Innsbruck - here despite it never being on my to-see list

Amsterdam is 6.5 hours from Kuwait and lightyears away in terms of thought. I'm looking at my first US and European newspapers and the stories center on the Olympics, the EU, and movies of the Oscar and Berlin film festival variety.

There is only the most minor mentions of the chaos in the Muslim world surrounding the Prophet cartoon and the Abu Gharib torture. These two items have consumed my life for three weeks and caused riots and destruction in several regions. The extremists that are organizing these riots are trying to send a message to the world but the world has shut them off and no one even knows what's really going on. I feel as though I've been off world.

I didn't see any American's in Beirut and only a handful of business travelers in Kuwait. Last night when I went to the airport it was almost reverse culture shock as most of the travelers were either US Army or civil workers returning home after 18 months in Kuwait and Iraq. I can't even imagine how tough that must have been for them. On the self flattery scale, I must have looked pretty darn good to the men after that long of a stint in the military zone. Luckily everyone was just too tired to talk.