Weird Moments

As I'm starting to process my long trip I've been thinking about the top weird moments - this is in no particular order and I haven't included the donkey wine story - and I know I'll think of others.

When the Kuwait Airlines flight (my first long flight of the trip) touched down in Kuwait City they began to play the theme song from Twin Peaks.

At the Dublin Airport men's room the same machine on the wall dispenses both condoms and mints.

Running into three university students from Indiana (one from IU) and Illinois in the Budapest train station.

Walking through the traditional market in Kasgar and seeing all these amazing things you could buy, including dried snakes (for snake wine, another aphrodesiac in the tradition of donkey wine).

Being pickpocketed not once but twice by the remarkably facile and persistent Barcelona pickpockets.

Sleeping on the tarmac of the Kasgar Airport.

Seeing the world's biggest vending machines in some Barcelona metro stations - they are around eight feet high by twelve feet wide.

Eating my first meal of a six week, seven country trip at the Applebee's in Kuwait City.

Having my friends Janka, Katarina and Nora surprise me by taking the long way around on a foggy, rainy trip to a train station in Slovakia so that we passed through Poland so that I could add it to my list of countries visited.

Eating such delicacies as tripe, chicken feet, donkey and blood sausage (and the casing was made from intestines).

Being told at Best Food Burger in Urumqi that they didn't have burgers and had never had burgers, ever, and then getting a burger at another Best Food Burger the next night.