(malta)
I have not done a very good job of keeping the blog updated with my ongoing travel around the world with my girlfriend. This is mainly due to traveling around the world being a hectic, confusing and often difficult goal, the intensity magnified by the more you try to travel cheaply.
With the dollar still being slaughtered by the Euro and trying to travel for six months continuously we are traveling verycheaply and have come to rely on large bottles of wine, couch surfing, buying baguette and meat from the grocery store and other more utilitarian methods then first thought.

Barcelona and Sonar music festival are impossible to describe in one go, I do not have the space or legal ability to fully tell you all that happened among the 90,000 hardened party goers. Let us just say that Barcelona and Spain in general is a very relaxed, pleasant place to enjoy music and the highlights were the Crookers dropping noisy transitions to a screaming crowdsurfing, very young crowd, Brodinski bringing in the new day as a soft gray rain began to fall at seven AM and Deadmau5 doing one of the most impressive big room DJ sets I have ever seen. Moderat was also a standout for pure technical mastery, one of the most cheered and moving electronic performances I have ever seen.

We rented a flat three blocks from the beach and spent our two weeks relaxing in the sun and eating local food from the fresh market.

The change to traveling again was very intense, an almost uprooting experience after such calm and Italy itself was a hard place to grow used to. Everything being expensive and overwhelmed by tourists, jammed into the monuments and churches.
We actually went to a G8 protest in Rome, very interesting, hung out at the social center first and met a lot of Anarchists from all over europe. Everyone was preparing for the absolute worst with the shooting of a protester in Genoa a few years back. Thankfully nothing happened, but it may have been a little to tame. A little under a thousand anarchist suited up in a public square and surrounded by twice as many riot police, tanks and street wide metal screens that extend from the tanks. The technology here is very developed to keep people under control and everyone seemed sad about the turnout, radical politics fading quickly in europe.
We also went to a free outdoor party outside of Florence- it was half way between a street festival and an outdoor rave, amazing and beautiful watching the sun come up over the grape vines on a random hillside. We had to hitchhike there and back, quite the adventure.

We are now in St. Julian’s, Malta. You would hate it. Or love it.
On the street where our hotel is there about a hundred huge loud mainstream clubs and since there is no minimum drinking age thousands of kids as young as fourteen wander the streets drinking- things are very cheap here and they over serve everyone.

Dara and I feel old, staying fairly sober and watching in alarm. Today we retreat to the hills to find the more rustic country side.

I am a little regretful that I ever doubted. We must stay strong. This is what Europe is teaching me, things are far worse and better then we ever realized. The people here live very good lives, very high standards of living and low impact, well educated and good food but with the information we are watching on the television it becomes clear how far gone the whole world is getting. I am reading radical books again and it is inspiring me- as is meeting dozens of new friends from all around the world.