Made it into Amsterdam

We finally arrived at our hotel just after the clock struck midnight last night. Wandering through a fairly residential area with no 'real' map of how to get to our hotel made it trying, especially after 15 hours of trains and transfers from Prague. One delayed train can change your whole day.

But we were able to download the season finale of The Office once we got to our hotel, so that made us smile. God, we love that show.

We are ready to come home. I am at least a little embarrassed to say that. I want to say, "No, we don't want to come back yet, Europe feels like home." But we're ready for 1 comfortable bed (not 2 twins side by side) and a shower with a curtain and a few other requirements we have for living well. :)

Our beautiful and dear friends Mike and Stacy Stavlund have had quite the week thus far. She gave birth to twins (one boy and one girl) on Tuesday. There have been some (expected) complications, but we are all hopeful. What beautiful people. What beautiful children. It's wonderful seeing all the comments on their blog...being reminded what a beautiful community surrounds them. We look forward to seeing them face to face soon.

But for now, a 20-minute train to Amsterdam (as our hotel is just outside the city) for our last weekend in Europe for this trip. We come home Tuesday. See you soon.

Praha

Just posted a gallery from Prague where we've been the last 4 nights. It's been a wonderful time. We slept a lot since we've been here. A good place to unwind I guess.

Tomorrow we travel 12 hours on 3 trains to Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam where we'll base ourselves for the last 4 days of the trip. (Klaas, are you reading this?)

Okay. Now off to check in on Mike and Stacy. If you haven't been following their story, you can find your way over to Mike's blog here.

Bourgeois Scum That I Am

Well I never.

You see, we're traveling most of this trip on Eurail passes, which so happen to be 1st class. No, I did not specify 1st class... in fact, I would have bought the cheaper 2nd class option if there were one. There wasn't. So we've been in 1st class for most of this trip (train-wise, mind you...not on the flight).

Well... turns out we've gotten pretty used to this whole 1st class thing. It's been so nice to scoot past the masses of travelers and locals to find our cushy seats at the front (or sometimes back) of the train. We've had entire cars all to ourselves, including panoramic cars through the Rhine valley. Wow.

Well today we left the countries that our Eurail passes cover. We entered the Czech Republic and had to purchase actual train tickets. Looking at us (I guess) they assumed we were 2nd class and sold us those tickets. Not thinking about it, I took them. Well you can imagine how put out I was to find out that we were not going to be traveling 1st class on a 4-hour train ride to Prague.

Well I never.

I have become all that I thought wrong with the world. I have become the privileged 1st-classer. I weap.

So we rode 2nd class here and it was actually quite nice. And we made it safe and sound to our hotel in Prague. Ah...

4 nights here and then to Amsterdam with a possible stop-off in Berlin. Should we? You tell me.

Ciao.

More Contextless Photographs

Sorry for the lack of captions with these photo galleries. Perhaps to explain them, we can stop by some time.

Here are 3 new galleries...

Switzerland 2 (Interlaken and Luzern, along with the JailHotel we stayed in)
Germany (Rothenberg and Fussen/Bavaria)
Dachau

Again, sorry for not directly posting pics, but this categorizes them a bit better.

We're leaving Vienna tomorrow morning to take a 5 hour train into Prague. We'll be there for 4 nights or so.

Thanks for the emails and comments. This has been a great trip to have been on. Wow.

Arrival into Vienna

Switzerland onto Germany and now into Austria. We are staying with Birgitte Clark's parents in Vienna for 2 nights and there is wifi here, so hopefully I'll post some pics and reflections tomorrow if there's time.

It's been a wonderful trip. We're tired. But it's been amazing. Amazing.

Stories to tell over a pint...your treat?

Photos, Photos, Photos

Okay. I just created some galleries with some photos from our trip thus far. Just click on the below links, as they are divided by Country or City. Cool? Ciao.

And don't worry...there are only about a dozen photos for each link, give or take...

Bruges, Belgium
Paris, France
Figueres, Spain
Nice, France
Cinque Terre, Italy
Gimmelwald, Murren, and Alps, Switzerland

Enjoy!

Geslosse

That's the German word for closed. Everything up here is closed. Turns out it's between seasons. This is one of the (if not the) biggest snow-skiing areas in the Swiss Alps, but ski season ended a week ago. Summer doesn't begin until June here. So most everything is geslosse.

So what do you do in the Alps when everything is closed? Hiking and eating. Mmm.

So, we'll post some amazing photos from the trip thus far in a moment.....

Confederation of Helvetia

We are in Switzerland. Wow. Just paid way too much for a fondue dinner, but it's snowing in the Alps.

We rode a lift up 1500 ft in 4 minutes from Lauterbrunnen to Gimmelwald. I cried I was so scared. God!

Can you believe that we have wifi at 7000 ft. in the Swiss Alps? In a rustic barn setting? What is going on here?

Ah...

For those attempting to follow us (like my mom), so sorry that I haven't been able to keep you up better. Internet really has been hard to come by or we have simply been out of time.

Okay. An update.

Just left the Cinque Terre this morning. God, what an amazing place. Really. Probably our favorite place yet. Stayed 2 nights in the town of Riomaggiore. When we go back with our little one, we'll stay in Corniglia...it's the birthplace of pesto. Mmm. So yummy. I had 4 meals of fresh pesto and fresh pasta in the last 4-5 days. So good.

We are passing through Florence, hoping to connect with a friend from the States [Craig and Lora read: Savannah] and then head off to Switzerland. First Montreux, then the panoramic train to Interlaken, up a lift to the town of Gimmelwald.

I just talked with the proprietor there and he says the weather is bad. No worries, I've always wanted to see the Alps, so we're there.

I'm hoping I'll get to ski either in the Swiss Alps or the Austrian Alps. We'll see.

The rest of our trip is not really planned out. We'll probably sketch a finer detailed map once we have a few days up in Switzerland. Perhaps we'll stay there an extended time or jet out quickly. Don't know.

Strangely we ran into some of Holly's work friends as we were leaving the Cinque Terre this morning. So strange. So strange.

Oh The Places We Will Go

So we left Paris a couple nights ago on a TRENHOTEL, headed to Barcelona. What a wonderful place...Barcelona. Paris was wonderful as well. The people were very warm. Much warmer than we had been warned. Now we're in Figueres, north of Barcelona, Dalí's hometown.

Tomorrow to Nice on the French Riviera, then the Cinque Terre.

Sorry these are so short, but internet is 1 Euro for each 15 minutes! Still looking for that Shangri-La of free wifi...

We made it...

So, we're in Brugge, Belguim. We made it into Amsterdam with almost no sleep from our time in the sky. Too much excitement perhaps? Or because we were just too tired to sleep?

Either way, we made it. And we are having a wonderful time thus far. Tomorrow we'll take off from Brugge and head into Paris and then on into Spain days later.

Okay. That's enough for now. More later...

Remember to keep up with us by checking out our itinerary.

Ciao!

Reflections on This Week

This has been a heavy week. I have had multiple (albeit small) emotional breakdowns.

It has been in part due to the preparation for leaving to Europe (tomorrow at the crack of dawn) and in part due to the amount of work we have been attempting to complete before leaving... but it has also been in part due to my ever increasing desire to understand how goodness is brought into our world, both in small (micro) and large (macro) ways... and how I cannot seem to draft up a single, simple answer for such a complex dilemma.

And alas, this has been my framework for most of my life. That for whatever kind of puzzle you got, you just stick the right formula in... a solution for everyone as the Indigo Girls sing. It's a hard thing to recover from.

My spiritual tracks, my neural paths, my very natural tendencies have been in a very long process of being dismantled and taken apart (whilst trying to hold them all in focus in a single glance)... and they just want to plant back down into a simple, consistent, cohesive understanding that allows for my own limitations, but explains how goodness is brought forth into the world.

And Bono says I'd join the movement if there was one that I could believe in... and I'd say the same.

This week has been all over the place for me emotionally, but it has birthed something new in me. I'm not quite sure of what it is... some blessing and burden, one and the same.

My friend Emma sent me this book entitled Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy and wow, it's rocking all my ignorance I had regarding globalized capitalism and it's many implications.

And I just saw V is for Vendetta and I am still working through it's implications.

Are there no poets, writers, screenwriters, songwriters who can teach of this revolution that comes by way of peace and love and self-sacrifice and not violence overcoming violence?

I am thankful for the Wachowski brothers imaginative efforts... social prophets in our own time. But is this only means of revolution... of healing humanity... of truly allowing goodness to be cultivated in this world... through a violent overthrow?

And all this during a week I almost forgot about... the week of my Master's final days. And what does the cross have to say about this? Everything. That there is a narrative that we can choose to be a part of that denounces violence as a means of bringing shalom into our world. That it comes through our death (self-critique/sacrifice), not through our taking of lives that inhumane governments will be dismantled... And it comes from our own self-awareness in this whole story.

Pick up your cross and follow me... the price of social non-conformity, the symbol of non-violent revolution... that this peasant first-century Jew did not lose in his death on the cross. Rather, he started (or fulfilled or started-again) a movement that I hope will come to fuller fruition in my life.

So what does the cross mean to me this Easter weekend? That we are called to help midwife the Kingdom of God into our midst... and that we are called to this in the most self-sacrificial of ways (even unto our own death). That this message that was at the core of Jesus of Nazareth's teaching (ie. Re-imagine your life/world! The Kingdom of God is at hand) is only realized when humanity realizes that we might have more to do with this than we thought...

Shameful

I am a web developer and I just deleted my previous template. Shame, shame, shame..............

Smug-Alert!

If you haven't seen the South Park episode on Smug Hybrid drivers leaving their small town to move to San Francisco where everyone is like them, then you must download it from iTunes now and comment here about how our life is a joke and I should stop smelling my own farts. Just download the episode.

Here's an interesting article that references the episode.

Or Am I Just Passing Through?

The unexamined life is not worth living... - Socrates

The unexamined world is not worth living in... - Me, probably inadvertently quoting someone else

...or am I the next Socrates? Hmm?

Anniversaries and Such

Today is the 6-month anniversary of us leaving Southern California. It's also the first day of the 13th week of pregnancy (or so we're told). And tomorrow is our 5-year anniversary.

Hoorah! Congrats! Yippee!

So Ryan, do you feel much more resolved or mature or enlightened? Um. Maybe. Sort of. No, everything's much more complicated now. Not that it was simpler then. Perhaps I knew less then and it made things seem simpler.

Well, do you miss those days or love these days? I'd never return to ignorance or apathy...or at least I don't want to. I love these days, but I am looking forward to having my own bed back (or at least have the bed that Craig and Lora offer us...are you still offering it, our true family :) ?) and I am looking to unwind from all these conversations. I feel a bit talked out...not that I haven't loved it...but that which is life-giving can turn out to be life-taking at some point.

Do you feel like you've arrived at a better place? Personally? Um, I don't know. I realized just how fine a line of idealist and asshole I walk daily. I often err on the side of the latter, valuing ideas over people, ideals over possibilities...but I'm trying to use that self-realization to propel forward. I feel like we've been on input mode for 6 months...and I hope that doesn't change...but I hope I can spend the next 6 months implementing and reflecting. I've realized that life is more cyclical than linear...so hopefully we'll never stop 'pilgrimaging'.

What do you regret? Wow. Uh, I think like what I said above...that I sometimes value ideas over people. And me doing that is as dangerous as people valuing 'western democracy' over iraqi/afghani people, you know? So, I've again turned out to be the world's biggest hypocrite.

What's ahead? Europe. A kid. San Francisco.

San Francisco? Yah. San Francisco. We've decided that we'd like to move there in July or August. Have the baby there and spend the next year or so in the City. We've several friends in the SF-Oakland Bay Area and I think we'll be able to get some traction behind some of these ideas we've been talking about.

Anything else? Well, I guess I am just so thankful for the people who have made our trip possible...those who have valued our music, our stories, our life. Those who have shared, those who have asked us to share, those who have offered wisdom, guidance... and those who have simply been our friends along the way. This has been an incredible trip...really.

So you sound like the trip's over? Well, no. Just this leg is ending this week. Back to CA and then Europe. Then we come back in May and do one last big loop across the US to see friends and family and be a part of some cool get-togethers like the Emergent dealio in MN and the PAPA Festival in Eastern Tennessee. Those should be cool. And then San Francisco. But the pilgrimage is never over...

Living off the Kindness of Acquaintances

The last week or so has been spent throughout the beautiful NorthWest. Oregon and Washington have always been states that Holly and I've had love affairs with. Whilst we seem to be faithful to California, if ever we were to cheat, it would be with the NorthWest we-thinks.

Last week, we (along with my sister who has documented the trip) were put up by the Burnett family in Woodinville, on the northeast side of Lake Washington. Then we moved over a little ways west to stay with the Lewis family. What kind people...hardly knowing us and opening their homes and cupboards to us. And now their essentially family.

We have decided that we resonate with Portland a bit more than Seattle. Seattle sure seems like it's grown up a bit, while Portland still has a raw-ness that we really vibed with. Perhaps not now, but someday we'll live here...almost for certain.

Again...

The Cobalt Season is again doing a live radio show and you can stream it live here. It's at 4pm PST if you're around. I know it's on the iTunes radio list. KAOS is the name of the station. It's based out of Olympia, WA.

Perhaps you could call in or email a song request? (360-867-KAOS) That would give the impression that there are people out there who actually like and vibe with our music... :)

Okay. Information has been disseminated.

Mmm.

So the way we have kept healthy along our last 6 months on the road has been with this book...

Wow. It has made our trip amazing as it has pointed us to several mom-and-pop healthy food options along the way.

You know, there was a time when I could not imagine being on the road and eating healthy. Now I know there are several cool options...and it has put us in touch with some of the 'cool' cultural centers of each city we're in.

Ashdown's New Album

Jasen Ashdown has a new album on its way out. I should know... I produced it. And it's good. Thoughtful contemplative songs for the Lenten season. All adaptations from ancient prayers/poems.

You can go to his Myspace page to check out pre-mastered 'demos' of the new songs.

It was a fun project to work on...definitely his best work yet as a songwriter. Check out his stuff and tell him he should write more songs.