Taking back the blog

So I left for a few days there, and it seems like the only people who noticed were spammers. Well I'm reclaiming my blog now spammers! Go waste your life making tedious and awkward comments on someone else's blog (my friend Brad Miller's blog is a good target as he seems to be on sabbatical -- the only thing he blogs about anymore is how he never blogs anymore.)

Onto a roundup of my recent journeys:

Cannes/Nice/Monte Carlo were pretty great. Nice weather, beautiful surroundings. Also prohibitively expensive and I was participating in the most exhausting conference on earth. But a little sunshine will get me through most hardships.

Apart from sun the other main theme of Southern France was: Russians. There were thousands of them in Cannes for the conference. I got one to admit she has wrestled a grizzly bear ("ok yes, but it was just a little one"). Russians are adorable.

My tour of Bulgaria (Sofia/Varna/Plovdiv) wrapped up yesterday. It was the furthest east I've ever been, and it was great because I had completely forgotten what the 1980s were like. Now I remember: there was lots of denim (even denim vests and black denim); there was lots of big hair; people put ketchup and mustard on their pizza; a pint of beer costed 30 cents; and I couldn't read. I'm not positive about the ketchup and mustard but everything else was such a throwback that if they were doing it in Bulgaria yesterday we must've been doing it in the States in the 80s.

As for not being able to read ... I was only temporarily illiterate because everything in Bulgaria is written in Cryllic. This made things difficult, because I can't look at a Cyrllic word and form a word with my mouth. The maps they give to the 5 tourists who visit Bulgaria during seasons other than summer give phonemic orthographies of the words (thanks Rick!), but since those pronunciations don't match street signs it didn't do me much good.

Things were extremely cheap there. Like cheaper than Mexico. And everyone was strangely lethargic. Yesterday in Plovdiv no one even bothered to wake up until 9am -- 3 and a half hours after I arrived in the city via the overnight train. As long as they have a steady supply of cigarettes they will not bother you.

I'll post some pics in the coming days.