After a long week of part time work as a hotel receptionist in between vacations now that I'm done with my masters (yeah that sentence was a roller coaster, I'm aware), Thursday morning rolled around and found me on another bus to the Netherlands - a relatively frequent occurrence ever since I started dating a very handsome Dutch man a few months ago.
My bus got me into town early which will probably never happen again and I headed to wait for Stijn at the nearby train station before we snuck through the personnel area of the Dutch train system in Eindhoven to use the bathroom (snuck bc he works for the company but doesn’t belong in this particular area and by extension neither does his American girlfriend whose ability to speak Dutch begins with “Hello” and ends with “thank you” – seriously that’s all I got). We made our way to Helmond, the small suburb of Eindhoven where Stijn grew up, and it was all of 5 minutes into the conversation with his parents before his father (who is absolutely adorable and has so many random fun facts and gets his English practice from BBC so is pretty much more competent than me) asked the fateful “So, what are your plans now that you’ve graduated?” question. Now listen. I haven’t had to deal with this question since I finished my bachelors three freaking years ago and it’s like a traumatic experience hearing it all over again these last few months, so for those of you who want the answer: I don’t have a damn clue. I’m headed home for a month at Christmas which means I can’t apply for real big kid jobs quite yet as I couldn’t start till February which means ya girl is working as a part time hotel receptionist until further notice. Impressive, I know. Side note: My masters program had a meet and greet for the students of the incoming year and invited the alums and I seriously considered going just so that I could tell the poor bastards that now that I’ve finished my degree I work as a part time hotel receptionist, juuuust to watch the light go out of their eyes. Anyway that’s not the point, I gave Stijn’s dad (Frans) the answer I’ve been giving anyone who asks recently: I’m pretty much down for whatever comes my way. I still want to work in conflict management or development aid for a nonprofit organization or something in that vein, but I am keeping my options pretty open. And before you ask: no, I don’t want to come back to the States. I am v v happy here. Plus Trump sucks. Once we’d established that I am basically still not a truly productive member of society, we moved on to less depressing topics like the fact that Stijn surprised me with FREAKING WICKED TICKETS IN LONDON OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I may or may not have teared up and internally questioned whether 2 months into a relationship is too early to propose (Stijn says yes but who asked him anyway). As if the joys of having Wicked on the London version of Broadway on my horizon wasn’t enough, he proceeded to make me his signature fried eggs seasoned to perfection before turning on Zootopia (a quality movie btw) which for those of you who don’t know equates to like my dream situation (food and children’s movies). And then, to top it all off, he downloaded the Disney app which Disney is testing ONLY in the Netherlands to see if people want an app full of Disney and Pixar movies available at all times (uh, obviously) to my phone and logged me into his account. Suffice it to say I was a very happy human and if we break up he is not allowed to log me out of this account. Dinner was an amalgamation of the Dutch classics with his family ranging from French fries to kipcorn to some sort of massive sausage that should not be edible by one single human and is titled something-something XXL before we headed to the airport with Frans for a quick tea (I say quick bc I was rushing us bc I was mad paranoid about missing our flight WHICH WE ALMOST DID ON THE WAY TO SPAIN DESPITE ALREADY BEING SAFELY THROUGH SECURITY AND IN THE AIRPORT FOR AN HOUR BEFORE BOARDING). We headed through the duty free shop as is our custom and found ourselves yummy smelling perfumes and colognes and tried on ridiculous sunglasses before Jess called to talk about life and her super cool college classes for awhile (initially with me but at some point the phone was passed to Stijn who was reluctant to give it back). Our flight was, unsurprisingly bc I was involved, delayed. We arrived at London Stanstead around 10pm and Stijn had already researched and booked and checked everything we could possibly need, so we hopped on a bus to Stratford (about 40 minutes outside the city center bc anything in the city center is so excruciatingly expensive) and eventually arrived at the world’s worst accommodation – and that’s coming from someone who has slept in a whooooole lot of different and uh, interesting, places. Stijn had booked through Booking and as the apartment was essentially, pardon my language, a shithole (no exaggeration whatsoever here people you know my standards are like on the floor), Stijn immediately made a call to start getting the situation handled. An hour on the phone with Booking later, we had a new hotel close by and escaped the apartment from hell with a story that was even pretty funny while it was happening considering the ridiculousness of the situation (and the contact high from the weed smoke in the apartment probably helped the situation). The next morning we took the metro 40 minutes into the city center (btw the metro here is super cool and advanced, Stijn has his credit cards in his Apple Wallet and all he has to do is tap his phone on the scanner and it immediately takes the fee from your card without making you buy a ticket THIS IS THE FUTURE, PEOPLE) to spend the day seeing the major sites of London. Ironically, half those sites were under construction, but it’s still super cool to have been able to see them. Stijn hadn’t been to London since he was 12 and while he remembered quite a bit, it was neat to be able to experience it while he kind of re-experienced it. As we know, my sense of direction is questionable at best so Stijn took the lead and I just rolled with it, which was a pretty cool thing to be able to do considering I am usually the trip planner not the tag-a-long-er. Would recommend, Stijn plans great trips. I did, however, have a mission on arrival, which was to obtain some delicious Tesco or Sainsbury’s cookie bite things which are essentially just chocolate, caramel and shortbread and taste like what joy feels like. Amazing. We kept lunch cheap (breakfast was free the entirety of our time in England bc we collectively suck at mornings and never made it into town before noon oops) with grocery store snacks bc the rumors are true – London is expensive as hell. Mid-walk around I realized I had made poor life choices and worn socks that were slipping down my shoe as I walked, and after a few (or several) instances of me stopping to fix them, Stijn made the executive decision that I needed less shitty socks, so to TKMaxx we went. Yes, it’s TKMaxx. No, that is not a typo. Europe is weird, man, I dunno. We bought a pack that Stijn would wear too bc he steals my socks without fail so I figured this would be a good way for him to be able to steal his own socks from me… see what I did there? And he found himself some sort of bougie branded wool scarf with which he was VERY pleased and was v necessary bc the rumors about London being cold and windy aaaaaaaaaaare (surprise) also true. We stopped everywhere from tea shops to Nando’s (very necessary and fairly reasonably priced chain chicken restaurant particularly well known in the UK bc the British are obsessed with chicken – specifically fried chicken) before heading back to the hotel and binge watching everything on BBC from comedy to most luxurious hotels features to the actual (depressing) news. The next morning (who am I kidding it was afternoon) we headed to Camden Lock Market, a super alternative area of London with the coolest food market I’ve seen in awhile which simultaneously impressed me and stressed me out bc there were way too many choices. I’m fairly certain we made like seven rounds before settling on some Jamaican jerk chicken to split and walking through more of the market as I drooled over delicious desserts and old school record shops for a few hours. Eventually we made our way to the Apollo Victoria Theatre where my life improved drastically as I experienced the most amazing musical live and almost accidentally left during the intermission bc I was too busy freaking out being joyful and riding the Wicked-high to realize it was the intermission not the freaking end (leave me alone I was on cloud 9). Plus Stijn had gotten us a bottle of wine with which to enjoy the show and of course that wasn’t aiding my already questionable ability to form cohesive thoughts, whatever, leave me alone, I saw Wicked live in London so HA. We spent our last day hitting up the sights we hadn’t had the time to get to yet like the Tower Bridge and Picadilly Circus and most importantly PLATFORM 9 ¾ FROM HARRY POTTER in what I would describe effectively as a chill day considering we had nowhere to be and all day to get there. We headed home early with to-go fried chicken in hand (I told you, the Brits love this stuff) ready to settle in early for the night as we had to be up at 2.30 to catch our bus to the airport for our 6am flight. I would like to take this time to note that Stijn always gives me shit for buying tickets at inconvenient times but I do it bc they’re so much cheaper which was exactly his reasoning for doing it this time around (our round trip tickets to London from the Netherlands were 35 euros total respectively). Anyway, we did not go to bed early. Not even a little. After we finished eating, I had my (now relatively normal) minor wave of travel anxiety which derives from having missed a flight in the recent past – I swear being poor makes it worse bc you know you cannot afford to have things go wrong bc your bank account won’t let you – and my brain decided that right then and there was when I had to pack my bag and clean up the room. Luckily Stijn’s response (rather than judging me) was to pack his bags right alongside me until my brain chilled out and I could be a person again. No I take that back… First I made him run me through how we would be making it to the airport about 27x with visuals and GoogleMaps proof that his plan would work – not bc he is a bad planner (he is, in fact, a pretty great one) but bc I am a crazy person who believes all forms of public transportation are out to get me personally. We spent the next few hours watching BBC’s comedy channel before I introduced Stijn to the terrible beauty that is Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (quite a novelty show for a European who likes to cook and is simply flabbergasted by what small-town eateries combine to make what appear to be delicious and popular dishes). It wasn’t until Stijn realized I was avoiding sleep bc I was worried we wouldn’t wake up to our alarms in the morning that he made me turn off the TV and catch a few hours of sleep before we had to head out. Spoiler alert: we did make our bus to our plane and there were no issues bc of course there weren’t, and all of my worrying was for naught. Whatever. The trip ended just how it started – back in the duty-free area trying out perfumes and trying on ridiculous sunglasses before we hopped on a plane to get back to real life. Basically, it was an incredible weekend made all the more incredible by the fact that this was my freaking graduation gift from Stijn. Yup, you read that right. A trip to London, as my grad gift. If this is the kind of thing I get for finishing my masters, I may just have to get another one. Just kidding, that’s a terrible idea, learning is hard. But for now, this is where I leave you. This fall weather has me wishing for something warm to eat and I see hot chili in my very near future. So until next time folks – xoxox. PS. Stijn is pronounced (well the closest approximation of it I can make of it as a non-Dutch speaker) “Stein” like with a long “I” sound. I was going to write it out with the international phonetic alphabet, but I figured A. I would be judged and B. Who the hell would understand it anyway? PPS. Stijn has taken to tapping me on the shoulder and simply saying “attention” until I stop doing whatever it is I’m doing and focus on him instead. Crude but effective, what can I say. PPPS. If I keep dating my Dutch boyfriend, I’ll have to freaking learn Dutch which goes against everything I’ve said for the last several years about how the Dutch language sounds like someone is simultaneously having a coughing fit, choking on sandpaper, and jumpstarting a car. Stijn already gave me my first informal lesson and boy oh boy do I sound like a German girl trying to speak Dutch… I gotta work on that. And last but not least, the title. This week's post title stems from the incessant and unbelievably annoying announcement that comes every time any time a London metro opens or closes its doors and practically screams at you to "mind the gap" as apparently no British architect thought to make either wider trains or less wide (also known as "narrower" to people who speak better English than myself) tunnels to avoid the situation which now plagues their public transport (a gap, obviously, between the metro and the platform itself) and now threatens the lives of its passengers apparently to such an extent that people will literally die if the announcement is not made every 7 seconds. It's fine. I took it in stride and was totally not annoyed by it at all, clearly. I'm fine.
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Alright, listen. I have been chastised on multiple occasions in the recent past for having been traveling and not keeping up with the blog, and to those people I say: shut up, I’m tired. For those of you who don’t know, after my baby sister flew back to the States at the end of July and - sprinkled between a few more vacations to Bavaria and Greece which will be written about later leave me alone – over the course of three weeks total, I researched, wrote and submitted my masters thesis. This means that assuming my supervisors don’t see through my bullshit and let me pass, YA GIRL HAS A MASTERS DEGREE. Insanity, no? Essentially, this marks the transition from me being a shitty masters student, to just being shitty. HOW NEAT IS THAT?! I don’t know when I got so old, but shout out to my waiter last night at the tapas bar out with my girls who assumed we were older than his 25 year old daughter and when we said that wasn’t the case he remarked “this is not good lighting for you ladies.” Considering all of us just finished this masters together, it was great to see that not only has this program taken a mental and emotional toll, but it appears to have physically aged us as well. Fab.
Anyway, the point of this particular post is to immortalize the joys Jess and I experienced in the last two weeks of her trip after our sweet little middle sister left us to go be productive and like work and go to college??? Can’t relate. So Jess and I spent the first two days after smol left pretty much chillin’ while I tried to get my life together a little bit. Jess and I cooked and crafted everything from creamy spinach pasta to spring rolls and charcuterie boards, all of which of course paired with several bottles of wine. Three days later we were supposed to head to Croatia at 5.45am but due to my recent trauma (missing my flight to England a few weeks before) I was absolutely incapable of sleep and seriously contemplated leaving the night before and sleeping at the airport bc if our morning train was delayed we would miss our flight until I told Stijn about that potential plan and he told me to take a moment and be a person again (which was valid considering I was acting like a crazy person – thankfully Jess was more than willing to head out whenever I felt was necessary and eventually convinced me it would all work out. Of course she was the first one up in the morning and made sure we had everything bc Jess has her shit together on a level that I will truly never even remotely reach, but whatever. Anyway of course my concerns were for naught bc we made it to the airport with zero delays and ended up wiping the floor with Jess at Go Fish before our connection in Vienna made us absolutely BOOK IT through ANOTHER ROUND OF SECURITY AND PASSPORT CONTROL even though we had like SEVEN AND A HALF SECONDS TO GET TO OUR NEXT FLIGHT and we had to pee so bad we were pretty sure Jess was going to die and her bladder was going to explode but it didn’t so the adventure continued. We flew into Zadar, an airport who makes the one in Waco, Texas where my grandma lives look massive (which it isn’t) and I sent Jess to figure out our bus situation to get into the city center bc A. I am lazy and B. I think traveling to a country where you know nothing about the language and have zero idea how to get where you need to go is a humbling experience, and I wanted her to have that. Mind you, I never let her out of my sight bc despite the complete lack of maternal instinct in me, my protective sister instinct works like you wouldn’t believe. Jess did wonderfully bc of course she did – and I’m pretty sure she made the poor small-town Croation bus coordinator guy fall in love with her in 5 seconds flat – and we headed into town to find our hostel. We grabbed money at the ATM where Jess was absolutely mind blown about the currency exchange from Euros to Kuna (one euro is several hundred kuna so when you pull out a few hundred euros in kuna you feel like your net worth is extensively higher than it actually is) and took the walk to our hostel in the 100* heat from the bus stop. This was Jesse’s first real hostel bc we’d been staying at my place or with my friends over the course of the trip (yes life is hard) so it was neat to watch her learn how to hostel what with the mixed dorms and bunk beds and fight for outlets and inconsiderate drunk people coming in and turning the lights on in the middle of the night and inconsiderate sober people turning the lights on and packing way too early in the morning etc. and she took no time making herself comfortable. It took us all of 10 minutes to check in, get changed, and head to the beach which was about a 10 minute walk away. The water was about as beautiful as we expected but the beach itself was very forest-like (pine trees and all) and lined with big boulders from which people were jumping. That’s all cool unless you’re me and your shoulder doesn’t work so essentially while I had no trouble getting in, getting out is quite a process. We eventually made our way back to the hostel very loudly as Jess was suffering from an apparently life threatening splinter, and changed to get ready to make the 30 minute walk into the city center (which Jess was able to handle despite the apparently immobilizing pain she was experiencing bc nature attacked her). We walked around gorgeous old town for awhile looking for something a little less touristy and thought we’d done it until we were served the most bland meal of all time and charged out the nose for it, at which point Jess and I agreed to eat exclusively grocery store and street food (my usual method anyway) or potentially never eat again due to the exorbitant amount we’d spent on this terrible dinner. Btw and as a side note: there are Germans EVERYWHERE in Croatia. If I closed my eyes and just listened, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even left Germany. Ridiculous. They are everywhere. The next morning we rolled out early to catch our long bus to Plitvice Lakes (where we got those gorgeous food-coloring-looking blue water photos) and hiked through some of the most beautiful terrain we’ve ever seen way too quickly (the hike was supposed to take us 6h and took us like 4h) so we headed down to the national park entry area to enjoy a beer and shoot the breeze because we were way too early for our bus back to Zadar and they wouldn’t let us on an earlier one bc they obviously hate us. As it had been a particularly strenuous day in terms of several hours of bussing and hiking and bussing again, we’d planned for a chill night involving a bottle of wine and a hostel cooked meal and maybe a walk to the beach, but as a chill night was what we were aiming for, exactly the opposite happened. We were verbally attacked by hostel-workers on arrival encouraging us to join for trivia night, to which we nonchalantly agreed thinking we could just not go if we didn’t feel like it, which we were super wrong about bc they subsequently wrote our names on the team lists and waited for us to finish cooking dinner before starting the damn game. I would like it to be stated for the record that my team kicked every other team’s ass (including Jesse’s team) at the actual TRIVIA part of trivia night. We had the knowledge. We finessed the hell out of it. But *apparently* that’s simply not enough as stupid Jesse and her stupid team wiped the floor with us when it came to the paper airplane throw and the coin toss and the heads or tails game WHICH SHOULD BE IRRELEVANT BC IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL TRIVIA AND YET WAS WEIGHTED AS MORE VALUABLE THAN THE FREAKING QUESTIONS and so her stupid team beat my awesome team about which I am obviously not bitter and keeps in line with me being the consistent family disappointment so whatever. We made friends with an Aussie named Brock at some point we ended up switching bars to our hostel’s sister hostel whose bar was open later than ours bc when everyone wanted to go (and I wanted to go to bed) Jess and Brock looked at me like “We’re going too, right?” and I have never felt more like an old lady than I did in that moment, but how could I say no to those faces? So to the next bar we went. Mind you, we were in like beach cover ups and flip flops and had no ID’s and had brought only enough money for one beer bc we were just going to have ONE BEER at the other hostel bar before coming back, so when we and our hostelmates somehow ended up walking the 30 minutes into the city center to get to a CLUB in the middle of the night after playing a few rounds of some terrible math-based drinking game called 21, you can imagine my confusion. I had planned to be in bed by like 10, and instead here I was with my baby sister and this group of hostel people on the way to the biggest outdoor club in Zadar with no ID in the middle of the night. Bc this is what happens when you plan a chill night, people. I needn’t have worried about getting into the club as they literally didn’t ask us for ID’s or anything of that nature – though I’m pretty sure they questioned our outfit choices pretty hard core as we were a stark juxtaposition with the girls in heels and the guys in button downs, but whatever, they let us in. A few donated beers from those who’d brought money and a wholeeeee bunch of dancing later, we decided 4am was as good a time as any to head home for the night, but once again the universe had other plans for us. As we began our eternally-long walk back to the hostel from town, we came upon a painfully drunk British man (that’s their natural state) who was quite a prick (also their natural state – save for my best friend’s British boyfriend who is actually great) but also apparently in quite a pickle as he could hardly walk and without help would have ended up on the news for drowning in the Adriatic the next day. Jess and I knew we couldn’t leave the poor bastard on his own so we asked where he was headed, googled it (he was going in the totally wrong direction btw) and turned him around to start walking him the 40 minutes it would take to get him home (which would mean a 70 minute walk back to our hostel from there but srsly this guy was not a human anymore he was so drunk) so the walking began. He spent the entirety of his time using colorful language to describe Americans in general, which was super fun (though we did agree with some of it to be fair) so it was quite a relief when we happened to run into his group of friends who was remotely less drunk and upon seeing us with him immediately apologized for anything he may or may not have said – clearly they knew him well – before thanking us profusely for not letting him casually die in Croatia. Our mission accomplished, we finally made our long way home, which would have taken twice as long but Jess was essentially tug boating me all the way back bc I was apparently incapable of walking at a normal pace and she was aggressively motivated to get us home. The next morning Jess woke up hangoverless and I woke up suffering (how I miss my youth) and we headed to the beach for the morning to soak up the sun and – for some of us – sweat out the hangover. The rest of the day consisted of hammock naps and beach bars and ice cream on the dock and brilliant comments from Jess such as “Look at all those lights…. And by lights, I mean stars.” The brilliance of my baby sister knows no bounds, people. Our chill day was followed by an early morning involving a historic tour of Zadar, a city Jess and I totally recommend as it’s nowhere near as touristy as Dubrovnik but still totally gorgeous. However, might we recommend it a little bit later in the summer than July as it was literally scorching and we were fairly certain death was coming for us in the form of heat stroke. We enjoyed the most delicious pastry that was absolutely impossible to eat sitting on the boardwalk and took a moment to appreciate the fact that we got to experience a new country together before making the long and winding trek back to the hostel to enjoy one last beachy afternoon before getting our lives together (including transferring our extra kuna back to euros bc we overestimated our expenses AND WOULD HAVE SAVED EVEN MORE IF NOT FOR THAT DISGUSTING AND EXPENSIVE DINNER THE FIRST NIGHT but like it’s fine I don’t even care. Euros back in our wallets and delicious hostel smoothies in our bellies, we made our way to the bus station to catch our bus to the airport (for which we were not excited bc leaving Croatia is not an easy thing to do). We’d asked about 37x about the bus schedule and the hostel workers had given us a schedule for it just to be sure, so despite the paranoia, we felt reasonably confident that we were leaving (way) early enough to catch our flight without any issues. Naturally, the bus schedule we were given was wrong. The airport bus had already left and wouldn’t be back until we should already have been at the airport bc of course it had. So we took a moment to freak out, gathered our thoughts, and agreed that it was worth it to get a taxi (pretty cheap bc Croatia and a fairly short distance) just to be sure we didn’t miss our flight. Here’s where it gets fun. Our taxi driver, after having been informed of our need for speed, decided now was as good a time as any to fill up his tank with gas, even though it wasn’t empty. And while we’re at it, why not get our windows washed? Fantastic. And then we make it to the airport to find out that we could have just waited for the stupid bus bc it would have gotten us there only 15 minutes later and OUR FREAKING FLIGHT WAS DELAYED. To treat ourselves in the face of all this unnecessary stress, we decided to grab some coffees at the tiny airport with no signs that dictate where to go or from which (of like 5) gates your flight is leaving or if it’s leaving at all. Apparently the coffees weren’t our best idea, however. So here’s how it went down: we’d budgeted very carefully with what kuna we’d had left to get a cappuccino and a small black coffee to share thinking that the cappuccino would be yummier but not having enough money for two of them and the donut Jess was considering getting. These coffees come out, and we just start laughing, as the “small coffee” looks absolutely miniscule and might constitute two full sips before being empty. Laughable and ridiculous, so we finish it and grab another cappuccino (Jess sacrificed her donut money) so as to have an actually sustainable amount of caffeine in our systems. The irony here is that apparently the coffee that looked like an espresso size-wise and tasted like black coffee was ACTUALLY a cappuccino, and the other decent-sized and decent-tasting coffee had been our “small black coffee” meaning that WHEN THEY BROUGHT OUT OUR CAPPUCCINO IT WAS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE STUPID LITTLE HALF COFFEE THINGS. We were not amused. I know it doesn’t souuuund particularly strenuous, but with all the flight stress and tiredness going on, it was all we could do just to laugh and accept that this was a battle we decidedly not won. Luckily, we did eventually catch our flight and the night went smoothly from there getting back to my apartment in Bonn. Just kidding, the train we were supposed to take was cancelled and we literally took all day to get home from a place that should have taken a few hours. Public transport is fab. Yay. The next few days were spent enjoying rainy day picnics, home cooked meals (mostly by Jess as my shoulder and I were still not on good terms) and two very happy sisters. Jess left for home a few days later to go unpack from her trip and repack for COLLEGE bc she’s officially a college FRESHMAN now and I don’t know where the time goes but I couldn’t be prouder of my big mini me. For now, I believe this is where I’ll leave you, as I’m headed to Spain today and I still have to write about my trip to Greece and ugh life is just so hard sometimes, you know? Until next time, beautiful readers. XOXOX PS. Grocery shopping in countries where the language is incomprehensible and unrelated to ANY of the languages you speak means (once again) staring at a product that looks like it *might* be what you’re looking for and then ends up absolutely not being that and you have to figure out how to cook with it anyway bc you bought it already and you don’t want to waste it. PPS. High knees moments are what we call it when something happens where you have a momentary (often physical and involuntary) reaction to something that surprises you, which is what Jess had when a bike almost ran her and literally hopped up like a frog in a way that totally wouldn’t have saved her had she been in any real danger but looked incredibly entertaining anyway. This is where I got the post title… clearly. Hello and welcome back to the blog of the least consistent blogger on the planet! Before we get started, let me go ahead and clarify a few things for those of you who haven't had a recent life update:
Apropo: my sisters are here. For the very few of you who don't already know, I have two little sisters (Sam, 20 & Jess, 18) who - in addition to my mama, obviously - are my very best friends. Sami is a junior at San Jose State University kicking ass at graphic design, and Jess will be an incoming freshman this year at Humboldt State studying Environmental Studies and saving the world. The three of us couldn't be more different, but our weirdness works well together and we sure are entertaining for anyone in earshot. As it was, I was supposed to fly into Manchester, England on the 7th to meet up with my friend Saskia (who lives there) and the girls were to fly in on the 8th to meet me. Instead, Saskia had to fly home for a family emergency so she wasn't there (while we stayed in her apartment), and my phone decided to update in the middle of the night so I missed my 4am wake up call and thus my flight, so I experienced the joy of buying an entirely new ticket to get me into England early the next morning just in time to meet Sam (who was flying in a few hours before Jess bc they got different tickets bc they booked a few months apart). Mind you, my new ticket involved me heading into an airport farther away in the middle of the night and camping out there bc there were no trains at the right time for me to get there at a reasonable hour and I was terrified to miss another flight so I was up for 30h for a trip that should have taken me like 4h total. Sometimes life is hard. Sami (aka Smol) met me just outside of customs at the airport bc our flights landed within 20 minutes of each other and we headed back to Saskia's apartment, where we met up with one of her roommates - Joe - who gave us her keys before heading to work and left us to pass out for a 4h nap bc neither of us had gotten any sleep in way too many hours. We picked up Jess after our much needed nap and somehow it was just like we were back at home taking a walk through town and chatting about life, but now in a totally new country (for them at least). It was such a wonderful feeling to have my girls by my side (despite the sling that was also attached to my side). We headed to Pie & Ale to share a few classic British meat pies and beers for lunch (where we got one for only a pound bc it was the deal of the day and it was awesome bc we are poor) before heading to check out the focal points of Manchester like the John Ryland Library and then wandering into the more modern and hip part of town (the Northern Quarter) to hit up some thrift shops and record stores for Jess. We enjoyed a relaxed evening with wine and a homemade meal while we scared the crap out of Joe with the way we interact after not having seen each other in months and missed the hell out of Sassy. I couldn't get the girls to wake up for anything the next morning bc the jet lag was beating them up a bit, so I decided to make breakfast (one-handed, mind you) instead, until the smell of eggs woke Sam up and we finally convinced Jesse to get her butt out of bed. We headed into town once again and Jess somehow managed to trip on every single surface in Manchester, including her own two feet, and accidentally hit my broken shoulder about 100x. I have a slight concern that I'll get back to my doctor and she'll ask me how my shoulder is somehow more broken than before, and I'll have to point her in Jesse's direction. We wandered over to Castlefield, a gorgeous canal-adorned area of Manchester, when the sky opened up and we decided that instead of swimming through the city, we'd stop at The Wharf for a coffee and to enjoy the caramel-chocolate-shortbread cookies native only to England. After waiting out the worst of the rain (bc despite bringing along rain jackets to England, none of our dumbasses had worn them out that day) we stopped at a fish and chips shop that's been around longer than our home country has existed before heading to the Manchester Art Gallery where we left Sam to wander the art we knew she'd love while Jess and I looked for some interactive kids exhibits that were more our speed. Showing the girls around Manchester would have been much tougher had I not been there so many times to visit Saskia this year, but I did realize how dependent I am on her to get us where we're going when we're there bc I had to pull out my GoogleMaps a little more frequently than I'd like to admit. We enjoyed a salad dinner at home where the girls complained about my (in their absolutely incorrect opinion) excessive dressing use - Joe liked it so I prefer his opinion but whatever - before heading out for drinks with Joe and Rhys, where Jess got to order our drinks and feel a little badass (a feeling Sam and I both experienced on our first trips to Europe). We headed home fairly early as we had to be up at 5.30 the next morning for our flight back to Bonn and I had some serious trouble sleeping considering my recent early morning flight experiences, but we woke up without any issues until I asked the girls to double check for their passports... which Sam could not find. Anywhere. Not in her backpack, her duffel bag, the bedroom, nowhere. I could have killed her, considering I had asked her to check for it the night before just to be safe and she had clearly super not done that, and it was all I could do as we scrambled to find the damn thing at 6am not to start forming contingency plans for if we couldn't find it and missed our flights and had to go to the embassy and get an emergency passport and... my brain works a little too quick for its own good sometimes, bc we eventually found the stupid passport and - after missing the train we'd booked to get us to the airport - caught the next one and made it no problem back to my place by the early afternoon. After some much needed showers, we headed to the local market to grab some delicious Greek food (shoutout to Stijn for finding the food truck) and wandered over to the Rhein with beer in hand (Jesse's fav part about Germany is that you can walk around with your alcohol) to enjoy the view. Wiebke, as the sweetest roommate ever, brought us some delicious German breads for breakfast, including but not limited to a mouthwatering chocolate croissant which Sam melted in the microwave bc she didn't realize how much chocolate there was inside (she's not so great with food prep but we love her a whole bunch). I headed to physical therapy and my orthopedic doctor the next day to find out I DIDN'T HAVE TO WEAR MY SLING DURING THE DAY ANYMORE which was potentially the best news anyone has ever given me bc it is hot as hell in Germany and that sling was the most irritating thing on the face of the planet and I literally could have kissed my doctor (but I restrained bc she probs wouldn't be into that). It was a rainy day so we headed to a beer garden close by to celebrate with some traditional German delicacies before picking up our bags and walking back to the train station (for the second time in 36h) to board a train for Utrecht to visit the boys (and by the boys I mean Joël and the rest of the crew who I've known since they studied for a semester abroad in California over three years ago + Stijn who is new for me but not new to the boys bc they've known him forever and now he lives with Joël). Jess was - understandably - amazed that we didn't need passports to go to another country (for those of you who don't know, most countries within the EU share free movement of people across borders) and that all it took was a 3.5h train ride to get there, and I am loving watching someone experience Europe for the first time all over again. Stijn and Joël picked us up at the train station and we grabbed some beer on the way home to enjoy on the roof before heading to bed bc everyone but us had to be what apparently is called an "adult" and go to work in the morning?? I don't get it but I guess it's a thing. The rest of us (and our German friend Luke who came to stay the same weekend so we could all have a reunion) headed to a delicious Dutch pancake joint on one of the many canals of Utrecht (where by the way I would recommend 100% over going to Amsterdam - it's way more beautiful and way less touristy, what more could you want?). It was raining so hard by the time we were done eating that we thought we may have to move in and start paying rent there by the time the rain would let up, but eventually it did just that and we decided to go on a free (bc of Stijn's job where he somehow gets tons of random perks bc his company works in conjunction with a bunch of other Dutch companies) tour of the massive and historic bell tower in the middle of Utrecht. To put it simply, this whole climb-the-bell-tower idea was a good one in theory, but in practice... maybe less so? 465 steps up the steepest, narrowest, most winding staircase later, I was losing my will to live and hoping against all hope that I wouldn't slip on the steps, re-break my shoulder, and take a whole bunch of tourists down in the process. We made it out alive, but our legs were decidedly unhappy with us by the end of the afternoon. We spent the night nursing our pride and cooking a family dinner (aka Stijn and Jess and I cooked bc Joël was happy to hold down the couch, Sam is essentially useless in the kitchen - but she's cute so we keep her - and Luke made sure he diced some veggies so he could be considered a helper and wouldn't have to clean up later (smart man). We took our chance to sleep in the next day before Thijs and Leon came over and we all headed to Amsterdam for the day so that Jess could see the sights and eat the foods and do the things. The boys were great about making sure the girls got to see everything they were there to see, even going so far as to walk with us all the way across town to visit the Van Gogh Museum for Sami (which we later realized she had already been to and also that she couldn't get in bc she didn't have an appointment - oops). We eventually made our way home and headed out to hit like the only club we ever go to when we're together in Utrecht (which is conveniently 5 minutes away from the boys' place). I'll admit I was worried about going clubbing with my sisters in Europe in terms of just keeping them safe, but then I had 8 Dutch men that I've known for 3 years watching over them like they were their own sisters, so I guess it really does take a village and the girls have never been safer. We woke up particularly late the next day (some of us later than others) and decided we needed food. We set out to get pizza, but couldn't find anything affordable. We walked all over town mind you, and somehow ended up half an hour later at a Vietnamese restaurant right next to the boys' apartment which had - you guessed it - a pizza place right across the street. We were not exactly running on all cylinders, leave us alone. Traveling home the next day was... well, it didn't go according to plan. Our journey home should have taken about 3h45min from Utrecht to Bonn. Instead, we enjoyed a 7.5h journey filled with several cancelled trains and delays and whatever else you can think of bc the German train system is everything Germans are not known to be: untimely and ineffective. Many long hours and expletives later, we arrived at home and grabbed döner from my favorite döner place in town (which conveniently just opened a new shop right under my apartment bc the universe doesn't want me to ever be a skinny person) and watched our favorite movie (Mulan, obviously) before rolling into bed. The next few days were spent enjoying gelato in town, grabbing tapas at my favorite Spanish restaurant with the crew (aka the Study Buddies aka my group of friends from my masters program), hiking up a mountain to a castle (which btw you should not do in converse) and enjoying more train delays on the way back home from said hike bc that's how life works when you travel with me. Our last night together was spent in Cologne, a neighboring city with much more tourism and a whole lot more going on (which is why I prefer Bonn but I guess I'm just not a big city girl). We enjoyed some sightseeing before grabbing dinner at a super traditional German place where they refill your beers without asking if you want another one bc they just assume that if you're still sitting there and you haven't passed out yet, you want more beer. We sat on the steps next to the Rhine and had chats over wine and ice cream about everything from life to ducks until we made our way to a glow in the dark mini golf joint nearby (once again thanks to Stijn for the discovery). I played better with a broken shoulder than I did with two fully functioning ones last month against Stijn - when I still won the game anyway - and I'm pretty sure I've peaked. The next morning we woke up ridiculously early to get Smol to the bus station so that she could hang out at several airports for way too many hours bc her flights were delayed heading home bc she apparently spent too much time with yours truly and now all forms of transportation know that they should simply not function correctly for her either. My bad, kid. So now it's just the two tol Janecek idiots left to take on Germany and Croatia together. We miss our sweet Sami already - she's such an incredible human - but we know we'll see her soon and in the meantime I'll be calling and texting her so often she'll want to change phone numbers (but she won't bc I'm her sister and it's in the rule book that I'm allowed to annoy her until she wants to throw things at me). We had an incredible 11 days together and I wouldn't trade a single moment of it for the world - I sure do love these humans. So for now this is where I leave you - my brain hurts and my shoulder hurts and I think it's time for lunch (it's important to keep Jess fed regularly so she doesn't beat you up). Until next time folx - I promise not to make you wait so long this time around. XOXOX For the third time in my short 24 years of life, I’m reaching the end of my studies. My Masters program is over in 105 days (but who’s counting) and barring the (high) likelihood of my head exploding in the next 6 weeks of classes/exams/papers and the subsequent 10 weeks of thesis-writing, it will soon be time to figure out wtf I’m doing with my life. Again. To put it into perspective for you, I graduated with my BA exactly three years ago today. A year of work, a year of travel, and almost a year of Masters later, here I am back in the same holy-shit-what-now situation, only with a whole new perspective.
Anyone who knows me is familiar with the fact that I used to be a pretty high-strung high schooler. I got a B once in Geometry and my dad came home thinking someone had died bc that’s how hard I was crying. Yup. Then came college and then graduation, with the months leading up to it being unbelievably stressful for me bc I had zero idea what to do or how to do it and ended up stressing myself out over nothing bc I went home and traveled a bit and found a job and life went on. Now in 3.5 months I graduate with my MA in European Studies – Governance and Regulation, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m feelin’ pretty chill. I mean chill is a strong word considering at this point I’m trying to make plans with friends like, “What are you doing June 29th bc I am definitely free that exact day and not a single day before that day." Like, my day to day life is decidedly not chill. Between work and school and (sometimes) the gym and the occasional very necessary social breaks that sometimes involve alcohol and often regrets, I don’t have a lot of breathing room at the moment. But I am about 1000x less freaked out about the future than I ever have been. Now don’t get me wrong, part of that lack of inherent anxiety is bc I’m so busy trying to handle the day to day stuff that the long-term stuff isn’t even kind of on my radar. And it’s not like I’m all zen bc I feel like I am finally qualified for literally any job at all – in fact I find the more I learn the less I know and the distinctly less qualified I feel – but rather, I have a part time job that pays the bills (barely), I have a beautiful apartment with an amazing roommate and incredible friends, and I have all kinds of time to figure out my next step. It’s not that I’m unmotivated, in fact I’ve recently been experiencing what you might call a reawakening of my professional motivation and I’m super psyched to hopefully be working towards my goals in a professional setting again soon - I know I sound like a loser just leave me alone. But I’ve finally realized that worrying about where and when and why and how the future is going to work is simply not going to get you anywhere. So here I sit (not paying attention in class) with a to-do list as long as I am tall, a strong cup of coffee, and a serious lack of sleep. I’ve got lists of future goals ranging from like, getting out of bed tomorrow morning to you know, working for a badass organization that focuses on peacekeeping in areas of conflict. I have lists of where I’ll be traveling in the next few months, grocery lists, lists about other lists… you get the idea. But I’m not losing my mind so much (potentially bc there’s not much less to lose). Bc it’s going to be just fine, dammit. You see, no matter how much you think you know – and I don’t pretend to know much – you probably know less. And no matter how well or poorly things are going one day, the next day will be a brand new start full of all kinds of potential screw ups and joyous occasions. Take me the other day for example (bc this blog is about me so that’s what you get). I was on my way home from work on Thursday (I work as a hotel receptionist for a big hotel chain in town) when I noticed my keys weren’t jingling as I road over the cobblestone sidewalks, which meant that my keys were no longer on me. And if my keys were no longer on me, that meant that they’d fallen somewhere along the 20 minute bike ride home into the street or onto the sidewalk just waiting to be run over or picked up by some curious squirrel and lost forever. Naturally, I lost my marbles a little bit. In the exact moment I was making the realization that I was missing everything from my work keys to my apartment keys to my bike keys, this 200-year-old (ish) sweet little German lady asked for my help finding the closest McDonald’s. Obviously I could not blow her off (despite my distress) bc A. sweet little old people are my favorite and B. there was already clearly something clearly off with my karma so I figured ignoring the nice lady was probably not the move. A full 2 minute conversation later about how difficult it is to find a damn McDonald's without a GPS, I was biking back in the direction of work in the dark with no light on my bike bc I’m currently using my backup bike – which doesn’t have a light - bc my primary bike is broken bc of course it is. Fab. So I called Des, who just so happens to live between me and my work. Being one of my favorite people on the planet and amazing in every possible way, she immediately said she’d put on some pants (bc who wears pants at home, duh) and come help me look. Mind you this is 11pm on a Thursday and we had class early the next morning. So out she came, and we walked my bike for a good hour back down the path I had just come, using our flashlights for light and keeping ourselves entertained by our own general idiocy – the irony here being that we had just been talking about how we should hang out… this was not the way we’d meant but I guess quality time is quality time. Anyway, we found my damn keys. It took an hour of searching and some slight hysteria before we finally found them LITERALLY RIGHT OUTSIDE THE PARKING GARAGE OF MY HOTEL and jumped around shouting for joy as some of the hotel guests looked on (and probably assumed we were a couple of drunk idiots based on our behavior). It was such a hallmark moment. We walked home with a much more enthusiastic bounce in our step, and it wasn’t until we reached Des’ apartment and I hopped back on my bike to ride home that life decided to sucker punch me again real quick – two pedal strokes in, my chain broke. 12am on a school night, I’m a 45 minute walk from home, and my chain (on my freaking back-up bike breaks. Fab. So I tried to fix it, but it was stuck and I was not awake or savvy enough to fix it in the moment. With greasy hands and a tired brain, I decided it was time to accept my fate and walk home. Because of how my life works and bc of how this night was going, it started to rain within about 2 minutes of me starting my trek. So I called Joël to keep me company on the way (and obviously laugh at the massive joke that is my life) and made it into bed around 1.30am. Suffice it to say that when my alarm went off for class the next morning, I absolutely ignored it. The point is folks, you’re never going to know it all or have your whole life together. Sometimes it feels like I’m never going to know anything at all or have any of my life together. But in 3.5 months my thesis will have been turned in and I will have a MA after my name (I will also have a BA, and according to my mother sometimes an additional DA – for dumbass). I’m not sure how I’ll make it through these 3.5 months (probably with the help of the 5 upcoming trips I have planned - yes, my bank account is literally empty and all I can afford to eat is rice) but I have a feeling this is going to be one of those times in my life where I look back and wonder how the HELL I got through it. But hey, at least that means I’ll have gotten through it, right? So this is where I leave you. Class is almost over so I have just enough time to run to the grocery store and eat a quick dinner before heading to work till 11 and then coming home to pack for our program’s coordinated 3 day trip to Berlin for which I have to be up at 6am tomorrow. Have I mentioned how unbelievably busy I am? Sleep is a distant memory and sanity was lost a long time ago, but life goes on (or so I’ve heard). In closing, please enjoy these random thoughts that have passed through my head and are probably not relevant to anyone at all but you’ve read this far so why not finish it off:
PS. To explain the title: Evolutionsbremse literally translates to “evolutionary break.” The definition is as follows: an “evolutionary brake” is an unintelligent person whose very existence on Earth hinders the advancement of the human species, so to speak. It felt like a relevant word in a time when people and governments in Alabama and Georgia and so many other states are proving to be the embodiment of this exact concept. I’ve known Becks and Chrissy since we were all 13 and ugly (some of us – me – more than others). For those of you who don’t know my age or maybe do know but suck at math (like me), I’ve known these ladies for 11 long years, and thankfully puberty has done us a few favors in the meantime. 11 years of life and school and boys and screw ups and successes and adventures and idiocy. If you’d told 13-year-old way-too-much-eye-makeup-wearing us that we’d be together again 11 years later in Germany, I doubt we’d have believed you to be honest. But here we are with two weeks of new adventures under our belts and plans in the works to do it all again soon. My time with the girls was incredible – it was a blur of classes and castles and work and streets lined with cherry trees in bloom and adventures to neighboring Cologne (where we ran across the landmark bridge you see in all the pictures to get to the bathrooms on the other side bc Chrissy and Becks have tiny bladders and our bridge-beers went right through ‘em) and casual alcohol-induced escapades. Becks left us for her home back in England about a week in and it was around then that Chrissy and I decided to make the 4h train trek to visit one of my closest friends, Joël, (you’ve heard about him before – the sarcastic Dutchman). And this, my friends, was the beginning of quite an adventure.
We spent the morning of the 24th making the trip from Bonn to Utrecht which mostly involved me reading over a friend’s doctorate thesis and taking pictures of a sleeping Chrissy who passed out while reading (she never makes it on a train without a nap – consistency is key). We made our very roundabout way - which took like 20 minutes more than it should have bc we have literally zero sense of direction and are apparently too dim for even Google Maps to be helpful - to get to Joël’s roommate - whose actual name is Stijn which translates to Stone in English and therefore will hereby be referenced as such – to pick up his keys. He was nice enough to walk us all the way to their apartment (which after seeing the route, we definitely would have gotten ourselves lost without his guidance). Upon arrival we were given a cold beer and a fantastic view from their picturesque roof while we waited for Joël to get home from work. We’d planned to visit the tulip fields at the Keukenhof the next morning, so we woke up (according to Chrissy, way too early, aka like 8.30am) and got our butts out the door, only to be met with the literal barrage of tourists that had the same idea we did on a casual Thursday when they should all have been at work or school or literally anywhere else at all but WHATEVER. Anyway it turns out the Keukenhof itself (which literally translates from Dutch to “kitchen courtyard” in case anyone was curious) is basically just a massive botanical garden. And don’t get me wrong, botanical gardens are super neat – just ask Becks, our resident nature nerd – but that was not what we’d been searching for. We wanted flower fields. Hundreds of thousands of brilliantly colored tulips to bring our souls joy and our social media followers jealousy (just kidding we were really only in it for the joy). Feeling slightly gipped and particularly motivated to find the flower fields of our dreams, we decided to rent bikes and check out what the surrounding area had to offer. Such. A good. Decision. We were off to a strong start when Chrissy got made fun of by both me and the bike rental guy for being a tiny human who almost had to take a children’s bike bc Dutch people are large – imagine a dwarf living among giants and you have a visual of this interaction. Anyway once Chrissy finally mounted the bike in some fashion, we made moves – slowly, bc she bikes at a similarly glacial pace to that which she walks – and also haphazardly, in a way that meant when she wanted me to stop so we could take a picture she would shout at me to “Break, break break!” and then realize that she herself forgot to break as she rolled right by me. Cycling is a work in progress, you know? We’ll get there… or we’ll die trying. Our bike-based frustration was briefly alleviated as we bore witness to the most beautiful fields of flowers we’d ever seen in our lives, and the look of joy on Chrissy’s face when she found out she could pick them (no she is not a nature-killer they were planning on plucking them all that day anyway to sell the bulbs) was absolutely priceless. That being said, the look on her face when she shouted “I hate bikes” in desperation on our way back to the Keukenhof and the look on the face of the old Dutch bike-loving lady who couldn’t help but to hear her were equally priceless. And then the look on my face when the woman’s husband rolled down his window as they drove past us on their way out shouting “Great bikes!” …. You guessed it, priceless. We spent our evening cooking – and by that I mean Chrissy cut things up with speeds rivaled only by snails and tortoises, and Joël literally stood behind the bar-stool-less kitchen bar drinking a beer and asking whether he could do anything to help and then totally not doing those things, and I cooked. We watched Game of Thrones to the most recent episode so we were all caught up and despite the casual chill-ness of the night somehow ended up working our way through a case of beer sitting side by side and upside down on the couch eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and talking about everything and nothing at all. It was pretty wonderful. We woke up the next morning later than intended and headed to the market and the grocery store with Stone to grab supplies for the three-course meal he planned on cooking after work that night. This would have been a much quicker shopping trip if the boys had literally any cooking materials or spices or any other useful kitchen item (other than a coffee machine which they do have thank goodness). Seriously in our time there we literally tripled their number of spices. Not hard to do when the initial number was three (including salt and pepper and some weird spice intended for chicken) but I digress. We spent the afternoon helping Stone cook his totally veggie-less (don’t worry mom, I made veggies and was the only one who ate them) three-course meal which started with homemade meatballs and ended with crème brulee and a very fat and happy group of idiots. Very important side note: Stone cooks like he is actively trying to make a mess. I’m fairly certain he throws food on the floor for fun. It was like watching a toddler cook in a play-kitchen except with the result being real food that was really enjoyable, so I can’t really complain too much. While the boys were at work, Chrissy and I picked up some candles and printed some photos of the four of us to hang on the mantle (it’s a long story – the boys wanted to hang something up there and we had officially voted to become collective roommates so we felt it was only right that pictures of the crew were on the wall – naturally the one of Chrissy and I was the biggest bc we bring the most joy – see photo below). Chrissy being her creative and resourceful self combined empty beer bottles – of which there were many bc Joël wouldn’t know what it meant to take out the trash if his life depended on it – with some of the tulips she’d picked the day before for a gorgeous centerpiece with a vibrant “broke bitch/beer-lover chic” look to it. Basically now all we need are the essentials like I don’t know a coffee table or chairs but you know what, baby steps right? We met up with Joël after he got off work to grab some orange spirit-wear (this past weekend was King’s Day in the Netherlands for those of you who don’t know, which means you wear a ridiculous amount of orange, which is sooooo not my color) which mostly involved Joël finding the ugliest possible things someone could wear for the holiday and putting them on my body whether it be penis-hats, tutus, or sequined dresses. We walked out of the store without the tutus but with two orange headscarves, 4 orange ties, a gigantic orange blowup hand (which got us into a lot of trouble later so thank god we only found one), some orange glitter, and significantly less dignity than we’d walked in with. We headed home to meet up with the group – a bunch of Dutchies who’ve known each other since we met when they were doing their exchange semester in California – and the night really began. It started on the deck where we’d recently moved the couch earlier that day. There were first-time beer shotguns, kickass rounds of CatchPhrase (Chrissy and Tiemen and I kicked ass), jokes about spider love (even weirder than it sounds tbh), spatula shaming (not as bad as it sounds), and juuuuust a few beers. And then magically, several hours later, we all woke up totally sober and not at all hungover or confused about the chronology of the night. Some of us woke up a little more banged up than others with wounds that can only be the result of a cross-bow bearing gnome who hates kneecaps, but a heaping order of KFC (with no mashed potatoes bc the Netherlands hates mashed potatoes like wtf??) and a nice nap helped liven us up enough to make moves end attempt to enjoy the King’s Day festivities. We decided to take a later train home bc Stone checked our tickets and said we could and he works for the Dutch train system so we trusted him – and it wasn’t long before we were booking it back to the apartment to throw our things together and hurry (painfully for those of us with mystery injuries) to make our train home. Spoiler alert: despite Stone’s assurances that we totally could take the later train, the Germans begged to differ. We made it most of the way home before someone noticed our incorrect tickets and apparently out of the kindness of his heart (his heart was not kind) decided to validate them for us. However, he only had time to validate mine before our train arrived at the station – which btw was NOT our train and the bastard sent us on the wrong one – and we somehow arrived in Cologne instead of where I freaking live in Bonn. So let me paint you a picture. It’s late. We’ve been traveling all day. We are toooootally not hungover at all. We are confused about how the hell we ended up in the wrong city. We’re close to home, but not close enough that we can risk getting on a train without a new ticket. There are several UNBELIEVABLY annoying soccer fans chanting throughout the station. We are essentially delirious. We have to buy new tickets despite being poor as all hell, all because some dipstick train person decided we should get on the wrong train and then THOSE TICKETS DIDN’T EVEN GET CHECKED SO WE COULD HAVE JUST NOT FREAKING BOUGHT THEM. At this point, the only thing fueling us is our collective self-hatred and burning desire for doener from the place down the street from my apartment. We finally actually arrived in Bonn way too many hours after our departure from Utrecht only to be met with confusion as we realized that in the few short days we were gone, they’d expanded the train station (aka Hauptbahnhof which all my American visitors have decided to call “Hoppenhoff” due to an inability to pronounce it correctly) to such a degree that it was unrecognizable, so we spent several minutes trying to figure out if in our delirium we had traveled to the wrong Bonn (which is impossible bc there is only one). We were basically zombies. Everything was hilarious and nothing we said made sense, but it was somehow a beautiful (painful) evening. But the adventure didn’t end there. You see, Chrissy had been having some transportation trouble since before she even got here. She bought her initial ticket to visit me a few months back with an airline called WOW Air. Weeks after she bought it, the airline went bankrupt and failed to mention that fun fact to its clients, so it’s lucky Des sent me a link to the BBC News article talking about it so that I could tell Chrissy to check out her ticket situation. The situation? She had no ticket. She contested the purchase with her bank and set out finding herself a new way to get to me (and holy shit am I grateful she didn’t just decide not to come) and it wasn’t long before she had a new ticket with a fully functioning airline that got her to me with no issues. But appaaaarently, the universe was as opposed to her going back as it was to her coming to me in the first place, because her airline was on strike the day she was supposed to fly home. So she got a new ticket (the old one should be refunded) and a train ticket to the Frankfurt Airport to go with it. Cool, problem solved, right? Wrong. The morning she was supposed to roll out, she checked her train ticket one last time to verify her departure time. Her train had been cancelled. Of course it was. So we made our way to the train station to find her a new route which should’ve gotten her there about an hour before her flight – which for a transcontinental flight is cutting it pretty close, even for me. But the alternative route she was given was delayed, so we spent the morning stressing out on the train and in my apartment respectively hoping for the best and putting our faith in Chrissy’s ability to physically run through the airport to make it to her gate. It would appear that our faith was well placed seeing as how I am now alone in my apartment (Wiebke is gone on vacation) thinking about what a wonderful two weeks I’ve just had and wishing with all my heart that I didn’t have to go back to work today and school tomorrow. In closing, please enjoy these fun facts and final comments: Things the apartment still needs: some sort of orb, a coffee table, kitchen bar stools, a reading corner, string lights, plants (I am actively sending the boys photos of potential things to buy and add to our place) Things the apartment does not need but has anyway: a vibrating mattress, a gumball machine, way too many empty beer bottles - Some trains have “silent cars” where passengers can go to - as the title would suggest - be silent. Chrissy and I sat in one of those cars and started reminiscing on the events of our trip before being aggressively informed of the existence of such train cars and essentially asked to shut up or leave. We left. Silence isn’t really our thing. - On our way to the tulip fields (at the Schipol Airport) a bird flew into the back of my head effectively dive bombing me and leaving me feeling particularly violated. It was not ideal, and I am fairy certain I have bird flu. - Chrissy has decided she is incapable of saying the word “poffertjes” which is like a Dutch mini pancake covered in powdered sugar and instead consistently resorted to saying “puh puh puh” while moving her hands like an upside-down jellyfish. Also, the human body is apparently capable of intaking an unlimited number of stroopwaffles (another Dutch dessert-snack-thing). - We love a good squirrel. Overall it was an incredible couple of weeks. I got to have some of my favorite people meet and re-meet each other, and there was basically non-stop laughter and happiness from beginning to end. I miss the girls like hell already and am fairly certain I’m experiencing withdrawals. The Netherlands was honestly painful to leave, and I’m compensating for that by already making plans to see the boys several times in the next few months (aka invading *our* home) and texting Joël to come visit me on a daily basis. All in all it was the perfect vacation from real life and I wouldn’t change a minute of it for the world. Now I just have to make it through the next 4 months of this damn program without losing what little sanity I struggle to maintain and it’ll be time to figure out my life all over again, which is something that has had to happen way too many times in the last few years if you ask me. Last but not least, to explain the title: adventure residue is a thing that sounds a lot worse than it really is and stems from the fact that Chrissy and I were wearing white shoes over the course of the trip which by the end of it were covered in any number of questionable substances and instead of referring to them as dirty (which they were) we just called it… adventure residue. Probably funnier for us than it is for you but that’s okay with me tbh. I got the call from my mom on Friday, February 16th that my grandpa was being put on hospice care. As many of you know, I’m currently halfway through a one-year master’s program out in Germany, so I couldn’t be physically father away from Texas. But that didn’t stop me from booking a flight for the following weekend to see him. There were 12 days between when I got the call and when I landed in Texas. 12. Despite the quick turnaround, grandpa deteriorated faster than any of us thought possible, and I spent those 12 days using my study breaks to send recordings for grandma to play for him reminding him that I loved and I missed him and that I would be there soon to see him if he could just hold on. And you know what? He did. He knew I was coming. He listened to me – though to be honest I think he was listening to grandma, he never could say no to her. Regardless of who he was listening to, he loved me enough to wait until I got to see him one last time and say goodbye. He passed away one hour after I arrived in Texas. Nothing I ever could have said would have been enough, but I did my best to tell him how much I loved him and how much he meant to me, and I like to think he understood.
Now listen, if you knew Wayne Stout, you know he was kind of an ass. He was as sarcastic as they come, couldn’t pronounce the Spanish highway exit he lived off of (Bosque) to save his life – and had zero interest in learning how -, and had a temper shorter than most. But he was also one of the most extraordinary men I’ve ever been lucky enough to know, let alone be raised by. He gave me my first beer when I was two. He taught me how to shoot when I was three – luckily not while I was drinking one of those beers he’d given me -, and how to fish by the time I was four. He made me watch my first scary movie when I was maybe seven after I flew out to see him from California and mom wasn’t there to tell him no. Granted, it was Jurassic Park, so maybe not all that scary, but 7-year-old me begs to differ. When I was a kid, he would chase us around the house with “The Claw” – which was almost as scary as those movies –, take me on lawn mower rides that rivaled the best roller coasters around, and make me watch more old Western films than I even knew existed at volumes that probably caused serious damage to my eardrums. He called me his “best girl forever,” a title that has grown in significance for me with age as I realize that he truly meant it. As I got older the scary movies got scarier, the sarcasm got quicker and wittier, and the love he showed my mom, sisters, grandmother and I only became more abundantly clear. This man was smart, let me tell ya. You wouldn’t know it to look at him maybe (though you wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at me either) but he was quick with a joke and even quicker to make you smile. And boy did he have a beautiful smile himself. It was the kind of smile that made you want to smile back, even if you didn’t have a reason to. “Best girl forever” was often replaced by my new moniker “mighty cake lady” due to his love for the Texas sheath cake grandma and I made him when I came back for visits, but it was equally endearing. In fact, me getting my masters was one of the things grandpa was proudest of me for. He was there for my college graduation, and the money I received from selling the truck he and grandma gave me after that graduation was what I used to finance this masters program. He didn’t even want me to get a job while I studied (but I did) because he wanted me to focus solely on my studies. And he was so excited that I was studying in Germany, somewhere he’d spent time during his years in the service and whose culture and people he’d fallen in love with in his short time there. We would have chats about the delicious bread and beer, the kind and hospitable people, and the breathtaking castles and cathedrals. His clear love for a country so foreign to his own inspired me to fall in love with my new home even more every time we spoke, and I must have invited him to come visit me about a hundred times. His pride in my academic career will be what carries me through to the end of this program, and I know that he’ll be cheering me on for every exam and every paper, the voice in my head telling me to quit procrastinating and get my life together – which I won’t, probably mostly just to spite him. As many of you know, and even more of you probably feel the same, grandpa loved his guns. And boy oh boy did he have loads of ‘em. I once made the mistake of asking grandpa what he was so afraid of that he needed so many damn guns. His response? "Well, not a damn thing now." Terrifying, sure, but I always knew whose house I'd run to in the event of an apocalypse. I loved that man with all my heart. He helped raise me. He taught me what it meant to stand up for what you believe in, the importance and value of education, and the absolute necessity to show the people you love that you love them. Not just with your words, but with your actions. My grandparents were married for fifty years and not a day went by that grandpa didn’t tell grandma how much he loved her or how beautiful she was or what he meant to her. She’d say (mostly jokingly, I think) that she was leaving him and he’d say "Alright well then let’s go, I’m comin’ with you." And I think that is what I take most from my grandfather’s life. If I carry nothing else with me of the myriad of lessons he taught me, it is the importance of making your loved ones abundantly clear on the fact that you think they’re the best damn thing since sliced bread. He loved with such an unconditional fierceness, and if I ever meet someone who loves me even half as much as he loved my grandma, I think I'll be doin' pretty well. My grandfather was proud of a lot of things in his life, but I truly believe he was most proud of being a good husband to his wife, a good father to his daughter, and – in my completely unbiased opinion – he was proudest of being our grandpa. PSA: He wouldn't have cared so much whether I posted about him on here, he was never big into social media and never gave a damn what anyone thought of him - a trait I'm proud to have inherited - but I wanted to memorialize him the best way I know how: with my words. This doesn't do him justice, but at least it's a start. Aaaaalrighty folks, where did I leave off? Ah yes, exhausted and on the way to Luxembourg on Wednesday evening. Amira and I spent the three hour bus ride from Brussels chatting about very significant world issues (and by that I mean our personal lives). We were given the night off - which doesn't say much considering A. we didn't arrive until 10pm and B. apparently nothing is open after 8pm in Luxembourg which is why the crew ended up drinking cheap hotel wine in our room and trying to decompress from the stress of the last few days. The wine wasn't life changing but the company made up for it and (as per usual) we ended up passing out way later than intended and somehow only got like 4h of sleep yet again. I know. We hate ourselves. As a side note, the hotel walls were mad thin so we could basically tell each other goodnight through the walls which was unbelievably creepy and not good for those of us who talk at a volume like 7x louder than any given European.
The next morning was a rough one and I'm pretty sure if I snoozed my alarm one more time Des would have smothered me with my own pillow without a second thought. In fairness, I forget that other people actually wake up to their alarms the first time they go off instead of hitting snooze every five minutes till the alarm finally just turns off and you sleep through whatever you were supposed to be doing??? Weirdos. Anyway, we made it down with plenty of time for breakfast, especially when our breakfast-time got extended bc the bus driver would be arriving late (meaning that once again I was robbed of at least 15 minutes of valuable sleep and when you're only getting 4h a night that's literally tons). Somehow we ended up having to take public transport to our destination despite having our own bus that refused to pick us up (thereby completely and utterly failing at its only FREAKING JOB) and it wasn't long before we arrived at our destination: the European Court of Justice. We watched a super cool case that I would explain except it would bore all of you to death bc you're probably not into the same nerdy stuff I am. I will say this though: as the working language of the court is French and cases come from all over the EU, there are simultaneous translators for any parties present. My focus here is the dude sitting in the Czech sound box (the case came from the Czech Republic) switching fluently between Czech - a language literally no one except Czech people speak bc it is insane - French, and English like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was like he didn't even have to think about it - he didn't hesitate or pause one time, he even poured his colleague a glass of water while interpreting, as if what he was doing shouldn't have taken every fiber of his concentration?! Do you know how difficult that is?! I'm not gonna lie like he wasn't even life-alteringly attractive but I considered asking for his hand in marriage after the hearing bc I was so thoroughly impressed by him and am still not 100% sure he isn't a robot. In kind-of related news, I really need to learn French. After the hearing, we grabbed lunch at the cantine (which was again way too expensive for what it was) and threw back some coffee before diving back into even more meetings which seemed to have no end in sight and resulted in several "JOSEF" texts asking when we could all go home. Now listen. When I say I was exhausted, I don't just mean like "pretty tired." I mean cannot formulate thoughts and opinions, have no Freudian superego to combat the primitive idiocy of my id, am on the brink of complete and total delirium, find everything funny and yet cannot recognize sarcasm, cannot make jokes funny enough to make other people realize I am employing sarcasm (though I think that also may have something to do with some peoples' general inability to comprehend humor idk), and having to actively fight to keep my eyes open during some of the coolest professional experiences of my life (like the CoJ case where I had to borrow JV's notebook and write notes to Des so that I had something to do other than pass the hell out bc we couldn't whisper to each other bc we are loud whisperers and every time we tried to communicate he glared at us and I'm telling you man if looks could kill we would be dust). I was no longer a person. My soul had left my body. I was a shell of who I once was, having aged 20 years over the course of a few short days. So when they told us that our last meeting was with an alumni was with a ZEI alum at the European Investment Bank..... like, alright cool, neat job.... but you're going to try and bring 25 brain-dead zombies to a freaking bank??? Are you insane? Suffice it to say that it was painfully awkward when he asked if we had any questions at the end and we could barely muster up the usual "tell us more about how you got to your current position" and "what is your job like on a daily basis" before our last two collective brain cells sputtered and died out. Now knowing how absolutely dead we were, you would think we would head back to the hotel and pass the hell out, right? Wrong. No, no. That would be way too responsible. The girls and I decided we needed food (and alcohol) in a bad way, so we grabbed a few friends and hit up the Mexican bar/restaurant close to our apartment to see what kind of trouble we could get into. It didn't take long before our Portuguese bartender friend heard a few of us speaking Spanish and decided to join us for chats and treat us to a few rounds on the house. You see the benefits of speaking foreign languages, people? Free alcohol. What more could you possibly ask for? A few drinks in we knew it was time to head over to the other side of town and meet up with the rest of our program who was enjoying dinner at a restaurant that my GoogleMaps absolutely refused to locate with any accuracy and sent us in a few circles before we asked enough people to lead us in the right direction. Half an hour of happily trudging through the snow like the seven dwarves later, we found the rest of our group and spent awhile hanging out and, admittedly, being a little less sober than everyone else, before deciding we would head over to the club we'd seen across the street with the loud music and pretty lights bc what could go wrong? Before we left, we asked everyone if they were interested in joining, and 20 minutes later we had twenty-five masters fellows racing across the street to dance their troubles away. Seriously, we took over this club. It was awesome. Amira and I befriended the DJ and it wasn't long before he was playing some absolute bangers while we all sang and danced way more exaggeratedly than we might have if we hadn't had a proper dose of alcohol and sleep deprivation. It wasn't long before there were only six of us left (myself, Amira, Colin, Heidi, Nikola, and Iris) and we decided that it was probably about time to head home - more because the club was closing down than bc we actually wanted to leave. We weren't super worried about the half-hour walk home (alcohol is cool like that) but we also didn't realize that entertainment would be provided along the way. See, my friend Colin has some sort of sick death wish, and thought that it would be a good idea to throw a snowball at me. Naturally, I had to retaliate. It took about 30 seconds before the six of us were in an all-out, no-holds-barred snowball fight, the likes of which never before seen on the streets of Luxembourg. Alliances were formed, trust was broken, friends were betrayed, and snow was in our clothes. By the end of it, our hair was absolutely soaking wet and as I'd lent Amira one of my gloves for fighting purposes, I could only feel one hand. The rest of the way back was filled with good chats and great company and a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors, the purposes of which will remain unnamed. All in all, it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time, and I don't think I'm likely to forget it. The next morning, however, was a different story considering YET A-FREAKING-GAIN we somehow only managed to squeeze in 4h of sleep before having to get ready to check out of the hotel. Like, seriously, why? The scientific term for what I was at that point is "brain dead." Luckily we had a veeeery chill day planned of taking a goddamn walking tour of Luxembourg. Yup. Of course we did, bc simply not doing anything for more than 5 minutes would be unacceptable. Now as a very relevant side note: Luxembourg is easily one of the top five most gorgeous places I've ever been, and the snow all over the place had it looking like it came straight out of a children's fairytale. It was breathtaking in every way a city can be. However, that does not mean that I want to go traipsing around pretending to listen to the tour guide about the history of this incredible city (which I honestly would be super interested under normal circumstances) and wondering how long it takes for your toes to literally fall off your feet in sub-zero temperatures with inappropriate footwear (fight me I brought the warmest professional-looking boots I had and wore them all 4 days I still have blisters I hate everything). Miraculously, we did make it through the tour (and the week) with all our fingers and toes in tact, and only a little less than half of our brain cells. I'd call that a success, no? I will say this was quite a bonding trip for the girls and I. I mean don't get me wrong, I see them all the time - and there are a lot of jokes made about the unhealthy level of codependency between Des and I - but this was literally four days of seeing each other non-stop when we were at what could probably be considered our worst in terms of lack of sleep and f*cks to give. I even noticed I've started adopting phrases and mannerisms and facial expressions from them, like the stupid valley girl voice Des does, the way Luisa calls everyone "bitches" and the faces Amira makes when she's trying not to say what she's thinking. It's a little terrifying, but they say imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I guess what I'm trying to say is I love you three. In regards to this weekend since we've been back: As per usual, the girls & I went from "let's have a chill, alcohol-free night" to downing 5 bottles of wine and closing down the club at 6am and I'm not sure how it happened but like are we really even surprised. Fun little anecdote for that night though is that after spending 20 minutes telling this guy in a million ways that I was not interested in going home with him, he finally realized my "no" didn't actually mean "yes", called me a bitch (and a bunch of other fun German insults meant to be derogatory towards women), and spat on the ground at my feet. And they say romance is dead. Aside from that though life is good and we're all back in class (competition law - and for any of you wondering how screwed I already know I am for the next exam, the answer is "very screwed") trying to shove copious amounts of information into our brains and somehow retain like 8% of it for later. Speaking of which, I wrote this blog instead of reading for class so I hope you appreciate my sacrifice for the greater good even though I didn't do it for you I just really didn't want to read. But for now I think it's time for bed, and believe it or not I think I'll be getting more than 4h of sleep tonight! So wish me luck boys and girls and until next time. XOXOX PS. I literally speak fluent German and still have to stare at the German words for "push" and "pull" every time I walk through a labeled door which inevitably makes me look *even* dumber than I would if I just tried one and then did the other if it didn't work BUT HERE I AM LOOKIN' DUMB. Have you ever heard the expression, "running on fumes"? I'm not sure how well it translates into other languages, but the gist is that you're operating on minimal brain power and energy, like a car running out of gas. Well, this week has given that phrase a whole new threshold for me.
This past Tuesday, the students in my program were instructed to meet up on campus at 6.45am to board our bus to Brussels, Belgium. Now for those of you have ever met me even once, you know that mornings are not my thing. In fact, my friend JV and I have a rule that we don't talk before noon bc he is a bundle of joy in the mornings and I am a hater-of-everything until I've had two cups of coffee and complained at least eight times about being awake. This lack of fondness for mornings and my subsequent inability to handle them was evidenced by Amira as she got to watch me try, on two separate occasions within 10 minutes of each other, to get out of her car with my seat belt still buckled. She was amused. Me? Less so. Whatever. Btw, as I left my apartment at 6.15am, Wiebke was leaving to go for a run... just in case you want to feel bad about yourself. To make matters worse, this was the day after we had a massive three-subject exam for which I was (unsurprisingly) drastically under-prepared due to my unwillingness to study for an exam immediately after having just turned in a research paper the week before which I also had not prepared for in advance and had to write in its 13 page entirety over the course of like two and a half afternoons. Clearly my time management skills need some work aaaand I hate myself. Anyway, Amira and I arrived on campus with donuts and croissants in tow for the crew and trudged upstairs to brew a pot of coffee before we rolled out. We boarded our bus (our own personal bus which was unfortunately not a party bus despite being financed by the thousands of euros we paid into this program) and naturally it happened that Des and I sat at the back of the bus thereby minimizing the number of people we could annoy on the three hour journey from Bonn to Brussels. Of course, that meant getting to focus all of our obnoxious behavior on each other and our neighbor to the front, the poor bastard, Josef. Specifically, this meant sporadically shouting "JOSEF" in the most horrid way possible, followed by any given variation of "Are we there yet?" which was met with (astonishingly) only minimal hatred - granted by the end of the trip I'm fairly certain we had asked about 100x over the course of the four days and it had extended to questions like "What are we doing?" and "Why are we here?" and "Can we go home?". If he wanted to kill us, his poker face didn't give it away. Three hours of blabbering about literally nothing bc we were too tired to form fully developed thoughts about anything of actual substance, we arrived in town. Now just as a side note, in case any of you were planning on going to Brussels: don't. It is not a pretty city. Unless you're moving there for work (valid reasoning considering the city houses the vast majority of super cool EU institutions among a host of other organizations), just don't. There are soooo many beautiful citites in Belgium (like Brugge, where I went in October) but Brussels is not one of them. Just saying. Like, okay, it's still a European city so of course it's a thousand times prettier than most places, but if you're going on a trip, don't feel bad if it doesn't make the cut, ja feel? We arrived in Brussels earlier than anticipated (meaning I could have slept a little longer but it's fine I'm not even bitter) so we grabbed a coffee and embarrassed Amira as 25 international masters students sang happy birthday at a cafe using a wooden coffee-stirrer-thing as a candle bc we didn't think to bring one. Innovation, people. We are the future of Europe (lol good luck Europe). We soon headed over to the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Union Brussels (Perm Rep for short bc what the hell kind of title is that) where we met up with a ZEI alumni and Brexit expert who tried to maintain our interest as we half-fell asleep at the table due to sheer exhaustion - plus we've talked more about Brexit than anything else ever and if I have to talk about it again I'm going to hurl myself out of a very high window. Oh, did I mention we had to be professionally dressed and ready for the bus at 6.45am bc we wouldn't be getting to the hotel till 7pm? No? Well, there was that too. Following our meeting, we headed to lunch at the European Commission which has a massive cafeteria-style eating area with meh-quality food (my steak was still mooing bc apparently that's how they eat it in Belgium???) and high-quality prices, so that was painful. Lunch did nothing to combat the tiredness, (in fact, it made it worse), so our meetings with three other alumni immediately after did not involve a lot of mental with-it-ness from yours truly, especially when they all mentioned how it was basically impossible to work for the EU without a European passport (ugh) but that's okay bc I want to work for the UN anyway. It wasn't until our last commission meeting of the day that the deliriousness abated for a bit, and that was a direct result of none other than Ms. Ann Mettler the head of the European Political Strategy Center (basically the think-tank for the Commission). This lady was amazing. I mean, she was a Scandinavian-German, meaning she had the genetic upper-hand from the get-go, but her public speaking skills and overall awesomeness had everyone in the room totally starstruck (especially the girls when she made some badass feminist comments towards the end) and it was all I could do to stop my sleep-deprived brain from asking her to formally adopt me (sorry mom and dad). I didn't ask, though I did speak up (something I rarely do believe it or not when there are so many ridiculously impressive people in the room that I cannot measure up to bc I believe it's better to just keep my mouth shut sometimes than saying whatever dumb thing passes through my brain) to tell her how amazed I was with her accomplishments and thank her for taking the time to show us her casual badassery and give me some level of hope for the future. We all walked away thoroughly astonished by the super-woman we had just met and headed to find our bus (which took much longer than it should have considering for some reason we always seemed to have to come to the bus rather than it coming to us DESPITE THAT BEING ITS LITERAL AND ONLY JOB) and check into the hotel. It took literally everything we had for Des and I not to curl up into a ball on our tiny hotel beds and pass out, but we had an 8pm social with a bunch of alumni that were living in Brussels, so we exchanged our professional clothes for slightly more casual outfits (none of which was warm enough for the temperatures in Belgium) and tried to put on faces that made us look like we actually enjoyed socializing with other human beings. I won't lie, my face wasn't very convincing, and it was 10pm when Des finally looked at me and asked if I wanted to go home. We were out of there in seconds, let me tell you. Like, I'm all about networking, but with as much sleep as I'd gotten in the last week, I'd sooner accidentally offend someone than make friends with them and develop connections... so leaving was a safer bet. We stopped on our way home at a grocery store for crappy snacks bc it was late and Europe doesn't do open-late places so we figured nothing else would be open, and it wasn't until we were trying to digest our crappy grocery-store-sandwiches that we saw several open fast food places and realized that our sobriety had led us astray bc drunk us would have done so much better finding good food than sober us did. We were very unhappy, let me tell you. Despite our exhaustion, we went for a walk through the city to wind down and take in the scenery (which was, as mentioned, meh) before stopping in a pretty courtyard to take a deep breath and just feel grateful that we had made it through the last week and a half of paper writing and exam taking. I think it's so important to take a moment every once in awhile just to take stock and be grateful for wherever you are and whatever it took you to get there. Miraculously, Des and I still ended up getting to bed way too late bc we were too busy chatting and eating kettle corn and getting crumbs literally everywhere to actually get some damn sleep, so waking up for checkout the next morning at 5.30am was so not the dream. The only redeeming factor was the bangin' breakfast our hotel was serving which involved self-made waffles (we were informed this would be the highlight of our trip) and naturally I almost broke the waffle machine bc I over-poured the batter and it got stuck but WHATEVER modern-day machinery is more of a challenge for some than it is for others, shut up, I'm just glad I'm not studying to be an engineer. We spent the rest of our day embarrassing ourselves at the European Council by taking Charlie's Angels-esque pictures in the lobby before heading into the European Parliament to watch a plenary meeting take place, which was pretty much the coolest thing ever. We walked in as the president of the parliament (an Italian) was addressing the parliament in Spanish about the situation in Venezuela and how important it is that the EU step in to help (if you don't know what's going on in Venezuela, Google it, it's important). Anyway the point is we walked into this massive room full of influential people voting and giving dramatic speeches and changing the world and they were speaking some of my languages and it was all I could do just to sit there and appreciate what was happening and how amazing it was. Of course it wasn't long before they switched into other languages I was less familiar with and I had to put the headphones in my ears so that I could listen to the simultaneous translators kicking ass at their jobs and giving me the translated version - I fangirled so hard it was ridiculous. Even crazier was the sign-language interpreter listening to a simultaneous interpreter's translation and signing to one of the hearing-impaired parliamentary members. Like, seriously??? Are languages not the coolest?! In essence, our time in Belgium was a blur of security checks and removing jackets and scarves and re-putting-on jackets and scarves and perpetual admiration for everything around us and exhaustion and trying not to let our toes fall off as we stood outside of each institution for way longer than necessary bc proper timing isn't our thing. It was such an awesome experience, and it was only the first half of the trip - but I figure I'll give you my words on Luxembourg in the next post bc I've already talked a hell of a lot and I figure it'll be a little less overwhelming that way. You're welcome. So until next time folx - XOXOX PS. For those of you who don't know, I had a birthday last week. If you didn't know, that's either bc we're not Facebook friends or bc I actively avoid making a big deal out of my birthday. My friends are not of the same mindset though, which is how I ended up with my friend Lea at my place the night before my actual birthday ready with cake and presents to celebrate at midnight despite our exams being that following Monday, champagne and decorations from Wiebke outside my room when I woke up in the morning, a girls night with Wiebs and Maja resulting in me getting a voucher for a Belgian beer tasting, and last but definitely not least, the most amazing video compilation organized by my friend Luisa and featuring literally all of my best friends which I so did not anticipate and brought me to tears (the good kind) just watching it. Basically, my friends are better than yours and I love them the freaking most. PPS. I just found out about a super cool search engine called Ecosia and if you use it instead of something like Google, the ad revenue from your searches goes towards planting trees where they're needed the most! I added the link below. https://www.ecosia.org/ If you ever want to feel bad about your foreign language skills, I suggest you play a game of Taboo in your third language (German) with your German friends, while slowly & painfully realizing that you don't actually speak any German at all & certainly can't describe ridiculous compound German words using other smaller German words under a very strict time constraint (aka the tiny, stupid plastic hourglass ticking away at your time and your soul and ruining your life).
In related news, my team lost, and if I succeed at NOTHING else this year, I will win a game of Taboo. It's important to have goals, people, and making it out of my masters program (A. Alive and B. With a passing grade) is aiming a little too high for my taste. To my credit, languages are not an easy thing to learn, and playing word games based on your mastery of a language is even less easy. In fact, they're pretty damn hard to wrap your mind around (languages, not board games... though sometimes those too). When you first start learning a new language, you basically sound like a neanderthal just trying to put a jumble of foreign sounds together that your mouth can't figure out how to pronounce. Give it a little while and put in some solid effort, and you finally sound like a toddler trying to communicate that you're hungry or you love your dog or it's raining outside. Then there's the "I'm basically fluent" stage (my personal favorite), the category under which most high schoolers with three years of Spanish under their belts seem to fall. You know, the ones who throw "pero" into random English sentences and call their moms "madre" and claim to speak the language brilliantly but couldn't hold an actual conversation if they tried. I did it, you did it, shut up we are all embarrassing, it's fine, just repress it and move on. And most people stop after this stage bc A. You're already clearly fluent, why learn more? and B. You filled out the high school requirement to graduate so seriously why go above the bare minimum necessary to get the hell out of high school? I get it. But if you're like me, and you hate yourself enough to keep working on a language, or languages, past that point, that's where the real fun begins. I mean if you're into instant gratification (I am - though it could be argued that I like gratification whenever it happens), languages will do that for you. Literally just existing on a daily basis in Germany means that at least half my day is spent thinking and existing in German, and every time I successfully communicate with someone in a language that is not native to me, I'm pretty proud of myself. I mean realistically the pride thing may also be due in part to an inflated sense of self worth and the fact that I am very easily impressed (esp. with myself), but that's not the point. And you would think that after the first few months, talking to waiters and colleagues and friends in German would lose its novelty bc it became the new norm. You would be wrong. I am in a perpetual state of excitement when I'm using German. Bc I am a freaking nerd. I learn new words and phrases and colloquialisms on a daily basis and I've reverted back to the strategy I relied on the very first time I was in Germany (like 7 years ago) of carrying a notebook around with me and writing down new words. I look like an idiot, but I usually look like one anyway and this way at least I'll be a better-German-speaking idiot. Granted, my Spanish is going to shit bc I never use it so I need to resurrect it and get my life together, but I'm focusing on the positives. Now not to get all philosophical and nerdy on you, but if you really think about it, immersing yourself in another language changes your whole perspective. If you ask a Spanish speaker what they think of a bridge they walk across, they might describe it as strong or sturdy, or other male-associated adjectives, because the grammatical gender of the word "bridge" in Spanish is masculine. If you ask a German, however, they might describe the bridge as beautiful or elegant, words that are associated with feminine connotations, because the grammatical gender of the word "bridge" in German is feminine. In Spanish, if someone drops a cup on accident, you wouldn't say "she dropped the cup" but rather something more along the lines of "the cup fell." So the language you speak can literally change the way you might place blame or lack thereof. Learning other languages has made me so much more conscious of the manner in which I say what I say. Now there is the minor drawback that my mouth tends to move faster than my brain and I say dumb things anyway, but I like to think I've improved a little over the years and learning other languages has helped me do that. Haruki Maurakamian said that "Learning another language is like becoming another person." This is true for me in so many ways. For example, I am a more attentive listener in German, and less of a talker (hard to believe, I know) mostly probably due to the fact that my grasp of the German language is - logically - less extensive than my handle on English (which is still often questionable at best, might I add). I would also venture to guess that I am more direct when I speak German, bc the vocabulary I have developed has been based in a very honest and blunt society (sometimes the stereotypes are true). My American enthusiasm, however, does translate pretty amusingly for my German friends who laugh at me when I say "I love this sandwich" or "This is the best coffee I've ever had" bc Germans just don't say stuff like that, but whatever, I'm hoping it's an endearing quality. Learning a new language is not just the process of learning different words for the same things, but acquiring a whole new way to think about those things. When you learn someone else's language, you create a bridge between your culture and theirs that will better equip you to understand the cultural nuances and subtleties that can only be expressed in the language of the culture in question. Languages teach you patience, which is something particularly valuable for me personally bc I am one of the least patient people I know. I cannot speed up my mastery of German any more than I can make the sun come up faster in the morning, so it's all I can do to try my best to improve every day. They teach you creativity, because every time you lack the word you need to complete your sentence, you have to find a way to work around it using other (probably less impressive) smaller words. They teach you confidence and social aptitude, bc goodness knows it takes guts to walk up to someone you don't know and do your best to carry on a conversation in a language you may not quite be comfortable with, even if it's just to ask for directions. The confidence aspect is dual in nature, as once you reach a certain level of fluency in a new language, your self-esteem gets a serious boost. In that same vein, they even teach you empathy. How? Well it's one thing for you to say that visitors or immigrants or refugees to your country should learn to speak your native language bc they came to your home to live, but unless you've learned a new language yourself, you will never understand the feeling of being completely overwhelmed, stressed, or even ashamed of your ability to speak someone else's language. They also teach humility, bc you have to accept that you will mess up, even if you're basically fluent, and there will always be something you don't know how to say or don't quite understand, and the best way to handle it is to laugh it off and take in everything you can in the way of new information. I guess my point is that languages are cool and we should all learn them?? I'm not sure where I was going with this but I sure had fun writing it. Who knew I loved words so much? Everyone?? K. Anyway, here are some relevant notes and anecdotes for this week that I felt worth mentioning but that didn't fit in with the flow of this post: I live in one of the most advanced countries in the freaking world, where the unprecedented technological advances and desire for efficiency are trumped by an annoying (yet admirable and very necessary) desire to save energy. As such, we don't use clothes dryers, thus rendering any and all clothes hung up to dry in the cold/wet winter air completely unwearable for 5 to 7 business days. It's fab. I love it. Substituting your dinner with wine is a real calorie saver, but drunk-you eating a massive bowl of pasta at 4am bc your dumbass hasn't eaten in 14h will indeed make up for (and then some) any and all calories you saved by (accidentally, I swear) skipping dinner. My gym is a 2 minute walk from my apartment but it's been pouring rain every other day and on those days I spend the hours leading up to my gym time trying to talk myself out of feeling like the inclement weather is a valid reason not to go despite the myriad of raincoats and umbrellas I have at my disposal (and again, the fact that the gym is a whole two minute stroll from my door to its entrance). Coffee is the reason I wake up in the morning. It is the light of my life and if it weren't an inanimate, consumable commodity, I would take a bullet for it. You see what happens when you've been single for awhile? Coffee fills the holes in your soul. Very healthy. In related news, I should probably get mental help. PS. The title of this post is "Arschbombe" which, while the literal translation would be "ass bomb" actually would be the equivalent of "cannonball" (like, into the pool) in English. I figured this title was fitting for several reasons: 1. We came across it in our game of Taboo the other day and I had no idea what in the world it could mean bc the literal definition was relatively concerning so I had to break it down into "ass" and "bomb" for game purposes, which was hilarious in the moment. 2. I promised some of my post titles would be new German words I learned during my time here. 3. Uh, it's funny? And life is about having fun. And not taking yourself too seriously. So why just jump when you could cannonball? PPS. All the photos for this post are super irrelevant to the words in the post itself but I was back in California for a few weeks over Christmas break and it was fab and I got to snowboard and beach and see family and friends and was sick for two weeks bc that's how my life works and (aside from the sickness) it was sooooo good to be back, even if just for a little while so pls enjoy the visual representation of the trip bc I was too busy and lazy to write a whole thing about it :)))) Can I just say how glad I am that I chose a one-year accelerated master’s program, so I could get all the information that comes with a regular two-year master’s program in only 12 months of mental abuse instead of 24, and while I gain that extra year, it takes approximately a decade off my life. WHAT A DEAL!
So listen, they say that time gives perspective, and I think whoever “they” is has a point. I turn 24 next month (gross), and I know that while that may not seem like much, it’s all I’ve got so far, and I don’t intend on trying to speed it up. Time is this terribly frustratingly exciting and horrifying concept that dictates so many aspects of our lives. It won’t slow down for anybody or anything, and it only seems to fly by when all you want is for it to stop, so you can just keep living in whatever beautiful moment you’re experiencing. If you ask me, it’s pretty shit. Apparently though, it WILL slow down when you’re being mentally abused by your master’s program. Right now, time is not on my side. I started this master’s program almost 10 weeks ago and it was around week 5 that shit really started to get real. Within the course of five weeks we had a European Law exam (which I miraculously passed, in case anyone was curious), a research paper based on EU/UN policy analysis (on which I kicked ass, bc words are like the only thing I’m good at – she says while ending a phrase in a preposition), a Political Economics exam (which chewed me up and spit me out and which I will not pass unless the professor gives a very generous curve), and two in-class presentations which we were told would not be graded but were not informed until presentation time that they would be harshly judged (in our case as “reasonably okay-ish”). But it’s fine, I’m not bitter. In the last 6 weeks, my frame of reference for time has been warped like never before. I can tell you right now that I will not get an actual, restful, full night of sleep until I turn in my thesis in exactly 259 days. But who’s counting? It’s me. I am counting. I don’t know what day it is, the gym is a long-lost friend, and I haven’t gotten more than five hours of sleep in a night since mid-November. But on the plus side, I don’t have to wear eyeliner anymore bc the black circles around my eyes are prominent enough without it. It’s the little things, people. In a broader, more ideological sense of time and perspective, holy crap what a difference a few years can make in a person. In high school, I once got a C in geometry class (1. Shut up I suck at math and 2. I said shut UP). It was my first ever grade in high school that wasn’t an A, and my dad came home to me bawling at the kitchen table with such dramatic flair that he assumed somebody had literally died considering my reaction. Nobody died. Except maybe my dignity. Fast forward a few years to my bachelors: I still pretty much thought anything but an A was unacceptable, I just got better about finding a balance between casual alcoholism, three jobs, and studying my ass off. Still pretty impressed by myself for that tbh, though I'm fairly certain my liver still hates me for it. Living in Spain taught me to relax a little bit, and my time interning in Germany reminded me that your whole life can’t be a vacation, so I maintained my balance. And now, a year of big-kid-adulty work and another year of traveling the world and messing around later, here I sit in my master’s lecture on the democratic deficit and political dynamics in the EU, writing to you people instead of listening to the 900 year old British professor talking slower than the sloth at the DMV in Zootopia (Flash, for those of you hip to kids movies like myself). Mind you, I would be furiously typing notes right now if this class had an exam at the end, but it’s a paper instead… so here I sit, ignoring 90% of the things coming out of his face. If you look around the classroom right now, you’ll see 23 of some of the smartest people I’ve ever met slowly drifting off into sleep. It’s not just me, people. We’re all over it. Mentally, I checked out about a week and a half ago, which made the effort I put into my last two presentations questionable at best. At this point I’m actually just looking to pass my exams; getting an A is so not even remotely on my radar anymore. Like I said, time changes things man. Dad would be proud. Also, it’s important to remember that even when I’m literally dying trying to memorize the equation for the interest parity principle or comprehend flow of migration and welfare effects diagrams, I am still so unbelievably happy to be here. On almost a daily basis, it hits me how grateful I am to literally just exist here. And it doesn’t always happen when I’m doing something particularly amazing like visiting the beautiful Christmas markets or having a potluck with some of the amazing people this program has brought into my life. It hits me when I’m biking to class (despite the frigid temperatures that make my face hurt and my perpetual fear of falling off the bike bc of who I am as a person, which some people are happy to point out has happened once already this year). It hits me when I wake up and drink my morning coffee with the beautiful view from my balcony (which I currently appreciate from inside my apartment through the window bc like I said it’s frickin’ cold). It hits me when I use German for everything from talking about daily life to having serious chats to ordering at a restaurant or help tourists with directions bc I’m finally figuring out my new city. It hits me when I’m sitting in class making a valiant attempt at comprehending the information on a completely new topic from whatever brilliant mind my program flew in to instruct us for the week. Everything about being here feels right, and I could not be more grateful for my life and the people in it. As it stands, I leave for California in 24h and have yet to pack, find Christmas presents for my family, or get any single aspect of my life together. What’s new? According to my sister Jess (who Face-timed me at 6am today telling me as I was just waking up that I looked like I just crawled out of a trash can – thanks Jess), I should pack a bikini and shorts, some snowboarding clothes, something to go clubbing in, and presents for her from Germany. Easier said than done considering I only get a carry-on and a personal item bc ya girl is too poor to check a bag and all my friends from here want me to bring back everything from Stevia to make-up and I plan to bring even more clothes back to Germany from California and rolling my clothes instead of folding them can really only do so much in terms of saving space. We’ll see how this goes. The fact that I will wake up tomorrow morning in my bed in Germany (at five in the damn morning, ugh) and go to sleep tomorrow night in my sister’s bed in California ( bc I no longer have a bedroom in my house bc my parents do not love me) is still absolutely unbelievable to me, despite the number of times it has happened in the past. I am so excited for so many things. My dog (only the good one, the other one is old and ugly), Mexican food, the beach, my snowboard, above-freezing temperatures… my friends and family, I guess… the list goes on. In 38 hours, I’ll be in the car on my way home from LA, severely jetlagged but insanely happy, which is a pretty remarkable thing to be able to say. So before then, I guess I should put down this glass of wine and get to packin', folx. Until next time! XOXOX |
About the AuthorMouth like a sailor, paper cut survivor, avid arguer, harsh critic of people who put clothes on their pets, easily distracte USA, Mexico, Iceland, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Morocco, Malta, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Hungary, England, Poland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Scotland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Croatia, Greece, Vatican City, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, Kenya, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, Indonesia
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