Snowing!!!

And I'm free!

A lonely traveler once again, stepping in and out of people's lives like bread into a fondue pot.

It was snowing on the day I left Paris, and OuiFM sang me a song in french about how "it's not goodbye, when you're coming back!"



Chocolat, le chat noir, wanted to go out onto the balcony and came back in all snowy white.

The bus ride took 11 hours- I forgot why I never take day bus trips longer than 4 or 5 hours... I think the reasoning this time was that I wanted to see the scenery... I was remembering the 24 hour bus trip from Fortaleza to Salvador in Brasil, where the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful and I felt that I was witness to some kind of endless panoramic IMAX vista through the windows of the bus.



This time I thought of the Chronicles of Narnia, I thought of Dersu Usala and Napolean and his army... It was snowing and blowing the whole way through, and we went about 10 miles an hour the entire time.

Sita met me at the bus station and whisked me away to Indonesian dinner followed by a Spanish bar in the basements along the canals in Utrecht. There was live music played by live volunteers from the audience, people who brought in their own instruments, who danced and sang until all hours of the night.



We ate smoked slices of meat from a cow's leg held suspended above the table, it was soooo good!



And to wrap it up we had turkish pizza wraps at a little cafe close to the house. Home to bed at 4 in the morning...

I feel comfortable in Sita's house, as if I've been here before. As if I've already climbed the steep stairway many times and looked out the bathroom window. The open stairwell with no guard rail is oddly familiar, as is the warm yellow of the knotty pine wooden floorboards in the living room.



Tomorrow we plan to storm Amsterdam, hitting up various museums and attractions as listed in the "Holland Pass, size XL"! (I finally got smart and decided to buy a discount pass, trying to save some euros here!")