"How about the Limey?" the BigGuy asked, awakening from his reverie. "Did you see him get on the bus?" Without waiting for a response, he continued. "He tells me, 'This bus is packed.' And as we all can testify, buses can get packed, much more than anything that has been seen in the States. So much so that I don't think Americans can relate to it."

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"Real overcrowding," Capn agreed wholeheartedly.

"So we get one guya Limeyhe says fuck it, I'm going to get on," the BigGuy continued. "There's a woman standing there with a small infant in her arms. He goes up, takes his hand and shoves the infant's face into the mother, pushes her away, and gets into the bus. The baby was preventing him from getting on. He wanted the baby's face."

"Real overcrowding and savagery," Capn elaborated.

"Where was that?" Nuco said, "I don't remember any Limey."

"That was in Turkey," the BigGuy replied. "That happened in Turkey."

There was a moment of confused silence, until Medio, who had accompanied the BigGuy on his Turkey tour, asked, "How do the people on this trip compare with the Turks, Senor?"

"Friendlier. Of course, you're not wearing shorts this time. I think that upset the Turkish locals." The BigGuy finished his cerveza, found a spot for the empty bottle and glanced at his watch. "Oh, that bus ride tomorrow morning is going to be great. Four o'clock in the morning and we gotta push our way through people again."

"Yeah, well, at four in the morning I don't know if we're going to see a lot of people," Medio said hopefully.

"The carabinieri around here seem much less threatening than in Turkey," the BigGuy observed. "They seem to be part of the community." As the next round of cervezas were delivered and paid for, the travelers all nodded in agreement. The BigGuy may have temporarily abandoned his US citizenship to become a Canadian citizen, then gone into an inexplicable meditative silence, but he had returned from both with his acute observational powers intact.