So, the rule for the future is: post or post not. There is no "planning to". Some form of trip synopsis will be forthcoming, but the ambitious town-by-town plan has been scuttled a bit because in all honesty when you go to 7 cities, it's kind of hard to remember the first 3 by the end.

Oh, and there's the slight matter that I'm taking off from Beallsville first thing tomorrow morning for the West Coast, via former regular commenter frank tanana's new gig in Oxford, Mississippi. I should be in Venice Beach sometime on Labor Day.

And, I'll be travelling in MY NEW CAR!!!

There's no way to truly do justice to a 19-day vacation in blow-by-blow style, especially when I didn't keep a diary, journal, or anything of the sort. But over the next couple of days I'm going to try to encapsulate as much as I can with a series of "5 quick stories about" posts for each city of the trip in order. No ground rules, except that I may expand "quick" as needed and that some general stories about the trip may be shoehorned into the places we didn't stay very long. So watch this space.

We've survived Prague, Bratislava, Split, Dubrovnik, and Budapest so far, and today we pulled into Varna (Жарна) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. There is no water in Varna right now. I mean, there's the Black Sea and all, but there is no running water anywhere in the city. Fortunately, the Internet cafe is doing just fine, and everyone mysteriously seems to know that the water will be back on by 10 p.m., a mere hour away.

In the meantime, we take some solace in the fact that there's plenty of beer around. Boy howdy. Plus, we just had a two-course meal plus a half-liter of beer each, it was delicious, and the total bill with solid tip was 31 leva, which is about $25. Good times.

I can´t stress enough that you should all come to Dubrovnik. Right now. I´ll wait.

Also, Eastern European keyboards have 24 letters in the right place, but y and z are reversed and all the punctuation is in screwy places.

Budapest tomorrow; Varna, Bulgaria, on Tuesday, and generally more to come.

An Open Letter to the Fleetwood Diner

Dear FD,

So, um, yeah, I just wanted to drop you this little note to say that I'm sorry about the unpleasantness. You see, I normally don't get that way, but it was my last night in town and I'd been moving all day and was pretty dehydrated, plus I had one or two more drinks than usual. Also, I haven't really drank much in July; July was bad--just take my word for it. So I was celebrating the end of that horrible, awful month too, and I accidentally overstepped my limits.

I'm honestly not even sure if you're the one I should be apologizing to, because I think that the garbage can in question might be municipal and not yours. But even so, it's right there in front of you, so you had to deal with the aroma of what I'd like to call "certified pre-owned gin" all night, and perhaps still even now. So yeah, totally sorry about that.

I'd also like to emphasize that this in no way reflects on the pancakes. I mean for starters, the first visit to the can in question happened before the flapjacks even arrived, and the return trip happened after just one bite. I don't think the one bite was a contributing factor at all. I mean, I've never had your pancakes before, but I've sat next to someone who was having them, and I remember being totally jealous because they smelled really good. In short, don't change the pancakes.

So I'm gone from Ann Arbor now and I won't get to stop by anymore, but please don't let this unfortunate incident scar the four or five other really good times we had together. I know it won't in my mind.

Sincerely,

--joe

P.S.: I know that "hippie hash" is a big seller in a college town, but that doesn't change the fact that broccoli does not belong in breakfast food. Please consider dumping it.