All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.
I'm writing under a very slanted wall in my new apartment. Over the last month, I've been taking one Ikea bag full of my shit for a 90 second bus ride and then up six flights of stairs to a flat which is tough to spatially navigate for the short and tall. If a hipster hobbit lived in Brno, they might have a place like this.
My favorite part of my new spot.
I returned my keys to the landlord of my first apartment in Brno this past Sunday. The Skacelova flat was my landing pad, my home base furnished with white leather couches and glass coffee tables. Over time I realized the comforts of that sizable flat was unnecessary for a single person plus cat and I was paying for a lot of space I wasn't using. I had an alcove with a desk and an entire living room I didn't sit in until six months after I arrived. These spaces collected dust and an unimaginable amount of cat hair during the year I inhabited the contemporary concrete dwelling and in an effort to save money and feel like I was really living in a space, I moved.
Looking for the right apartment took a few weeks. Time was of the essence during this point in the summer as it was right before the throngs of university students descended upon Brno for their careers in horticulture or veterinary science. Instead of being up against those living away from home for the first time, I decided to look earlier than I initially intended. I found a few places I really liked. I even told the real estate agents I met with "I'll take it!" more than once, only a few days later to discover it was given to someone else with no warning despite my firm and enthusiastic response. What was it going to take to actually secure an apartment in this city?
When I found the apartment I'm in now, I immediately fell in love with it. The walls are slanted and I have skylights for windows. There's no carpeting, and the space is just enough. I didn't want this apartment to turn out like the last few by slipping through my fingers, so if the Czechs wanted to play hardball, fine. It's supposedly my national past time. Why not make an attempt at getting what I want? I would be living in it, after all.
I pulled 10,000 crowns out of the bankomat at 8am and met with a real estate agent who could probably star in Real Housewives of the Former Iron Curtain. Her nails were very manicured and her strapless pink jumpsuit was usually seen poolside somewhere in Vegas. She and her tall hair led me up six floors to the flat I'm still struggling to name. After shaking hands, it became apartment she knew zero English and I could point at things and name them in Czech but was unable to create any concrete thought which conveyed meaning. But money doesn't need a language.
As soon as I saw the apartment met my minimal requirements of a separate bed space, washing machine, and walls I could drill into, I pulled out my cash and slid it across my new kitchen counter to the agent. She laughed as she outstretched her arm to count it and possibly make sure it's not counterfeit which I hear is still a thing here. She immediately wrote me a receipt and I had officially reserved the flat for September 1. I'm officially in and most of my things have a space of their own which isn't cluttered. Maybe I'll even buy a TV because
While I was sorting out moving from one flat to another, I made reservations to come home for the first two weeks of November. Thanksgiving and Christmas weren't available to take due to popular demand, so I inadvertently decided to travel during the most tumultuous week of the year: the midterm elections. I didn't even realize I had included this burgeoning clusterfuck in my travels until I gave my mom the dates of my visit. "You're going to be home during the election!" was the first reply I got to my news. Panekristo. I'm in a weird place with going home. I haven't told a lot of people I'll be in town with the exception of my family and a few close friends. I've been off Facebook for about three months meaning I didn't send out some pointless press release announcement to everyone in the digital ether. I haven't tried to book any shows or schedule things which can't be unscheduled. I've had 30-some Novembers in Seattle and this one probably won't be much different. I can honestly see it now: first I'm going to borrow my mom's car and hopefully remember how to drive. Then I'm going to go through the Starbucks drive-thru and go back home. And maybe I'll hit a mic or two.
Right now I get the feeling I'm really rusty with comedy. When I first got to Brno I had to test out which material worked from home and which stuff didn't. I had to adapt certain jokes or completely forget others that relied too much on local references or inside jokes. I'll probably have to reformat what I've written here prior to going on stage in the back of a Thai restaurant. In my head it goes a certain way. I make an awkward joke about being away and I stumble through a combination of old and new jokes that don't work regardless of what country I'm in. Am I going to be judged? But I want the attention and validation of being on stage without having people look at me.
Better try stand up!
I know I seem pessimistic about returning, but I think it's because I don't know what to expect. I'm sure friends and family will be happy to see me and I'm sure I'll be consoling one or multiple family members on election night due to some fantastic upset we'll act like we didn't see it coming but in reality we were in the backseat as it had been careening out of control for months. I get to meet my niece Emily just in time for her very first birthday. From what I hear she's an extremely happy baby and kind of a ham. But as I'm writing this, I realize it's not even the actual visit back that I'm concerned about; it's getting through Heathrow in under two hours.
In 1999 I spent six hours somewhere in the sprawling duty-free stress zoo of London-Heathrow. My family and I were returning from a trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe and the trip home to Seattle was roughly 36 hours starting from Livingstone, Zimbabwe. My only real memory of the seventh biggest airport in the world was that my mom bought a watch. Our layover was long, even by international standards, which meant shopping and ogling at things like cigarettes and booze, dormant items which would awaken in about five years. A silver Seiko, my mom bought. I'm not sure why that's the one memory I'm clinging to about this English detour, but that's all I got.
To get back on track, holy shit it's a big place. The website for Heathrow is actually pretty adorable. There are a ton of little video tutorials on how to go through passport control, customs, how to get from terminal to terminal, take the Underground into the city, and where to exchange money. I plotted out my course and realized the last time I was making a connection was with two duffle bags and a cat on my back so this should be a bit easier.
I've traveled enough to have developed habits along the way to ease the process and not stress out. Here's my foolproof to-do list:
1. Put your headphones in before you even get on the plane. Don't even listening to anything if you don't want to or need to keep your hands free from the Shuffle function. You know that guy waiting in line to board and you know he's just a chatty motherfucker by looking at him and his stupid jacket and utility vest with all the pockets? Don't risk it. This flight is 10+ hours and by no means can you speed it up. Chatting may make the time go faster, but the last time I tried this I ended up sitting next to a Mormon guy ("Elder Matt") and he was very confused by the presence of a tattooed girl leaving the Tucson area and had to know more. If you don't want to talk, headphones.
2. If you're in line for security and there's a sign that reads "you no longer have to remove your shoes or belts!", remove your shoes and belt. More than half the time people act like they can cruise through a metal detector when it's not like any of us have anywhere to be and the process slows to this unprepared passenger rubbernecking through zigzagging lines. The little Vietnamese kid making six cents an hour assembling your shoes probably didn't think the little piece of tin or aluminum wedged in between the arch and sole of your shoe was going to cause massive delays. But here we are, waiting on you because the signage stated our travel plans are impervious to hidden materials. Nope. Take 'em off.
3. Buy shit when you get there. Every time I was traveling to Tucson, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis, I was having to buy tiny containers of bullshit every time, and I ended up buying more than I needed because what if three tiny containers of hairspray wasn't enough!?
At Target these little guys are $1.08 before tax. The average woman uses 7-8 products during her shower and beauty routine, and given the frequency I was flying, I didn't want to fork out money for every round trip flight, so I bought stuff and kept it where I was landing. But if you're booking a one-way to stay in a yurt out on the Mongolian steppe, good luck.
4. Schmooze with a flight attendant for extra perks. And if you're a dude I don't mean try to fuck one of the flight attendants. I just mean be nice to them and show them some extra courtesy while they're doing their job. And I understand being nice to someone on a long trip while 38,000 feet in the air can be demanding, but it doesn't have to be. On the trip from Seattle to Frankfurt, I had kitty underneath the seat in front of me and the seat next to me empty, leaving us considerable room to spread out in the luxurious world of Economy Plus. I stuck to the basic please and thank yous but also remembered to maintain eye contact and telling them I appreciate what they were doing for me. After a while, one attendant would "serve" the empty seat next to me so kitty and I would have extra potatoes, rolls, or teeny bottles of water. Other times an attendant I hadn't seen yet would appear from within the aisles and ask to see the hidden kitty at my swollen feet. Wo ist der katzen?
5. If you don't want to check a bag and have everything with you in the cabin, don't use a rolling rectangular suitcase. A habit I picked up from my dad is checking to see which kind of aircraft is taking me from A to B or A to B to C. You might have traveled in the past and realized with a pang of panic that you're suddenly taking a two engine prop plane to your final destination instead of the now seemingly luxurious 737-900. It was nice knowing you!
Travel with a backpack meant for light travel or for serious backpacking. If you don't overpack, the shape of the backpack can be malleable and more forgiving in unexpected spaces. You know that shitty little luggage test space (I'm seriously blanking on the name of this thing) where you try to squeeze your bag in to see if it's up to the airline's sizing standards? Never will you be asked to compare your luggage to this if you don't use a rectangular bag. You don't even need to get a serious hiking backpack, just something that lends enough support for your back and shoulders. Also you'll have both your hands free. AND you won't look like a doofus trying to figure it out how to get a rectangle into a rectangle. Get a backpack, shove that thing in the overhead bin and be done with it.
5b. Don't have a backpack but don't want to pay the $25 to check a bag? Carry it through security anyway and gate-check your luggage. 90% of flights offer to check your bag for you at the gate rather than at the check-in counter prior to security. Usually this happens because “aw wouldja look at that folks, we're oversold and need some volunteers to take advantage of this undiscovered trick we either haven't realized or chose not to tell you about!"
I've gotten to gates and been like "What do you mean it's too big?" Play dumb and volunteer. Don't forget to take out any medications, keys, chargers, etc before separating from your belongings.
Obviously a few of these are strictly for international flights, but yeah have at it. This is the closest I've come to giving advice on this blog for about a year, the last being "So you want to expatriate." I've lived in the Czech Republic for 352 days. 352 days ago, everything here was brand new. Little processes you'd gloss over and not think twice about took some major maneuvering. The simplest answer was never the easiest. The scenic route wasn't always scenic. I've cried at bus stops, on trams, and outside of hospitals at 2am. I've been yelled at in a few different languages, sometimes by a person in the immigration office, sometimes a person at the embassy. Someone told me I'd be home by March 28 because I would give up and want to come home. I fight for this because it's what I want. It's painful, exhausting, depressing, and discouraging at times. There are times when I've really wanted to pack it in and stick kitty back in his backpack and book a flight home. The inner child in me runs home to my mom for refuge, reassurance, and a good blanket. That inner child yearns for a bedtime story and for someone to tell her that just because things are unpredictable right now doesn't mean it won't be okay.
There have times I've been unhinged and very un-Dude. Most of these situations involved a government or business entity leaving out key pieces of information I needed in order to plan my time and spend my money accordingly. There are so many instances of this I'm not even going to list them. I'll leave my flat with a mission, get these three things done!
And I return home with half of one to completion. But the comfort, ease, and automation of bureaucracy currently present in the United States are a few things I chose to sacrifice. The Czechs still run on a take-a-number system in the majority of public places. I might even go so far to say the Czechs run the take-a-number system. In the bank, the doctor, the post office. It's as if every moment of progress backslides because standing in a queue (weird) is a thing of the future, a thought which hangs out with "walls that aren't cement" and "my ATM not being an actual person." It's frustrating, but I chose this. The longer I live outside the United States, the less I want to go back.
I've changed positions a few times under my very slanted ceiling since I've been writing this. I'm in bed which is in a nook that resembles a mid-century-modern opium den with oversized pillows, slightly askew angles, subpar lighting, and a cup of rooibos. I feel safe in the nook. Kitty is snoring next to me and we both got our toenails cut today. I'm on the mend from being sick and I may have some changes on the horizon. Lateral move changes, not move-to-Sihanoukville changes. I hope the United States gets it's shit together soon. If it doesn't, you have my permission to burn it to the ground.
