Ciao bella from Italia

Ciao amicis from Firenze (Florence), Italia. The country is astoundingly beautiful - I could spend a month here without feeling the need to leave. On Sunday I flew into Venice which is, unforunately, a bit overrated and overcrowded. Floating is nice but it was a bit Disney too. Since then I've made it through fair Verona, the city of Romeo & Juliet and now into Florence, the city of everything from Michelangelo to Machiavelli. I'll be here for another day or two before a pit stop in Milan and then into Southern France. Today's the half-way point of this vacation-tour so a good time as any to catch up on a blog (plus Florence actually has normal-budget Internet cafes like this one, only 1.5€ per hour!).


Venice 1

Venice 2

I'd post more but as usual my efforts have been thwarted. A major downside to a nice camera is the 4MB images that take 15 minutes to upload (or as in my case error).

Zurich, Switzerland - August 1, 2006

After taking the train to the city of Freiburg in the southwestern corner of Germany, I met up with Ivo, a friend I met in Mexico while on a student exchange in 2003. Together we went for a day trip south of the border to see what we could see.

The large, serious and anonymous face of Swiss banking in Zurich, Switzerland´s biggest city. Somehow fitting.

Keeping precise time, the clocktower over the canal that runs into Lake Zurich.

Sipping espressos underground in the haupbahnhof, Zurich´s transportation hub.

Ivo displays the Swiss franc - an annoying outcome of Switzerland´s decision to reject the Euro after joining the EU in 2004. It takes a lot of these to buy things down there, my advice is don´t visit Switzerland if you´re not among the jetset crowd.

The local Ricola band. Actually, August 1st was a Swiss national holiday although I didn´t know what they were celebrating. The weird part is on Swiss holidays everything shuts down. The entire city was more or less deserted like a ghost town. The few Swiss out and about were part of a small celebration on the lakeshore featuring a Western-style hoe-down and then finally something a bit more ´local´.

More later. All these crappy computers I´m using over here are incredibly slow and hard to type on so its hard and time consuming even to browse photos to find which I should put up. Wish I could show you all more. Having fun now in Prague, Czech Republic.

Adios,

Jason

Famous in Ingolstadt

Well looks like I´ve become famous through the slightly unconventional route of a Bavarian Wirtefest: See me partying down in Ingolstadt with the Delight Showband.

Click News and then the Bilder link beneath Ingolstadt Wirtefest. I'm on the second page of photos...