People Misbehavin' on Trains

We had a charming 32-hour journey from Sighişoara, Romania to Istanbul. This included a 5 hour delay in the middle of the night at a rustic train station in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria. Hot sleeplessness and a conductor wandering the aisle in a wife beater and a cigarette hanging out his mouth, who's english vocabulary consisted of "money", "mafia", "internet", and "passport", defined the trip.

Istanbul is a lovely crossroads of East and West.

warning... obligatory Czech pun ahead

I made it to Prague, the Eastern Europe tour is underway. I've managed to join forces with some friends from L.A. to tag along with for the month, then things will start to get real. I found a community on the WWOOF network in Greece that essentially operates like a commune. Not to make any political statements or anything, but I think that would be an interesting thing to try out for a while. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I expect I will be spending some time there after I part ways with Lyd and Suz at the end of August.

But we still have plenty of places to hit up before then. It goes Prague, Budapest, Kiev, Transylvania, and finally Istanbul. So far Prague is one of my new favorite cities in the world. It's very beautiful, and almost more importantly, very laid-back. I don't know... something about it. I'll keep this one in the back of my mind as something to remember to do again in the future someday.

Czech Mark.