I’ve been doing a lot of flying in the last couple years, and have been especially conscious of the airport security measures – largely as a result of reading a lot of Schneier, I find the whole process fascinating, especially in the ‘security theatre’ context.

I am not sure what a “normal” amount of singling out is when getting the swabs after going through the metal detector phase. But I seem to get what I would consider an above average amount of that treatment. I know I’m spotless and I’m generally always early so I’m not worried about being delayed, but I know that when they pick me up, it’s a gigantic false positive that stops them from swabbing and probing people that actually might be problematic.

I’ve noticed that I can seemingly evade the swabbing process if I delay my exit from the x-ray machine. For example, after my bag and laptop come out, if I spend some extra time putting it in my bag, I can keep an eye on the swabber. As soon as he swoops on someone else (assuming he hasn’t already profiled me as a high-risk entity), I can just grab my bag and walk out the door, because he’ll be occupado.

This is a pretty obvious strategy. I’d like to think their profiling is good enough that they can easily spot people like me, shiftily glancing at the swabber out of the corner of their eyes while they spend an eternity struggling to stuff their laptop into their bag and putting their belt back on.

So I’m on holidays at the moment having a break in Eurostan; didn’t really get to explore much of Leipzig or Halle outside of the Games Convention, but after that I went to Dresden for a couple days. Dresden was neat – always wanted to go there as it is mentioned a lot in the WW2 histories. The tour was a bit depressing – all these beautiful old buildings that are there are basically reconstructions, almost all of them having an amazing history of being build hundreds of years ago, then their story ends with sentences like “burned down in 1945″ or “was bombed in 1945″.

Then it was off to Greece for a few days exploring Athens. I was pretty stoked about finally going to Greece; I was an Ancient History nerd in high school and have always enjoyed Greek history so was looking forward to checking out the Acropolis and some of the other bits and pieces of history.

I arrived at night and was greeted with a pretty spectacular view from the roof of my hotel – there was a bar up the top that overlooked the Acropolis, which is nicely illuminated at night. Went wandering up there the next morning – the rest of Athens is, sadly, a bit of a shithole. It was hot as balls in the middle of summer, there’s people everywhere, roads appear to exist solely to a) make drivers miserable and b) give miserable drivers a chance to take out frustration trying to nail pedestrians. So that was disappointing.

The Acropolis though is amazing; its pretty much the highest thing for miles around so you get a great view looking down on the rest of the mismatched bizarre-ville that is Athens. The Parthenon and everything else up there is pretty spectacular and it’s awesome to reflect upon the history of the place – although sort of depressing reading a lot of the things about it (“…was destroyed when the Persians invaded, then was rebuilt, then was destroyed 20 years later when some other jerks invaded, then was rebuilt again, etc..”).

After that I was looking at my map and saw this epic hill that I thought might be fun to check out – the map sort of implied that there was a cable car or something but it was lies and I ended up walking up the thing – good fun but shit it was hot. Great view at the end of it though.

Also checked out the TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS which has to be written in caps because it’s such a cool name for a place.

After Athens I met up with a bunch of mates – we’d rented a sail boat for a week to go sailing around the islands. I was sort of expecting this to be a nice, relaxing tranquil affair sailing around lush tropical islands and golden sandy beaches, but that’s not how the Greek Islands work. Unfortunately we arrived just in time for shitty weather for sailing – it was wayyyy too windy.

I’d never been sailing before so was surprised that too much wind is actually bad for sailing! We had a massive big night before we left and I was hungover as hell and had 3 hours sleep – then spent about 5 hours in massive rolling seas, the end of which had me puking my guts out over the side of the boat wishing I was dead and wondering why the hell I thought this would be a good idea.

Fortunately after that point it calmed down a bit and we never had any trips as bad as that (plus I was hitting the motion sickness pills before every trip). We sailed around a bunch of the islands – I need to check the order and names but we spent a couple nights in Kythnos because of the bad weather (which was nice, but a bit on the small/quiet side), then hit up Serifos, then Mykonos (the party island, which was crazy), then Naxos, then Paros. Occasionally we’d stop and find a cool place to swim.

Aside from the wind the weather was fucking spectacular; we had nice hot days with heaps of sun, much to the enjoyment of everyone I was traveling with – they’re all Aussies now living in Europe so seeing the sun is something that happens a few times a year for them now. As a Queenslander I was a bit blase about the sun though; everyone else was diving for the decks to try and get their bronze on and I was cowering under my giant hat and layers of sunscreen.

The sailing part of it was surprisingly complicated – even though we had our own skipper, a hilarious Kiwi bloke called Alan who did most of the hard work and corrected all the mistakes made by us useless landlubbers (definitely including me). I’d actually never been on a boat before (aside from ferry things) until a couple weeks earlier for a fishing trip for a mate’s bucks party and it was on a motor boat dealie. The regular process of finding a free berth in a marina and docking is surprisingly tricky – not to mention dangerous and risky when you’re dealing with a boat worth half a million euro. No wonder everyone moved to cars.

By the end of it when we were back on land, almost all of us had amazing boat-induced motion weirdness going on – sitting down you’d feel like you were constantly bobbing up and down. The last night in Athens after I’d been off the boat for like 16 hours, I woke up in the middle of the night, got up to hit the loo and almost fell over the room was swinging around so crazily. Alcohol may have contributed here, but it was a very weird effect. I guess you get used to it if you’re sailing regularly…(?)

After Greece it was on to Italy. I arrived early afternoon and spent most of the first day just recovering from Greece. Next day did some of the usual tourist things like Trevi fountain and Colusseum (which was probably the highlight of Rome for me). No photos available yet! That night I met some Aussie girls in a random bar and we got shitfaced and I lost track of the next day.

Then it was on to Pompei! I was pretty stoked about this, having heard good things from all sorts of people. Got up at some bullshit hour of the morning to get the fast train down there and arrived pretty soon after 9am. It was another scorcher and I spent about 3 hours walking around these amazing ruins of this whole ancient Roman town before getting absolutely exhausted and having to call it quits. There were a lot of other tourists wandering around but every now and then you’d hit up some section of the city and you’d be totally alone, in this weird ghost town that is thousands of years old. Very cool.

I debated going up Vesuvius – but decided I didn’t have enough time for the tour. While it was a hot sunny day it was also very hazy so I figured the view would be average – could barely even see the mountain. So I decided to head back a little early, which turned out to be a terrible idea – my train was late getting to Naples, I missed my connecting train to Rome, and was stuck in the shitty Naples train station for hours. All I’d heard for weeks before was ‘be careful in Naples train station because of all the felons’, but I didn’t have any problems or really even see too many sketchy people. I DID however see this rail worker dude that was the spitting image of Vin Deisel. I would have taken a photo of him but he was terrifyingly huge and carrying heavy blunt objects whilst scurrying around underneath trains, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea.

Bummed around Rome a bit more then headed off to Geneva, Switzerland (where I am now). Had a bit of a poke around here for the weekend; its a nice place but nothing really amazing to see – the weather sucked for the first couple days, rainy and cold – beautiful today though a bit on the chilly side.

Spent almost all day today inside at the PC trying to plan my next chunks of trip and just generally having a day off. Tomorrow looks like I’m off to Nice in the south of France to check out some more of the laughable European beaches at the tail end of their summer, then its on to Paris a few days later which I’m really looking forward to. 2 weeks later I’m off to Munich for Oktoberfest which should be a little on the fun side too.

Anyway, hope all is well back on the other side of the world. Will try and update again when I have some more downtime but I’ll be back on hand in a couple weeks anyway, although still from this side of the planet.

This is a thoroughly boring report, but this was what I hope will be the most boring part of the trip – so just a few notes.

Just finished up in Germany; a week working out of Leipzig (staying in Halle, which is a bit of a hike away but the shuttlebus made it utterly painless getting back and forth) at the Games Convention and then a couple nights checking out Dresden and then a single night in Berlin.

I didn’t see any of Leipzig or Halle outside of work commitments but postcards I saw of Halle looked nice.

I’ve wanted to go to Dresden for ages, mostly out of the same World War 2-inspired curiosity that drove me to places like Normandy and Hiroshima. It was almost completely destroyed in 1945; fire raged through it for 3 days destroying many classic old buildings. I did a quick bus tour; the most common phrase I heard was “destroyed in 1945″ or “burnt down in 1945″ – most of the buildings in the city centre are reconstructions of the originals. They still look fantastic, of course.

The city reminded me a lot of Prague; it has a similar sort of look and feel to it. I only had one full day there and spent most of the time just wandering around the inner city looking at all the various buildings. I also found an Australian-themed restaurant called Ayers Rock which served Bundaberg Rum, so I finished up both nights I was there having a couple of drinks there (I know, I should be drinking German beer, but I was jonesing).

After that I ducked up to Berlin, from where I would fly out to Athens. I’d already been to Berlin a couple years ago for the World Cup so really it was just a night there killing time. I was impressed with my memory – I stayed in the same hotel I did last time and managed to walk to it pretty much unaided and everything was where I thought.

Then I decided to walk to the Brandenburg Gate – last time I was there it was all weird because they’d take up a lot of that area with World Cup stuff. Unfortunately my memory failed me here and I took off in the wrong direction – I’d walked almost a kilometre before I realised and then had to walk back. Shit.

Spent the rest of the time relaxing and trying a local Indian restaurant (which was very average and very expensive). Went out to the airport which I was expecting to be huge, but it was a tiny dive that was really cramped. I screwed up and got there about 1.5 hours too early as well – flying is so lame once you’ve become used to the awesomeness that is the German Rail system.

I am now in Athens, Greece – wandering the Acropolis and the narrow streets while I wait for our boat trip around the islands to kick off.

In San Fran again for GDC. Was greeted with spectacular weather, which is almost spookily becoming the norm when I travel, cementing the idea that I am a weather god further in my mind. Had a relaxing day yesterday after landing at 10am and checking in with the local authorities (ie, giving the US Department of Homeland Security my fingerprints). We went out to Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay and had a beautiful afternoon watching the sun set eating battered artichokes and drinking a beer.

nb: this is a work in progress.

Kilometres travelled: 47,676 (as reckoned by Google Earth)

Major cities visited: Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne.

Favourite city: Paris

Most impressive place: Mont-St-Michel

Best view: Carnelion Room, San Francisco

Best Beer:

Best World Cup moment: Having chanting competitions with the Brazilians in the Hofbrauhaus beer hall in Munich.

Worst World Cup moment: Can’t remember

Best looking girls: Paris

Best looking guys: What? No idea

The lowlights:

Most concrete city: Los Angeles

Most depressing city: Los Angeles

Worst city in the world: Los Angeles

Best newspaper headline: “5 day 32 degree heatwave” – London

Emails upon return to work: 12,513

Number of emails that were spam: 9,842

I am, in case it wasn’t obvious, back in Australia. More information about my travels will be added as soon as I have recovered fully.

A quick summary of the action in Munich, just copied and pasted from my post to QGL about it:

Well, I am currently in Munich and watched the game at the FanFest here out at the Olympic Park. Unfortunately I can’t get photos online but if you google I’m sure some people have gotten some up. There were thousands and thousands of people out there – I can’t even estimate how many but it was packed out. Lots and lots and LOTS of Aussies, which is awesome.

The few nights before here in Munich were great too. The atmosphere here is just indescribable. I can’t even begin to explain how awesome it is being in a crowded German beerhall with thousands of people all here for the soccer.

Most of the Aussies we’ve met here (like us) don’t even have tickets – it is so cool to see so much support for the Socceroos even from people that aren’t going to the games. Everyone is (generally) in such a great mood; it is really nice to see people from all countries just getting along. Everyone seems to love the Aussies (although we keep hearing Americans saying weird things; I think they’re copping a lot of shit from everyone – including Australians – and are suprised that no one seems to like them).

It is really cool to be able to walk around and see random groups of Aussies (you just here cries of “Aussie!” everywhere as you’re walking down the street). The day of the Brazil game we were all meeting in Marienplatz (big square here) and random tourists would walk past all the Aussies drinking beer and stop to take our photo. We get lots of people just walking up to us to say hello and shake our hand and to wish us luck.

Of course the Brazilians were getting their share of the love as well – they’re noisy and are just partying all the time. They’ve got the drums going and are doing a lot of chanting. I thought they were remarkably restrained after the game – I guess they’re used to winning. It would have been total fucking chaos here last night had Australia won – we would have torn the town apart with drunken revelry!

The weather here is beautiful too. Drinking steins of beer is awesome but surprisingly hard work – after the second litre of beer you need a breather.

I thought the game was pretty good, Aussies did well considering they were up against the favourite of the entire competition and one of the best teams in the world. We were unlucky with a few shots (and I think calls) but overall it was a top game and I can’t wait to go to Stuttgart to see how we go against the Croats.

After the game some of the guys we were with busted out a Sherrin and started kicking it around the (crowded) field we were on. Everyone had a good laugh as all the crazy-ass Aussies ran around chasing the footy going for marks and tackling the shit out of each other. Well, everyone except the people that got sconed in the head by the footy.

It is just so amazing being here.

Summer in Europe has arrived, with a vengeance. French and Dutch people are heading outside in droves with such reckless abandon for the safety of their skin that it makes a Queenslander cringe in fear for their lives. Despite the fact that this side of the globe still has an ozone layer and you can actually last ten or twenty minutes in the sun without having to spend the next 48 hours in sunburn hell, you still can cop a pretty good dosage of UV – as is now evident by the vast numbers of crispy red Euro-types that I am now seeing everywhere.

I’ve just gotten back from a weekend in Amsterdam visiting Soph, who has this ridiculously awesome apartment situated basically in the middle of town next to an actual real canal. Amsterdam seems like a really awesome place to live – really relaxed, beautiful surroundings, lots of nice pubs. Didn’t really do a lot of general purpose tourist stuff and instead spent time hanging out, plus one trip to the beach on the Saturday – along with most of the population of Amsterdam. They sure do love nuding it up on the beaches there.

Found a nice little Aussie bar on the beach which sold Tooheys New, so we sat around there for a while and soaked up the Aussie beer whilst sitting inside watching some of the footy. After that we decided we needed more Aussie beer, so upon returning to Amsterdam we got some dinner, found another Aussie pub, watched some more football and drank a stack. Awesome fun.

Back in Paris now – the Aussie game vs Japan was yesterday and boy it was awesome to watch. Unfortunately my train back from Amsterdam was delayed so I didn’t get back in time to find a good pub and ended up watching it on TV, but it was still a freakin’ awesome game.

Off now to watch yet more football – France’s first game is this afternoon so it’ll be cool to hit the pubs for that.

Well, many days have passed since my last update. I only had a few days in London, one of which was a bit of a write-off due to travel-induced exhaustion, so I wanted to cram them as full of stuff as I could.

I definitely could have spent more time in London, though you quickly start wishing you were earning pounds rather than measly Australian dollars. One dump truck full of Australian currency will get you a pint of beer. (Contrary to what I’d heard, all the beer I drank in London was cold.)

There are heaps of great museums in London. The Imperial War Museum was by far my favourite, jam-packed with amazing relics from World War 2 (and a heap of other military engagements that England has been involved in, but I was mainly interested in the WW2 stuff). V2 rockets, tanks, weapons, uniforms, letters – all fascinating stuff to see IRL.

The Natural History Museum is pretty impressive but I was a bit natural historied-out after being to the New York Museum of the same name, so I went off to the Science Museum which I really enjoyed, although I suspect it’s really targeted at younger people.

All the other tourist stuff I did as well to some degree – Tower Bridge, Tower of London (didn’t go in due to time constraints but walked around), London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square (unfortunately under construction), Westminster, etc, etc. Stacks and stacks of stuff to see and do. I found the Tube really awesome to use and was surprised to hear that quite a few Londoners don’t like it that much.

Mad props to Nicky and Aidan for putting me up in Islington, where – when walking ‘home’ from one of my frequent excursions – I saw Harry Kewell walking around the streets with his family. I was a little too starstruck (after I finally even confirmed that it was him anyway) to do anything useful like ask for a photo, but it was still way cool.

…to Paris…

I am currently in Paris and have been here for about 6 days – having a great time. My French is very rusty but basically everyone speaks English so it is easy to get by anyway.

Again, contrary to popular opinion, so far just about everyone I’ve spoken to anywhere has been very helpful and very tolerant of my woeful French. I remember just enough from my five years of study at school to get by and am probably slightly better equipped than the average tourist, but I sure wish I could remember more. However, not really a problem as everyone has enough English to help you out and (so far) have not been reticent about using it.

Everything here is very cool. Eating lots of croy-sants and pan-oh-chocky. Good stuff. Lots of amazing history here.

Now that the Da Vinci Code has taken over the world (and the handful of illiterates that haven’t read it can now see it on the silver screen), all these people (e.g., Americans) have now heard of this mystical place that Jesus built called ‘The Louvre’. (Actually I can’t remember if the book mentioned that Jesus built it or not, but it is the sort of thing that would have been in there.) As a result there are a lot lot lot of people around the place, but more of them seemed intent on circling the modern glass pyramids and taking photos of them instead of, say, going to check out the priceless artifacts.

The Louvre is so massive that you really need several days to explore and dig on the whole thing – unless you’re an ignorant savage like me and feel like you can safely skip massive sections of artistic history. I checked out all the Greek and Roman art which I really enjoy, more for its history though. There’s quite a lot of cool Renaissance-period Italian stuff which is great.

The Mona Lisa is, of course, there. It is neat. Small, but neat. I don’t have the artistic background to make any useful comments about it – again, I appreciate it more because of its history rather than out of any real level of understanding about the art involved.

There are a billion other things to see in Paris, most of which people will be familiar with from movies such as Team America. The Eiffel Tower is spectacular, particularly at night when it lights up and frequently starts sparkling due to thousands of lights all over it that are turned on at certain times. The Arc de Triumphe is massive (and I was surprised to see it had four legs, not just two!).

Notre Dame is probably my favourite place so far; only a few minutes walk from my hotel I’ve gone to sit in its shadow with a cuppa a few times and just reflect. I haven’t been up the towers yet to see the gargoyles but will be doing that soon. I am not, as most people would know, big on the whole religion thing, but I must confess I love cathedrals, particularly the old-school Gothic variety.

I am spending quite a bit of time soaking up the place, just walking around Le Marais, the area of central Paris in which I am staying.

The French, like the English and Japanese, still have smoking indoors in restaurants and bars. I forgot how gross it is to come out of something reeking of smoke (after three weeks of being in the US where smoking indoors is verboten pretty much everywhere), and as almost everyone in Paris smokes all the time, it happens pretty regularly. I am coping, however, as is my asthma (fortunately).

I have a few more days in Paris and then I have vague plans to head north; I will see how they solidify.

At dinner o’clock, as I walk around, my head is generally whipping from side to side almost fast enough to cause some sort of spinal trauma. On a lot of the roads there are just restaurants or food places on either side that all look so great and are generally packed with people, so trying to decide on a place to eat becomes this incredible excercise in mental anguish as I try to make sure I’m getting the best meal possible.

Yesterday I decided the weather was good enough to try going out to the Statue of Liberty. I got on the subway and made my way down the entire length of the island, got out and wandered over. I saw a massive line of people but I figured they were there to get someone’s autograph or something, because it was far too massive to be going to see the Statue – right?

Sadly, I was wrong – they were all going to see the Statue. It’s like it is some sort of incredible tourist attraction, or something. I’ve never seen so many people lined up for anything anywhere I’ve been doing tourist stuff. We’re talking easily in the thousands of people.

I decided that I wasn’t going to stand in line with the rest of the chumps so found another tour thing (one that didn’t actually land on the island) and spent the next hour or so getting an instructive tour of the southern end of Manhattan Island, including a look at New Jersey, Queens, Brooklyn, the Statue, plus a bunch of other places. We ended up pretty close to the Statue (and you can’t go up it any more since 9/11) so I think I’ll save visiting it ‘properly’ for next time.

I then was planning on going to the Metropolitan Museum, but on the way back I went past the Chrysler building and decided I had to get out to get some photos – it is easily the best looking building in the city. While I did that I remembered the UEFA Cup Finals was on so wandered around until I found a pub that had it on (poor old Arsenal, getting their keeper red-carded in the first 20-odd minutes).

Then my plans fell apart, because I’d forgotten I hadn’t had lunch, and as it was 4pm I was getting hungry, so I went to Hard Rock, ate and checked my email (free wifi rules), then stupidly decided to walk the 50+ blocks back to the hostel. I arrived and that was effectively the end of the day; I was exhausted.

Today is my last day in NY and it looks like the weather gods have decided to tease me by offering the best day yet – all blue skies, 20+ degrees, really beautiful. Unfortunately I leave in about 3 or 4 hours so don’t have time for a lot but hopefully I can make a museum or do one last cool thing before I jet out.