Breaking it Up: Praha (Prague)

...Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeats,  "The Circus Animals’ Desertion"



On the third day of the new year, before my friends had woken, I packed away the few things I left out the night before that I would need in the morning, I pulled on my coat and my gloves and my scarf, and I headed out into the still debris-strewn streets of west Berlin. I took the metro to the train station, headphones in, drifting in and out of attention to the world around me once I had gotten myself where I needed to be. I boarded the train and sat in the window seat even though my reservation was for the aisle. We pulled away from the station and I realized I'd be riding backwards. I slouched in my seat until I was comfortable and I slept for a while and when the train's stopping at a station woke me up we were no longer in Berlin or a city and I saw a man looking down at his ticket then at me so I started to rise from my chair but he waved me back and sat beside me. I nodded at him gratefully but didn't speak and he didn't speak and I continued to watch the world pull backwards away from me and I tried not to think about my friends or Kosovo or turning 30 or my guilt or all the thousand little things I chide myself for every day. I tried to empty my mind and let the words of Bob Dylan fill it and watch Germany slip away and feel peace.

I did try.

Prague was frigid and the wind bit through my jeans, through my muscle, seemingly through my very bones, the minute I stepped out of the train station. I followed a group of rolling suitcase-touting tourists to the town center. I couldn't get a good internet connection anywhere so I ducked into a hotel, blinked my eyes sadly and asked for a street map. I checked the street I was on and found the street of my AirBnB and felt a rising surge of triumph when I found the building number of my apartment followed by a swift plummet when I realized I had no way to contact the host. I wandered up and down the street seeking internet or an idea of what to do, whichever could present itself first, before my host stepped out and recognized me, let me in, gave me the key and left me to my solitude.

I have never had an AirBnB meeting/key exchange that was not an exercise in patience and fortitude. But it's still the best way to go, to my mind.

I looked around the little studio that would be my home for a few days and now, not consumed with finding my way through a strange city, the edges of my mind began to refill with all the doubts and anger and sadness I'd been pushing away so I went back out into the street and let the crystalline cold of early January in the Czech Republic freeze me into a human-shaped automaton. I walked around a bit and went to the grocery to store to stock up on supplies (beer, junk food) and returned to my temporary home to thaw and sleep.

I walked through the famous Christmas market, past the famous astrological clock, across the famous bridge and up to the famous castle and I looked on at the famous beauty of this city and I felt mostly nothing.

I stared at this church from an alcove where I was hiding while waiting for a momentary blow-up of snow and wind to pass, and I felt nothing.

The skies cleared and I felt nothing.

I took pictures of things I thought were beautiful and things I thought were strange or interesting, but I felt nothing.

I sought out things I'd read about, I went through the motions of a person on vacation, and I felt nothing.

I looked at the lights and the people and I smelled the meat and the beer and the potatoes and the garlic and I felt nothing and I heard the singing and the deep, bellowing clangor of the city's church-bells and I felt nothing.

I returned to the apartment after my wanderings through the city, because my legs ached below where my coat protected my torso and thighs. I slept then, mostly I slept, for the several days I was there. I slept and I drank and I ate and I thought and then I remembered. I thought about my host family in Topanica and I thought about my host family in Rahovec and I thought about Trump and I thought about the friends I had made and I thought about all of the friends I have said goodbye to, unable to say if I would ever meet them again and I thought about that professor in college who inspired my stupid Peace Corps dreams and I thought about all the reasons why I should stay and do what was right and I thought about all the things it would mean for me to do that and I thought about all the reasons why I should go and I thought about all the things I would feel if I did that and I remembered the moment I was looking on the Peace Corps website at the list of countries who were taking TEFL volunteers and I remembered choosing Kosovo and I remembered riding my bike through the excruciating heat of mid-day summer in Hanoi to get my documents mailed in time and I remembered the agony of waiting, of people asking about my application and having no answer, and the ecstasy when I read my invitation while sitting in a cabana on a beach in Thailand with Zach and I remembered the first night of my stay in Georgia when I was bewildered and freezing and I remembered the feeling that my life was moving forward somehow and I remembered leaving Chile and thinking I'd never teach or travel abroad again and I remembered the panic attack I'd had walking down the street of New York with my mom a few days before I flew to Prishtina and I hated myself more strongly, more acutely and more venomously than I had ever hated anyone or anything before in my entire life.

And then I slept and I tried to forget.

I did try.

Netherlands/Belgium

Another long overdue post, the photos from my visit to Holland! After playing tour guide to my parents during Christmas we both flew out of the Budapest airport on January 1st. They were heading back to New York and I was headed towards Holland! First to Eindhoven, and from there onto Rotterdam, where I was meeting up with my old friend Kathleen and her sister, Maeve, who is studying there. Time for someone else to play tour guide for me! The plane/train connection went off mostly without a hitch, after a bit of wandering around, and I met Kathleen easily at the Rotterdam central train station. As we walked along the streets back to her sister's new place (she had just moved!), I reveled in the Dutchness of the houses.

Maeve has two beautiful, luxurious, fluffy cats who are somewhat friendly to whom I am very, very allergic. This started to be a bit of a problem towards the end of the second day but still, they were so cute!

On our first full day together, we luxuriated by sleeping in and enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Then Maeve had some things to take care of and Kathleen and I headed off to Delft, onetime headquarters to the painter Vermeer.

 Your eyes are not deceiving you and I did not take the picture poorly. That tower (Oude Kerk, or Old Church) be crooked.

 A vision in pink!

 That seemed to me a funny place to put a door, but the ducks were not complaining.

The other very notable church in Delft, Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). This one is right in front of the town's market square, which was bustling with cheese and fish and fried anything/everything vendors when we arrived.

City Hall.

Cheese purchasing- a task to be considered carefully!

This little dog was hanging out under one of the stalls and with very little prompting (okay, some prompting was involved) came out to say hello and grant us the honor of ear scratches. He was so cute and had I not needed to take several trains and a plane to return to Budapest, he would probably be curled up with me as I write this.

After the hard work of wandering around slowly for an hour, we stopped for a refreshment.

 Then we went through the Vermeer Center, the house in which the artists' guild of Vermeer's time met, and visited the New Church...

...as well as the Old.

That is one seriously old fish market.

Night was beginning to fall so after meeting back up with Maeve we were put to work, accompanying her to the nearby IKEA to furnish her new digs!

 Don't mind if I do?

 The thrills of shopping.

A mural we encountered on the way back to the train station, with one of Vermeer's most famous works on it (Girl with a Pearl Earring).

The next day we got moving a lot earlier and were a bit more ambitious, as we headed out to Amsterdam.

 Unfortunately the weather was not great. We hadn't thought to purchase tickets online beforehand to the Anne Frank House (something that you can do, and I would recommend that you DO do!) so we waited about an hour and half/two hours and then we walked through. It is as sobering, interesting, and tragic as you might imagine or know it to be.

By the time we finished we need to cheer ourselves up and the weather wasn't helping, so we grabbed some food and drinks and walked around a bit more before heading back to Rotterdam.

(HOTEL TAMARA!! Reminds me of my old Georgia days...)

 Last view of Amsterdam.

This is the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, which we walked past on our way to dinner at the Hotel New York, a beautiful old place.

 The next day I said my goodbyes to Kathleen, who was flying home, and Maeve, who had work to do, and after a few hours deliberation decided to spend my last day in Gent before returning to Brussels for my flight home. Unfortunately the pair of boots that I was wearing, which I purchased in Tbilisi last fall when the pair I was wearing THEN (that a good friend had given me) died, did the same thing and died on me while we were walking around Amsterdam. The sole became unattached from the boot and there was not much hope of salvaging them as they were pretty cheaply made in the first place, so I went into the closest shoe store (that just so happened to randomly be a vegan shoe store) and bought a new pair. They were pretty expensive and additionally, although they were at first comfortable by the end of the day my feet were hurting and by the time I'd ridden the two trains to get to Gent and walked waaaaaaaay out of my way to get to my hotel, due to getting very, very lost, my feet were basically ruined. Popped blisters bleeding through the socks ruined. So although I ventured into the center of old town Gent after finding my hotel for long enough to get some food and take a look at the Christmas market, I didn't go much exploring.

My hotel was cool, though. It was the only place with an open room on such late notice in Gent. Basically it was an old church that had been converted. I was in the Sanctus Batholomens room. It was very nice, although freezing cold (initially, I figured out the heater eventually).

Walking into the town center.

 Not many open vendors at the Christmas market (this was January 3rd, after all) but enough people open that I could find scavenge some food.

The hotel courtyard, by morning. Feet still in tatters.

Walking back to the train station, to head to Brussels, because I am a stubborn idiot.

Tiny window kitteh!!

 I wish I could say that I didn't change into the slippers Kathleen had given me as a Christmas gift once I got to the airport. I wish I could say that before that I didn't duck into the public bathroom in the Brussels train station so I could cry for about 2 minutes about how badly my damn feet hurt. I cannot say those things, though, because they did happen. Not many things can really ruin a good trip for me, but feet pain is one. And weirdly enough, it seems to be the one that always gets me. I have terrible shoe luck. In any case, still a pretty good trip and a very joyful reunion with one of my favorite people.