People

About five years ago, I used to really like Plot. Plot and setting. Those were the two big things that made up a story, and everything else was of secondary consideration. Its a philosophy that I think drives the Japanese RPG industry.
Lately, I've turned more towards characters. The people that make up the stories are what I'm interested in. This trend had been occuring for awhile, but really settled when I read the Game of Thrones series.
People. People people people. When this trip terrifies me, and it still sometimes does between expanses of giddy excitement and awed contentment, most of that terror comes from the worry that I will not meet anyone. That I will "pass through" Europe, eating, sleeping, seeing, and talking only when I need to find places to eat and sleep.
I had visions, before I left, of meeting a group of youngish people in a hostel, people from everywhere. People whose english was often not so good. We would meet at a table, perhaps because they asked me directions, or I them, and a conversation would spark. They, or I, would introduce some other new friends that we had made, and suddenly we would be a small party. After a night fantastic night upon, we would awake the next morning and passionately decide to travel together.
It would not need to happen so quickly or concretely as that to please me.
We met two Austrian teenagers last night who were in Dublin on a whim, looking for work. Then we met an Australian who was, like us, traveling for traveling's sake. He had already been to India and Cairo, and was headed for Germany for music festival's which, dissapointingly, have almost exclusively American musicians.
To my elation, I discovered that it is nearly impossible to be from wildly disparate nations and have nothing to talk about. There is ALWAYS something. Comparison alone is a topic which can stretch endlessly, an air-conditioned and fortified fort from which forays into other topics may be launched. There are so many tiny differences that are both interesting and suprising between EU and US countries that one, I think could talk forever about them. When you throw Australia into the mix, you are gazing into conversational infinity.
Take, for example, the seemingly inocuous culture of going into a male bathroom. One would assume (at least I did) that such a thing was rather the same the world over, as long as the facilities were similiar. I imagine the communal muddy hole in the ground has a different etiquette behind it than the classic American throne, for example. But overall, the same.
Our Austrlian friend Mark apparently gets into a lot of trouble abroad because, in Australia, it is not only accepted but expected to look over to your urinal neighbor (though apparently they have more troughs than urinals) and have a polite chat.
It was comforting to know that girls still go to the bathroom, in all cultures we collectively had experience with, in gaggles.
It is 9:00 in the morning here, and we are about to catch a bus to Dublin airport and then fly to Athens. I am a little worried about how different it will be, especially since English in not as common a language there. I dearly hope that I will be greeted by a phalanx of spearmen, one of whom will hand me a red cloak and V shield in much the same way they hand out leighs(sp? that looks to Gaelic) in Hawaii. Perhaps they will have to fight a cyclops, which I have heard are a big problem down there.
I don't know what our net situation will be in Athens. In Dublin it was hard not to be on the internet. It was literally advertised on the street. The irish would get into drunken fights about the superiority and inferiority of different email accounts (there was actually a lot of fighting when we were here. At least two occured outside our windows while we tried to sleep. The combatants were mostly girls). If Athens proves different, it may be a while before we post again.
I have included a picture of me doing something I commonly do. It was taken on one of the main commercial areas in Dublin. Is there no land on Earth where good spelling and grammar are on the forefront of people's minds? A Literariland? I hope that this picture arouses pleasant, or at least accurate, recollections of me. We will have more later, I promise.

-Rhys

I hope there is not really a thing called Blue-Thooth.