You don't have to put on a red light.

"Not quite the Jazz Age euphoria I was expecting." - Marc Hauser

Amsterdam is for amateurs.

If this shatters your travel dreams, or insults your personal judgment from your own experience, My apologies. Well, not really.

This isn't the post for the full Tourist vs. Traveler analysis, but all you need to know is that Amsterdam is claustrophobically saturated with the former, while I consider myself decidedly the latter. Paris was stricken with the same problem, but the city itself was diverse enough in its neighborhoods and nuance to accommodate this, to give refuge to those who seek a little more than the mainstream. Amsterdam is a circle. That is what it looks like on a map, and walking its streets is a loop of coffee shops, canals, garish tourist souvenirs, and rows of bicycles on endless repeat.

That's the setting. As for the cast of characters. As I was checking email on my laptop after checking-in, two guys at my hostel used the only public computers in the building to listen to techno music videos on YouTube and write down the lyrics. For forty-five minutes. This was followed a few hours later by a conversation a girl from Spain had with a 28-year-old World of Warcraft-obsessed guy from America. A guy that is terrified to go anywhere that they speak anything other than English. Luckily Amsterdam and Paris still fit this for him, but he refuses to go to Spain. "Its just so tough because everything's in a different language." Contrast this with an excerpt from a conversation I overheard in Lithuania: "Oh, South America.... to do South America right you have to go for at least a year." Two ends of the spectrum. Tourist and traveler.

This guy in Amsterdam, he's been here for 3 days, by his own admission hadn't seen any of the city or its sights yet, and he spent today lying awake in his bunk for hours, waiting for 3 British guys he just met yesterday to wake up because he didn't want to walk around on his own. He'll cross an ocean, but walking those last few hundred meters is too much to bear. I don't get it. Last night with that girl, he talked about how much he wanted to go to Prague.... how he heard that you could live there in luxury on 10 or 20 dollars a week. What's his source.... a Lonely Planet from 1993? Do people really think the world's just that simple, that there's still some undiscovered-yet-completely-tourist-friendly magical city in Europe waiting for America to rescue it from squalor? This isn't rural South America or South East Asia. If you expect your money to go an absurdly long way, you're going to have to travel just as absurdly far to reach it. And every inch of it will be outside of your comfort zone.*

Back to those ever-napping British guys, the Jonas Brothers wannabes in my room, they're wearing those matching fake silver necklace and bracelet links they sold at the mall by the inch in the late '90s, wearing them without any irony. Velcro shoes. Those canvas cinch belts from 7th grade. They stayed out last night to a pretty normal hour, about 130, saying 2 o'clock would be quite generous... and so they slept in today. Until 5pm. Fifteen hours of sleep in a city they've never been to, never seen any more of it that you can't already see on a dorm room couch while playing Gran Turismo or Madden, no more than you could see from an ambiguously-damp sofa in a frat house garage while fighting the stale smell of weeks-old spilled beer. These are your options for smoking buddies in Amsterdam. If I had my own friends along with me, some of you guys reading this, I'm sure I'd feel differently. Not much as you'll see, but a little.

If you're coming here for the liberal stance on drugs, just understand that you're coming for that: the stance, not the substance. Coming from the West Coast you can take it for granted that you live where Oregon, Hawaii, and Humboldt County crop is easy to come by... how much better do you think it honestly gets? I only smoke on rare occasions, but if I'm going to, I expect it to be damn good. The lesson of Amsterdam is that mere legality and prevalence does not ensure quality. No, this isn't the Mecca to travel to for an amazing high. This is the Disneyland of Drugs. Fear and Loathing in Frontierland.

Amsterdam's other trademark. I didn't get a hooker (tell me no one actually expected me to get a hooker...), so I can't supply any first-hand insight, but I can relay a story I heard from a girl in Estonia that instantly became my favorite on the trip. This is how her friend that was backpacking relayed it to her, so I'm paraphrasing mostly, except for the last line, which is indelibly etched in to my memory. "After traveling for a few months, and not having any real luck, I thought I'd treat myself to a hooker in Amsterdam. Most depressing sexual experience in my life. She was barely 16 and so emotionless about it. She just laid there, and the more bored she seemed, the harder I tried, and I got really frustrated and wanted to impress her or make her feel at least something. So I went to switch positions, and she just said in this monotone voice 'That will be 25 more Euro,' ..... so I just lost my erection and left."

This is the Amsterdam of reality. Give me Bruges, give me Manchester, shit, give me Vegas. Or just give me a train ticket to my next city: Munich. Oktoberfest. Now this I can guarantee will be another amateur hour, a shit show waiting to happen. But somehow I feel like the chicken dance will make it all better.


*On a quick tangent, this is where I mention my gratitude to one of my best friends in the world, Kelly, who is traveling that absurdly far distance to see me in Thailand. I'm sure it will be pretty far outside our comfort zones at times (especially when we do the bungee-jumping I inexplicably agreed to). But I don't want it any other way. If you want to travel countless miles to live the exact life you left behind, go to Sandals, go to Disneyland. And I guess, sadly book a flight for Amsterdam.

Rotterdam and Amsterdam:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2104587&id=35804394&l=21f1fa4d5f

Little-known facts about fire.

"We're gonna build something this summer." - The Hold Steady

In baseball, this is known as a change-up. I feel compelled to write a progress report, especially given that today marks my 40th day in Europe, since there's probably some symbolism in wandering for forty days and forty nights. But my writing is a little too flowery and hyperbolic for self-analysis, and since it's been a pretty amazing time, the last thing I want is to sound self-congratulatory. So instead, here are a few smaller musings from the first forty days. More utilitarian than anything. Consider this a sorbet between courses. Or the flicker of fireflies at dusk.

I lost 15 pounds in the first 3 weeks I was gone. A lot of this had to do with the stomach parasites I got in St. Petersburg that sent me to the hospital in Estonia, but luckily I've gained most of this back, and don't look quite so Emile-Hirsch-in-Into-the-Wild. On top of this, I was attacked by bed bugs in both St. Petersburg and Vienna, the blisters on the sole of my left foot are so multi-layered that it looks like a topographical map, and I have a 24/7 piercing pain next to my spine from my 28-kilo backpack. Just so you don't think it's all amazing foreign beer, priceless art, and exotic food.

In Barcelona, they are still constructing Antoni Gaudi's life's work and masterpiece of a cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. Construction began in 1882, and will not be complete until at least 2026. This is comforting to remember when I get down on myself for not being perfect at 26 years old. The night I came to this renewed peace of mind, I was at a 5-story club with five other people from my hostel. "Time to Pretend" by MGMT came on, and when the line "I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, in the prime of my life" hit, we all made eye-contact that can only be described as feral, grabbed hands and sprinted to the dance floor.

I received one of the best compliments of my life last night, from a total stranger. I didn't begin talking to the 3 Dutch girls in my hostel room in Liverpool until after the lights were off, when we were all reduced to nothing more than voices in the darkness and ideas from a void. After discussing my travels so far, my plans that lie ahead, and a good deal of world politics, one of them said, "You have fire in your voice." According to her, this made me dynamic, even when I was nothing more than a sourceless sound. I don't know why, but I really like that.

I had the privilege of waking up the city of Warsaw. My overnight bus from Lithuania got in just before 5 a.m., and after dropping my bags off to a bleary-eyed hostel staff, I walked the length of the city's center (around 4 or 5 km), and was able to be alone with it's old town square and mermaid statue, the Chopin monument in Lazienki Park, the city's well-kept gardens. This only deepened and cemented my strong ties with the city, the paradoxical feeling of homecoming when I'm 8,000 miles from anywhere really familiar. Walking thru still vacant streets afforded me a few hours of meditation on where I was in my life, both geographically and emotionally. And as the rest of the city woke, I felt oddly proud of it, as if in observing it at sunrise I could see the potential it held that others would experience only later, in the hours to come. And don't listen to anybody, it's infinitely better than Krakow, which is essentially just a watered-down anonymous European city. There's not a ton to see in Warsaw, but it possesses a tangible sense of the Polish culture that Krakow lacks.

In Slovakia, 3 Italian backpackers I met made me a pasta dinner and were so disappointed with how it turned out (actually it was pretty decent), that they bought me beer all night to make up for it. And when I get to Milan, we may meet up again, as they promised they could do much better with fresh Italian ingredients.

Of the hundred plus buskers I've seen/heard, I've been tempted all of once to actually give a few cents, and that was to a couple in Riga playing an instrumental version of The Cranberries' "Zombie," with a really hauntingly prominent violin. In Paris, one gets nauseated from all the subway musicians. Trying to ignore the beggars however has been a bit harder, particularly in Eastern Europe. An elderly woman in Lithuania in particular, who had one exposed and empty eye socket, and crawled backwards on her hands and knees. You don't just shake off something like that.

One more note on Barcelona. Managed to get swine flu. So I had that going for me. Which is nice. Feeling basically back to better now though.

The closest that I will come to self-analysis, or a final grade on this progress report, is a recurring image I've had to propel me, a visual mantra for my travels. And it is either fiction or non-fiction, I'm not sure, although I know which one I want it to be. But it isn't my place to judge, just my time to continue.

Somewhere in Europe, there is a candle burning at both ends. But with every passing second, the flames inch farther away from one another, grow in size as they inhale, the oxygen nourishing what was once something that merely flickered in to a steady roar of heat that swells brighter, hotter. Still just flames on a candle, but ones rapidly becoming capable of providing warmth to loved ones, illumination to strangers, as potential is consummated. The wicks shake off the ash, their weave grows tighter, become a solid rope framework keeping the surrounding facade of wax balanced. The candle does not become extinguished in the four winds, rather amplified by them; where they normally snuff out a flame, here they work towards stoking it. And even when this candle sleeps, it wakes up stronger, more alert, hungrier for more.

----------------

One last bit. I'm not actually keeping a private journal while I'm gone, not a detailed one, so this list is really more for myself than anything. But it's what songs have meant something to me in the places I've been. Arcade Fire at the Louvre, Radiohead in Warsaw, The Fling in Lithuania, Frightened Rabbit this morning in Edinburgh. A few people asked me to do something like this before I left, but it's not like I'm expecting everyone to start making a playlist or anything. Although it would be a pretty kick-ass one if you did.

Leaving
Muse - Starlight
Bright Eyes - Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
Bright Eyes - If the Brakeman Turns My Way
Bright Eyes - Another Travelin' Song
The Kooks - See the World
Spoon - All I Got Is Me
Russia
Bloc Party - Pioneers
Bloc Party - Plans
Regina Spektor - Carbon Monoxide
Brazilian Girls - St. Petersburg
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium
Coldplay - Life in Technicolor II
Maximo Park - Russian Literature
Estonia
The Faint - Take Me to the Hospital
The Lonely Island - I'm on a Boat
Finland
Architecture in Helsinki - Like It Or Not (Version 2)
Snowden - Anti-Anti
Snowden - Dreams
Snowden - Between the Rent and Me (Captain Crunk Remix)
Brand New - Play Crack the Sky
Sigur Ros - the ( ) album, Untitled 4 specifically
Latvia
Kings of Convenience - Homesick
The Cranberries - Zombie (instrumental)
Poland
The Kills - Tape Song
The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer
Muse - Map of the Problematique
Austria
Rilo Kiley - The Good That Won't Come
Rilo Kiley - Better Son/Daughter
Germany
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Around the World
Editors - Munich
France
Foals - The French Open
Carla Bruni - Quelqu'un M'a Dit
Arcade Fire - Wake Up
Spain
Counting Crows - Holiday in Spain
Nappy Roots - Work in Progress
MGMT - Time to Pretend
The Decemberists - O, Valencia!
England
The Smiths - London
Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning
The Clash - Hateful

Untitled, one.

Today I stood on holy ground. I have never thought that, nor even knew it was possible for me to do so, until I looked out at the English Channel from the sand of Omaha Beach.

The blood of the thousands of American soldiers killed on D-Day, the blood that changed the color of the ocean, saturated the sand until each grain was engorged and could hold no more, mingled with the grass and roots of the forest on the sloping hill above the beach, this blood also consecrated this spot, and the other battle sites all along the coast of Normandy that on that day would open up to swallow the lives of thousands of young men, swallow their lives and swallow all the promise that the future would have held for them, everything they would achieve if not for this war, this place, this enemy that they were thrust against, these boats they were crammed in to, this part of the earth that they very simply had to take away from others, by the use of guns, and explosives, and intimidation, but those others had guns and had explosives and had intimidation as well, and they also had momentum, had a foothold, had the strategic advantage of needing to simply hold ground, wait for the Allies to tire themselves out wading through the ocean waters and then up the beach and then up the hill, dodging bullets and mortars with every step, finally they would make it to where the Nazis were positioned, and only then would we see whose guns, whose explosives, whose intimidation held sway, and on that morning, on the very spot that I was to stand today, 65 years later, thousands of men with limitless promise became corpses, while another thousand became nothing, their bodies were never found, their annihilation was that complete, but they didn't really become nothing, they all became martyrs, and for me, with my toes nestled in the sand that is now their sepulcher, I recognized that they all became gods.

Seeing the waves of the English Channel break on Omaha, and the gorgeous coast and the forest above, it was impossible for me to really picture that day, or to visualize the carnage that existed in all directions. And that's exactly as it should be. The sacrifice these men gave was so that we all need not picture that. But rather that we enjoy our freedom, savor our happiness, and if anything silently acknowledge what the price for our livelihood was. Not all gods ask for tithes or affirmation; for some, a solemn recognition alone suffices.

This stretch of coast is absolutely gorgeous, worthy of being the altar of their deification. And the cemetery above where nearly ten thousand American dead rest, where gods sleep- it is kept immaculate. For this alone to be the case made me swell with gratitude. This cathedral was not abandoned. But as my visit was nearing its end, I saw a team of groundskeepers spread out around the many acres of graves. One man stood above his large mower at the end of a row that was closest to the ocean, closest to the beach below. His frozen position was just enough to catch my attention and I watched as he stood silently, looking at down at what I assumed must be a faulty machine. And then he crossed himself. And what I mistook for confusion was really silent prayer, and he began mowing the grass above the graves of men he held in such regard that even in fulfilling an everyday task, he wanted to show his respect, his gratitude for everything that they died for, everything they gave up and could not live for.

When in the future I think of Omaha Beach, this image will come easy. Not of carnage, but of legacy.


Omaha Beach, as well as Paris and Versailles:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2101951&id=35804394&l=420c3bea04

Paris, in monochrome:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2102144&id=35804394&l=d236612a22