What I Did in London

Me. I've been having such a great time in London!
Friend. That's great, Laurie! Did you go to Buckingham Palace?
Me. Oh, no I didn't, actually.
Friend. Oh, that's too bad. Did you make it to Madame Tussaud's wax museum?
Me. No, I missed that one unfortunately.
Friend. Well, what about Big Ben? Surely you saw Big Ben.
Me. Um, I think I saw a corner of it from across the city?
Friend. Well you must have gone inside St. Paul's Cathedral.
Me. No.
Friend. Windsor Castle?
Me. Nope.
Friend. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre? The Royal Mews? The Sherlock Holmes Museum? The Jack the Ripper tour??
Me. Um.
Friend. Laurie, what did you do in London?
Me. Uh, I watched 19 episodes of Twin Peaks and the entire third season of Sex and the City. It was great! You should totally go to London!

p.s. I'm going home tomorrow.

London

There's this Regina Spektor song that I listened to a lot last summer. I listened to it a lot. I listened to the whole album a lot but that song in particular. Driving through the rolling green fields of Wisonsin, windows down and music up, it took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from jumping out of the car and dancing on back country roads. That song felt like something in the inner recesses of my soul had been plucked out and set to treble clef and bass clef.

I haven't heard that song since last summer, I don't think, but I heard it a few days ago. I was stirring my coffee when it came on the radio and I thought how funny if someone had told me, while I was driving through the rolling green fields of Wisconsin, that the next time I'd hear this song I'd be stirring my coffee in the kitchen of someone's East End flat in London. And I wondered if some people are never surprised by where they find themselves.

I hope that all of you have the opportunity to surprise yourselves.

I'm staying with the nicest boys in the world. I met them in Berlin through a mutual friend (who I hadn't even seen in probably three years) and they're putting me up for seven whole nights in London. They're actually cat-sitting for a friend and the cat's staying with them the exact same dates that I am. They've put up a survey on the message board: "Which new housemate do you prefer? (please tally at will)". So far I'm winning by a landslide but then I clean up after myself and the cat's a bit ornery.

So far:

• trashy British television (a close relative of trashy American television)
• falling asleep on a double decker bus
• oohing and ahhing over baby farm animals
• fantastic exhibit at the Tate Modern
• brownie-baking and tear-inducing Noel Coward film
• frozen pizza on living room floor watching Sex and the City
• people-watching on a wall in Soho at twelve in the morning
• getting lost in Hampstead Heath Park (which, in addition to being the loveliest place imaginable, also has the cleanest park restrooms I've ever seen)
  

It's nice to be with people again.

I was thinking yesterday that there are so many people in the world who I love, love, love and who love, love, love me, too. I bet you have a lot of them, too, and isn't that the nicest thing in the world? It's nicer than sunning yourself in a park in Amsterdam, toes buried in the grass. It's nicer than strolling down a wide, tree-lined boulevard in Paris with flowers up and down the sides. It's nicer than watching the sun set over the Charles Bridge in Prague, city lights painting the sky one by one.

All of those things are very nice, actually, and they are experiences that I hope each of you can have someday if you want them but I was thinking today of that quote from The Wizard of Oz, the one that I never really liked: "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

I never really liked that quote but there's something to be said for it, I think.

The Saga Continues... and Then It Stops

So my housemate's still crazy.

My other housemate and I are rarely home and, when we are, we're quiet as mice at a Cat Fancy convention. We take out the trash and recycling, we wash our dishes instantly upon using them, we clean up after ourselves, we buy household supplies, we barely keep anything in the common space, we're respectful and we always lock the door behind us. We pay our rent.

In short, we are nearly perfect tenants and yet, every single time either of us passes the Crazy Housemate in the hall, she ambushes us (separately, we've never discussed this, I've just witnessed it) with a new list of things we've allegedly broken, things we've allegedly done that we shouldn't have done, and things we should be doing that we allegedly haven't done.

It has become unbearable.

Between her and the Crazy Landlady (who ambushes me with a similar frequency and with similarly inane, made-up issues), I am constantly on edge. I go out into the city and I'm bored and lonely. I come home and I'm bored and lonely and also alternating between hiding from my housemate and listening to her nag me while I stare dumbly at her and wonder if I've wandered into the Twilight Zone or perhaps Candid Camera.

This afternoon, I made the mistake of using the bathroom while she was home. I usually try to avoid that but she seems to be home approximately 23 hours a day. The remaining hour is the time she spends at the grocery store, stocking up on more food to cram into our tiny refrigerator so that my other housemate and I are allotted only enough space for about 1 or 2 food items each.

As I passed her in the hall, I was unsurprised when she called me into the shower room to "discuss something". The issue of the hour was that the shower is apparently broken. I probably wouldn't use the word 'broken' to describe the issue in question. I would probably say that it is a very, very old shower and it does appear that occasionally a drop of water escapes from the hose when it's not supposed to, although I had not noticed this previously.

"It's hard to say that anyone broke it," she must have said a hundred times, followed by the specific implication that I, in fact, did break it, evidenced by the fact that she thinks I am "rough with things" (what?) and that it was (allegedly) not broken before I moved in.

I calmly explained to her that it was a very old shower and it seemed exceedingly unlikely to me that anyone broke it, intentionally or otherwise, and that she should advise la guardienne that the apartment needs a new shower, if the slight dripping bothers her.

She assured me that that would be impossible for various inexplicable reasons and that she really hated to pay for it all by herself and it was likely to be very expensive and it's hard to say that anyone broke it, exactly, but...

And then suddenly it clicked.

She isn't crazy. She's trying to scam me.

And suddenly everything was ok.

"Eva, Eva, Eva," I said and then I laughed and then I hugged her, right there in the middle of the bathroom. And then I went into my room and I packed up every single thing that I own, and I went to the train station and I bought myself a ticket right out of this godforsaken country.

I'm cognizant of my privilege in this situation, of course. There are people the whole world over who are being ripped off every single day of their lives and for a lot more than a 200 euro security deposit and they have no place to run.

But I do have someplace to run. And that someplace is England.

I leave very early tomorrow morning. Walking home from the train station, I felt lighter than I have in weeks, which makes sense given that my pocketbook has just slimmed down considerably.

There are things in this world that Matter and things that Don't. Let's file this one under "D".

Two Roads Diverged in a Wood

I've been keeping an eagle eye on the bathtub. I check it several times a day, as if with a magnifying glass, prepared to scrub and disinfect at the first speck of dirt. Of course, it hasn't been two full days since I cleaned it so there's been no dirt to be found.

This morning, as I left the apartment, my housemate was already scrubbing the bathtub with a sponge.

Yesterday, on the way home, my bus passed a group of three girls on a bridge, posing for a photograph. Just as the camera was about to flash, one of the girls laughed and held out her hand to stop the photo, reaching up with her other hand and sliding her sunglasses to the top of her head. As the bus rolled away, it struck me that for the rest of her life, every time she looks at that photo of herself in Paris, her sunglasses will be on top of her head.

I don't know why that thought occurred to me but I couldn't stop thinking about it the whole way home.

In Which Many Things Happen and Yet Really Nothing At All

It wasn't quite nine in the morning when I'd already had a Day.

My female housemate has been out of town most of the time that I've been living here so it's taken me awhile to notice that she's a complete nutcase.

I awoke at eight o'clock this morning to her yelling at me. She'd just arrived from Nice and she was angry because in the two weeks since I've moved in, she's scrubbed the entire house three times while I've merely taken out the trash, bought toilet paper, washed all of my dishes within moments of dirtying them, and wiped down the counters after using them.

Let me repeat that. She has scrubbed the entire house three times in two weeks. It is a very small apartment and I am essentially the only person using it. I don't know the French word for it but in English I think we would call this 'OCD'. I wanted to discuss her childhood and what sort of repressed emotional trauma could result in such an acute case but she wasn't in the mood and she was still yelling, now about the fact that everytime she gets into town she is exhausted and wants to take a shower but she can't because it's been three whole days since the bathtub has been scrubbed with disinfectant.

Seriously crazytown.

So after a pointless shouting match (France has taught me how to yell at people I barely know, an important skill to have here) and scrubbing the tub at eight o'clock in the morning (during the course of which I did manage to remove the single speck of dirt which had accumulated, you'll be relieved to hear), my coffee had gone hopelessly cold and I had no stomach to stick around and no plans to go to class (we were scheduled to do "skits" today, no thank you).

I walked for awhile and then decided to take a bus to a shop where I once saw a purse that I haven't been able to stop thinking about in the intervening week. This shop is in a touristy area of Paris and it wasn't open yet (things tend to open late in Paris in my limited experience-- take the official opening time listed on the door and add about an hour and a half) so I had a cafè crème at the only open cafè on the street.

Every single person in the entire cafè was American.

Yesterday I was in a dressing room, trying on a sweater, when I overheard a girl talking outside and I was momentarily struck by the strange sensation that it was my own voice I was hearing. I know that doesn't make sense but such was my feeling of connection and familiarity to that voice. My second supposition was that it was the voice of someone I know. It took me probably two or three full seconds to realize that I didn't know her at all but that she was simply speaking English with an American accent. I almost never encounter Americans in Paris, or English-speakers at all for that matter, and for a moment it sounded like music.

Anyway, this morning I heard enough American accents to last me a year. The primary offenders were a group of WASPy 50-somethings. They were a set of three couples and I got the impression that they might have been on some sort of church trip but I may have made up that part.

When I sat down, they were talking (loudly, Americans are famous for talking loudly and I must admit that I am a great offender on this one) about some terrible ordeal they'd all been through and how shaken up they'd all been about it. My first thought was that they'd been in a train wreck, although I don't know why I thought that. It turns out they were pickpocketed.

I have not been pickpocketed, despite the fact that I have taken practically zero precautions against it and semi-frequently do inadvisable things like leave my bag unattended while I'm in the bathroom. I'm not a complete fool-- I keep my bag closed with my arm over the flap when I'm walking, I don't keep money in my pockets, and I only leave my bag unattended if the situation is such that it's virtually impossible that anyone would touch it. I ditched my money belt my second day off the plane.

If I were a pickpocket, however, these people would probably be my first target. One could surmise in three seconds or fewer that these people were wealthy, obnoxious, and not very smart.

The group quickly launched into a full analysis of each of their positions prior to the incident, the various "bad feelings" they'd each prophetically had, and each of their astute observations regarding the "suspicious" character who would later attempt to steal WASPy Man #1's wallet, following a ten page rap sheet of shifty moves and ominous facial expressions. The story went on for a good fifteen or twenty minutes.

"... and then, out came the wallet. I saw him take it out. I hit him in the arm and then--"

"You hit him in the arm?"

"I think I hit him in the arm."

This is one reason why I like to be alone. No to avoid these people because lord knows you can't. No, I like to be alone because I'm afraid of becoming these people. I often feel, after witnessing a particularly embarassing display such as this one, that I should try very hard to never speak again. Better to be mute than to risk ever sounding like this.

"... you know, Ken does a lot of pro bono work."

The husbands are lawyers. God help me.

The cute boy was working at Starbucks again today. I hope he appreciates the number of subpar lattes and ill-executed pastries I am suffering through for him. Today I bought a cheese and vegetable wrap because it was lunch time and because it had the word 'vegetarian' in the title and, as this was our third date, I thought it was time to tell him that I hope to raise our children vegetarian. I hope that sentiment was subtly but clearly conveyed through my "Bonjour" followed by my "Merci" and then my bungled mumbling as I attempted to say "Au revoir" and "À bientôt" simultaneously. I sat in a purple arm chair and wrote in my notebook, trying to look both pensive and single.

I bought the bag, by the way. Actually, the original was pink and this one today was green, which I liked better. The first time I saw this bag, I thought it looked like the perfect "Paris" bag. I didn't buy it because I assumed that I'd see a thousand more just like it but I never did.

As I was signing the receipt, a woman walked up and asked the shopkeeper if mine was the last bag of its kind. It was. We were all very sad. Well, they were very sad and I was kind of sad but also thrilled because this is the bag to end all bags. It's the sort of bag that gives the wearer the sense that she can be a whole new person, starting today. I have a few bags like this and they've never lost that feeling for me. Every time I wear them, I feel filled with possibility.

Speaking of possibilities, I went to see a movie today. It was Raisons d'Etat which I selected because I liked the name. I think it was called The Good Shepherd when it was released in the States. It was very long. It was so long in fact that by the end of it, I'd somehow contracted the flu. Also, I think Angelina Jolie was miscast.

I discovered that the Starbucks boy speaks English. I can't tell how much but when he wrote my name on the cup of my frappuccino, he said, "Ah! Laurie!" as if he was pulling a rabbit out of a hat. He makes my name sound like abracadabra. I hope he got the part about our kids being vegetarian.

The World's Worst Zen Proverb

I was walking tonight, nose in a map, when I almost subconsciously noticed out of the corner of my eye that an old man walking just ahead of me was struggling to drag something down the sidewalk. Absent-mindedly, I reached out and grabbed the back of it as I studied my map. He said 'Merci' and it was about half a block before I realized that I was walking down the street, carrying a filthy old mattress with a homeless man. I still didn't know where I was so I walked a few more blocks with him until I figured out where I had to turn. I think he was blind in one eye.

I found Europe's largest Chinatown tonight by accident. I seem to find everything here by accident and whenever I try to find something on purpose, I can't. I think I just wrote the world's worst zen proverb.

In other news, I went back to class today and the cute boy still works at Starbucks. He is still cute. The only thing I have said to him is "Je voudrais un grand latte avec soja, s'il vous plaît" but when he handed me my drink this morning, he said "Un grand latte avec soja" and then added, I thought meaningfully, "For Laurie," pronouncing my name in that incredibly charming way that French people do. It actually had not previously occurred to me that it was charming but it truly, truly is.

Hypothetical Questions, Famous Paintings, and Corporate Coffee. Oh, and Decisions. Big Decisions.

So, hypothetically, the five second rule. Does it apply to the Paris sidewalk? Additional hypothetical information: you have not personally witnessed anyone urinate on this specific section of sidewalk and it's a really, really good pain au chocolat.

Hypothetically.

So I did a funny thing this morning. I woke up early, got dressed, bought my weekly metro pass, rode the bus for about half an hour, and got all the way to the Grands Boulevards metro stop before it occurred to me that I didn't know where I was going. My second two weeks of school are at a different campus and my only directions were: "Grands Boulevards Metro Stop". No walking directions, no street address, no description of the building. I guess I assumed it would be obvious. It wasn't.

I wasn't that broken up about it, to tell you the truth. This is actually the third day in a row that my plans have been thwarted as a result of my bad luck, my ineptitude, or both, and all three times I've left the incident feeling not frustrated or annoyed but instead almost giddy with happiness. That's Paris for you, I suppose.

It's funny how every part of Paris feels like an entirely different city. The area that's currently hiding my French school looks exactly like parts of New York except with broader sidewalks and more crooked alleys. There's a Virgin Megastore and about seventy-three Starbucks and the most common variety of Homo sapien is White Man in Business Suit.

Speaking of Starbucks, I've patronized exactly two multinational coffee chains since my arrival in Europe. The first was a Gloria Jean's in Budapest and the second is the Starbucks where I am currently writing this entry by hand. I fear I may be back here as it's (presumably) on my way to school and the barista behind the counter is incredibly cute (why couldn't he ask me out on a date?). Also, I actually tasted the sweet taste of soy milk today for I think the first time on this trip. The smell of cow's milk makes me a bit nauseous after awhile, even in coffee.

Budapest marked my first ever visit to a Gloria Jean's and my only prior knowledge of one was the one in the Brandon mall where I think my friend Bri worked in high school. I didn't even know it was a chain let alone that there would be one in Budapest.

As I walked in with my Australian friend Leah that I met in Krakow, she exclaimed, "Gloria Jean's! I didn't know they were a chain! I thought they were just in Queensland!"

Anyway, this Gloria Jean's (aside from being expensive even by American standards-- oh, Budapest, you little minx!) was by far the largest and most beautiful coffee shop I have ever seen in my life. It looked like a palace. This Starbucks where I am sitting in Paris is probably the second biggest and second prettiest coffeeshop I've ever seen and it too looks like some sort of palace or maybe a fancy hotel lobby. I've seen a few McDonalds here that were similarly glamorous; it must be how these American franchises attempt to compete with European cafes.

I'll be the first to admit that I do not have a refined appreciation of art. There are things I think are cool and things I think are boring and the vast majority of 'art' falls into the latter category for me. That said, I felt compelled to go to the Louvre today. Maybe it was guilt from missing class.

It was a spontaneous decision so I didn't have my camera. There were a few times when I momentarily lamented its absence but when I imagined what poor justice any photograph I could take would serve, I decided it was for the best.

The Louvre is nothing like I expected. From the outside, it looks like a small, unimpressive building with the words "Musée du Louvre" stamped on the front. But past that misleading façade is an enormous and beautiful interior courtyard complete with fountains and the giant glass pyramid so famously described in The Book That Shall Not Be Named.

The museum itself is grand in every possible way. In fact, it's almost too grand. Every single inch of that museum is so old and beautiful and impressive, so crawling with people and camera flashes, that it's a bit deadening to the senses. You feel after awhile that you're being clobbered to death by beauty and genius. Oh, and tourists.

That's not to say that you shouldn't go. It's free for children under 18 and only nine euro for adults and I was so close to the Venus de Milo, I could have reached out and touched her (although I don't think the gentlemen wearing army fatigues and carrying automatic weapons would have appreciated that).

I saw the Mona Lisa, like the Eiffel Tower, by accident. I was in an especially crowded room and I turned to escape the crushing mob and there she was, right in front of me, view unobstructed.

The Mona Lisa is famously unimpressive in person so I won't bore you with a description of her boringness. I gave her a good look because I was supposed to and I moved on, like a zillion tourists before me and a zillion tourists after me.

Walking through the significantly less crowded outer hall of Italian paintings, I passed a hundred paintings that could have been the Mona Lisa. Why her and not them? They've probably spent the past 500 years wondering the same thing.

I wasn't overly excited by the Venus de Milo either. I mean, it's fine but there were a zillion other perfectly nice statues that looked just like it. Winged Victory, however, is so much more beautiful in person than she looks on the cover of postcards. Unlike the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, the crowd gave her a wide berth, never standing closer than five or six feet although there was no guard rope.

My favorite section by far was the African art (all African countries were in one section together, except for Egypt). It was the only art that moved me at all and nearly every piece was incredible.

The only piece outside the African art section (aside from Winged Victory) that really affected me was Agnolo Bronzino's "Portrait d'homme tenant une statuette". I passed it twice and I don't know if this was the original intent but every time I did, I felt a chill go down my spine.



Oh, and I decided once and for all to go to law school in August. Surprise! What's not a surprise is that I am, how you say, ze 'crazy'?

Same Sunshine, Different Street

NYU just sent me my Orientation schedule. I guess my cancellation hasn't been processed yet. I shouldn't have opened the document, but I did and now I'm sitting here crying in this stupid internet cafe in Paris and I don't even know why.

These past few days have been really hard. I came to this internet cafe today to buy a new plane ticket home, feeling heavy with disappointment and failure. But then I got here and read Jennifer's blog comment and I wonder if that isn't the right thing to do.

I took a walk this morning to try to clear my head. There was a moment at the intersection of rue Verginaud and rue Auguste de Blanqui when I stopped to decide if I should turn right or left and I was suddenly struck with the realization that it didn't matter in the slightest. It was a profoundly existential moment and rather than feeling liberated by this freedom, I felt asphyxiated by the possibilities.

A boy asked me out on a date last night. And this time it wasn't a construction worker or a guy in a Peugeot in front of the Moulin Rouge. No, it was much worse than that. It was someone I actually know.

My would-be suitor is a guy who works at one of the supermarkets by my house. I go there pretty much every day of my life and he works there pretty much every day of his life so it makes sense that we would become acquainted. He's very cute and he speaks a little English and he asked me out on a date last night and now I can never go to that supermarket again. Which is unfortunate because they are the only supermarket that sells my favorite gnocchi and my favorite tomato sauce and my favorite brownies and if I'd known that he was planning to ask me out on a date, I would have stocked up.

I imagine that, for normal people, being asked out on a date by a cute boy is probably perceived as good news. Certainly not cause for WII-bunker-level gnocchi purchases and making shocked faces to oneself while walking home (do you make shocked faces to yourself after something ridiculous happens? because I always do).

I think normal people would probably also enjoy spending a month in Paris. It's Paris for goodness sake, not the Mojave Desert. There's no conceivable reason for me to feel as lost and alone as I do.

I say no to things all the time and I never know if I'm saying no because I'm brave or if I'm saying no because I'm scared.

I emailed NYU and asked if they could wait until Monday to process my cancelation. I don't know why; it doesn't make the slightest difference if I turn right or left. It's the same sunshine and the same shade, just a different street.

On Saying No (and Yes, too)

"Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want."

-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Ever since I read that book, this line has been floating through my head like a pop song you heard in the grocery store or maybe like a spell. I find it hard to differentiate between these two. Shyness and shame, that is, not pop songs and magic spells.

Well, actually.

I started writing something today and maybe you can finish the last sentence for me. And then maybe I'll write some more. What do you think?


It was a Tuesday when I noticed the plants were dead.

At least, I think it was a Tuesday. That may be one of those 'facts' that one invents later to convince oneself that one's memory is accurate and irrefutable. Anyway, it was definitely raining because I remember that I'd planned to go out for a baguette and noticed that it was raining too much for a baguette. It wasn't raining too much for wine but then I had wine.

That's another thing I remember. I had wine.

And the plants were dead.

The fact that the plants were dead isn't important (well, it may have been for the plants), the important thing is that was the day I decided to _____________________________.


Y'all, the Tour de France is going to be here on Sunday! That's probably going to be annoying! But exciting! And annoying! Simultaneously!

Time Flows from a Hole in a Tree

Everyone told me that these two months would fly past me but they've been dripping by like wax. Remember when I was in Amsterdam? That was, what-- four, five years ago?

I still have three weeks before I leave and I'm kind of ready to be home although home will present its own set of challenges since I'll be job-hunting, trying to sell my car, preparing to move, and applying to grad school all at once.

I've decided with 99% certainty that I'm moving to New York by the beginning of October. I never realized until this trip how much I need other people and there are so many people in New York that I love. That feels like the right place for me right now.

Today, I bought a brand new notebook and a brand new black pen so that I could start working on my writing sample. I sat down at my desk and poised my brand new pen over the first clean, white page...

And that's it.

I forgot that I am awful at writing fiction.

Oh man.

In other news, I don't know if I'm still going to my french class or not. I spent most of the day listening to french radio and writing out verb conjugations in a workbook while eating chevre and baguettes. That felt more productive somehow.

From Someone Who Would Know

"... if there is anyone who can go through the process of writing long law school applications, get accepted and then not go, it is you."

And that's that.

I realized that it was the process of applying to law school that I needed to do and that brought me to a place where I needed to be (physically and otherwise). The actual going would have been overkill.

I skipped class yesterday afternoon and again this morning. Maybe I shouldn't since I'm paying for it but I feel like I'm getting more out of just sitting in my apartment, filling out workbooks and listening to french radio. Class was starting to make me surly and difficult. Oh, you know how I do.

Gross Sandwich

Oh, here's a gross sandwich you can make at home!

Ingredients:
* 1 cheap french baguette
* 3 slices of really creepy french fake ham
* 2 tbsp. dijon mustard that you thought you could leave out of the refrigerator for a week and now it's turned sour
* stinky cheese

Bon Appetit!

My Apartment in Paris

Also, I added a few photos to one of my entries from Saturday.

Proof that I'm Really in Paris

It's funny that when I finally saw the Eiffel Tower, I saw it by accident. Who sees the Eiffel Tower by accident?



Anyway, I really am in Paris, I guess.

French

One of the nice things about living in Paris is that even when it's raining and you're abominably late for the bus and some crazy person on the street is screaming at you in french... you're still in Paris.

I've started to kind of hate my french class. I think it's good for me but there is nothing fun about spending thirty hours a week doing something that you're really bad at. It makes my brain hurt. And this is terrible for my french but I have earphones in my ears almost all the time now when I'm on the train or when I'm walking down the street. Sometimes I just feel like I have to shut out the french or it will start dripping out of my ears like wax.

I've committed to making a decision about law school by Friday although I think I already know what that decision will be. When I decided to go to law school, it felt like swallowing a vitamin. This time, it's going down like honey.

The Catch

One of the only good things I've discovered about not speaking the local language is that I can't understand what people are saying when they yell at me.

I had a friend over for lunch this afternoon and it had been raining so she'd left her paraplouie (umbrella) in the hall. Halfway through our cheese and baguette, she says, "I think someone's knocking on your door."

I answer the door and it's my gardienne (landlady). First of all, let me just say that this lady is totally nuts. Today was actually my first real encounter with her but I could tell she was nuts just from passing her in the hall. I think what tipped me off was the guy who follows her everywhere playing the Wicked Witch of the West theme music on a boombox.

"Blah blah blah in French! Regardez de l'eau! Regardez de l'eau! Blah blah paraplouie blah blah!!"

'Regardez de l'eau', for those of you playing along at home, means 'Look at the water' and the water to which she is referring is the tiny puddle that has formed under my friend's tiny umbrella all the way up here on the sixth floor.

Totally bonkers.

So I say 'Merci' because I can't think of anything else to say and I take the umbrella and I close the door. Ten minutes later, we're enjoying our gnocchi with aubergine-tomate sauce when there's another knock at the door. It's la gardienne again and this time she's with her 900-year-old husband who is, like, shaking his cane at me and she's stamping her foot and now they're both yelling at me in french about l'eau and shaking a rag at me and the whole thing is so intense.

So I just smile and wave and say "Merci! Au revoir!" and close the door.

They're probably going to kill me in my sleep.

Keys and Lightbulbs

This morning, while eating my mushy banana and 'American-style' peanut butter, a light bulb went on in my head. Of course, if you've known me for any length of time, you probably know that light bulbs go on and off in my brain with the frequency of a strobe light in a discotheque.

Nevertheless, this light bulb went on which was good because I'd been sitting in the dark for a long, long time.

Whenever people tell me they're going to graduate school for creative writing, I always think it's the goofiest thing. I mean, can you think of a less practical subject to study in graduate school? But here's the thing I recently learned: a lot of people go for free. And sometimes they even get paid. They get to write all day long and get feedback on their writing and work with this community of other writers and they sometimes get paid for it.

What?!

Of course, at the end you just have an MFA in Creative Writing which might come in handy some day if you run out of toilet paper but the point is that you probably grow, like, way a lot as a writer, right? And sometimes it's free!

So, anyway, that was my light bulb.

And now I almost officially do not want to go to law school which kind of makes me want to throw up if I say it out loud, which I haven't yet.

I mean, here's the part that I left out of yesterday's "wah wah I don't know if I want to be a lawyer" post. I left out this part because I was embarrassed but maybe I'll just tell you now anyway.

Ever since I was a little kid, I've thought that someday I'd be a Writer (whatever that even means) but it was always something I could put off like losing weight or learning how to play guitar. Like someday I might wake up and miraculously have an idea for the next Great American Novel (or even the next Mediocre American Novel) and until then I could just keep doing whatever else to bide my time.

But law school isn't biding your time. Law school is making a commitment to one possibility (for at least probably 8-10 years) and sending all of those other possibilities up to Possibility Heaven.

And that's really what it comes down to. I've been mourning the death of possibilities.

Paris has awakened something, I think, or maybe Paris is just where I happened to be when the thing woke up on its own. Things feel possible here that never felt possible anywhere else. And I feel a little more grown up, too, although that's hard to explain. I feel more ready somehow but I'm not sure what it is I'm ready for.

So this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking maybe spend a year working somewhere and save money and take the GRE and apply to graduate school. I am, like, awesome at applying to schools now. I have a hard time thinking of a worse place to save money than New York but I'm thinking I might move there anyway because I don't want to scrap everything at once. I want to keep at least part of the plan.

And I don't need to go to the world's most prestigious graduate school. That's the beauty of a toilet paper MFA: no one's going to care anyway. I just need to go somewhere free or very cheap, somewhere that I'd like to live for a little while, somewhere that I like the professors, and somewhere that hopefully doesn't make me go back to the good people who wrote my law school letters of recommendation. Eep.

Of course, there's something else in all of this and if you've known me for awhile, this something else may have already occurred to you. I say 'no' to things a lot. Most people have a hard time saying 'no' but I could teach a graduate-level course on the subject. I say 'no' to schools, I say 'no' to jobs, I say 'no' to relationships, I say 'no' to Istanbul... ok, I've only said 'no' to Istanbul once but the point is: I say 'no' all the time.

And if I'm honest with myself (which I rarely am, I suspect), I'll admit that I get a kind of high from saying 'no'. There's something weirdly exhilarating about saying 'no' to something to which it should be really difficult to say 'no'. It's an active decision, it's a strong statement, and there's something that always feels so (deceptively?) right about an active, strong decision.

So there's that.

And maybe that's what I'm doing for the hundredth time. And maybe I'll do it a hundred times more until I'm old and grey and alone with fifteen cats and a life full of no's to wrap around me like a quilt.

J'Adore

This is the weirdest thing. I've been knocking myself out using French keyboards for the past week and now I'm in an internet cafe that actually has an American keyboard and I've forgotten how to type on it. FRANCE HAS RUINED ME.

In other news, every time I turn a corner I fall more hopelessly in love with Paris. I can't believe how much I love this place. I also can't believe that I've really forgotten how to type on an American keyboard. This is seriously so weird.

J'adore my neighborhood. It's a mix of wide boulevards and quaint, winding streets, ivy scaling the walls and flowers in every window. There are trees everywhere, everywhere. The streets are filled with people-- old men and children, students and beggars and businessmen, people with skin of every possible shade, wearing every imaginable style of dress. Today I wandered into an Asian grocery store and when I walked out the back door, I found myself in the middle of an open-air market that seemed to stretch for miles, the air thick with the smell of fish and the sound of voices shouting in French and a thousand other languages.

The best part about my neighborhood is that no matter how long I walk, no matter how many twists and turns I make, no matter how many alleys I slip down, when I'm tired of walking and ready to be home, I look up and there I am, like some kind of homing pigeon.

I've been studying French like a crazy person. Actually, I'm not sure how much a crazy person would study French so maybe that's not a good analogy but I've been studying a lot. There's a shop next door to my apartment that sells primers for little French kids and I bought one that's designed for seven-year-olds. It's perfect. I struggle with some of the examples because a seven-year-old French kid would actually have a better vocabulary than I do (they would know the word for rabbit, for example) but I'm learning.

I haven't been carrying my camera with me lately so I don't have any photos for you but if you just picture the most beautiful city you can imagine, that's what you would see.

Ma vie à Paris

Although I haven't had time to write in here, rest assured that my paper journal is bursting. This is a funny word to use but my life here feels sort of nourishing. I imagine that the sort of person who would use that word should be wearing flowy skirts and lighting incense all over the place but there you go. I love the feeling that every day I know so much more than I knew the day before and I've already sunk into my routine like a cozy armchair.

I wake up in the morning around six-thirty when the sunshine knocking at my french doors won't let me sleep any longer. I heat a cup of coffee on the stove and drink it in a bright orange mug with creme fraiche. For breakfast, I eat yogurt and sometimes a banana or a fried egg.



I leave my apartment at the same time as my neighbor across the hall and we say 'bonjour' and ride the elevator together and sometimes she says something to me in french and I smile and then we say 'au revoir' and she walks up rue de Tolbiac and I turn onto rue Verginaud.

I take the train to school; sometimes I read but most days we're packed in like french sardines and I'm lucky to get a seat at all. When I get to school, I eat a package of madelines and a cafe au lait from the vending machine (so much for my healthy petit déjeuner) and then start my day with four hours of french lessons and then eat a sandwich in the park or on the square by the Corentin Celton metro station.

I finish my day with a three-hour french workshop and then I take the train back to the 13th arrondissement, stopping at every super-marchè on the way to pick up the items I've added to my list throughout the day. Once I'm back in my apartment, I make dinner (it's been gnocchi with eggplant-tomato sauce most nights). I usually eat alone but one night I shared dinner with my housemate who is an American man in his sixties who works in Washington and is studying French at the Sorbonne.

After dinner, I read until about ten-thirty when the sun goes down and I can't see the pages anymore. Then I sleep for eight hours and wake up the next morning and do the whole thing again.

I really like my school although I find french pronounciation très difficile. I don't like saying words that require you to clear your throat for periods greater than forty seconds. I'm actually able to pronounce the words better than most of my classmates (thank you, theatre training!) but so far I can only do it when I'm being silly and pretending to be Gerard Depardieu. I'm working on it.

After just a week, I've found that I can read the advertisements in the subway and, walking through the city, I'm beginning to understand snatches of conversations around me. It's like looking at the world through a fogged-up window and watching as the glass slowly clears.

I miss Madison terribly. I miss my home and my friends and my coworkers but almost more than anything I miss the city itself. I miss the trees on East Johnson, I miss the way the sidewalk on Ingersoll felt under my feet, I miss how small the world felt with my face bundled in a scarf and my boots sinking one by one into the snow.

I miss when the world felt small.

I love this city to an incredible degree. I live within a few blocks of an organic co-op, an internet cafè, a vegetarian restaurant, a grocery store that sells the world's most delicious brownies, and Europe's largest Chinatown. My apartment is flooded all day with sunlight. I have wood floors and a kitchen and even my subway stop is pretty. It's called Glacière which I think is a beautiful name (although I think it means refrigerator) and it's above ground so you're standing among trees and sunlight while you wait for the train. A man outside sells crepes in the afternoon.



Anyway, life here is lovely for the most part. I hope yours is lovely, too.

The Wrong Key

So you have this set of keys. And you have a lock that needs opening. So you try every key to see if it's the right key but none of the keys fit and you're wondering if the right key is even on this ring when, suddenly, one slides right in. Voila!

So you try to turn the key.

And it won't turn.

C'est impossible! The key fits! This must be the right key! But it won't turn. And you can't figure out why so you keep trying to make it turn but it won't, it won't, it won't.

Here's a clue for life: no matter how perfectly the key fits, if the key won't turn, it isn't the right key.

So I've spent the past few days trying to turn a key. I've sweated buckets, I've worn my fingers raw, I've thrown out my shoulder trying to turn this key and I realized last night that no matter how well the key fits, if it won't turn then maybe it's the wrong key.

It started when I took a practice LSAT online because I was bored and I did suprisingly well. I did really, really well. I was feeling a little disillusioned with my job so I filled out some applications and, bingo, I was accepted to a prestigious school in a wonderful city where many of my friends are living. I visited and everything about living there felt right to me. Going back to school felt right. Living in New York felt right. I even found a roommate that I was excited about living with. Everyone I knew rallied around this decision-- what a prestigious school! How fun to live in New York! Best of all, I'm told that lawyers spend their time reading and writing and researching, three things I enjoy doing.

The key fit.

As most of you know, the debt associated with law school (and my law school in particular) is immense. After just my first semester, I'll have a bright red -$40,000 attached to my name and at the culmination of my degree I'll be in the hole somewhere around $150,000. If I'm lucky.

Everyone says not to worry. With a degree from such a good school, I'll have my pick of firms and most of them pay $150,000 a year as a starting salary. For those of you who know me even a little bit, I'd like for you to engage in a quick visualization exercise if you wouldn't mind. I'd like for you to try to picture me in a business suit with a briefcase and pumps, working at a big corporate law firm. Ready? Go.

...

Could you do it?

Because I can't.

My law school currently offers a generous loan repayment program (the program could be pulled or changed at a moment's notice but probably won't be) under which if you work as a lawyer for a non-profit organization for five full years at a qualifying salary, they will pay back your loans for you. It's a great program but it could be changed or pulled at any time and, further, it means working full-time as a lawyer until I'm at least 33-years-old and I know this makes me sound like a dope but I'd probably like to be a stay-at-home mom by then.

I can picture myself as a law student but I can't picture myself as a lawyer. And I realized that I'm not sure I want to.

The thought of not going to law school next year is terrifying to me. What would everyone think? What would I do instead? Would I regret my decision once it's too late? But mostly it just makes me sad because I've been looking forward to going back to school and moving to New York. It sounds like so much fun and I'd be lying if I said the prestige has nothing to do with it. There are people in my life who I think respect me now in a way that they haven't for a long time and that's a hard thing to toss aside.

But the key still won't turn.

All of Europe is Obsessed With This Product

I don't care how hungry I get, I am never going to be hungry enough for roasted chicken flavored potato chips.

A Room with a View

My hotel's a bit dodgy but the view from my room is magical. I didn't know how to describe it to you in words so I just took a picture.

Paris, pt. deux

I feel like I'm in Beauty & the Beast. Walking down the street, I'm treated to a chorus of men calling out to me from the doors of their shops: Bonjour! Bonjour, Mademoiselle! I've had the opportunity to practice saying 'Bonjour' at least 1800 times.

Everyone warned me about Istanbul but no one warned me about Paris. Walking down the street at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, no less than four different men hit on me in a stretch of less than two city blocks. One actually stopped his vehicle on the side of the road to ask me to have coffee with him. No joke.

My trip to Paris was not without incident, unfortunately. The journey involved three currencies, five forms of transportation, and six cities and there were several minor and major incidents that very nearly prevented my arrival. But I did make it and that's the important thing.

My hotel's a bit of a dump but Paris is just lovely. Nearly everyone I've met has been friendly and helpful. In every other country I've visited, it's been like pulling teeth to get me to say so much as 'hello' in the local language. I always try but then I get tongue-tied and shy and revert back to English. Here, I find it surprisingly easy to converse in French. I mean, my side of the conversation is composed entirely of oui, bonjour, merci, au revoir, s'il vous plaît, and Où sont les toilettes? but I find myself saying those things with a surprising amount of confidence.

I stumbled upon a farmer's market this morning and wanted to buy everything. Unfortunately, I don't have a kitchen yet and I also don't know the French names for numbers or produce. I think I actually do know how to say 'I would like three eggplants' but the truth is that I would not like three eggplants so that seemed like a silly thing to say.

I love Paris for several reasons, most of which are inscrutable to me, but here are four of the most persuasive:

• Paris is absolutely beautiful.
• I speak French so much better than I speak Dutch, German, Czech, Polish, or Hungarian.
• I am a Paris Metro superstar.
• I found 10 € on the sidewalk today!

I also found an apartment. Well, to be more specific, Lauren found the apartment for me (on Craigslist). I went to see it this afternoon and it's amazing. It's sunny and beautiful and in a great, non-touristy neighborhood and it's cheaper than student housing or a homestay through my school. I move in on Tuesday.

School starts tomorrow and I am tres excited. Did I mention that I'm going to be in class almost thirty hours a week??

Paris

Excerpt from an email from Malka:

... I know that's not why you're REALLY going to Paris. Yeah I figured it out.

You're on the run from an international conspiracy of evil meat company executives. They've gotten wind of your upcoming "Worldwide Guide to Fake Meats and Where to Find Them" and they know it will take the world by storm and ruin their profits forever and force them to abandon their lives of decadent luxury.

So now they've sent their minions and ruthless assassins after you, with instructions to stop you at any cost. To hide your tracks you've been changing itineraries every 10 seconds, buying lots of extra tickets and enrolling in schools which are actually full just to throw them off the scent. Like right now, there's a whole pack of minions and ruthless assassins wandering around the Budapest train station wondering where you went.

It helps that you've become a master of disguise with your brand new tan but I think you should also wear a new wig in every country, and possibly sometimes a fake mustache. Also, they are probably following the smell of delicious tofurkey, but I learned from movies that if you wade through a stream they'll lose the trail.

So great news for the ruthless minions: it looks like I'm using my ticket to Paris after all. I just called the school and an extremely nice person in the school's office informed me that there is in fact a space for me in the class on Monday but they don't have any available housing on such short notice so I'll have to find my own place to stay for a few nights and then they'll assign me to a host family.

Following a search that was both exhaustive and exhausting, I have come to the conclusion that there is not a single available bed tomorrow night for under $90 in all of Paris. No good.

What I'd really like is to find a flat for the month so that I don't have to live with a host family (that seems so invasive and weird to me although it would probably be good for my non-existent French). I'll keep looking and if anyone has any suggestions for websites to search, let me know. I've already tried craigslist and google searches for "cheap vacation rentals Paris" and that sort of thing.

So here's my itinerary tomorrow: I'm taking a train to Breclav (evil, evil Breclav) at about seven in the morning and then sitting around the Breclav train station (evil, evil Breclav train station) for approximately a billion hours and then I'm taking another train to Bratislava where I have approximately three seconds to change my Czech crowns into Slovakian money, grab a taxi or a bus, and check in for my flight to Paris. My flight gets in to Paris at about 20.00 and then I have to figure out how to get to my (non-existent) hotel.

Wish me luck.

I spent yesterday hanging out with a girl from the UP (go team Midwest!) and a woman from Madrid. I spent probably five or six hours with the girl from the UP (that's the upper peninsula of Michigan for those out of the loop) and it wasn't until after she left Olomouc this morning that I realized that I never got her name.


(from the kitchen window of my hostel)

You should be impressed with me, by the way. I accomplished the nearly impossible today: I shipped a package from a foreign post office. If you've never attempted such a feat, I recommend against it. It's not that the post office is poorly run, it's just that nothing is in English. Anyway, I spent $23 to send home a thoroughly useless package of things that I'll never need again. I hate throwing good money after bad but I'm usually pretty good at throwing the bad money the first time around.

Speaking of throwing money, I'm heading back to Western Europe tomorrow. How about that?

Olomouc

For all of my joking about the Czech Republic, of my three visits to this country, I've seen a rainbow during two of them and those aren't bad odds.

I think I made the right decision in coming here.

On my third visit to the Czech Republic, I am now officially fluent in Hello, Goodbye, and Thank you in Czech. I can't say anything else but I say those three things beautifully. Of course, I always say everything in English first out of habit and then say it again in Czech as if I'm subtitling myself.

I ate a fried egg and yogurt with cherries for breakfast this morning. Yesterday I ate an entire bag of frozen broccoli. Half of it was mushy and half was still frozen but I didn't care, I was just so happy to be eating green vegetables. My hostel has a gorgeous kitchen and I'm trying to take advantage of the opportunity to eat a little healthier than I have been.

Since I arrived in Eastern Europe, I've been on a steady diet of coffee, bread, cheese, and tomatoes, punctuated by the occasional (or not so occasional) chocolate croissant. I don't know if I'll be eating much better in Paris.

The plan is to stay two more nights in my hostel and then take a train to Bratislava and fly to Paris from there. I still haven't heard from the new school in Paris but I guess I'll figure out what I'm doing after I get there. Leigh sent me a link to accordian lessons in Paris which is obviously an amazing idea.

As some of you know, when I was originally planning this trip, I was going out of my way to ensure that my itinerary didn't involve France at all whatsoever. It isn't a political thing, I'm just terrified of French people. Anyway, some of you are probably wondering how I went from refusing to come within 50 km of the French border to deciding to spend a month in Paris. The reason is actually amazingly silly.

I was sitting in a cafe in Budapest with an Australian girl that I met in Krakow when an American woman I'd never met walked up to me and handed me a book and said, "I think you should have this." The book was Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado which was written in the 1950s and is about an American girl who lives in Paris for a year. I don't believe in signs but I do believe in living your life as much like a Hollywood movie as possible so here I am with a ticket to Paris.

Lauren pointed out that I'm not in any of my pictures so I took one of myself. This photograph showcases the lovely view of Olomouc from my bedroom window and also the spectacular tan that is my only souvenier from Budapest.


Onward and upward, I guess.

Back in the Czech Republic

We were nearing Breclav so I stood up and started attaching my bags to myself. The elderly man sharing my compartment sipped his mandarin juice and eyed me thoughtfully. I thought he might be about to speak to me but he didn't.

That's usually when people speak to you, when the train's about to stop. They're afraid to say much before that because they might get stuck talking to you for the rest of the journey, but at the end they can satisfy their curiousity about you without fear of entanglement.Where are you from? Where are you going? That's all anyone ever wants to know.

It turns out that the optimism of yesterday's post was completely unwarranted. Yesterday was a dark day in every sense of the word. We're back to rain again and the people from the school in Paris wrote me back to explain that they'd made yet another mistake and actually I can't come to school there after all and then my train to Olomouc simply never showed up so that I was stranded at the train station in Breclav for hours and hours and hours with a bag of potato chips and an overwhelming sense of defeat.

If there was ever a moment on this trip (and, truth be told, there've been several of them) when I wished that I was with someone, it was sitting on that cold, concrete platform in the rain, tear-stained and beaten down and ready to just give in to whatever life lesson I was supposed to be taking from all this.

The people at the information center in the Breclav train station don't speak any English so obtaining information from them presented a challenge. After several increasingly desperate visits, they managed to convey to me that another train was going to Olomouc (what happened to the first train will remain a mystery) but that I'd have to change trains yet again and I wouldn't arrive at my destination until almost midnight. A seven dollar phone call to my hostel assured me that I could take a taxi from the Olomouc train station to avoid being mugged in the dark.

Lovely.

Many exhausted hours later, I was finally in a lumpy but otherwise perfectly suitable bed in a small town in the middle of the Czech Republic. It felt like a bittersweet success.

People often talk about going on a trip like this to 'find themselves'. I don't mean this in a melodramatic way but I actually feel that I've lost myself entirely. I have never in my life been less sure of myself than I've become on this trip, and that includes middle school.

I think part of the way that we understand ourselves is by a process of forced self-definition. We say 'I am like this' and we say it over and over until we believe that it's true. We say it to our family, we say it to our friends, we say it to ourselves. We say it to nearly anyone and everyone who will listen and by this process we develop an identity that can be put into words.

You may agree with me that we never remember our dreams, we only remember the stories that we tell about them until our false memory of that dream becomes more real than the dream itself. I think it's the same with ourselves, or with myself. It's not myself that I know but instead it's the stories that I tell about myself. The person that I think I know is a fiction.

Anyway.

I'll tell you something, though. If you're going to discover that you never truly knew yourself, I don't recommend doing so on the cold, rainy platform of a train station in the middle of the Czech Republic. If you're going to have that kind of realization, I think an ideal location would be a cushy armchair, preferably with a cup of hot cocoa. Of course, it probably wouldn't occur to you under those circumstances.

So here I am in the middle of the Czech Republic with a plane ticket from Budapest to Istanbul, a plane ticket from Bratislava to Paris, and a plane ticket from Paris to London but no accommodations beyond tomorrow night and no onward train ticket out of this town. I'm not quite sure what to do about all of that but if you've got any ideas, I'm currently accepting them.

This is a nice place, I think, but I haven't really seen it yet. All I've seen is that I have my own bedroom with a door that closes and that is enough to say that I love this town. Last night, the owner insisted on keeping me up to tell me all about Olomouc and its many attractions but I was already half asleep and the only thing I remember was him telling me something about a place that serves chocolate pie and I thought, 'Chocolate pie and my own bedroom? I must be in heaven.'

It occurred to me last night, while studying the illegible graffiti of the OS 4223 that going to law school may be an outrageous mistake. Ok, I know for a fact that 80% of you just groaned audibly (the other 20% are probably skimming this paragraph). I just don't know anything anymore, that's all. I just don't know one single thing.

Maybe to really find yourself, you have to lose yourself first.

I think I'm going to go find that chocolate pie.

Update

I haven't written in awhile because things have taken a pretty intense turn for the worse and I was waiting for the smoke to clear. Unfortunately, things have been steadily getting worse rather than better so I guess I might as well just tell you that.

My first hostel in Budapest was a disaster and I spent my first night here in something like shock. My second hostel seemed better at first but then turned out to be potentially worse than the first one. After an especially bad night, the details of which I am not going to regale you with, I finally started to wonder why I was doing this to myself. I still had four nights in Budapest but I didn't want to stay another minute and the only reason I was still here was because of my flight to Istanbul on Thursday-- a trip that I'd come to dread with every fiber of my being.

So I decided to just scrap the whole thing. I threw out my plane ticket to Istanbul (figuratively speaking, it was actually an electronic ticket), canceled the rest of my nights in Budapest, and booked a train to Olomouc, which is a small town back in the Czech Republic. I booked two nights in a private room so that I could take a deep breath and get my bearings again.

My train left this morning just before ten and if the timestamp on this post gives you any indication, I wasn't on it. I went to sleep early last night and I've been waking up between 5:30 and 8:30 nearly every morning of this trip so I didn't bother to set an alarm. I woke up this morning and it was still dark outside and the seven other people in my room were still sound asleep so I guessed it was probably about six in the morning.

It was 9:45.

So I missed my train. There's another train just before two so I can still get to Olomouc tonight but it's a longer train and I won't get in until almost 9:00 at night which is kind of silly given that I only have two nights in town.

So the other thing I did last night was I finally decided to book a language course. I'd been thinking about it for a few weeks now and I am just really, really tired of traveling. It's not that I want to go home, I'm just sick of museums and coffee shops. I want to be doing something. So I found a four-week course in Paris that looked perfect, or at least good enough, so I booked it and also booked my flights to and from Paris. I was so excited to finally be settling down somewhere.

Unfortunately, I just got an email from the school that they made a mistake and they are actually fully booked. So my count of wasted plane tickets is actually up to three now. And I don't know what I'm doing.

Anyway. It will be fine. Everything will be totally fine.

Update: As you may have seen in my reply comment to Jess, I heard back from the language school and I may be able to get into the Paris class next week after all. Also, I should add that I did meet some cool people here in Budapest and did some fun things (you can see photos on my Picasa account) so it's not like every second here has been a living nightmare. I was just feeling a bit overwhelmed this morning at the string of bad news. I think everything's going to be just fine.

It's Still Raining and My Backpack is Full of Books

For awhile, I was consistently losing weight due to the extreme amount of walking and stair climbing in which I've been engaging. Unfortunately, my steady diet of cheese and carbohydrates has apparently caught up with me as that trend has decidedly reversed.

I only accept partial blame for my unhealthy eating habits, however. Every food product in all of Poland and the Czech Republic seems to have been breaded and deep fried and then smothered in a mountainous glob of cheese and mayonnaise. Vegetables are elusive.

I fell in love today, by the way. The object of my affection is an English language used bookstore called Massolit Books which bought two finished books from me and sold me three more for a shockingly low price. English language books are notoriously expensive and hard to come by in Europe and this place was stocked. It's actually the second most amazing used bookstore I've ever come across (the first being Antiquarium in Omaha, Nebraska).



Tomorrow is Budapest!

Highs and Lows, Part II

I'm feeling much better. I decided to just write off today as a freebie and as a result I've done shockingly little with my time. I spent most of the morning reading in the kitchen (have you read Capote's In Cold Blood? if so, please tell me that it eventually stops reading like a bad Unsolved Mysteries dramatic re-enactment), did a load of laundry, mailed a postcard, and ran an errand at the train station across the street, where I successfully exchanged my night train for a day train.

There is a bounty of vegetarian food here in Krakow but I've had trouble finding fake meat until today when I hit the fake meat jackpot in a most unlikely place. Across the street from our hostel, there is a huge fancypants shopping mall. You have to kind of walk through the shopping mall to get to the train station (it's as weird as it sounds) and while walking through the mall today, I stumbled across a health food store with tons of fake meat! Fake meat always improves my mood.

Tomorrow I'm visiting Wawel castle and maybe the Jewish district if the rain decides to give us a break. I wasn't exaggerating when I said that it's rained every day of my trip. Friday morning I leave bright and early for a delightful eleven hour train ride through Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary and then it's on to Budapest.

Highs and Lows

Krakow is clean, safe, and walkable and my hostel here is pleasant and comfortable.

I am bored out of my mind.

Right now, I'm scheduled to stay in Krakow until Friday at which time I have tickets for a night train to Budapest. I have several issues with this itinerary:

1. I don't really want to spend two more days in Krakow because although it's lovely and the people in my hostel are nice, I'm ready to move on.
2. I do not want to take another night train. Ever.
3. My train doesn't leave until 22:30 but I have to check out of my hostel at 10:00 which leaves me with over 12 hours to wander the city and it will almost certainly be raining since I think it's rained every single day of my trip so far.
4. I am suddenly totally unexcited about going to Budapest.

That last issue is weird because I've wanted to go to Budapest for a really long time and I've heard nothing but good things about it but I'm starting to feel like if you've seen one Eastern European city, you've seen them all (which I don't think is actually true). The problem is that I already have hostels, trains, and flights booked for that time period. What I really want to do is just scrap the whole thing but I think I would lose a lot of money if I did that.

I also still haven't planned the last three and a half weeks of my trip and I have no idea what to do with that time.

Anyway, I'm feeling kind of frustrated today. Some of my hostelmates and I were talking last night about the highs and lows you experience when traveling solo. Today isn't the lowest of the lows but I'm definitely not feeling the greatest.

Krakow

The night train from Prague was not entirely awesome. My bed was surprisingly comfortable but sleeping was a challenge with the non-stop passport-checking and ticket-stamping that was apparently necessary. I'd finally dropped off around four in the morning when I was awakened by a man banging on my door and shouting at me in French that we were at Katowice and I needed to get off the train immediately.

"Allez, allez!"

"Okay, okay!"

I had an hour to kill in Katowice so I decided to venture downstairs into the train station, a decision that was instantly regretted as the Katowice train station somehow manages to be even smellier and more depressing than Hlavni Nadrazi. So I waited upstairs in the cold.

When I got to Krakow, it was cold and windy and threatening to rain, like it's been nearly every day of my trip thus far. I finally bought a coat in Prague, hoping that Murphy's Law would guarantee sunshine for the rest of my trip but instead it just got colder. It was a Sunday morning and I was cold and hungry and tired and my ATM card wasn't working so I didn't have a single zloty to my name so I did the only thing I could think to do.

I went to church.

The service was in Polish, of course, and the cathedral was beautiful. I didn't stay for the whole show because Catholic services always intimidate me with all the standing up and kneeling down and chanting in unison. But it did make me feel better somehow.

Krakow is easily as pretty or prettier than Prague and it's much cheaper and less touristy. In Krakow, I get the sense that there's a life here outside of people on holiday whereas in Prague I got the feeling that if the tourists left, the whole city might collapse in on itself. Keep in mind, of course, that these observations are based on very short periods of observation. For example, I know for a fact that Prague is full of real life Czech people and considering the vast quantity of bankomats, internet cafes, and English speakers here in Krakow, the tourist industry here must be considerable.

Anyway, my point is that Krakow is beautiful, walkable, and inexpensive and you should book your next vacay as soon as possible. The hostel in which I'm staying, Greg Tom Hostel, is wonderful, too. It's lovely and clean and there are no bunk beds and the rooms are spacious and $18 USD a night includes breakfast, internet, laundry, special events, coffee, tea, etc. Last night, a few of us walked home in the rain at around midnight and when we got in, the guy working the night shift sat us down at the kitchen table with steaming mugs of tea and coffee. It's important to remember moments like those (moments when everything is easy and comfortable and nice) when you're having one of those "other" moments.

I've made some friends in this hostel and two of them are Americans. One of the Americans grew up in Florida, lived in Madison, WI for several years, and then lived in New York City, which has been my exact trajectory. Her sister is going to NYU law school with me in August. The other American grew up in Kentucky, went to Oberlin for his undergrad, lived just outside Madison, WI for a few years, and then went to the University of Oregon at Eugene for grad school, which has been my friend Chris's exact trajectory.

It's a small world.

Prague

I arrived in Prague on Wednesday after bawling my eyes out for four hours while finishing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on an otherwise pleasant train ride from Berlin.

Prague has been almost disappointingly normal. I've heard more English in this city than in Amstedam and Berlin combined as the streets are nearly 100% filled with American tourists. I don't feel like I'm in Prague, I feel like I'm at Epcot. I can't imagine living here.

My first night in town, Dan picked me up from the train station and took me out to meet some of his friends. Unlike Ben, all of Dan's friends are Americans so my experience with them was completely different from my experience with Ben's friends in Berlin. The next day, I was out wandering the city (lost, actually) when I heard someone say, "... Laurie?" I looked up and it was Dan's roommate! An hour later, I was sitting in a tea shop when a couple walked in and I looked up and it was Dan's friends Dave and Petra. Seriously bizarre.

Yesterday was cold and drizzly and uncomfortably windy which made for unpleasant getting lost weather. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I did and the whole day ended up being kind of a bust as a result. Today I'm armed with a map and written directions.

Last night, Dan and I went to dinner at a "traditional" Czech restaurant (which was suspiciously frequented by only Americans). We're both vegetarian which kind of limits your options since most of Czech cuisine seems to involve things like "pig knuckles". I ate fried camembert cheese with tartar sauce and fried potatoes. We followed up this healthy treat with Lion bars which are candy bars that are apparently too delicious to be legally sold in the United States. It's basically a Kit Kat bar wrapped in a Snickers bar wrapped in a Crunch bar. I thought I was going to be sick.

At dinner, we decided to sit outside because it was such a beautiful evening but about ten minutes after sitting down, the restaurant was hit by some sort of hurricane. The video below doesn't appropriately depict the EXTREME DRAMA of the situation. The roof almost blew off, I'm not kidding you.



Anyway, ten minutes later it was over and we were treated to a beautiful rainbow over the city as compensation.



Tonight is Dan's goodbye party (he's moving back to the States on Sunday) and then tomorrow I'm off to Krakow.

The Center of the Universe

Ben gave me a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in exchange for my copy of Special Topics in Calamity Physics and there couldn't be a book in the world that more perfectly fits my feelings right now. There are certain books and certain songs and certain films that fit against our hearts like puzzle pieces and this book fits almost too perfectly as I've spilled tears on at least one page out of every three. Today I was reading about the Dresden bombings, cheeks salty with tears, when I looked up and realized that we were sitting at the Dresden train station.

There are so many things that I never think about.

Last night, sitting in the darkened kitchen, clock ticking heavily, we were discussing global warming and the end of the world and Ben asked me what consumes my thoughts when I'm alone. I couldn't tell him the truth and I couldn't tell him a lie so I didn't say anything at all. The world is larger than myself and it's taken me twenty-five years to notice.

Adventure in Berlin

A few days ago, in the Van Gogh museum, I was suddenly struck from nowhere with the thought of a swimming pool elevator, shaped like a cylinder. For three solid seconds, I could think of nothing else and was in fact obsessed with seeing this imaginary thing.

Yesterday, Ben mentioned to me off-hand that there is a cylinder-shaped elevator here in Berlin and it is filled with water. I nearly fell over. I've told this story to Ben three times now but he still fails to be impressed by the coincidence.

Ever since I arrived in Berlin, several times a day as we pass a building, I find myself wondering if it's a hospital. This random obsession with hospital locations gave me slight concern. I don't believe in signs really but what if this was some strange cosmic cross-wire that allowed me to foresee an emergency in which I would have to find a hospital here in Berlin.

Today, Ben and I found ourselves rushing to the hospital. The emergency mission was to rescue a potted plant for Ben's roommate's mother. It's probably best if I don't explain.

On the way to the hospital, we were nearly run over by a Turkish wedding and then we were nearly run over again by a runaway parade float. Today has been an adventure.

The problem with not understanding German (although I do understand sometimes and it's extremely exciting although the only things I ever understand are things like "These are nice windows" and "There is cheese in the refrigerator") is that I sometimes laugh at inappropriate times like when the six of us were piled into Markus's tiny little car and we were hurtling through the narrow, rainy streets of Berlin and Markus mentioned that we were driving into oncoming traffic but he said it in a funny voice so I laughed. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Speaking of which, I've had a vaguely psychotic-looking smile plastered to my face since I arrived in Berlin and I'm not sure if it's dazed confusion or abject happiness. Maybe it's something in between.

Berlin

You know how when you play a video game and then you stop, you can sometimes see it in your head when you try to go to sleep? That's how I feel except that whenever I'm someplace quiet, I hear French and German voices banging around in my head. Except that I don't think they're actually saying anything because I don't know French or German.

It's humbling, by the way, to be out with a group of people who speak a combined total of probably 87 languages but they're all speaking English, which isn't their first language or probably even their favorite, just so that you can understand what everyone's ordering for dinner. Maybe humbling isn't the right word. Maybe it's embarassing.

On my way to Berlin, I spent the first two hours thinking that I was on the wrong train or that I had the wrong ticket and I started imagining how, when they threw me off the train, I might have to live out the rest of my days in the Dutch countryside, foraging for food and sleeping in windmills. When the man finally came and checked my ticket, he just smiled and handed it back to me and moved on. I was almost disappointed.

Here are a few things that I can tell you about Berlin:

First, it is nothing like Amsterdam. Amsterdam is cozy and sweet and Berlin is neither of those things, although not necessarily in a bad way.

Secondly, it is nothing like New York. Berlin has almost no car traffic at all and seems to be almost entirely made of grass. New York is neither of those things, although not necessarily in a bad way.

Thirdly, anything and everything in Berlin can be and is a discotheque. This includes drugstores, power plants, and a fast food restaurant called The Flying Sausage. I told Ben that this would be my angle for this blog post but that's actually all I have to say about it.

Today we bought vegetarian chicken cordon blue from a farmer's market.

Ben's roommate and friends are all alarmingly nice and funny and smart and I've spent a lot of time feeling dumb and self-conscious. I'm hoping this trip will be a Defining Experience that makes me finally, after twenty-five years of abject laziness (note that I've managed to use the word 'abject' in two blog posts in a row and this time I'm using it incorrectly), to finally learn a language besides English. French seems like a good place to start since a lot of people speak it and it's kind of like English and then maybe next time a cute French guy asks me 'Parlez-vous francais?', I can say 'Oui'.

Last Day in Amsterdam

I'd like to live here someday. This city feels like something you want to be part of instead of something you just peer at through the thick, smudgy glass of tourism.

I had an hour to kill today at Amsterdam Centraal so I ordered a smoothie of indeterminate contents at Shakie's. I somehow managed to entirely avoid bringing a change purse to Europe so all of my Euro coins are jangling freely in my purse, begging to be liberated (and I'm sure a few of them have been). As I dumped my change on the counter, one of the coins (to my abject horror) rolled off the counter and into a pitcher of fresh juice.

The woman next to me gasped, then laughed. I was mortified. I instantly launched into a loud American whine rendition of the familiar classic "Oh my gooooosh! I'm sooooooooo soooorry!" The cashier, to her credit, simply offered a classy smile and a "no worries" and then dumped out the juice and handed me back my Euro, now coated in a delightful combination of fresh organic orange and apple juice.

Five minutes later, making my way through the train station and still recovering from my extreme mortification, an attractive guy in his late twenties stopped me, presumably to ask for directions.

"Excuse me, do you speak French?"

I smiled apologetically and and shook my head. "I'm sorry, only English."

"Oh," he said with a smile, "Well, you are very beautiful."

My jaw dropped and I stood there for probably a full second before stammering an insightful, "Oh."

AND THEN HE WALKED AWAY.

My jaw remained in the fully dropped position for at least thirty seconds before I recovered. As a member of the fairer sex, I'm no stranger to the "Heyyyyyy, gorgeous" (usually drawled from a car window), the "Got a boyfriend?" (usually inquired by a fellow passenger on public transportation), and even the rarer awkward-wall-lean-with-stammer at a party. But this may have been my first acquaintance with the hot-French-guy-just-wants-me-to-know-I'm-beautiful-and-then-walks-away.

Ten minutes later, it occurred to me that I'd probably been pickpocketed.

I checked.

Everything's there.

Have I mentioned that I love the French?

In Which I Fall in Love with Amsterdam

Last night, I ended up getting very lost. Not cute, adventurous lost but in-a-torrential-downpour-and-it's-getting-dark lost. I was finally aided by a shopkeeper named Ricardo who pulled out actual maps and phonebooks to help me, all the while asking many a question about my "boyfriend in America".

Today, the weather is beautiful and I had whole wheat toast with Dutch nutella and a hardboiled egg for breakfast. On my way to the Anne Frank house (which I almost found by myself), I got a bit turned around and had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with my nose in a map like a dolt. A woman walked up to me and asked if I needed any help. What I think she actually said was "Something?" accompanied by a helpful facial expression.

I told her that I was trying to find the Anne Frank house (which I pronounce "Ay-n Fray-nk" in my nasal American accent) and she said, "Oh, yes, the Anne Frank house," except she said it in Dutch and then she said (also in Dutch) that she didn't speak much English. She then proceeded to give me directions IN DUTCH which was amazing. The reason it was amazing is that I felt like I was having an actual conversation with someone instead of just being a jerk who makes people talk in English to her. The best part is that I totally understood what she was saying and then I said 'Thank you' and she said 'You're welcome' (I think) and then I said 'Have a nice day' and she said something friendly in Dutch and we went our separate ways.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

So anyway, at 8,50 Euro, I thought the Anne Frank house was a little disappointing. There was a line outside and the inside felt surprisingly sterile and commercial. It was a lot of video installations but they don't have any of the original furniture so maybe they've done the best they can.

There were two things I liked about the Anne Frank house. The first is that the staircases were so steep you had to climb them like ladders and the second is that they had her actual diary in a case. It was bright pink plaid and I wondered if someone had given it to her as a gift or if she picked it out herself.

I got lost again today but this time it wasn't drowned rat lost, it was delicious, wondrous lost. If you took the feeling of being curled up on a couch by the window with a cup of tea and you turned that feeling into a whole city, that would be Amsterdam. It's cozy and charming and today I wandered aimlessly through narrow cobblestone streets and the whole world was quiet as a church except for the occasional snatch of conversation or peal of laughter that drifted through an open doorway like a windchime.

Day 3 of 60

Saturday was my first international flight so I'm not sure if this is typical but my six hour Air India flight included two full meals, about 73 Bollywood movies, and an actual staircase. I don't mean that there were steps, I mean there was an actual upstairs. My aislemate, who is a pilot in India so I guess he would know, told me that our plane could seat over 400 people. Amazing.

On the downside, my flight was three hours late and I didn't sleep a wink. On the bright side, my amazing friend Anna braved the A train to hang out with me at JFK during my endless layover.

I expected London to be New York with a British accent but it actually didn't remind me of New York at all. It might be the prettiest city I've ever seen and the people, besides abiding by some county ordinance that requires everyone to be supermodel gorgeous and exquisitely dressed, seemed extraordinarily kind and laidback. There was some weird issue on the tube that required us all to change trains four times before we finally left the station and no one fumed, no one threatened to sue. Everyone just laughed about it.

I took a ferry from London to Amsterdam and it was lovely. I had my own cabin and it was tiny but it was my first chance in two days to sleep and shower and I've never slept better. In the morning, I ate scrambled eggs, morning sun blinding my left eye as my right eye watched Holland approach through the starboard window.

Amsterdam is charming and I don't think there's a better word for it. Although I have to say that despite everyone's assurance that "everyone in Amsterdam speaks English" I have not found that to be the case at all. I've barely heard a word of English since I arrived here and actually that's alright with me. I'd much rather perform some elaborate pantomime to order my lunch than have someone pander to my ignorance and speak English to me.

Within about an hour of arriving in London, I made the first in what is sure to be a long line of embarassing missteps. This particular error involved me giving a barista a $6 tip on a $4 cup of coffee. Note to self: make sure you understand local currency before spending it.

My second error was actually made back in the States when I thought it would be a good idea to put my train tickets in my journal and then take my journal out of my backpack. This is actually perfect because if there's one thing I love, it's spending the same $150 twice. Oh wait, I don't love that at all.

Actually, I've been taking this all in stride so far. I laughed when I realized I'd spent $10 on a cup of coffee, I took a deep breath and exhaled when I realized I'd left my train tickets at home, and when the zipper on my backpack broke, I just gritted my teeth for ten minutes until I fixed it.

That's not to say that everything's peachy. In normal life, most of your day is spent doing things that are easy, so easy you barely even think about them. Alone in an unfamiliar country, it's just the opposite-- everything you do is hard. Grocery shopping is hard. Ordering a coffee is hard. Riding the bus is hard. Using an ATM is hard. Even just walking down the street seems harder than it should be. Nearly every moment since I touched down in London, I've been lost, confused, or in someone's way and usually all three at once.

That said, I don't imagine I'll feel this way every day for the next two months. I believe things will even out and I'll find a rhythm here.

Until next time.

Cross-Country Drive

I arrived in Florida on Friday, in one piece and enormously impressed with myself. I sunburned within approximately 30 seconds of crossing the Florida border, please forgive me if I ever complained about the heat in Madison. Or the traffic. Humidity and traffic jams aside, it feels good to be back here. There's something to be said for the place that raised you.

The drive was long and mostly uneventful. On Thursday, I drove through Illinois (in which I spent approximately three hours trying to find my friend Malka's apartment), Indiana (in which you can turn your head to the left and see clear across the state), Kentucky (in which I fell in love with Louisville from the interstate), and finally Tennessee.

I stayed the night at a motel of questionable repute in Murfreesboro. A motel which the night clerk informed me offered such surprising amenities as a swimming pool and free breakfast. The pool turned out to consist of about 3 inches of slime and broken concrete and the breakfast was all the watery coffee and stale mini donuts I could eat. I was hungry so I ate two.

The breakfast room was divided down the middle-- one side was linoleum and folding tables and the aforementioned stale donuts. The design scheme of the other side could best be described as 'Demented English Tea Parlour'. It featured a dizzying floral carpet in a shade of fuschia that cannot and should not be found in nature along with several wingback chairs with a similar pattern and color scheme. It was kind of amazing.

I arrived at my parents' house on Friday night. It's funny because flying here is a bit like teleporting and seems perfectly normal but driving here feels awfully strange. I guess I never realized before that these two places are connected and that roads run between them.

It's a good thing to realize.

Cross-Country Drive

p.s. Did I mention that I'm leaving the country in five days?