farmers’ market, her teaching me how to profess my love to the beflowered granny by the coleslaw barrels; and just enjoyed good conversation and the rocking Polish nightlife. Our first night out we went to the outskirts of the city to old army forts, which had been converted into uber-hip art bars.

A common complaint of Jewish visitors to Warsaw is that the city doesn’t pay enough respect to its ignominious past. But I wonder, do people really want the ghetto reconstructed, the same as the colorful facades of the Stare Miasto/Old Town (the entire city was razed in the ghastly 1944 Uprising)? They have the award-winning Uprising Museum, which sadly was closed for maintenance when I visited, and various plaques and monuments around the city. What else could people ask for, besides a thoughtful and respectful populace (more on this later)?

My last night in Warsaw was Paula’s birthday party. She made homemade cream cheese, bought Polish vodka tinted ever-so-green by a blade of bison grass, and let me play music off my Ipod (”Who wants to rock out to…Iron and Wine? Whoooo!). Suffice to say, it was perfect.
All night, I, along with the 30 or so guests crammed into her apartment and on her balcony, danced, sang, and engaged in pleasant small talk:
Pretty Polish Girl: Tell me, how do you like Warsaw?
Me: You tell me, have you found your country’s swallowing the bitter pill of capitalism (a) isolating, (b) crass…
(Pretty Polish Girl falls on floor in bored stupor)

The following day I joined Paula’s friends on a train south to Krakow, where I stayed with Magda. Krakow is the Prague of the 90s: undulating cobbled streets, looming castles, a booming expat community, and a steady, unescapable flow of tourists. The majority of my time in Krakow was spent either walking and walking until exhaustion, where then I would collapse in one the city’s 3490432424 awesome cafes; OR sitting around the kitchen table at Magda’s place, trying to pick her fantastic brain.
Magda was born in Poland, and her father was an esteemed professor at Krakow’s Jagiellonian university (the second oldest in Europe). However, when her father, a member of the Solidarity Movement, failed to adopt communist teaching plans, he, and all like him, were jailed. Magda told me of the night they came for him: She was a young girl and had to hide away at her mother’s family’s country farm house. Her grandmother put her in the bureau and told her, no matter what, not to look out. She immediately poke her head out and saw her grandmother calming her wailing mother, her father sitting stoically at the dinner table, and her grandfather standing guard at the frontdoor with an axe. The machine gun-toting Soviets arrested some 32,000 Polish, her father included, at the same moment so they could not warn one another. After that night, it was another two years before Magda saw her father again. His Polish passport was subsequently revoked and the family had to move to Canada.

Yesterday I decided to hire a guide and tour Krakow’s beautiful Jewish Quarter. My original tour guide canceled and I was instead taken around by Joanna, a mid-twenties Jewish Studies major at the university. She, like her friends in the department, is not Jewish, but loves the magical richness of the Jewish culture and wants to someday move to Israel. It was a little strange having sexual tension with my private tour guide (especially on a Holocaust tour, good God), but at least it meant I listened incredibly well, and afterwards she cutely confessed “it was the hardest I ever tried to make a tour good.” Good–and sad–it was. I learned a lot about the pscyhological warfare the Germans played against the Jews. They used their sacred cemetery as a rubbish heap; their most beautiful synagogue as a barnyard; and when they shepharded the Jews out of the Quarter and into the tiny ghetto (16,000 people in 300 flats), the walls built around it were daunting copies of the Jewish gravestones of the aforementioned cemetery. And even still, the Jews maintained hope. A monument in the square of the old ghetto contains dozens of large metallic chairs. Thinking they were going to work, not death, camps, the Jews lugged their chairs and other furniture to the ghetto square, where Germans ominously ordered them to leave it behind. After this strange, and powerful, monument we walked to the factory of Oscar Schindler, the profiteering Nazi-turned-hero. Poland wants to turn it into a museum, but currently lacks the funding.

Today I ventured outside Krakow to Wieliczka, to see the small town’s Unesco-awarded Salt Mines. I’ve come to resent any place that makes you pass all of its super-tempting gift shops before exiting, but this place was pretty. 300 meters underground, I saw former chapels, statues of elves, ghosts, and saints, all carved from salt, and many by miners.

I could write more, but I’m tired of writing. It’s all phenomenal. Leave me alone.

Travel is going fantastically, but my, it is difficult to find time to update this DINGER. I have a trainride to Krakow, Poland tomorrow, so perhaps I will have time to write a post on the way. I hope so because Lithuania and Warsaw have been incredible.
Up next: Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and perhaps Serbia.

Monday morning I took a stroll alone through the streets of Valencia. The streets were empty except for a scattering of hollow firework casings, and the city looked, well, boring. Walking past the droopy store fronts, I realized I was passing through a city–emotionally, if not physically–leveled by a war.

Las Fallas began in the mid-18th century, as Valencianos would burn rag dolls on strings in honor of the Saint Joseph. Things have changed. Today the fallas , gargantuan paper mache statues, fill full city plazas and depict everything from Osama Bin Laden and GW Bush strumming peace chords to dinosaurs and goblins haunting a woman’s cranium. In the shadow of these mammoths, Valencia’s long boulevards brim with alcohol-soaked dance parties, churro and chocolate venders, and firework blasts that sound like mortar shells.

Janine and I arrived to the hostel and immediately started out about the city to see the fallas. We were like mosquitoes to a lantern, bouncing around the city, completely unaware of where we were going, just mesmerized by the beauty of the epic creations. At midnight we found a spot along the river and watched the first of the week’s many amazing firework shows.

The rest of the week I was the sickly, sober barnacle on the Georgetown Booze Cruise (I stayed with G-Towners Janine, Shamin, Mel, Brendan, and Emily, and many more Hoyas were in town). My days were spent wandering through the city markets, eating delicious street food, periodically burying my head in my arms to avoid another firework-induced-ear-ringing, watching spontaneous parades of street bands and flower-bearing children, marveling without end at the fallas, and just basking in the beautiful Spanish sun and forgetting momentarily how sick and sleep deprived, in reality, I was.

One day Brendan and I joined Janine and Shamin for a day at the Valencia City of Science, a sprawling, incredibly-designed complex of science and art museums. The architect of this insanely ambitious futurescape is the famed Santiago Calatrava, the future designer of the WTC Memorial. The City’s aquarium was particularly special and lulled the four of us into relaxed stupors (except for the dolphin show, which was more cooler than cool). After the aquarium, we saw an Imax presentation of The Mysterious Nile, which was so awesome that it nearly guaranteed my attendance at the Franklin Institute when I return to Philadelphia.

One night we went to the bridge over the (long dried-up) river to see the week’s most-acclaimed fireworks show. These were the most original fireworks I have ever seen. At one point, a string of fireworks shot high into the sky and floated downward, still illuminated, like incandescent worms. Then countless fireworks were set off and the sky sizzled with a fiery static. It was an incredible effect.
After the show we were walking towards the center, when screaming broke out. To our right we saw a flash of light, another, and then a loud burst. Firework fight! The girls (Shamin, Janine, Mel, Emily, and Brendan) ran for cover. I watched as the Spaniards on the bridge and the Spaniards down below hurled flaming rockets at each other, sometimes picking up the whistling things before they exploded to toss them back at their enemy. Overthrown fireworks landed into the crowd and screams and chaotic escapes commenced. One spastic girl below picked up a yet-unexploded firework, ran to throw it to the bridge, slipped, fell, and the firework exploded on her. This. Was. Awesome.

The last night of Las Fallas is interesting. And by interesting I mean it’s mayhem. And by mayhem I mean at 12:00 midnight every falla in the city goes up in flames in a John Wu-cop car skidding into an oil tanker-holyfuckingshit-explosion. Originally we all planned to see Poseidon at the Town Hall Plaza go up in flames, but Team Wedding (Mel, Emily, and me) decided The Wedding falla, our favorite, would provide us a cooler show. The Wedding Falla features a mammoth wedding couple standing before a mosaic and stained glass-adorned chapel, with horn-toting angels announcing their arrival. The three of us pushed through masses of Spaniards before we had a great view for the coming spectacle. Our view became completely unimpeded when a father in front of us took his daughter off his shoulders, when Spaniards to our right boo-ed and started chants about her. Emily rolled a purro, and we waited, and waited, the anxiety killing us. Finally, fireworks blasted over the rooftops all over the city. Then the lights dropped off the Wedding, and a red fire ignited at its base. Then it spread, and soon the whole structure was engulfed in an awe-inspiring inferno, that rendered us all speechless. As the angels and the open door to the chapel burned, I felt as if I were looking into the gates of hell. The night was an amazing end to a week of insanity (well, at least better than my real ending: stepping on Emily’s hair straightener and losing the last $40 of my weekly budget).

The next day I flew to Paris, where I spent the night in Charles De Gaulle airport. I thought myself brilliant, finding undeniably the penthouse suite of the Terminal C: the floor of the handicap bathroom. I snuck in, said goodnight to an African immigrant washing himself in the sink, laid my sleeping bag on the floor, and crashed. But an hour after falling asleep I heard a loud rapping at the door and a word that sounded like “croissant.” I opened the door, but in place of a warm, delicious pastry, there were–I kid you not–4 armed police officers, 2 security guards, and a curious bystander. “Hurry up! Get out!” one of them ordered, as I clumsily gathered my things. A little intense reception, but the poor immigrant was likely outback getting pistol whipped, so I’ll consider myself lucky.

The next morning I flew to Helsinki. I used Helsinki mostly as a gateway to the east, but I did take some time to enjoy the city’s architecture. My favorite piece, per my mother’s recommendation, was the Church in Stone (a church built into a rocky hill), the holiest church I had ever laid my eyes on.
Now I write from Lithuania, where I fear for my life. If I had to shop here, I’d be in the fucking children’s department. The women are gorgeous, but each time they talk to me in their intimidating Eastern European accents, I nearly soil myself.
You might have noticed that I skipped Estonia and Latvia. Sad as this is, I have decided mostly for work-related reasons to accelerate my travels and head towards my real point-of-interest, the Balkans. I will be in Croatia, likely, in 2 weeks and home much earlier than planned. This is bittersweet.
Anyway, hopefully there will be updates soon. It’s getting much harder to find internet time, though.

Just finished Fallas. Good god. That was insanity.

A real post is coming soon. And possibly some major route changes in my backpacking trip (warm weather seems very appealing these days). Talk to you soon.

Abrazos,
Jim

Crowd Surfing at the Futureheads concert

Originally uploaded by Jim Goldblum.

I am in Edinburgh, Scotland, a city of grand Georgian architecture, an epic castle, volcanic scenery, and more bars, restaurants, and galleries than I know what to do with, but among all this beauty and endless potential for fun, I can think only one thing: I am tired.

My last night in Oxford Liam got me tickets to a secret Futureheads concert. Their post-punk, guitar thrashing tired me out after two or three songs, but it was a good night regardless. I was especially impressed by the vigor and passion of England’s crowd surfing. Kids tossed into the air would tumble and flip, sometimes smacking their shins into anonymous faces, but the crowd, bearing this abuse, never once dropped them (almost a given at many shows I’ve seen in Philadelphia). It was inspiring.

The next morning, after a restless night sleep, I took a train up to Liverpool, a city known for only two things: soccer and The Beatles. I became lost in the city center and without a map, I asked many where I could find the Beatles Story museum. Then was one of my first times I felt true heart-wrenching nostalgia for Sevilla. At least there I could understand people. Scouse, the dialect spoken by Liverpoolians, is fast, molasses thick, and entirely incomprehensible. I was frustrated, and the city wasn’t offering much eye candy to assuage my throbbing brain. You see, Liverpool is under attack. In 2008 it will become the European Capital of Culture, and for now, it seems as if every building is either under scaffolding or having something ripped off or dropped onto it by omnipresent cranes.

After an hour or so I stumbled upon the waterfront and Albert Dock, the home of the Beatles’ museum and the Tate Liverpool. The former was fun, informative, and fantastic. The latter, good. Both, however, were likely terrible ideas for me in my zombie-state.

I returned to my hostel drained and ready to collapse. Sadly, sleep didn’t come early, as I ended up watching the England-Uruguay soccer match with a bunch of drunks, and then later having a shockingly personal conversation with an Italian-German aspiring pop singer about her elusive father. Needless to say, I didn’t get the rest deemed necessary for my trip to Manchester.

On Friday Benji, my Manchester host, met me in Piccadilly Gardens and soon we were off to a swanky bar, where his housemate Matt works. We all got acquainted over beers. And then something wonderful happened: the bill never came. FREE! I knew then two things: (1) I would like Benji and his housemates; and (2), my heart speaks Hebrew and loves not to pay for things.

It was Benji’s birthday, but the real festivities would begin Saturday. That certainly didn’t stop us from going to the local pub with over a dozen of his friends and downing pint after pint. I was discussing Bush’s abandonment of conservatism with one housemate, Dan, when Benji’s face began glowing redder than a Theta’s nose at formal-time. This indicated it was time to leave. We returned to casa de Benji, and there I beared witness to the most terrifyingly intense game of Casino ever played. One guy, Will, said when accused, “I hate this game and I will hate it even more if you vote against me. I am swearing to you, swearing to you, I am not the killer.” Another girl, Nita, offered £20 for her friend to not vote against her. This was abnormal.

The next morning I went to the city center for my favorite sport: SHOPPING! Benji told me that Manchester serves as England’s second city of culture. Peeking my head into the various boutique clothing and record shops, it wasn’t hard to see why. As the city that introduced Joy Division, New Order, and Morrissey to the world, Manchester’s emphasis on the hip and obscure summates it as much as the cheesesteak does my beloved Fattydelphia.

That night everyone gathered at Benji’s house, where they held a fun pregame. Finally, 10:30 rolled around, the time doors opened at the Music Box. We arrived on-time and sufficiently drunk to see Mr. Scruff, one of England’s top DJs. The well-reputed bar decided it’d be best to drop the lights for the night, and I fell into the music. A technical DJ, Mr. Scruff mixed blues and jazz, hip hop and folk, anything that had a soul. For 6 hours– the last 2 of which blew me away–I joined the silhouttes of the crowd and bobbed to the music. Intermittently, I’d hit on Benji’s friend from Hong Kong, Purple, and that was going decently until I jokingly accused her of stealing the coatI lent her and she, um, didn’t get the joke.

The music cut off around 4:30 and we wandered out to the street to find a cab. No, not home, but to Raj’s, the purveyors of the world’s greatest chicken kebab. A friend of Benji, Alice, suggested we walk and eat, and I snapped at her, “NO!” I sat down, wrapped my two shaking hands around that behemoth, devoured it, found Jesus, and decided, as the time was now 5:50, that I would pass on the after-party and head to bed. I left, but not before telling the workers at Raj’s that I loved them. They smiled warm smiles and handed me a pile of menus to “give [my] friends in America.”

I awoke at 9:30, with a grumbling in my stomach. Oh, my kebab was enacting its revenge. I ran all over the house in search of some toilet paper, but there was none. Finally, I found a solution, and as a sidenote I recommend to all that you don’t try to read my diary entry for the weekend. Oh, this is a particularly crass entry.

For the next hour, restless, I cleaned up scattered beer cans and plates and listened to music. At around 11, my ever hungover host wandered into my room (or the amazing room that Dan kindly lent me) to say we were heading to a traditional breakfast at the house of the girlfriend of Hugh’s, yet another absurdly hospitable housemate. There, while waiting for breakfast, I watched the British Apprentice , which was so intense, I almost felt pity, inexplicably, for the show’s poor soul-sucking ladder climbers. Finally, a heaping plate of toast, beans, and sausages was set before me, and I ate with glee.

I needed to finish my dish hastily, though, as it was time for the Manchester City–Sunderland soccer match. The game started great, as Manchester City scored twice within the first ten minutes (from what I had heard about Sunderland, I half-expected their team to be rolling around in wheelchairs). Cheers reverberated throughout the stadium (my favorite, directed at one drunk Sunderland fan and sung in orchestral chords, “You fat bastard!”). The game was fantastic, and I can see why Sevillanos always shied away from English fans (hint: they’re crazy).

That night I said my good-byes to Benji and his housemates and left for the train station. When I told the ticket man in Manchester my plan, he started howling with laughter. I, feeling wretchedly hungover and sleep deprived, caught the 10 o’clock train from Manchester to Preston, sat there delirious for 2 hours, and finally hooked up with a sleeper train, which dropped me off in Edinburgh at 4 in the god damn morning. Yayyy!

In Scotland, after catching a cab outside the train station, I arrived at the flat of my friend Joanna. She brought me upstairs, and drool poured down my chin, as I stared longingly at the air mattress laid before me.

The next morning, I lay awake in bed, light dripping through the curtains. Then I knew. (Please don’t read on if you don’t want ruined your image of me as hardcore…mom) I couldn’t continue on like this. This endless culture-binge during the day, alcohol-binge at night had drained me. Realizing that one, I hadn’t been home in 7 months, and two, Edinburgh would be one of my last destinations in the West, I decided to make it into a makeshift trip back to the States (sans friends and family, sadly). Aside from our trip to the mosque for stellar curry, I tried to eat greasy Western food, went to every movie I wanted to see (Walk the Line, Capote, Good night, and Good Luck), and, aside from one rockin’ party in Joanna’s flat–with lots of beirut and a pretty Scottish girl– rested and caught my breath.

Yesterday, I did garner the energy to visit the Edinburgh Castle. A former home to both royalty and dying prisoners and built precariously upon a dormant volcano, the castle is a sight to behold. I took a tour with a friendly Scottish man and a handful of Americans. Our tour guide told us that he was venturing to New Orleans soon, and one Arizonan blondie with twinkling blue eyes blurted out, “Ooh, they have a great shopping mall there!” So painfully stupid on so many levels, this was the 5,690th time an American in Europe almost made made me shred my passport. Why is it that so many of my beloved Americans become so detestable to me the second they step outside our borders?
The castle was phenomenal, but for all those who once dreamed of living in one as a child, surrender that dream now. Americans captured in the War for Independence were stowed in the castle’s barracks, starving, and doing menial labor under horrendous conditions.

At night Joanna and I embarked on the highly regarded “City of the Dead” walking tour. Edinburgh earned this nickname, because in its famous Grey Friar’s Cemetery, 350 gravestones mark the burial place of between a quarter and a half-million corpses, nameless victims of the plague. Covering everything from Darwin’s borrowing ideas from linguist James Burnett to the Declaration of Independence’s basis upon the Scottish Covenant of Blood, the creepy distinction between a ghost and a poltergeist to a stupid story of a dog that inspired not one, but two Disney movies, the tour was phenomenal, if not a little scary.

My last night Joanna and I decided to go out for a final meal, before my late-night flight to Dublin. At Mussels Inn we stuffed our face with a kilo each of steamed mussels. We left the restaurant with the forces of gravity, my overstuffed stomach, and my enormous bag all trying to shove me to the ground. On the walk to the train station, Joanna found a passport and a female NED (non-educated delinquent) approached me and proceeded to stroke my arm vigorously, informing her trashy friends, “He’s my friend. I found a friend. I like my new friend.”

Update: Cursed RyanAir delayed my flight, then delayed it again, so I did not arrive in Dublin until 1:30 in the morning. Good thing my couchsurf host was a vampire who never slept, so this wasn’t a problem. Actually this was a problem, as her hours of course were too much for tired little me, and I am now writing from a hostel, deathly ill. I am trying to recover before I return to Spain for the 5-day insanity that is the Festival of Fire, Valencia (Las Fallas). I will write my post about splendid Dublin soon. Adios.

Eiffel’s understudy’s bridge in Porto

Originally uploaded by Jim Goldblum.

In the north of Portugal, a majestic old city towers over the banks of the River Douro, a lattice steel bridge tying it to the town of Gaia, where signs for port wine cellars speckle its hillside like Hollywood. Welcome to Porto.

I arrived at the office of my host, Gabriela, sleepless and a bit dazed, and Gabriela, ever the professional, skipped out on work early to show me back to her apartment (it was soon thereafter that I learned she was the office boss). We chatted in the car, and she informed me she once worked for Super Bock, my new favorite brand of beer. Then she parked, slanted across two spots, and I feared she might have a drinking problem. No, she owned both spots.
Gabriela’s apartment [and quite possibly Gabriela] will undoubtedly be the pinnacle of my couchsurfing experience. With walls bare yet brightly lit like a modernist gallery, she ushered me past her living room into the guest room, with its huge, cushy bed and blinds so effective I could sleep the day away.

For the next 36 hours, we walked along the pier, past mighty waves slamming into the lighthouse and me squealing like a schoolgirl, shared travel pictures and stories, and listened to music of our youth (mine Raffie, hers New Order). She exuded such generosity, taking me my first night to a fantastic restaurant, Caffeine, where I ate delicious scallops and prawns, and where she, with no more than a glance, shooed my hand away from the bill.

After only two nights, Gabriela and I made a sad parting, and I made my way to the airport for my flight to Paris. Everything about Paris screams “beauty.” From its long boulevards stuffed with over-stylized people to its neatly prepared cuisine to its mammoth Gothich structures infested with tourists, the city is stunning. And, I, at age 20, despise it will all my soul.
Here, let me introduce:
My 3 Reasons for Loathing Paris (see: how Jim became the cliche Ugly American):
1. Julie: So lovely over email, my couchsurf host turned out to be a disaster. For 5 hours I tried calling her and for 5 hours I heard her annoying voice mail, none of which I could understand. Because of her inability to answer a single call, I ran around the city, past ubiquitous flyers for a Star Wars Convention, and failed to find a decently-priced hostel or hotel. Finally at 11, an hour before every hotel reception in the city would stop accepting guests and I’d have to lay my sleeping bag on the street, I found one backalley roach motel, which kindly charged me 50 Euros for a crap closet space.
2. Hotel Receptionists’ Failure to Learn English: Ooh, this one is particularly Ugly American of me, but good fucking god, this isn’t Djibouti. It’s Paris, a supposed intellectual capital of the Western World, and for people in its hospitality sector to not speak any English, the closest the world has ever come to an Esperanto, is simply unacceptable. I learned more French in 24 hours than some of these ingrates know English. Ridiculous.
3. People Watching: In Paris many cafes with large glass panes have all their chairs inside turned to the sidewalk. I might have found this cute under normal circumstances, but when I am sweating profusely and my shoulders slacken from hours under an oversized backpack, getting judged on how well my hiking boots match the vein jutting out my forehead proves nothing but annoying.

And, Why I Must Return:
1. It’s Paris. C’mon. As I said, it’s beautiful, and it has some of the best museums, food, and yes, people in the world. For me to write it off would be the epitome of idiotic.

After my 24-hour soiree with Paris, I was in the chunnel on the way to London to visit my friend Joe, a student for the year at King’s College. The hall in Joe’s student dormitory was a real eye-opener. I threw my pack to the ground and was soon thereafter greeted by a few students wrapped in blankets, sucking away at pacifiers. It seems I wasn’t the only one feeling ecstasy to be in London.

My first time in London was just five years ago with my family. Since then, the city has changed. Drastically. I remember both the food and the women being mediocre at best. Not the case. First off, anyone who says food in London tastes awful receives his cues from antiquated guide books. It’s appalling expensive, yes, and nearly sent me into epileptic sticker shock. But bad? Oh no, no, no. It’s quite good (side note: I have learned that “quite” is the secret to the British appearing charming and intelligent. To be charming, say, “Oh, this tea is quite nice, don’t you think?” or “You are quite a filthy prostitute, aren’t you?” To be intelligent, say, “Oh my. That is quite a predicament. What would I like to eat?” Works like a charm.)
As for the women, WHAT HAPPENED!?!? And whatever it was, can we do it in the States asap? They are gorgeous. They are unreal. At every street corner I was craning my neck excitedly like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Sorry. I forgot my mother reads this. So…
I spent my nights drinking with Joe or hanging out with the colorful characters of his hall, and by day, I ventured into some of the city’s phenomenal museums (the Imperial War Museum–the war porn museum, if you will– and the Tate Modern, unquestionably two of the greatest in the world).
My last night, as I walked about the city, past the Buckingham Palace dimly lit and into the momentous Trafalgar Square, stopping to dance with a Brazilian La Bamba concert in Covent Gardens, and continuing through to the boutique shops of SoHo, I thought of something absurdly pretentious and stupid Joe said to me upon my arrival. “I have heard that every couple years, there is an unspoken competition between New York, Paris, and London for the greatest city in the Western World, and that right now, London is it.” Standing before the steps of the National Gallery in the Square, I knew, against my better judgment, that he must be right.

I am writing this post from Oxford, England, and I apologize if any of it reads as incoherent babbling, but I have not slept well for two nights now. I am staying with Liam, a most awesome underachiever, and his university roommates, who let me crash on their couch. Oxford is spectacular (save me ambling about in a perpetual state of fear because the streets lack the “look right/look left” street signs of London).

Tomorrow I travel to Liverpool, where I will sleep ’til Friday. Then I arrive in Manchester to join the 24 Hour Party People.
You will be hearing from me. Rock ‘n roll.
Jim

Oh and another thing. I thought I’d list here all my 8 favorite pieces from the Tate Modern. I mean, why not?
1. Dorothea Tanning–Eine Kleine Nachtmusic (surrealist painting inspired by Gothic novels and childhood nightmares)
2. Marcel Marien–Peace During Wartime (a bucolic engraving intermixed with a map of WWII Europe)
3. Juan Munoz–Towards the Corner (cool statues that I liked the first time I saw them in a park in Porto)
4. Thomas Schutte–United Enemies (photography of puppets revealing a disgust with the current state of Italian politics)
5. Gilbert & George–Death Hope Life Fear (the strangest mix of stained glass, living sculptures, and photography; very 80s; very sinistic; very cool)
6. Carlos Amorales–Interior versus Exterior (another living sculptures photo set showing the artist in various Mexican wrestling masks; about rituals and appearances as fiction)
7. Thomas Hirschhorn–Drift Topography (like the train set from hell; depicting the war in Iraq and its ideas and rhetoric)
8. Christian Boltanski–The Reserve of Swiss Dead (anonymous obituary photos illuminated strangely; shows how everyone is unique and beautiful, but disappears so quickly)

This is a post to say I will be making a real post soon. I just came from Porto, which was amazing (Gabriela, don’t blush) and from 24 hours in Paris, which was like the third-ring of hell (no fault of the Parisians, except 2 or 3 thousand). Now I’m in London, crying in my room, clutching my wallet. You will hear from me soon.
j

Sintra, Portugal…pretty

Originally uploaded by Jim Goldblum.

To travel around Europe I am using a hospitality network called Couchsurfing. Locals let you stay at their house and ask for little in return (cultural exchange or your body parts in their refrigerator).

Pedro was there waiting for me, when I arrived at the bus station in Lisbon. He took me back to his apartment, rolled me a purro, showed me to his guest bedroom, and got to work cooking me a typical Portuguese meal. An auspicious start, I’d say.

The following morning Pedro dropped me off in the main square, and I immediately trudged my way up the impossibly steep steps of the traditional neighborhood, Alfama, towards St. Jorge’s Castle. From there, once I garnered enough energy to open my eyes, I had an incredible unimpeded view of Lisbon and the River Tagus.

Lisbon is, if I could ever define one, an international city. To call Madrid, or even Berlin, international would be a misnomer. They’re mammoth, mostly integrated, Western cosmopolitan cities. Yet Lisbon, although similar, stands apart. Its founders built it upon seven hills (like Istanbul). Much of the architecture dates from the 18th century, as an earthquake leveled the city in 1755. And the buildings, with their red-tiled rooves and peeling plaster facades, demonstrate a beautiful grittiness many scrubbed-over European capitals lack. Even more, that chicken in that Indian restaurant will be cooked in a tandoor, and yes, that Angolan woman at the busstop is balancing her groceries on her head.

I was hungry and decided to go to Barrio Alto for lunch. Instead of walking and therefore risking doing more exercise in a day than I did a whole semester in Sevilla, I joined a heap of Italian tourists for a ride on the funicular. A funicular, the medical term for brightly colored trolley, lifts up and soars over the hill, like a wire-donned Peter Pan in the broadway musical (childhood dream much?). The Barro Alto is a small, lovely neighborhood dedicated to almost nothing but eating and drinking (some 60 bars within its cavernous streets). However, I could find nothing open for lunch that wasn’t a 45-fork rated, prix fix, escargot-on-the-small-plate eatery. Just as I was about to surrender my convictions and enter Hell’s fast food joint itself, Subway, I heard something. Staggering up the hill, sucking in oxygen like a vacuum sucks up pennies, and wearing a circa-1990 Chicago Bulls’ sweatshirt covered in grease stains, was the fattest slob in all of Lisbon. Surely if anyone knew where to get a filling meal on the cheap, it was he.

Me: Hello, do you speak Spanish or English?
Fat Gentleman: Portuguese.
Me: Ah, fuck. Food! (pantomime: fork entering my mouth) Food!
FG: Blah Blah Blah. (portuguese word that sounds like “prostitute”) Blah.
Me: No, food! (pantomime: rubbing belly) Cheap, delicious food!
FG: Ah! Blah blah. (portuguese word that sounds like “cheap”)
Me: Yes! Cheap!
FG: (he motions me to follow him) Blah. Blah. (Portuguese word that sounds like “Jew”)

He led me to a literal hole in the wall (I had to duck under the scaffolding to enter). But inside, a small Portuguese man scooped onto my plate two heaping spoonfuls of delicious pasta, two big steaks, and a half-loaf of bread, all for $3. Perfect.

Later, after a walk by the waterfront and through tranquil Blene, I was on a train to Cascais meet my next host, Caze.

I had a good night sleep on his sofa bed, and he woke me early for the 20-minute car ride to Sintra, the supposed gem of Portugal.

What words could you use to describe Sintra? For one, judging by the single busload of Japanese tourists, underrated. Majestic? Pristine? Scintillating. Meh! Mystical? There we go. Caze drove me through sheets of rain, but the moment the car stopped in front of the Sinta National Palace, the rain stopped. Spooky. During the ride, he told me of Lisboan goth kids who come to the Sintra woods by night, geeking chickens, etching pentacles into the towering trees, and hoping the dark lords will send them a sign. The place has that kind of effect on people.

I spent the day glossing over its history and focusing my attention more on its astounding beauty. I hiked through the backyards of Portugal’s nobility, past castles, through the Dante-esque cave tunnels that run under the Quinta Regaleita, and up to a mountain-topped Moorish Palace. At one point, while I was photographing one stunning moss-laden walkway, the wind smashed a large tree not five-feet from my feet. Caught up in the magic of the place, instead of soiling myself, I took this to mean this path was unpure and I should turn back. Sintra has either made me into a pagan or a huge nerd.

Caze picked me up, and after a quick trip to see the sunset at Capa da Roca, Continental Europe’s western-most point, we jetted back to his parent’s place for the FC Porto match and a homecooked meal. Before we entered, Caze ensured that I could eat his mother’s famous breaded pork cutlet. You see, the night before when I explained to him and his bestfriend Joanna the term “neurotic Jewish mother,” they were confused as to whether I was really a Jew (the 1st they’d ever met) or just sharing a peculiar American colloquialism for “crazy.” After assuring everyone (or rather having Caze assure everyone, since I don’t speak Portuguese) that I’d eat anything, the meal went like this:

Caze’s mother and sister sit in silence.
Me: (to mother, pointing at food) Boa! So good!
Caze’s father: Ah, he likes it. Tell him to eat more.
Caze: He says he already has 2 cutlets on his plate and he’ll just finish those first.
Caze’s father puts two more cutlets and a scoop of rice on my plate.
Minutes pass.
Caze’s father: He needs to try the birthday cake. And some port!
Caze: Jim says he’s happy with the orange.
Caze’s father puts three slices of cake on my plate, and pours me a glass of port.
The cake tastes great, but the port chasing it ignites a fire in my throat.
Caze: Jim, my dad wants to give you a strong drink.
Me: (laughing) Tell him he’s succeeding.
Caze: No, not the Port! He wants to give you Fire Water.
Minutes pass.
Caze’s father: Does he want another glass of the Fire Water?
Caze: No, Jim says he’s quite comfortable crying on the floor right now.

After attempting to siphon a fire extinguisher, Caze and I met Joanna at a bar in a windmill overlooking the Cascais ocean. A beautiful night discussing life, before my early morning train to Porto.