Bleach Mode

Last post of the decade! WooOoOOOoooO!

Nope. That's not what this is gonna be. Life didn't really get better, it just got different. The last two entries here were super depressing so hopefully some kind of a yearly wrap up will bring out the better instances of 2019 instead of the two that really destroyed me.

In 2019, I only had to go to immigration one time. One. Time. Last year I think I had to go eight or nine times to the decrepit little office on the outskirts of Brno where the clientele mostly looks like the third class cabin from the Titanic. Lots of phrase books, interpreters, people getting handcuffed, some people who just said "fuck it" and went down with the bureaucratic ship. After solidifying my position with IBM, I got to drop off my contract with a shit-eating grin and not care so much that I was getting yelled at in Czech. Again.

Getting yelled at in loud Czech is a common facet of an immigration office visit. Most employees there can actually speak English, but they won't. Passively armed with the pseudo-Czech I know, I was able to slide my IBM contract under the glass and give a woman who has zero time for me a quick smile. Pieces of paper were stamped and I signed where I was pointed to sign and I left. Twenty minutes, in and out, and I'm good for another two years. Usually this process takes a lot longer.

I'm not going to say my position at IBM is easy. The job itself is actually quite simple, but the communication with my team and other technical teams based around the EU can be challenging. I spend my time double, sometimes triple checking the phrasing of emails or the instructions on a task just to make sure the air quality of my snark is perfectly clear. A lot of my time is spent in Excel or IMing other folks on my team because we all have our headphones in but refuse to have a real conversation with the person sitting across from us. I really can't complain. I have good relationships with my superiors and I've only been late once in the last 11 months. I'm a 10 minute bus ride from the office and I can work from home two days a week if everything isn't really crazy, but January 2020 is going to be really crazy.

I also got to visit Seattle and Tucson in November like I did last year. I'm the only one on my team not taking any vacation during Christmas so instead I took two weeks during my birthday and Thanksgiving to go home. This trip was fraught with travel-inducing headaches but I was able to schedule time with the people I wanted to see and I got to headline my first club back home. I think when I come home next year I'm going to try to record my first album, but that's gonna depend on how much stage time I can get in Bratislava or Olomouc or wherever I end up performing beforehand. I have the material, but like last year, I was spending a fair amount of time on stage figuring out what jokes actually worked in Bratislava but not Portland, OR. I have a new closer in the US, but not in Brno unless I want to waste time explaining who the Zodiac Killer is (or isn't.)

In Tucson I spent time with my dad, step-mom, and uncle for some nuclear family time. My uncle gave me my favorite gift and it came with an unknown story. Before getting a job building Boeing planes during WWII, my grandfather practiced his machinery skills with small projects. He made a silver ring in an Art Deco style that my uncle has had for a number of years, and at Thanksgiving he passed it on to me. I haven't taken it off since I got it. In a way it's incredibly reflective of my grandfather's personality: simple, nothing flashy, but purposeful.

When I returned home to Brno, I came home to Gossamer, a cat I adopted in May after Patrick died. Gossamer's very different but equally cheerful and entertaining. His name was initially "Ragy," translating to "rags" in Czech. I sat around with him for a day before deciding on Gossamer, the delicately named big red hairy monster from Looney Tunes. He's a younger cat, definitely in his terrible twos. He's got a lot of energy but he has calmed down to snuggle since the weather got colder.

The woman who fostered him got him fixed and cleaned up and medicated after he had been on the street for an undetermined amount of time. When he was found at my neighborhood Tesco, he looked like he had just gotten sober so I knew we'd get along. She thinks he's a flame-point ragdoll because of his markings and serious floof and size. It's hard to imagine such a cat to be alone on the street. I'll never know his full story, but some people I've talked to actually don't think he was homeless and that perhaps he was abandoned, or a family moved and didn't take him. It makes me really sad to think about, but I'm happy I can give him a good life and all the little crinkled up paper he can handle.

Right now I'm writing this and Gossamer is playing with his new favorite toy, a condensed ball of his own hair. He's a little crosseyed and it makes me chuckle. He can't not look like that. Sometimes I ask him if he's a nerd and he has to look at me with his goofy expression. He's an amazing cat, a good companion. He likes stealing my glasses off of my face, headbutting me, and waiting outside my shower to get little drinks out of my drain.

One thing I'm going to try to do more in 2020 is travel because I'm a white woman in her 30s. It probably sounds ridiculous for a person living in Europe to say that, but it's true. Most of the travel I did this year was mostly little 18-24 hour trips for comedy, there and back in one night. These were mostly jaunts to Poland, and while I love Poland, I was technically at these places for work and wasn't taking the time really needing to relax or experience anything culturally significant. So I put down some money, something I hardly do because I'm...what's a good way to say this, thrifty as fuck, and I bought at ticket to Pearl Jam and the Pixies in Italy next summer.

After doing some research, it turned out the show at the Ferrari autodrome was the cheapest option because all of the tickets are general admission. The shows in Vienna, Budapest, even Krakow were more expensive and they didn't give me the option of exploring uncharted territory, so off to Bologna I'll go next July. I'm happy because I'll be doing some traveling just for me. Not for stand up or holiday obligations, but just for me. The concert is on a Sunday night so I'm debating about taking the whole week off and doing some exploring in the Balkans or something. I dunno, I have six months to figure it out but that doesn't mean I can't start the incessant, impulsive planning meant for late spring.

Now that I have some decent job security, I've been able to be more flexible with my appearance. I spent half the year platinum blonde and half the year bright pink. I got my hand tattooed and I put my septum piercing back in. I'm basically the person 23-year-old Liz wanted to be. I honestly don't notice myself looking that alternative except for when older Czech people stare me down with the same eyes that have witnessed multiple political revolutions. My look definitely isn't conducive to the semi-conservative atmosphere in Brno. In Prague or Vienna, I'm more anonymous, part of a seamless crowd. Now if I see people staring at me, I stare back at them because I'm no longer a shy, language-less foreigner.

So here's the official nonsense count for 2019:

Three notebooks/jokebooks

Six pairs of headphones

Two vaporizers

Three hair colors

Two bouts of serious depression

Six flights

One break from Facebook

Seven countries visited

Two new medications

Eight phone chargers

Five vet visits

Three books read

One minor heartbreak

Two refrigerators

Two new flavors of Skittles

One political demonstration

Zero hospital visits

Pretty good overall. The 2020 election will most likely decide where I'll be spending my time in 2021. But if I have to stay here, it's not the worst thing in the world. I'd actually prefer that. In terms of "resolutions," which aren't really resolutions but a romanticized list of things I'd like to accomplish once I get my shit together, there's only a few:

Write poetry more regularly

Pay more attention to gut instincts

Take some kind of Czech language course that isn't just Slavic memes

Continue good control of my blood sugar and a1C (6.3!)

This isn't too crazy of a list. I think I'm intentionally setting the bar low knowing I'm in a funk right now and I've yet to come completely out of it. I have the whole year to work on it once we stop hibernating.

Down by the Water

My first trip home from the Czech Republic was surreal. Including an 11-hour layover in London-Heathrow, the entire journey came to about 33 hours from start to finish. One tram, one train, one bus, one plane, one bus, and another plane later, my step-sister picked me up and we made the essential white girl stop on the way home before doing anything else: Starbucks.

Seattle changed but didn't change at all. I kept expecting this massive influx of reverse culture shock but instead it was little mannerisms or habits I picked up in CZ I noticed, like putting my key in the door the wrong way, assuming the flush for the toilet was located in the center of the tank, or how to drive a car. It wasn't like coming back to the Pride Lands after your British uncle screwed everything up for you by killing your dad. Everything was still standing even though the mood was openly more volatile than when I left. Despite the crazy jet lag and early morning insulin regimen, I slipped back into the normalcy of being an adult living at home with their parents.

After arriving, I came to realize how much I missed a few things, like Corn Chex. I don't mean this as a pun and I temporarily had to rewire my brain to type that word, but cereal isn't a common breakfast food here. In the US you have an entire aisle dedicated to cartoons and the sugary nonsense they sponsor. But what I missed was lumbering out of bed, haphazardly pouring squares or circles out of a really noisy bag and then dousing it with a milk of my choosing. Then I was done! That's it. Boom. Breakfast, and not necessarily a balanced one.

Cereal does exist here but not in the way it does in the US. Same thing with big trucks. I maybe see a truck twice a week here, a Ford something-or-other. It's not that I completely forget they exist, but it's kind of like I completely forget they exist. They're just impractical. Brno is a tremendously easy city in which to not own a car. With 12 tram lines (well, 11 tram lines but the number 7 is missing...) and numerous busses and trolleys, there's no reason for me to get a Czech drivers license. As a resident here, I can no longer get an international driving permit and I would need to take drivers ed in Czech.

A little more than 24 hours later after landing in Seattle, I headlined a show in Tacoma at a community cafe/gallery/meeting place or whatever these multifunctional purpose spaces are called. All 25 minutes of me rambling were interrupted with little jet-laggy sighs or intruding thoughts with zero filter. It felt good to let loose in front of an audience that could understand me in our mother tongue. On stages in CZ, Slovakia, Poland, and Austria, I've had to slow my pace WAY down just to get a simple joke across but also to make sure everyone could understand me. Now I had a room full of people that understood me and a mic to make it even louder. It might have been the jet lag, but it felt so relieving to relax on stage, dick around, and take my time.

I did a handful of sets in Seattle with a trip to Tucson sandwiched in. As I was getting used to one jet lag, I set off for Arizona to see my dad, step-mom, and uncle for another subpar time change. The desert was welcoming with temperatures in the 70s and food which wasn't commandeered by another culture who tried to create what they think is Mexican food. Everyone in my Tucson family is a photographer so the images which resulted from my trip look easy, natural, and effortless.

After looking through the photos, I sighed when realizing that there haven't been a lot of pictures taken of me in the last year because of how much time I've spent alone. And this isn't going to turn into a pity party; it's just fact. In Brno I'm either taking pictures of myself or other stuff, usually kitty. I was pleased how my hair turned out, which was done three hours after I landed in Seattle, and it was nice to be outside in a t-shirt because Brno was crazy cold when I returned. 

I flew back to Seattle from Tucson on Thanksgiving Day and spent some time in Salt Lake City between connections. The family dinner in Seattle was a bit bumbling, a little off-the-rails, and somewhat distracting, but we kept it together between wrangling kids and passing dishes in a direction that was never discussed beforehand. I also got to meet my new niece, Emily. Well, not new. She's a year old now and was born only a few weeks after I had left for CZ. She's an incredibly happy baby and very interested in everything around her, especially her almost three-year-old sister. When combined with eight-year-old Laszlo, there are actually a troupe of kids now at family gatherings. For so long it was just Laszlo in varying degrees of age over the years, but now he has cousins who are beginning to communicate better. I don't use the word "rambunctious" ever, but that's exactly what Thanksgiving was. It was like the Benny Hill theme was the soundtrack to Toy Story.

The next day I turned 31. I went out to dinner with mom and step-dad who were trying incredibly hard to get the server to become interested in me. I think he was until my mom went the extra mile and mentioned I live in Europe, which is something else I'm going to debunk now:

I'm not on vacation 24/7 because I live here. I received some confusing reactions right after I moved, comments to the tune of "god it must be amazing to be on vacation every day." If you've kept abreast of my immigration situation on here or my social media, you're well aware that this has been far from vacation. All bureaucracy aside, I'm doing everything I'd be doing in the US. For instance today I went to a psychiatry appointment and the discount grocery store on my way home. I stopped to take some pictures, and now I'm home with Patrick. This exact day has clearly played out in Seattle more than once and I'm really not trying to be hacky, but that's where I'm at. One day last year I watched all three Men in Blacks in one sitting. Depression doesn't know I moved to Europe. My anxiety sure as shit does, but my depression doesn't. 

Anyway, my birthday. It was great. I did a show in White Center and overall it was cool seeing how Seattle is getting it's shit together with comedy, and when I say that I mean there are some seriously great people doing some seriously great things. Some parts of me felt weird to be back, some places definitely felt like the cafeteria in Mean Girls. I wasn't sure of what my status was or if I would be perceived the same upon my return. I had a lot of shit to clear up while I was trying to sort out my life while living nine hours ahead, and I'm hoping a lot of it has been forgotten. 

One important day when I was home was seeing my three closest friends in comedy but also just my three friends who I can get real with. We had a family dinner of sorts with chicken wings and hella La Croix. We talked about our fears, tumultuous events from the past year, our travels, and our current standings with stand up. It felt good to be myself around the people to whom I feel comfortable revealing myself. No pressure. 

And to be honest, the hardest part was leaving. The only other time I've cried when flying out of an airport was when I was in Burbank and I was leaving a relationship that had ambiguous boundaries at the time. This time it was different, even harder than moving last year. I felt so reconnected with my family and my hometown and my familiar environment. I'm still unclear about what was making me cry. It could be a lot of reasons but I think maybe it's because I didn't want that camaraderie to end. I was knowingly taking a trip forward, and this time I even knew what was on the other side. I knew what was waiting for me. So why was this time so much harder, so much more emotionally taxing than the original move itself? 

I returned to Brno with the city anxiously celebrating Black Friday because they don't have a Thanksgiving. The Christmas markets are up and running and all of the white and red holiday lights are running through the alleyways in the city center. We had our first snow on Saturday and I turned my heat on in my flat for the first time. Nothing blew up or caught on fire so I think we're safe for now. I outfitted my sleeping nook with some shelves and a nightlight so now my opium den is almost fully functional and almost ready for Instagram.

Right now I'm spending time waiting to hear back from IBM. Oh yeah, probably should have explained that earlier. I've been too stressed to write until now but long story short I got let go from my job at AT&T and due to the timing of it, the trial period I was under erased any valid visa I had so in order to not get deported at the end of December, I needed to find a job which will sponsor both my job and my residence in the Czech Republic. I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women and within the next week, they offered me a position. Part of the reason I was stressed was because I had initially made plans to go home for the first two weeks of November because it was the only time I could take from my job for the holidays...but then I had no job for the holidays and I needed to patch things up with immigration before leaving the country. I suspended my trip for two weeks while I communicated with IBM and made sure everyone knew I would be on holiday and unavailable for interviews and phone calls. The situation with IBM became more and more solidified and on Thanksgiving morning I woke up to an official job offer. 

I'm hoping to start sometime in January, but as I've learned over the past year, I need to add an extra 60 days to any sort of bureaucratic timeline in the Czech Republic. So maybe before Easter is more realistic. Once again I have something on the horizon, but now I just have to wait.

Also I went to Dick's while I was home and it was fucking awesome. 

Czech and Date

I first used Tinder in 2015. I had just moved back to Seattle from Minneapolis and I wasn't really sure of my relationship status at the time, so I hopped on the app with a notoriously simple UI. After a few cautious swipes I got a match! My first match! What should we name our kids? What will he think of a color scheme containing seafoam and taupe?

After some further investigation, I discovered my future husband and I had around 60 friends in common from Facebook. Of course, he was a comedian.

Tinder is such a mystery to me because I've seen people use it like a sperm donor donation guide but also in a hot-or-not rating system way just to innocently pass the time. None of the matches I ever made came to fruition. The furthest I got was moving from the app to text messaging with our real phone numbers. No movies, no dates, no walks along Alki. A daily "hey how's it going" turned into a weekly "what are you up to this weekend?" I wasn't crazy determined to meet anyone every time I've used Tinder, and I spent most of my time swiping left to find people I know and giggle over how they chose to represent themselves through six Instagram pictures and their recent Spotify artists. 

Honestly, meeting someone from Tinder sounded like a lot of work.

Are they going to like me? I'm leaving the country soon so I could ruin his life. I'll ruin his life. I'm running out of foundation. Is this guy worth scraping the bottom of the tube with a q-tip just to give off the illusion that my skin is decent?

I'd rather stay home and watch Brendan Fraser movies with my cat (this ended up happening a lot). 

For the first three months I was in the Czech Republic, the only person I thought of was myself. Initially this idea is selfish, but when transitioning to a post-communist country with a lot of people who have been through some shit, I had to make sure I was doing okay before I even considered romantically invited someone into my life who may have very different societal ideologies than myself. I redownloaded the app and edited my profile with more recent pictures and a few notes about my eating habits (cheeseburgers), my drinking habits (there isn't one), and my love for sitcoms (not that there's anything wrong with that). But even after ten minutes, I could tell my main issue would be the language barrier. 

Most people here who are under the age of 30 speak English to some degree. It is now taught in primary schools as opposed to German or Russian. The more profiles I went through, the more I realized that I'm either going to have to find someone who speaks English or I'm going to have to learn Czech very quickly. I'm very sparing with right swipes, so any dude who I became interested in superficially had to meet a certain set of criteria: not all of their pictures should be of them drinking, they need at least one photo someone else took of them, no gym selfies, and they had to indicate they spoke at least some English. After a few minutes on the app, I saw a popular pattern emerging among Czech men:

(I accidentally swiped left on a couple of these goobers so I'll update if anything happens.)

If you guessed "men on vacation wearing sunglasses," congratulations! Most of the profiles I saw had an absurd amount of men traveling and being active. If you swapped all of these pictures out with American girls who recently studied abroad for all of two months, there would be zero difference. I shied away from making contact because I think I was intimidated. I know myself well. I don't surf. I don't mountain climb. I don't go to places where I can't at least buy a snack. I like being comfortable and where there's no threat of large crowds or riptide or bees. There is a residual fear of not being able to connect with any of these people because I like movies and writing and typically things that involve being indoors for an extended period of time. What am I going to talk about? How I found a good Russian cam rip of Isle of Dogs or what subreddit deserves more attention?

I only had one successful match where the conversation lead to WhatsApp and eventually a date at a teahouse. He looked like a young James Spader and majored in astrophysics. In his spare time, he's working on getting his pilot license and spending time with his family. English wasn't his first language and my first instinct was to correct his actually pretty decent grammar, but it was so harmless and cute I almost couldn't take it seriously. And that's why I think I'm largely unsuccessful with dating apps: I can't take them seriously. 

Every profile becomes a joke to me. By the end of my perusing I've given half the guys ambiguous Slavic accents and butchered their English while they talk about the differences between good and bad dinner rolls. Tinder has now replaced Reddit as the "hmm what else can I do" entertainment portion of my evenings. It's incredibly mindless and I only login after I'm convinced I've read the entirety of the internet. I forget I have Tinder. I open it maybe once a month, and each time I open it I have to reacquaint myself with the conversations I left dangling or the five guys named Martin and the three guys named Ondrej or the couple of guys named Pavel. I'm also convinced there's only seven Czech names for men and that's why I can't keep any of them straight or differentiate them from one another.

I wonder if Tinder is worth my time because it slowly came to feel like a chore. I became more content with continuing to spend time with myself than muster the effort to meet someone who may not understand me, both emotionally and linguistically. James Spader understood my jokes and we texted a few times after our date, but we haven't talked in maybe two weeks. Things fizzled out and I think neither of us saw the point of carrying it out any further. I also have my own suspicion he lost interested when he found out I don't drink or go clubbing. The only thing in common was our age. It was tough to build a cultural connection in such a short time, but maybe it was for the best. I always feel safer when I'm alone. The act of procreation is really popular here, and I don't mean the euphemism for sex, I mean actually procreating to make children, so the older generation urges the younger to make offspring. I can't even start my job, let alone a family. What I'm getting at is that I don't know how I'll measure up to Czech expectations of how life is supposed to proceed. I'm on a very different unpaved road and I'm not trying to rush into anything. For now, Tinder is only a source of entertainment, a digital carousel of traveling millenials and Adidas tracksuits. I'm not desperate. I think the only person I need right now is me.

Dancing with St. Vitus

I feel like these updates are lacking the crescendo they used to have. Ever since I got my visa, things have quieted down quite a bit and I haven't been the busy bee I was when I arrived. Now I have a completely different agenda to more or less accomplish the same thing: achieve the correct paperwork and navigate the bureaucratic system for the right to legally work in the Czech Republic. I'm definitely on an expat plateau. Explateau? Whatever. 

The teaching job I've held since the beginning of this year has become wildly unpredictable. Usually when you imagine a teacher, you imagine someone who has the same hours as their students, maybe from 8 to 3ish in the afternoon. But language schools have to operate around life's other obligations, which are mainly work and family. There's no set schedule and sometimes students will schedule classes as they would with a therapist. Both receptionist and student have their pocketbooks out, flipping through dates to find a time in the future to conjugate verbs while still having fun. So this style of schedule leaves me to have no schedule of my own. Sometimes I work an hour in the morning and then six hours later I return to teach two courses in the evening. Other times I work from 2-8pm with no break. I don't have enough time to eat a meal or even a snack. I check my blood sugar in the middle of class because my schedule doesn't leave me time to sit down and actually pay attention to the inner workings (or non inner workings) of my dead pancreas. The limited and spontaneous availability I have has left me rescheduling appointments, not knowing if I can take gigs in other countries (it sounds drastic but it's like 60 miles away), and trying to create somewhat of a normal sleep schedule, which I've been chasing after for at least two decades. I don't have time for me and it's fucking exhausting.

Back in January, I interviewed for a manager position at AT&T. Yep, that AT&T. The telecommunications company has offices in both Brno and Bratislava, Slovakia, quite the surprise to someone who used to work at Comcast and thought positions with these places were limited to cubefarms in American metropolitan suburbs. The "interview" started with a group of roughly 30 bilingual people who were all interested in becoming a technical support specialist for the internet service AT&T offers to certain parts of the US. A few people had luggage with them as if they had come straight from the airport or train station, and I soon found out they actually had. A team lead told us to introduce ourselves, where we're from, and why we're interested in the job that requires English speakers B2 and above. Mostly everyone was Czech with a few people who actually flew in from France and Germany for the interview. It sounds ridiculous but when you think about it, flying anywhere in Europe doesn't take that long so they might as well attend an interview for a job in a country with a lower cost of living. Simply by the introductions, it was clear which candidates would be able to function in a job like tech support. When the pleasantries got all the way around to me, I realized I was the only native English speaker who had worked at a telecommunications giant. A lot of people stared at me. Why is this woman interviewing for a job she easily could have had in the United States?

To make sure we were actually capable of reading, writing, and speaking English, the team lead administered a test based on reading and listening. With twenty questions for each category, I found myself struggling with the most basic of knowledge. For instance, one of the questions involved listening to a woman describe a vacation to a beach, and we had to pick only one word to describe her experience. However, many options for the answer were synonyms. Casual, relaxed, breezy, low-key, and a few others were choices to choose from. But what exactly are they looking for? It wasn't the language that was throwing me off; it was the psychological mind games I needed to play in order to beat out non-native speakers for the same job. After everyone was finished, we were released for an hour and I did what any white girl with time to kill on her hands would do: go to Starbucks. 

The AT&T campus in Brno is located in a suburb known as Bohunice (BOH-hoo-nitz-uhh). There's a large sprawling mall and numerous medical facilities throughout the area of new commerce, and even though there's many plastic new shiny buildings out there, my favorite communism-looking building is right in the center of all of it. White with rails, simple windows, and a few panes of frosted broken glass, the medical center was a staple of what used to be sterile brutalism before 1989. I took some pictures and ordered a decaf latte in very poor Czech and waited for my pre-determined future at a new job with an actual schedule. 

When I returned from my hour alone, almost half of the candidates weren't to be found. Our team lead explained that those who hadn't passed the language test were dismissed from the rest of the interview. A few people looked at me as if I had something to do with their demise, but really I think they weren't surprised I passed, like a "good thing she survived" sort of a look. As a group, we were led into a lobby and then told to wait for an individual one-on-one interview with a manager. The woman I met had originally expatriated from the Philippines and married her Czech husband here in Brno. She looked at the experience I had listed from my CV and explained I was hired before I was even walked in that day. I spoke with her about submitting for the management position and she explained that once I complete the basic training and because of my native language, I can be transferred into the position. I also found out that being a native speaker was getting me about 15% more pay than the rest of the candidates who either had no technical support experience or mediocre English skills. 

What I'm most excited about is I'll be working at night for open business hours in the US. My shift will be from 11-8am so I can communicate with AT&T's customer base no matter which timezone they're in. Supposedly I'm also making more salary because the job is solely based at night. Night is when I'm most active. I'm writing this post at night, I have my best stupid ideas at night, and I try to at least learn something every night before bed. I can now offer my best potential on a Monday through Friday job. I never honestly thought I'd say "I want normal hours and zero unpredictability" but there I was interviewing for exactly that. The pay will be stable and the work will be familiar. 

In the coming weeks, I'll be filing for an employee card, which operates as its own visa. Right now, my trade license and my long stay visa both rely on each other for me to stay in the country and earn a living. But with AT&T, I'll be cleared by the Czech government to have an actual employer. The employee card needs to be renewed every two years, and I won't have to verify my funds with the government every year as they how much and when AT&T is paying me. They'll also provide my health insurance so it'll be included through my work and I'll no longer be on the socialized state system. Honestly the job can't start soon enough. Right now I'm in limbo between filing documents and waiting for my start date in May with no forward nor backwards progress and so we wait here on the plateau. 

The cool part about starting my job next month was that my mom and I both had the availability for her to come visit me for ten days. She's retiring in about ten months and she's looking forward to having the freedom to travel and spend time with family, meaning she has some vacation to burn through by the end of the year.

I was incredibly giddy the entire day. This was the first time anyone from the States had seen me in my new environment and I made sure to have things in a very presentable HGTV fashion. I literally cleaned my floors on my hands and knees, I dusted, vacuumed little nooks previously overlooked, and made myself into a real person who looks like they have the gumption and dedication to complete such a task, someone who really has their shit together. The last time I had been to the Prague airport was arriving on October 18th, almost six months ago now. It's is incredibly clean and almost looks like a convention center with giant cylindrical pillars and signs pointing to various amenities. They even had one of those ridiculously sized chess sets that you can play on the floor. And their bathroom was free. 

While I was on the train to Prague to pick her up, she was transferring in Frankfurt. Frankfurt, we both agreed, is the most absurd of European airports. Half-mall and half-travel checkpoint, it's an incredibly expansive place, leaving no room for tight connections. When I came over I also transferred in Frankfurt with a 90 minute connection and it was real tight, but my mom had some extra time to peruse duty-free whathaveyous and the vast plains of moving walkways. 

I toodled around in Arrivals with other people waiting for their respective passengers. The Prague Airport is divided into two terminals, flights from within the Schengen area and international flights from outside the Schengen. Since Frankfurt is Schengen, the hour long flight arrived on time. I watched the status on the arrival board of her plane, "Landed," Unloading," "Baggage." Spurts of passengers came out from behind the secure and opaque screen of customs a little at a time. Every little group I got excited and positioned myself unobstructed to be sure she could see me. At last she appeared with a tote and luggage. She looked so small next to everything she had packed for ten days of sightseeing in the Czech Republic. She looked tired, amazed. Everyone in my family is an experienced traveler but my mom had yet to see the former Czechoslovakia, and I felt settled in enough at this point to be somewhat of a reliable tour guide during her time here. 

We hugged for a long time. She's roughly my same height so our embrace with no intention of releasing seemed more reciprocal. After getting a good look at one another after our different yet varied travels, we got the first of many lattes at the airport while we waited for the bus to return to the main train station. We had about six hours of travel ahead of us with a bus, train, and then a cab ride back to my place in Brno. Our first meal consisting of Burger King fueled us for the journey and we arrived back home to a very excited kitty. 

The four days my mom was here in Brno were spent Easter market shopping, closely akin to the Christmas markets but with a bit more paganism sprinkled in with the food, spiced wine, colorful eggs, decorated switches used to hit girls in return for eggs, and porcelain products unique to Moravia. A lot of our time was spent sleeping in and relaxing with no set schedule because we knew Prague was going to kill us. We were planning on doing some serious damage in regards to sightseeing while in the Bohemian capitol. I traveled through the Czech Republic in 2009 but was on a pretty strict budget so my sightseeing was limited to cheap beer and Pall Malls. But our stay in Brno was eventful. My mom met a few of my fellow teachers at the school and one of my closest friends, we went to a cat cafe because Patrick just wasn't enough, and took a cruise through Spilberk Castle, one of many located in CZ. 

Czech Easter eggs designed by Jiri Zemanek

Over the few days my mom was in Brno, I realized that she's getting older. And yes, I'm aware of this phenomenon known as aging, but she was different from the last I saw her when we were crying in the airport in Seattle. She's slowed down a bit, both with her memory and her speed. Sometimes she would have a tough time keeping up with me during her visit. I've always been self-conscious of my speed when I walk because I've now had two ex-boyfriends who were quite eager to comment on it. I'm hardly ever in a rush. I've also spent so much time alone in Brno that I'm never around anyone that often to feel self-conscious with. Spending time with my mom made me more hyper aware, not just of my actions, but hers, as well. 

And then I started feeling guilty. Occasionally this pang of guilt or regret strikes and I feel like I made the wrong choice by moving so far away. In this case, I felt bad because I'm not with my mom anymore. I can't help her as she's getting older. I'm not immediately available if she needs assistance, reminders, or pertinent information. Staying in touch with her has been easier than I assumed but I think my shock of seeing her after almost six months made me realize I might not be able to see her in a time of need. It's the same thing with my new niece, Emily. I haven't met her yet and she isn't cognizant of her auntie who lives across the pond. I'm losing the chance to see her grow up, and sometimes it mades me incredibly sad and alone. A lot of expats will experience this while abroad and start to rethink their decisions, that their choice to separate from family and friends both geographically and emotionally will negatively affect others. Prior to leaving, I told myself I'd return to the US only under a few different circumstances: a family member getting seriously ill or dying, a zombie apocalypse originating in Russia, or a court order. Seeing my mom in her now more limited capabilities made me wonder if I'd be moving back to the US sooner than I thought, or what it will be like to have aging parents so far away, especially as the only child in one circumstance. 

I noticed this for most of my mom's visit but it didn't slow us down. In Prague we went to the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral which has left me particularly awestruck over the last week. I'm not sure if it's the crazy gothic overtones or its age or the stained glass to which Mucha contributed, but to me it's this evil building that is tall, maniacal, ominous, and threatening. Not because of the religious curiosities tied to it, but the massive presence it gives to the Prague skyline. It's like in Independence Day when the alien ship slowly covers Washington DC except St. Vitus has graced Bohemia with its brooding presence for almost 1,000 years. 

My photos from St. Vitus

My mom also got to see me on stage while in Prague, and I'm really happy she got to see one of the best sets I've had since I've been here. I booked a spot on a weekly Tuesday showcase and found out at the last minute I was headlining. Vir Das, from Conan and fucking Netflix, was in town and asked for time but at the last minute had a scheduling conflict, so they asked me to fill in. Kind of cool, I'll probably use that as a credit from now on. The show takes place in a popular hostel and it's free for guests to attend, so the show often has a large audience whose common language is usually English. I met another comic from LA who was on the show and we discovered we had a lot of people in common between us, so it was fun to network so far from home. And my set went great. I couldn't have asked for a better slot or audience. The audience was engaged, paying attention, a little drunk but happy and focused. I'm so much more comfortable on stage than when I first arrived, nervous and anxious over material that worked so many times which might no longer have potential in a non-English speaking country. But I've adapted, and I think that's kind of what all this is about. 

My mom and I separated at the Prague train station where she took the bus to the airport and I a train back to Brno. I had to teach two classes after I arrived, one at a lighting company out in the suburbs and another at the school itself. The lighting company cancelled on me 40 minutes after I arrived due to some Chinese bigwig in town and I didn't have anyone show up for my second class. Of course, I get off the train and my world immediately becomes less predictable, less calculated. I have four days off for Easter as the Czechs observe Easter on Monday as well as Good Friday on, well, Friday. I've been nursing a sinus infection in the mean time and tomorrow I go into a 25 hour teaching week, and I'm sure I'll be dead when it's finished. Until then, I have some cheese to eat and a kitty to annoy. 

Ahoj, Polsko!

Last week I went on my first real comedy tour that wasn’t just two back to back nights in Wisconsin. Prague’s Kristyna Haklova founded Velvet Comedy and has been a force with whom to be reckoned in the European comedy scene. She organized four dates for her, myself, and Lucie Machackova over five days throughout Poland. We had all been discussing the shows, promotions, and transportation for a few months now, and this past weekend, it finally manifested into a Soviet-laden and bombastic spree through a country whose borders have been fought over for centuries.

Former Soviet countries (or Second World countries as they’re less commonly called) are often bundled into one specific group where many assume they’ve endured the same hardships. Sure, the Czech Republic and Poland both have had their fair share of annexations, battles, and fluctuating political borders, but Poland is different. While the country has adopted many Westernized ideas such as the hipster coffee and wine bar and the scalp massage parlor, the gray scenery is still a haunting spectacle reinforced with brutalist architecture, large scale monuments of mountain movers past, and little old ladies pulling shopping carts across the cobblestones behind them. In five days, we visited Wroclaw, Lodz, Warsaw, and Krakow, each with their own unique comedy clique and variation of the Polish street food known as “zapiekanka,” which is basically pizza on a baguette. Krakow is the only city I’ve been to in Poland and I was eager to see what the rest of the cities had to offer. When we weren’t on stage, we were either sleeping or taking a bus across the great plains of the country. Buses proved to be the most economical way to travel and we splurged for the train when we wanted extra legroom or a steadier wifi connection.

Starting and ending in Brno.

We all convened in Wroclaw, a city roughly four hours north of Brno. Lucie and Kristyna had come from Prague earlier in the day and I took three separate trains over five hours to meet with them. Jim Williams, another American expat comedian whose job is a hospital clown akin to Patch Adams, gave us his AirBnB for clean and hospitable accommodation. Located near the main train station and “Old Town,” Jim’s place was a short walking distance to the venue. With lots of stone and brick, the location for our first show was as if it was built by Hogwarts students for open mic nights and interpretive magic. More often than not, the shows I’ve done have been in a basement or cellar or bunker, which means no cell service. It feels strange to be immediately cut off from the world that’s so close above you, but it was nice not to have a handy distraction on me at all times. The crowd was warm and happy and extremely ready to laugh. They weren’t overly generous with their laughter, but all the jokes I wanted to land went as planned and my new stuff about my moving process from the US to CZ has been working well. We even met a few other American comedians based in Wroclaw, which is so strange to say considering most Americans have probably never even heard of the place.

After a great show and a night well rested at Jim’s, we caught a bus to Lodz. Three of the letters in “Lodz” have some sort of slash or line above them so in Polish, it’s technically pronounced “wouldge.” As Americans, we pronounce it “Loadz” and giggle when we say it. It was in Loadz (haha) we realized the more east we went into Poland, the less Westernized it was. This may seem like a fairly obvious observation where west is West and east is East, but the further east we traveled, conveniences, dry wall, and clean air weren’t found. Poland’s air quality is generally terrible. It’s hard to differentiate the smoldering smog from the manufacturing industry from the slate colored climate surrounding every city, but it added to this Soviet aesthetic which is only seen in certain spots in the Czech Republic. The old Cyrillic style font is used by many businesses, signs are trilingual in Polish, English, and Russian, and every surface could have used a decent pressure washing. Of course there are malls, Ubers, and KFC in Lodz, but you could tell the outer shell of most businesses and people have been through some shit.

Upon arriving, we found a Polish restaurant with a whiteboard menu outside and a very homey yet commie feel on the inside. The walls and ceiling were only half painted, the floorboards probably came with the original purchase of the home back in 19xx, and the tables were set up in what was at some point definitely a living room. The kitchen in this home was neither industrial nor steel, but instead a kitchen like you’d find in any two-bedroom home that served as the laboratory for all things pork and potatoes. The server only spoke Polish, but both Kristyna and Lucie are Czech and they were able to translate some Polish since the roots of both languages can be similar. We tried to order water but we were told there was none. Bottled water is common in many restaurants in Europe so initially we thought maybe she didn’t have any, but after some linguistic investigation, we were told there was no water period. Between our guestimations and Google Translate, we were able to order a variation of potato with some kind of meat off of a handwritten menu. My order was a large potato pancake filled with gravy and pork pieces that could have choked a horse. Like most Polish food, it lacked salt and spices commonly found in most kitchens. Lucie and Kristyna also received similar dishes of some rendition of potatoes and chicken cooked in an indistinguishable manner, so at one point we all traded dishes so we could each taste our poor navigation skills of a Polish menu.

Prior to the show we stayed in a “stack,” those giant Soviet style apartments with a billion units, the same floor plan in each unit, and an elevator in desperate need of speed, repairs, and safety. We stayed with Rui, a Portuguese resident in Lodz who works in IT. He explained that the reason the city can look so empty is because there are jobs available yet no one wants to move to Lodz and take them. He works specifically with translation and while he has as comfortable life, he seems like he could be happier elsewhere. Rui led us to our venue for the night, a hipster New York City style loft with white walls and a black floor. All of the chairs and tables were forged out of old shopping carts, barrels, and other items and materials you’d see in a challenge on Project Runway. The show wasn’t well attended, but the 15 people we did have were incredibly happy with the show, a few of which were other comics in Lodz. The idea of comics living everywhere is sometimes surprising, I guess because comedy is such an American thing to me, so while the buildings and food are very Polish, the humor is American. I’ve been trying out new material regarding the differences between “here and there,” a common topic for expat comedians to elaborate upon. Stereotypes and the fascination with different habits, people, languages, and culture is popular material for those wanting to hear stories from other places. In Warsaw, this worked the best, probably since I made fun of it a little bit.

Stacks, Night Woodge, and Kristyna and I with our flyer.

Warsaw is its own animal when it comes to Poland. Most cities look fairly industrious from the outside but they have a charming middle, like a Marxist Cadbury egg. When you emerge from the main train station, all you see is glass and steel. Large hotels, large billboards, and streets with sputtering old cars and an upsetting amount of lanes are common place in what’s nicknamed “The Big Village in the Middle of Nowhere.” It’s almost alarming. It was so busy and hectic it made Brno seem sleepy and a place where people would stroll instead of walk. Of course there aren’t many historical caricatures so often found in European capitols. Warsaw was the second most destroyed city of WWII behind Dresden and before Leningrad. Some say Warsaw looked like a sea of swept fire while it choked on its last battle cry. There was a lot of rebuilding to do in the years following 1945 but some villages and plots on the outskirts of “Nowhere” had clearly been abandoned for decades. I’m sure the Iron Curtain rusting over helped to create these giant intersections under which had tunneling pedestrians since there’s no time to pause the traffic of the busy streets for safety, but even in its new, shiny industry, Warsaw was weirdly haunting.

Outside Warsaw Glowny

Our show in Warsaw was in another dungeon close to some fake palm trees erected on a busy street. I still don’t know if this is a fun joke Poles have about their climate or something, but it seemed out of place (as opposed to a normal palm tree?) Loko was very kind with us and extremely busy. The show was oversold due to the hustle and bustle of another expat comic living in Warsaw, Christine Skobe. She hails from Canada and calls Warsaw a more temporary home as the air quality borders on opaque and it’s a considerable health concern for some. She also gave up her living room couch which three women managed to sleep on for a few hours in the middle of the night after some much needed showers. Christine was a saint and hosted the show with a few guest sets sprinkled in between our common sarcasm and jokes. The stage we were on was a pallet with a Persian rug over it. I had to be careful not to step in between the slots of the MacGyvered stage and end up in a Warsaw emergency room, but I had fun with it. At one point I think I said “This is Polish as fuck.”

I’m still not 100% confident doing my sober material over here, or anywhere for that matter. Drinking is a huge part of multiple cultures so when someone brings up that they don’t drink, people are sort of taken aback but in a way that mean mugs you with comments like “So why are you here, then?” It would be like someone moving to Seattle who doesn’t smoke weed. Oh wait, that happened to me too. I trudge through it because I want to be honest and tell my truth. Sometimes I talk about it at the start of my set so I can get it over with and move onto material which is more relatable. If I put it in the middle, people aren’t sure what to do. They feel bad for me, like they’re not sure if they should laugh. I felt like I had to discuss it since I had my three year sobriety anniversary on Valentine’s Day, the day I arrived in Wroclaw. I’ve thought to myself on occasion, “well what am I gonna do, not talk about it?” And not talking about it doesn’t seem like an option. Not drinking is now a part of me, a part of my identity but it doesn’t entirely create who I am as a human being.

Team Warsaw!

Everyone on the show did great and we retrieved more zapiekanka on the way home to Christine’s. In the morning we Ubered to the bus station to catch a ride to Krakow. We had the day off so there was no rush on getting into the city, but we had about five hours to spend in a cramped space and wanted it over with as soon as Polishly possible. Lucie, Kristyna, and I grabbed snacks from the “delikatesy” before boarding to trek across the plains to my favorite little city, which is technically the second biggest city in Poland.

Krakow is this weird mix of Old World charm, cranky Jews who refused to move or survived hell, well-preserved historical monuments, and carbohydrates. It’s my favorite place. With the cobblestone streets so jagged they could crack a cankle or two, the place known as Slavic Rome, Little Vienna, or the Florence of Poland has roughly the same cost of living as the Czech Republic but they have better war stories, street art, and graffiti. We stayed with a couple who are friends with Kristyna and live a short tram ride away from the city center and Kazmierez, the Jewish Quarter. We spent the evening wandering between brick synagogues, old iron gates, and neon signs featuring old communist facets while navigating the seas of obvious tourists. I don’t really go barhopping unless I want to try your best club soda on tap, but I was able to drink some amazing tea alongside some creative but grungy cocktails.

Walking alone in the winter became tiresome and upon returning to our temporary home, I slept for about 14 hours. Everyone reconvened for lunch the following day at a place we had walked by the night before. Israeli and Jewish food was their specialty and although I’ve never really had either, I believe it to be true. Afterwards we (they) got coffee from an Israeli teahouse and I drank rooibos alongside my fellow caffeine consumers. We took it easy for the rest of the day until our show at a punk bar near Old Town, or “Miasto Stare.” It felt so safe and serene to be back in Krakow walking under barren trees and cathedrals on the way there. Krakow feels like a less industrial Brno despite it being a bigger city. I’ll definitely be back, maybe in another nine years.

The last show wasn’t full and the audience wasn’t quite sure what to do with me, as I’ve discovered with Czech people. I don’t look European. I have fairly non-traditional features and I’m not afraid to present myself as such and augment my differences. There’s a very sleek “look” Central and Eastern European women strive for. Their hair is always very straight and pristine. They wear the same winter style of a puffy parka jacket, skinny jeans, knockoff Timberland boots, and minimal make up. So when a short sarcastic American woman treads on their turf, they become confused and gawk. I’m not even really sure it’s gawking; it’s probably more of a Resting Czech Face and I just perceive it to be negative ogling. When I go on stage, I feel like there’s the same silent judgement of “Make us laugh, yankee.” It might not be that aggressive, but there have been times people are so inquisitive about WHY I’m in their part of the world. They’re honestly astonished a person from a country like the United States of America has expatriated to a place of cold weather and even colder wars.

I stumbled through my set and caught my bus to Berlin. Actually, let me back track a minute.

Two days into the Poland trip, I was notified I could pick up my visa in Berlin (because Germany is the place a person needs to go to obtain legality in the Czech Republic?) or I could pay someone twice the amount it would take me to get there to do it for me. I cancelled one bus ticket and scheduled another, a nine-hour rumble through Southwestern Poland and Eastern Germany. Luckily I had two bus seats to myself so I managed to get roughly three hours of sleep while huddled in a fetal position. I watched the sunrise over Germany and safely arrived at the main bus station in Berlin, which featured many popular and whimsical characteristics found in most bus stations: used syringes, someone looking for half smoked cigarettes on the ground, and a person having a cell phone conversation at a really unreasonable volume. I took the U-Bahn (it sounds so much cooler than subway) to the Czech embassy and after 15 minutes of waiting, I FINALLY GOT MY VISA!

It's real!

But I couldn’t go home just yet. I hopped on a train in Berlin an hour later to head to the trade license office in Prague. They needed to see my visa so I could officially get my trade license, however it wasn’t going to be ready for two more days. Instead of making a trip all the way back to Prague later in the week, they kindly agreed to mail it to me in Brno. I spent roughly two hours in Prague and then hopped on a train back to Brno where I sorted through my pocket change of Crowns, Zlotys, and Euros. I returned much earlier than I assumed I would and got to spend the evening snuggling my kitty who barfed in my bed and on a Late Show with David Letterman t-shirt. Someday I’ll spend more than four hours in Berlin and actually get to see some of the city instead of just the walk from the train station to the embassy and back.

So I’m home now. Barfy kitty is in my lap and he’s been really clingy this week. My teaching schedule has picked up big time and I decided to be exclusive with just one school as organizing two separate schedules was becoming conflicting and ultimately costing me money. I’m happy I’m becoming close friends with the other teachers at my school and they’ve been happily able to accommodate me during the time while my visa was pending. I have three days off so I’m looking forward to sleeping, conquering an apparent black mold invasion in the window in my bathroom, and watching some recently released comedy specials. I also made plans with my mom and she’s coming to visit me in 25 days! We’ll be spending half the time in Brno relaxing and taking it easy and then half the time doing some major sightseeing in Prague. This week has been busy as fuuuuuuck.

But for now, hurray! I’m legal to work in the Czech Republic for the next year and no one can stop me.