The past several days have featured my first continuous encounters with people in the tourist industry who speak zero English; I've found in the past that even a 20 word English vocabulary is enough to get me the info I need. This leads to logistical tragicomedies but I'm used to them after six months of SE Asia and India. I'm on a swank Mercedes bus, who cares if I don't know if I'm on the right one?

So it'll be a few more weeks in Turkey. From there I am thinking roughly:

2 weeks Romania
2 weeks Hungary
2 weeks Czech Republic

Then down to Italy to chill with melo for a bit, and Rome for the first week of September. Paris next, for one week, including the meetup, with maybe one less snooty stop elsewhere in France for 3-4 days before Paris (any ideas?).

My sister who is traveling for five weeks around that time is going to meet me in Paris on the 15th; we're going to spend most of our time in Germany, and I'm going to try to talk her into at least five days in Berlin. We might go up to Holland to check out a small town that bears our surname, mostly to take our photo next to the sign. Then down to Austria to meet up with the people I was traveling with in Laos and Cambodia; two of the guys live in Salzburg, and we're going to train it up for Octoberfest during the last weekend of September.

Originally I was going to do Ireland or Scotland in October, but given the cold I think I'm going to spend it in Spain. Then the finale in Londinium to clean out the final bits of peanut butter from the jar of my bank account.

Bonus pic: Epic baklava

you are the media you consume.