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.