Temptation.

The fish was large. Obscenely large, and round as a basketball. It swam forward five meters, and then stopped, lazily observing its surroundings before quickly turning around and swimming back five meters. Again, it stopped and began the process anew. The fish was hungry, but that was all the fish knew. The fish was not aware that it was near death, nor would it ever be aware. All that it was concerned with was its hunger, and swimming.

Dedication.

Five meters above the body of water that contained the fish, a pinpoint of light burned with the heat of a thousand suns. The pinpoint of light quickly expanded in the brilliant daytime sky, burning outwards in a perfect sphere until it vaporized the entire lake. The ball of light disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving a massive hole carved into the earth. Bits of green grass smouldered along the perimeter of the new crater.

A man dressed all in black jumped quickly backwards from the edge, his crimson-red hair reflecting in the sunlight. But it was an unnatural jump, a jump aided by forces unseen. Those same forces stopped his descent into the crater, suspending him in midair right where the surface of the lake was only moments before. The red-haired man glared angrily at another still standing on the grass, one clad in clothes that looked like they hadn't been washed in months.

Face covered in grime, the man on the grass sneered, his voice hoarse as he spoke, "I have you now." Suddenly, a dagger was in the air, flying towards the red-headed man at an uncomprehensible speed. There was no question of where the dagger had come from. A filthy hand, dirty fingernails and all, extended outwards, pointing straight at the red-headed man.

Attention.

The dagger froze in mid-air, displayed in glorious 1680x1050 resolution. A girl peered at the dagger and frowned. She was dressed in her pajamas, sitting on her computer chair in a dark room. The only illumination came from the myriad of computer screens all around the girl. Colorful cables were sprawled out in every direction, the low and steady hum of cooling fans invading from every direction.

Still, the girl focused on the dagger on the screen. It captivated her, entranced her, eyes examining every little detail of the dagger. There was a ruby inlaid to the hilt of the dagger, reflecting back the light that shone from behind. The girl tilted her head, her mind only taking a moment to process the fact that the light wasn't reflecting off of the dagger itself, but the monitor. The light was coming from a source behind her.

She swiveled in her chair, and her eyes widened. The girl only had time to gasp and ask an unanswered question: "Nani..?" Brilliant, unfiltered white light poured into the room.

Perspective.

Sol had grown to several times its own size, as it was doomed to do, but several billion years premature. A giant comet had slammed into it just moments before, forcing the process of supernova to begin early. The heat from the expanding surface had already destroyed two planets in its wake. Now it thirsted for a third. The colossal wave of pure flame worked its way closer and closer to the planet.. striving to make it.. the burning plasma from the star barely touching the Earth's surface..

But it wasn't to be. At the last minute, Sol ran out of the necessary fuel to continue its merciless rage. The surface of the third planet was already melted beyond recognition, atmosphere extinguished in the blink of an eye. It was saved from complete distruction, however.. doomed to float in space for eternity, lifeless.

Excellence.

A space marine on the fourth planet was sitting in a control room. LED's flickered on and off on control panels. LCD screens flashed at regular intervals, displaying the feeds from security cameras strewn throughout the facility.

Suddenly, klaxons sounded throughout the room, waking the marine from his fitful slumber. Years of training brought his plasma rifle up to the ready position without a trace of thought. The marine scanned the room rapidly, finger on the trigger, awaiting whatever it was that was after him.

Instead, a computer display caught his eye, causing him to slowly lower his weapon. He frowned, turning to the console to study the screen closer, leaning over a panel of buttons and lights. Could the computer be malfunctioning? How was it possible for the Earth to fall off of the planetary display? The marine then looked up at another display, one that tracked a massive shockwave incoming to the planet. He did not have time to complete his last sentence: "Oh shi-"

Unity.

Several tens of thousands of years later, a girl with short, green hair was staring lifelessly at the exact spot where Sol shined dimly in the night sky. A slight breeze blew against her delicate strands of hair. But she was not thinking of the stars, nor was she thinking of the wind.

The girl gave a depressed sigh and looked down at her hands, muttering a wordless curse as she shook her head. She should have died. There was no reason for her to be living now, but here she was. There was only one thing to do now: get out, run.

She looked back up at the stars just in time to witness a bright flash of light as Sol exhaled its last, harmless breath upon her world. That the flash was an unusual occurrence did not register in the girl's mind. She did not know the name Sol, nor did anyone else on her planet. In fact, the green-haired girl had other things to worry about. She turned her back to the star, dress rippling slightly in the wind as she left the balcony.

Unsanity.

A short girl with fiery-red hair grinned from ear to ear as she teleported into the laboratory. In the center of the lab rested a huge machine. A strange machine, with a large camera suspended off of one metallic arm, and a satellite dish sticking out at a right angle to it.

The girl walked up to the machine and traced a finger along it, caressing it. She spoke softly to it, as if it were her own child, "My, what an important relic you are." She smiled outright and strided across the lab to open a toolbox, rifling through it noisily before returning to the contraption.

She returned with a hammer and chisel, and set it against a golden, circular disk affixed to the side of the machine.

Teapot.

An elderly man sat patiently as he observed the heavens through a viewfinder device that he called the "locator". Red and white moonlight shone against his cheek, but this did not deter his efforts. He was a patient man, not put off by the brightness of the moons that made watching a dim object difficult. Not tonight. He had been observing this particular object for several days now, watching and recording its unusual behaviour. A low, warbling hum came from the device he peered in to, the sound having long since become reassuring to the old man. No two objects sounded alike. It was able to track the energy signature of the object perfectly.

Suddenly, the object brightened ever so slightly in the locator, and the calm hum escalated to a disturbing symphony of noise, then disappeared all together. To the unknowing eye, it was not a notable event by any definition of the word. Despite the deafening silence that now filled the room, the elderly man smiled a knowing smile, taking his eyes from the locator. He then turned to a young girl with long, pointy ears and straight silver hair that flowed down to her waist. The red and white moonlight reflected back off of her hair in shades of rose and crimson. Calmly, he asked, "Was it recorded?"

The girl nodded slightly, wordlessly, motioning towards a device. A single character composed of many intricate lines slowly blinked on the device's display, signaling that the data contained within was already properly cataloged among millions of others.

The elderly man gave a brief nod of approval, his voice calm and kind as he asked, "Now that it's done, girl, would you pour me a cup of tea?" He then returned to his locator, training it to seek the next piece of inter-galactic history to archive.

The hot Nevadan air blasts me straight in the face like a furnace as I leave the airport, luggage in tow. Throngs of people, families even, scramble this way or that, some of them in a panic to find their hotel shuttle or a cab. I can't help but smile; isn't Vegas supposed to be about relaxing, about leaving your daily panic behind? Apparently not. In no hurry, I skip the long line of people waiting for a taxi, and stand calmly next to a sign that proudly announces "CAT". Most people here wouldn't be caught dead taking public transit, but hey, for a buck and twenty-five cents, you can't go wrong.

It's my first trip to Vegas, although not my first to Nevada. At night, Vegas appears to be like Reno, but on a much larger scale. Of course, it's probably the other way around. But in my mind, Reno always comes first. The air-conditioned bus is a comfortable ride as it meanders through the city, giving me a glimpse of places I had only read of before: the Convention Center, the Sahara, Stratosphere, and finally good ole downtown.

I disembark the bus on Fremont Street, and my ears are instantly bombarded with loud music in all directions. People move around in loud, rowdy clumps, moving across the street in a fashion that demonstrates that the pedestrian lights here are only mere suggestions. I have the downtown map permanently branded into my brain, so I look up to see.. ah yes, there it is.. the Gold Spike, the red fluorescent lights announcing its lonely presence a block away.

As I walk towards my final destination, some of the more unsavoury elements begin shouting in my direction. I'm still wearing my fancy work clothes, and that's just something that doesn't blend in very well in this neck of the woods. Surely, someone dressed as I am is headed in the wrong direction. "Where you think you goin'?" they shout.

The Gold Spike is under renovations, and I was prepared for that. There's a reason why the room rate was so cheap, after all. But it strikes me full force in the face as to what 'renovations' *really* means as I enter the dilapidated building. The roof tiles are all gone, and one half of the main floor is walled off in a fashion not unlike that of the Berlin Wall. An array of cables in all colors of the rainbow hang down and sprawl like some kind of tentacle monster. The room is dark, dingy, and dim, rows of slot machine screens lightning up the faces of their respective gamblers. It's like an arcade from the 80's, but with slot machines. An employee shoots me a quizzical look. Clearly, dressed the way I am, I *must* be in the wrong place.

Most people in my position would turn tail and run out as fast as they could. Perhaps they would book themselves into the MGM Grand at $200 a night. But not me. This was all part of the adventure, part of the charm (or the stark lack thereof) that made up Las Vegas.

With half the floor out of commission, I figure that finding the registration desk for the hotel couldn't be difficult. So I walked down a hallway, and then back again, before stopping in front of a fold-out table complete with a computer that looks like it's been in use since the early 90's. There's a portly lady behind the desk, and a rat's nest of cables veering off in all directions. Some of the cables have been spliced together with electrical tape, so a bright orange extension cord will terminate in a mass of black, only to emerge on the other side a dark brown before continuing on into some conduit. A power bar hangs in midair above the desk, suspended from the depths of the ceiling, where the computer and various other devices are plugged in.

The woman behind the desk is clearly more interested in catching a nap than tending to customers, so I offer a polite, "Good evening" to wake her up. That seems to do the trick, as she puts on a smile, "Ah, yes.. welcome to the Gold Spike. Do you have a reservation?" Checking in seems to take far longer than it should, doubly so in a place as simple as this. But I'm patient and polite, watching as she feeds a keycard through a device with the nervousness of a novice. I guess keycards are newfangled in these parts.

Then I'm in the elevator, a creaky affair that spits me out onto the third floor. A sheet of paper fresh off of an inkjet printer announces "ICE" along with an arrow. Scotch tape has been used to affix it to the wall. "How tacky", I think, but then again, that's the twisted charm of this place.

I open the door to my room, flick on the dim light, and can only laugh. I've read every detail of the review a million times over, but nothing had prepared me for this. Cigarette burns in the floor, furniture fresh from a thrift store, linens from the 60's, and a television that still proudly calls itself a *color* TV. I flick on the light to the bathroom and am greeted with chipped and worn counters. The floor has dirt that has been permanently embedded into the tile several times over so that it forms a dirty shield several millimeters thick.

"They weren't kidding" I muse to myself. Without further ceremony, I discard my luggage, and more importantly, my work clothes. I put on something more appropriate for this neck of the woods, something liable to not get me shot or mugged: a t-shirt and some khakis. I look at the old digital clock by the bed which flashes "12:00" over and over again. They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this is no exception: it's actually about Midnight.

I set off to explore Fremont Street, walking slowly by each casino, taking a slow stroll through the gambling floor of each one, taking in the unique, cheesy atmosphere that each casino provides. For the most part, the table minimums are too high, or the rules too unfavourable. It's clear that downtown Vegas attracts the younger party crowd. Lights flash everywhere, deep bass rumbles in from every direction, and the shouts and clanking of liquor bottles ring like Christmas bells.

Feeling a little hungry, I helped myself to a one dollar hot dog somewhere, in some casino that I can no longer remember the name of, and drench it in ketchup. A woman to my right talks excitedly about how she's going to play a few rounds of Keno. The teenage employees slaving over the heavily smoking grill openly trade laughs and jokes with their customers. I'm positive that I'm the only sober person here.

This time, I didn't get so much as a look from the locals. Excellent. Blending right in was on my agenda.

Walking through the Gold Nugget, it disappoints me that the casino seems to be very unremarkable. Which is a shame, considering that the whole premise of the short-lived reality show "The Casino" was to make it very much remarkable and "Old Vegas." Now it pretends to be just another Strip casino, except that it's not on the Strip.

Figuring that I had got my fill of the "Fremont Street Experience", I started walking towards a less brightly lit end of town: Fremont East. This was the home of a cheapo casino famous in its own right: The Western.

I had a dream a few years ago about a casino that looked like something fresh from the early 70's. Wood paneling on the walls, linoleum on the floors, and a stark, sort of grey-white tackiness to it all. The Western is, without a doubt, that dream come to life. Smoke hung in the air much like smog does over Los Angeles. The players looked downright depressed at the tables, spending their hard-earned money away on a friday night.

After a quick table survey, it looked like the best I was going to get was $3 a hand. That was fair enough, so I plonked down a likeness of Franklin, which I suppose is a lot of money in this casino. Receiving a huge stack of white chips made me feel important, but that euphoria quickly passed. I asked about what happened to $2 minimums, and the dealer just laughed. "We don't *do* that around here anymore." He says it like a $3 minimum is a big step up.

I realize that I'm not here so much for the gambling as I am to do some people watching. The players at the Western certainly don't disappoint. To my left, someone jumps up and stares down the slot player next to him. I can only guess as to the insults that were hurled about each other's mothers. Security quickly intervenes; I guess they're used to that sort of thing around here. Of course, the gentleman being escorted out tries to show up the guard, gestulating wildly with his arms, but it doesn't work.

Back at the blackjack table, an elderly woman to my left keeps on making stupid decisions. Doubling down on 17. Splitting 10's. Hitting on 16 when the dealer shows a 6. Sometimes she dozes off completely in the middle of a hand, and the dealer has to shout for her to wake up. Eventually, she goes bust completely.. her fifty bucks all gone. The woman then begins to mumble under her breath, her hand clenched in a fist as she tries to grasp chips that are no longer there.

Eventually she leaves, and everyone at the table (including the dealer) breathes a sigh of relief. This gets the table talk going a little more, and the dealer explains, "She just got her paycheque today. Every time, it's the same old thing. She blows the whole works in one night." At least the dealers here are pretty cute, which works for me, and the cocktail waitresses attend to my drinks with sufficient speed.

But then Senile Lady is back as quickly as she left, this time grasping a crumpled ten dollar bill in her wrinkled hand. She stands in front of the table, crushing the bill into a little ball, and then smoothing it out again before repeating the motion over and over again. She begins to mumble, contemplating whether she should spend the ten dollars on a few more hands or just go home.

Meanwhile, the darkness outside turns to a light blue, and I'm becoming hungry. It's 6:00am now, so I figure it's time to leave. There's nothing quite like having a good breakfast, so after a quick visit to the cashier, I find my way walking back down Fremont Street to the El Cortez.

The temperature outside isn't quite furnace-like anymore, just comfortably above room temperature, in fact. The streets are mostly empty, but the party hasn't stopped yet. I walk by a few buildings and drunk people stumble out in uneven intervals, loud thump-thumping music emerging from the dark depths. It occurs to me that Vegas is really just one, gigantic 24-hour party.

El Cortez turns out to be rather unremarkable, except for the tired-looking gamblers contained within. The poker players look as if they've been running marathons. The folks manning the slot machines move their money from wallet to machine with robotic efficiency. At least the Cortez has a carpet, and feels more "old Vegas" than either the Western or the Gold Spike. Or should I say, it is the most "Reno-like."

Breakfast is tasty, cheap, and uneventful. I walk back to the Gold Spike and consider getting some sleep. However, I couldn't bring myself to crawl into those dirty, flowery sheets. Especially not when I had a free reservation at the much fancier Planet Hollywood on the strip. You see, Planet Hollywood is a Starwood property, and that means Starwood Points can be converted into free stays. If I could only convince them to let me check in early, then I'd technically get two sleeps for the price of one. Or is that the price of "none", since I wasn't paying a dime?

Thus I pack my things, which really means taking my luggage by the handle and rolling it out the door. I check out of the Gold Spike, having spent $40 for what was essentially six hours of luggage storage. That done, I walk over to the Downtown Transit Center to catch the Deuce down to the Strip. For two bucks, how can you go wrong?

A pedestrian light switches to 'walk', and I instinctively look over my shoulder to see an unsavory local sneaking up on me. I don't know what his intentions are, but he's clearly making an effort to make sure I don't notice him. I do my best to ignore him, continuing on to the bus depot. He follows me for a little while, but finally turns around and goes back the way he came. The Downtown Transit Center isn't much better, though, with all sorts of locals crowded around in various states of cleanliness and drunkiness.

The double-decker Deuce is a pleasant ride, giving a more detailed view of the strip. It looks far different during the day, large buildings towering over massive plots of land. To my eyes it looks all very clean and almost like a vast amusement park.

Before long I'm at the registration desk of Planet Hollywood, and it's 8:00am. There's not another customer in sight, thankfully. The vastness of the room speaks for how bad the lines must get on a Friday evening.

A clerk welcomes me from behind the desk. "Good morning, sir, welcome to Planet Hollywood. How can I help you?" I explain that I'm very early, but would like an early check-in. The attitude of the clerk changes instantly, and he sighs. He doesn't say anything, but the body language speaks volumes. 'Of course you can't check-in, you *idiot*, who checks in at 8:00am?' But after punching my reservation into the system, his attitude swings back and he smiles broadly, "Ah, of course. Mr. Sommerfeld. Your Starwood Platinum status entitles you to a free upgrade to a suite and we'll check you in right away." Business travel has its benefits, after all.

The suite is a complete 180 degree difference to the Gold Spike. It's like I've gone from the lowest form of accommodation to the highest. A large bathroom with two sinks, a separate tub and shower, and an adjoining water closet. A walkway into a room featuring a king-sized bed and a great view overlooking Bellagio and Caesar's Palace. Everything is immaculately clean. Surprisingly, there is no mini-bar, which strikes me as odd.

I quickly dump all of my stuff off in the middle of the room, close the blinds, and put out the "do not disturb" sign. It doesn't take very long for sleep to claim me, helped along by the dull thump-thump of some still-ongoing party nearby.

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

(seven hours later..)

From: Matt Weatherford <...@cheapovegas.com>
To: Randy E. Sommerfeld <...@rrx.ca>

Your story was entertaining, but you lose a lot of points for not even sleeping
at the Spike. Come on, man, you have to live the full experience. Too bad you
never stayed at the Western when it had a hotel.

Good luck,
Matt

So there's just something fundamentally awesome about creating a fresh new Star Mage in Disgaea 3, and then having her promptly walk through all ten levels of an Imperial Seal in the Item World, solo. By the time she emerged from that, she was level 20 and caught up with everyone else. I'm sure the +400 intelligence staff, and the resulting 400+ damage Star spells helped things along a little. There's something very satisfying about watching enemy after enemy meet their maker in a fury of bright yellow.

Cold Storage has a tune called "Star", and it's oddly appropriate for all of this. ~Fill the sky with a million stars, the sky falls down on you.~

I used to think that the first iteration of Disgaea was bad enough with the micro-managing of statistics, but Disgaea 3 is even worse. You could spend hours, or even days just fussing about the different optimization techniques around skills, items, weapons, armour, or leveling up strategies. As if that wasn't bad enough, they've introduced a *Class World* where you enter an Item World-like dungeon except for the purpose of leveling up a certain character's attributes. The result is that the deeper you go into the dungeon, the character's aptitude goes up, or they're able to learn skills that other characters possess, among other things.

So now my Star Mage has Heal, which is just obscene. Not only does she do a ridiculous amount of damage, but she now does a ridiculous amount of healing as well.

Well, I have to say that despite the PS3's slow start, it has come out with some mighty fine games lately. Wipeout HD and Mega Man IX were released today, and they are nothing short of awesome.

Wipeout HD in particular is an exercise in jaw-dropping, hot arcade gooeyness. I played it at PAX, but that doesn't compare to playing it on a 52" 1080p display in your own living room, headphones throbbing with the smooth techno soundtrack. The zone mode in particular is smooth and vibrant, the track pulsating to the beat of the music. When the track smoothly changed to a deep shade of red with purple accents, I lost control of my ship because I was so damn impressed with the visuals. It might just be the prettiest thing I've seen.

The gameplay is nice and smooth, too. I was worried at PAX, where I had a real tough time controlling my ship, but now that I'm sitting in my own living room, it's no problem at all. The online play is great, too. I haven't been this impressed in a long time.

Cold Storage is releasing an album called "Cold Storage HD" pretty soon to go along with the game. Since you can queue up your own MP3's in-game, the idea is that you'll add the Cold Storage HD album (which will feature tracks exclusively in his trademark Wipeout style) so that you can listen while you play. I'll probably add tracks from the previous Wipeout games, too.

Other notable games are 1942: Joint Strike, which is a perfect modern shooter in the 1942/Raiden tradition. The graphics are nice and smooth, the music perfect, and the action nice and twitchy, as a shooter should be. It's like they finally figured out how to make games arcade-like and fun again! Even the new Bionic Commando is fun, and while it uses 3D rendering quite extensively, it's not obvious nor does it glare at you in a 3DO kind of way. It's like they finally figured out that you can have games that look great in 3D without having to let you walk around in 360 degrees.

In other news, I've got my video game collection database back up and running. Thanks to Thomas, I have some HTML/CSS that doesn't completely suck, and I registered a domain for the purpose. You can check it out here: http://vgdb.ca/

It defaults to displaying my NES collection, where games in green I own, and titles in red are missing from my collection. Currently, I own just under 400 NES games, which works out to 51% to a complete NES collection. I never thought I'd see the day when I passed the halfway mark. Other surprises include owning a substancial chunk of a complete Intellivision set (mostly commons), and a whole shit-ton of Atari 2600 games (close to having a complete set of R1's for that system.)

I've also got the Xbox set back up, with the plan to play through the beta translation of Lennus II. SNES9x looks positively great at 1080i (the maximum resolution that the Xbox can output via component cables.) I set up Samba earlier this week so that all of my media is playable directly on the Xbox from my main server, and while the resolution on a lot of videos is decidedly *not* HD, they still look great on the big screen.

Plus, I finally ordered a new comfy couch, which should be arriving next Saturday. That will make the whole experience far, far more pleasant, I'm sure :)

Aside from my trip to Chernobyl, the whole trip to the Ukraine was exceptional all unto itself. In fact, if I had to pick a single country to return to, it would probably be the Ukraine. (I also apologize for putting 'the' in front of 'Ukraine', I know that the nomenclature is now to call the country simply 'Ukraine', but old habits die hard. I realize that someone calling Canada 'the Canada' would piss me off, too.) Italy and the United Kingdom come in a close second place, but the Ukraine wins simply because it's so damn expensive to do anything in either the UK or Italy, but so, so very cheap to do those same things in the Ukraine.

Of course, the Ukraine isn't exactly at the top of anyone's travel list except for my own. The fact that it used to be part of the Soviet Union was the biggest draw for me to go. I wanted to get as close as I could to the whole Soviet *experience*, just to get a feel for what it must've been like. Communism is the opposite of capitalism after all, so, to my mind it would be interesting to see some of these inverses in the flesh.

Remember those movies that show a room full of people waiting in a single mass, not organized at all, everyone all sweaty and not seeming to move at all as they wait to clear passport control of some foreign, hostile country? That's what it was like stepping off of the Lufthansa flight from Munich. The American couple ahead of me were simply aghast to have to put up with such a nightmare, but I found it absolutely fascinating.

Guards walked around the room in soviet-style uniforms, big communist-style caps and all, trying to look as important as they could. A television screen advertised where luggage could be claimed after you cleared the control point, cycling city names in English, then Ukrainian, and finally Russian before starting over. A Russian passenger at one counter is actually yelling at a passport control agent. I can only smile -- he wouldn't be able to get away with *that* back in the Soviet days.

It took me an hour to finally make my way up to a passport control agent, and they looked positively meek compared to how their Soviet counterparts must've composed themselves back in the day. I greeted him with a "hello" in English, and presented him my Canadian passport along with my filled out entry/exit card. The agent's photo, registration number, and name (in cyrillic, of course) were all on display in front of me on an identification card -- a method to combat corruption. He flipped through the pages of the passport, didn't say a word, and promptly stamped both my passport and the exit card, having retained the entry card for the government records. I knew that if I should lose this exit card, leaving the country would pose some serious problems that would involve a trip to the Canadian Embassy.

My luggage had to be scanned through a security screening device on my way out, not for safety reasons, but so that customs could keep their eye out for anything suspicious making its way into the country. The customs agent half asleep in the chair could care less about the contents, though, other than to ensure that you follow proper procedure by feeding your luggage through the device. No doubt Soviet customs agents would have been all over everyone's luggage back in the day. Now, the westernization of the country has seriously crippled the old way of doing things. All that remains are these vestigial reminders of a once totalitarian society.

I was surprised when the hotel driver was still waiting for me, half expecting him to have long gone given the hour wait. He barely speaks any English, which isn't a big surprise in a country where everyone speaks Ukrainian, most people speak Russian, but very few speak English. It takes him a couple of tries to start his car. Even after he manages to make the thing roar to life, it fills the interior with exhaust, forcing us to roll down all of the windows. I look back at the airport and the huge letters above the airport, in cyrillic, announcing "Boryspil." It strikes me as being something from the 60's.

We're then roaring down the freeway to Kiev, where huge, modern LED signs are suspended above the highway every kilometer. The signs announce the current date, time, weather conditions, and speed limit for each lane. My driver is in the far left lane, of course, where the advertised speed limit is 130kph, compared to the 70kph speed limit of the far right lane. Since the corrupt traffic police were disbanded years ago, everyone drives at what I would later refer to as "Ukrainian speeds." There's no longer a fear of receiving so much as a speeding ticket. As bright LED sign after sign flies by, it strikes me as a quite quaint way of modernizing the road system; even Germany isn't that adamant about keeping you informed every kilometer.

The Soviet-era bus stops fly by on both sides of the eight-lane highway, some of them large enough to drive a train through, with huge cyrillic letters announcing the stop name atop of each one. The Soviet obsession with branding things in big letters was not lost on me.

Soon we enter the Kiev city limits, where one tall concrete apartment building after another passes by. They're all alike: bland, utilitarian buildings built to house the maximum number of people possible. They stand next to one another in perfect rows, sometimes half a dozen or more, all looking the same. It's like a concrete jungle growing all over the city, or a scene from the latest dystopian flick.

Before long, I'm checked into my hotel room where I'm paying 500 grivna per night, or about $100 Canadian. The average Ukrainian salary works out to $500 Canadian per month, which means that my hotel stay alone will burn through three fifths of a typical Ukrainian salary. My room has a great view of a wide boulevard, some kind of Soviet-era monument complete with communist star atop, the train station to the south, and the never-ending Kiev cityscape along with all of its uniform buildings.

What stands out is the NATO flag. It's everywhere. The Ukrainian government has been pushing to become a member of NATO for some time now, and the fact that they're proud of their gradual westernization of the country shows. Who would've thought that the NATO flag would fly in the streets of Kiev?

I turn on the television for a brief moment to see what Ukrainian broadcasts are like. Unsurprisingly, it's full of Ukrainian-dubbed versions of western favourites: The Simpsons and Family Guy among others. I watch the weather forecast on the all-news channel, fascinated by how once-familiar city names from around the world look obscure in cyrillic. After turning off the TV, it doesn't take long for me to fall asleep .. there's a long and exciting day ahead of me tomorrow.

I arrived at Pacific Central Station a full hour early for a train departing at 5:45pm, something that I would never think of doing during my stay in Germany. There, most people show up about five minutes before the train departs and line up evenly along the platform according to where their assigned car will stop. The train pulls in, people swiftly disembark, and then the people on the platform rapidly board. It's like a well-oiled machine, and the train *always* leaves on time, regardless of whether you're ready or not.

But that's not how we do things in North America. Here, we have to walk over to one area of the station, to wait in line just to pick up your ticket. Then, you walk over to another line to have your ticket inspected and seat assigned. After that, you wait in another line to have the US Department of Homeland Security review your travel documents in addition to a short interview. Then, yes, you get the privilege of waiting in yet *another* line to have your bags screened. Only after you've completed this rite of passage are you allowed to board your train.

I've seen a lot of train platforms in my travels throughout Europe, and it saddens me to say that the Canadian passenger rail system seems to be about on par with Poland. The rain pounding on the cement against a grey sky certainly didn't do anything to improve this image. The interior of the train looks like a TGV from France, which means that it's comfortable but utilitarian, the decor both stark and dreary.

After a long wait, the train is underway, and the Amtrak conductor announces that the train will stop momentarily every now and then as it leaves the station. He goes on to explain that this is because the track switches between the station and the mainline track need to be operated manually, requiring someone to jump out of the engine, race ahead to the switch, turn it, and then hop back on. Heck, even Poland's switching systems are all automatic. Ironically, the switching systems in Poland were provided by Bombardier. Now our rail network has gone from "on par with Poland" to "below par with Poland."

The tracks were clearly built for freight purposes, with rough joints that make the car gyrate wildly up and down and then side to side. The smooth tracks of Germany and France, or even Vancouver's SkyTrain have decidedly spoiled me. The only country's train system I have to compare with is, again, Poland, where my ride to Auschwitz was about as equally as bumpy.

The woman I'm seated next to clutches her purse while shooting me sideways glances like I'm going to mug her at the first opportunity. This attitude is decidedly different from Germany, where people will freely leave their laptops or ipods at their seat while they pay a visit to the snack car. After all, if something goes missing on a train, it's not like the perpetrator has anywhere to go. Unlike a bus, the train is packed with staff who are available to assist should anything go awry.

But I find the faults in our inter-city train system to be more fascinating than annoying, and the train gives me a unique way to look at a city that I know like the back of my hand. We go through the Grandview Cut, then rapidly pass through Burnaby, cross the Fraser River to Surrey, and then swing down to White Rock with some breathtaking views of the coastline. Before long, the Peace Arch flies by on my left-hand side, and the train begins grinding to a halt for the post-border inspection in Blaine, Washington.

Everyone is instructed to remain in their seats as the Department of Homeland Security officers board the train to check travel documents. Surprisingly, the inspection is swift and efficient, taking only ten or fifteen minutes, and the train is once again on the way. As day turns to night, we roar down the tracks along the I-5, and I help myself to some of the food in the snack car. Unsurprisingly, it's full of overpriced, tasteless sandwiches, and thus I *can* confirm that it is in your best interest to bring your own food and drinks along should you decide to travel on an Amtrak train.

The trip only cost me $32 (after taxes) one way, which is pretty damn cheap. I booked the fare several months in advance, and it appears the later you book, the higher the price. The Amtrak station in Seattle is about a dozen blocks away from the convention center, so keep that in mind if you're planning to travel to a convention like I was. Contrast this against Greyhound, which costs $31.50 after tax for the same one-way fare, but is actually about 30 minutes faster than Amtrak according to the official Greyhound schedule. The Greyhound depot is also only two or three blocks away from the convention center, making it more convenient for convention-goers.

However, in my opinion, traveling by train is more convenient because the customs inspection appears to be shorter, and you don't get tangled up in the long waits at the Pacific Truck Crossing. These waits can get up to several hours long if it's a long weekend. People traveling by train seem to be of a more, uh, "savory" element. There's also lots of room to get up and wander around, and the crew are better equipped to assist you than a bus driver occupied with, you know, *driving.*

But the most important reason to take the train, in my view, is to help grow the North American train transportation network. Rail in North America is decidedly freight-oriented. As oil prices rise, and as people are looking for quick, cheap, efficient methods of travel, rail travel should eventually emerge as the best choice. The only way to help this process along is to buy rail tickets to show that the ridership is there. Amtrak seems to have the right idea: offering affordable fares and decent travel times. Via Rail is taking the decidedly *wrong* approach by telling me it's going to be $1,000 for a 24-hour train ride to Vancouver from Edmonton in economy class. Why would anyone do that when one-way plane tickets can be had for $160 after tax?

Speaking of planes, of which I've had a lot of experience lately, I've become spoiled by the whole first class treatment. Since I've obtained my Air Canada Elite status, which allows me to check in at the first class counter, and includes access to the Maple Leaf Lounge among other things, I've become increasingly impatient with what I like to call "airline bullshit."

Believe it or not, I don't really enjoy lining up at the first class counter, especially when I've printed my boarding pass online and can drop my bags off equally as quick at the "web baggage drop off" line. My needs are pretty simple: check in my bag and proceed to security. That's it. I don't know what the deal is with people talking with the check-in clerk for fifteen minutes or longer is. Is their travel situation really that complicated? Are they arguing about paying $100 to check in their 27 extra bags? Did they forget some travel documents? I mean, honestly people, why can't you just be nice and efficient like the Germans?

So, there I am, I stroll into the Edmonton Airport and proceeded directly to the short line marked by a sign that says "web baggage drop off." I have my web-printed boarding pass in hand, and I'm ready to go all efficient German-style. I look over to my right at the long, snaking line of people going through the regular check-in process. "Fools," I think to myself, "don't they realize that they can just check in online 24 hours ahead of departure and get into this nice, short line right here?"

There's only one person ahead of me, so it goes quick. I wait for my turn, but then an Air Canada rep looks right at me and says quite sternly, "I'm sorry, *sir*, but this is the wrong line. This is not the check-in line. You need to go wait in *that* line, over *there*", complete with finger points and everything. Of course, she's pointing towards the long, snaking line full of people who want to chat to the check-in agent for half an hour. I frown and point back towards the "web check-in" sign, asking, "Is this not the web check-in line?" She sighs and replies annoyingly, "No, sir, you need to check in over *there*, *that* way." I give it one last try by mentioning, "So, what's this sign for, then?", motioning towards the check-in sign. She begins to reply, it's something equally as sassy as her previous responses, and I just hold up my hand and say, "Look, forget it, okay? I'll just go over to the first class counter."

In a strange juxtaposition, the check-in clerks at first class are always among the most polite that I deal with.

But the question is, why aren't all of the check-in clerks just like the first class clerks? I mean, life would just be so much more pleasant in that case, wouldn't it? Or is it a matter of the airline thinking, 'no, the plebs don't deserve a pleasant check-in experience, we need to put them through as many lines, waits and hassles as possible.'?

The funny thing is that while the fancy Air Canada Elite card entitles me to check-in through first class, *I* don't feel entitled. I end up feeling like I'm taking advantage somehow, like I'm playing the system or getting away with something unethical or sneaky. Now, I *know* that isn't the case, but knowing and feeling are two separate things.

So imagine my surprise when my flight from Seattle back to Edmonton ran into a few bumps. The check-in at the Air Canada counter (actually, operated by United Airlines) was smooth enough, with the exception that I didn't receive a boarding pass for my Vancouver to Edmonton portion of the trip (since I was connecting through Vancouver.) "Forget it," I thought, "I'll just get a boarding pass printed once I'm in Vancouver."

Well.

You're required to clear Canadian Customs in Vancouver, which means waiting in yet another snaking line, picking up your luggage, which then could be searched by Customs in case you're importing firearms or other things just as dangerous, such as fruit. But in Vancouver, there's no separate section for "connecting passengers," you're forced to exit with everyone else, walk over to the domestic terminal, and then go through the check-in process again. So I lined up with all of the plebs, like the good prole that I am, along with my luggage that has already been tagged from SEA -> YVR -> YEG.

So I finally reach the check-in counter, and began the process, providing documentation and soforth. That is, until the check-in lady says, "I'm sorry sir, since your bag is over fifty pounds, there will be a hundred dollar overweight charge." I reply by asking, "I thought that Air Canada Elite status allowed me to check in up to two bags at weights up to seventy pounds each." She nods and says, "Yes, however, you're not Air Canada Elite, you're showing up here as Aeroplan." She taps her computer screen for emphasis, after all, computers can't lie.

I just shake my head, "here we go again," I thought. So I point to my luggage tag, along with my old Seattle to Vancouver boarding pass and ask, "If I'm not Air Canada Elite, then why do I have priority tags and the AC*E token on my boarding pass, here?" She doesn't have much of an answer, reiterating that it's going to cost me a hundred bucks. My first thought is to call for a supervisor, but instead I smile at her and take my documentation back, announcing, "Thanks for your time. I'm going to go over to the first class counter."

Of course, at first class, it's the quickest check-in I've ever experienced along with a genuinely polite, "Have a pleasant flight, sir." There's no mention of any monetary requirement.

So, I really hate to sound like a spoiled, entitled bitch, but I'll be checking in at first class from here on in. Thanks.

It's June in the Ukraine, a beautiful day outside, the sun blazing in our faces. It's warm, but not annoyingly so. Tall apartment buildings, some almost twenty stories tall, cast shadows in every direction, breaking up the brilliantly blue sky. In one direction is a gym and swimming pool, the other sports a hotel. But this isn't any ordinary city. It's absolutely quiet all around -- the normal sounds of people, vehicles, or the general buzz of everyday life is completely gone. Several of the buildings are capped with a giant hammer and sickle, while others announce their purpose in cyrillic. This is Pripyat, a quiescently Soviet city founded in 1970 for the sole purpose of providing the Chernobyl nuclear reactor with employees.

The trees and grass have overgrown the sidewalks everywhere, forcing the buildings to jut out from a sea of green. Without anyone trimming the branches, concrete and foliage co-exist side by side, mingling together like some kind of sick union that wasn't meant to be.

I set foot into a school, looking up to a banner that proudly announces in Russian, "all children deserve to have the best education and bright futures." Coat-hooks line the walls, empty, their last use having been over twenty years ago. Looking down, a newspaper lays flattened, yellow and wrinkled from age. Despite not being able to read cyrillic, the year along the top makes everything clear: 1986.

Making my way down the hall, I turn a corner and peer in through a doorway. This must be the school's library; but instead of books neatly arranged in shelves next to one another, everything has been pushed over so that books fill the room up to my waist. Several spill out into the hallway, this vast collection of history destined to never be cataloged or put to use ever again. The sensation I feel is distinctly different from the one I had at Pompeii -- despite both places having been effectively frozen in time by great cataclysmic events.

Fortunately the Soviet obsession with concrete makes for buildings that will likely stand for a long period of time. Thus, I make my way up to the second floor and set foot into a classroom, the desks still arranged the way they were when the students left. Here or there are workbooks, flipped to random pages, featuring the writings of a child just becoming familiar with the cyrillic alphabet.

I make my way up to the third floor, then the fourth, peering in to classroom after classroom, unable to take in the contents of them all. It would take historians or researchers years to catalog every little piece of history here. Soviet propaganda posters line the hallways, some sporting proud busts of Lenin, others giant red stars, while others still have simple imagery showing how a "good communist" contributes to society at large.

A call from below announces that it's time to go. I enter a stairwell and climb up a ladder leading up to the roof -- risking radioactive contamination should a 'hot' particle be on any of the rungs. Water drips down from the open door above, contributing to the slow decay of the building. After a quick look around on the roof, I wind my way back downstairs. A tour member meets me on the second floor, shaking his head mournfully as he explains, "There's just too much... you could spend all day here in this one building alone." I nod in silent agreement as we descend back to the first floor.

Next is the back entrance to the "palace of culture", a huge theater whose back room sports hundreds of giant props and portraits of various Soviet officials. A few of us play guessing games, trying to name the various officials -- but nobody knows who anyone in the portraits are. Certainly any of these historical items would fetch a decent price on the open market, but the exclusion zone guarantees their stasis. I make my way across the stage, then down into the stands.. being mindful of large holes that have appeared here or there, nature having carved out large pieces of the wooden floor.

Close by is the Pripyat recreational complex, sporting proud slogans in Russian that I don't even bother to have translated anymore. There's just simply too much everywhere. The swimming pool is an empty void in the middle of a large cavernous room -- the soaring windows having lost their glass ages ago. Chunks of ceiling insulation is all that will fill the pool, now, and a dive off of the high diving board would guarantee a messy death. A scoreboard on the far side of the room, no doubt an impressive marvel of technology in 1986, now sits dark. The wooden floor of the adjoining basketball court is still springy, having been spared the elements creeping from the outside in.. at least, for the time being. A deflated basketball sits in a corner, almost begging someone to pump it up and play a few rounds.

I emerge from the rec building and make my way over to what was once the pride of Pripyat -- the amusement center. Here, a large asphalt pad is surrounded by all manner of carnival rides: bumper cars, a ferris wheel, and various carousel-type attractions. You could imagine the sea of tents and vendors set up in the middle, providing the citizens a refuge from the drudgery of everyday life. Sergei walks right up to one of the rides and yards on it, causing it to spin a full revolution before coming to a complete, if creaking, stop.

On the walk back, Sergei places a geiger counter atop the asphalt -- and it reads nothing beyond the background radiation level. Then, he moves it a meter away to a low point in the pavement, where a colony of ants seems to be going berserk, and the geiger counter follows suit. It shoots up to almost five times the background radiation level, then ten... twenty... before settling on almost thirty times the background level. "Don't step in this shit," he reminds us.

Next is the massive hotel complex, soaring high up into the sky. A few of our party opt to not make the climb all the way up to the top -- a good twenty stories or so. We exit onto the balcony of what was once no doubt a grand presidential suite. The view from the top is simply stunning, giving a chilling view of the Chernobyl 4 reactor in the distance, the ghost city of Pripyat surrounding us in all directions, and little bits of concrete exposing themselves out of the trees. In one corner of the balcony, a small tree grows from a space between the tiles, its roots somehow finding subsistence in the mountain of concrete below it.

Back inside, I peer down the opened elevator shaft, amazed at yet another piece of modern equipment that will never run ever again. Our group slowly descends the stairs, arriving back at the reception area. Sergei steps behind the counter and jokingly pretends to play host for a minute or two. Then, he shows us the reception book, still opened to the page of guests admitted just before the accident. Next to it is a stack of papers -- permission papers from the local police. Back then, showing up at a hotel without permission to travel papers from your local police meant a quick denial of accommodation along with what was likely an equally quick call to the local police.

It's already been a few hours, but it doesn't seem like long enough. Like Pompeii, I wish that I had days to spend exploring the site, but that will have to wait. We check in with the guard on the way out, the third ring of the exclusion zone that protects Pripyat from looters and other miscreants. As the van once again does its imitation of a plane trying to take off down a Ukrainian highway, Sergei explains that Pripyat is likely to be closed to tourists soon. Some of the buildings are simply becoming too unsafe -- especially the ones whose roofs were stripped off in a lame attempt to "wash out" the contaminated buildings from the inside out by spraying in water from the top.

The geiger counter goes nuts again, having reached another portion of the "red forest." The van screams as the driver accelerates even more, causing the chassis to rattle. The geiger counter calms down, as does the driver, settling back down to normal Ukrainian speeds as we clear the second exclusion zone checkpoint. We stop again at the actual city of Chernobyl, not quite a ghost town, where our military "guide" leaves us. Inside the building everyone steps on a machine that checks them out for radioactive contamination. A yellow light with cyrillic writing announces that I'm clean, so I proceed down to the canteen.

The dining room is set up like a fancy home restaurant, with simple white tablecloths and piles of bread set in the middle of each table. The food is simply delicious -- true Ukrainian home-style cooking. Dinner ends with a tasty poppyseed roll, leaving all of our group stuffed as we file back into the van.

The driver pulls out onto the road, and turns right onto what was once no doubt a very busy highway. As he accelerates, an old sign flies by on the right hand side. The paint is old and peeling, but enough of the text is readable. The text is in cyrillic, of course. But this is one word that I can translate perfectly. It's "Chernobyl" with a red diagonal line through it, announcing our departure from this infamous place.

So I thought I'd take a break from my Europe travel postings to mention the fact that I'm going to be in the Los Angeles area at the end of this month for a week-long training course. As it turns out, the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas will be shutting down permanently on September 1st. I had originally planned to visit Vegas sometime on or near Christmas with visiting the Star Trek Experience in mind. But, now that they're closing it for good, and since LA is so close to Las Vegas, I couldn't pass up this opportunity.

I had tons of fun in Reno, and I suspect that Las Vegas will be more of the same. Unfortunately, there's no single-deck $1 blackjack like they had at Bonanza in Reno. In fact, as far as gambling goes, Vegas is probably one of the most expensive destinations you could visit. But at least I get the opportunity to visit the legendary Western and their $2 blackjack after midnight ;)

Ladies and gentlement, without further ado, I present to you my itenerary. All prices are after tax, in Canadian dollars.

August 1st: Fly from LAX to LAS via United flight 1648 ($80). Take a bus from the Las Vegas airport ($2) to downtown, and then stay overnight at the legendary Gold Spike ($50).
August 2nd: Move from the Gold Spike to the Planet Hollywood hotel on the strip, where I get to stay for free thanks to my Starwood points ($0). Go see the Star Trek Experience ($50).
August 3rd: Fly from LAS to Calgary, then change to a prop plane to fly in to Edmonton.

Of course, there will be random gambling by way of cheap blackjack at the Western, and poker at Planet Hollywood. :)

On Sunday, June 15th, I paid a visit to the city of Chernobyl, Ukraine, inclusive of the 30km exclusion zone that forms a circle around the world famous number four reactor. This trip was part of a tour around the area and its surroundings, including the abandoned city of Pripyat, the power generation facility itself, and the ruined landscape. I have been studying the Chernobyl disaster as an idle hobby since I was in my early teens, mostly as part of my greater interest in cold war and Soviet history. To be able to visit the Chernobyl site in person was a rare, once in a lifetime opportunity.

Unfortunately, in my stupidity, I forgot my digital camera at my home base in Nuremberg, Germany. I could have bought a disposable camera in Kiev, but I decided against it. I've never claimed to be a very good photographer, and with the Chernobyl site being infamous worldwide, I figured that it would not be difficult to find superior photos online. Never the less, even after writing this, I still feel a twinge of pain for having taken no photos at all.

The tour consisted of about seven of us in total; a few from Switzerland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. I was the only person on the tour representing the western hemisphere. A minivan took us on a one-hour drive at Ukrainian speeds (meaning, crazily fast) through the countryside. We passed by old, rusted out Soviet checkpoints every dozen kilometers or so. After all, the Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union, and that meant presenting your transport papers at select checkpoints along the highway. No papers meant no right of transit, even within your own country.

So there we were, flying down the Ukrainian countryside, listening to various 70's hits on the radio (while Western Europe seems to be stuck in the 80's, the East seems to be stuck in the 70's,) watching the distinctive Soviet checkpoints and bus stops fly by. Soviet bus stops are not like your usual wooden bench kind of stops, these are huge cement bunkers painted in bright colors, sometimes in unusual patterns. A huge sign in cyrillic is always fastened to the top of the stop, announcing the name of the village or town that the stop serves.

Without warning, the checkpoint for the Chernobyl exclusion zone was upon us. Signs with the 'radioactive' warning logo announced stern warnings in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. There's an Orthodox memorial next to the guard house, topped with a large, shining, gold bell. Barbed wire fencing stretched out along the border of the exclusion zone as far as the eye could see. This zone extends in a thirty kilometer radius around the destroyed reactor, and contains some of the most polluted areas on the planet. The zone border is patrolled regularly and heavily, keeping looters out. While most looters are just looking to salvage anything of material value from the site, the greater concern is for theft of contaminated material. After all, it wouldn't do to allow a clump of radioactive junk to wind up in the wrong hands.

Our tour group stepped out of the van and waited around, taking in the surroundings. Across the road, a pair of Ukrainian military guards were checking out something under the hood of a car of someone exiting the zone. Another guard wielded a large geiger counter. Outside of the presence of the military personnel, fence, and checkpoint, there was no indication that this was the gateway to a very dangerous place.

Entering the exclusion zone involves submitting your passport details to the Ukrainian government for approval beforehand. After everyone's passport was checked against the 'approved' list by the exclusion zone guard, we were let through. This is where Sergei, our tour guide, joined us. He began to explain a lot of things that I already knew about the disaster: agricultural, business, and ranching activities of any type were absolutely prohibited within the exclusion zone. How the runaway nuclear reaction took place, where most of the fallout landed. Then came the ground rules: stay on marked paths, avoid low-laying areas, and always, always stamp your feet hard before re-entering the van. This allows any radioactive particles that manage to stick to your shoes a chance to fall off. Lastly, it was absolutely prohibited to take anything out of the exclusion zone. Anything.

Our first stop within the zone was the site of a former village. You wouldn't even know that a village was there, as the trees and shrubs all around it have swallowed all of the buildings. Sergei led us through the trees, where small houses and buildings began to appear out of the forest. Most of them were in a terribly dilapidated state, falling apart or leaning in one direction dangerously. Some houses were missing entire walls. The wood was dark and splintered with rot and vegetation everywhere, marking the process of mother nature reclaiming what was rightfully hers. The residents of this village were forced to evacuate along with the thousands of others who were forced from their homes after the disaster in 1986.

On our way out of the abandoned village, we happened across the town square, which also doubled as a memorial to World War II. Known as the "Great Patriotic War" in the Soviet Union, this memorial looks very similar to our own war memorials in Canada. The hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union adorns the monument. A large slab in the center of the square lists the names of the people from the village who perished fighting the German onslaught. It's about here where I started to greatly regret not having brought a camera of any kind with me.

It should be noted here that at no time were we in any unusual amount of danger from radiation or otherwise. The level of normal background radiation (for example, in Canada) is 30 micro-roentgens per hour. The pair of geiger counters that our group had never went higher than 50 micro-roentgens during the whole brief stay in the village.

After some solid stamps of the feet, we all piled back into the van and continued onwards. Without any traffic on the road, our driver was able to speed up considerably, flying down the highway like an airplane trying to gain enough speed for takeoff.

A sign in cyrillic suddenly announced "Chernobyl", the limits of a once obscure Soviet city now famous the world over. The city itself is about ten kilometers from the nuclear reactor itself and generally clean of any dangerous contaminants. But, the city has changed dramatically since 1986. Now that its borders are within the exclusion zone, all water must be trucked in. Pipes that feed the city's water, heating, and sanitation systems run above ground -- making the city seem like some kind of weird oil refinery. The reason for not burying the new pipes underground is one of blunt utility: the whole exclusion zone is contaminated, so there's no need to waste money by making the pace look pretty.

We pull into a small, non-descript building, a place that Sergei explains to usas the 'interpretation center' and central hub of all activity in the exclusion zone. It's here that the cleanup and maintenance crews get their daily orders, eat their meals, scan themselves for radioactive contamination, and soforth. We sign more forms and get another stern talking to about what we're allowed and not allowed to do. What's allowed to be photographed and what is not. One of the Ukrainian military guard joins us; his only job is to ensure that we don't disobey the rules.

Before long, we're back on the road, which includes a small tour through the city of Chernobyl and its associated sights. A monument to the fallen firefighters who died putting out the initial radioactive fire. The field used as a staging ground for helicopters flying to and from the burning reactor with payloads of sand. Everyday homes that are still occupied by people crazy enough to live in a place as inhospitable as the arctic or remote desert.

The van turns towards the heart of the exclusion zone, but not before passing through another military checkpoint. This one marks the 10 kilometer inner exclusion zone. Again, our papers are thoroughly checked and compared against the list that the guard has. He eyeballs each and every one of us before allowing us to continue on our way.

Sergei begins explaining more about the disaster, stuff that I already know: how it happened, and why it happened, as power lines begin to emerge. We're getting closer. More power lines emerge, and then converge, and before long there are rows and rows of power lines all going to the same place that we are. Suddenly, the forests give way to open fields, dotted here and there by large mounds of grass, looking like a graveyard suitable for giants. At the foot of every giant grave, like a tombstone, is a chilling red-on-yellow 'radioactive' sign. Here is where there used to be entire villages -- their houses so contaminated by radioactive material that the 'liquidators' dismantled them and simply buried the contaminated housing material: wood, glass, and all, into the dirt.

I can see the reactors on the horizon now, and our geiger counters begin to skyrocket. Sergei explains that we're passing through a portion of the "red forest", even though the land is flat and devoid of trees all around us. Just like the contaminated villages, the forest was so badly poisoned by radiation that the liquidators had no choice but to clear-cut the whole forest and bury it. Even buried, the level of radioactivity that these now underground trees give off is enough to set off alarms on the geiger counter. We're at over 1,000 micro-roentgens per hour, now. This is simply amazing when you consider that we're on the road, in a somewhat shielded vehicle. The simple act of stopping the vehicle and stepping outside would drive the geiger counter through the roof -- up to 3,000 micro-roentgens or higher. Needless to say, we drive through this area very quickly.

The chirping of the geiger counters fade away as we continue down the abandoned highway, a giant cooling tower looming dead ahead. It occurs to me to make a correlation between this place and Land of Devastation; it was just so *strange* to see all of this infrastructure, but no people. The cooling tower, a structure that most people associate with nuclear reactors, isn't complete, the upper rim of it faded in a half-completed brown mesh of concrete and rebar.

It's important to note that the Chernobyl site isn't just one reactor -- it's five of them. The reactor here is about a hundred meters away from the incomplete cooling tower, surrounded by a sea of cranes. This is the Chernobyl 5 reactor, a reactor that was never completed -- the building has been left in the half-built state that it was in when Chernobyl 4 exploded. Like everything else in the exclusion zone, it's been frozen in time, forever doomed to live in 1986.

We stop in at an old railway bridge that crosses the massive artificial cooling pond used for Chernobyl reactors 1 through 4. Sergei takes out a few whole loaves of bread and steps onto the bridge, tearing off huge chunks and throwing the into the water. Out of nowhere, a huge catfish -- at least twelve feet long -- splashes out of the water to eat the bread. The fish have thrived without human intervention for over twenty years now, creating huge schools of fish that can easily be seen from the bridge.

From the bridge we slowly drive around the Chernobyl 3 and 4 reactors, stopping at a monument constructed a mere hundred meters away from the destroyed reactor. Outside of the van, the radiation exposure level is incredibly only barely above the background level -- 50 micro-roentgens per hour. But as you step towards the monument, and thus the ruined reactor itself, the geiger counter begins to step upwards. Two steps forward brings it up to 100, two more steps, 200, and by the time you're at the monument itself, the counter is over 500 micro-roentgens per hour. It's hard to believe the harsh conditions that the people working in the immediate vicinity of the reactor had to go through while constructing the protective concrete sarcophagus that now encloses it.

It's sort of unreal, being in this place, staring at the reactor that I've seen in photos hundreds if not thousands of times over. I turn to my left, and the Chernobyl fire station is right there. The firefighters dispatched to put out the initial nuclear fire only had to walk across the street. The fence is topped with dangerous-looking razor wire all around the facility -- it wouldn't do to have someone just walk in like they own the place. There's an administration building to the right, which we've been told to not photograph under any circumstances.

Back in the van, the stamping of feet having become ritualistic, now, we tear off and leave the Chernobyl nuclear facility behind us. The Soviets originally planned for ten nuclear reactors at this place. Considering that the whole area is already a maze of buildings, overhead power lines, and railway tracks, it's hard to comprehend what the place would have looked like had this plan reached its ultimate conclusion.

We abruptly stop in front of a large sign. It proudly announces "Pripyat" in cyrillic, with "1970" in the lower right corner, marking the founding date. This is the city that was created from the ground up by the Soviet Union as the perfect Communist city, a city for the people, where workers employed by the plant would spend their time when not working at one of the reactors. The various nuclear reactors of the Chernobyl facility loom to the right of the sign, while to the left bits of the abandoned city skyline peek out through the thick forest that has now grown all around it.

So we stamp our feet, pile into the van, and motor on in to the abandoned city. On our way, we pass another one of the large, colorful Soviet-style concrete bus stops. But this one's different. It's now overgrown with trees and brush, destined to never be used ever again.

(Note that I will have an extensive collection of pictures of this trip up at http://cyan.rrx.ca before long. Pompeii, especially, is a lot more dramatic in photos than it is in words.)

I woke up early on Sunday morning, showering, shaving, and then helping myself to another decidedly mediocre breakfast before heading out. This time, I opted to take a cab instead of the shuttle bus. I had an express train ticket to Naples, and by the time the first shuttle bus left in the morning, it would be far too late. The cab cost a fortune, to be sure, but it was worth it.

Rome's Termini station is an unsurprisingly busy place. But after you get used to it, all train stations are the same, and it was easy to find the train I was looking for. The train to Naples was non-stop, taking two hours to roll through the Italian countryside. For the price of seventeen Euro, one really can't go wrong. As the train rolled on, you could see bits of the ancient Roman aqueduct before the flat countryside turned into rolling hills, and then outright mountains.

Instead of going around the mountains, the train went straight *through* them by way of tunnels. It occurred to me that the landscape was starting to look a lot more like the Okanagan region, complete with barren hills and small, insignificant shrubs in the place of large forests. There was also a thin haze all around, the result of continuous garbage burning happening across the region. A garbage dispute within Naples left that city without garbage service, forcing people to dump their trash in the countryside. As the train neared Naples, the garbage problem intensified. Small, organized piles gave way to huge heaps of rubbish lined up along the railway. The haze thickened, and small little fires dotted the countryside everywhere.

Before long, the train pulled into the Naples "Piazza Garibaldi" station, giving me my first taste of southern Italy. Naples was certainly far more chaotic than Rome is, and a little dirtier while retaining more charm, somehow. Throngs of tourists milled about, forcing me to keep a finger on my front pocket, lest my wallet get stolen by pickpockets.

I made my way around the station and down a set of stairs, to the Circumvesuviana, a narrow-guage railway that encircles the great Mount Vesuvius. After managing to procure a ticket from a lady who spoke no English at all, I continued on to the platform to wait for my train. Again, the platform was packed full of people going to Pompeii, my ultimate destination. Squished together on the platform like sardines, everyone once again made an ideal target for pickpockets. How the place even coped in the tourist high season, I had no clue.

The Circumvesuviana gave breathtaking views of the Italian coastline while simultaneously subjecting me to the whims of Italian graffiti artists. Whole stations were coated in paint, to the point where the station signs themselves were converted into a canvas. Half an hour later, I was stepping off of the train at Pompeii. There, I paid a Euro to relieve myself in a washroom -- paying for *that* particular priviledge is not uncommon in Europe -- before continuing on to the gates of one of the most famous ruins in the world.

People were clustered about, waiting for their tour guide to arrive. Other solo tour guides loudly announced the languages that they speak, hoping to attract last-minute tourists. I opted to go for an audio guide, which would let me browse the ruins at will, while still being able to interrogate *something* for more information. After paying the modest entrance fee, I made my way up the hill to the Forum of Pompeii.

Unlike the Roman Forum, which only had bare outlines, tiles, and cobblestones as remnants, the walls of the Pompeii Forum buildings still stood. It was easy to walk from one building to the other: the fish market, meat market, tailor shop, public latrine, and temples were all preserved to the point of being able to tell which sections of the building were used for what. For example, in the fish market, the center was used for gutting fresh fish. This was done over an opening to the sewer, which allowed the waste to flow out through the complex Pompeii sewer system. Although the building had no roof, it was extremely easy to visualize the Forum as it would have looked two thousand years ago. This kind of visualization was not as easy in the Roman Forum.

After the Forum, I continued on through the depths of the city, its western side, where I began to have an appreciation for just how large the city of Pompeii was. It was easily larger than the whole downtown area of Squamish, and perhaps even the size of Vancouver's West End. It's really that big. Again, the size completely caught me off-guard, and it was becoming apparent that things really *are* larger than they appear in photos or print.

Consulting the map, I made my way to a large, preserved residence on the north-western side of Pompeii. The view after I stepped through the entryway was simply breathtaking. The house was perfectly preserved given how long ago it was built. You could clearly see the two shops flanking it on each side, the bar, foyer, living room, dining room, and bedrooms. Painted frescoes on the wall were still bright and vibrant, sporting Roman artwork. The back yard was spacious and luxurious by Roman terms, complete with private access to the Pompeii sewer system. To one side of the residence existed another small building that sported two additional bedrooms, complete with frescoes. The only thing I could do is stand in the middle of the building, completely in awe of how complete the building was.

As I made my way through the narrow Pompeii streets, I investigated more and more of these houses. Some had extensive back yards, luxurious gardens, or pools. I had only allocated myself eight hours to explore the ruins of Pompeii, but it became increasingly clear that this was simply not going to be enough time. I started skipping houses to make up for the time shortage. For one to completely explore Pompeii would take at least a weekend. At least.

The size of the ruined city ensured that bumping into other tourists was somewhat rare at times. The ruins are simply too big, allowing people to spread out and explore on their own. Sometimes I would walk for fifteen minutes or more without seeing anyone. I'm sure that this must be different during the tourist high season, but it was nice to feel like I had a whole city to myself.

Eventually, I found myself on the northern edge of the city, exploring the site of some ancient tombs. Just south of these tombs, was the central nerve center of Pompeii's aqueduct system. Water flowed into the hollow, round brick building from a watershed somewhere, and was then evenly divided into three sets of pipes that distributed water throughout the city. The arrangement of the pipes was such that water was provided to the most important services before the least important. For example, the city fountains, which provided clean, fresh water to its citizens, were deemed most important. While private pools within the homes of wealthy citizens were considered least important. In the case of draught, the citizens of Pompeii would still be able to obtain fresh water from the fountains.

Although it was a beautiful day outside, partly cloudy and somewhere in the mid-teens, the top of Mount Vesuvius was permanently shrouded with clouds. This denied me a clear shot of the famous mountain. But what continued to amaze me was how street after street of Pompeii was perfectly preserved, right down to the cobblestones and 'bridging' stones that would allow one to cross the street without dirtying their feet in the sewage or wastewater that would flow freely down the streets.

I made my way along an old market street, admiring more frescoes and intricate tilework as I went along. The street ended at my first big monument of the day: Pompeii's version of the Colosseum. Despite being smaller than the Roman Colosseum, the Pompeii Colosseum was still impressive to look at. It didn't have a basement. Instead, the base of Pompeii's colosseum featured plain Earth. I leaned up against the wall of the Colosseum, resting for a few moments while I consulted the map and the time. Seven hours had passed, and I had only scratched the surface of what Pompeii had to offer by walking along the upper circumference of the city. It was clear that I would have to come back, perhaps in the autumn. Until then, I planned to walk along the bottom circumference.

Also perfectly preserved was a type of 'track and field' ground used for military training in addition to sport. Columns ringed a square, grassy arena on all sides. In the very center was a small square pool. The roof was still intact over the building on all sides, which meant that this building is now almost exactly as it was over two thousands years ago. A similar type of building, without the pool, was beside Pompeii's two theaters. But instead of military exercises, the purpose of this building was to serve as a sort of meeting hall for those attending events at the theater. During intermission, snacks would be made available to the attendees, where one was expected to roam and socialize with their fellow patrons. The cogs of Roman high society at work.

Even the theaters were well preserved, with their marble staircases and dramatic, stadium-style seating. A tour group of children were sitting on the steps of the large theater, listening to their teacher or guide tell them of the history of the place. It struck me as particularly fantastic that two thousand years ago, people were sitting on those same steps, in the exact same spot.

Unfortunately, time was cut short. I could spend days in the ruined city of Pompeii, but it was time to go. I still had to catch the Circumvesuviana back to Piazza Garibaldi, and then the express train to Rome. I rushed back to exchange my audio guide for the deposit, looking back at Pompeii one last time, vowing to return before long.

It's 5:30am, and I'm posting this from the Meridien Hotel in Nuremberg. It's been about 25 to 30 degrees out and humid as heck, a big change from the dry, continental climate of northern Alberta. At least my room is air conditioned, which can be a bit of a rarity in some German hotels. Not all of the rooms here at the Meridien are air conditioned, but I managed to fight my way to the top to get one ;)

I woke up in Rome on April 5th, a Saturday. My goal was to catch the first shuttle bus to downtown Rome at about 6:00am, which would get me into the heart of Rome sometime around 7:00am. So I quickly showered, got ready, and made my way down to the restaurant for a quick breakfast. The breakfast was a simple buffet of your standard fare: sausages, cold cuts, breads, and pastry. The food quality was better than in Germany, but not by much. What struck me as odd was how *terrible* the orange juice tasted. It tasted like it was made from Tang, or some other mix of powdered chemicals. Considering the fact that there were fresh oranges growing on the trees just outside of the hotel, from which they could use to make *real* fresh orange juice, I found this decidedly odd.

My first goal was to visit Vatican City before it became overrun with tourists. Early April is still considered to be the "low season" for tourists in Rome, but they still come out in droves. Several co-workers related horror stories of having to wait for hours in line to see anything, and I wasn't about to waste a few hours out of my weekend waiting in lines. I walked from the Teatro de Marcello, across the Tiber River, and into St. Peter's Square. On my way, I continued to pass by more random ruins from ancient Rome; temples, houses, and storefronts were represented by plaques describing their former purpose. There were stray cats *everywhere*, sitting around in clumps, sometimes stalking one another in an attempt to gain prestige over their ruinous homes.

As luck would have it, the lines just started to form by the time I got to St. Peter's Square, so I joined up with them and waited to pass through the metal detector. The throng of people slowly walked along their way to St. Peter's Basilica, passing by several of the ceremonial Swiss guards dressed in their colorful uniforms. I spent a considerable amount of time in the Basilica itself, a church of enormous proportions sporting tombs of ancient popes, and giant stained-glass windows. Confessionals lined the walls inside the church, sporting placards advertising the languages spoken within.

I then went downstairs, through the Tomb of the Popes, a giant underground cemetery featuring crypts of popes from years past. Some of the popes interred there died over five centuries ago, speaking to the longevity of the Vatican as a religious force. People were packed into the hallways like sardines, making me wonder how this sort of situation was tolerable during the tourist high season. They especially clogged up around the tomb of John Paul II, where numerous people opposite the tomb were kneeled down in prayer. Paying my respects, I continued onwards out of the underground.

I was about to leave the Vatican all together, that is, until I walked by the Vatican Post Office. The Vatican, smallest country in the world, has its own postal service that ranks among the world's best in terms of efficiency. I walked in, bought a stack of postcards, and began writing a few out to anyone whose address I could remember. It's a shame that I didn't think of it beforehand, otherwise I would've brought an address book with me. After all, it's not every day that you can get something postmarked from the Vatican!

On my way back to the ancient Roman Forum, I stopped in on an island in the middle of the Tiber River. It was about lunchtime, so I was looking for a place to eat. One place in particular had a "Michelin Guide Rated" sticker in its window, the hallmark of a quality restaurant in Europe. The menu looked good, but the restaurant unusually tiny. You had to ring a doorbell just to get in. Considering that I was dressed in my street clothes, I figured there'd be no way they'd let me in. The lack of a reservation wouldn't help any, either, so I continued on.

In the spirit of my love for the unusual, I continued along the edge of the Tiber River in search of the outlet for the Cloaca Maxima. The Cloaca Maxima was ancient Rome's sewer system, which emptied out onto the Tiber River. When you consider that this system existed two millennia ago as a surprisingly effective sanitation control, the fact that the outlet still exists today is amazing.

I found the outlet, no doubt about it. However, a few homeless people decided to take up residence all around it, leaving all manner of human waste strewn about. I actually disturbed a homeless guy in the process of dressing. Ugh. A real shame, too, because I wanted to take a picture of this special historical relic. Alas.

It was about lunchtime when this was all over, so I walked back up to the cafe on Teatro de Marcello to order some lunch. This time, unlike before, the food was excellent. The ravioli was excellently prepared with a simple tomato sauce. I helped myself to some excellent strawberry gelato before continuing on to my favourite part of ancient Rome: the forum.

The forum and Palatine Hill are entirely fenced off from the rest of modern Rome, forcing people to pay in order to gain access. The ten Euro fee was a small price to pay to gain access to one of the greatest, oldest historical sites of our time. I walked down the hill and turned right, instantly greeted with the Roman Senate building, various temples, markets, and shrines. In particular, the shrine to Julius Caesar (built by Augustus,) featured the column that supported Caesar's body when it was burned. The base of the column is still there today, adorned with flowers from everyday people paying their respects to someone who died over two thousand years ago.

I slowly made my way up Palatine Hill, gawking and soaking in the atmosphere. It just felt so surreal to be in this place, to see preserved pools, baths, buildings, or columns. A shower room is perfectly preserved, water flowing from top to bottom, showing how the Romans made use of gravity to guide the flow of water. Back then, taking a shower was a luxury that very few could afford. Tunnels wind their way through the hill itself, colorful frescoes still preserved on the walls. Ancient latin script was chiseled into everything.

I made my way to the top of Palatine Hill, to where only the most wealthy could afford to live. It's no wonder that the nobles and well-to-do of ancient Rome chose this place -- it offered breathtaking views of Rome proper, the Tiber river, Circus Maximus, and Aventine Hill. There was one scene from HBO's "Rome" where Octavian, and his sister Octavia were looking over the city from their back yard atop Palatine Hill, presenting the viewer with the same kind of breathtaking view that I had that day. The show sure did the view justice.

Also perfectly preserved was the residence of Augustus himself, with its elaborate tilework and frescoes still intact. The state of preservation is so tenuous that they only allow visitors to browse the residence three at a time.

All in all, I spent about eight hours looking around the ancient Roman forum and Palatine Hill and still hadn't seen everything I wanted to. By far this amounted to the best experience I've had abroad yet, and I have full intentions of returning sometime in the fall, provided that I'm still in Europe by then. In comparison to my trip to the Colosseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill experience simply blew it out of the water. Next time, I'd have to stay there for the whole day. It really was worth it.

By then it was night, and I walked back to Teatro de Marcello to catch the bus back to the hotel. The next day would end up being even more adventuresome: a train trip to Naples, then to the ancient doomed city of Pompeii.

I'm currently in the first class lounge at the Edmonton Airport, waiting for my flight to Vancouver. It sure is nice to have free wireless Internet, free food, and a nice, quiet atmosphere with comfortable seats. I'm not quite sure if I could ever wait for a plane with the rest of the plebs ever again ;) Since I'm back in Canada and have written virtually nothing of my various trips around Europe, I thought now would be a great opportunity to get this stuff down on paper. Besides, some people have linked my attention to detail to the amount of time that has passed. Since I was in Rome over a month ago, let's see if I can dispel that myth.

The Lufthansa flight cost me only $35 Canadian dollars return. Of course, after adding taxes, it came out to about $135, but it was still dirt cheap. The flight took me directly from Munich to Rome, over the glorious Austrian Alps, and then along the Atlantic coast. A lot of flights in Europe board right at the plane -- that is, a bus takes you from the terminal out to your plane, and then back again on the other side. In contrast, it's quite rare to board a plane from the tarmac in Canada, unless you're catching a small regional flight to some remote destination inland.

As the flight began its descent into Rome, I looked out the window to see what I could see. To one side was the coast and the ocean beyond, and to the other was a village of some kind. As the plane descended further, it became clear that the village wasn't a village at all -- it was a collection of ruined brick buildings. I had no idea what the village was called, or how old it was; whether it was from the ancient Rome era or soforth. It shouldn't surprise me that ancient Roman ruins could be found everywhere in Italy, but for some reason it did.

I disembarked the plane (via bus, of course,) and stepped out in front of the airport. Immediately I was accosted by a random Italian shouting in my ear, "Taxi? Taxi?? Taxi?!" I knew about these guys beforehand -- illegal taxis that charge exorbitant rates. You'd have no idea that you (and your chequebook) were being taken for a ride until you got to your final destination and the driver proudly announced "200 Euro please." At today's exchange, that works out to about $350. I ignored him and continued towards the official Taxi ranks.

Quite frankly, I dislike taxis. They are grossly expensive, especially when you compare them to the public transit options available. However, considering I was only in Rome for the weekend, and my hotel was in the middle of nowhere, I opted for one. I asked the driver if she spoke English, to which she shrugged and said simply, "not much." Little did I know that Italy would be the least English-friendly country that I had set foot on to date.

So I watched the meter climb up as the driver took me through the Italian countryside towards the city of Rome. Palm tree after palm tree went by as the radio babbled on in Italian. It was about then that I realized that the Italians drive like absolute lunatics! The lines on the road are a mere suggestion, the traffic snarled in a mixture of cars turned this way and that to gain every little centimeter of advantage possible. Scooters zipped in and out of the traffic, weaving back and forth like it was some kind of slalom course. How these people manage to not get into accidents is beyond me.

The meter continued to climb. It proudly showed a price of 40 Euro (about $65,) and continued to climb as I prayed for the hotel to be around the next corner. By the time I had reached my destination, a small hotel in the middle of a Roman residential district, the meter on the cab was about the same price I was paying for my hotel room. Of course, no credit cards are accepted, Italy being an unsurprisingly cash-friendly country.

In retrospect, I would have gladly paid the extra price for a hotel in downtown Rome. To say that my hotel was in the middle of nowhere is an understatement. Of course, it was a rather nice residential neighbourhood, but a decidedly unusual place to put a hotel. My room rate was 99 Euro per night, but paying the 300 Euro per night for a downtown hotel would've been a far better idea.

There was a shuttle bus that took people from the hotel into downtown Rome, and then back again. But this thing took about an hour to get into the heart of Rome from the hotel. Considering that I only had one weekend to enjoy as much as I could of the ancient city, this was a major disappointment.

After the bus trip from the hotel into downtown Rome, I stepped off at the Teatro de Marcello and was surrounded by ancient Roman ruins in virtually every direction. Anywhere I walked, there was some old ruin or excavation that revealed more of Rome's rich history. To stop and try to have an understanding of it all in one weekend was an impossibility. Instead, I walked around in a half-daze, still amazed that I was in Rome itself, towards the Colosseum (known in Italian as the 'Colosseo.')

Military guards decorated the entrance to the great Colosseum, running people through metal and explosive detectors to ensure that nobody would attempt to blow up one of the world's greatest historical pieces. I walked through, and despite having removed everything metallic from myself, I set the detector off. One of the guards spoke to me in rapid-fire Italian, to which I responded, "I'm sorry, but I only speak English." The guard then smiled and said, "Okay, okay" and waved me on through. Needless to say, he didn't speak a lick of English.

I should mention here that I don't blame anyone for not being able to speak English in their own non-English-speaking country. On the contrary, I didn't expect anyone to speak English to me at any time -- anyone who chose to do so would be simply extending to me a great courtesy. To visit a foreign country expecting everyone to speak English is, in my view, highly ignorant. Contrasted to Germany, where virtually everyone is able to speak some level of English, this simply made my visit to Italy a richer experience.

I've read about the Colosseum off and on since childhood. Ancient Roman history has always been a favourite subject of mine, so to actually set foot in *the* Colosseum was simply amazing. As usual, the size of it caught me off guard -- pictures always make things look much smaller than they actually are. I knew that the Colosseum would be a large place, but to take it all in firsthand was literally awesome.

You could see exactly where the stands were, the steps that everyday Romans would climb up to reach their seats high above. I was able to look down and see the flow of water underneath the basement -- the remnants of the ancient Roman sanitary system. I thought to myself, "there's no way that anything could possibly top this!"

After an hour or two, I left the Colosseum and found a random Italian cafe. Finally, a chance to sample some real Italian food in a real Italian cafe. I settled in and ordered Tortellini ala Panna, one of my old favourites, along with a side of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes. The Tortellini came out undercooked (and I don't just mean al dente like pasta is supposed to be cooked -- this stuff was still crunchy in spots,) and the sauce was over-salted. But the tastes were there! After being exposed to terrible German food for the past month, being able to taste authentic Italian food was heaven. The fresh mozzarella, something that I took a liking to right away, went along very well with the tomatoes.

Later, in Germany, the mozzarella and tomato sandwich would become one of my favourites.

It was beginning to get dark, so I wandered over to the ancient Roman forum, hoping to be able to stroll across it on my way back to the bus stop. Unfortunately, it was closed, so I had to walk around it, along the Circus Maximus, and back to Teatro de Marcello. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself -- the thought of being able to casually walk along historic sites that I had only read of previously would have been an absurd notion only a year ago.

The bus wound its way back through the crazy Italian traffic, dumping me off at the hotel an hour later. Not long after that, I fell asleep to the sounds coming through my open window: Mediterranean winds blowing through and rustling the palm trees outside.

The time for Breakpoint 2008 is drawing closer. They just announced that they're going to play all of their demos on a 16:9 HD screen at 1920x1080 resolution. There will be two projectors playing the demos on a screen that is larger than *70 square meters.* Man, if I was an artist, I'd be crapping my pants now at the opportunity to have my stuff displayed on a screen like that. Then, as if the icing on this virtual cake wasn't good enough already, they're going to be having an unofficial ANSI competition on that same screen.

The days can not go by quickly enough.

Breakpoint has a pretty heavy focus on *producing* instead of just lurking. I'm not a very creative person, at least, not so far as music and art is concerned. But, I can get some coding done. I've been fiddling around with rearranging the way Synchronet displays its message bases to the end user. I think I might be a bit late to the ball game, but, displaying these messages in a more 'web forum' type layout might make it more appealing for most web users. I've got the proof of concept done, and now I just need to code it, and I think the four days at Breakpoint will be a great excuse. Now if I can only find a HTML designer while I'm there so as to make the presentation look good...

In other news, there's going to be a train strike at Deutsche Bahn starting on Monday, which means a lot of my glorious German trains will be going away :( Hopefully the strike doesn't last too long. It'd suck if I couldn't attend Breakpoint only because the trains aren't running. Also, I realized that the train tickets I pre-booked were for the wrong week! This wouldn't be a big deal in Canada, because you'd just call the company up, explain your screwup, and then pay the penalty as they change the tickets to the right date. But being in Germany, there's not much use I can be on the phone. I think the only complete German sentence I really know is, "Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?" Which... is not very useful ;)

(I was quite pleased with myself when I realized that, while getting a sandwich at the local bakery, the girl asking me "Alles?" was really asking "Anything else?" See, listening to 80's tunes gives you insight into foreign languages. Really. ;)

The train I take into work every morning was built by Bombardier, which fills me with a sense of joy that my coworkers are unable to appreciate. It has automated announcements just before every stop, along the lines of, "Next stop is Furth main station. Please watch your step when disembarking the train." (The announcement is in German, of course, but that's the gist of it.) Every morning, after each automated announcement, the conductor comes on and snarls out something in German that ends with the word "Rechts." Words can not explain how harsh this word sounds to English ears. For a few days I couldn't imagine what value the conductor could be adding to the lengthly automated announcement.

But then it occurred to me, on a trip on the ICE from Munich, that the same word was being used. Then, at another station, the announcement remained the same, but "Rechts" was replaced with another word. It was at that moment, to my great satisfaction, that I knew the conductors were saying "Disembark on the RIGHT" Or, in the case of the ICE, on the left. I knew this because the doors used to disembark the train ware the only thing that changed between the two stops. Up until then, given the harsh pronunciation of the word, I just assumed he was telling me to go screw myself, or something like that.

My co-workers, however, were not as impressed with my discovery. "You get pretty excited over the little things," one said. Yes. Well.

I've meandered from my main point here quite a bit. This post is supposed to be about the demoscene, yes? Well, I've had the pleasure of paying for and downloading two new albums from completely different artists. The first, "Ghosts I-IV", by Nine Inch Nails, is no stranger to the news and you've likely heard of it already. Trent Reznor is selling this album for $5 per download, or if you prefer, $300 for an ultra-deluxe limited edition collectors box set. The box set sold out almost immediately, netting Mr. Reznor $750,000 in a matter of hours. Who says the online model doesn't work?

I paid $10 for the other album, "Quiet Places", by Bjorn Lynne. Mr. Lynne is an old demoscene alumni from the Amiga days, so any album of his is worth downloading.

The problem is that I was greatly disappointed by both of these albums. "Ghosts I-IV" had promise, because it's an all-instrumental album (like the vast majority of demoscene music,) and was described to me by Thomas as "like listening to high-quality modules." I'm not a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, and in fact have rarely enjoyed anything by Mr. Reznor since the "Pretty Hate Machine" days, but for five bucks and a glowing recommendation from a friend, how could one go wrong?

I just don't think the NIN style does anything for me. At least, not the style used since "Pretty Hate Machine," because I found this album difficult to listen to. Instead of nice, smooth, powerful melodies that flow along, Reznor gives us harsh, abrupt music that will repeat itself without variation for a couple of measures. A co-worker described the music as "angry," and I had never thought of it that way before, but it sure makes a lot of sense. I'm giving it a "B-" by the Cyan Grading System, which really means "barely above average." Sorry guys, this one just doesn't work for me.

So after that fiasco, I thought I could relax to some Bjorn Lynne. The problem is that he's decided that producing an album similar to "Cry of the Loon" would be a good idea. Now, I knew that an album called "Quiet Places" would be quite mellow, so I knew I might be getting myself into hot water. I thought at worse it'd be a lot of really nice ambient music, graceful trance stuff, that sort of thing. But this music really does compete with the 'moody' genre in the sense that you expect to hear sounds of the ocean or waterfalls, or something. Which is fine, I guess, all the more power to people who like to listen to that stuff. But it does nothing for me. There's just no melody to catch on to, and the bloody album just about put me to sleep. It pains me to give Bjorn Lynne a "B-", but I think I have to in this case.

I've got more material from my trip here in Germany coming soon. I just haven't decided how I'm going to present it just yet. The Prague writeup was a big hit (thank you all for your comments,) as was the Nuremberg Rally Grounds photos, even if I'm still not proud of my writing there. I think I'll be taking the opportunity to rewrite that sometime soon. The problem is that I'm not a professional photographer, and a lot of my photos look like crap compared to some of the stuff out there on the net. I still haven't decided which method works best for various types of trips. I think it varies depending on the subject matter and soforth. We'll see.

It's Saturday the 23rd of February, and after a quick breakfast at the hotel, we're off to Prague. "We" being my cousin, Elizabeth (who goes by 'Beth') and I. In an interesting twist of irony, she's on a student exchange program in Sweden, and flew in to Germany from Sweden last night. It was originally her suggestion to go to the Czech Republic, and after consulting my coworkers (the response was a unanimous "go immediately",) I decided it'd be in my best interest. But to get there, we first take a train to Schwandorf, a small town close to the Czech border.

Most trains in Germany are operated by "Deutsche Bahn", or "German Rail" (also known in Germany as simply "DB" or "Die Bahn.") However, the train into Prague is operated by a third party carrier, likely because of the international nature of the trip. The difference shows. Instead of a nice, modern train, we're greeted with segregated and shared compartments of six seats each (three seats facing each other.) We select a compartment occupied by two others and make ourselves at home for the four hour trip.

Just as soon as the train begins to move, two guys walk into our compartment dressed in all green fatigues and begin barking orders in German. Both Beth and I look up, confused, turning to the other guys in the compartment with us. Maybe they know what's going on. But it's clear from the look on their faces that they have no clue, either. By this time, the guy barking out instructions realizes that we don't understand a word of what he's saying, so he switches to English and simply says, "Passport."

Ah, yes. Traveling between countries in the European Union usually doesn't require a passport check, but it's always good to have it with you for situations like this. It dawns on me that these two tough German guys, wearing all green, are actually the local police. Why it took me that long to come to that realization, I have no idea. My cousin and I hand over our passports, to which the police officer announces in an amused tone of voice, "Canada?" He flips through the pages and hands them back.

Then, our two cabin-mates hand over theirs, to which the officer announces, "Brazil!" Well, that certainly makes their silence a lot more understandable. Throughout the whole trip, the two Brazilians wouldn't say a word.

Satisfied, the police leave, and I can't help but wonder about why they're there. Checking for drugs or suspicious activity across the border seems likely. Or maybe they were just checking to ensure that we had proper Schengen Agreement visas. The crossing from Canada to Germany, and then from Germany to the Czech Republic are still among some of the easiest (personal) border crossings of all time for me, so it's not like having to show a questioning police officer my passport is a big deal. Besides, even twenty years ago this trip would have been all but impossible. Never the less, I am curious about the reasoning behind the passport check.

I thought that the Czech border might be a difficult thing to see from the train, but it proves to be rather easy to spot. Several rail cars sit neglected on side tracks, perhaps awaiting inspection or something else. There are old buildings here or there, falling into various states of disrepair now that strict border controls are no longer needed. The smooth, modern rails of Germany change into the rough rails of the Czech Republic. It's so strange to think that we can simply roll on through the border like this, instead of having to stop, take all of our luggage with us, go through the interrogation, and then get back on board again. I could just imagine what the border would look like under communist rule; men with automatic weapons performing patrols in the forest between barbed-wire fences.

Our first major stop within the Czech Republic is the city of Plzen. As we roll up to the city, it strikes me as being a sort of postcard for the rapid industrialization of the country as a whole. Huge smokestacks loom on the horizon interspersed between institutional buildings. Towering apartment buildings sit neatly arrayed, one after the other, all identical. I'd have taken a picture, but I managed to convince myself that there was no picture I could take to do the scene justice. The beauty of the Internet is that someone, somewhere likely has a superior photo.

The train continues on, and the contrasts between Germany and the Czech Republic are very clear. Some of the buildings are one step away from collapse, missing doors, windows, or entire walls all together. In Germany, it is very rare to see a neglected building, but here it's very common. German farms are little tracts of land, perhaps an acre or two in size. Here, collectivization of the farms has created massive fields stretching for kilometers on end without a break.

Hours later, we arrive in Prague. There's not much of the city to see by rail, especially after it enters a tunnel to go underneath the city to bring us to the main train station (called "Praha Hlavni Nadrazi", or just "Praha hl.n" for short, similar to German "Hbf" or English "Stn." for "Station.") After we step off of the train, my mindset of visiting a country behind the Iron Curtain is reinforced by the condition of the station. The platform is dusty and dirty, the station is dark and gray. Out of a garbled, reverberating loudspeaker, a voice drones on and on in Czech, making me feel like I'm living in a scene from "1984."

The station building itself is clearly the creation of a twisted communist mind. It is entirely utilitarian, bolted on to the existing old structure, overshadowing it. Overpowering it. The halls are dim and uninviting, the Czech voice continuing to speak in never ending monotone sentences. As we pass by the departures area, slot machines can be seen in the main lounge. The glass for the main doors has been smashed out by an act of vandalism; it's clear that nobody could be bothered to replace the damage. The step outside, leaving the dust and commanding voice behind, is literally a breath of fresh air.

Beth and I walk through the park in front of the station, and along the sidewalk. We look around and are amazed by the lack of traffic. I look around some more and ask, "Do you see any street signs?" Beth frowns and looks around, replying, "No. Isn't that weird?" It takes us a while to figure out that they're bolted to the sides of the buildings themselves. The lack of street signals at most intersections also causes some distress, another stark comparison to Germany where disobedience of the pedestrian signal means taking your life into your own hands. Here, you're expected to just cross the street at a marked crosswalk whenever you like.

We find the hotel and check in, marveling at how nice and modern the place is in comparison to everything we've seen. Heck, it's nicer than the hotel that the company uses in Nuremberg! Not that the hotel in Nuremberg isn't a nice hotel (really, it is,) it's just that the hotel in Prague is so much better. Since there wasn't any food service on the train, Beth breaks out some cookies she brought from Sweden, and I raid the minibar for a Coke and bottled water. After the short snack and quick planning, including talking to the hotel concierge about a reservation at a local restaurant, we set foot outside to explore.

Our first destination is the Old Town Square. In the Old Town, the streets are more or less reserved for pedestrians. The buildings all look magnificent, with their old architecture and intricate detailing. As we turn the corner into the Old Town Square itself, I can only stop and blink at the sight. It's something that I'm completely unprepared for. No photo in the world can do it justice, really. I can only describe it as looking like something from Disneyland, but without the facade.

Also in the square is the Astronomical Clock, which keeps time in far too many ways for me to keep track of. It is a combination of twenty-four hour clock, sidereal clock, lunar clock, zodiac calendar, and sunrise/sunset timer. Those are the only things that I can remember and accurately pick out on the massive dial. It's amazing to think that the clock has been operating in one form or another since the 1400's, back when you couldn't look up the position of the stars and planets by simply double clicking your virtual planetarium.

From there, Beth wanted to obtain tickets to a local marionette show. This is something that I wasn't too keen about, but it was something that she spoke quite passionately of. Finding the place proved to be rather difficult, tucked away from most of the tourist trappings. By dumb luck, we bump into one of the managers at the theater. He explains that the show this evening would be at 8:00pm. On the other hand, our reservation for dinner is at 7:00pm, which would be cutting it far too close. Beth turns to me and looks like she just suffered the biggest disappointment of her life.

We make our way back into the throngs of people, filling the narrow streets of the old city from wall to wall. We ponder how it's possible for the city to survive during the tourist season. If it's this busy now, in the off season, how does the city not fall to pieces during the tourist rush?

Next stop is the Charles Bridge, a pedestrian-only bridge made famous by King Charles IV, who ordered its construction. The condition of this bridge (given its antiquity) is simply amazing. The cobblestones under your feet, the statues that line the walk, the guard tower that looms overhead, it all speaks faithfully to the medieval age.

We take our time and walk up the hill of the Lesser Quarter, then up another hill known as 'Petrin' as the sun sets, giving us a great view of the city. Our destination is the "Petrinska Rozhldna," a tower built atop the hill, giving an excellent, towering 360 degree view of Prague. We arrive exhausted, and find that it is closed. Descending the hill, we come upon some old caves carved by hand into the rock of the hillside. The inside is scorched and smells thickly of smoke. I joke that the cave was probably used to burn bodies. Beth doesn't look impressed. Before leaving the hill, we find about half a dozen of these caves. To date, I haven't been able to find any information (online, or otherwise) about what these caves are or what they were used for.

The restaurant that we're set to eat at, "Cowboys", is a steakhouse in the middle of the Lesser Quarter. We arrive early, hoping to get a head start on dinner so as to make good time for the marionette show. Besides, after a day of walking and hiking all about Prague, both Beth and I are starving for a good meal. We order the chicken wings to start. Beth orders the pumpkin ravioli, and I ask for the filet mignon, medium rare. Some people would give us hell for ordering American-style food in the Czech Republic, ("why not order some local cuisine?!",) but I've got a real craving for a good steak.

The chicken wings arrive, and they're average by North American standards. I give it a "C" by using the "Unofficial Cyan Grading System." But the steak is easily among the best I've ever had. It's served with broccoli and a spicy cheese sauce that tastes excellent with both the steak and the broccoli. In traditional European style, the steak came with french fries instead of the usual baked or mashed potato. Beth was also rather impressed with the pumpkin ravioli, making the restaurant a good choice overall. After a hefty tip, and our compliments to the chef, we continued on to the Don Giovanni marionette show.

Unsurprisingly, the entire show is in Italian. But what is surprising is the caliber of the marionette costumes, the handling of the marionettes, and the overall quality of the production. It's hard to figure out exactly what's happening, and by the time intermission rolls around, Beth and I have a little conference to decide what on Earth is going on. She's already tired with the show and wants to leave, but now it's me who's excited to stay and see the end. As it turns out, the show is some kind of parody on a traditional Italian opera, and marionette shows. Exiting the theater, I was quite pleased to have had the chance to go and see something unique. It's not like marionette theaters exist in Edmonton!

Back in the hotel, it's time to go to bed. After a day full of travel, walking, hiking, and exploring, sleep comes easily.

The next day, after a quick breakfast, we venture on over to the Museum of Communism. Oddly enough, it's located within the same building as a casino. As with the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, there isn't a whole lot here that I didn't know beforehand. But it was interesting to see some artifacts first hand. In particular, a Czech note beside a time-card system exclaiming, "By checking in to work on time, you do your part to help bring down the Americans!", a poster of a smiling Stalin alongside the Czech leader with Soviet and Czech flags flying in the wind side-by-side, and a poster depicting the perfect "communist citizen" became instant favourites.

I was reading one of the exhibits when a tourist flew through the building, taking photos of everything in rapid-fire motions, completely ignoring the text and information available. I frowned and couldn't help but wonder if he even knew of what this place was all about. When he gets home and looks at the pictures he took, what will they mean to him? Outside of being able to say, "Yeah, I visited the Museum of Communism," I couldn't think of anything else he might have to say or reflect upon.

I was quite tempted to purchase a poster or two, but considering that I have no real way to transport them back home (and keep them in good shape,) I refrained. Besides, I'm sure that these posters will be available on Ebay should I still want one when I get back to Edmonton. I hope.

After the Museum of Communism comes a short stop in at a local street market, where I take a look at several hand-made chess sets, backgammon boards, and card holders. Unfortunately, none of them are large enough to hold a custom poker chip set. But, again, that may be for the best considering the fact that I have no extra room to transport that sort of thing. We move on.

Next is the Lennon Wall, a wall full of graffiti in honour of John Lennon. As we round the corner, people are openly writing on the wall with felt marker or with paint. A tour group stands to one side while their guide explains the history of the wall. Beth manages to procure a felt marker from someone and begins to draw a flower on the wall. I scan the wall for messages, noting the variety of languages on the wall: Japanese, Korean, French, English, German, Czech.. the list goes on. The messages vary from "God Bless Lennon" to "Vive Le Quebec!" Some people prefix their messages with dates, ranging from the early 2000's to now. Layer upon layer of paint covers many years' worth of expression on the wall.

We have some time to kill before going to meet our train, so we decide to walk along the perimeter of the old city along the river. We stop by the old Jewish cemetery and marvel at the rows of old headstones. Beth takes some photos of several swans deciding to take a nap as they drift down the river. We stop in at a dingy, sketchy street market that seems to cater mostly towards soccer fans. Lastly, we pay a visit to a local supermarket, picking up various snacks and drinks for the trip back home. We marvel at (but do not purchase) a 10 Liter jug of wine that works out to ten Canadian dollars. I remark that it "must taste like vinegar."

The communist-style train station is like night compared to the brilliant day of Prague's old city. The droning voice still goes on and on, never stopping to take a breath or give passengers a break from the monotony. Pigeons fly around freely inside, and characteristically unwholesome folks sit at the slot machines, spending their money away in a mechanical fashion. It costs 5 Czech Crowns for me to use the filthy, ammonia-reeking bathroom.

After boarding the train, I'm approached by someone who doesn't speak any English at all. In fact, he doesn't speak any Czech, either, since I saw him earlier trying (unsuccessfully) to communicate with a Czech crew member. By using hand motions, I'm able to figure out that he's not sure of what station he's supposed to get off at. I explain as best I can, and he seems to understand. In the end, it turns out that he's from Poland, and it occurs to me that this international travel stuff isn't so scary when everyone's just trying to help each other out. When you have so many different cultures and languages packed together so closely, I don't think you have a choice.

On the train ride back to Schwandorf, I have the pleasure of standing near an open window and feeling the cool breeze against my face as the electric train chugs its way across the Czech countryside. It's fifteen degrees outside, and not a cloud in the sky. I get to watch as the train runs into problems with a switch, requiring it to change over to the incoming track, proceeding against the red train signal as it blows its horn repeatedly. The little train monitoring posts are still manned here, unlike in Germany, or in North America, where everything is automated and electronic. I get to watch the sunlight slowly bleed away behind the Czech hills. At a station, I get to watch what looks like a bus on train wheels get dispatched by a conductor with a whistle. It's like I've gone back in time, where the equipment was older and train operations were all done by hand. At Plzen, the electric engine gets switched out for a diesel one, owing to the end of the electrified portion of the railway. Then, at the German border, the Czech engine and crew is switched out for a German one. The Czech engine roars past in the opposite direction, having performed its duty, it's now heading back home.

The German crew begin to announce station stops, something the Czechs never bothered with. It feels good to be back "home", even if Germany isn't my real home. I thought it'd take some time to get used to living in a foreign country, a non-English speaking country. But if all of my trips are as exciting as this one has made itself out to be, then I don't think I have anything to worry about.

It was about 9:00am local time when the plane crossed over the Netherlands (I actually saw a warship or two in the Atlantic just before the coast came into view,) giving me my first view of the European countryside. Unlike the prairies of Canada, which are a nicely arrayed grid of farms, Europe is a mess of wandering roads and fields of random sizes and dimensions. You could tell the new towns from the old, the ones built during medieval times, with their circular layout and city walls.

We quickly crossed into Germany (which didn't look any different from the Netherlands, I assure you,) and landed at the Munich International Airport, having completely skipped a day in the process of flying across the Atlantic. I only managed to get an hour or two worth of sleep, since I'm usually not one for sleeping while traveling. The couple next to me on the plane managed to sleep the entire eight hours from takeoff to landing. I was quite jealous.

I managed to play quite a bit of Disgaea, along with some Orcs & Elves on my brand new shiny-black DS. Orcs & Elves is actually a surprisingly fun hack and slash. It doesn't take any particular degree of skill to complete it, and it reminds me of the days when I'd play Catacombs 3D on my 386 (in glorious 16-color EGA.) If ID put out more of these sorts of games, I'd be perfectly okay with that. They used a lot of sounds from Quake and Doom in the production. You can just imagine my glee when an enemy cast a spell at me with the first second or two of the BFG sound playing. Well worth your twenty bucks.

This was the first time I set foot in a country where English wasn't the national language. I made my way to Customs (called "Passport Control") and presented my passport to the officer. "Good morning," I said in English, hoping that he spoke it as well. He just grunted in response, and proceeded to flip through every page of my passport. Then, after unceremoniously stamping my passport and handing it back to me, I said "thank you!" He then grunted again.

I picked up my bags and was on my way to the S-Bahn, which is the German equivalent of the LRT. I had my transit route all planned out, and I hoped that my years of experience on various transit systems would assist me. Unfortunately, my optimism would be abruptly halted by the ticket vending machine. It wasn't a case of a few buttons to navigate a menu of choices, this machine had somewhere in the order of a *hundred* buttons depending on what you wanted. The buttons came in all different sizes and colors, making it seem like I was playing a game of 'transit bingo' rather than purchasing a ticket. I knew that I needed a 'daily pass', and *some* of the directions were in English, but I was stumped. Fortunately, a transit employee saw my frustration and spoke passable English, enough to let me use my credit card in the machine, procure the ticket, and proceed on my way.

The Munich (actually, Munich in German is 'Munchen', so I'd like to speak to whomever extrapolated 'Munich' from that. In fact, whoever extrapolated 'Germany' from 'Deutschland'? Actually, it was probably the Romans. But, I digress) S-Bahn is a lot like the Edmonton LRT in a lot of ways. It runs on standard-gauge rails with a single 600V overhead wire. It announces every stop. The stations are a lot less fancy than ours, but they get the job done. I also quickly learned that "Nachster Halt" means "Next Stop."

I departed the S-Bahn at Munich Hauptbahnhof (which I would also quickly learn is 'Main Train Station', whereas bahnhof is simply 'Train Station') and proceeded up a couple of floors to the Deutsche Bahn ("German Rail") ticketing desk. I asked the ticket lady if she spoke English, to which she replied, "yes, but very little." I then managed to buy a ticket on the ICE (Inter-City Express,) the German equivalent of the bullet train, to Nuremberg. I complimented the ticket lady on her English, since she was quite conversant and a spoke lot more than "very little." There are no words I can use to express the pure awe of Munich Hauptbahnhof. There were at least twenty or so tracks all lined up under a huge atrium-style building. There were several heavy-rail trains within the station, and people buzzing around everywhere. The size of this station is probably much larger than anything we have in Canada. Take a look at this photo for how one side of it looks (not my photo:)

http://rrx.ca/20030424_munich_hauptbahnhof.jpg

The ICE train itself had rather comfortable seats, so I stowed my luggage and settled in. That is, until a German couple came by and scowled at me. Oh, shit. Do you mean this thing has reserved seats? I made some embarrassed apologies in English and quickly got out of *their* seat, but I don't think they understood a word I said. I studied my ticket over and over, trying to figure out where I was supposed to be sitting, but had no clue. Since I was standing by a window, I just thought, if I had to stand through the whole trip, that'd be just fine by me.

As the train got underway, I was surprised to watch it go back through some of the S-Bahn stations that I had just gone through. It makes sense that the various train systems would use the same tracks, it just seems more efficient that way, but it never occured to me that this would happen in practice.

Eventually the train got up to 100 kilometers per hour, then 200.. and the sensation of standing and holding on to something became quite perculiar at this speed. I knew how fast we were travelling because the train had these LCD displays that showed the speed in realtime. I was becoming more and more impressed with the train as the minutes flew by. Despite the fact that I was standing, I got great views of the German countryside, and I was having a great time.

One of the DB (short for "Deutsche Bahn") came by to inspect my ticket, and I asked if he spoke English. Fortunately, he did, although not as fluently as the ticket lady. I asked what the deal was with the seats, and I suppose my phrasing of it confused him, so I had to try again in simpler English. He explained that all of the seats were reserved, however, some were reserved only between certain cities.

This would explain why, above every seat, there was a small LCD display that noted two cities (for example, "Nuremberg - Frankfurt") That means the seat was reserved between those two cities. But since I was traveling *to* Nuremberg, if the seat was available, I could take it. Thanking him for his help, I made my way to an open seat and continued to enjoy the view.

The train traveled along a stretch of autobahn for quite some time, and it was interesting to look up at the realtime speed display (now showing 300k/ph), and then look out at the cars, which had to have been going 200k/ph or faster. This was truly a great way to travel. It's just a shame that Canada is too large (and has such a sparse population) to justify such a rail network.

It only took an hour for the ICE train to arrive in Nuremberg, where I departed and took a cab to my hotel on the north-west side of town. The next day, at work, I met my fellow Deloitte employees and was given a short instruction of the Germany rail system. ICE trains were the fastest, of course. "RE" trains are similar to the West Coast Express, in that they are commuter trains that stop at only the busiest of stations. "RB" trains stop at every station, including little towns in the middle of nowhere.

Which is another thing that struck me as odd about the German countryside. There weren't farms on plots of land like we have in Canada. By and large, the land itself was empty, but you'd have small groupings of houses (villages, really) every so often. Endless numbers of these little villages all over the place, and the "RB" train stops at each one.

Could you imagine how great it'd be if we had a train that started in, say, Hope and stopped in at every little community on its way to Vancouver? That's what the RB train is like.

Later, I took the U-Bahn train (equivalent to a subway system, more like the SkyTrain), and the Tram (which is similar to our trolleys, except that they're on rails embedded into the street with street traffic.) The only method of German transit that I have yet to take is the bus, and I'm not sure if that'll ever happen. There's a train, tram, S-Bahn, or U-Bahn that goes practically everywhere, so I'm not sure under what circumstances I'd use the bus.

This past weekend was the first weekend I had free since arriving here. I work 11 to 12 hour days, so there's no time to go strolling around between then. But, on my first free weekend I went to the old Nuremberg Rally Grounds, home of the infamous Nazi Rallies. Since that entry is rather heavy with photos, I created a little website for it as opposed to a journal entry. You can read more about that here:

http://cyan.rrx.ca/rally.shtml

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the German rail system. I've already got my train (with a reserved seat this time!) booked for my trip up to Bingen for Breakpoint 2008, the world's largest demoscene party. Two hours on the ICE to Frankfurt, then one hour on the RE to Bingen. It's going to be great.