Europe hasn’t killed me yet

But it’s trying. I just got back into Vienna on Sunday night, and have been busy with various “back in Vienna for a week” tasks, such as visiting the museums I should have visited while I was living here proper, mailing things home, buying that guitar I’ve had my eye on, annoying Soren and sucking eggs to get his landlady to give me a spare key. That sort of thing.

Last week I was in Prague, then briefly Berlin, then Prague again. I had fun. I have one story to relate that will have to suffice for everything. It’s coming, after this brief word from our sponsor.

Notice that the title of this post lacks a starting “About” – it’s on purpose. The about’s were just a temporary device to help me get back on track, writing-focus-wise. I feel I’m most of the way there now, and tired of my creativity being stifled by the template, so the about’s are no more. If you loved them, I’m sorry.

With the about’s goes any effort on my part to choronologue adventures I have in Europe on this site, beginning with the conclusion of this post. I know, you’re disappointed, but this way you people will have to hang out with me once I’m back in the states to satisfy your curiosity. The problem is that too many amazing things are happening – so many that, far from being able to describe all of them, I can’t even pick out a couple to exposulate over. What could I say? That I stumbled onto a makeshift barbecue at the Studentenheim last night? That I very nearly got hit by a bike? That I just saw so much renaissance art that my head is spinning? That I’m sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm under a bridge, sheltering myself (and Kelly’s IBook) from the rain so that I can type this post? That it just started raining a lot harder, and that my little refuge may shortly be insufficient? Those are just the things on the very surface of my mind, skimmed off like a layer of cream. I haven’t mentioned anything that happened before yesterday, and still I’m overwhelmed by the volume of choices I have to write about. Things are only going to pick up the pace as I continue teaching this continent the true meaning of the phrase “rocking out”, and as the adventures pile up, unchronicled, their weight makes me more timid to attempt singling any one out. If this sounds like a cop out, don’t worry; it is. I’m not abandonding my post entirely here, but I am resigning, right here and now, to stop feeling obligated to take pause from my life to keep a magnetic record of it. The updates will come, don’t worry – but they aren’t going to be anything resembling regular for a while.

Maybe you’re already used to that.

Wow, the thunder and lightning and rainfall just built to a crescendo as I was writing the last paragraph. It makes me feel like I’m doing something hugely momentous, not telling a readership of twenty (hi, Grandma!) to suck it. I’ve moved four times now, but the rain just keeps finding me again. This is typical of Vienna weather – an hour ago, it was so nice outside that you got skin cancer just by thinking about taking your shirt off. The funny part is that Soren is stranded at Donauinsel, trying to rollerblade back across town to meet me for dinner in a few. Any guesses on how many times he’s been struck by lightning / fallen in puddles / accosted by Vienna’s teeming mass of prositutues? Wow – I just heard the loudest thunderclap of my entire life, preceded by the brightest thunderbolt. I wonder if Stephansdom is still standing. Jebus, there goes another.

Back on track now… since writing about my life has become such a large part of my life, I have no intention to stop, but I’m switching over to private-journal format, the sort that only morbidly bored indivuduals would ever take an interest in. It’s faster and more convenient (a lot of places in The Europe think the Internet should cost more than coffee, which is saying a lot over here), and it frees me from the fetters of grammar and coherency, as well as the need to edit out all the too-hot-for-TV parts, the things that never make it onto this site except for those who know which lines to read between. Maybe I’ll compile a “best of” collection and type it all up when I get back to Seattle (the 24th, mark your calendars).

Meanwhile, back in Prague, Europe actually was trying to kill me. Last, last Saturday, Kelly, Roark and I spent a solid nine hours hitchhiking, which isn’t so bad considering that it takes five hours just to drive from Vienna to Prague. It was boring and tedious and more than a little frustrating at times, but we made do the best we could. We had Pablo with us, of course, so at any given time either Roark or I would be improvising spoken-word masterpieces set to a random chord progressions, and this made things easier to bear. I’ve forgotten most of the salient details of said masterpieces, except for the following gem: “If you could be just one brand of commercial air freshener, which – Really? Me too! We have so much in common!” It didn’t make much sense then, either, but we got a laugh out of it nonetheless.

We rolled into Prague around 11 in the back seat of the nice Spanish men who had driven us, reached the hostel around 11:30, and discovered that they’d assumed we weren’t coming and given away our reservations. To ice the cake, all of the city’s many hostels were booked completely solid, putting us in something of a jam. After visiting four hotels in the 100-dollar range, it became clear that we weren’t going to find a conventional place to stay that night, at least not within the price range our budget would allow.

Kelly and Roark immediately volunteered to stay up all night, an idea which worked well in their imaginations, just fine in Kelly’s reality, but not at all for me. After some debate I brought Roark most of the way over to my side, and we started looking around surreptitiously for a convenient cranny into which we could nestle unobserved until sun-up.

Three hours, one visit to KFC, uncounted crosswalks, 25 drunken Englishmen dressed as Robin Hood, and roughly three drinks apiece later, we found ourselves on the bank of the river which runs through Prague and whose name I couldn’t pronounce then and so don’t remember now. I laid down. Kelly and Roark talked about leaving me (“Go for it, I’m fine. But I’m going to sleep, right now.”), then eventually joined me. Somehow, we found an abandoned canoe and two fur coats of unknown origin underneath – the former had cross bars which prohibited us from sleeping under it and the latter terrified Kelly, of all people, so Roark and I grabbed a coat apiece, Kelly snuggled up against us, and we tried to sleep.

Tried. To sleep. I remember hearing Kelly snore at one point, but Roark and I were all rushing thoughts and shivers until the sun came up about an hour and a half later, bringing wintry frost with it. “Homeless in Prague!” we shouted, as we walked across the deserted Charles Bridge at dawn. “Sleepless in Prague!” we whispered to eachother while buying a hot dog from a subway vendor, the only place in town open at 6am. “Homeless in Prague!” we reiterated, leaving a bar which served pizza but which was packed to the gills with more drunken Englishmen. Finally, at 7:30, we found an open cafe and had a proper breakfast, Czech pastries. We checked into the hostel at 10am, having wandered Prague for almost 12 hours.

Jesus! This is the most exciting post-writing experience I’ve had in quite some time. It comes to this: 12 minutes of battery life; pouring rain and wind; thunder crashing down; lightning everywhere; terrified of getting laptop wet; wind blowing rain around corners into my hiding places. I told you Europe was trying to kill me!

I love you all. We’ll talk again real soon.