You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

[Spongebob narrator]:

Ahh, the first post of 2019. 

I'm a week in to my new job at IBM and OH HOTDOG is it different in a lot of good ways. I haven't had an actual committed schedule since October and once again I've turned into that semi-responsible person who cooks their lunch the evening before. Sunday evening food prep has reminded me I can't cook at all. I mean I can. But it's a real grab bag of "frugal fusion" since I'm not getting paid until next month. I've been freelancing on the side to help pay for my morning muffins, but I'm happy to be in an environment that isn't up my ass as soon as I walk into work.

To be blunt, working for AT&T was a fucking nightmare, a just a huge fiery butthole of furious idiots who faxed us copies of gift cards as a presumed form of payment, ran over their dropped telephone line with a lawn mower, or fought with their sister-wife about if Big O Tires offered a cheaper tire rotation than Les Schwab. I originally got hired to become a manager, but I was moved onto a team which was led by a woman who turned out to be vehemently anti-American. I've encountered some misogyny in the workplace, but never before from a woman. Our small team consisted of some folks from India, Scotland, Bosnia, Australia, and Azerbaijan. It was mandatory to speak English at all times, even if it wasn't your native language and I was one of three native speakers on my team. My manager would often coo and blubber over the two Scottish guys, who were polite and soft-spoken on the phone.

I was the only American who was actually speaking with other Americans, and as a result, I was often told by customers south of the Mason-Dixon that they were so happy to talk to an American, or "someone they could understand," or "someone on shore." I had the easiest time of anyone doing tech support because I was helping people I understood and they understood me. There was even a number of agents we could transfer the customers to if they wanted to speak to someone between Canada and Mexico. One of the education modules I had to complete early on was about the NFL and college football because half the calls we received between September and January were about bowl games and schedules which hasn't exactly branched out into the European mainland. But this ease wasn't pleasing anyone. With the full use of my vocabulary, idioms, and nuances unknown to the ESL student, I could express empathy and connect with people more so than any other agent in that call center. I was getting paid more because of it and at some point, I believe I became a threat to those around me, especially my Egyptian manager.

It eventually got to the point where I would be at work for less than two minutes and was already being berated by this woman. She couldn't not say anything condescending or insulting to me. It was always something about having my bag under my desk (for easy access to food and insulin) or about not adhering to the strict schedule by 30 seconds. Then it was becoming obvious to the rest of my team this woman had somewhat of a vendetta against me. I was the best person on my team so why was I being singled out? She would pull me off the phone because she "didn't even want me on the phone right now." The last time I interacted with her she took me off the phone unannounced and yelled at me for an hour and 20 minutes. She came with such hits as

"How did you even get this job?", "I see no evidence that you've done this job before",

and the crowd favorite, "Do you even know what you're doing?"

Instead of offering me ways to improve the already satisfactory calls I was receiving, she insulted my intelligence. I don't even think I answered those questions. I just nodded and shrugged, the only war cry I had left that wasn't NSFW. 

What are we going to do, Liz? "

I'll tell you what I'd like to do...

I caved at that point and took a 45 minute break instead of my mandatory 15. I went outside to smoke and text my mom about the situation. I was incredibly close to walking out of the job I had fought so hard for. For the eight months before this, I had been tied up with immigration, translators, bureaucratic meetings, notaries, certified stamps, seals, and approvals trying to get this job. I was already sick and I'm guessing the stress of this made me sicker and when I came back to work from being ill, I was immediately fired on the day before my 10-day paid vacation started. My hair was falling out. I was incredibly depressed. Most of the information I had been told about the job for the last eight months had been a lie. I was given false information numerous times, information I had to confirm with four or five different sources before I landed on the right answer for questions I didn't think I'd be having to ask. This sudden firing also made me have to delay my trip to Seattle, pay British Airways more money, and once again rely on my parents for help. When I asked why I was getting fired, they answered with "legally, we don't have to tell you." Oh cool, doubling-down with the word "legally." I grabbed my shit from my desk and was escorted out of the building. On the way down to the lobby, I told the HR representative that AT&T was discovered to have donated money to white supremacist political campaigns in the United States, and it probably would be a good idea to have an actual American on staff to handle those complaints instead of some people who think the entirety of our country is Texas.

One week later, I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women, three of whom I'm working with directly. The bureaucratic immigration process took roughly eight weeks instead of the usual 20, and even with a small delay, I was able to start on time, get dependable information, and adapt to their much more professional environment. To put it this way, IBM is more of a democracy and less of a regime.

The more and more information I found out about the job, the more relaxed I became. For the last week I've been busy but I haven't been stressed out. I'm at work by 8am and home by 5pm. It's still light out upon my departure and my return. I'm not tethered to a phone so now if I want to get some coffee or some water or go to the bathroom, I don't have to send out a literal signal to all of the managers to let them know where I am for the next two minutes. It's quiet. No one talks to me. Most of the time everyone leaves me alone. At one point one of my managers told me she was worried I'd think the job was boring because I'd be "doing the same thing a lot." I would much rather do the same thing day in and day out with all of the possible repetitive motions than have someone standing over me while I'm trying to tell someone else the reason they can't watch TV right this minute is because there's a Category 4 hurricane barreling towards their quiet little beach community.

But most importantly, I'm happy that I'm learning. I'm doing data security, and without going into all of it, I'm making sure the correct people have the correct access to the correct things. Most of this last week has been spent reading PDFs, doing educational modules designed for the company, and quickly learning an atrocious amount of acronyms. There's no life or death situation and the work is fairly straightforward once understood and experienced. Yesterday was the first day I did any actual work and I got excited because I was finally contributing to the cause of keeping information safe! Or something. This job can take me places. I feel like I'm learning and by the end of the day, I feel accomplished. You can only restart someone's modem remotely so many times before you want to blow your brains out. What I'm doing now is current, freeing, and relevant. They're excited to have me on the team and I'm getting the impression I'm doing well for someone who is only five days into the job. I could tell it would be different solely by the on-boarding process they took me through prior to my first day. It was precise and clean with no room for error. Their HR speaks English incredibly well so if there were any complex questions or concerns, they were answered with clear confidence.

I have 23 days of vacation this year including some national holidays thrown in. I'm more giddy than I usually would be about this because my mom just retired. My happy beautiful mom had her birthday last week and retired the following day. She's worked so fucking hard (sorry, mom) for me, herself, her family, her friends, her former president, the amazing women in her life, and for the causes she believes in. Her last day at her job was my first day at IBM, like she tagged me in to take over so I can take care of her. What this means is more opportunities to travel in the future. I'm not chained to a specific timeframe and neither is my mom. She's looking forward to going to New Orleans with Max and there may be a summer trip to Mallorca taking shape. AT&T had such a hold on me where I had to bail out of so many things and let go of opportunities I wasn't sure I'd ever have again. I lost $450 on accommodation for Edinburgh Fringe and I could never make travel plans due to imprecise information. But now that it's the beginning of 2019, I can fuck around with the dates that are free to me and it'll make my family more flexible in the long run for our plans. I also like Facetiming my mom on a weekday where she's up making coffee and I'm home from work with a snuggly kitty who I whine at if he whines at me.

I'm also trying to be more careful with my money. 25-year-old Liz would have gotten money for Christmas and then immediately booked three tattoo appointments after buying a flat of Coors Light. 31-year-old Liz went to the Czech dentist to get fillings in her teeth replaced because the last dentist she saw before she left the country did a real shit job. Actually, it's because of this heinous contraption that my dental health was compromised:

This is a Herbst appliance, which I'm assuming was named after a German guy named Herbst. This car engine of an orthodontic apparatus adjusts your jaw to replace the need for elongated headgear use or potential surgery. It seemed like a good idea. It sounded like a good idea. But while my jaw slowly shifted into place over 18 months, my dental health was completely destroyed. No matter how diligent I was with a toothbrush, floss, toothpicks, those rubber pokey nibs on the end of toothbrushes, or mouthwash, there was no way to get that actual good clean feeling Orbit always talked about (no matter what). It was like having two pistons on both sides of my mouth, digging into my cheeks and chugging along as I spoke. A few days after getting it "installed," I went to a friend's house for dinner and ended up crying out of embarrassment because I couldn't chew anything . I wanted to be polite and finish what was in front of me but there was this shiny metal shame protruding from every breath, bite, or word.

When I got the thing out, it was a miracle.

I could yawn and not have it get jammed open like a stupid baby bird! I could chew gum! I could brush not the best but better!

After the entire ordeal, my teeth were straight and white just in time for high school. I was no longer an awkward gawky kid trying to be cool while also trying to find out who I really am. But shortly after this I discovered that having the equivalent of a pawnshop renting out my mouth weirdly created some permanent damage for my now structurally compromised teeth. I have severe cavities in the four points where the Herbst appliance connected to my teeth. Had I known this was going to cost me thousands of dollars in dental work in the future, I would have foregone the process of slightly moving my jaw. The dentist I saw prior to leaving Seattle did a shit job and I think I still owe them money but now they're in the same category where I placed my student loans: if I'm not home, I'm not paying for it.

I imagined the Czech dentist to be like a scene from the Saws or Hostel. Deep underground in a putrid stoney cavern, a man with blood for sweat and a metal ribcage would saw my jaw out of my head while I screamed and you wasted $14 seeing a shitty movie. But instead it was...calming. The practice I went to was owned and ran by two Czech twin sisters who get a fair amount of business from expats since they both speak very good English. Initially when I walked in, I thought I had the wrong place. Their reception area was shabby chic and for sure belonged on a Pinterest board somewhere in the Bible Belt. The floors were a gray wood and the furniture was clean, white, unassuming flatpack. They even had a chrome espresso machine on top of a bureau in case the mood struck while you were waiting to get your teeth cleaned?

The equipment, technology, and bad music was the same as every other dentist office I had been in. The procedure of getting numbed the fuck up and then drilled into was no longer a foreign or scary concept to me; as a tattooed diabetic person, I don't exactly fear needles. The cost is also roughly the same IF you had insurance in the United States. This wasn't covered under my state health insurance here, but it was still less expensive than what it would have cost at home with no coverage. A week later, I can feel my upper lip and I can drink hot and cold liquids without flinching my entire face. My next goal is to get my eyes checked because my prescription has drastically changed since I've been here. I started wearing my glasses more often but when I came into IBM on my first day as a platinum blonde with Gryffindor glasses, I needed to reintroduce myself to a few people.

It's about 9:30pm here. Tom Brady is a good football player but holy shit is that guy super boring. What a lame Super Bowl. I can't stay awake for a lot of the primetime television events due to the time change, so I skipped out on the Super Bowl and the State of the Soviet Union address or whatever people are calling Trump's rambling babbles now. The days (err, nights) of staying up until the wee hours of the morning are over. But I'm going to bed early and I'm not stressed so I'll take it. I'll make my weirdo food concoctions of something spicy with protein, vegetables, and a sauce made up of three other sauces. I'll drink my tea with too much honey in it, and I'll snuggle with my cat whose newly discovered affinity for wet food has made him so much more annoying but in the best way.

Ich bin ein Berlizzer.

I've been extremely stagnant trying not to spend money, and it's been somewhat easy considering my seasonal depression kicked in as soon as it began to get dark at 3:45pm. I don't really have anything resembling a schedule right now; Monday afternoons are for hanging out with my nine-year-old Czech friend and the experience has been extremely valuable.

Alžbětka and I went to the library next to her school this past Monday. Most of the libraries I've been in are new or remodeled or have been demolished and rebuilt. But walking into the Brno library located near the center of town was like entering some kind of governor's mansion. The marble stairs, floors, and columns were stoic while embracing the new technology needed for navigating the various worlds of literature. They have a coat check and a few librarians surfing the web and awaiting for questions to be asked very quietly. When loud noises do occur, they echo broadly against the high ceilings. The experience was familiar but different. No one around me was speaking English except for Alžbětka and I, which was slow and rudimentary to accommodate everyone's skill level. 

She took me up three flights of expansive marble stairs to a Young Adult section where the walls were covered in remnants of Halloween decorations and DIY paper pumpkin projects. She gravitated towards a shelf with books for young girls, hardcover books with pink filigrees and a main character looking hopeful because she hasn't discovered the horrors of society yet on the cover. I assumed the content was about taming a wild horse or a gardening contest or a softball team full of tomboys or whatever else nine-year-olds are into. I wandered away and found a section for "komiks." The French comics from the Asterix series and Tin Tin weren't out of place but what tickled me was discovering Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield  in Czech. I became visually excited, much like a nine-year-old, upon discovering familiar comics with depictions of the Czech words. I flipped through a few of them to get an idea of what was happening and to see if I recognized any of them specifically, but focusing on my memory game proved to be difficult. I had to combine the minimal amount of Czech I knew with the illustrations as well as the context of the illustration. Sometimes Garfield was being a total dick, but was it about Nermal or the lack of lasagna? Did Odie say anything in Czech at all, or was it just the word "haf" ("woof" in Czech) repeated a few times? The Czech in Calvin and Hobbes was more difficult than the empty blanket statements made by Jon and his orange Monday hating cat. I needed to start with something basic. 

Over the weekend, I finally found a stationary store which carries flashcards, so I bought 200 of them to practice vocabulary, everything from days of the week, seasons, general salutations, numbers, food, and navigational questions. I'm confident in my ability to learn Czech, but people are right: it's difficult, on par with learning Vietnamese, Mandarin, or Arabic. I showed Alžbětka my flashcards and she was really eager to quiz me. What helped most was the pronunciation of Czech words. I'm often studying alone using Mango Languages, a Duolingo type website, or with a dictionary and Google Translate, so it helped to have a native speaker solidify the tones and inflections of a very consonant heavy language. We stood in the library and giggled at my horrendous pronunciation and Alžbětka's clues to words I had immediately forgotten upon writing them down. 

She brought me over to the reference section of the library. Each reference category was separated from language, biology, mathematics, science, music, arts, literature, etc, but they were all for readers at a similar level as Alžbětka. I found an encyclopedia and plopped down on a beanbag chair while Alžbětka started the most recent book in the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid. For an hour we sat in silence and occasionally asked each other if we liked what we were reading. I was going over encyclopedia entries for things like dinosaurs, Asia, photography, birds, the solar system, vegetables, insects, farming, robots, etc. I was mostly seeing which words I could point out that were obvious and that was borrowed from a Germanic or Romantic language. Having a picture and the title of the entry helped frame the context and from there I looked for articles and nouns I was familiar with. Some things started to click with adjectives and syntax and all of a sudden it didn't seem so crazy to learn a language with Slavic roots. 

I took Alžbětka home and went to a bookstore to see if I could find the encyclopedia I was reading at the library. The entire downstairs floor of this store was language texts, tools, study guides, and school supplies. I found an encyclopedia that was similar to the one at the library; the format is in alphabetical order, each entry comes with a graphic, and there are little sayings and rhymes peppered throughout to familiarize the reader with Czech quips and idioms. The illustrations are very new and not antiquated like Gray's Anatomy drawings. It feels very new, which is weird because I always imagine encyclopedias to be very old and musty. I also picked up a Czech-English English-Czech dictionary since I was mostly using a Czech phrasebook that is more meant for travelers and not actual residents. But I'm sure all the names of animals I'm learning will come in handy sooner or later... 

Very very early Wednesday morning, I left on a quick trip to Berlin for my visa interview, which sounds a lot more official than it actually was. With trains and layovers in the middle of the night, the trip from Brno to the bustling German city took roughly nine hours. The German countryside is lush and green and full of goats and hills and old cars no longer in production. While outside of Dresden, I saw these little "tiny house" communities as they're coming to be known. People retrofitted sheds and garages next to the train tracks. They even had little roads dividing them and clothes hanging up outside and small gardens and yards that were well manicured. It seemed cute and cozy. I started imagining a life where I had just a little bit of space with a brick chimney. And then I remembered that's why I'm here in the first place, to get away from closet sized dwellings and live according to my means. I saw a post on Facebook early this morning of a house for sale on Beacon Hill that was gutted from a recent house fire and the price tag was still above $500,000. Fucking ridiculous. 

So the train went on and I arrived in Berlin. A clean sense of German efficiency and production welcomed me to a city I've always wanted to go to but was reserved from my last experience in the country. I visited Munich in 2009 and left underwhelmed. A lot of the monotony surfaced from the Bavarian capitol being so similar to Seattle. While charming in some areas, there wasn't much there to soak in. Buildings in Germany may look old, but due to the massive bombing sprees by the Allies during World War II left multiple cities in Yosemite Sam-esque smithereens, so a lot of the new structures were modeled like the old ones they were replacing, producing a physically large facade of well cultured and experienced history. Now that skyscrapers and institutions of all kinds have taken over the skyline, a vast array of steel and glass protects the financial energy generated by the city. 

The one building I did see that was rather impressive was the Reichstag. One thing Germany is good at is producing large, fast, and efficient things, and this building was the pinnacle of cultured design remaining in Berlin. The structure had been remodeled and damaged numerous times, once by a fire in 1933 under circumstances which are still unclear. It was heavily bombed during the war and it changed names, ownership, and governments depending on who was in charge of the country at the time. Today it features a large dome where you can walk up and experience the inside offices, possible bunkers, and architecture no longer produced by the industrial city. 

I walked a total of about six miles over the course of my afternoon in the city, and I was coming upon sights by complete accident. I had my map from the main train station to the Czech embassy conveniently located four hours from the Czech capitol, but I hadn't really marked out anything to see since I didn't have the time. I successfully turned on roaming on my phone, which is now incredibly amazing for travelers. It used to be that every time you went to a new country in the EU, you'd have to purchase a different SIM card. Today you can buy one and tell your phone you're abroad so it will work in other places aside from your home country. I was stuck in the Apple orchard while navigating down busy streets when I looked up and saw these concrete blocks that were incredibly geometric and particularly placed. An entire square remained void of any tall buildings but instead was just a sea of gray concrete. I've seen pictures of this sea numerous times and recognized it as the Holocaust memorial, even though I didn't realize I would be seeing it on this trip. It felt strange meandering through all of the columns and rows knowing I had a time constraint, otherwise I think I would have been there for much longer. I took some pictures while trying to avoid photographing others taking pictures, and spent maybe 15 minutes imagining the pure size of the systematic operation represented by these individual monoliths.

Auschwitz is the toughest place I've ever physically had to be. I had been to the extermination camp a few years ago on an incredibly gloomy day. The days were getting dark in the afternoon and the people in my tour group remained huddled together like somber penguins when traveling from building to building. The tour started off in Auschwitz I, the site of the main camp and administration. All of the brick buildings are still standing. The barbed wire still lines the perimeter. A skull and crossbones with the word HALT are still written on signs before the previously electrified fences. Many of the buildings house what was turned into the museum. These buildings are currently holding the displays of the many suitcases, shoes, eyeglasses, crutches and canes, and human hair collected by the Nazis upon selection. They had small chambers for caning prisoners and even smaller chambers for solitary confinement, dark closets with heavy doors to ensure light and sound were subdued. Trees still line the pathways and promenades in and around the buildings. If you hadn't gone under the iron gate reading ARBEIT MACHT FREI, you might think you were in a gated community of sorts, or a university campus. The buildings and history within them were well preserved within the brick and design of Auschwitz I, but Birkenau was a different story.

Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, was roughly two kilometers down the road from the main camp. You've probably recognized the main train entrance in movies like Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice. The building opened up into a massive field containing the foundations for barracks. Hundreds of them throughout what must have been two or three football fields. Wooden watchtowers ran parallel to the tracks where the selections took place. Like Auschwitz I, the perimeter was still lined with electric barbed wire fences with these ominous looking poles, as if out of an industrial revolution Dr. Seuss tale. Our tour group went down the train tracks and through a few of the barracks and latrines that remained standing. A lot of dark, quiet wood and damp concrete made up the majority of these lingering barracks while the rest are simply cracked rectangular foundations, many of them with chimneys.

Birkenau may be the largest place I've been to. It seemed to go on for miles, miles of plots and death. After my visit here, I didn't speak much for the rest of the day. I almost felt guilty even though my family had no direct lineage either to the victims or the war criminals orchestrating the events. I started having nightmares of the place. They were always in black and white and from a first person perspective. In one nightmare I was running along one of the perimeter fences. I was barefoot and I could hear my heavy breathing in my dream, like a manifestation of my adrenaline. There's a dog barking a ways behind me, and it sounds big and focused on my capture. The ground was muddy and I struggled to not fall or clutch the electric wires next to me to keep me from falling. My other nightmare was me simply sitting in what seemed like a paddock but for women. Again the ground was muddy and thick with recent rain, and a woman with a shaved head was sitting directly in the mud across from me. She cradled a child in her hands and looked at me with a severely sunken face. Her bone structure was gaunt and seemingly made of clay. She adjusted the child once or twice before turning her face away from me, but displaying the starkness of her skull. Thinking back on it, I don't normally talk about this experience in much detail, but I can't tell if the child was dead or alive.

After my visit to Auschwitz, I spent the next two days in bed at my Krakow hostel. Plans to pay someone to go into the woods and teach my friends and I how to shoot assault rifles and 357s were put on hold. We'd go out to dinner but we didn't really say anything about the experience. It was sort of like we all felt the same way but didn't address it. 

But the memorial in Berlin was much different. It was daytime underneath sunny blue skies and next to a main arterial with heavy traffic. You could hear traffic and sounds upcoming appointments and cell phone conversations and tourists attempting to find their next sight worth seeing. I didn't want to rush my time with the memorial, but I myself had somewhere to be, and it felt strange leaving the experience abruptly after having discovered it by accident.

The Czech embassy in Berlin looks like it is modeled after 2001: A Space Odyssey since it was clearly constructed during a time where modular angles, shapes, and space age architecture was the new hot aesthetic. Full of brown glass and brick, it looks like Andy Warhol constructed an egg carton in the middle of a city block surrounded by a very Soviet style looking concrete. I arrived in the main office and met my visa person along with five other American women who are on the same path to Czech citizenship as I am. It felt reassuring to know I wasn't alone in this journey and it gave me more confidence in my visa person, as well. My visa person, the person who I paid to avoid fucking up any paperwork or bureaucratic business completed by myself, explained I would have an interview in regards to my job history, academic background, qualifications or completed certifications, and the means I have to support myself within the country. I imagined this 45 minute job interview that I had accidentally worn a BOMBING FOR PEACE t-shirt to stressing me out, but instead, I filled out a questionnaire with similar questions, turned over my documents for my bank account, proof of accommodation, my Czech trade license, and then I signed a piece of paper confirming my visa person had translated the documents for me and that I understood what I was signing. It took no more than ten minutes, and in retrospect, the nine hours of travel time for ten minutes of paperwork seemed...uneven. So now, I wait. When my visa gets approved, hopefully 4-6 weeks from now, I'll return to Berlin to pick it up, or my visa person will pick it up and I'll meet her halfway to exchange confirmation that I can legally stay in the country for one year :) One year from now, I will go through a similar process that will take much longer, but will approve me for a stay of two years. 

I spoke with the other girls in the lobby for a bit while I waited for my phone to charge. That's something else I don't think I've mentioned: there are no outlets. Anywhere. Gone, goodbye, none. So when you see an outlet in a building that's available, you lunge for it like someone is dropping the Spirit Stick. I left my phone in a potted plant for a bit while getting to know the other girls and how they were adapting to life in the Czech Republic. They were mostly all based out of Prague and so we exchanged a lot of questions about what it's like living in a very touristy area versus a city whose focus shifted over to IT and manufacturing. I got my phone up to a non threatening battery percentage and left to go back to the main train station for my train(s) home. I found a McDonalds for food and also an available outlet for my phone, and hopped on the train back to Prague, where I'd have another three hours to kill before going home. It was snowing in Brno when I arrived. At 3am I waited for a night bus outside the train station and arrived home at almost 4pm. I don't sleep on trains well so at this point I had been up for about 40 hours. I opened my door and I had a very loud and adamant kitty waiting for me to get into bed so he could crawl under the covers and sleep with me, a habit both of us have come to like in the cold winter months. 

Most of my time in Brno has been a waiting game, a waiting game where if I win, I'll be able to get a job, spend money, and live above my means, one of the reasons I'm here. I still don't have a direct answer to why I moved here, and it's been for a lot of reasons. For some reason, expats from other nations are somewhat standoffish when they find out I'm from the US. "You're just here for the health insurance and the cost of living." Yeah, we all are, dude. I guess I had this idea that as a whole, expats are all in this together, but based on me being a diabetic American, that places me in a different category because my pancreas doesn't work which means I'm obviously mooching off the system. As I explained to these idiots online, nothing I'm doing is illegal. There's some confusion here on occasion because a lot of folks will use "immigrant" and "refugee" interchangeably. I, Liz Donehue, am not a refugee in a xenophobic sense of the word of the word being used by some people here. But I do see myself as an immigrant, a qualification that supposedly places me with the nations and religions the Czech people fear, or have been told to fear. I've tried to tell them they should be more concerned about white guys with guns, but that's neither here nor there. I guess I am taking seeking refuge, but not in the sense where my home country needs a drastic humanitarian overhaul from the neighboring nations. I mean we do, but hopefully that will change.

Overall, I'm happy. Christmas is coming up and the Christmas markets have exploded here. Authentic cider, ceramics, candles, jewelry, steins, wind chimes, children's toys, leather goods, knives, and all kinds of pastries, meats, cheeses, and holiday centric candy are available until December 25th. There's constant chatter about which European cities have the best Christmas markets, and from my understanding it's between Berlin, Vienna, and Zagreb. I'm hoping to check some more of these out while sipping some hot cocoa and people watching while trying to understand their native language. Usually this time of the year really bites for my family and I, but since I'm without family this year, I'm going to attempt to brighten the next few weeks with merriment typically unavailable during other parts of the year on my own. Ciao.

Note: photos were pulled from Google Images.