Have just been watching the eclipse. Could not get down to south=eastern Turkey in time, so had to be content with 90% totality in Istanbul. Spent the morning uploading photos, so should now be up to date. One of the Bulgarian photos refers to the Beer Index. I've instituted this on a whiteboard in the truck to track prices as we move from country to country. The rules are: 1. A standard beer shall be 500ml 2. A standard beer shall be between 5 and 5.5% ABV 3. A standard beer shall be local. 4. A standard beer shall be purchased and consumed as part of a meal. 5. The price of a standard beer shall be quoted in US dollars, using the exchange rates listed in the Economist dated 16 March 2006. Observations so far...the price drops consistently as you move further southand east, however Istanbul destroys the pattern, being relatively expensive. Tomorrow we are off to Asia at 06:00 so, I suppose that having crossed a continent,now is the time for reflection. What have I learned? Mostly I've learned about snoring. The party is divided into three types of people: non-snorers (Graham, Maureen, Jeff and myself), snorers (Mike, Dave and Warren) and then thereis Rob. Rob is an uber-snorer. Rob was my roomie for the first two nights, and I can now filter the noise out. Not so for other people. In Sofia, we thought that as a group we had cracked the problem by placing Rob on a bed in the lounge area, while the other two groups comandeered the bedrooms. At this point I need to make a diversion. Consider a plucked string -the noise of the string depends on how hard you pluck it but, in general, it doesn't make a great deal of noise. But,if you put the same string in front of a large empty box, you get a much louder noise. Such is the case with Rob in Sofia. By placing him in a large, empty room we simply succeeded in adding a deep, rich resonant quality to his snoring which enabled him to drown out the trams that were running past our window. Such is life.