There are two more entries coming. I'll write them in the next few days and close up shop here. Because of the small but steady interest in reading about my high profile, ultra glamorous life (joke)...I'll continue to keep a web log, just from a different page. I'll leave this one online for anyone wishing to escape reality for a little while, or give me a publishing deal.

An hour of CNN news before boarding the plane. I haven't watched TV in 3 months.

Headlines:

• Number of peole in U.S. correctional facilities reaches all time high at 6 million. Over half are in for drug or alcohol related charges.
• NSYNC singer Lance Bass set to begin training for his space flight.
• Tonight on Crossfire: How bad are U.S. international relations? Is President Bush to blame?

Welcome Home Elliott.

You know...its a real pity you can't just be someone else for a while. If we all shared in those finer moments a little more often...if we knew what if felt like to win the World Series with a homerun or summit Everest or sail the South Seas with nothing but the wind and a sextant....oh the possibilities...world peace, an end to hunger and racism, free milkshakes for everyone and .50 cent coffee at Starbucks.

I've been gone 3� months. 11� hours to go: Venice to JKF to Cincinnati to Greenville. My dad will pick me up. No one else knows I'm coming home.

I'm at the airport. I don't particularly like sleeping at airports, but I like it more than paying $30 a night in Venice. I paid $5 a night all across Turkey...and Turkey kicks Italy's ass. Its clean and empty and late. I'm the only one here, except the nice night watchman that gave me a bottle of water. Its odd to be the only one in a place so big and quiet.

It feels like I've been gone forever...lifetimes have passed...2 or 3 at least. I barely recall myself 4 months ago. What was I like? I remember thinking alot during school how far I'd drifted from those things I like best in myself. Its so easy to do. But I did well in my classes and sometimes enjoyed it and made friends the best I could. And thats how it often goes: you do a little here and some there and try to enjoy it and then one day you forget those things you liked best in yourself. We were all brilliant little kids with enough heart to make flowers bloom all year.

Life is short.....I disagree. Life is long. These 3� months have been eternal...endless. Travel can turn months into years, days into weeks. It's turned these last 3� into a lifetime. Consider that I've been doing this for 7 years: Life is long.

And what a life it sometimes is!! 3� months...I sailed the Mediterranean on a 50 foot yacht. That was a lifetime. Seasickness..exotic ports...night sails...salt water...and movement. I was on the ship with most eminent pain doctor in Sweden. His whole life was a mess: wife filed for divorce while he was on the boat...drank and smoked all day and put himself to bed every night with sleeping pills. Sometimes he didn't wake till the next evening. I hope that isn't the price of eminence in your field. The other doctor on the boat went back to Sweden and killed himself with an injection of the morphine he took for his migraines. His funeral was last week. And he wasn't eminent at all...seemed pretty well adjusted.

In Rhodes I really began to recover (thanks Becky). Thats where things started to get funny again. I think I'd forgotten how to enjoy myself. Even my journal entries start to improve (June 23). 3 days with blistering fever on a Turkish Gullet, met up with Kent in Cappadoccia, made great friends in sleepy little Goreme, had a huge crush on an Australian math teacher, met two chicks in Bran that reminded me of me (check out their website), tons of wild nights, more than a few sunrises, lived and worked at a hostel in Transylvania (miss you guys)...and that's just the stuff I'm willing to share. All that in 3� months. Life is long.

I'd like to say here to those of you I received mail from during this trip: I really appreciate it. I meant a lot to me to hear what you thought. It can get lonely out here (especially right now at 2:30 in a cold, empty airport) and reality checks are few and far between. If it weren't for you feedback I certainly wouldn't have continued to keep this website. Many people said it was entertaining...for some it provoked a thought or feeling...and some folks actually got quite personal with their letters and shared a thing or two...those are the ones I appreciate the most.

I remember one of my first journal entries. I was in a bad way when I wrote it...lonely and confused, but I meant it at the time nonetheless.(May 21). I said travel was passing its usefulness. Well...I was dead wrong. It would be better, mostly, if it had...then I could leave it for dead and move on.

Travelling is the only thing I've ever done that consistently exceeds expectations. How many things can you say that about?

It is where I fit in best and most easily find nice people. Its most where I'm told I'm not crazy and where I am not judged. There are less reservations and more openness. There is a heap of trust and more sharing. It feeds the most childish, petty and shallow parts of me. It also develops the most profound and soulful parts in ways nothing else can. It makes me comfortable with myself and eager to meet new people...which must happen in an intense rush because you're always catching everyone in between here and there. It forces you to open up fast...there isn't enough time for anything else. It also teaches me patience...everyday is an emotional rollercoaster. Surviving the day can be a heroic act. The ups and downs are monstrous. At times I ride them out and sometimes I let them sweep me away. It teaches reckless abandon, which there is far too little of these days. Travelling can be dangerous and exhilarating...take advantage of that: you're leaving the country the next day anyway.

Perhaps most interestingly, travelling will show what people are really like, which is a terrific lesson that teaches you a whole lot about yourself too, if you let it. There is no substitute for travel in this respect. Without it you'll only ever know the nature of people where you live, or the nature of people with your religion or the nature of people under democracy or with education or from a warm climate. Only after you've seen a little of everything, everywhere do you start to notice things common to Everyone.

And its not as easy as it appears to flit around the globe by the seat of your pants; if you don't believe me...try it. Travel has learned me many a good problem solving skill and made me, for better and worse, the person I am. Stress out? I was once chased by a man with a scimitar in Morocco.

I could go on, but I've just about come full circle. Its being chased by that man with a sword in Morocco, sleeping under the stars of the Negev desert or trekking in the Himalayas that makes life long...it also reminds me how much I'll miss being out here.

Its a pity travelling is considered a vacation and not what it more resembles: an education far better than....well...anything.

Here is a picture of me in Morocco 2� years ago. Thats the edge of the Sahara in the background:

Venice, Italy. It was 7 years ago the 1st time I visited. I was young...and idealistic. It amazes me how much I still resemble that kid. Not that I've maintained much innocence, just that I didn't have all that much even then. I am a born skeptic. Anyway...besides the fairy tale canals and distinctly Venetian architecture, I remember commenting in my journal (yes I even kept one back then) on a distinct sense of abandonment. It was low season and the town was dead. I remember wandering the quaintly mildewed canal streets drinking cheap rose wine and thinking it was too empty to be of much use to us.

Fast Forward 7 years: Its not empty now in the middle of summer...but there is still that sense of abandonment. Too many boarded windows, black mold on marble walls, cracked stucco, the rising water level, marshy islands and buildings with flooded ground floors.

The beauty of Venice has been its own undoing. It's been abandoned to the tourists...so expensive no one can afford to live there. 3 bucks for a Coke. 2 bucks for 15 minutes of Internet..it was 33 cents an hour just a day away in Bulgaria. My pen ran out of ink a few hours ago. I couldn't buy another one...apparently selling pens doesn't make one enough money to survive in Venice...I did see a 200 dollar Mont Blanc in a jewelry shop though. There is only one Youth Hostel left and its on the outskirts of the islands...not enough money in cheap accommodation. I paid $30 last night for a shared room I was assured is the cheapest in the city. I paid $5 all across Turkey (just two days away by train). The same $10 pizza I am eating right now I was buying for $2 in Romania.

There is little left...just buildings like a sinking museum...restaurants and shops, high fashion, overpriced ice cream, boutiques, film and camera shops, jewelry, glassware...and hotels, lots of hotels. I have yet to see a supermarket or hardware store. They should just close the public train station and start charging admission...like the Venice ride at Disney World.

But there is no doubt its really pretty..

I posted a few more pictures and will write another entry tonight. I've been a little more busy lately so I haven't had time to think.

It has also come to my attention that you have to sign in/join Imagestation.com to view the pictures. That sucks, but I haven't gotten any more junk mail since I joined and it is better than the old site I used for storing pictures.

This pictures is taken outside the Hagia Sophia after the light show at the Blue Mosque during the 5 minutes a day they run the fountain:

I'm on the Eurocity to Budapest. Nice train...its been years since I was on one so nice...5 maybe. The Transylvanian countryside is rural, verdant and pastoral. It reminds me of nowhere in particular and has a timeless quality of rolling green hills and post card inspired stucco houses.

Travelling is the best opportunity you'll ever have to become yourself....there is always that if you are at a dead end. 3 weeks of dumb contentment and tons of great nights...it was a vacation from a vacation and likely changed the course of my life. The second I woke this morning...red eyed and unrested, travelling started up again. Packing bags (did i forget anything?) checking the time (will i make the train?) where is my passport and tickets (most important stuff) leaving the country (do i need to change money? need a visa?) will i catch the train...only have 30 minutes...taxi to town, change money..forgot to eat..buy food? no time...gotta go back to the hostel to fetch my bags...should've thought about this before...taxi driver doesn't have change..have to say goodbye to everyone..sad, but I'm used to it...whistle..on the train..world starts moving...release. Exhale.

And that happens 20 times a day in some variation...emotional roller coaster.

Oddly I've grown to associate hunger with travel. Warm hunger pains in my stomach remind me of no Drachma at the port in Pireaus trying to find my ferry to Israel 6 years ago. I begged an apple off a vendor and permenantly borrowed some bread from another. They remind me of Bray outside Dublin when we walked so far out of town there was nothing...no food or water..and no passing cars.

But you can ignore the hunger or just recognize it...you can look at the mountains with its terraced ridges and patches of black forest...a man with a scythe in a field, a flock of crow, skinny cows and rusted train tracks, brown mission tile roof...brick smokestacks...crooked old woman with burlap bag, brown swollen river....my own tired eyes and racing mind. I forgot to shower.

What a pretty mountain that is. I'll never set foot on it. If I did, I'd never make it to the ridge beyond...if I did that I'd never cross the valley below. And thats how it all gets the same...almost the same. Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, Pamplona, Barcelona, Bern, Luzern, Lausanne, Paris, Venice, Florence...was it caving in Prague and trekking in Slovakia or vice versa? Where was that hostel I liked so much? That restaurant? What was her name? Where was he from? I travelled with them for 3 days...I should remember. I should've eaten too...but you can't have everything...or so they say.

I'll miss Sighisoara...but it was time to move on...fun though. Nathan really does enjoy his life more. He was drunk and told me...and that he would miss me...and that lonliness is the worst part of it........I know.