Manthei Family extravaganza!

I must admit, I was completly blown away by the beauty of Iceland. It' super green, clean, and you will actually negatively age while your're there. It's that clean. The entire country only has 300,000 people - 200,000 of those are in Reykjavik. The rest of the country seems really empty. Because of the large amounts of rain Iceland gets (which we experienced), the whole country is really green. Everything is has a coating of green on it, unless it is currently spewing hot water or there are some funky smelling hydrothermal minerals.

Also, and sometimes more importantly, Iceland is the most expensive place I have ever been. Forget Europe or large US cities, this place is crazy. We're talking $10 beers and $30 stir-frz dinners. Wild. Here's a funny story: I brought my fishing gear over from the states to fish for a day in the storied rivers of Iceland. When we landed, I was stopped by customs because my rod wasn't ''sanitized.'' This essentially consisted of a guy with a squirt bottle containing that pink water that janitors use to clean elementary school cafeterias, taking 5 minutes to spray my rod. He then dryed it with a rag. Total cost of said ''sanitizing'': 55 fucking dollars!!!!! What a scam. But maybe thats why the whole country is clean and modern looking.

I was relatively sure that the most beautiful women in the world came from Italy or Brazil. Can't really decide between the two though. WHICH, doesn't matter, because they are insanly eclipsed by Iceland, and are now running a distant second and third (although I am still going to Norway on this trip). I'm not even kidding when I say that 80% of the women could be models in America. It's absurd. They're not even all blonde, they just have some wild beautiful gene that never made it out of their Vikingculture and over to the mainland.

The hot dogs in Iceland taste like what whipped cream would taste like in heaven. They're magically delicious and that's all i'll say...

We hopped a super early flight to England where we spend the weekend at mom's crib. She lives near London in this awesome little town. I would love to bike these roads. We're coming back at the end of the trip, so I'll talk more about England then.

My Dad had never been to Dresden because it was part of East Germany while he was growing up. The city is actually quite fantastic, and has some awesome museums and food. It's kinda eerie because it still has some commie architecture and propaganda around. The city is really new (because it was blasted to shit in WWII), but it still retains the feel of an Eastern European city. We spend 2 full days there before coming here, to Berlin.

Havnä't gone in to the city yet, but looking forward to exploring. We're staying outside the city with some friends. I'm going to try to meet up with Alexander Rohrmann's crazy German ass so he can so us a good time in Berlin. He forewarned me that we wouldn't be sleeping if we went out with him and his friends. I have more to say, which I will expand on later, and, of course, plenty of pictures.

Cheers.

No time to write anything now, but looks for the following items in a lengthly discussion of iceland:

1. greenery
2. the moon
3. $10 beer
4. volcanoes
5. hot dogs

After the weekend in England, we're in Dresden until tomorrow when we go to Berlin. Here are some German characters on the keyboard:

öääüäö++ü.ß?=01920ß´ßß0. fun.

Way to go Carlos Sastre, winner of the Tour de France

So, I've been to New York City a few time, but I always seem to forget how big of a shit-show this entire city is. We arrived on Friday night at 11 pm and the city was just full of madness. Ate dinner at Times Square and it was shoulder-shoulder traffic until 1 am. Crazy.

Made it out to Long Island on Sunday for James and Martha's wedding. Met up with DP, Amanda, Strugatsky and the rest of the Girardi clan. Think Sopranos. Whats hilarious too, is Girardi has an identical twin brother that talks and laughs exactly like James. Its like that Seinfeld - the Bizarro world. I made that mistake a few times that day. I've uploaded a few pictures to this site, but I don't have that much space. Check out my facebook page for many more.

Came back to the city with the crew and my cousin came down from Jersey on Monday night. We all had dinner and went out to a few places in Chelsea - a bomb neighborhood with restaurants and pretty people. Leave for Iceland tonight and then get to see Mom on Wednesday! I had to write this in a super-rush while packing up.

Overall, gotta love NYC. These last few days have been a real whirlwind. Made a few mistakes and learned a few things, but it's always good.

Funny website of the day: www.gizoogle.com

That's right: it's a freaking hot Wednesday morning in Tucson and I'm sitting at my desk at school. I am, however, completely checked out. Frankly, I don't even know why I'm here. Oh well.

Dad and I leave Tucson on Friday for NYC. Moose is flying in from Portland, Or and will join us in the city. For those that don't know, my brother's name is Alex, but he's always been Moose to me. It's a long story, i'll explain it sometime.

The Girardi wedding is on Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how a large Italian Soprano-like family interacts. I'm thinking i'll get kissed on the cheek, or whacked in the first five minutes. On second though, I bet Alex Strugatsky gets whacked first. We'll place a bet. Remember that scene in Wedding Crashers when Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn are betting about which sappy bible passage the sister will invoke when she speaks at the wedding? I can't remember the other one, but I think she chooses First Corinthians. Love is kind and all that. That's the one I would bet on in this case.

Obviously, I don't have any pictures yet, but thanks to Herr Doctor Mihai I have an awesome new camera. I'll be posting random shit and cool photos about how mature my brother and I are on this vacation - so keep up. On this trip we'll be visiting New York, Iceland, England, Germany and Norway. We'll be covering the spectrum of parental supervision - from total both-parent meltdown, to my brother and I blowing coke off a midget's johnson at 3 AM in Oslo. Maybe not that extreme, but I don't know...we'll see if we have time. I just don't know if we'll have time...