Clickety-clack clickety-clack ad nauseum

If you like being pampered and overstuffed then this little joyride is right up your alley. If like me, you tend to place more emphasis on a sinfully overstocked bar then you are in luck as well. Party train central, make no mistake about it buttercup.


I don't know how long it is before we get to Constantinople but time is flying by. When we left Paris at last amid scattered gunfire, hurling taunts and invectives out our windows, the fun truly began. A knocking on my door tore me away from the window, and as I turned to see who it was a beautiful Persian woman came in. Cursing and talking dirty in perfect Farsi, she smiled and slipped a pipe in my claw and introduced me to oh-pee-yum. Wow. Just...wow. My ears started ringing and I heard choirs of angels singing to me.

"I am engulfed, and drown deliciously

Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light

Golden with audible colours exquisite,

Swathe me with cerements for eternity.

Times is no more. I pause and yet I flee.

A million ages wrap me round with night.

I drain a million ages of delight.

I hold the future in my memory".

When I woke up we were pulling into Strasbourg. Strasbourg is neither French or German in entirety and is instead a jumble of all the worst qualities of each. A cloaca of indifference tempered with large doses of Euro-assholism. It sits on the Ill River. I'm all like hey Pierre it wasn't me that made your little river all sick so step off crybaby. Enough with the attitude already. Back in the 5th century the place was occupied by the Franks and Huns. I told them that judging by the inordinate amount of little ugly bastards running around they must have been occupied by the Franks and beans at some point too. Nobody laughed at my little joke. Stoopit Alsatians.


The nadir of our journey was when we went to Here Mchenschule. Some girls college. There were no hot girls there in cheerleader skirts, no bookworm babes ripe for an education of a different kind, no nothing. Bummer.


Our tour of the city was mercifully cut short when the local constabulary escorted us back to the train after our stop at the Mus des Beaux-Arts. When you're looking at all the masterpieces and bullshitting with your friends with a healthy opium buzz on, don't stop to look at Sandro Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus'. Just don't. Before you know it Sal Giaquinto is going to dare you to do it, then he'll double-dog-dare you to do it. Next thing you know you'll inexplicably have your pen out and writing "Insert P3n1x here" across Venus's forehead then drawing an arrow down her nose pointing towards her mouth. Believe me, there is a fine line between zomg funny and yet another international incident.

We hit Munich and lasted all of ten minutes before being taken back to the train by the Polizei. Not our fault this time. Germany took us by suprise. The Munich coat of arms has a figure on it called Mchner Kindl. It consists of a guy wearing a dress holding what looks like a pack of smokes in one hand and flipping you off with the other. I think to myself, Gott damn but these Germans are my kind of people. That couldn't have been further from the truth. Munich is the no-fun-allowed capital of the world.


All it took was one comment about "ghey-derhosen" to piss off every herr in the vicinity. By the by, seems they don't like being called Herr Lipp or Herr Pees. Klaus is no fun at all. We had to sit on the train and wait. Good thing we had a metric fuckton of hootch to pass the time. Austria is the next stop. Vienna to be precise. I hope they have a better sense of humour than that bag of butts in Munich.

Vienna it turns out wasn't much better. Perhaps exacerbated by the fact that after Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss introduced himself to us Elaina kept calling him Chancellor Doofus.


Okay, it was more like drunkenly dancing around him in a circle while pointing and shouting Doofus over and over. The Cult thought it to be high humour. The Chancellor not so much. Typical language barrier issues as well. Painting a full eighty-eight key keyboard on your willie and showing it off at the Wiener Konzerthaus, contrary to what one might think, is frowned on by polite Austrian society members. Damn them and their misleading names.

On an Austrian sidenote: they fail to see the humour in scratching out Austro-Fascist Party on those posters and writing in Auto-Fellatio Party. I'm beginning to think we need to take a different route home on the return trip.

On thru the night to Budapest.


Hungary? Gott damn right I am. We went straight to the only place open at that hour and ate my bodyweight in Palatschinkens. After a few shots of firewater the most my tongue can get out was schinkens. Gaara kept calling them Fu-Schnickens. We el oh el'd all night over that.


Palatschinkens are like our pancakes but they roll them up and fill them with apricot jam. We paired this with every bottle of apricot brandy in town. There's something about apricot brandy that makes me want to run around pretending to be Cerebus The Aardvark. Must be the fact that we both share a self-absorption that borders on the pathological. What do I remember about Budapest? Not a whole hell of a lot. We ate pancakes and got wrizz-ecked, and at some point started throwing the Palatschinkens up in the air and trying to catch them in our mouths while screaming "Hungry Hungary Hippos". Thats what they tell me anyways. All I know is I woke up on the train and we were heading to Bucharest.

Bucharest.


Vampyres.


Stayed on the train, 'nuff said.

We finally made it to Istanbul. End of the Line. The Orient Express was a hell of a ride. I recommend it to anyone who embarks on their own Great Panda Hunting expedition. Quality through and through. We head out in the morning for Persia. We were lucky enough to hire a few cars, hopefully the roads won't be too bad. The guys were saying something about getting some Turkish hash for the road. Yummo. I hope they get some eggs and bacon too.

I'll telegram more when we get to Afghanistan.