The Uneasy Lowness of the Dollar

All be amsterdamned...even though the dollar is back down to $1.21 to the Euro (was $1.36 when I was in Bologna and Florence), it is very very expensive here. I just dropped 100 Euros today. Of course, I bought two books: one by Murakami and another by Palahniuk (sp?).

I miss 50 cents per hour internet (the cheapest I have found here is nearly five times that at the EasyEverything Internet centers, which seem to have taken a bad run of luck and they are no longer 24 hours and not in as many cities as they were before. Step aside Paula Cole, you and your cowboys, I have a song to sing...Where have all the cheap internet cafes gone? Not that I really listen to Paula Cole...just the unfortunate circumstance of having to listen to her whine ever other song on the radio back in Colorado Springs about six, maybe, seven years ago) that was featured all over the Balkans, except for Croatia. It's a dollar there.

nothing really to note...

Not Amsterdam but NYC. Just another big city that I am visiting; however, the gritty feel, the interminable stench of pot and piss through the streets is beginning to rack my nerves. I have been here before and each time (this is my third), it really gets worse. I don't know what to think of here. I am beginning to think that this place is damn near the edge of the earth. All her shame brought to show on her sidewalks from the beaten prostitute to the gaggles of tourists peering into the pink flourescent-lit windows wondering, licking their lips and wondering what may just lie (take that either way) on the other side of that fortress made of thin cotton. Her ominous yet inviting architecture, famous mad artists, beautiful canals and vast tracts of cobble and tracks of tramlines portends potential transformation in more ways than you or I could imagine. What is it you expected to find when you passed by here? Some questions are best left unknown and some regions of life whether on earth or inside our heads may need to be explored with better care. As for me, I think that I will take my leave of this place soon. Bruges, Belgium may be more my speed.