Winner [win-er]
1. A person who wins; victor.

"In life, there are winners and losers." Well that's what I've always heard and so believed. Although this weekend I learned that's not always true. Life- maybe, but in Football- No!After 90+ minutes of what can only be described as a stalemate, the Fulham/Blackburn football match ended in a draw. Lame. Yet, on the way out the underdog Blackburn fans cheered and sang as though it had been a victory.

Winner [whin-erz]
1. A man who picks up a French speaking Senegalese woman in a pub by asking, "are you looking for the guy selling nachos?"; A man who yells on a crowded street without provocation, "French chicks are hot if they're not fat!"

I am going to liken the former Republic of Yugoslavia to the great state of Washington.

Kim and I started our tour in Split, Croatia- or Bellingham if you will. Split is a very interesting city. The old town dates back to 293AD when retired Roman Emperor Diocletian built a palace here. The oldest part of the city is built completely within the walls for this former palace creating a juxtapose of new and old. After two days in Split, we took a ferry through the Croatian island, not unlike the Washington State ferry line from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands. Kim and I spent 2 nights in the town of Korcula (Friday Harbor for comparison). Korcula was pretty sleepy this time of year and it worked out well that the only day poor weather was while we were there. From Korcula we travelled to Dubrovnik- the Pearl of the Adriatic, as it is called. A city of such beauty could only be compared to another jewel- the Emerald City of Seattle. Like it’s Pacific Northwest comparison, Dubrovnik is set on a beautify coastline. Dubrovnik is seriously an incredible city. The old town dates back to the 7th century and, despite receiving an 8 month pounding from the armies of Serbia and Montenegro in the early 90’s, it is probably the most picturesque city I’ve ever seen.

For our last day in Dubrovnik, Kim and I decided to rent a car and do a little exploring. Our first port of call was over the mountains east of Dubrovnik and across the boarder into Bosnia Herzegovina. We stopped for lunch in the town of Trebinje which is rumoured to be one of the three most beautiful cities in Bosnia. I will compare Trebinje to the magical central Washington town of Ellensburg (note: sarcasm). Like Ellensburg, Trebinje isn’t much to look at, but I did appreciate the fact that at 11 am on a Sunday morning the entire town seemed to be out in the town center drinking (I have to assume that similar to Ellensburg there isn’t much else to do either). My first impression of Bosnia- like central Washington, it appears to be little more than a barren wasteland. After lunch we headed south to Montenegro. The coast of Montenegro was beautiful, like that of Washington, a mixture of beaches, rocky outcroppings, and river valley inlets. Kim and I found the town of Kotor to be particularly amazing, although we couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of fortifying the steep hillside above the town (not sure if you can see in the picture below, but there is a wall running all the way to the top of the hill).
Back in Dubrovnik, we had one more amazing sunset and night out in the old town…

Good things come to those who... stay out really late.

So last weekend I was walking through Dam Square in Amsterdam in the early AM hours of Saturday morning and who should I run into? Dave Matthews.

It was very random, just waking with back to the hotel and I looked over and said to Curt, "there's Dave Matthews". Dave was really cool, he talked to us for a few minutes, indulged me by listening to my drunken ramblings of a story, and even gave me a hug. It was awesome!

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but I did take this picture the next morning- just use your imagination. The weekend was capped on Saturday night by one of the the greatest shows I have ever seen- Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds at the Paradiso. Truly an amazing show in an amazing venue. The Paradiso is an old church that has been converted into a nightclub. With just under 1,000 people at the show it had a really intimate feel. Dave was in rare form. It was really interesting to talk to some of the Dutch people at the show who were shocked that we would come all the way from London and Luxembourg to see this guy that they had never really heard of...

Man, Amsterdam- such a great place.

Last night in Oxford... click here for the video

(Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds)

Video 2 and Video 3 - Not mine, but really good.

I guess I should have mentioned, that sandwiched around my momentous visit to Auschwitz was an amazing weekend in Krakow. While I’m not going to say much, and I’m definitely not going to talk about the amazing Polish girls, I will say that Krakow has jump straight into my top three most favorite European cities. Completely unscathed by WWII bombs, Krakow is a gem!

Ryan and I made the most of our 2 nights in this post-Soviet paradise…

Saturday afternoon I had the chilling privilege to visit what is perhaps the most awful place on earth- the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southwestern Poland. While I can not, in words or pictures, do justice to the horror of such a place, I would like to share my experience.

The name Auschwitz actually refers to a network of Nazi concentration camps which operated between 1940 - 1945, the most notorious of which were KL Auschwitz I just outside the town of Oswiecim and KL Auschwitz II near the village of Birkenau.
A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial sites begins at Auschwitz I, which on first impression may appear to have an almost collegiate feel, that is until you start to notice the not so subtle barbed wire fences and guard towers. After annexing Poland, the Nazis converted this Polish army base and training facility into a political prison in June 1940 and spent the next two years expanding the camp to a full capacity of 20,000 prisoners. Any glimpse of serenity is immediately and painfully destroyed upon entering barracks 11, known as "the Death Block", where the most horrific types of medical experimentation and torture imaginable were carried out on a massive scale. The brutality in incomprehensible.

In September 1941 the Nazis began the systematic annihilation of prisoners at Auschwitz I. A moment spent standing inside the original gas chamber moves nearly every visitor to tears of sadness and frustration. When the killing and incineration efficiency of 340 bodies per day at Auschwitz I was no longer sufficient for the Nazi's intentions, construction of Auschwitz II was undertaken.

The new camp, 3 km away, would be comprised of 4 killing factories with the joined capacity to execute and cremate 20,000 people per day and an adjoining camp capable of holding of 100,000 prisoners. The layout of the camp was designed to make mass-murder as efficient as possible. In fact, the railroad tracks were extended inside the camp gates allowing the unloading platforms to be immediately adjacent to the gas chambers requiring the weakest of the doomed inmates to walk only 200 meters to their immediate execution.

The statistic that really got to me was that 80% of the men, women, and children who arrived at Auschwitz II - Birkenau were deemed unfit for labor and immediately executed within the hour of their arrival. The surviving 20% would be worked to death over then next 2-3 months (the average life span in the camp) in weather as cold as -10 degrees Celsius wearing little more than what you and I wear to bed and consuming less than 1,000 calories per day.
To say it was a hard experience is a dramatic understatement and I think every visitor deals with the overwhelming feelings in different ways- some joke, some pose for pictures, and others weep uncontrollably. I spent 4 hours in a state of indescribable shock and disbelief, truly moved beyond words. I would like to think that each visitor takes away one or two feelings that will be with them for the rest of their life. Mine- standing on the unloading platform imagining the agony that the arriving prisoners must have felt as they confronted their horrifying fate and any glimmer of hope they were holding for their promised "relocation" was ripped away as the rail car doors were finally opened after a journey of up to 2 weeks; and the feeling of stepping into the 90 cm x 90 cm (approx. 35 in) standing cell which was used to incarcerate and torture 4 prisoners at one time. As fellow inmates passed away in the complete darkness, those surviving had to hold the deceased body upright until the cell was emptied and they were released for work the next morning (often after as much as 14 hours). Standing in that spot, where so many had died, I don't know how to put in words the overwhelming feeling of loss and sadness I felt.

Perhaps you wonder why I would refer to it as a "privilege" to visit such an awful place, a place where literally millions* of innocent people were murdered- I found this message particularly appropriate.

*The total Auschwitz death toll is unknown because any records that may have been kept by the Nazis were destroyed before that camp was liberated, but even the most conservative estimates place the number over 1,500,000

So, Seattle is not the only city in the world that shuts down with a little 'severe' weather hits. In the last couple weeks, we've been 'hammered' by two killer storms. The first, about 2 weeks ago, was an 80+ mph wind storm that uprooted trees and tipped over trains. England shut down for a week. The second storm was a vicious blizzard that burred southern half of Britain in almost 3 debilitating inches of soft, powdery, white snow. Apparently enough to flood tube stations, short-out above ground power cables, and raise boiling hot magma for the depths of the earth.

Since Transport for London became NO TfL last Thursday, I had a really nice walk into the office.