Day 1 (ish!)

Ok so first the preparation! I packed all the essential things that anyone going on holiday should take. It's the bare minimum requirement:



I also took some things for Maria - poor girl has been living in that barbaric country for too long and needs civilising:



OK, so won't bore you too much with the travel details - the flight left a little late. It was a lot more pleasant than I am used to - they kept offering drinks and food and things. I am so used to the carrier charging you for every little thing, especially given that I got an Uber deal on the flight, but these guys gave me loads of stuff. Their inflight entertainment requires some work thougj, the movies were totally lame lol! Anyway, was cool. I decided I wasn't going to take any pictures out of the window. Then we flew over Greenland.





So obviously US passport control was manned by crew-cutted belligerence personified but luckily there were some Germans and French at the front of the queue so I think they were having a breather when it got to my turn, having given that lot a hard time. Poor sods. One of the guys was pretty funny though, whereas mine fired out a load of quick and varied questions in order to trick me into revealing that I am, in fact, an international arms dealer last thought to be at large in Paraguay.

I managed to lose my mobile phone in Cincinatti airport, so at least the part of the holiday where I lose something important out of the way.

Got on a plane the size of a bus to connect to Pittsburgh and half the luggage was left on the tarmac because it was too heavy. Luckily mine wasn't one of them but there was a queue of unfortunate people at the airport without luggage, so again I wa squite lucky.

I was so pleased to see Maria, was so weird after all these years - we had a cigarette and got back to hers where I met her boyfriend, Stefan. This pic is a bit blurry, I'll get better ones later in the week. I crashed out around 1230am, and got some decent sleep. Now I am all ready to gadget shop with Stefan while Maja goes to slave over a hot test tube all day.



More later, you lucky people.

See what I did with the URL?

I know, it's clever isn't it?

OK maybe not. See my brighter airier template? This is to demonstrate my light holiday mood you see, it's very symbolic.

It's also the first non-crappy one I saw after the one i use for my regular blog .

"So, Matt. Why are you using another blog for your hols? Why not just use your normal one, you know your going to complain just as much as normal!"

Basically the plan is to post lots of pictures and hopefully update daily when I am away, probably lots of short irritating posts. As opposed to the witty, insightful commentaries on my other blog.

Also, there are like two people who seem to like reading my other blog but they may not necessarily be interested in my trek abroad - perhaps they are Luddites, fear the Heathen or think that 'abroad' is a made up place and these are just the ravings of a madman.

Anyway, it's here now so hello! - I'll post again either Friday evening (GMT) or Sunday morning (Pittsburgh time).