The page on Sound Recording has a link to my tumblr, which has many vignettes from my around the world trip in 2008. But I’ve always liked traveling, and I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve been to many places.
In a garden of Sevilla, an Italian woman sat across from me. Rather, we were both cross-legged on the same stone bench, as she looked in my eye. She said she could tell fortunes based on the coloration of the iris. I was thirty at the time, and right at the thirty-year mark in my iris was a black mark, denoting a big change. That change was a trip around the world, couchsurfing whenever I could and wandering the streets with my sound recorder.
There’s so much that comes flooding back when I write about this, but I hope to transcribe some journal entries here. As you can see from the paragraph above, my writing about that time will probably only get more insufferable as I age. So it might be better to put some writing here from when I was less sentimental. Edit: I checked some of my entries, and they were very honest. I’ve included some edited snippets below.
Here is a list of countries I’ve been to so far:
United States (All 50 states, some very briefly)
Mexico
Canada: After asking some questions of the camp host at a campground on Prince Edward Island, I heard her say to someone else “A little eccentric, I think.”
Cayman Islands: My family almost moved here when I was 12.
Netherlands: I met Stephen Malkmus in Utrecht, which is not a big deal to people in Portland.
Belgium: My Serbian friend thinks the pigeons in Antwerp are mutants.
France
Spain:
Portugal:
United Kingdom: “Pass on the left” someone said quietly.
Norway:
Sweden
Denmark
Germany: I lived here for two years.
Luxembourg: We stopped at a rest stop which sold the largest selection of cigarettes I have ever seen.
Italy
Austria: I don’t know how people can be so pretty.
Romania: A Roma child was trying to get something from me in a public square. I pretended to speak a fake language. She went through 6 or 7 different languages she knew trying to figure out what I spoke. Finally she said “Do you speak any languages they speak in Denmark?”
Hungary: I lived here for three years.
Macedonia
Bulgaria: I passed through quickly because I was afraid of running into a former co-worker. It was hard to pass through quickly because of the potholes.
Greece
Bosnia: Sarajevo is one of my favorite places.
Serbia: I have friends there I should write to.
Croatia
Montenegro:
Albania: Albania is too much fun to be in Europe.
Slovenia
Greece: There’s a lot of wild dogs in Athens, but not in the Acropolis.
Turkey: At an open-air backgammon spot on a rooftop, men were smoking and smoking. Once an ashtray was filled, one guy just dumped it on the floor.
Czech Republic
Slovkia
Poland: Krakow has a lake in a quarry. It was illegal to go there, and lots of people were swimming there.
Ukraine: I went to Kiev and stayed in a large apartment block. I met kind people there, and the chocolate was good.
Lebanon: Lebanon is one of the most beautiful places, in every way.
Syria: People came up to me on the street and gave me food. They wanted an American to know they weren’t terrorists and to think well of their country.
Morocco: I went to a castle that was rumored to be Jimi Hendrix’s house with three guys and a Finn I was traveling with. When we got to the castle, they didn’t have a lighter so we left.
India: For a full month, I couchsurfed with people.
Myanmar: I was only there for a night. Walking to the one hotel I could stay in as a foreigner, I saw through rough cut boards many children dressed in orange robes meditating. I went to have a drink in an alley on plastic chairs. A cart had large jars with different animal parts in them. They were in an alcoholic fluid. I had a shot from the jar with a giant centipede in it. A man came up, speaking perfect American English. “Foreigners don’t usually do that” he said. We hung out for most of the night. He had learned English from a radio program. He couldn’t leave the country. It was like he should have been able to come with me.
Thailand: “I love you. Boi loves you” This was the pitch by two dragonboat rowers for me to live in Nan. They took me out to people’s houses at night. The houses were on stilts and the people lived upstairs.
Sri Lanka: Manali and I traveled for a month. She was from Mumbai and she always got her price.
Lao: On a bus on a mountaintop looking out a window, I saw a white man with a long brown beard flowing in the wind, charging up the mountain on his bicycle.
Cambodia: I remember the tuk tuk driver offering me water when I walked by his house. His door was open, and it was a garage door. His father had died, and was lying in a bed in the house. I was there because I heard the recorded chant and came to listen. Then he gave me the water and said he was a tuk tuk driver. I had hated the tuk tuk drivers in Cambodia so much. Then I didn’t.
Then there’s the little ones that everyone counts but you’re only there for a day: Vatican City and Monaco
Also, the countries where I was really only in the airport: Japan, Ireland, Malaysia, Switzerland, Iceland