Well, my flight left Sunday at midnight, and by 1:30 am I was flying high into the sunrise. At 9am Vancouver time, 6pm Europe time, I arrived in London. I took the train into the downtown core, and met up with my friend Eric. We took the Underground (subway) to his place, which is a nice place in a fairly nice part of London. A block away is an old cathedral which is just lying in ruin. In the other direction there are old cemeteries with ancient tombstones. I took a picture of one grave with a skull on it flanked by two crying baby heads. Unreal.

What a day! I really got a taste of Europe today. After 5 hours of rest at Erics, I got up in the morning and left for France. The trip took longer than expected, but I eventually arrived in Calais and picked up a rental car. From there, I took off to Belgium. It is simply unbelievable here. The country side (which is much like the Fraser Vally, minus the mountains) is littered with cathedrals and castle towers, stone walls laying in ruin etc. I drove off the highway through some small villages, then headed to Brussel, Belgium. I don't know what country won the football match, but the whole city was going off waving red flags aroung. It was harsh! Streets were closed off, police were everywhere, and the people went nuts.

After taking in that intensity for a couple hours, I headed north to (zut, I forgot the name, and don't have a map with me). It was a smaller city, but really cool. Tiny streets with railcars on them, people packing the pubs on the sidewalks, more cathedrals and beautiful sculptures. Etc, etc... After a bit more driving, here I am, in Amsterdam. I haven't had a thing to eat today yet, and it is after midnight now. I'm going to go grab something now, then maybe hit up a club or after hours party. We'll see. I'll have to partake of a beverage or sixteen as well. There is a casino a block away from here, and I'm going to try to pull myself from the incessant vaccum emenating from within its doors.

It's the morning now, and I have yet to start my day. It looks like I won't be able to spend much time here today, as I plan to be in Berlin this evening. No sex museum for me. I couldn't find any clubs last night, but I hung out with the locals in the typical European way on the sidewalks and busy store-fronts. I stumbled into the redlight district as well. No really, it was an accident. How bizzare: small alleyways with picture windows lined on either side. Beside each window is a door, and behind the window, a chick in a bra/g-string trying to entice you into the little room that only holds a bed and a desk. Well, I have to go back into town now, I still haven't eaten anything (since Monday evening), and I have to leave before the outrageous parking fees take effect.

After that last entry, I headed out on the road going from Amsterdam to Berlin. The labrinths of highways here gets crazy, but I was able to figure it out thanks to mappy.com. I am surprised that the weather has been so nice. Totally hot and sunny. The trip to Berlin was long, and given that I was going 180 km/h, it was quite a journey. I stopped in a few small German villages to get some beverages, and no one spoke english. That was the first time all trip I ran into non-english-speaking people. Enough of the drive. Once I arrived in Berlin, I went to a park and tried to figure out where the hell I was. The roads all have weird unpronouncable names, so it is hard to follow road maps. Berlin is also HUGE, and all the maps I have only show the main routes, and only give names for half of them. So what I did was park in the outskirts of town, then take the subway and train system to get to a hostel, where I stayed last night. Well, actually, I didn t get back in from the club till nearly 8am!

I went to the coolest techno club last night! It was an old stone building with two levels and two dance floors. Upstairs was good downtempo kinda house, very danceable, but soothing almost. Nothing I heard came even close to trendy trance or techno that I always end up hearing in Canada. The music kicked ass. The room upstairs was illuminated in red, and had a lounge area in a separate room behind the dancefloor. Through a large hole in the wall was the entrance way to a corridor leading down some old brick stairs. It lead into a dark room with pounding noise, strobe lights, and filled with a crazy amount of energy. I met some people there in the club that happened to be staying at the same hostle, so we ended up hanging out most of the night. Another really cool characteristic of this club was the garden-like courtyard out back. There were dirt pathways through beautiful trees and gardens. It was illuminated with some dim lights lining some of the paths, and had benches and tables in cubby-holes along the pathway. It was super chill there, which was a good break from the sweaty and loud dancefloor. This club was everything I was looking for in the German techno scene! The people were hardcore, and the music was extreme!

Today, Thursday, I rented a bike, and am tooling around town taking pictures and taking in some sites. Who knows what will happen tonight, but if it is 1/4 as good as last night, it will kick some serious ass!

Thanks to Mike, Drew, and Rune who emailed me. Sorry bros, I don t have enough time to reply to everyone, that is why I write stuff here. A vaccum for the house is cool, so yes Drew, I m down. Also, Kh, have you been over to the house yet to do the wine? If not, please? I don t want our next batch to go bad, so....

Biking around Berlin today was fun. There is so much to see here, I haven't even covered all of my area (Mitte), which is only a section about 1/5 the size of Berlin.
I'm just heading back to my hostel now, and it is 5am. All the clubs I went to were closed, which was totally surprising. I plan to get 4 hours of sleep before check-out time, then head to a concentration camp for Friday afternoon. Depending on where I am, and the nearest city, I might end up clubbing tomorrow (Friday) night.
As an aside, and as I expected, I am totally unaffected by jet-lag. Despite the 12 hour flip in time-zones, I haven't noticed its effect on me. That being said, I just spent all day in the sun biking and walking around, and it is now 5am. So I'm tired and am going to bed. Next on the agenda: concentration camps and castles.

i have to make this quick, it is georgious out (30 c), and i am going to drive down the Rhine to visit some vinyards and castles. yesterday was good, i drove from berlin to cologne, stopping at a concentration camp, kulzburge. i arrived at the hostel around 11pm, then went out clubbing. i found a really cool one, that was rather small, but played good downtempo/tech-house. although i was so tired that i was trying to find a place in a nearby park to have a nap in before going into the club, i ended up partying there until 6;30am. after 2.5 hours sleep, i started my day by visiting the largest gothic cathedral in the world, that took over 600 years to complete. this city is absolutelz beautiful.

This keyboard is weird, so I ll make this quick. Since last I wrote, I travelled from Cologne down the Rhine and was amazed by all the castles. I took a tour of one, Burg Rheinfels, and actually was able to crawl around under the castle in small dirt tunnels using a candle for light. The castle was made in the medieval era, and was unbelievable. Since then, I ve travelled through Trier (saw Roman ruins), then through Luxembourg. I was planning on staying there for Sat night, but it was small and unappealing. I ended up sleeping my Sat. night away in the trunk of my car at a rest stop. Now I m in France, and had a full day of driving Sunday. I spent Mon driving through the countryside in disbelief of all the spectacular sites (cathedrals, chapels, menhirs, dolmens, abbey ruins (11 Century), fortresses, etc.). I m tqking lots of pix, and will have lots to show you all soon. Sorry for not answering my email, as this system will not allow me to login to hotmail.

Having only experienced a tiny piece of the world prior to this trip, I always thought that there was so much more potential than I was aware of. Now that I m here, I reallize that I don t want to go back to Canada. Bye for now.

After travelling through many small towns in France (without email/internet access), I am finally here in the land of technology. I struggled through a frustrating 2 hours to get here after having a few relaxing drinks at Eric's place. I spent most of yesterday driving nearly 1000 km. and had only 2-3 hours sleep. I spent today getting to London, and am really tired, being that I left the comfort of Eric's place at 11pm. searching for internet access. It should have taken about 30 min. but actually took 2 hours. This subway sucks ass for showing directions while in the labrynth. So now that the 'underground' has stopped running, I now have to walk back to Eric's place from town, which will take over an hour if I stay on track. Realistically, it will take 2 hours of walking. It will be worth it though, as I finally got to check my mail. Jimmy: I am so sorry for not emailing you! When asking about nuts or sack, I guess I deserve both.

I tried to go to a casino tonight, but all of them in london require not only a suite and tie, but also an exclusive membership!!! I couldn't even get into one to lose all the rest of my money. Well, actually, I don't have any left, so that is the reason why I wanted to go. Did you guys know that it costs approx. $1.10 US dollars per LITER of gas here??? I've spent more on gas here than ever! Needless to say, I've spent way more than expected, given that in only 4 days I travelled over 5,000 km! I've seen lots, and experienced more than most given the relatively short amount of time that I've spent here. It is now after 2 am., and it is time to find my way back to Erics, which is about an hours walk from here. ZUT ALORS! Funny thing is... I don't give a shit what happens to me anymore. If I find my way back or not, it doesn't matter.

Thanks for all your emails. It shows who cares.

Unfortunately, my trip has come to a bitter end. It is back to work for me, how mundane.

After my last entry from London, I did have to walk back to Erics, and ended up getting really lost. I took a bus which I thought went towards his house but it actually took me somewhere else. Thanks to the bus (which I thought would save me some walking and time), I managed to end up a long ways from my destination. I was armed with a street map of London, and wouldn't you know it... the only two pages that were ripped out of the book was for the area I was in. I had to ask for directions from a couple different people (and there weren't very many around at 4am either). Each time I got directions, people seemed to point me in a different direction. I eventually figured it out, but I did way too much walking. So my one and a half hour excursion to check my email turned into an all night ordeal, and I arrived at Erics about an hour before he got up to go to work.

My last full day in London consisted of waking up in the afternoon and going to Highgate Cemetery. What a beautiful place! I think I'll put some pictures of it below. Although I tried to capture the essence of the cemetery on film, as you could imagine, the pictures don't do it justice. As you can see, the cemetery was very old and overgrown. It was like walking through a forest, only that this was a forest riddled with statues and tombstones sticking out from the undergrowth.

(You can view the enlarged, higher quality image by clicking on the picture you want to view.)

I will soon have a lot more pictures available, but I will do it properly, and make a separate page for all the images. For now though, I'll just throw a few more here.