SlovakiaI didn't sweat that much last night, thank goodness, it is a very nice couch.. I waited too long to use the bathroom, preferring not to move, and someone else got in and used the shower when I really had to go pee. A double shame since the toilet is separated with its own room beyond the first bathroom door, which was now locked. Meanwhile I was outside the door doing the dance, the classic nervous jig we've all done while holding it it. The jig continued for a while until it turned into a freestyle breakdance, at which point I knocked, loudly. Luckily Zuzkas mom was already finished, and I waltzed in to put an end too my uncontrollable boogie. Zuzkas mom and I were the only ones awake and we had a lovely little getting to know each other talk over breakfast. Her english was enough for us to communicate, she studied English for two years in high school and is taking night classes now. She told me about life in Slovakia, how it was during Soviet times and after, when "Democracy" had come. She went on to tell me more about her family, how negative her mother is, always making a scene to get attention. Even faking heart attacks and calling the ambulance to have the family come and see her. Everyone in life has family, no matter if they know it or not, but each of us has experiences with our own blood that seem to strike closer to the bone than those we have with others. I guess thats just what family really is, those who are closest to us and mold us into who will become along our journey through life.She made me lemon ginger tea and told me about the trip we would all be going on to the family cottage in the countryside. They would be getting a new tractor and plan to continue remodeling the house. Zane and I are to be the new recruits in light of their ambitions. After explaining this to me she left for a business meeting and Zuzka came in to make us both tea, again lemon ginger. Once everyone was awake and breakfast had been finished, all attention was brought low to the bright little screens in our pockets. It truly amazes me how quickly cell phones have forever altered the very fabric of social interaction on a global scale. My other best friend Blake would always tell me how boring and pointless it was to be stuck on my pc playing video games. He was right then, and he's still right today. Except now it's many times worse because that pc is in billions of pockets around the world, never leaving their side, not even while sleeping. Zane and I go out on the balcony to blaze from his 5€ pipe he got in Spain. Being quite chilly and not wearing my jacket, I pull a blanket over myself and we sit together talking about what we'll do when we return home to Pacific Grove. Where will we stay? What will we strive for while home, and when will we leave again for parts unknown? The most important question being where to live, since both of us lost our rooms when we left home. We stay out there for an hour and then come inside, drink 1.5L of the original Budweiser beer each, which the U.S.A. Company stole from the Czech company, and then go for a walk into the city with Zuzka. She had some shoes to pick up that had been repaired, so after getting some french fries we went into the bowels of an abandoned mall to a tiny 8'x8' box of a room where a completely bald, bear of a man sporting a mustache and a pink shirt worked amongst piles of shoes and linens of various types. From there Zuzka leaves us and we find a restaurant to eat and drink in. It was a funny place, the decor reminiscent of a dark and smelly wine cellar beneath a tavern in the high mountains of some Germanic country. We returned to Zuzka's to nap for 45 minutes and once again walked back into the city, smoking from his pipe on a foot bridge spanning the 8 lane highway running through Bratislava. We meet Zuzka at a craft beer pub near the bus terminal. There I order a chocolate brownie and more french fries like a Fool! Vile weed that makes me eat everything in site!By the time we get back to Zuzka's we've already walked more than 5 miles today. After a short break Zuzka and Zane drive me to my couch surfers house on the outskirts of the city, in the industrial zone of course, but whose going to complain about industrial pollution with 12 days of free accommodation in the bag? Certainly not Daniel Maddox, the king of penny pinching, or so I used to be...Pedro comes down to the lobby to greet us, Zane and Zuzka leave and then its just us in his apartment overlooking the freight trains coming and going from the refinery not 400 feet from us. Pedro tells me about his home island off the coast of Morocco that belongs to Portugal. He tells me about Vienna which he likes very much, and of Slovakia which he's traveled a good deal of in his year and a half living here. Pedro is a line manager for IBM. Bratislava is a big hub for international corporations because it's a gateway between east and west and they get cheap labor out of it. Pedro came here to work as a manager at IBM, which he knows will afford him much greater possibilities in the future.  We finished our conversation and I unfolded his couch to try and sleep. Trying is exactly what I would be doing, for little sleep was to be achieved. His couch ended up being a new age torture piece cleverly disguised as furniture. No matter where I went on the folded out couch I would have pure steel beams hidden by a thin and hardly cushioning layer of fabric, protruding into my ribs, back or arms. Tomorrow I either sleep in his room on the other side of his bed, which is quite large and separated in the middle, or I find a new host. Im certainly not going to sleep on this death trap again...