I went to Europe for two and a half weeks because my older brother James had a three-day conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Instead of just flying in, conferencing, then flying home, James made a mini-vacation out of this, and I tagged along.

First we went to Rome, Florence, Marseille, and Paris, with a lot of train traveling in between. Things were fine until we reached the Netherlands, which aren't called the Netherlands for nothing. Our introduction to the nether regions of Western Europe was the city of Maastricht. It was grey, windy, rainy, and cold -- which wasn't Maastricht's fault. But it was also industrial, bland, expensive, with lousy shopping prospects -- which was Maastricht's fault.

Still, I was okay with it all. It wasn't Rome or Paris by any stretch of the imagination but at least they had CNN in the hotel room. Then I realized just how wrongly complacent I'd been. In giving the city the benefit of the doubt, I stupidly consumed an entire plate of the hotel restaurant's wildly overpriced "Pasta mit scampi" dish that was smothered in rancid cream sauce. It was disgusting, yes, and the pasta seemed to be cooked al giaccammer. I take full blame for ignoring my self-preservation instincts by licking up every last drop of that vomitous sauce. My only excuse is that I was very hungry.

Then I paid dearly for this blunder.

Even a whole three days later, as we left Maastricht for good and headed up to Amsterdam, my own nether regions were still reeling from Maastricht's Revenge. Our first night in Amsterdam, we checked into the ridiculously expensive Amstel Botel, a former cruiseliner (with an emphasis on former) now permanently docked in a canal. James went out alone in search of dinner and a hot date. I opted to stay in, not only to inhale the musty urine odors emanating from our nasty botel bathroom, but to weather the storm brewing as strongly as ever inside my innards.

As I sat in silent solitude in the dimly lit room, bracing myself for every next wave of gut-wrenching agony, it occurred to me that I could try to pass the time by documenting this internal experience as visually as I could. Since it's not really possible to stick a camera inside my colon except during colonoscopy spelunking moments (come on, all you old people out there, you know what I'm talking about) -- and besides, what information could a layperson possibly glean from microscopic images taken inside a dark tunnel of crap? -- I chose to represent the torturous experience using plain old facial expressions, some of which didn't even require The Method, as they came about naturally and spontaneously given the unpredictable nature of the real pain I was actively experiencing.

Maybe these pictures will be enough to set your imagination off and running. I myself secretly marvel at what my bowels were capable of producing during this stressful, nightmarish moment in my digestive system's life.

-Amy

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