Across The Pond

***Writer's Note: For those who are very bored at the moment, are interested in Asia, or who find my writing mildly entertaining, there is a decent amount of writing on the blog from the month I spent in Southeast Asia. Just take a look at most of the 2008 entries.

Friday, June 26th, 1:19 CST

My bags are as packed as they are ever going to be. In the last few hours I've thrown various clothing, toiletries and other miscellanea into my ackward blue suitcase. At 6pm CST, approximately 17 hours from now, I start on another journey through (for me) parts of the world unknown.

Like the trip one year ago through Southeast Asia that gave my blog its name, this trip is equally unscouted and unplanned. Unlike my travels through Southeast Asia, this time I have a companion with me: Mark Patterson, wholesome midwestern boy from Minnesota, Northwestern student, and soon to be Ph.D. In terms of the ability to successfully plan ahead, put both of us together and we can just about read at a 5th grade level.

What I do know is that my first stop is England. Mark has been living there for the past year with some family while doing a masters, and he'll be showing me around London for the first two days, June 27th and June 28th, of my vacation. I'm not really sure what to expect - the only time I was there I must not have been much older than 10. For the moment I'm looking forward to drinking shandys (1/2 lemonade, 1/2 beer), relaxing in the famously pleasent English summer, and catching up with my friend. On tap for England at the moment is a play on Saturday night (Tom Stoppard's Arcadia), and hopefully a night out on the town. The day after that the United States plays Brazil for the finals of the Confederations Coup, a soccer/football tournament, and that should be a lot of fun to watch in England.

Since I anticipate the readership of this blog to be comprised mainly of A) my mother and B) friends checking this out to see if I'm actually updating, I have two messages. Mom - I love you, thanks for the support and good feeling throughout my life. The same goes for my father and brother. Friends - I'm going to get into my proposed travel itinerary in a second, but if you see on this blog that I'm in close proximity to your favorite bakery in a random corner of France or something, please make the suggestion on this blog or to me at zfreeman.nu@gmail.com. Also to my friends reading this - if you've always been a huge fan of belgian chocolate, and you see I'm in Belgium, please let me know! I'll do my best to bring some back for you. Ditto to anywhere else I go.

Back to our travel itinerary: After leaving England, things get pretty hazy. From a 2 sentence-conversation with Mark last week, it looks like we agree on the following potential destinations: Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Paris. Who knows if we'll actually keep to that, but thats the situation at the moment.

Hopefully you people out there in reality can expect a post every other day, we'll see.

I thought as a primer for you and to pysch myself up, I'd throw in a few pictures here from last years trip to SE Asia. Enjoy! And best of luck for you and yours to whomever is reading this.


Eating some kind of chicken dish as a prelude to cockroaches and crickets in a random Cambodian market.

Tokyo, Japan - I stumbled upon an anime/cartoon costume convention. Really??

Wading my way ashore the Thai island of Railay.