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We wandered among its narrow streets that radiated out like spokes to a wheel. Bicycles danced across our path. Up one of these many streets we spotted a small coffee shop adjacent to one of the more picturesque canals. It was a good day for mischief. It had a large window and we noticed that the table upfront was vacant and had a nice view of a small flower market. …
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With a cup of coffee and a cigarette, I got an early start and headed toward Gavie to see its shores. All this talk about love and kissing had got me thinking about it as well. In regards to the young ladies that had entered my life that I have loved, I always acted as a gentleman and never took control until the door was open and I was invited in. I needed a green light. …
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There were no hedges, nor fences, in the bare and uniform countryside leading into the Netherlands. We were heading back into the crossroads of traffic back into the circus they had named Amsterdam. I could see no natural boundaries that separated the courtyard from the jester. …
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I attached myself to the rear of a group touring Notre Dame. After I came down from the tower I found myself sitting among delinquents in the square just outside the church. After I finished a cigarette I proceeded down to the Louve. It took me all day to wander its halls, a maze of inconveniences. I planned on coming back in a day or two to catch up on what I missed. I always wanted to learn how to paint, so I enjoyed watching the students copy the masters. …
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At the breakfast table there were rumors of another train strike, so about six of us headed out early to attempt to board the last train prior to any stoppage. Our destination was Mont-St-Michel. When the island first came within view I stood there for some time and gazed at its glory. It had more a look of a cover to a picture book than something actually real, a castle right out of some fairytale. There were endless fields of mud waiting for the imprint of somebody’s foot. …
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With all the time I’ve been spending on trains I started to find it difficult to sleep without the cluttering of wheel against rail. I had an address of a hostel in Frankfurt that somebody had suggested along the way. It was late and dark when I reached Frankfurt and I didn’t have the best luck making sense of the piece of paper I was carrying. …
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With the crack of dawn we were up to conquer the monster. We had taken the first train into the heart of the Jungrau region, Grindelwald to the base of the Eiger. We surveyed the landscape against a local map and selected the West slope since it was opposite from …
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I HAVE BEEN TAUGHT THAT ………………we now come to know the nature of change through Cognition ……… …
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One irony in my life is that I had very few women friends. Most relationships with women were always aimed toward romance and when that didn’t work out or when we experienced an obstacle that couldn’t be overcome, we’d move on. Mostly I have had male friends, sharing common experience and growing up like all normal boys. But I’ll have to admit, women make pretty good friends. Once that it is understood that not everything is sexual, we get along wonderfully. They make much better traveling companions, easier to agree with, better conversationalists, not as competitive, better sleeping arrangements; they attract a different type of crowd, and if there were benefits attached all the better. …
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When I woke up I notice that my knife was unchaperoned, sitting all by itself. Most likely it was pushed away by me while I slept. There were two elderly gentlemen sitting alongside the same bench staring at me and the knife. I had gotten less than an hour of sleep and was still very tired and in need of a shower. I followed those two gentlemen back into the heart of Naples. …
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The storm passed through very quickly. When the sun rose I gathered up my things and without even saying goodbye I headed down the volcano like I was escaping. I had just come out of a sulfur cloud, was coated in mud and must have smelled like shit. I sure felt like shit. When I finally made it back down to the residence below they too were cover in mud. I’m glad somebody could laugh at this. The first two people I saw were in the process of shoveling themselves out of the mud. …
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A small mini-bus arrived and toted us off to Pamukkale. I only knew what I had read in the bible and in travel brochures about Pamukkale. I understood that it was one of the seven churches Apostle Paul wrote letters to and was coined the “Cotton Castle” of the ancient world. There was an extremely old hot spring that was believed to have healing power and over time became a center of a pagan cult. Large limestone steatite created a beautiful arrangement of pools. …
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It was very late, or to be more accurate, real early in the morning. Outside the station it was dark and cold, really cold. Neither one of us were equipped for that type of weather. The streets were covered in ice and our worn tennis shoes didn’t provide much if any traction. When we exited the station we had no idea which way to head to find ourselves a room. There were two others that also exited our train so we began following them in the hopes they would lead us down the right path. We came to a large boulevard lined with large office shaped buildings but there were no signs or lights that provided us any indication that we were heading in the right direction. …
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The gentleman that leased us the car was extremely nice. I am naturally suspicious of people who are too nice and I usually create a bit of a buffer until I’ve figured out their motives. We ended up talking a bit over a cup of tea before we departed south. The agent’s nervous habit of looking out the window was distracting. …
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We continued munching on nuts up to the entrance to the Topkapi Palace, the heart of the Ottoman Empire. I naturally avoided the circumcision room. I was very impressed with the jewels on display. The sultan’s armor had diamonds and emeralds the size of baseballs. I have a lot of respect for somebody who can step on battle field with jewelry of that value and not get raped. We crammed a lot into one day and I was dead on my feet so we didn’t wander far from our hotel to find food. …
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