*sarajevo*amman*istanbul*bishkek*xian*

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

My favorite countries were Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey; if I had gotten the chance to see more of China, that might've made my list. My favorite posts here are "Rewriting History in Visoko 3" about the Hungarians and the Bosnian Indiana Jones; "Medugorje Oasis of Peace" about the Catholic pilgrimage site outside of Mostar in the BiH; and "The Good People of Sarajevo", about the Sarajevo Tunnel tourist site. My favorite pictures, tho, are out of Jordan -- Petra, the Dead Sea, and even the bustle and dirt of Amman -- all in golden sands that made me feel that I had crossed into another dimension - during the day, I was in a Biblical holodeck, where John the Baptist and Moses and Jesus walked, and by sunset and evening, in a windswept desert tent where any moment Omar Shariff and Scheherezade would appear on horseback and trill as they rode through the windswept desert camps (or 5 star hotels, as the case may be). Kyrgyzstan is a country whose landscapes are capable of being romanticized - like turning a prostitute into Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman", or a homeless, diseased child made Dickensian and singing and dancing in a Broadway musical; but not by me. Thousands of years of shrouded, mis-read, misinterpreted, and abused humanity and human history was rendered insignificant by the natural power of Tash Rabat and the majesty of the Asian mountain ranges. But the Soviet legacy of filth, poverty, and rape of Bishkek and the Kyrgzy culture, demonstrating an incredible lack of care and respect for a proud nomadic culture, was tragic. There seemed to be little other than a naive kind of hope for a better life, although everyone we spoke with was both as generous and kind as they could be. Beijing, on the other hand, was a steamroller; and so we got out of the way, for now, and came home.