It´s almost like Leavenworth...

We haven't been able to tear ourselves away from the great food and company here in Germany long enough to collect our thoughts and blog. Our dear friends and hosts Rollo-- "the black goat" Dutchman, Marga-- the "Spanish queen of Ruston", and Adrianna their little baby girl are taking such good care of us.


We're enjoying a fusion holiday. Every day in the house we speak a mix of English, Spanish, baby babble and the kernel of all languages Dutch. As dense as we are, they're even trying to teach us some German. We stay up late like Spaniards, eat a European breakfast of sliced meat, cheese, and bread like a good Dutch family at the crack of Spanish morning, 10:00am. Lunch is a big affair around 4:00pm, complete with wine, Spanish delicacies cooked up by Marga or American fare rustled together by Canuche and me.

Rollo has been the champion of our dinner time, turning out mashed potatoes & cabbage with sausages and Dutch crepes at the Spanish dinner time of 9:00 or 10:00. We pause our eating to take siestas, play ping pong, or stroll through the grape vineyards and fruit orchards of Germany in sub 0 (Celsius) temperatures.

I am not sure what you would call this cultural and culinary fusion, with Paella, brisket, apple pie, Dutch crepes, and German beer consumed one after another, maybe Sputch-Germican fusion. No matter what you call, it we're having a damn good time.

The problem is we don't want to leave. Much to the dismay of Rollo, Marga and Adrianna we're really cozy here. We're struggling to muster excitement about our imminent departure to India. If any of you have traveled in that part of the world and can supply us with advice on Tamil Nadu, Kerala or Mumbai, we could use some inspirational Details. We'll be eternally grateful. We're also leaning toward including Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam in our plans from late February through April, so if you have advice for us, send it over.

Now for the drama of our German Holiday, as if the fusion stuff wasn't enough, the grocery store across the street from R & M's house burst into flames last night. It was 3:00 in the morning when Marga called the fire department and woke us up. For 20 minutes we watched in horror as the flames devoured the building, finally the fire department showed up and spent the next 14 hours putting out the flames and investigating the scene. It was an intense reminder of how tenuous our security actually is. Check your alarms and fire extinguishers for us!

The fire was a surprising and heart wrenching spectacle in an otherwise placid and lovely holiday. We hope you're holidays are treating you well and that you have been as utterly stuffed with good food and surrounded by good company as we have.
Happy New Year!

Egypt - Salty or Sweet?

All-in-all we have enjoyed Egypt. Our visit started with a great few days in Cairo with our buddy Heidi. We visited with great people there, including our Egyptian friend Ahmad who we met in Damascus, a laughter filled group of card players in the Muslim Quarter who invited us to hang out for a few rounds, and a host of other friendly folks at nearly every turn.

We adored the food in Cairo, from the delightful sweets at Al Abd bakery and ice cream shop, to the Koshary addiction we developed--our bellies were always full of good food. Koshary is a mix of noodles, rice, lentils and garbanzos that are served in a bowl (small for 50 cents, large for 1 dollar) with a pitcher of chunky tomato sauce and a carafe of spicy sauce alongside for each customer to doctor to their own liking. Along with Felafel, koshary is one of the beauties of cheap fast food in the Middle East.

From Cairo we visited pyramids at Giza, Saqqara and Dashur. We climbed down 50 meters to the burial chamber in the Red Pyramid at Saqqara. Our thighs were yelling at us for days. We joined the crowds of Polish tourists clad in short-shorts and muscle shirts to gaze at the Sphynx and took goofy shots of us petting the Pyramids.

Next we lurched down to Luxor on the night sleeper train. . . not nearly as romantic as I'd hoped. Luxor was a real mixed bag. The amazing history along the fertile banks of the Nile was sometimes difficult to appreciate due to the intense salesmanship of the locals. We were warned about the Egyptian hawkers and touts before entering Egypt. We'd steeled ourselves for the experience, but Cairo was so easy on us that I thought "ha, this is nothing." But I hadn't been to Luxor yet.

Luxor's economy is pinned on tourism and was hit hardest by the drop in tourism after the recent terrorist attacks targeting foreigners. Now there are many times more taxis, horse carts, tourist boats, and papyrus shops in Luxor than the tourism can support. Each day was filled with a host of interactions with the struggling people of the industry, including:
Carriage Hawkers - cajoling us into their horse drawn carriage. Fun and affordable transport, but with 20 empty carriages for every full one, the hawkers were incessant.
Commission Loiterers - on the streets or ferry trying to convince us to rent a bike, donkey, taxi, horse, camel, felucca boat, or... from their brother / cousin / uncle / father... in the hope of collecting a commission .
Helper Loiterers - who attach themselves to you on the street and follow you (they say they're leading you) to your destination and then try to badger a tip out of you for the "service".
Guard Loiterers - who sit at the entrance to temples and tombs to collect a tip (baksheesh) from you when you leave, no matter that you've already paid for your ticket and the guy did nothing but sit at the entrance.
Guide Loiterers - (can also be cop loiterers armed with guns) who sit inside the temple or tomb and pop up when you enter to shadow you pointing out the obvious, explaining the incorrect, and generally turning pacifists to violence. Oh and of course they want baksheesh for that service.
Children Trainees - who follow their father's lead and pursue tourists asking for pens, caramels and bon-bons

Throw in the joy of negotiating every purchase and you've got a vacation to make you pull your hair out. The saving graces were great companionship, astounding sights, an excellent museum and a serene hotel. After 3 days our patience was simply wrung dry. Heidi headed for Cairo and Nuche and I booked an emergency mental health plane trip to Sharm El-sheikh in search of some much needed chill time in Dahab on the Sinai peninsula. 5 days of relaxing, strolling the Cornish, and diving have returned us to a state of well being.

Chek out our pics

Aqaba marathon and the two border day...

The Aqaba marathon was...small. At the start there were about thirty westerners, a dozen Jordanians, and 100 half marathoners toeing the line. We all charged out of the parched mountains together then the marathoners turned out to the desert: A long and lonely sand filled stretch to the airport...without a fan, a farmer or even a tree for miles and miles. Surprisingly, it led to one of my fastest finish times. Even more surprising were the intestinal events that made me thankful for the solitude. But no need to go into that here. An 8th place 3:08 finish made me feel better about my battle with the bowels in the desert.

Mercy and I went for an Ultra Marathon day; the first leg - a 42 Kilometer race in Jordan, the second leg - a couple of border crossings into Israel and Egypt and the final leg - a 6 hour bus to Cairo.

The transition from Aqaba to Israel is stark. The red sands and palm trees were consistent across the border but the anthropological world changed entirely.
Our last moments in Jordan we exchanged money and shared dry dates with an office full of men smoking and joking with us in Arabic. We left Jordan's white-washed concrete bunker and hefted our packs past the barbed wire into the no man's land between the borders. Within 200 yards an Israeli guard came into view wearing chinos, short sleeves, and an Uzi slung casually from his shoulder. Passing him we were greeted by a smiling women in a similar uniform welcoming us to Israel in perfect English. She led us through metal detectors and into a new pavilion where other women worked the x-ray machines and stood guard with big weapons. After spending the last two months almost completely surrounded by men in these roles it was refreshing to see women in playing the same parts. Even though they had guns, we found them oddly comforting.
After about two hours of questioning and security checks we left the serene environs, functioning plumbing, music, and garden art of the Israeli check post. We crossed the resort city of Eliat, Israel, before plunging back into the Islamic man's world of Egypt.

We loved Cairo, enjoyed Luxor and we're now in sunny cool Dahab doing a bit of diving. Hopefully we'll be able to tell you of all of our mis-adventures in Cairo and Luxor soon.