In a nutshell

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. I sort of apologize. I was genuinely busy getting out in the cities (Paris and London) I’ve been in, and haven’t taken the time to write. I also met my parents in Paris, where they flew over to join me for a two week vacation when my mom finished teaching at the end of Spring semester. This meant that the laptop that had been mine for any spare moments I had in hotel and hostel rooms, was suddenly shared, and my dad, god love him, likes to waste time on a computer at least as much as I do, so my access was restricted in a way it’s never been before, since at home I have my own separate computer and never have to share.
I think part of it is that, in Vienna, I wanted to write about shared experiences, because I knew my friends who were there were also looking and writing their own accounts. When I was alone in Spain and Italy, I had no real way of reflecting on what I was doing except to write about it, and I also knew I had to be sole curator of the memories I was making there; if I didn’t write it all down, I would probably forget some of it happened, in light of the overwhelming body of experiences I’ve had.
However, in Paris, I had travelling companions which meant I wasn’t as likely to forget anything, and that I suddenly had to share duties on deciding what we would do with our time. It was often trying, when it came to deciding what we would do, since I could spend most of my life in art museums, street cafes, and sitting on park benches, where my parents get bored quickly with art museums, and just have a different operating pace than I had grown used to in Spain and Italy. After all, in the Mediterranean, you just don’t do things fast. There’s a relaxed pace because it’s often too hot and humid to do it any other way. Paris and London are a different breed of city, to be sure, and my parents were coming directly from Canada, which is, to say the least, not a lot like the Mediterranean.
Travelling with someone is quite different from any other experience you can have with someone. I still live with my parents, though I’m definitely reaching that point where I would like to move out (I just need a little more impetus to undertake something so expensive when there’s nothing really wrong with living at home right now). However, living with my parents isn’t really like travelling with them at all. The combination of the stresses of public transportation, sharing very small spaces, and the delicate balance between seeing everything and actually relaxing on vacation makes for a complicated dynamic where we didn’t always get along.
If this sounds like I’m complaining about my parents, don’t mistake it: I’m really not. Travelling with anyone is hard, particularly when you feel obligated to do things together. In Vienna, there were enough of us that if you wanted to do something, usually at least one other person wanted to go with you, so the rest of the group didn’t feel obligated to go just so you wouldn’t be alone. With the three of us, there was an obligation to be together most of the time, and I’d just spent the last three weeks on my own, so it was an adjustment, to be sure.
Anyway, by way of a short recap, in Paris, I saw and did most of the things you might expect: we went to the summit of the Eiffel tower, we spent most of a day wandering the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, we walked through Notre Dame and saw the view from Sacre Cœur’s bell tower, we went to l’arc de Triomphe and wandered down the Champs Elysees, we went to the Pompidou centre and my parents sat downstairs when they were tired, while I pored over modern and contemporary art (from Picasso to Kandinsky to Schwitters to Duchamp, all the way up to modern and political stuff, like the work of the Guerilla Girls about the art in the Met (in NYC, that is). I may have to write something entirely separate, just to deal with some of what I saw in the Pompidou), we went on an evening boat ride on the Seine and got mooned by a girl who had emerged from the throngs of young Parisians who hang out on the banks, we went to Pere Lachaise cemetery and saw the graves of Orson Wells, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison, we went to the Musee d’Orsay and saw amazing impressionist works and Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde, which I would kill to be able to hear people’s responses to...and we sat in street cafes and drank wine and espresso and ate croissants. We rode the metro lots and lots and lots. I bought at least a dozen CD’s, some entirely French and some by French bands with mixed French and English lyrics.
In short, I had a pretty great time.
London, well, again, it was another entirely different type of city. In London, I was fortunate enough to get to go to quite a few theatre productions in the west end because my parents love musicals. We saw Avenue Q (absolutely bloody hysterical. Funniest musical ever written), Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (really funny and interesting, especially if you’re as interested in the performative aspects of gender and orientation as I am), We Will Rock You (I love Queen music, but I hate bad writing so much more. Don’t do it, folks. It’s god-awful), Les Miserables (glad to have finally seen it, but having Nick Jonas in the cast for a 3 week run made for an awful audience of squealing, misbehaving girls instead of the usual audience), and Grease (honestly, I think the movie’s better). We also went to the Tate Modern museum (meh), the London Eye (not worth the money), walked past Buckingham Palace, saw the vault in the original Hard Rock cafe, celebrated Canada Day in Trafalgar Square (because the Canadian Embassy is right beside it), drank a lot of cider (because I still don’t like beer), shopped, did a walking tour through Soho to a bunch of places where the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Clash and others did their thing, cruised down the Thames in a big boat, went to the top of Tower Bridge, shopped some more, took the tube a bunch.
In short, it was also a pretty great time.
So now, as you’ve probably figured out, I’m home (and have been for a couple days now). I’m trying to adjust to jetlag. It’s 7 hours time difference, so the first night I slept at home, I got a little less than 4 hours of sleep, woke up at 4am and watched Golden Girls reruns. The second night, I was able to sleep until 6amand the third night until around 8, so I guess it’s getting better and I’ll probably be back to normal (whatever that is), within a few days. I start back at work the day after tomorrow, and then some of my family come to town for the Stampede. I thought I’d be bored with all the time I’d have here, but not yet, anyway. I’ve felt busy pretty much since I got home. I’m still unpacking and putting things away, along with fighting off a cold I got the day before I left London. I haven’t got much of a voice right now, but I am getting better.
I’m finding the adjustment back to be a little weird. Being in a mall for the first time in almost two months was really weird, as was walking through a food store and seeing names that now look unfamiliar to me. It’s weird having a coffee maker and a fridge and a microwave and a tv that plays shows I can understand 24 hours a day on about 50 channels. It’s weird knowing that I can understand the packaging on any product I see at a store, or I can talk to people anywhere and assume that they will probably understand me and have at least one thing in common with me. I don’t know. I keep having moments of weirdness. When I had to move my calendar from May straight to July, it seemed completely impossible that I could have been away. Some things feel so familiar, so immediate, it’s like I can’t have been away at all, but I think that’s to do with living in one place your whole life. It becomes so familiar that you perhaps can’t forget it. At least, not in a matter of weeks or months.
I had an interesting moment when my Mom was speaking to her own mother, and started saying how she’d been to more countries than her mother, and now I’ve been to more than her. I’ve been to 10 countries in 23 years (though, to be fair, a full half of that was this trip). It’s done amazing things for me, to me. I still haven’t reflected the way I need to, but hopefully I’ll find the time soon to do so. And to put my pictures up on facebook.

“I want someone badly/To burn in here with me”

-“I Want Someone Badly” by Jeff Buckley

<3 Angi

Catching Up

I seem to have hit some sort of wall with updating. I haven’t written any blog entries in 4 days now. Sorry, guys. Um...so, what’s happened...I took the train back to Madrid where I stayed overnight. I walked from the station to my hostal, because this time I knew where it was, and it was either walk up the hill with my luggage, or do all the stairs of the two metro stations with it; you might even call it a rock and two pickles kind of situation (inside joke).
While back in Madrid, I went to the Plaza Santa Ana because there’s a “Federico García Lorca memorial” there, which sounded like something I’d want to see.
It’s a little, statue that says his name on the front. It’s tiny. It’s not even the dominant statue in that plaza. There’s a much bigger one for something else at the opposite end. I was disappointed, as you can imagine. So disappointed, I didn’t even take a picture.
That night, after dinner, I went for what is, apparently, a Madrid must-do, according to my lonely planet guide: I went for chocolate con churros at a place just off Puerta del Sol called the Chocolateria San Ginés. You might have had churros before at an amusement park or something, but they’re different in Spain. They’ve still got that characteristic long, thin, ridged shape, but they’re plain, and softer and freshly made, and you get a little stack of them along with a cup of chocolate that I would describe as being kind of like warm chocolate pudding, but not gelatinous like pudding can be. That’s not overly appetizing sounding, but it was good and different and a cool experience to sit in this little narrow street at an outdoor table at almost midnight, and the tables were mostly full and stayed relatively full—when one emptied, people sat at it sometimes before it was even cleared.
The next day...well, it’s pretty much like you’d expect, I think. I took the metro to the airport. It’s about an hour between transferring (might be less without all the luggage, but...yeah) and finding lifts and/or escalators. The one station, Cuatro Caminos, to get to line number 6 (grey) which I only had to take one stop further, you go down 4 of the longest escalators I’ve ever seen in my life. And that’s from another line, not even from ground level.I don’t want to know how far underground that puts you.
The airport was airport like. Lots of waiting and struggling with bags. This flight was on Meridiana, and they are officially known from here on as the luggage Nazis. Where BA, Air France, and Iberia all allowed up to 23kg for your bag, Meridiana allows 20, and it’s not per bag. You pay a fixed rate for the first 20 kg, and it can be spread out among as many bags as you want. Then you pay €12 for EVERY kg you go over that limit. Yeah. So I had to do a lot of creative shuffling. Long, loooooong story short, my bag...19.9, bitches. Yeah. I did it. Course, that meant everything heavy was in my backpack. If I hadn’t also weighed it, I would have sworn it was as heavy as my luggage. It’s amazing what a difference 3kg makes on your back.
So, we loaded onto the plane relatively on schedule, then the captain said they were just loading the luggage, so a short delay of 15 to 20 minutes.
An hour and 20 minutes later, we FINALLY took off. Someone in the back of the plane clapped. The rest of us we’re thinking it.
This put me about an hour late in Florence, where the people who run the place I was to be staying at we’re waiting for me to arrive because they don’t stay here the rest of the time. I was supposed to call if there were any major delays, so I tried to call them as soon as we landed, and I couldn’t make the stupid travel cell phone dial correctly, so I had to get a hold of my dad (it dialled fine when the number was already in saved in its phonebook. I’ve since figured out I was using the wrong combination of + and * and #, which go in different places in the number. Ugh.) and get him to call them, which he did because he’s cool like that.
I got a taxi painlessly, and the guy was really nice and let me butcher some Italian with him and even told me I spoke very well (which I have two theories on: 1, he sees lots of tourists who probably speak as much Italian as I did German when I got to Vienna, and they probably all have terrible accents for romance languages, and 2, he’s paid, ie tipped, to be nice to tourists). We got to the place quite quickly, and I rang the bell to be let into the building.
No answer.
Shit.
On the sign, it says if there’s no answer to call the phone number I hadn’t been able to call at the airport. So again, I had to call my dad and get him to call them and then he called me back to say that she said she’d be right there, having left because she thought that my plane sitting on the ground for an hour meant I wouldn’t arrive for another hour. Not so much. Anyway, after she got there, all was well. The keys here are crazy. the front door is a fairly normal house key. The inside door of the locanda (I think that’s the Italian equivalent of pensione, somewhere between hostel and hotel) is this scary looking key that should open a magic book or something. The door key and bathroom door key (since it’s across the hall) are extremely old, simple keys that look like you could pick the lock with a butterknife.
By that point, after I got settled in, it was pretty late, so I just went for dinner. I found a little pizzeria near the Piazza della Independenza, I think, and pretty much felt like the obviously gay waiter was laughing at the stupid tourist girl, since he had a table of friends he was joking with most of the time. Want to know how I knew he was gay? Yeah, you already know the answer to that, don’t you? (The answer is that every time in the last 5 years that I find a man attractive, it means he’s gay. He was cute, therefore gay). Not to mention, straight men don’t wear pants that tight. Just sayin’.
The next day (yesterday, ie. Sunday), I bought some groceries for breakfasts, and then mostly wandered around the city to get my bearings.

I saw Ponte Vecchio, which is pretty much something I wanted to see since my very first Italian class in my first semester of University when I was 17, so that’s kind of awesome. It’s all jewelry stores in the buildings now. The bridge itself is a little over a thousand years old (seriously), which I can’t even think about properly. I walked a bit along the Arno river, and had lunch at a little outdoor cafe across the bridge—foccaccia with turkey, mozzarella and asparagus, and a lemonsoda.
I also saw, of course, the Duomo (Italian word for cathedral), with the huge dome, and the bell tower (or Campanile), though didn’t go into any of them just then.
In the evening, I went to the Piazza della Repubblica and had dinner at another outdoor cafe. Simple spaghetti pomodoro e basilico. I had a craving for it. On the walk home, there was a HUGE crowd down the street laughing and clapping, so I had to check it out. A Charlie Chaplin style mime street performer was doing his thing. He was awesome, even though I only caught the end of his little show. I got Nocciola gelato (hazelnut) on the way home.
I also stopped to buy a small bottle of wine, planning to try to recreate Tinto de Verano in my room. Bought a small bottle of Italian red, got most of the way home and figured out the folly of this plan: I don’t have a corkscrew.
Well, so much for that (I’m planning to look for one later today, actually).
Speaking of today, I slept in again, and then went out planning to do the Duomo, the dome, the campanile and the baptistery today, since they’re all essentially part of the same complex. I took one look at the line to go to the top of the dome, and turned around, on a tip from my guidebook which said the lines at the campanile are shorter and it’s almost as high.

Jackpot. I didn’t wait at all to get in. 414 steps later I was staring at all of Florence, including the dome itself. Gorgeous. (Note, that picture is taken from the dome, because I wanted you to see the campanile I climbed. Scroll down for the view from the campanile OF the dome)

When I came down, I went into the baptistery and saw these amazing mosaics on the ceiling. Then I went through the Duomo itself (which is a separate entrance than to climb the dome. After Sevilla, the architecture didn’t look like much, but the frescoes on the inside of the dome are a-m-a-zing.
I had some lunch, and then figured I’d come back to the room for a bit and go back fairly late to try to skip the long lines for the dome, but when I walked by it was fairly short, so I decided no time like the present. I ended up in line between a bunch of Americans (after explaining to a bunch of other tourists that they were in the line to climb up the dome, which caused them to promptly leave. Wimps), and we talked. There was a guy who’d just graduated high school, a girl who was that same age and her sister who was probably a few years older than me, all from the upper east corner of the states, and then an older guy from Lousiana.
This guy...Oh man...this guy was one of those guys who worms into every conversation and thinks he belongs there, and that he knows everything, despite the fact that I was clearly better read on the subject of Florence...and everything else, really, than he was. He kept saying stupid things, and inserting what I thought were totally inappropriate to the conversation the rest of us had (including his very own anecdote about if a gypsy hands you a baby, you drop it because the gypsy is going through your purse, to which I responded that I’d find it more traumatic to drop a baby than have my money stolen. Yes, I actually said that to him. Didn’t shut him up though.).
Sadly, of course, this meant I got to the top (460 steps up, ugh) about the same time as him. He was offering to take pictures for everyone, which was nice enough, but when I refused, saying I didn’t need a picture of me in front of the view, he followed me around and insisted. And then went on telling me I was beautiful and would probably get a modelling contract. Seriously dude, what the fuck? Also, this is the picture he took:
Yeah. Nice.
I bet he thinks he’s a photographer too. Although I kind of like that you can’t see my face.
Also, just for comparison, here’s the picture I took myself:
I like it better, but hey, maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, there, now you’re up to date on my Firenze adventures. Tomorrow, I’ve got an afternoon trip to Pisa booked, and Friday, I’m going to Siena and San Gimignano. In between, I’ve got to see the Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David is), the Uffizi (also an art gallery) and the Palazzo Pitti (once owned by the Medici’s, it’s now an art gallery, royal apartments, and big garden all together)
Oh yeah, and I have to eat everything in Italy.
Did I mention how I feel about Tuscan food?
It’s like the exact opposite of how I felt with Spanish food where if I liked it, I was surprised, and mostly was just eating safe stuff because I had to eat. Yeah, here, I want half the menu immediately, but I’m also trying not to be too expensive. Sigh. It’s very sad, I know. Don’t you feel sorry for me?
On that note, here’s my list of things I miss the most (in no particular order, of course):
1) My dog (seeing her on skype with my parents isn’t the same thing, and it kind of breaks my heart that it confuses her when I talk to her through the computer, though it’s cool that I can make her sit from another continent)
2) A shower which requires no contortions to be used effectively, and I don’t have to turn off every 30 seconds to avoid flooding the bathroom
3) My bed. Oh man, my bed. Ungh.
4) Carpeting. Vienna was the last place I can remember even seeing carpet in a building. Seriously. I don’t feel at home without carpet. Is that weird?
5) You guys, my friends and family! (sometimes, I gotta break out the cheese, sorry. But really, I do miss you guys)
That’s it for now. I’ve got MTV on right now, for some background noise, and oh shit, they’re playing Jersey Shore. I need to leave now. I can actually feel my brain shrieking and trying to escape.

<3angi

Making It In Madrid

The last entry is unfinished, I suppose, but I felt I needed a new one (despite not having the last one posted yet) to really talk about things. I thought I felt overwhelmed in the London airport looking at all those people and feeling really lame about all my shit, but only 24 hours later, I’m already thinking back at it fondly as cute to feel so overwhelmed by that.
After the ridiculous layover, where I got no sleep at all, I went to check my bag at 4:30 in the morning, went through security and bought a terrible sandwich from starbucks in the airport. I probably could have gotten a hotel for the amount it cost me to not starve in the airport. Sigh.
More waiting, and this time my laptop was dead from the overnight usage, and I don’t have a UK adapter because I was only supposed to be on my own in the UK for a couple hours on two separate occasions, so it seemed unnecessary.
Rather than a BA flight, I was now on Iberia. Next time I say “no, I don’t need an exit row,” I need a swift kick to remember that just because BA planes are decently roomy does not mean that all of them are. I spent the next 2 hours and change feeling like I was going to die from a bloodclot or something because I couldn’t actually sit without my legs turned sideways and still shoved hard against the seatback in front of me. There were also lots of shouting children, though thankfully I only heard them intermittently when I paused my ipod.
Finally I got to Madrid and felt like I was in the wrong place about 17 times because I really have no idea what I’m doing. I was one of the first people to get to the baggage claim, and my bag was literally the first one to come off. How random is that?
Then I had to sort out the metro situation. I knew what station I was looking for, and I know that the airport is kind of out of the city and only 1 line goes to it. It took a lot of staring at the board, sweating, looking at the little subway map, sweating more, fiddling with the ticket machine and having it reject my credit cards, sweating a lot, asking for help, going all the way back upstairs for an atm, then finally buying tickets. The train was ok, but it did take me quite a while. I had to transfer twice to different lines, with all my heavy shit, sweating like I was dying, covered in plane/airport grime. I can’t remember the last time I felt quite so gross.
When I mercifully reached the station I wanted, I had to drag my suitcase up about 100 stairs. This station, for some reason, had no escalator or lift, even though almost all the other places I transferred at did have them. On street level, I was turned around and confused, but after wandering around a bit, found the sign for my hostal. I pressed the intercom button for the door and heard nothing, nothing, nothing, then a voice goes “Yes?” sounding almost bitchy, and I said I have a reservation, and he says, “yes, i opened the door for you. (pause) The door is open.” I pushed and pulled and it finally moved and I felt exceedingly dumb. Up a floor, another locked door and I feel like a frustrated monkey trying to get in, before I’m greeted by a man who was already waiting for me and everything.
He proceeded to be the nicest, most helpful person I think I’ve ever met. He gave me a city map and drew on all the important things, explained a bunch of areas of the city, talked to me about Canadians and how he finds the Canadian accent is easiest to learn from when learning English (his was very good).
Eventually I got a room, and washed a bunch of essentials in the shower before I showered myself. It was glorious, that shower. Not just because it’s a decently nice shower. I probably would have been happy with a dribble of water out of a hose by then, but it is a nice shower.
It was around after 2 by then, a full 24 hours since we left Vienna, and I still hadn’t slept more than 10 minutes, but hunger was definitely battling with sleep, so I walked down to Atocha street and wandered, finding a little cafe place to eat. The waitress didn’t smile once, and I think I’m totally letting that make me feel bad. I tried a little bit of Spanish, like “agua,” “gracias” and even “la cuenta?” for the bill (all with big, nervous tourist smiles that usual make people smile back).
Then more wandering towards the Museo de la Reina Sofia, supposedly free on weekends, but turns out it closes at 2:30 on Sundays, so I was way too late. I took a different way home, around the opposite side of the building and managed, despite staring at my map every 12 steps, to get lost for a while. But thankfully I have a semi-reliable internal compass during the daylight hours, so I had some faith if I kept walking in the right direction, I should be okay. Eventually, I was right.
After a stop at a grocery store, for cold drinks, I came back here, already sweaty again (apparently it was supposed to be 31 here today?), and slept for a little while, maybe an hour or so.
When I woke up, I was hit with the strongest wave of homesickness and disorientation I think I’ve ever felt. I have no internet here, and don’t know anyone in a city where I don’t speak the language. I know that I should be proud of myself for doing something that is probably scary even to the most outgoing people I know, but mostly I was just hit with an overwhelming need to give up and go home where I don’t feel stupid all the time. It’s certainly made me rethink my moving to Europe thoughts because it would only be worse if I didn’t have a relatively limited time frame on it all.
It’s funny because I really did spend the first two weeks not missing home much at all. I was busy and had friends, and their dramas to deal with on top of being in a new city. Vienna is also more English than most cities in non-English countries (though given what I’ve heard so far, if I’m honest, there’s plenty here in Madrid too), and the food was pretty comfortably western. And I always felt pressured to go out and experience the city there because my friends were going out and I tagged along rather than sit in the hostel, but here, I remembered that I only have myself to do that now, so if I don’t push myself, I could spend a bunch of time in nice, but generic hostel rooms, and not experience Spain or Italy at all. It’s hard to know how to balance it, because there is a point at which I have to do what’s comfortable, and pushing myself to do crazy things is almost as likely to lead to me remembering this trip badly as not pushing myself, if that makes sense.
What I mean is that I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted time, but I also don’t want to feel like I’ve pushed myself to do so much that I miss the point, and I’m not sure where that line is. I just need to keep reminding myself that only I get to decide that anyway, so pressuring myself is stupid. And to breathe. Breathing is good.
I think my attachment to the internet is unhealthy too. I’m feeling so isolated largely because I can’t reach out through email or facebook or even posting a blog. It’s a security blanket, because half the time, I don’t even talk to people on there. Anyway, my guidebook says this plaza is a free wifi hotspot, so I’m going to head there soon, and I guess if you’re reading this on the weekend, that means I found it and it worked. Yes, I did just say my attachment is unhealthy, now I’m going to go get my fix. Admitting a problem and doing something about it aren’t the same step. Plus, I think I’ll take what comfort I can get right now.
Anyway, It’s 7pm here, so perhaps I will head out and see what I can see tonight. I still feel the panic at the edges, threatening me, but sitting here thinking about it really isn’t helping any.

“Non, Je ne regrette rien” – Edith Piaf (both the title and the quote. It means I regret nothing.)

<3Angi

Goodbye Hugs and Long Layovers

As I write this, I’m sitting in the arrivals area of Heathrow, waiting out my exceeding long, overnight layover because I’m way too cheap to do something like find a hotel for 14 hours, especially when I’d still want to be back at the airport by about 4 am anyway. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually sleep a little here later.
But let me go back a bit, and maintain the continuity with my last entry. I did, indeed go to the impromptu little soiree Rachel set up, beginning at Crossfield’s Australian Pub. Kathy, Jill and Elinor also came along, and we met up with some of Rachel’s new Austrian friends. We proceeded to play foosball, eat pub food and drink. Lots.
Yet again, I somehow ended up drunk at 1516, this time on a combination of tequila shots, vodka shots and Radler. It was a good night, indeed.
The next day—my very last in Vienna—was spent writing in the park with David, where I got super sunburned on my shoulders and my legs. Awesome. We went to the Naschmarkt again, needing some dried strawberries for the road, then ate garlic soup and gelato for lunch. Our final group meeting was an informal affair where we talked about our progress with our plays and as writers. I felt a little strange hearing all these talented writers talk about having never written before, and then me saying I’ve taken quite a few writing courses and been working at creative writing for several years now, and I’m probably not much further ahead of any of them for it. We also got to meet Natalie’s dog, Rocket, and I was able to cure a little bit of my severe case of dog withdrawal by getting some snuggles and kisses from him. I still miss my dogs though.
After the meeting, we ate at a little cafe/restaurant that is, quite literally two doors down from us, called Smokey’s Bar Food. They give you a ton of food for really cheap given the proximity to the center of Vienna. 8.50€ (maybe $11 or so CAD?) gets you one of the best veggie burgers I’ve ever tasted, a huge salad and a huge serving of potatoes.
On that note, I really don’t think I can accurately describe how good I ate in Vienna. Even the street vendor food I had was amazingly good. If you’re ever in Vienna, I have a whole list of places I could recommend near the city center. I’m going to crave the garlic soup from Venezia for the rest of my life, and I don’t know where I’ll ever find such good hazelnut or lemon gelato in Canada. I feel like such a fat kid talking so much about the food, but I had psyched myself out pretty badly before I left Canada because I’ve always been a picky eater, so to find I liked pretty much everything I ate was a really pleasant surprise. I also found it shockingly easy to eat vegetarian there. I only ate chicken or shrimp at about 5 meals the entire trip, which is way less than I would at home. It makes me want to put a little more effort into eating less meat at home.
Anyway, enough about food (I swear, even with all the extra exercise I was getting there, I gained weight in Vienna. Ugh.).
This morning dawned with the unmistakeable sadness that comes with leaving a place that feels good, though I think we were all ready for a little time away from each other. For me, at least, it also dawn with a lot of trepidation about what’s coming.
After breakfast, the last four of us to leave took a cab to the airport around noon, and got on our shared flight to London—the last shared journey for us. After a delay boarding in Vienna and a delay in London airspace waiting for a runway, we were about 40 minutes late.
The plan for me was to already be checked in for my Madrid flight, and then find somewhere to store my luggage at Heathrow, before following Elinor on a little London adventure, since she’s got about 4 days here since the London to Calgary British Airways flight was cancelled.
Unfortunately, the luggage storage place is only accessible from 5am to 11pm when I would have wanted to get my luggage around 4, AND they charge £8 for 24hours of storage (around $15 CAD I think?). Can you say ridiculous? Already frustrated and stressed and hot and tired from lugging my heavy shit all over the airport to find this out, I gave up on going with Elinor, so after a goodbye hug, I began looking for somewhere to kill an entire night.
What I have learned already knew but have had reaffirmed today:
-I seriously envy people who travel with practically no stuff (though I still have no idea how they do it)—and wish I’d left a few things home
-airports are crazy expensive
-while being in different places may be awesome, travelling itself actually REALLY sucks
-travel stress makes me weepy
-I miss home if I have time to think about it
Anyway, I ate some really overpriced bad pasta, drank an enormous coffee (so I’m brimming with caffeine right now), and wandered around just trying to find somewhere to sit that was slightly quieter than the inside of a plane’s engine.
After much wandering, I found it. It ain’t great, but it’s the least crowded area I’ve found. At the little convenience store here, I bought something called a King Tango (cherry flavoured pop) though I didn’t read that it contains sugar (good) AND sweeteners (really not good). Boo. I also bought a Kerrang, which is only £2.20 here, as opposed to something like $12 in Canadian bookstores. I’m trying to kill time by doing my homework (I have plenty of it to get done), but I’m also tired and cold and really wish I had a bed right now.
I’ve also been having a ton of difficulties with my allergies the last 4 or 5 days. I forgot how bad spring can be. I can’t even wear eye makeup right now, and I have that itchy feeling in my ribcage underneath the skin, which is impossible to fix by scratching.
But, here’s my attempt to redeem all the whining I just did: A couple of times, I’ve looked at my wrist and it has done exactly what I hoped it would do. It has reminded me that all the bitching I’m doing needs to be kept in perspective. I’m doing something most of my friends are crazy jealous of by travelling around Europe. Of all the problems to have, a long layover, overpaying for food, and seasonal allergies are pretty good problems to have.
I’m pretty certain this entry could bore you to death. Sorry for that. I’m bored right now, so I’m sure that’s a contributing factor.
I’m going to attempt a little more homework now. By the time I get the entry posted, I have no idea where I’ll be, but it won’t be here. There’s no free internet here, and as we established before, I have problems justifying airport costs. Sigh.

“The glove compartment isn’t accurately named/’Cause behind its doors there’s nothing to keep my fingers warm and all I find are souvenirs from better times”

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Afternoon becomes evening becomes the middle of the bloody night. It’s 2am local in London (3am Vienna, 7pm Calgary), and the airport that was a teeming, crazy mess of humanity a few hours ago is mostly asleep. There’s something kind of nice about seeing it this way. The lights never go out, perhaps, but this place does sleep. Just not me, of course.
I tried. I really did. I even found a group of benches without arms so I could stretch out, but it’s too bloody cold and uncomfortable. Eventually I gave up and watched episodes of Extras on my ipod.
I should be reading. At least then, I might feel like the weight of my ridiculous carry-on is justified. But, no. I could also do homework.
Instead, I wandered a bit. I’m sort of glad I did. I walked outside onto the main entry of the departures area. My flight is the next one out, top of the board, about 4.5 hours from now. This place is very different this time of day. I wish I’d taken a picture of the insanity a few hours ago, just for the comparison shot, but I never thought it’d be worth taking a photo of at 3am. A pleasant surprise, I suppose.

First Impressions

So, I can officially say I’ve slept on the terribly attractive (and uncomfortable) blue carpet of the London airport. Couldn’t sleep at all on the nine hour flight from Calgary to London, but the industrial grade carpet in the London airport—the kind of carpet I will always associate with my high school band room: basically some short, velour-y fibres over concrete—felt like a superb place for a nap.
Jealous?
But I should go back a bit. I had a weird week. I’m a really bad packer. When it comes to packing, I'm notoriously bad. Ask my best friend, who generally bears witness to my 4am-the-night-before-I-leave throwing random shit into a suitcase fiasco. Ask my parents, who've had to take me shopping numerous times upon arrival because I've forgotten a swimsuit, or a pair of shorts, or a toothbrush, etc, etc, etc. Ask anyone who's travelled with me, and had to see the too-large bag I bring only to hate "everything" I have with me because none of it goes together.
I freely admit to being really, really bad at packing. And I gotta tell you: I've never had to pack for more than two weeks. And I'm pretty sure I get exponentially worse at packing as the length of stay increases, so I truly have no idea how to pack for 7 weeks. 49 days is a long time. So as you may have guessed, packing stresses me the hell out.
On top of that, one of my dogs (Zap, our youngest, the black and white springer spaniel) had to be put to sleep on Wednesday. I was pretty awful and extremely quick. 2 weeks ago, he was perfectly fine. The same day, I went to the Chuck Palahniuk reading which was a really intense experience given the day I’d had.
I was also trying to see several of my friends before I left, so scheduling in packing time was ridiculous, and I ended up staying up until 5am on Thursday night, and then getting up at 9 am, just to continue getting ready. I fought with my bags and declared that I “didn’t want to go anymore” more than once. But eventually (after buying a new, bigger backpack on the way to dinner and the airport), I got everything into my bag and carry-on, and got through security (which was, yes, as fun as you might have expected it to be).
My flight from Calgary to London left at about 9:30 at night. And just for the record, this will have more significance to some of my friends than to others, but I was on the same flight as Christian Bök. Small world, huh? And I was further forward on the plane than him. Make what you will of that. The flight was about 9 hours. I did not sleep more than about 10 minutes on it. I hate trying to sleep on flights. I am no good at it. The food was really good, actually.
I watched a couple of movies, and thought I was dying from a blood clot when my leg started aching so bad I wanted to cut it off. Otherwise, it was uneventful. There was a 3 month old baby one row in front of me, but after fussing in the first 5 minutes of the flight, it didn’t make a sound the rest of the flight (admittedly, I had headphones most of the time, but it didn’t make any noise that I heard).
Then, the London airport. That bitch is big, kids. When we finally made it through the buses and another security checkpoint, we wandered around the really expensive stores (Tiffany and Co., Cartier, Burberry, Versace, Harrod’s etc.), then found somewhere to hang out for a couple hours while we waited. After being uncomfortable and trying about a dozen different places, I gave up and slept on the floor for about an hour. And now we’re caught up.
Flight to Vienna was pretty quiet. We arrived in Vienna local time about 10pm, but Calgary time, it was only 2 in the afternoon, and we were getting hungry, so after we got to the hostel (disturbing our already sleeping roommates), we went back out to find food. The only things open were a few really expensive restaurants, and some street vendors, so we found a stand that said pizza and hot dogs. The guy didn’t really speak English, but I managed to end up with some sort of spinach struedel. It might have been sleep-deprivation induced, but it was really good. We ate in the subway station because it was the only dry place we could find around. Did I mention it was pouring rain? I suppose not. And it’s forecasted to rain all week.
We couldn’t find anywhere to hang out, so we gave up and came back to our rooms. Our current room is about the size of a postage stamp, but I’m told we’re supposed to be switching because we were supposed to have a kitchenette and this one doesn’t even have room for a mini fridge. I shared a bed with a guy I’ve known for about a week. Technically we’re on separate mattresses with one sheet over them and separate blankets for over us. It’s weird. Anyway, I slept eventually. I’ve now had about 5 hours of sleep, but given I slept 4 hours Thursday night and...well, I guess the hour on the London floor counts as Friday night, so getting 5 hours on Saturday night is pretty good. So we’re gonna hit up breakfast pretty soon here.
I love you all back in Canada. If you’re reading this, comment so I know someone’s interested. Hopefully my stories will get more interesting over time.

"there's something coming around/as wicked as it may seem/as wicked as anything could be"

-"As Wicked" Rancid

<3angi