Naw, a Rythym is for dancing.

I don't want an identifiable rhythym. I want an erratic pulse that you can see from the moon. (Or maybe I want to be on the moon, or be the moon--I should have been an astronaut). I realize, now, why I didn't want to come to Spain in the first place, what was so not understandibly undesirable about the who position and the whole situation. That is rhythym. That is lifestyle. Here I am working essentially from 6 to 3 at a job that A.) I don't particularily enjoy, and B.) doesn't particularily seem to make good use of having me there. AND FOR WHAT. That big, working class question, when jobs are unfulfulling but take up a lot of our time and are supposed to be a good (pro)portion of our "reason". My life's become docile, and tries to be organized and tame and kind to the world. I try to stay in my place and put together all the little pieces of the thing that people call "everyday life": some patterned, barely audible thing that makes me feel like I'm not human, in the delicious sense of the word.
And this is what I didn't want!! Yes, I know that I can make my life anything that I want it to be, yes yes yes ys and that's why I came here in the first place, don't you get it??? I could make this outrageously blossoming couldron of craziawesomenss with my Granadian life outside of work, but, god, I'd hate to have to make my life, LIFE, and my LIFE, outside of work. Even if I have good things outside of work, I A.) don't want to have to surrender to the "I'm just getting through the day/just doing this to make money", because I'm NOT. I didn't come to Spain to live that kind of thing, and B.) I don't make nearly enough to "suck it up". Things would be different if I was working in a field I was interested in, or curious about!!! I wonder how these other Auxiliars do it. Are they just more interested in it than I am, are they just sucking it up, are they not in tune, did they just come here to work a whatever job and then party with the rest of their left over money, does everyone else feel like they *have left-over money? How do they have left-over money????
And if YOU, yes, YOU, have a job you don't like, how do you get through the day, the month, the year, how do you talk to yourself about life? I mean, I will tell you it's one thing if you're working a semi-shitty job and you're making a ton of money (ie. many waitressing gigs I've had. And at least there are so many gap-filling unexpected moments). When I've been in that position in the past, it is definately justifiable because you feel that you are at least working hard for something, right? When I was waitressing this summer I didn't particularily like that gig, but I knew I was working to make money to travel.
But what's more, and of primary importance is that "I am living a regular patterned life", which I'm not trying to hate on, necessarily, in theory, it's just that I DON'T WANT THAT right now. I want to live a kind of life that I've never lived before. I don't want to have a gym and to have to go grocery shopping and go out only on weekends and run errands, and blah blah blahblbllllll. I don't even want to walk on city streets right now.
So it's that I'd either like to be living a like, patterned life, but committing my time to something I'm interested in or care about, or I'd like to be experimenting with putting myself into a whole 'nother thing that I've NEVER EVER experienced before, like olive picking. I want something to put my in another place, throw me out of orbit, teach me about life in a different way, and not just by presenting me with new knowledge, but by consuming me, pulling me in, by making me do and experience and literally, every second, actively be a part of a different world, a different way of life, people committing their time and energy to something that I'd never really considered I'd committ my time and energy to. 'Comes back to the same old thing, thoughts and urges I was having at the begining of all of these blog entries: project, purpose, hard work. Uhhh, where is it? I don't see it.
AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANTEST THINGS OF ALL OF THIS. Look, I AM TWENTY-THREE. I should not be wasting my time doing anything that I don't like. End of story. These are the most precious years of my life (any years. any years before you). Whoa.
Look, I met these girls last night who'd just come from a full season of picking olives in some tiny town in Spain and they said it was such hard work, that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into, but they loved getting up and working from 7-2, working hard, being physically exhausted but feeling like they really accomplished. And they got to live a type of life they never thought they'd actually get to live in the capacity that they did. This reminded me of all these things. The girls were high-school and college graduates. Two of 'em biked the Camino de Santiago beforehand. One of those two biked in southern France with her bf be*fore the Camino. And I was like what - the - fuck - am - I - doing?. whathefuckamidoing. Seriously.
I have, thus, appropriately, put a hault on buying things for my room (which I moved into yesterday), getting a gym membership, getting private health insurance, blahblahblahblahblah, and instead, I am going to focus on some writing, planning a trip during winter break, and thinking thinking thinking. I will buy a yoga mat, meditate daily, hike up to the ALhambra tomorrow, go to the mountains this weekend, and have long talks with Daniel about the future, and purpose, and cats. Goodnight.

Checkn' it out in Granada

Sometimes you go to sleep feeling frustrated, useless and meaningless and you wake up to an invitation from one of the more beautiful men in Granada.

First kiss in Granada (tongue ring, street lamp, etc.).

[I feel like I'm on the Truman Show....]

Jazz, Magic

Hello Saturday night/Sunday morning on November 21/22^nd in Spain. Hello first, real, intimate time with a writing machine. I’m seriously sighing with all of my body.

Guys, I’ve been in Spain for over two weeks now and I haven’t had a real chance to communicate with most of you (and with myself, in the way that one spits a bunch of stuff out, expulses it, and then can step back and look at it from afar. There is something weird about the layout of my current notebook that disables me from long-writing. I need to get a new one). Here we are, again. And I am oh so lost. Welcome to my madness!!!

Let the games begin.

So this is actually my first, real time that I’ve ever had being a real adult. You, know, “real life” and all that. I’m taking care of EVERYTHING myself, I’m figuring out EVERYTHING from scratch, and I’m taking on all these new things that I’ve never had to take on before. It’s overwhelming and fucking frightening and so amazing all at the same time, maybe somewhat like what Richard Yates writes in his Revolutionary Road—which I am reading right(/write..ha I accidentally wrote ‘write’, initially) now because someone lent it to me/it is good and I wanted to read it—writes: “It was like walking through a sandstorm; it was like walking on the ocean; it was like walking on air” (141. P.S. I am obsessed with semicolons… That’s all.). And thus has been my past 2-3 weeks here (I put 2-3 because I really, seriously don’t know how long it’s been. Surprise!), a grand mixture of so many things, so many ways of looking at things, life plans, lifestyles, changes in monstrous logistical things, learning how to react to all kinds of info and situations, learning about a new culture, understanding purpose and intention, working, calculating, trying to enjoy while calculating, making friends, peace and reason, breaths of fresh air, siestas, culinary morphis, meaningandmeaninglessness, something out of nothing and knowing when there is sometimes nothing in something, eyes wide open and world somewhere else, coffee and shawarmas, communicating and communicating and communicating and messing up and not being able to say what I want and not really knowing what I want to say, and missing people and realizing that I maybe should and shouldn’t and actually did or didn’t miss people, and NOT missing people, and not remembering things and then remembering things really hard, really intensely, really unexpectedly, and then crying and having no one there to comfort, and then when seeking comfort feeling lost and even more discomforted because comfort isn’t comfort anymore, and feeling so far away from everyone, starting to feel closer to myself. Stuff like that.

I’ve been crashing here on Elizabeth’s couch (upon which I sit at this very moment) for over 2 weeks (once again, -ish). Elizabeth is a friend of Vanessa’s (girl who went to Oxy, is living and working in Granada, and did the same the year before) who is teaching English here through CIEE. She is also coincidentally from St. Louis, which is totally the weirdest thing. I love this, because I LOVE St. Louis. Yes, for all of you that don’t know, I absolutely love that city. It is a ridiculously special place (and if you have never been there before, I will show you sometime). Elizabeth has been incredibly giving and I am endlessly in gratitude of her and her roommates warm and open house, their empathetic understanding of my situation, and the loving way in which they incorporated and invited me into their home. (A home really is a thing, really is a force) I am even probably “moving out” this week and her flatmate, Katarina from Prague, invited me to dinner on Thursday night. I plan on having them all over for an excellent and indulgent dinner when I finally get a place figured out. I owe them so so much; way more beyond the ‘things’ I could ever give back to them.

And yeah, then about my living situation. I mean I don’t want to go into that too much, since I already basically wrote a whole ‘blog’ (which was more just a thing of my being like omg I need to tell ppl about this bc it is eating up my days and life here, I need to write a blog/ and I need advice!!) about this, but I am yes still in the process of figuring this out. I have a new idea which is a happy medium, which involves paying a lady to crash in an empty bedroom every tues and wed night in huelma and then living in Granada the rest of the time, therefore only paying for 4 full days of carpool the whole month and 8 days of rent in huelma. It seems to be the best happy medium for a lot of reasons.

There’s something special about Granada, in its jazz and magic, I have yet to find it and I think it will be a long, sinking in, thorough process.

So, far, since being here, I’ve finished The Best American Non-Required Reading 2005, am half-way done with Revolutionary Road, and have experimented with Bolano’s “The Romantic Dogs” in both Spanish and English, depending in time, place, internal season, etc.

A few things I liked from my book (Yates):

“..became the stock supporting actors in a confectionary romance of bachelor-girls in Manhattan” (and I thought about the way my life could have been/he worded that so fucking beautifully and so spot on, like all of his language)

“never in talking to his wife had he triumphed more completely over time and space”

and the quote I put earlier, that is really amazing both IN and out of context. The page #s there, so if you are of ever will be or ever have read it, look for it in context..Bad Ass.

Then something that both my brother reminded me of (via a quote from his 1^st grade teacher), and that April Wheeler puts to plainly and obviously in the novel, “‘certainly it’s not going to be easy. Do you know anything worth doing that is?’” I would love to keep this in mind. Frank and April never made it to their great and big and fabulously fabulous plans. Here I am. It may not be perfectly what I had in mind, but man, it’s something, and it’s pushing me, and I’m growing and I’m frustrated, and I’m empowerd and squashed all at the same time, but it’s in experiences like these, where I have the incredibly good and the incredibly bad all mixed together, when I can feel elation and energy and empowerment as well as fright and worthlessness and defeat, that I feel pushed and moved in the most meaningful of ways, in the big ways that aren’t fleeting.

I punched this into my cell phone as I walked from an internet café to Elizabeth’s apartment, after Skyping with Alex Black tonight:

I find myself floundering in a vat of my own confusion, that I can’t find the clairvoyance to make sense of anything, to pick anything out, to push through it, like honey, pushing into a wave. --It’s worth taking note of what I wrote in that moment.

Kiiitos. 3 o’clock climbs into me (sexual? It wasn’t meant to be, but think walking in Brooklyn at night, Naguine!! Oooops..?) and I feel I should be ‘responsible’/I’m tired. Here’s my thing right now: I’m still at that phase/point in my life where I write things like “responsibility”, in quotes, and feel like maybe I should just fucking take the quotes off because it’s real. That’s where I am. That’s how things are changing. Fucking weird. Warped. Unreal. Real.

Ciao, bellas! mush mush

p.s. looking very forward to brother visit in January and the semester arrival of The Bear (Sarah Buyers from Oxy).

What’s more: bathroom stall, coffee shop, Helsinki, Finland: “Te quiero Heidie, no se porque pero te quiero mucho mas que me quieres. Ahora no importa, despues no se”

Andalucian Life...: Pueblo Life? The house hunt begins. (and never ends)

Hola, Todos.

LIVING:

Yes, I am definately in Spain and have definately been here for over a week (was a week on Monday). I've spent most of my time honestly searching for an apartment, and I've gone through many phases of this. First, I was looking at apartments circa 200 euros/month, because that was around the price that my friend was paying. I found two fabulous apartments (mom, nag, and cat, those are the ones I emailed you about) that were 230euros/month and they are really really lovely. prob the coolest apartments I've ever had the option of living in. In my next phase, I was trying to find apartments that weren't SO perfectly central, that weren't like riDIculously cool, still nice enough, and that costed less. This is a much harder process than the one before because it requires factoring in so many little things. And it requires being super vigilant during my brief visits to visit the apartments (like, mental checklist and all).

Anyway, Huelma?

Ever since I've started my job, which is yesterday, I have been thinking about the possibility of living in Huelma, the town where my school is. Although I've figured out a commute and have a few options on places to live in Granada, here are my thoughts:
-The commute is tough. I mean, it's roughly 3 hours out of my day, 3 days a week, which is definately something. I have to fight really hard in the morning to not get car sick. I drive through the mountains on small windy roads and the driver drives maniacly and the car is controlled via stick shift, which makes it even jerkier and more nauseating than it needs to be.
-With these new financial issues (loans), I can actually pay quite less for rent and therefore would be more likely to afford paying back my student loans. Also, my boss is encouraging me to subscribe to a private health care company in addition to the public healthcare that I already have. He says it's better and faster. I told him about my knee injury and he said it would be better for me to do private insurance so I can get to it quickly. He said with public healthcare I might have to wait over a month to get started and my knee hurts a lot right now.
-Slower, I can focus more, think more. I felt flooded, unnecessarily (not in a stimulating way, like the way that New York floods my being. Just in a busycitystuffgoingon way) in Granada. And the smoke is suffocating me (cig and traffic). bleh.
-The town is nice and not too small. There are bookstores, cafes and restaurants, a pet shop, florists, I think even an theater. I think I could actually find some things to do outside of work. Some things to be involved with.
-One of my main goals of being here was/is to write a lot. Write short stories, online journal articles, start a novel. I think this would be the perfect place to do it. Away from distractions.

Qualms?:
-I'd like a gym. I don't know if they have one here.
-Can I do physical therapy here?
-there's noone here that's my age. For some reason at the moment that doesn't seem to bother me.
-possible lack of stimulation and boredom.
-less stuff availible that I'm used to
-It's colder because i'm in the mountains (and not particularly beautiful. Just kind of like hills in our vicinity, but we def get the temp of the mtns)

If I don't like it, I can always move into the city later.

Thoughts?

P.S.
-Spanish-speaking everyday: awesome. learning a lot. especially at my school where I spend a lot of time with the teachers in long and sometimes intense conversations about pedagogy and all.
-uh my comp charger is broken, so I've only been able to utilize the computer really infrequently. my apoligies for lack of communication, but, i mean, yeah.

Loves youuuu. u. u. u!

I don't have any pictures, yet, because I don't feel like a tourist. Sorry, duduzeses.

Notes from New Yo-ak, Second Toe

8 Octubre, 2009

New York was a blur. I mean, not like a million things happened, but my mind was somewhere else..completely preoccupied. I've appreciated that on all of these beginning legs of this trip(/life. "It's not a trip!"), things have been rather chill-er than they could have been. I arrived into New York mid-day on Saturday and took the bus to Max Abram's place in Queens (Max is a friend from Oxy for those of you who don't know) and hauled my crazy mess of bagS around Astoria. On the bus ride there I met this Canadian doll who "is a Flamenco dancer" and loves the flamenco because "you don't have to have a partner!!" After regrouping for a few in Max's apartment, Naguine, Max and I hunted for a particular Brazilian place for lunch that turned out to actually be closed. We walked around Astoria for a little, searching for an intriguing and not outrageously expensive place to eat. We decided on an Indian place that had good lunch specials. The food was satisfying and they used a lot of garlic, which you don't typically taste in Indian food. I liked it. Think about it. After they started playing what I would say is AMAZING keyboard ballads (others might call it pre-programmed back-up sounds on your Casio), Max ultimatum-ed that we HAD to leave. We ducked into a coffee shop (it was greek?) for summa tha goods, hit up a free wine -tasting at a seller next door, and then went back to Max's. At Max's we again regrouped and planned the evening, deciding to take it a little easier and skip the dance party at the Brooklyn museum and instead chill in Queens at Max's roommate's friend's, where we smoked hookah, drank tea, laughed. After late night babaganoush and falafal sandwiches, Naguine and I had to lug my baggage all the way from Queens to Brooklyn and ended up getting to bed around 4.

In the morning, Naguine had some errands to run on the Upper West Side and I met my friend Courtney for coffee, met back up with Naguine, shopped a little in Brooklyn and had lunch at a cafe where Max joined us. Time was ticking rather fiercely at this point and here is where I began to get a little crazy. I just really didnt want my last day or last few hours left in the U.S. to be stressful and hectic. They very much were, which I find really unfortunate. I think I definately am a person that likes to sink in. I like to process what I'm doing and in this case, what I am about to do. The haphazard throwtogether, the only-tending-to-the-physical and the logistical needs really was not okay. If I had really known this about myself, I would have designed my day differently and made it very well known that I needed a good amount of time in that day to just chill and be and think, maybe write, and call Sophie (!). I only realize this in retrospect. Look!..I learned something about myself already! I also learned that you should ALWAYS take the option to bring the most convenient suitcase, even if it is not the largest one (IF you are moving, and especially especially if you are making some stops along the way). Carrying around an inconvenient suitcase..I will never do THAT again. I ended up swapping my suitcase for a rolly one that Naguine had (props to N's ingenuitive mind) and this saved me loads on my very last trek from her place to the JFK airport. Oh myyyyyyyyyyy..! And trek to the airport was insane because I took a cab to the subway station but the subway station was closed so I had to board a shuttle bus to the next station and had to transfer onto 3 different things. A lot of really really awesome people helped me along the way with bag carrying and directions. Who ever ever says NYC is filled with cold, isolated people disinterested in their fellow new yorkers is so freakin wrong. I feel that EVERY TIME I am in New York. People reaching out and connecting, people caring about each other. Maybe that is just me and what I happen see (as in come across) in the place, or maybe I just see it differently. Perhaps people just tend to treat ME differently, but I really don't think so because I see it with other people, too..it's not just me.

The airport was absolutely insane. I guess that's what you get with international departures. All sorts of people doing all the little things differently and also lot's of crazy long and intense sorts of goodbyes and people going for longer times, bigger-deal journies. Craziness comes with that. The Indians, though...they were the craziest (flight to Hyderabad leaving like 30 mins before me, and then Mumbai 20 mins after that). I felt like I was back in India, suddenly, with all of the tiny little culture clash, like lines (as in forming/not forming them or knowing that they are things that people do) and organization, personal space, family etc. If you went to India, think about like 100 Indians (maybe half of the people in line) and then like a ton of other intl ppl (mostly euro/us) who are tame and obedient and form lines and stay quiet and are professional about the security process. It was just so good. So India and so strange that I experienced it RIGHT before my Spain flight, right? What a weird coincidence. Like moving twice at the same time. Like the Universe recognized that I was leaving and just wanted to let me know that it was paying attention to this one. Let's see what that means in the coming days..

Now, I am actually sitting in my seat on the flight from NYC to Madrid. I took a sleeping pill, but what the heeeck. It really isn't kicking in very well. I think that I will take the other one after I eat this dinner that they are aparrantly bringing to me? Go vegetarians in Spain...? Let me get back to you with goo (emotional, intellectual) when I am done with this meal thing. 2 secs.

Psych. This blog is over. Stay tuned for notes from ESPAÑA!!

First Toe

The first toe (left, second) of my trip comes to an end that is the begining of a begining. Tonight I will fall asleep, head full of thoughts of past and future (I feel like I have no present at present)--Chicago will string these together for me (Abbey and Oxy girls, high school and college, mid-way between places, old and new memories strewn all over this city)--and wake up plunging towards New York. My time here has been very nice, my Uncle Chris and Chumel as very accomodating and comfortable hosts (its rare that I stay with family and its very nice) and it was a fantastic way to begin my journey: slow, easy, but filled with good things. I also got to see my dear Abbey from high school who I really haven't seen much of in the past 1.5 years (whom I absolutely adore right down into the core of my being), had short but really good visits with Celeste and Nia from college, and then spent my last evening with my most favorite girl in the entire world, Catherine Petru. Catherine was in Chicago for a PIRG-related conference (super perfect coincidence). I got to meet some of the PIRG people in her life and we made our way to a fanTAStic cafe on Clark in Andersenville(o?), then ended the evening breifly at my uncle's. I love that girl so so damn much. She really feels like my family. Like my other family.

It seems that I am one of those people where it is imperative that I stay up very late on the night before I am about to do something big because I must remain to process and sink into everything and what I am doing, what is about to happen, to squeeze a little bit more out of being in the now before the future becomes the now. It's nearly 3 a.m. here. I'm planning on waking up at 7:15. I will save this to my flash drive, post it tomorrow from Naguine's, and read a short story (maybe 3/5s) before I fall asleep. What will I dream about? Maybe Catherine and I will be underwater or my mother will be sowing a garden of children's toys and candy canes.

Train towards Chicago

Cute couple asleep (upon each other) on train, behind me. Only exacerbates my feeling of sinking into loneliness and wanting to feel the intimacy and love of this type of relationship. Yes, true that I have been feeling like I want a relationship lately. I've never felt that before (because typically, I am already in one), but I think it is probably a symptom of me slowly detaching myself from things, places, people, in order to advance forth into this new stage of my life, this independent waif stage--this has left me feeling particularly lonely, emotionally and connectively isolated (redundant? whatever its working for me) [because i have to be so in order to ever really enjoy my time abroad and scurry about like a psycho bunny that i have become] and maybe therefore craving this intimacy/something or someone to go through it all with, and to have to fall back on and into in every sense of falling on and into. This pushing away so as to move somewhere else, I really don't like. I wish I could take all the people and places and things I care about with me. Obviously this is unrealistic, but then it gets me to thinkin about what Sophie and I have been talkin about lately, which is if people really are a huge part of my/our life/ves then why not and how come I don't keep these things central in my decisions, then? Perhaps I will..when roam around the world adventure stage is done, because let's just face it: it is completely impossible to drag 8 places and 20 people with me everywhere I go (I mean literally, I can't check that much luggage on a plane..would cost me a fortune!) so when I ask for this lifestyle and these adventures, I am asking for something that I must and can only do alone. So here I go.

Two things, which are actually words of advice from Sophie's mother:
love and purpose seem to work together
and "life is only figured out for an hour at a time"

Sophie's mother is so wise.

The Literary City: Praha

You don't take your story with you; You spread your story around.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I believe you deserve some sort of explanation, here. Right? Well, I would like to just (belatedly) relay to you some of my experiences in a land called Prague, then Berlin, and lastly, Finland. I will do these in chronological order (at least at the start. You never can tell what will happen when you get the ball a'rollin and you get the things flustering, you know?). Check this:

Praha!--
Hey. So Alison and I arrive in Prague late at night, and at the very very very last minute my friend Tom (who I met in Hyderabad) helped us out with a place to stay. Brieana has a really lovely apartment in Vinohrady and Alison and I stayed in a really luscious spare bedroom.
Our first day in Prague was unexpectedly and accidentally tourist-effed. We were just trying to see the old city and check out some stuff, but we accidentally were swallowed whole by the maddness and the mobs of tourism that are Prague. Oh, poor little Prague. Completely overtaken. It was so hard to see where the city even was underneath all of the tourism icing. Un. It was nasty. That might have been the most annoying and unpleasant tourist infestation that I've encountered yet. That night we went to dinner with Bri and a friend, drank fabulous Czech beer, and ended up at a club called Techtele Mechtele where we met Peter and Peter and had interesting chats about India and writing professions, respectively. We got back to the apartment, realized we'd left our keys upstairs, so knocked on her neighbors window (the light was on) at like 2 am and he actually came out and hooked us up!! Turns out he was ridiculously good-looking so Alison and I appropriately wrote him a secretive secret meeting note, slid it under his door, and then failed to make out secret meeting the next day.
In Prague, because Bri had wireless internet, we spent a fair amount of time doing "work": Alison her Marshall scholarship, and I planning the next phase of my trip, post-Alison. The next morning we "worked", bought tickets to see the symphony later that evening, spend the afternoon at the Mucha Museum, made dinner, dressed and saw the symphony, hit up a cafe where I illegally over-indulged in chocolate (should've been a crime) and we begin writing "Dear Stranger" notes furiously on Cafe Louvre stationary. We left one for our waiter with our bill, and the rest we poked around in little secret places around Prague during out walk home in the (light) rain. Dear Stranger notes are special notes to strangers. We started writing questions to these strangers and then decided to make a website where these strangers could answer the questions. We put the website on the note, but when we got home and tried to create the site, it domain was already taken, so I made a site with a similar name to what we wanted, but that didn't help our cause. [I distributed a bunch of these notes around Helsinki on my last day there and I put the appropriate website address but no one has yet responded. I know that in order to do this seriously I have to mass produce these letters, but I didn't really have the means to do that at the time. Perhaps I will do that in the future].

The next day Alison departs, I take care of some odds and ends, meet up with my friend Saarah's friend Drake (Saarah I also met in India) and people at a Beer Garden near Bri's, we migrate to a place with an excellent dj where I befriend a hilarious Irishman and then crash at Bri's. The next morning Bri and I do breakfast, I depart to move to Drake's (because Bri is leaving for China in the evening) where we enjoy a charming lunch in his big open window, head out on a search for a particular bar, come upon an old, breath-taking random church, drink fantastic beerS at a bar with the largest beer menu in the CR (here i had Budvar, the orig budweiser maybe..?), I lose my sunglasses, we tour an offbeat part of the city sufficiently buzzed, end up at Bukowski's (where D has been wanting to go because he, like myself, it a huge and awesome literature nerd). Here I have a great chat with an Indian-American girl about India and about South America (and they sort of crossed over). We go back to D's for dinner and then I opt to stay in while he goes back out, because the room is lit so well. I do yoga and finish the epic Ashbery work (the perfect place to finish it if Prague was good for nothing else).

Next morning Mallory goes on an excursion solo, crossin the Charles and over to Petrin Hill to finish Praha with an Unbearable tribute. I make my way to the top of the Hill, experience what I suddenly sense to be the beginning of fall (it hits me). There is this lady kneeling and praying on this precipice that overlooks all of the orange city. It’s an overcast day and she’s crying. I spot, from SO far away, an orange bag flying in the air (like in American Beauty) and it’s weird because the city is orange—so it matches—and this lady is crying and weeping over the beauty or her life or some sudden catastrophe, whatever it is, I can’t believe how poetic and cinematic a scene it was. I felt like I was let in on some cinematic secret. Like I wasn’t supposed to catch all those things at the same time and have them line up like they did, but I did, and that doesn’t happen very often.

Then I found a strangey field with all of these fruit trees and chatted with some local about how he does and I can actually pick any of the fruit (“and eat it!”). I promptly pluck two pears (one ripe and one rare), take some photos for an Indian couple in a rose garden (sophie…), and head out to meet drake at this sick bookstore/coffeeshop called The Globe (check it out if you’re in Prague!) I secure my ferry trip from Stockholm to Helsinki whilst at this shop, chat with a dawg from Ar-hay (in Spanish, por su puesto), and Drake and I buy matching books (written by a Polish lady, published by a Prague-based press) soas to begin our adorable 2-person book club. We hurry back to his apartment and I shoot like lightening (I’m getting good at it) to catch my overnight bus from Prague to Berlin.

Rad Travel Quotes

“Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do..."– Mark Twain

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France

“Travel is not reward for working, it’s education for living.” -?

“I am not the same having seen the moon rise on the other side of the world.”~Mary Ann Rademacher

My current favorite:

"If you arrive in a strange land,

bow

if the place is bizarre

bow
if the day is utter strangeness
surrender--
you are infinitely more peculiar"
-Orides Fontela

And a classic: “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac. Always love a good old friend.

Photos

have posted some more photos of Romania. Cheeeeck.

Rumination: Social Welfare and Social Behavior or Expression in Finland

The freedom of self-expression is quite interesting here, because, as Josh tells me, Finland is a social-welfare state, equalizing the socio-economics within the country (well I guess it's more economically..I'm not really sure about the "socio" part). So with this welfare that takes care of everyone, you get this financially equalizing effect. I am looking for the seedier parts of the city, for communities of young people where the coffee shops are cheap, for people struggling. I haven't found them yet.


Most families own summer cottages, where they spend the season whiling away, and enjoying an escape from typical life. I told our Finnish friends that this was very uncommon in the U.S. and that only wealthy families would ever be able to afford this type of additional house. Their responses treated cottages as if they were just entirely normal.


Additionally, the saunas here are really popular, and they are unisex, and everyone is naked. (This isn't self-expression, then, necessarily, but can be looked at as a gender-equalization, thus making co-ed naked saunas an non-socially progressive thing. Just normal. People also maintain that the sw-system here promotes a "female-friendly gender regime", perhaps further equalizing power in gender interactions and therefore allowing for naked interaction to be less provocative [if women are seen less as objects, if they have higher status, more respect, and power, then perhaps the image of their naked bodies also warrant these things.)


The way that I thought that individualism and individual self-expression would play into an equalizing, social-welfare state, isn't exactly what happens here. When we walk around the city, Josh points out the dull colors of the outfits. I notice the non-descript and modest architecture that seems purely functional, not decorative or celebratory, at all. This seems to fit the idea that a sw-state affects social equalization. Josh also said that Finnish people like their physical distance, are not at all socially outgoing, don't really use a lot of facial expressions in public (walking around, faces seem stern--effect of the weather, maybe?), no one crosses streets unless the walk sign has changed. I made sense of this by thinking that if people start with equal-ish means, then perhaps they only stay within equalish grounds. Doesn't necessarily make sense that an equalization of social and financial resources would lead to an equalization of social behavior.
But now here I am in the library, and each kid in here has his or her own, unique style. They are all dressed quirky, some display socially deviant accessories like tattoos, wild piercings, freaky hair. So instead of stream-lining behavior, I see with the younger crowd more individual expression and comfort with individual expression (not the desperate cry to be recognized as an individual that I see in the States), and I can't quite fit that into the larger, Finnish equation. Is it just the activity of the youth, that youth expresses and is allowed to express more than other people? Will they change drastically and conform like all the other people on the street when they get older? Is this a new, contemporary phenomenom--is Finnish culture changing, and, if so, how does the sw-system play into that?


Perhaps it is the blanket of base equality (starting with equal resources) that allows the youth to express individually. Like upon the base of sameness, this is the perfect catapult to express. And therefore individual expression is mandatory, is possible for everyone, is a necssary part of Finnish life. What's confusing is the disconnect between what I see in the streets and what I see in the buildings of the University. Maybe students are typically not out because they are in classes and studying, etc. Maybe this is a particularly big university town so the youth acts more strongly, socially. Perhaps there's a large international student population that leans the culture of the student population in a progressive direction.

Perhaps we are seeing the wrongs sides or parts of the city. I am confused. Is this a free society or closed? What forces are acting here to make the Finns act in such opposing ways? Does the social welfare system even have anything to do with it?



Or maybe I need to ask larger questions, like does a social-welfare state lead to social egalitarianism? SW-system + what in Finland = the behavior I observed? Is it and how is it diff from behav in other sw-states?



Also, I really need to look into these beggar women in Helsinki. They are all dark-skinned, wear long, flowing skirts and scarves tied around their heads. They seem to have a community: I often see 2 or 3 of them together. Where did they come from? What brought them here? How do they play into the social make-up of Helsinki? What do people think of them?

Photos now have captions!

Hey all! I am in Berlin.

Wanted to let you know that my captions now ALL have photos so look through them to know where I was and what was going on!

Cheers!
-Mal

Photos

I posted some of my photos from Slovakia, Vienna, and the beginnings of Romania.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mallory.nezam/UploadPhotos?authkey=Gv1sRgCOTV4ougrpnCDg#

We Transition. I want this to be big(ger).

What's interesting is that now that Alison is leaving and I am beginning a new part of my journey, alone, I realize that all that everyone has been saying about how wonderful it is that I am traveling and therefore challenging myself has really not rung true to me. Here is the thing about traveling in Europe: I am not challenged; I am having fun. Here is the thing about traveling: I sort of feel like in order to truly challenge myself in the way I want to be challenged, I need to be a part of a community and that I can't be moving around like a waif so much.

Again, I want a project. That project could successfully be completed on the road (writing. but it has not yet been possible with the lifestyle that alison has wanted to keep up. i am not so much into seeing castles right now as i am about learning. castles teach me minimally).

Now that I have the freedom to decide my next step, I am considering countless options, including Helsinki and a trip up to the Northern lights (one of the things on my list of things to do in life), immediately make my way to Spain where I have nothing prepared (only a lead on a WWOOFing job), go home, or go somewhere else crazy--like another country (where challenge will be ever-pressing)!

On this slightly cloudy and life-noisy day in Prague (which is a nice little city, but nothing interesting, despite all of my fantasies), I spend the morning looking up the alternatives.

I don't feel like this is my calling.

Alison officially leaves in like 30 minutes and I can feel something changing. The leaves are rustling.

The Romaniacs overcome Endless Obstacles and YOU wish you were there to join the fun

Today my words come from somewhere in the outskirts of either Hungary or the Czech Republic. Alison and I are on a bus making our way to Prague. But why are we going to Prague right now? On a bus? That wasn’t the original plan, Mallory. Oh yes and don't worry that we are just coming from Timisoara, making our way back through Budapest, back through Bratislava, and then up to Prague. No worry that we are Actually, Literally backtracking the ENTIRE course of our trip. Yeah that's not weird or anything. Maybe I should tell you a little story..

Mallory and Alison embark upon a lovely journey toward the Retezat Mountains (13th wonder of the modern world) southeast of Timisoara. We awoke early this morning (I have no idea what day of the week it was) and jumped on a train at like 5:20 AM or something. This train, we had pieced together through out detective work the day prior, would take us to Simera where we would have to transfer to another train (a real janky one. hello india traveling, right? only it was a little better than the ones in India) and that would land us in Ohaba, where we were to take a "minibus" to Carnic, where we would then ascend into the mountains. So all goes according to plan so far, we are nearing the Ohaba stop where a train worker comes into our car and tells us we must hop out now. Thank god he told us to get off of we would have had no idea.

The Ohaba train station isn't exactly a train station. It consists of an old, abandoned, pee-smelling building, men in overalls on tractors, horses carrying wooden carts, a few families lying under shaded trees on the other side of the track (hiking equipment and backpacks..clearly returning from a trip), a few porter potties, a plastic bear 'statue' (more like figurine), a "map" of the mountains, a small, nondescript white van, and a lovely man in a blue tank top that read (in red, white, & blue, of course) "THE U.S.A.". Alison and I are literally made to jump off the train as it slowly rolls on by the Ohaba 'stop'. Right on.
On this mini-bus, we wait, and if you know me, you know that I can't deal with a viod of air circulation, so i spent most of my time outside of the bus (Alison was exhausted so stayed inside): I took pictures and chatted with a family who'd just come down from the mountains. They gave us a lot of advice as to where to go, how long it would take, how to deal with transportation when we return. They were also, like everyone else we told our "plan" (who has plans?) to, worried and surprised by our attempt at such a trip (only two of us, girls, americans, plan-less, map-less, with limited time. No Big Deal.)

The minibus ride to Carnic was gorgeous: we had great views of the mountains and our bus driver was a doll. Upon arrival in Carnic, we are approached by a seemingly kind older couple (who actually turn out later to be eviiiil) who try to sell us a "tent" (a trash bag on sticks), coffee, and rip us off on a map for 20 lei (which is essentially 7 bucks. what the fuck) but we were feeling like we might be completely effed if we don't have a map in the mountains, so we bought it--what were we to do?!

At Retezat, you don't exactly have a lodge or information center at the foot of the mountains. No. Instead you must make the 5¬-6 km hike up a mountain to get to the first cabana. So Alison and I hiked with all of our stuff, up the mountain for about 3 hours or something (of course going past the side trail to the cabana, and needing to backtrack as the sun was starting to wane) and finally, starving, we reached the cabana! It was gorgeous here--a pleasant little haven among the mountains. Here we were actually able to buy food. We had been really worried that we were going to be stuck up in the mountains for 3 days sans food (besides the bread and nasty cheese that we'd brought up from Timisoara) but we got lucky (luck will be the theme of this story, you will see).

In Retezat, we spent 2 nights and basicly 2 days. It was obviously really lovely to take a break from city life, pace, scenery, culture, etc. I have learned that no matter how much we enjoy traveling through cities, we must must absolutely take breaks and leave the city, venture into nature. It makes us appreciate the opposite more and allows us to get back in touch with things as we re-adjust our pace. We went on a full day hike our 1st complete day there. It took us up the mountain and to one of the glacial lakes that Retezat is so known for. It was extremely nice to finally be moving around a lot and get some hard exercize. I think our bodies were thankful. The hike up started in a forest and then went about this forest line and took us higher than the clouds. Planes from a military base in the distance danced and traced designs with smoke in the sky as Al and I wrote poems underneath a cloudless atmosphere.
Retezat happenings to note: The cabanas had electricity only for 1 hour, between 7-8pm. Interesting. We ate a lot of polenta (mamaliga), and met two (North) American dudes working for the Peace Corps in the mountains of Romania (teaching english). We talked with them about life and why they chose what they did, if they like doing it. We also made friends with a little Romanian guy named Alin who really liked to talk (was interesting to talk with), taught us Romanian card games, was couchsurfing on the mountain (yes, if you ever go to Retezat, aparrantly there is a couchsurfer who lives right by the Pietrele Chalet. Check it out) and coincidentaly studies in Timisoara.

Finally, the descent back down out of the mountains, reversing our trek from foot to bus to (hothot) train. At the station in Simeria, Alison and I realize that A.) We are not sure if Marco knows that we are coming back today, what time we are coming back, and B.) we needed to swap sleeping spaces in the apartment so that we could sleep in the living room where the computer was so that we could work on croatia stuff when we got back (we'd arrive very late and leave for croatia quite early the next day). Payphones never work for us, so we had no luck with this, but asked some nice girls if we could borrow a cell and send Marco a text with all the info that we needed. Thank goodness that worked out. Our ride back to Timisoara was really fun (just a lot of laughing and good conversation) despite the fact that we had an actual insane person in our train car. She kept singing really loudly (and terribly) with headphones on, and rocking back and forth (?). She would say and shout things really loudly in Romanian to us, she dressed like a man, and kept yelling into her cellphone whenever anyone would call. It was awesome.

What was not so awesome, however, was when Alison realized that she'd lost her purse. Yes; it is true. We've just jumped off the train onto the platform in Timisoara and immediately Alison yells "oh my god--where's my purse". She jumps back on the train (it has actually stopped this time) and scours it, but it is nowhere to be found. We both check ALL of our bags to see if we put it inside of anything else. I go back on the train myself and check with a train worker. Then Alison does one last go-around on the train as it is starting to take off and has to jump back off for an escape. Her purse had in it her Passport, credit card, some cash, and her i.d. Pretty bad.

After talking to some officials at the station, trying to figure out if anyone has picked it up, and/or who we should talk to about a lost or stolen passport, we run into Marco and Tania, who have been looking for us. After telling them what happened, we all go to the police station, where we begin reporting and talking things over with the policemen, only to suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a police v. homeless slaughter. A homeless man had aparrantly hit some man in the train station. This man complained to the police. The homeless man was brought into the station while we were inside. All of this was going on in Romanian so really all that Alison and I witnessed were actions. Later Marco told us what people were saying to each other. The homeless man began to speak, maybe loudly, and babble some things that were really angering the police while they were trying to speak with us about the missing purse. The oldest, fattest policeman aparrantly has a very short temper and stomped over to the homeless man and smacked him, then spit in his face and began shouting things at him. The policeman's temper escalated and he grabbed his baton and began beating the homeless man. I definately witnessed a few blows to the head. Other police began to gather around him as the homeless man was shouting and the police man was bashing. The police got the homeless man on the ground, the older cop began kicking him, they hand cuffed him, put a hood over his head and sat him down on the bench next to us. All that just while we were there. Aparrantly this happens all the time.

I have never actually seen this type of police brutality or police-homeless interaction ever in person, only in movies or on t.v. But it happened, right in front of us, with an air of oh this happens all the time so it's not something unusual and scandalous that we should have to hide you from. No one acted as if we shouldn't have seen it. No one really seemed to be trying to excuse it or cover it up.

You could feel the energy of the cops starting to heat up, so they directed us into another, small room where the door was closed and we couldn't observe what was about to occur, or continue to occur in the main room. Here, Marco gave us the impression that this isn't too terribly uncommon from the police here, that there is general corruption amongst this branch of the law, and that 'he hates to say it, but they guy might have had what was coming to him' (because of what he was saying?). Perhaps the homeless man was saying things much worse than Alison and I could have imagined. Anyhow, it was pretty scarring to watch this scene, to feel like you can't to anything even when you feel, as a natural impulse, the need to help anyone in pain, and when anyone in a position of power seems to be abusing it. I don't know what we can do in Romania. I don't know how the law works. What would have happened to me if I'd said something? Would I get beaten? Would I disappear? What would happen, I don't know, so I didn't do anything, just felt...And now I'm telling you this. I'm sure Catherine will be interested in this story.

One of the worst things, though, is that when we left that room and walked through the main room to exit the entire station, we had to walk past through the room of the scene and there were more people in now, all sort of crowded around this one man, and there were these two younger boys who were maybe just random station workers or security guards (not police), who had faces of pure pleasure. They were laughing and smiling when I made eye contact with them. Laughing when they looked my way as if to say ha we all this this is fun and amusing; I want to share this mutual feeling with you, but I could and did not share this with them. Instead, I just kept a solemn, serious, and I think disapproving face, very stern, as I walked past them. Who knows if anyone saw anything in my face, but I really do hope so. Perhaps that is idealistic, but I felt that that was the smallest way in which I could have done something, just a very very small disapproval and a small little critique.

We go home empty handed--Alison's purse is nowhere to be found. We begin the project of cancelling credit cards, contacting embassies, etc., and it is late at night and we can obviously not leave for Croatia in the morning. The next day we are still working on Alison's loss of important things but decide, at least, to go grab a movie that evening.
Inglorious Bastards is the film that wins for the evening. The film is in German, French, and maybe 25% english. The subtitles are in Romanian, so I got a really excellent language lesson in (kind of in French and Romanian). (It's really amazing--Alison and I are learning SO MUCH Romanian. We can understand SO much of it and our language acquisition is improving rapidly). During the film, Marco gets a breakthrough text message. Apparrantly someone has found Alison's purse (!) and we meet her at a hotel after the film to retreive it. Her story is strange and there are holes, but Alison is unconcerned because she has her purse back with everything in it except for the little bit of money the left, which really isn't an issue. Back in business, Alison immediately begins talking about leaving for Croatia tomorrow morning on the 5am train. I am like whoa no I dont think we can to that. I think this idea is too haphazard, even for us. (I'm like you dont have a credit card, your parents still think your passport and cc are stolen, we dont have anywhere to stay, it is already really late at night, etc.) So we decide not to leave in the morning, enjoy the evening with friends, and plan when we get up in the morning. We bar-hopped with the crew, which includes Marco, Tania and their friends Amira and Soltar.

As Alison and I are researching transportation options to Croatia this next day, we come across the information that SkyEurope has officially closed (bankrupcy) and they have stopped ALL of their flights. So our flight from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Prague was cancelled. And Alison's flight from Prague to London was also cancelled. Our plans were once again tossed in a hamper. We had gone from plans to no plans to all plans back on track to absolutely no plans and a blank slate in the course of like 60 hours. My being was going insane being hinged and then unhinged and then hinged again, and then unhingedhingedhinged, etc.

We shared this news with the Romanian crew and went for lunch at Marco and Cristina's parents home. Their parents were very close to Clara and Emilian Taranu when they lived in Romania. They told me that they were all each others' best man and head bridesmaid at the other's wedding. Lunch's end found us all a bit sleepy and sloppy, and then we decided that the best thing in life would be to go back to Marco's house and play the game that we witnessed in Inglorious Bastards. At home we drank coffee and played a game where we write the names of people (we later extended this to places and things) on a piece of paper and stuck the paper on the head of the person next to you so that each player can not read the name on their head. The game is then everyone asking yes or no questions about their character to try and guess who they are. We played for hours and it was really fun. Soon it became late and the night had to end, as they often do.

Guess what--the next day was my birthday! I spent the first few hours (from like 2-330am) talking to my little Catherine online, which was, who can argue?, a stellar way to start any 23rd birthday, right? In the morning Al and I went into town where we bought watercolors, drank in cafes in our favorite square, then walked to the botanical garden where we painted a lovely joint picture. We briskly made our way back to the apartment where we met Marco and Tania and went out to dinner at this place pretty far away from the city. Amira and Solan met us up there and we went next door to this crazy complex (connected to the restaurant) that had indoor soccer, bowling, a bar, game tables (some romanian game), and pool tables. We played many hilarious rounds of pool (I'm not as good in Romania/without Kevin as I am in the States). [[I am listening to Graceland right now and it truly and phenomenom]]
[[I must interrupt here, because the following note is of the utmost importance. I think I have just witnessed the absolute most annoying thing in all of my life. There is a couple in front of us on the bus and they are actually kissing THE ENTIRE RIDE, but that is not the bad part. The bad part is that it is so disgustingly audible and muchy and smacky and fucking loud and the other most annoying thing is that they need and have to do this stupid kissy thing ALL fucking ride long. There is honestly something seriously crazy about your relationship if you can not leave eachother even semi-alone for more than 1 minute (i am not kidding. i hear this slopping at least once a minute) during a 6 hour train ride.]]
At the end of the night, the 4 of us finally took some group pictures, said our undesired goodbyes [[ooh i want those potatoes from the restaurant right now]], and Alison's camera, unfortunately broke.

In the morning Alison made quick to pack and run to catch a taxi. We had only 9 lei left so we crossed our fingers and hoped that the meter read less than that. It did! Hooray! At the ticket couter at the train station we were informed that the times the woman at the train info office had told us the day prior were incorrect and there was a train that had just left 2 minutes ago for Budapest, and a train that leaves at 5pm. [[*Note: we thought we were going to have to take a train from Timi to Buda and then Buda to Prague and that this (bummer) train would cost us around $140/person which we both thought was a lot to swallow (especially seeing as we were not sure if we'd get our $ back from SkyEurope). I did a little bit of genious research and found a cheap bus from Buda to Prague, so we bought train tickets to Bud, and now are on the bus to Praha. Yay for cheap alternatives! Yay!]]. So the lady quickly improvises (appreciated) and tells us of a train to Arad and then a train from there to Buda, but train #1 would be leaving in 5 mins (!) [ps-we cant take later train because we have bus tickets booked for 4:15pm]. We pay and wait for the semi-archaic process of issue Romanian train tickets slugged along, and at 7:12am, the exact time that the train was to leave, we are able to grab our tickets and run (with our 20kilo bags) to platform 5, where we make it just in time to grab our train to Arad. In Budapest, during our layover, we eat and check to see if our Prague host has gotten back to us about directions and official permission to stay that night (highly needed, ee....). She hadn't, so we tried to call her from Skype and left a msg. Our bus was to get in at 11:30pm and therefore we needed to have stuff figured out before we got in. The alternative was to book an expensive hostel even though we have the possiblity of having a free place to stay, OR to stay out all night and romp around the town (not like it hasn't been done before. Each city deserves a full 24-hour rendezvous, we decided). Our decision was to go grab something to drink and then check back on the internet breifly before we had to run over to the bus station. When I checked, Brieana had gotten back to us!! (Brieana is a friend of a friend, Tom Wortly, who I met while we were both living in Hyderabad, India) She gave us an address and thorough directions from the metro station. Excellent. Things were set. We maneuvered through the metro, tried desperately to find the bus station, used the last of our Hungarian forents on some drinks, and headed onto the bus.

On the bus, that Hugh Grant movie with Drew Barrymore and the Hugh Grant singing was on, and I started thinking about Naguine (because obviously she introduced me to those god-forsaken [but catchy] songs), and Alex Black, because obviously everyone says he's the American Hugh Grant. Sorry, Alex. It's still funny. I'm pretty excited to see him in Barca.
But for now, I am plotting the ways that I will kill this couple in front of me and I think I will give my hands a rest. You have no idea how long this post is. Well, wait, no. I guess you do. Paul Simon. Peace.

Birfie

Happy Birfday, me!

Charmed in Romania

It is the evening of our first full day in Romania. Yesterday we arrived midday and were greated by Marco and his girlfriend Tanja. Marco is the son of Emilian Taranu's (Emanuel's father) best friend from Romania. He and his sister Cristina live in an apartment near the Universitatea de Vest and this is where we are staying. Marco, his girlfriend, Cristina and her husband are really accommodating and such a sweet group of people. We went out to dinner with them (save Marco, who was still at work) and then went into the city centre--all cities are absolutely gorgeous by night. This was no exception.
When we first walked into the room we would be staying in, which is Cristina and her hubby's room, we were amazed by the lighter collection, or altar, in the room. Totally weird. We learn later, at dinner, that Cristina and her husband work in sales and work for JTI, Japanese Tobacco International, under which products like Camel and Winston operate. The lighter collection now made sense. Cristina's husband used to work for Coca-Cola, turns out, and he hated his job. He worked long hours (would often come home around 8-10 pm) and the work was difficult. He eventually quit because his schedule was so terrible. There is a large Coca-Cola plant here around 10km outside of the city. This was really my first time hearing from a real person right in front of me, the terrors of the Coca-Cola industry. I had been educated about it at Oxy, but this was the real thing. It's true--Coca-Cola is a moral-lacking company that cares little about its employees. I am glad that he was able to find another job. He seemed quite unhappy and a shade of gray came over him when talking about his previous job. I wonder if there was more there than he spoke of. I kind of got the feeling that there was.
Also at dinner we chatted with Tanja about bikes. Tanja is in the Green for Bicycles Club in Timisoara, which promotes biking and campaigns for infrastructure and city development that is bike-friendly! She was very proud of her bike and passionate about promoting bike riding. It seemed like the organization contained a lot of young people, but she also mentioned that there were some older folks who came out for the group bike rides and attended the weekly meetings. She claimed that there were around 3,000 members on their Yahoo page. For more information about biking movements in Timisoara: http://www.greenpacks.org/2008/10/24/romanias-green-side-bike-counting-in-timisoara/ . I get the sense that Timisoara is a more progressive city, with the large influence of the University and all of the young people. It also has a history which seems to paint a picture of this type of character. The first city in central europe to use electric street lamps, the city in Romania where the people rose up and overthrew Communist dictators (http://www.timisoaraguide.com/history/revolution.html - some illustrative photos here). We also saw an art exhibit on the second day in Romania (today) that promoted environmentalism in the country and critiqued the disdain. [Also on the note of environmentalism, go Europe for having airdryers in bathrooms rather consistently instead of paper towel.]
The second day in Romania, Alison and I took care of personal chores like washing clothes, etc. and then had a picnic in the park with an excellent bottle of romanian wine, walked to the centre of the town, tried on Italian designer clothing (why not?), spent a lot of time at the tourist office trying to figure out how to get into the mountains and how to make our trek to croatia.
We are now sitting in a square in town near a museum surrounded by a bunch of cafes. Birds fly everywhere here which is really poetic, and the church bell has been ringing for a good three minutes. Not sure what that means.
We leave for the Retezat Mountains tomorrow, stay for 3 days and then make the epic, long trek to Croatia. Wish us lots of luck.

Fun? National Poet of Romania, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihai_Eminescu , http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poeti_tr/eminescu_eng.php . There's a statue of him near the town square.

Delayed Slovakia, Vienna, and Budapest

Not long after crossing the border of Hungary, Alison and I find ourselves in the 4th largest city in Romania: Timisoara, “the city of flowers”, the “first free city” in Romania. Timisoara is where the Romanian comunity overthrew their communist dictators in the week long violent riots in 1989 (check out Wikipedia: Romanian_Revolution_of_1989) . More interestingly, Timisoara is the birthplace of my dear friend Emanuel. He lived here only for a few years as a child, but I figured that if I am going to Romania, I ought see his city; and thus, for better of for worse (“Why are you going there?!”) we find ourselves here.
I have absolutely no conception of time here. I am without a time-keeping (ha, keeping!) device and therefore am unaware. Consequently, the many filled days that have quickly passed since my last post seem like a quick blur and I can’t even believe that time was passing or that it existed or that it is a thing that runs the world. Because of this huge gap in my blogs, I owe you back-up stories. And so we begin.
The last time I wrote we had only spent one day in Slovakia and I was just beginning to ease into Europe and understand it all. I think that now that we are moving further east and into areas that are less western European and that aren’t a part of the EU (and therefore haven’t taken on a lot of the same EU things that all EU countries like to have), the culture finally feels to me to be distinctly different. We have been moving progressively into less western-feeling culture and I think where we are now (Romania) is the most drastic of a cultural difference from what we’re used to.

Slovakia ("BUMmin' Around"), and 24-hour Vienna trip: The remainder of our time in Slovakia was excellent. Once again, I can not stress how nice it was to stay in someone’s house and to break into traveling so easily with the wonderful accommodations of the Blahovas. So I begin with the second day: This day we decided to go into Vienna with Maja and her friend Jenni. We packed a picnic lunch and made the drive from Slovakia to Austria and into Vienna. We first went to the Schönbrunn (fatty palace where the Hapsburgs lived), remained mostly in “the gardens” because they were so beautiful and we had our picnic here and then the tired Maja and Jenni (and also the non-tourists who have done this before) stayed around while Alison and I trekked up to the top of the hill and looked at the view of Vienna. Then we trekked around on some little trails and chatted, enjoyed the beauty, and met a very adorable little girl in a pretty dress and hat who was lost but eventually found her mommy. After the palace we went into the city proper where Alison and I once again went off on our own and explored the impressive St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It is just absolutely gorgeous and officially my first piece of stunning European architecture. We also got to go inside which was sweet because we haven’t gotten to do that at all places. One of my favorite parts of that church is the roof, which is surprisingly colorful and a really interesting style. We then strolled around Vienna, exploring small side streets, making our way to the Museums Quartier, attempting to penetrate their glorious library (hard without a card but cool to look at from outside!), saw other cool old buildings, had dinner outside in front of their grand parliament building (there was an film festival going on and a bunch of food). We met back up with the girls only to learn that Marie’s friend Clay had called Maja’s phone while we were gone and we promptly made plans to meet up with him and Maja and Jenni went back home to Slovakia while Alison and I made the decision to “figure out” how to remain in Vienna until the sun comes up.
We met up with Clay at an open café in the middle of the Museums Quartier and had some drinks. Clay is amazing and Alison and I got along with him really well. I’m super glad I got to meet a good friend of Marie’s. I now know that she was in excellent hands while abroad and that is good. Clay, Alison and I then walked over to another bar, Donau, and around 2am left to find Clay some kaiserkreiner (some sausage thing wrapped in bacon that Marie used to rave about) at a food stand and after quite some walking, we found it, Clay left, and Alison and I attempted to penetrate the Viennese night. Per Marie’s recommendation, we searched for a place called Flex, which was apparently open until quite late, but we got royally lost and couldn’t find the place for the longest time (it is in such a secret location, Marie!). Eventually, we made it, and grabbed beers and danced to that crazy Euro techno awesomeness. We made some friends who wanted us to continue partying with them when the club closed, but after their other friend “Yemen” came up to us with greasy hair, looking like somewhere in between a car salesman and a ring leader (of a circus), we definitely declined the offer. On our walk out, we ran into an Indian and a Pakistani guy (“excuse me…you look…are you Indian?” ßthat was for sophie. They find me everywhere ahh!) who wanted to help us on our 24-hour game by inviting us to hang at their place. Although the Indian guy was very sweet, saying things like “we are like family because you are also Indian”, we know that travelers must always be on their guard, so, no mother, we did not go with them. Instead, (and this is the much safer option, right?) we just roamed around Vienna allll night. We went exploring, wrote a joint poem, crept up into a fancy hotel and ran up to the top floor to see if we could catch the sunrise (we couldn’t), saw St. Stephen’s at its finest (sunrise), and then found a very nice man at another hotel who helped us out with figuring out how to get back to Bratislava that morning. Around 6 am, we left. The story doesn’t end there, though, because we get on the train and the train stops at some place and then turns around and starts going the other way (WTF?) before it has gotten to Bratislava. We asked around the train and we were told to get off at the next stop and hop on the next train heading east. We did. And we were in the middle of nowhere and then I started my period and then we feared that a train might never come because there was only one track and how could one train be heading west while another train is heading east on the same track? But it came! Hooray! And we arrived back in Slovakia, tried to figure out the phone to call Maja, and she picked us up all cheery and wonderful like always. We slept the whole day.
Although we had partied hard the night before, we knew that we had another celebration coming that night. Maja and her friends had been planning on having a party that evening and when we woke up, we basically got ready for the party and went over to her friend Milan (or Hugo)’s house and drank a Slovakian liqueur with peaches in it (real ones in the bottle) and sang many songs while Hugo played the guitar adorably. Her friends are really fun and Alison and I really liked hanging out with them. We left the apartment and went down into the center of town to a place where we could dance. Hugo is a crazy guy and, accordingly¸ a crazy dancer and we spun around many times in circles. Then everyone needed fresh air so we went walking and running and spinning some more and made our way to the big castle on top of the hill in Bratislava where we had sweet views of the city at night (all cities are just gorgeous by night. They are so much kinder; you can taste a sweetness).
The following day we went swimming at a lake with the whole gang and said our goodbyes. The evening found Alison and I in the city for dinner and for WiFi where we planned a little bit more of our Budapest trip. We would leave in the morning. When we got home Maja, Alison and I stayed up chatting and sharing photos of important people in our lives so that Maja could get an ample life update. Bed ensued.

Budapest ("Boyfriends, Baths and Bikes"): Budapest, Budapest. Absolutely amazing. Breathtaking. Awe-striking. Unforgettable. Happy. Intelligent. Creative. Teeming with life—good life. People soaking it up. So we changed our plans quite last minute and instead of going to Romania and\then going Hungary, we chose to go to Hungary first (it seemed to make more sense according to the people we were talking to in Slovakia). We tried really hard to find another couchsurfer who could accommodate us at the last minute but that day we seemed to be failing so we booked a hostel which actually ended up being pretty\excellent. Arriving in the Budapest train station, the station was gorgeous (go figure), but the walk in the heatheatheat with huge heavy backpacks, not so fashionable.We found Casa de la Musica (hostel), moved in, and then got advice on where to exploring the city via stroll. Oh my god were we blown away. I wish I knew more about the technical term for architecture, but I don’t. There is just such a mix of interesting buildings in Budapest and these gorgeous buildings are EVERYWHERE. It is not just a few of them that are stately and impressive in the centre of town, but these buildings that seem to capture you as if they were universes of their own, were every and anywhere. And of course I like then when they are slightly falling down or not entirely being kept up in immaculate condition because it gives a sense of reality and time, things actually being lived in and used, building that show the face of their identity and of their country, what it has been through. All different colors, all different feelings, all different styles. It’s like a unique architect took this ONE building into his hands and it was his little baby and he made it the best it could be. It’s like every one of them is like that. I’ve never seen this before. We strolled around a lot and eventually grabbed dinner at this place where our waiter stopped being nice to us when we specifically asked for tap water instead of the mineral, sparkling and bottled stuff he was trying to sell us (oh, America). He then became our “bff” in Mallory and Alison lingo. We still refer to him as such. And then, super-Americanly we brought out leftovers home (people don’t do that) and tried to take it easier that night by not going out (we were rather ridiculously exhausted) and attempting to write stories only to find ourselves chatting with some boys from the hostel over bottle of wine. One of the boys we met at the hostel works in Spain (San Sebastian) and I chatted with him for a little bit about that endeavor and I got his info (hopefully I didn’t lose it. I think I did). It was around this time that I started thinking about going to Spain earlier than later (like after Helsinki, France and Portugal) and heading there right after Berlin!
In Budapest, we did quite a lot, but we were also spending time trying to figure out couchsurfing. The first night we got an email from a CSer in Budapest who gave us a phone number to call. He was quite elusive on the phone and I was so very confused and intrigued. Sure, sure. We always have room, he said. He and a girl host people at “The Place”. He said to come into the cottage, that he most likely will not be there, but there will be a key on top of the fireplace and a note underneath explaining “how things work”. Enjoy “The Process”, he said. Hmm. We ditched that because we looking further at their profiles and it was the sort of stuff like “dancing like fireflies in eachothers’ hearts” “the glorious force of etenarnal souls ahhh” (c_____ shit, sophie) and it seemed like it kind of ran like a cult where the group had to self-govern and like forage together and stuff.
We just didn’t want people telling us what to do and we weren’t into intentional mystical soul-opening encounters in isolated communities where they are just too enlightened to deal with you other, normal drone-slave people. Maybe if we’d had more time in the country it would have been an interesting experience, but our time was limited and it was therefore not on our map. Luckily, Josezf came through. On Day two, Alison and I walked around the city, crossed the Danube river from Pest into Buda. Budapest is divided into two parts. Pest is on the eastern side of the river and Buda on the west. Pest is the newer, more cosmopolitan part of the city and Buda is older, has castles and caves and is more residential. Most tourists, at least budget tourists, stay over in Pest, though traveling between the two is quite easy. Al and I had a picnic on a bench in front of the huge St. Stephen’s Basilica in Pest (we randomly found a bench and it happened to be there). We snagged spots on a free tour about communism in Budapest and I am embarrassed to say that, although the information was really interesting to both of us, when we stopped for a little lecture in the park and got to sit on the grass, both Alison and I began falling asleep. We were just so tired. Oops. We actually decided to leave the tour in the middle and we went back to the hostel where we figured out where we would stay for the night, dipped in the pool (a plastic blow up thing) with one of the guys that work at the hostel and chatted about Romania, then had a dinner of cheesecake and lattes (because we wanted to). The cheesecake was weird.
After dinner, we were planning on moving our stuff out to Joszef's apartment, but when we shared this new information and his address with our hostel running friends they were skeptical. The area, although only only a few blocks away from our hostel, is filled with tricky gypsies and Alison and I were planning on walking by foot around like 10pm with huge backpacks to draw everyone's attention. So our plan became that I would ride on the back of our friend Alex's motorcycle and him and I would check out the situation. The situation was okay, Alex and I decided and then the three of us walked over to Joszef's, Alex left, and Alison and our new friend chatted, checked out some stuff on the internet, talked about music and film (Joszef is an "indie" music buff).
The next morning Alison and I spent the day at the thermal baths. The thermal baths that people still use today in Budapest are Turkish. They are indoor and outdoor in these really gorgeous old buildings, and it's kind of a like a huge huge huge public pool complex, only the baths are mostly heated. There was a whirlpool, fierce sauna, an ice shredder thing where you brought ice into the sauna and put the ice all over yourself, let it melt while you also melt in the sauna, and then there was a freezing cold bath outside of it to counteract. Check out? http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/things_to_see/thermal_baths . That night Joszef made us salata de vinete, a Romanian dish that I used to eat with Emanuel a lot. Joszef is originally Romanian and I mentioned my connections to the country, dropped the name of the dish, and we made it for dinner that night. Afterwards the three of us went out to explore the underground music scene at some reallyreally excellent venues, open garden bars, and a club underneath a pool/fountain thing in the middle of the city that had a clear roof so that you could see the water above. The music was good, but the clubs excellent. Budapest has a really delicious night scene and Alison and I made like 2342352 boyfriends there. There were all of these fights that night because all of our Hungarian boyfriends were finding out about each other and getting pretty upset. We felt bad but obviously can't help it. The night ended around 3am.
On the morning following, Alison and I shopped for a picnic, rented bikes and rode around the city, eventually landing on an island in the middle of the Danube where we had a lovely picnic in the middle of a park. We then rode to the other side of the city, to Buda, and explored the castles and the castle district a little more, and chatted about our experiences abroad last year and all of the social and political issues that we still haven't been able to get out of our heads over "American coffee" (the cheapest on the menu. Go figz). Afterwards we made Joszef dinner (our little present to him), and, because we had to wake up early, spent the evening planning Romania (aka figuring out how to get there), and then watched a really excellent film that Jozsef recommended, Factory Girl. Andy Warhol was Slavic, don't ya know.

A Clockwork Narancssárga

Hi all. I am in Budapest, Hungary and leaving for Romania tomorrow morning. We have been so incredibly busy here that my posting activities seem to have become obsolete. I can not possibly relay the informatino of everything that has been happening here, but I can retell a few of the highlights and then catch up to you in detail a little later (if possible, right?).

-Many fun and new friends in Bratislava, including late night romping around castles on hills, dancedance parties, and lake swims
-a 24-hour no-sleeping escapade on the streets of Vienna
-BUDAPEST. It is SUCH an amaízing city: so romantic, creative, stimulating, beautiful, comfortable with itself, and ever-changing. It is a really fabulous place. I hope to come back here and I could see myself living here. We changed our plans the last minute, traveling from Slovokia to Hungary instead of Romania first so at the last minute, we had no place to stay. We found an excellent hostel and made quick and fantastic friends with the awesome staff--a bunch of fun young guys from the city. We spent the remaining time actually couchsurfing with a last minute dude named Jozsef. We was sweet and we had a good time with him. Highlight activities: the thermal baths (this huge beautiful complex of large, heated Turkish baths--both indoor and out), bikeriding around the city and to an island in the middle of the Danube, frollicking around the castle district in the Buda hills, amazing night clubs (open air gardens), fun music, cheesecake for desert (?), cobblestone, breathtaking (literally) architecture, and endless picnics. The architecture here is so phenomenal--more on this when i have time. Also, more on everything when i have time. you know i like thorough posts, but havent the time right now.

all my love to you all on the other side of the ocean. romania tomorrow for 4 days, then croatia until the 9th, then prague till 13th, then berlin till 17th, then either helsinki or directly to ESPANA!

I said don't give me the brush off; this is big

Aug 23, 2009

Currently listening to: Where do you go to my (lovely), Peter Sarstedt (Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack—which is really fascinating, because, as you will see in my post, this fits eerily well with the content of this blog….it’s a French song in a movie about three American men traveling to India. We get the west meeting with the east, their uncomfortable co-occupation, traveling, and the inevitable searching and learningàthe mission of their journey. Hopefully I come to such enlightening conclusions, as well. Just like the movies, si?).

First, flying. Josh and I took off early in the morning on Megabus to Chicago, mostly sleeping along the way while I also snuck in Kevin’s traveling mix from time to time (which was really good, mister). We stopped for a break somewhere in the middle of Illinios, where all the megabuses usually stop, and we were right near a cornfield. Josh and I saw it appropriate to walk into the cornfield until we could see nothing but corn around us and sky above us. It was a first for both of us that we needed to check off the list; and plus, it was a good tribute to the Midwest. One last little hoorah for our home. (Hi, St. Louis!)
In Chicago we navigated our way to O’Hare, endured many hours until our 9:55pm flight (which we worried we would be delayed, seeing as the weather was rather mischievous that night). The sleep in the flight was the worst sleep of my life—this was because the armrests were waaay too damn low. If they had been higher, like on most other airlines, I could have rested my head on it and gotten some freakin shut-eye. Instead, maybe an hour of sleep for a flight that left at 10pm and arrived in London at 11:15am. Not the best. In London, Josh and I boogied around the airport for a little doing this and that and then departing from each other’s company: Josh into London, and me to the central bus station where I waited for Alison, was hit on a by a British boy who was trying, obstinately, to dress like an Italian, and my first few hours observing Europe and hanging out with pigeons (so London, right?). Alison arrived (!) and we grabbed a quick bite, then hopped a bus to the Stanstead airport and flew to Slovakia. I passed the H out before the plane even took off. Maria greeted us at the airport with a favorite Slovakian snack (yum), we chatted (or is it chat, here?) until the wee hours and then, bed. Maria’s family is really sweet and her place is very nice. She is the most amazing host.

Today, technically our first day in Slovakia, we, of course, got a slower start (jet-lag). After a slow morning/afternoon of traditional Slovak lunch that her mother prepared, we headed out to visit an old castle about an hour away. Thoughts on the castle: Do I not like visiting any places that exhibit or demonstrate ornate wealth? It just kind of made me sick, upset, and completely guilty and stupid for spending time out of my life being there. I mean, I can’t believe how these people (royals) lived and how ridiculous their lives were. How could you ever feel human if all you did all day was “lie in bed day and entertain your visitors” (actual quote)? I’m serious. Will I be seeing this all over Europe? I imagine yes. Will I be feeling this way about everything?—I asked myself, then, what am I looking for in Europe—honestly? What I wrote in my private journal in response to this question was honestly: fun and adorable charmingness, I guess, like little alleys and cobblestone, music on patios, and cafes and colors, architecture. [I know I sound like a ridiculous, idealistic, and ignorant idiot, but after India, what can one expect?] Time envisioned prior: okay, now where does that get me. Perhaps in time I will learn that it is not about the intention or the reason but what I find. Does it not matter where I am, but what I’m doing? If so, then I don’t know: in the larger sense.

I keep thinking back to India, my last, most intense, and longest travel/international experience ever. I keep understanding a lot of my trip here by my trip there. Trying to understand myself as a traveler by the difference; trying to understand the world by the difference. The difference: obviously countless things. Notable things of the day: sheer number of people (all of the everything that that affects. It’s really amazing and I never realized that before—the affect of all those people, of mass populations, limited space), intentions of the people, downtime, how wealth relates to leisure, safety, organization and sanitization, things taken for granted. India was “so difficult, yet humble”, I wrote in my journal. Today, perhaps, I learned more things about India than I did about Slovakia and Europe. Isn’t that really interesting? Wow.

After the castle, we went back to Maja’s house and did some email stuff that we needed to do in order to prepare for the future of our trip; and then, into Bratislava. We toured the city at night with Maja’s friend Jenni (spelling?) and took some fun pictures. After dinner at a pub, the four of us met up with two guy friends at another pub, laughed, moved to our third pub of the evening where we played mean games of foosball (“table football”. Loosers had to crawl under the table) and called it a night.

I am already feeling very effected by things—just by new space and difference (though not stark—Europe is nowhere near uncomfortably different) and the lack of all the people in my life and the energy, day to day, that I usually have (energy as in energy intake from my surroundings, ie activites, people**). I already feel a small loneliness and an isolation. I think a lot of this has to do with the language barrier and the absence of typical activities throughout the day that I like to do. Dan, I had some song from the mix you gave Alex in my head all day, so my thoughts were often with you (hi! How’s grad school??). The true song of the day award goes to David Bowie’s Sound and Vision. You little bitch, you, torturing my mind for a good 10 hours. 12 hours. Good song, though. I used my senses of sound and vision quite a lot today, fueled only by David and his fabulous inertia. I don’t know why I said that. I think it’s cause I wanted to end this blog entry and didn’t really want to have to think about how to end it, so I just wrote something that didn’t quite work in order for you to want me to go away. So here I am, going away. Bye, everyone. How are you, good? Catherine, how’s the job/training? Naguine, New York? Any developments? Etc. Etc. You can all write comments on my blog and we could communicate back on forth on subject. Wouldn’t that be nice. Okay bye!!

Diving Deeper

Two candles flicker by my bedside and I wonder how much longer it will be until the next candle-flickering bedside moments in my life will ever happen. Base-less, intention-less, homeless for months means few times of comfort. Tonight (and today) under the stress of more preparations that inevitably abuse my precious bank account (buying like 1,000,000 things), the unnecessary freak-me-out (for Kevin: freakmeowt) over preparation that formalized travel calls for (felt whilst browsing so many travel books)—and then my realization that, oh, I’ve done NONE of this—and then all of this drama with my computer (which really freaks me out because setting up a computer overwhelms the hell out of me). Put all of that on top of waking up on the wrong side of the bed—tired and head full of some rather unpleasant dreams—and the emotional stress of leaving and ending and the need to prepare for loneliness (a good thing, perhaps, for this clinically social girl), and you’ve got yourself my day, the weird way that I ended it, and the strange things that I must have done and said. Anyhow, here I am, and, after talking to Marie, my mom, Kevin, and myself, I have this to say (to myself and to you):
· I am leaving not to leave things but to find things. Thus I leave nothing bad and everything good, which means it will be hard, but beautiful. Finding things is hard and painful, too, because this process of goodbye and then easing into unsure waters is not always the most comfortable task. There are times in my life when I find this thrilling, however, and I have no idea if this will be one of those times. Additionally, I am beginning to enter the transitional stage,


and this stage is awkward, like puberty: awkwardly in between, unwelcome, unfitting, unclear, but absolutely necessary. Para crecer.
· Money – this stresses me out like no other. Money will be spent in Europe. I must spend to survive. I must travel wisely and economically, but not get an ulcer because I am burning cash. Additionally, and Sophie knows I’ve learned this, being a stickler with money is good and necessary, but you must also take care of yourself and taking care of yourself might call for money to be spent. If so, let it be spent. It will keep be happier and healthier, keep me going for longer, and help me enjoy the experience, keep the good.
· In similar vein, I need to chill. I have actually been really chill all summer and suddenly this stressfulness has come back over me. I feel like I have to be really in control right now in order to step my foot on to the plane and plop myself into the great unknown. I feel like I have to be together in order to plunge into madness. I don’t know if that’s the best way to go, but I feel it’s wise; it’s what my Self is telling my self to do (I think it is in that order..?).


Ideas for blogging:
-thinking of reading either one philosopher or one novel from each country while in the country and then commenting on it/(inevitably) incorporating it into my life and such.
-Al and I were talking about doing a “Europe in 3 weeks on 1000” kind of schpeal
-something more personal
-something universal (ultimately more marketable)

I like the literature theme. It is me and it is delish. Also, how about recounting all the characters I meet, daily, and taking a photo of every important person I meet? Maybe I could have a travel journal where everyone I meet writes a very short note, or contributes a drawing or something to it. Sure, it’s been done, but every thing has (duh).

Preparation

Planning and preparing, already, are the hardest part of this trip, or perhaps any trip for that matter. Despite the fact that I am intentionally directionless, there are quite a few logistical and technical matters that I must be entirely in control of before I depart. I am tired, but also these tasks imbue me (weirdly) with a in-understandable energy. A sort of energy in my exhaustion, an inertia in my disintegration. The countdown is 5 days. Friday morning I head out on a big bad bus for 5 hours, make my way to Chicago, and catch a flight that night to London. From London, I immediately make my way from 1 airport to the other and hop on a plane to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Last night we began the festivities of leaving. Josh and I threw a little goodbye party in the barn and backyard and I passed out after attempting to drink Chartreuse at 4:30 in the morning/spilling it all over myself [waking up with strangely shaped, crinkled shorts]; woke up at 1:30pm feeling like utter shit. Sorry, Eman, for disappearing into my house but I was clearly down and out. The party, however, was really fun. Mom and Harold hung out for a bit, various loads of people showed up, and everyone was merry. Thanks for coming.

Tonight, I embark upon the long journey of packing, I interrupt with a short bike ride (because the weather is unbeatable), and I go on a walk with Kevin.