The Snail Trail

Falling behind here... ahhh...

     Matt and me have been high tailing it all around. When we got back from Rome we stayed with my lovely friend Maya in Barcelona. She showed us a good time there, feed us Tapas and Pilau, which prior to those i had no faith in the spanish cuisine. We spent our nights wondering around Gracia with Maya and drinking Sangria. She also took us to the famous Park Guell, another page in Gaudi's repertuar. It was fantastic, very natural and yet so bizarre at the same time, its home of the famous mosque lizard. So Barcelona became more familiar to us after our second time there, and much harder to leave. I could have moved onto Maya's couch and stayed put for good. But off ward and on ward... always saying hello and then good buy.

    Next stop was Figures, resting place to the late Salvador Dali. His museum stands there, more like a chapel for his work. It is full of sketches, murals, tapestries, furniture, installations, and of course my personal favorite was his Jewels. My oh my that man mad the most fabulous jewelry pieces out of the most valuable materials... a diamond encrusted eye ball, and a ruby heart the actually has the mechanism to beat.  This is a man to be reckoned with in the world of art, a master of so many fields and a complete mad man at the same time. We did a few more things on our way out of spain, namely spent our time in water slide parks :P. Matt got a hankering for some slippery action so we spent a few days getting beat up by the gnarlist slides i've ever been on, ????really make you feel like you getting old. I think in spain they are a little less strict with the building regulations.

    We were now driving back up to france again. Heading for a commune that i had heard about 5 years prior from a man on a train, L'Arch La Borie Noble. This commune was founded by a man Lanzar del Vasto who spent quite a few years in india with Gandhi and later in life returned to france to bring back the non-violent way of living that Gandhi had been teaching. There is no electricity at La Borie, this means every time you want to take a shower you light a fire under the boiler, every time you do your laundry you scrub each piece of clothing with soapy water. We spent our days there mainly building a fantastic mortis and tenon chicken coop (mansion.) But i also milked the cows, helped with the cheese and got my hands in the mud down in the garden. As you can guess perhaps they produce almost all of the own food, cheese, milk, veggies, along with making fresh bread every other day. I loved it there, Matt and me wanted to stay for a few months but Oktoberfest was calling us to Munich so on ward we went.

On the way out of france we went by another commune, Longo Mai, a anarchist haven. This community was huge in comparison to  L'Arch, there were about 100 residents and 100 goats as well, a radio station "Zinzine." Very cool place, a real working anarchist community that is almost self sufficient. Good stories but this is a nut shell cap on the past... who know' s how long.

We also stopped back in Lyon the see Jake again. Where we road the Velove bikes around the city. These bikes are awesome, you pay 14 euros per year and can use them when ever you want. There are stations all over the city where the bikes are kept in the weird locking mechanism. So you take a bike with you ID number and ride it anywhere in the city and leave it at another station in the area you want to hang out in. Awesome idea, seriously. There are so many people riding these bikes all over, and its totally easy to use and convenient. There are now community bikes like this all over europe but in Lyon it works particularly well, it was the first place where it was tried and took off. So we road these bikes up along the beautiful river walks and to the markets. Lyon is defiantly my favorite city in france, if not my favorite in the world. It was in this beautiful city where we tested our stomachs with the french speciality Escargot. Yes i can proudly say we have now eaten Snails, they are really not as bad as you think.

And now one can only wonder where in the world we are. hehe... next installation will be Oktoberfest so you have something to look forward to. Sorry for the brief cap on the last month but the amount of information there was becoming overwhelming.
Love to you all
XX
~Nima