Last time we checked in with our hero, he was travelling by train to Berlin.
The glass dome on top of the parlament building makes time-travelling Berliners from the future feel more at home.
This church, bombed out during a WWII air raid, has been left as a reminder of the war. Next door...
...a modern cathedral has been built. The altar sculpture commemorates the time Jesus jumped on a trampoline. **
A machine, built by the East Germans, that makes everything nearby look soul-crushingly sad.
This still standing section of the Berlin Wall is called the "East Side Gallery." The murals and grafitti here are pretty nice. - makes you wonder if they made a big mistake by tearing down the rest of the wall.
Checkpoint Charlie once served as crossing point between West and East Germany. Now it serves as a standing point for tourists.
This holocaust memorial forces visitors to think about all of the senseless concrete waste during times of war.
The memorial's uneven floor and different sized stone slabs are intended to create an uneasy and confusing atmosphere, like when the Germans tried to eliminate an entire race of humans.
Now this is a street I could get behind!
I saw this dish at a nearby table, pointed to it, then told the waitress, “I'll have that, the plate of dicks.” “Those are sausages,” she responded. “Oh, that's what I want,” I lied, “In America we call those dicks.” I think she could tell I was disappointed.
I saw this at Berlin's Kennedy museum. I can't imagine a world with a comic book about Superman helping the Bush Administration. I guess maybe he could fly really fast around the earth, forcing time to reverse, then stop the Constitution from ever being written.
Berlin is a very young and friendly city. Here, my friend Andy and I are out drinking with locals we met after a concert.
The two girls were photography grad students so I asked them each to stage a photo of us. Notice how these photos don't look like complete garbage.
After Berlin, I took the train to Warsaw. Old Town, Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII then painstakingly rebuilt using photographs. If I was around during this process, I would have submitted a lot of photoshopped pictures featuring statues of me performing difficult slam dunks.
A sculpture of me just before working out.
After Warsaw, I took the train to Moscow. This is all I ate during the 24 hour journey because I was too scared to get off the train in Belarus. (The UN contends that "the political system of Belarus seems incompatible with the concept of human rights." That coupled with my non-whiteness seemed like a dangerous cocktail.)
The track size is different in Russia so, mid-journey, we had to wait an hour while our train was lifted off one set of wheels and placed onto a different set. It's hard to see me in this photo, but I'm on the other side of that orange thing, lifting the traincar up with one arm.
I can't remember what my Moscow guide said about this. I think it's some sort of missile factory.
My tour guide said this was the world's largest cannon. “Aren't you forgetting about these?” I asked as I flexed my biceps. That's how I learned the Russian word for ”jackass.“
Vladimir Putin's office. It looks like it's three stories tall, but it's actually only two. The second floor is where he decides who to murder by poisoning.
Tomb of the unknown soldier. They don't know who's buried here, but they seem pretty sure he liked flowers.
St. Basil's is pretty small - only about half the size of a severed baby's foot.
When I was in Paris, I asked Leila to pretend she was Steve for a second...
...She did a pretty good job. Steve and I met up for one day in Moscow. I gave him the “gift” of a monogrammed attache bag containing four photos taken the previous day at his Los Angeles apartment.
This is the first of the photos. Steve did not recognize the two men as they are strangers, but he recognized the bed as his own.
I can't stop laughing when I look at these pictures.
They are pretty into his old tyme toys.
If I were Steve, I'd probably move.
Vali, Steve, and distinguished guest.
Steve was more articulate, but the bear had some salient points.
We ate at a Siberian restaurant. This plate featured various preparations of reindeer meat, horse meat, and quail. English does not have a word that captures how revolting everything tasted.
After Moscow, I continued cheating and flew to Cairo.
Policemen armed with machine guns guard the pyramids against some sort of imagined threat. I convinced this guy to sell me his policeman's hat. He gave it to me next to a tomb behind the pyramids and kept saying something that I later learned was, “If you are caught with this in Egypt, you will be arrested.”
the officer's English wasn't great, so this camel driver brokered the deal. For his services, the driver wanted $60 and my calculator watch. Being a businessman, I negotiated him down to $60 and the promise that I would mail him a calculator watch when I got home.
Outside the pyramids, I tried my hand at selling figurines to tourists. I was hoping to make enough money to live on once my reputation is ruined for turning in a couple of stick figure drawings as my first draft of the book.
I figured my superior marketing campaign would give me an edge over the other guys. I was wrong. I sold zero sphinx figurines. The other guys didn't sell anything either, but they were handicapped since they spent most of their time telling me to go away.
This boat was supposed to be used by a buried pharaoh, but it was still in Cairo hundreds of years after it was built. I guess it's more convenient to just catch a cab to the afterlife.
You know that old saying, “There's no better place to pick up ladies than a mosque?” It turns out that's not a real saying.
Tired of the convenience of being able to see out your windows? I have the solution to your woes.
I learned the hard way that this is NOT one of those Nude Jogging & Jumping-jacks parks.
I thought these boats were from an attacking foreign navy and threw a bunch of rocks at them. It turns out they are for pleasant night cruises on the Nile. I've never had to say, “I'm sorry I hit your kid in the face with a rock,” so many times. One thing about Egyptians is that they can't let things go.
Just outside Jericho in the west bank of Palestine/Israel. A little traveller's tip to help you through Israeli military checkpoints: Don't be Arab.*
A date cart in Jericho - the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. *
I ate dinner with a Palestenian family on thier patio. During dinner we saw flares attached to parachutes slowly descend over the desert. The Israeli army was using the flares to light the desert so they could search for a suspected suicide bomber. Despite the constant threat of violence, it seemed surprisingly possible to live a semi-normal life in the west bank. *
In Dubai, I sailed around for a while to get a taste of what Steve must have been going through. This got boring super fast.
While driving a four wheeler out on the dunes I, somehow, ran into the only tree in the entire desert.
On the set of Snow N******, an Arabxploitation movie about a ragtag group of Emirates who go to the Winter Olympics. Coming Ramadan 2008.
Me without my makeup on.
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge killed between 1-3 million of Cambodia's total population of 7-8 million. To date, none of the Khmer Rouge's leaders have been punished for their involvement. (Except in these scathing photo captions.)
The Khmer Rouge's goal was to create a classless utopian society. Historians disagree on whether they succeeded or not.
These guys took me to a flooded forest. On the way there they served me three glasses of incredibly vile moonshine. I honestly thought this was the last thing I would see before going blind. **
The people who live in this village next to Tonle Sap lake build their houses on stilts to accomodate for the rise in water level that comes with the wet season. This explains the Cambodian pickup line, “You must either be from heaven or live in a stilt house, because it looks like you just survived a nasty fall. [start kissing.]”
This village handles the rise in water level by simply building everything on floating platforms. This explains the other popular Cambodian pickup line, “It doesn't matter that you're too drunk to climb a ladder, because I live at sea level. [Start kissing.]” **
Any respectable floating village dining establishment has an alligator pit. **
Stone lion. Awesome, as always.
K.K., a Cambodian refugee who grew up in Long Beach, had some brushes with the law in his youth. After the U.S. government declared a post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia safe again, refugees with records were deported back to Cambodia. Now the twice-displaced K.K. is learning Khmer and teaches poor kids how to breakdance at night.
The staff was handsome alright, but the music was merely good.
A storm approached as I got to Angkor Wat.
I saw a lot of great stuff during my trip, but Angkor Wat was the most incredible. I went there three days in a row. **
I found the gate to heaven, but the bouncer wouldn't let me in since there were no girls in my group. **
A natural rock formation. **
Moments before I thought I achieved nirvana. (Turns out I just fell asleep.) **
Ancient dental floss advertisement.
This unfinished temple looks like a cubist interpretation of an Angkor temple.
Kids selling postcards inside one of the temples. To help them sell to tourists, they have learned the basics of five languages. When the little girl asked me where I was from, I asked her to guess. She looked me for a second then guessed, “the moon.” I bought a bunch of postcards from her.
Nature: 1. Angkor temple: 2. Nature is catching up.
After Cambodia, I flew to Shanghai.
An excellent way to commit suicide in Shanghai would be to walk around and take a swig of whiskey every time you see a lifting crane. The average person would be dead within fifteen minutes. Alternatively, you could shoot yourself in the face.
The city was strange. A lot of it looked like it was built for Lex Luthor...
...Yet, the cab drivers all wore Mickey Mouse gloves.
This sculpture is one of many amazing items found in a museum of ancient Chinese sexual art located in a Shanghai subway station. I didn't get a photo of the funniest item. It was described as "an artificial penis which was used for expanding the anus of gays." What? Why?
Maybe so this could fit in? (The title of this piece: "This Part of the Body Could Not Be Locked.")
After Shanghai, I flew back to LA. There, I was surprised to learn that Steve had not yet returned. Feeling bad about cheating, I decided to wait and let Steve be the first to taste the Kinclaith.
One week later -- eight weeks after starting the race -- it became clear that Steve wasn't even trying to go fast. (It had been four weeks since we met in Moscow and there was still no sign of him, despite the fact that one only needs two weeks to get from Moscow to Los Angeles by combination of train and ocean liner.) So, without remorse, I declared myself the winner of the Ridiculous Race and drank my tumbler of scotch. It was delicious.
This trip was the best thing I've ever done. If I learned anything during this trip it is this: I owe almost everything I have to the happy accident of being born in a first world country. For that luxury, I can never be thankful enough.
