Islands and sunny smiles

My last few days on the Greek islands have been nothing short of amazing. I've made new friends, sang made up songs with them and spent most of my days swimming lazyily in the beautifuly blue salt water. I've felt more free in these last few days than any I can remember in my life. Paros the last island I visited was wonderful, I spent my first night sleeping on the ground in a tent with only my 3 tee shirts to pad the ground. I met a crazy french girl there and we spent the night walking around and taking pictures. In the morning I decided it was time to move on, so I hopped on the scooter and headed to another side of the island to see if I couldn't find a cheap bed to rest my broke ass on. I ended up finding a super tight hostel that these two German girls worked at. It was a very warm place, everyone there seemed so happy and we spent the night together around the barbeque speaking a mix of German and English. I also met this super cool girl Viyda from New Zeland at the hostel, we ended up getting along well and traveled together to Athens on the ferry the next day. After hours of good convo and a bit of chess the ferry pulled into the port in Athens, we were followed by at least a hundread seguls who were flying like fighter pilots next to our ship diving whithin inches of the water to eat the fish that were forced to the surface. The sun was setting behind us and casting a wonderful array of colors on the city as we pulled in to dock, I was so greatful to be alive. The rest of the night was wonderful, we found a room with little trouble and then watched Germany beat Turkey 3-2 in the 90th minute.

Right now I'm waiting to catch my flight at 19:45 to Istanbul and other than flying to Eygpt on the 3oth I have no plans. I hopefully will find a place to play chess when I arrive and a Turkish bath might also have to do down. The few hours I've spent in Athens have been tight though. I found a meat market where they sell whole carcuses of animals in the open air. The smell of exposed flesh and the twang of the butcher's knifes craking through bone on wooden slabs was enough to make me consider not eating meat for about 15 minutes, until I walked past a gyro place and the smell of seasond pork rotating on a spit brought me back to my senses, the gyro was juicy and delicous. I've got to run but I leave you with a pic of the gutted mess and a toast to the beautiful flesh that fills my belly at this time.

Sorry spell check doesn't work.

Pics after another long blog silence

The last week has been a mix of relaxing days on the beach and seemingly endless bus and ferry rides. It's all worth it of course and I'm sure after seeing the pictures I think you'll agree. (hopefully they get downloaded).

After Rome tyler and I headed down to the Amalfi coast in Italy, it's similar to Cinque Terra with it's cliff side dwellings and beaches but differs in the amount of tourists. Amalfi seemed less over run and felt very Itailian. In the two days we spent there we did little else except sit at the beach, swim and watch Itailan kids play soccer. We also ended up meeting a really cool guy (bill) who was a teacher from the states who was studying in Italy on a grant of some sort (tough life huh?). We watched a Turkey's epic comeback against Chech with him and shared a meal the next day.

Then the time came to leave our beautiful cliff side dwelling and we began our 48 hour journey to the island of Santorini in Greece. This Journey would include a 6 hour train ride, 2 8 hour ferry rides and 7 hours on a bus so funky I thought I might actually pass out. The positive side of this long journey was of course the people we met along the way. We meet these kids from colorado who used to live in Pheonix on our first ferry to Igomentista (greece), we ended up having a great time with them on the first ferry. After we arrived in igomentista we were supposed to be parting ways but after their travel plans fell through we ended up deciding to go to Santorini together. The journey there was another 24 hour experience, we had to battle the funky bus and another 8 hour ferry. Shortly after we arrived any thoughts of the funk of the bus or the traveling of the past 2 days were quickly forgotten. We found a super cheap hotel and rented motor scooters, which fucking fly by the way I got mine to at least 90km+ on a bit of a down hill. (don't worry too much mom I had a helmet on and I'm trying to keep it as safe as possible). The scooters are a blast though we spent the first days doing a beach tour of the southern part of the island. We would stop at every beach we found swim for a bit and then roll out to a different location. At one beach we found a cave that you could swim into and then stand up in walk for a bit and then swim out to the other side of the rock face. I wanted to get pictures of the cave because it was so amazing, so I hatched a plan to tie my camera up in plastic bags and then where it on top of my head so I could swim into the cave and get some pics. The plan went off wonderfully and the first sensual zak of the trip was captured in a cave filled with beautiful see water, and don't worry sensual zak will most certainly be coming out again before the trip is over. After the sensual experience in the cave I went on an island tour by myself while everyone else hung out at the pool. I got some great pics of the sunset and the surrounding buildings.

I've got to run but I will (and I know I always say this) try to be a bit more on point with the blogging when I can find Internet. I'm heading to a few more islands and then I'm off to Istanbul on the 26th and then on the 30th to Cairo and the heat. I can't wait, but for right now I'm going to hop back on my scooter and fly to the other side of the island to take a dip. I love you guys, see you soon, Zak



Of shit I almost forgot, I found the best pair of scharf boy shorts you've ever seen in you life, they're so fly, see for your self the red lacoste boys in the pics.

Rome pics

I'll write when I get a chance but I've only got 8 minutes left. Rome has been great though, now we're heading down to Pompei and the Alfami coast. Have fun, zak

Garmisch & future plans

Being back in Garmisch for this week has been a nice rest, seeing old friends again and being able to just relax has been huge. It's weird though, when I was in AZ for the first couple months I thought about coming back to Garmisch often and wished I could return (with my family of course), but being here I realized that it's sometimes better just to move on to different things now matter how easy or agreable a past situation might have been. I don't know if I will ever come back here but I don't think it would be the best thing for me if I did. It would just be too easy and planed out, true living in Europe is great but I think I can manage something more interesting.


My time here has been awesome though, I've gone to the erding sauna which is the biggest in europe and had a great day with my haf (friend from Garmisch). My friend Gary and I did a ride that absoultly killed me and to top it off it rained and hailed on us for an hour before we got home. The mountains are still here and as beautiful as ever, even though they were covered for most of the time I was here they still made a point to come out for a couple of hours and say hallo. Playing chess with the old boys in Garmisch was also a great experience, it's nice to be so warmly greeted by old Bavarian guys who share the same love. Of course after the greetings we tried to rip each others heads off, but that's chess. I'm glad to have had the oppertunity to live here, but strong moves must be made.

I've changed the plans a bit, I know I had told everyone I was planing on eastern Europe but... I decided to go to Turkey and Egypt instead after Tyler leaves me in Greece on the 26th. I don't really know why I changed my mind but I liked the randomness of this new direction. Just thinking about going to Egypt filled me with the same nervous wonder I felt before leaving to India. It's also one of those once in a life time opertunity things you read about. I'm going to be in Turkey for 4 days and then in Eygpt for 8 before returning to Garmisch to do a bike trip with my good friend Gary.

I've got an hour before the train and the night ahead of me sleeping on a bench at the airport. My pack has even less in it than before, I feel light, happy and focused ready to meet what comes next. I'll write soon and of course send pics from the sand and heat. Much love. zak

paris pics

this thing just fucked up and erased my post so you only get 5 pics of Paris, sorry but need to get caught up to Garmisch before I leave on the train in a couple of hours.

I don't even know if the pics are going to show up.

Amsterdam pics before I forget

The attic Part and the rest is Amsterdam

Just pics from Amsterdam and a couple from the Copenhagen "attic cleaning party" before I get too far along in this marathon bloging experience.

Antwerp and the first doner kebab of the trip

We had went to Antwerp really without any plan, our chess friend who loved architecture in Amsterdam had recommended it and Tyler and I had already been to Brussels so we figured we would give it a try. Antwerp turned out to be a pretty strange place. We arrived on a Sunday and for those who don't know Europe has this great and sometimes rather annoying habit of closing everything except restaurants on Sundays. When we first got there Ty and I had forgot it was Sunday and were under the impression that Antwerp was a ghost town as we walked through the business district looking for a hostel we had read about online. After arriving at the hostel and banging on it's locked door a Brazilian guy poked his head out and at first told us he was full but then asked us to come in, saying he would see what he could do. I'm still not sure if the building was actually open legally as a hostel or if this Brazilian guy had the keys and was squatting there. He didn't even know how many beds he had and we had to wait while he counted them again and again trying to figure out if he had space for 2 more. Eventually I think he tired of the math and just decided to say fuck it and we were told we had a place to stay. Later that night, rather unsurprisingly, our friends math had been wrong. We ended up having one more person than beds in our room and I had to go and sleep in a room we were told not to go into. Other than the relentless attack put up by the mosquitoes the other room worked out fine. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful and in the morning we headed to the train station to figure out our plans to Paris. After figuring our plans out we headed to the biggest park in town to kill a couple hours before the train. Tyler wanted desperately to sit down and I wanted to creep on old men playing chess in the park. We didn't find any old men with chess pieces grasped between sweaty fingers but we did find a skate park where we sat for quite a while and watched a very strange mix of people roll around, some on bikes others on razor scooters, most thankfully on skateboards. After a few hours we rolled out to the train station and on to Paris.

I know that I suck

It has been over a week since I've posted a thing and this of course is totally unacceptable. My excuse in Belgium and France was the key boards and their rearranged letters that I wasn't familiar with. Even though I always look directly at the keyboard the whole time while I'm typing with 3 fingers I couldn't get over this hurdle, I guess my 3 fingers do sort of remember where the keys are. So now that I'm in Garmisch and back to a proper keyboard my plan this morning is to sit here in front of my friend Haf's computer and not get up until I've gotten the blog somewhat back on track. I do how ever have the added bonus of being able to upload images, so now you get to look at something other than my horribly written words. I'm going to start from Antwerp and write a post for every place up till where I am now in Garmsich, I hope you enjoy.

P.S. the picture of The Brain was taken in Copenhagen and I like it.