The Back in America Blues

So I knew there'd be a post-trip funk, and here I am...

First of all, it's a sad day because of Chandler, and I don't feel like elaborating. It just is. Taylor will attest that he is an international friend, so it qualifies for the blog.

Secondly, two-thirds of the elusive triple peanut are back in the States. Only Lady remains. Rob and I are back to the grind. I have been for almost two weeks, actually, but somehow Rob's return this week makes me think of it differently. It truly does feel as if my leg of the trip were a million years ago - a world away - and yet I got back less than two weeks ago. I'm back in my ordinary rhythm, and it's weird.

In the wake of this trip I realize what extraordinary friends I have - those with whom I traveled and those to whom I returned - and what amazing memories I have to fall back upon when my life seems so boring and ordinary and frustrating. (See, homebodies, what travel can do for you!) I also know that I am not going to be satisfied unless I have at least one international trip a year from now on. I can't stop researching my next adventure - literally. I've been incredibly productive at work this week, but that hard work has been interspersed with a disproportionate amount of compulsive Googling and reading about Central and South America (and chatting with Lady... sorry, boss!). I think it's just a necessary mental escape from my cubicle. And many will tell you that I always live in a hypothetical, idealized version of my future that almost never comes to pass - and yet I'm sort of obsessed with it, and I don't know why.

(I realize I'm not making much sense... I think this 9% pumpkin beer is getting to me after all, and I'm just damn tired...)

Speaking of being back to the grind, I now must sign off and depart to pick up Kim to head to a very American big-box retailer to buy groceries (but NOT WAL-MART!!!)... ah, routine. Mindnumbing.

Trapped in my own version of Hell...(an irrationally angry lady vent)

After walking around the streets and museums of Warsaw unable to communicate with people beyond the level of "one student ticket, please" and "where's the bathroom?" one might think being in a room filled with native "English" speakers would be a blessing. Unfortunately, when those native English speakers are self-important Aussies, hearing a language you understand could not be more annoying.

On one side of the room, there is stereotypical loud female Aussie entertaining five obnoxious male Aussies (correction, four aussies and one irishman) who act like 16-year-olds drinking beer for their first time. On the other side of the room, there are a couple "more mature" Aussies who can't tell stories without shouting at the top of their voices. (And, by definition, there is not intellectual content to justify their enthusiasm. Undoubtedly, their stories revolve around drinking and being drunk.) There are a few quiet, if not absolutely uninteresting girls in one corner (passively watching and thereby contributing to the exhibitionism of the obnoxious young Aussies) and the only non-English speakers (German speakers from what I can hear) have managed to sit next to me and chomp pretzles in my ear non-stop. (Pretzles are a genius invention and I love pretzles, but they're made in such a tiny, easily edible shape for a reason--so you can put the whole fucking thing in your mouth at once, not so you can nibble at it piece by piece.)

It's happy hour in the hostel bar, so ordering two beers at a time is cheaper than ordering one (two for 7, one for 5). Without any shame, I ordered two and sat down with both of them. I suppose I could make an excuse and pretend to be waiting for the absolute wanker aussie of them all, my roommate, but I would like to share a beer with him like I would like to allow a piranaha to suckle at my left breast.

Fuck! When did "travel-happy" turn into "I hate you all (and your Aussie accents, too)"? Perhaps I'm just hungry and on the verge of low blood-sugar mania, but since I have been eating (biscuits, go figure), I think it's something else. Perhaps it's just the architecture of the bar, which seems to make things echo with no end. Or perhaps, I'm bitter because tomorrow I return to a place where I used to live and I envy all these Aussies who go out and "travel" for years and years without any remorse about not productively contributing to the world. ( I wish I had more time in Warsaw, and I wish I had more time to travel!) But in all honesty, I think the novelty of meeting new people has warn off. I'm no longer interested by the tedious details of the lives of tedious people who are not intelligent and don't even pretend to take interest in intelligent (or even pseudo-intelligent!) things. (Then again, what can one expect? These are the same people who look at travel like a to-do list--done that, done that, need to do that, etc.--and treat life in foreign countries like arenas for competition with their countrymen?)

The lesson from this hostel (which I chose on the basis of good review and free wireless) is: unless you want to eat and drink with wankers, don't go where the guidebook tells you. Read the reviews, but trust your gut and go where you want to go, stay where you want to stay and sleep in a room with people you don't immediately detest from the first moment of introduction.

On that note, it's time to remedy the sitation: Na zdrowie! (I've moved on to my second beer.)

Ich bin ein jelly donut

This last week has been an exercise in non-communication. It's weird how different a travel experience is when there is no one to talk to, not least some who speaks the same native language.

I'm having a great time in Berlin but I am pretty ready to come home. Not for the normal reasons you might think - e.g. abundant ice and water, free refills, BBQ (ooh, BBQ...maybe I better scratch that last one), English speakers (there are plenty of those here...just no one I would want to talk to), but reasons pretty personal to me. I miss having friends to talk to. I miss having a home base that feels like home. I miss Chandler. All that sort of thing. I think as I age and my life has settled down a bit, my need to travel constantly has abated a bit. Don't get me wrong, I still love to travel, but I miss home more quickly. I have more to come back to now, which is in my mind an even better reason to travel in the first place. Oddly enough, I don't miss American food at all. I have decided to wholeheartedly embrace the European eating habits, which means in Germany eating lots of deli meat and cheese at breakfast, wurst with (way too much) ketchup as a late lunch/snack, but for the most part, small manageable portions. I actually went to an Indian buffet last night and gorged myself, let that be a lesson that you should NOT ever go back for a second plate, not least if you're not still hungry. Stupid American tendencies...

The Peanutopolis! mix has gotten some good use, as has another mix I created a few months back. Both are great for travel, I've decided. I'm happy that B&S has a specific association now, by which of course I mean the Eastern Europe train extravaganza where we went splitter-crazy.

I ended up not making it to Dresden - I couldn't find a train that took less than three hours (Lonely Planet advertised two) and by the time I got there it would pretty much have been time to come back. I ended up S-Bahning it to Potsdam, which was a cute little suburb which had a nice palace complex (with yet more plundered Egyptian artifacts) and some great gardens, if you like that sort of thing. Very nice but to be honest all the old buildings are starting to look alike. Probably just as well I didn't get to Dresden as I probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I might have earlier in the trip.

I am kind of excited about my send-off activity tonight...tomorrow is German reunification day and they have had a festival set up near the Reichstag for a couple of days. I think I'll head up there and see how they do July 4, German style! I think the actual moment of reunification is tonight at midnight, if I get indications as such I may stick around a little late!

OK - I better sign off - until I'm back in the states (or if I get really bored this evening), signing off!!!

Crispy Rolls and Communism

There was a temporary exhibit of policital cartoons from the 1980s at the entrance of the Museum of the History of Warsaw. The artist created some captions to help explain the cartoons to people who did not live through the era, and I found one of them particularly funny. It said:

"Everyone (except him [Minister Krasinski]) knew that they (crispy rolls) can't exist in socialism, because it's either a socialist economy or crispy rolls. Both are never found anywhere in nature at the same time."

On the surface, it sounds like just a silly little remark--crispy rolls and socialism are incompatible in nature--but the sentiment definitely touches upon some serious issues surrounding socialism. Do we suffer for our social/economic ideals or feed the people? And should we suffer, how far are we willing to go?

It's hard to imagine that the people I see on the streets of Warsaw--the old men hobbling along the cobblestone pavement with hunched backs and felt caps--lived through the whole Soviet experience. For me, the two lives of Poland are not compatible. There's the Poland I see today with cute cafés, affordable restaurants and readily available wireless internet and the former USSR of another lifetime. The two do not exist on the same timeline for me.

But for the people who live here, the War (WWII), the destruction caused by the War, the process of reconstructing the city, socialism, the Soviet Union and breaking from Soviet oppression are real, tangible memories--events that happend during their lifetime and events that continue to linger in their memory. Even the Lech Wałęsa I saw speak at Lawrence is not the same Lech Wałęsa who liberated the nation, the same Lech Wałęsa featured in photographs at the museum. They're different and divided in my memory. There's too much distance between my experience and perceptions of the events for my mind to comprehend that I am in a place that was part of the Soviet Union during my lifetime. (And now the new imperialists are "liberating" central Europe with their own "evil empires." Wherever socialism gives way to capitalism, Starbucks can't be too far away...)

Back with the boys...

Last night was flashback to middle school. I met two crazy astronomers who were absolutely obsessed with a little-known sexperience called "the rusty trumpet." Rather than describe this event in detail, I'd much rather leave it up to your imagination (and your goofle fetish), and dwell instead upon how hilarious I thought it was to spend over an hour (this is no joke) with two grown gentleman--both working on their PhDs in radio astronomy--who related every part of our conversation to the rusty trumpet.

That, my friends, takes talent. It's one thing to make a joke; it's another thing to keep the joke running for hours. And it take even more talen to keep such a ridiculous, childish and utterly mindless joke running for hours.

I must confess, though, I was torn between my desire to contribute to the immature adult humor (it seems like an oxymoron, but I don't reckon it is in this instance), passively accept the immature adult humor or get the fuck out of the room before my entire brain melted from the utter ridiculousness of it all. In the beginning, I was bit uncertain--didn't want to laugh too hard for fear I might be the butt of the joke. Then, recognizing the ridiculousness, I joined in full force and laughed my little ass off one rusty trumpet joke at a time. And THEN, just to take the piss, I started making jokes, which was the ultimate in fantastic times.

At one point in the evening--the only time we were able to move away from rusty trumpet talk--we were actually laughing at farts. I honestly cannot remember the last time I laughed about farting (perhaps it hasn't happened since the inception of the peanutour in 2004). I suppose you never know what you will encounter when you stay in a hostel, and last night's activity was a first in so many ways. Definitely a night that will make for a lifelong travel memory. How many times have you gone from complete stranger to laughing about farting in less than 6 hours? I don't have the stats, but I doubt it happens very often, and when it does, it is a rare and blessed event.

I am such a child and it's fantastic. Rusty trumpet (tee hee hee).