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.

Red Pill vs. Blue Pill

Woo! My visa has been approved! 

With a long stay visa, I'll be legal to work in the Czech Republic for the next year. I have a few more bureaucratic things to take care of in regards to getting paid, but the waiting and the hard part is over. A year from now, I'll need to reapply for two years after I prove I'm able to support myself being independently employed with my trade license. The schools I currently work for allow me to teach as a contractor, meaning I'm responsible for my own taxes, health insurance, and future visa processes. 

It's a huge relief. I've heard these horror stories of messy visa applications with different contracts and the length of stay available to expats and so far I've done my best to avoid that. One of the complicated things about visas is that no one situation applies to everyone. While I was doing research before I left the US, I was getting an insane amount of misinformation from people who assumed I was from the EU or that I was already a Czech resident but not a Czech citizen. CZ separates expats and their rights by where they come from. For instance, members from the EU, people from the UK, Americans, Australians, Canadians, and other citizens labeled "third country nationals" all require a different visa process to apply for residency or for work. My dear friend KD swooped in during June of last year to alert me to her existing troubles as an American abroad. She highlighted details given to me that were incorrect and struggles she encountered both in CZ and abroad to steer me in the right direction. I'm infinitely thankful for her and I couldn't have completed this exodus without her. She's also been extremely real with me in that she explains things about Czech bureaucracy with no sugar coating. I'd rather someone be up front with me and be brutally honest than leave me in the dark to figure out these processes on my own. The truth can hurt, but it makes for good progress in the future. 

Prior to receiving the email regarding my visa approval, I went to my first therapy appointment since October. I had done some research about who to contact before leaving the United States but hadn't bothered to contact anyone until about two weeks ago. Therapists generally don't take health insurance in CZ and just do a flat rate for one hour, which alleviated me trying to find someone who takes my non-existent insurance but won't break my back. In USD, prices average out to about $20/hr. In the past, my therapists have been anywhere from included in the cost of my health insurance or their rates were north of $130/hr. There also seems to be a sliding scale with bilingual therapists where the cost is lower in Czech but a few more crowns if you require an English speaker. 

Bretislav is a mix of Hopper from Stranger Things and a Czech version of Dr. Frasier Crane. I had seen his picture online when I was looking for therapy options in 2017 and like a lot of comedians I know, they look incredibly different from the professional headshot they've loosely been relying upon for a number of years. He listed his credentials and his areas of expertise, which is important when seeking out therapy. Two years ago I had made the mistake of going to therapy with someone who wasn't keyed in about addiction, the recommended treatment involved, and the after effects of staying sober. I ended up having to explain a lot of facets of AA and how the recovery system works, which was fine, but needing to contextualize addiction within my anxiety and depression proved to be fairly difficult. I was relieved to see Bretislav specialized in all three areas. 

We emailed back and forth about finding a time to meet and I met him at his office. His entire workspace was larger than my last apartment in Seattle. Fifteen foot high ceilings (or roughly four meters?) and tall windows allowed for a lot of natural light to be complemented by bright hardwood floors and off-white walls. He had two IKEA swivel accent chairs facing each other with a coffee table separating them. Books in Czech and English and plants I assumed were fake decorated his bookcases. After seeing the entire arrangement, I went into design mode and mentally reorganized his space with my belongings to my liking. The space would photograph well. 

Bretislav sat across from me with a pen and a legal pad. I've been trying to figure out where the fuck to get yellow legal pads in Brno since I've arrived but I was determined not to be distracted during our first meeting. He asked me a few basic questions and explained that there are some complexities in the English language he may not understand so there's a chance I'll need to clarify on occasion. I've had to do this a lot in CZ since I've arrived and doing it for the person treating me for my emotional free-for-alls didn't seem like too much to ask since he'll need to understand me on multiple levels. I talked about where my issues stemmed from: my parents' divorce, dating men I shouldn't as a result, alcoholism, mentally taxing diabetes care, feelings of inadequacy, running away from my problems and my severe fight or flight instinct, and the general idea that I am not enough and I never have been. Of course a lot of these things are going to take longer than 50 minutes to delve into, especially when talking at half the speed I normally talk to ensure no one is lost in translation. 

Because it had been so long since I've spoken to an impartial party, it became overwhelming to not leave out any details about why I scheduled an appointment. I wanted Bretislav to know everything immediately so he could stamp a diagnosis on me or lend me resources to curb the things I've been told are wrong with me, my faults, criticisms, and critiques. I explained how a recent text from an ex-boyfriend threw me for a loop of would have/could have/should have hypotheticals and how it has led me to second guess a decision my mom once deemed "dramatic." From what I understand, a lot of expats experience this phenomenon. Moving abroad is easily the biggest decision we've ever made, maybe behind on deciding which university to attend or other life struggles I'm unaware of. We start to examine all of the different paths our lives have taken, what prompted us to pack up everything important, sell whatever wasn't important, and uproot ourselves from the life of familiarity we no longer desired. 

But this wasn't just a "well maybe if I wasn't so irrational, we'd be married" situation. This was a "maybe I should have continued my studies in Art History and applied for graduate school abroad" situation or a "maybe I should have picked a profitable major and ignored all of my creative impulses so I'd be rich but boring" possibility. It wasn't the text I received at 4am; it was all of these paths culminating into a Czech nexus of uncertainty. I'm happy I'm here and I'm happy I made the decision to move. It feels selfish from time to time, but ultimately the path I'm on right now seems to outweigh all of the others, and the part that bothers me the most is never knowing what could have happened if I took a different path, leading me to feel guilty and ashamed.

I tried to explain all of this to Bretislav in the five minutes remaining in our appointment and he politely reminded me that if I decide to move forward with his services, we'll have plenty of time to discuss the events and neuroses which make me a human being. After all, whatever has happened will stay that way. Things that have happened to me can't erase themselves no matter which country I run to. Sometimes I wonder if I didn't move east enough. Instead of being nine hours ahead of Seattle, I should be 14 hours ahead and living in a yurt with a dirt floor and a couple who does all of their hunting with a trained eagle out on a vast steppe. But choosing to live in a yurt means little to zero access to insulin, so here we are in Brno.

It's been an emotional week. Now that my visa is done, I can acquire Czech public health insurance. I used my credit card for the first time since I've been here to pay for medication for the next four months - $130 for a four month supply of Cymbalta and Wellbutrin with no insurance. In the US, a 30 day supply of Cymbalta alone is $260 without insurance. Even though my costs are cheap in comparison to the United States, I'm happy to know I can officially begin this process, as it's a lot of the reason why I'm here in the first place. I gotta take care of me, and sometimes I forget to do that.

Some resemblance of an actual life here in Brno is beginning to emerge. I'm no longer in visa limbo, I have access to an incredible network of doctors and specialists, and I can legally acquire income to support myself. The first few months have been tough because most of my savings has gone towards paying rent without receiving anything in return as it was illegal to get paid. I can go forth and be productive! And I have incredibly amazing things on the horizon. On Wednesday I leave for Poland for a five day tour with two amazing female comics from Prague. Our journey will take us to Wroclaw, Lodz, Warsaw, and Krakow with an extra day to do some sightseeing. Poland has similar costs to CZ so we won't be going broke and our accommodation is with other comedians, meaning new friends and neighbors. Another American expat comedian in Poland is helping us coordinate travel and costs with different venues where we're performing. I can't wait.

So in hindsight, wanting to have a solo adventure in my life isn't bothering me; it's all of the unknown adventures I'll never know about that could have been possible. 

Ahoj, Bratislava

Soooo it’s been a while, maybe even longer since the release of that shitty song by Staind. The New Year has produced multiple job opportunities, never-ending Central European bureaucracy, comedy shows, and my first jaunt to Slovakia.

And I'm still waiting to hear about my visa.

But during this seemingly infinite waiting period, I’ve taken two teaching jobs that are happily withholding my pay until I can become a legal Czech employee. They don’t have to pay me until further notice so I’m basically working for free, and hooooo boy do they know it. My schedule went from sleeping most of the day and going down a rabbit hole of late 90s Saturday Night Live videos to mapping out an entire timetable of trams and busses for my assignments all over Brno and its dingy yet incredibly charming suburbs.

I’m traveling to different companies in the metro area to help employees with their conversational skills, business English, and strange grammar unique to my native tongue. Most of the students I encounter are very intent on the idea that their English isn’t great but really it’s the opposite. I swear I had someone tell me, “My goodness, I am astonished at your surprise because I do believe my English is quite terrible!” but they aren’t speaking like a Soviet caveman. They’re actually speaking very well, better than me in some cases. I usually spend 45 to 90 minutes trying to produce some semblance of a lesson plan that revolves around discussing current events, politics, movies or other popular American media, and common dialogue from their place of work, but also HOW we discuss them. But what surprises me is that during every lesson, my students become so curious how a thirty-something woman from a booming yet not beaming country like the United States ended up in a place like Brno.

Brno has roughly 400,000 people. It’s been described to me as St. Paul without Minneapolis. There are enough people here to cause a very slight delay during morning traffic or a decent back up in any store in the mall on Sunday. Trams during peak hours are full and standing room only. This city as a pulse, and the only thing that would for sure kill it or at least slow its resting heart rate is something like Amazon becoming a budding and brooding feature. So when students ask me, “Why here?”, I usually respond with something that promotes the differences in cost of living while not having to live somewhere like Terre Haute, Indiana. I also explain that I’ve been through the Czech Republic before and liked it enough to move my life here. I’m not sure I have the balls (I don’t) to throw a dart at a map and expatriate to places like Kiribati or Lhasa or Ushuaia in Southern Argentina. But here I can live inside former communist architecture while practicing peaceful democratic resistance. Oh and that whole health insurance thing, too.

So right now, even though I come prepared each week with a loose lesson plan that can often derail like it did today when I had to explain the origin of the phrase “don’t drink the Koolaid,” my students are vastly interested in me and what I’m doing in the second biggest city in the Czech Republic. They also tend to ask me, “Why not Prague?” Prague seemed incredibly romantic at first. If I was going to write my own Eat, Pray, Love bullshit novel, my journey would probably start in Prague. The city (and most of the country) has amazingly preserved architecture. It wasn’t destroyed during the Second World War so a lot of the streets and flats and businesses are decades old and still in seamless operation. Prague carries a lot of the business in the Czech Republic but it isn’t all smokestacks and concrete. When I think of people in Prague, I imagine a woman wearing a silk bathrobe looking out her tall windows, tall windows that are emulated in the US because we can’t have things that are genuinely old so we destroy new places to purposefully make them look old. She has one of those stupid chunky blankets with the giant yarn draped around her. It’s snowing. There’s a dog outside leaving tiny footprints on the cobblestone sidewalk as a young boy chases muž’s best friend. The woman in the window snuggles her face into the giant yarn catastrophe while her gorgeous husband swoops in from behind her while carrying the smallest fucking espresso cup you’ve ever seen. She receives the bright white cup and saucer from within her Pinterest cape as they giggle over the idea of reading Faust in their giant sleigh bed in front of an exposed brick backdrop for the rest of the day. That’s Prague.

Brno is much more industrial, as are other cities here like Ostrava, Olomouc, and Plzen, so it leaves people wondering why I chose cooling towers over historical bridges. In short, it’s cheaper. But most of the expats in CZ are based in Prague, yet out in Brno it feels less like a vacation and more like an ongoing journey. If you live in Prague, you can go days without needing to speak Czech because everyone in your bubble speaks some derivation of English. I wanted to be around Czech people, not people who want to be around Czech people. I feel like a resident here. Somedays in Seattle I felt more like a tourist due to barely leaving the house during the throes of depression and anxious bullshit.

Teaching currently has me busy for roughly four days a week. I have some breaks midday and some downtime before hustling across town with a different set of folders for a different set of students. The nice part being is that if I notify the schools far enough in advance, I can take time off for comedy. This past weekend I ventured to Bratislava, Slovakia for a comedy show, my first time to the other half of the previous state of Czechoslovakia. Bratislava is a grungier version of Brno that could stand a good pressure washing. The city of 420,000 people is the largest in Slovakia and it is proving to be somewhat of a booming new metropolis. Slovakia is also on the Euro which catches people off guard. Surely the Czech Republic is on the Euro if Slovakia is, right? Wrong. CZ is on the Czech Koruna (crown) while Slovakia became a loose cannon and confused the fuck out of everyone by switching over to the popular Westernized currency. I exchanged money at the train station before I left, and two hours later, I walked off the train and onto a movie set designed for Liev Schreiber or Elijah Wood to extract their vengeance on the surrounding community for a betrayal of past generations. People think CZ is in Eastern Europe when really it’s in Central Europe, but Bratislava flirts with that misinformation much more, especially when people are confusing it with Slovenia.

Every European city east of Berlin has a section commonly referred to as “Old Town,” a four or five block district in or near the city center. At least one large church, forged statues and sculptures, and outdoor markets are picturesque both in person and on the overpriced postcards sold within the area. Bratislava’s Old Town is a nexus of hidden passageways featuring popular pubs, souvenir stores, flower shops, and coffee and wine bars. I’m not using the Oxford comma between “coffee” and “wine bars” because they are constantly featured together under one business. There’s a good intermingling of the old country’s hardened Slovaks enjoying their nightly pinot noir with younger travelers who wanted a piece of cake and tea (me). Since I arrived in the city at 4pm on a Sunday, a lot of businesses were closed and I only had roughly an hour of daylight remaining to take pictures, so I walked around and got lost in the caverns of brick and doors that weren’t rectangular in shape.

A few photos from my visit

The comedy show I was in took place at Goblin’s Pub, a dungeon-esque pub with plenty of beer and zero cell service. Upon arriving, I encountered a group of Irish dudes who were actually swinging their beer mugs from side to side with their arms around each other while they sang/yelled old Irish folk songs. Groups of football clubs, rugby teams, and bachelor parties will often come to Central and Eastern Europe to get their drink on because it’s so much cheaper. I was an economic drunk and 40 cents for a beer was nothing to sneeze at. I wrote out a setlist, similar to the setlist I was working off of the night before in Brno. I’m having a tough time deciding when to compromise my comedy. When I say that, I mean I don’t know whether to give the people what they want, which happens to be easy stereotypes and blanket statements, or do the comedy I really want to do and know I’m capable of. I want to have some measure of integrity without leaning towards an entire setlist of Blue Collar Comedy style jokes and tag lines. My set at Goblin’s was like most of my other sets in Europe; people like me and my enthusiasm, but if it’s not slightly off color in a way they want it to be, they’ll smile and have this sort of Resting Czech Face that I proceed to pander to for the remainder of my stage time. Doing 25 minutes is incredibly easy for me. Being confident in the jokes I’m telling to an audience expecting a certain style of humor is difficult.

I left the venue and hopped Bratislava’s tram back to the train station, took the train back to Brno, missed the night bus home, and called a Liftago, our version of Uber. My driver seemed happy I was communicating in broken Czech and he compromised with me by speaking some broken English in return. I checked my blood sugar when I got home realized my levels weren’t as predictable as they usually are. If I ever get sick or stressed, I can usually see it in my blood sugars before I actually feel or sense the onset of it coming. And by the time I had woken up a few hours later after falling asleep during an embarrassing Vikings loss, I was definitely sick. I had mono at 16 and ever since then I’ve been prone to sinus infections. I maybe get two to three a year where there’s a tremendous pressure in my sinuses, I feel and sound like I’m underwater, my neck and shoulders ache a bit, and I can’t focus. On Monday this week I was supposed to start at another school but had to defer my start since a) I’m not an asshole and don’t want to get other people sick, and b) talking for six hours a day while running all around the city by public transit wasn’t an option. I pretty much slept for three days and ended up being really hard on myself. I was supposed to start a new job and my body let me down, thus letting my employer down. I want to be ready and capable and worthy of work but this stupid sinus business wasn’t exactly allowing me to do just that. I felt worthless, not working and wanting to get better while trying to simultaneously practice the act of patience. And I fucking hate being sick. I turn into a swearing three-year-old sailor who has seen some shit, so much shit they can’t even drink anymore. Kitty and I slept and drank soup and as much water as we could, and today I’m almost back to 100%.

Today was my first day back teaching in four days and I learned that I was not the only teacher who was sick this week. Classes were cancelled, moved around, delayed, and rescheduled due to most of us combatting some type of a pseudo-plague. My Thursday class is my favorite. They’re a bunch of young dads who understand my puns and are eager to talk about politics, current events, traveling, and generic smalltalk used in getting to know one another. The 90 minutes goes by quickly and I don’t feel like it’s work because I’m learning, too. The second round of the presidential election in CZ is tomorrow. People throughout the country will pull their little grocery carts behind them while seeking to uphold the tenets of democracy or bring the country down to the level at which I left the United States. They told me about their candidates and the voting process. Brno (and the rest of the country I’m assuming) has a system that is similar to precincts, districts, and counties. People vote on a Friday by using paper and pen at a polling station, most often located in a school, and the results are then tabulated until the next morning on Saturday. I told them about the US having fifty different states, which means having fifty different sets of laws for how people vote. I explained the mail-in process for the state of Washington and how ballots are tracked and counted before the election. The two countries honestly don’t seem that different, and there has been an overwhelming turn out to support the guy who is more like a combination of Hillary and Bernie than President Fuckface (fingers crossed). One of the main areas of debate right now in CZ is the issue of "immigration." One tough thing about understanding the accuracy of politics and political views here is that the terms “immigrant,” “migrant,” “foreigner,” and “refugee” are all used interchangeably, so I went over the differences with my students and they agreed with their correct usage:

foreigner:

anyone who is of a different nationality or ethnicity than the place they are in presently

immigrant:

a person of a different citizenship or nationality legally seeking rights and citizenship in another country

migrant:

a person who is moving to a new country in seek of work, can be done legally or illegally, and is an economic based decision

and

refugee:

a person seeking asylum by escaping their country of citizenship due to political reasons (war is most common).

This class has been fun and valuable to me. In some ways, it feels like I’m getting paid to learn about my new home and the varying political climates by age group and geography.

My little victories are important here. I’ve had a master list of things I’ll eventually need to take care of, and today I got to cross of a major one: open a Czech bank account. Two banks have turned me away because I need to bring a Czech interpreter with me, even though I was told this in English. From my understanding, they don’t want to have a foreigner (refer to the above) signing a document if they can’t fully understand it. So today I went to a bank whose website is in both Czech and English and not by way of Google Chrome. It took about a half hour and the Czech banker was patient with my English and we both used Google Translate to ensure our definitions of terms were the same. Victory! I’ll get my “contactless card” in about two to three weeks. I’ve seen the magic of the contactless card at various stores: you’re supposed to hover the card over a hub and it will register as a physical swipe, but people end up needing to tap the hub numerous times and sometimes outright slam on it in frustration for it to register. Contactless!

So it’s after midnight. Tonight I had the energy to cook so I made this eggplant tomato basil…mash. I don’t know what to call it. Half the time I cook I’m coming up with something where all the flavors and textures are good but it doesn’t have a real name. I also put pepitas, capers, and cranberries in it and I shredded super good gouda on top. I’m going to be super farty tomorrow. Hopefully next week will be better than this week. I’m excited to officially have employment and an actual schedule. It will take some time to adjust and I’m just happy I don’t have to watch the fucking Pro Bowl this weekend at an absurd hour to distract me from doing great things. Oh yeah, and speaking of which,

Fuck you, Tom Brady!

“So you're a Lebowski, I'm a Lebowski.”

I’ve been having trouble starting these blogposts. It’s unlike me to struggle saying anything that’s on my mind, but for some reason when I begin this first paragraph, it has become difficult to relay my thought process. Perhaps it’s because this is THE NEW YEAR’S EVE POST but when you’re sober, you don’t really take these "holidays" seriously. So maybe it’s the residual pressure of having to report on 365 days of…whatever.

This year started off with a relationship I wasn’t expecting myself to get into. It’s incredibly easy to date comedians, which is why I dated yet another comedian later in the year. It’s like when smokers go out to smoke but they don’t know each other. They immediately have a sense of camaraderie because they’re smoking anonymously. It’s the same for comics as any other artistic form of expression, I imagine. But it’s hard to not shit where you eat when all you’re doing is comedy. Like let’s not pretend I don’t know about it, because I do. I’ve dated a few comics. Some of them ended in a real Hindenburg type explosion but others softly glided down to an even relationship homeostasis. For a real paycheck, I was labeling, measuring, describing, and slinging mid-century modern furniture to people who had never been exposed to the design form everyone over the age of 50 is relatively sick of. The consignment shop was reminiscent of a pawnshop owned by Don Draper, but most of my time was spent listening to Creedence and try to upsell people on the experience of a reversible sectional sofa versus a love seat with no accompanying ottoman. For forty hours a week, sizing up furniture and thinking of ridiculous names that had significance to me but was beyond imagination for anyone else visiting the vast array of uneven concrete floorspace.

March rolled around and life’s challenges became unusually stressful both mentally and emotionally. It was around this time last year I was having conversations about wanting to better myself in terms of what I ate, how I exercise, and what I deem a healthy amount of sleep. And in the new year, I became obsessive over numbers: units of insulin, calories, carbohydrates, minutes spent expelling energy, low blood sugar, high blood sugar, pounds on the scale, inches of my waist. I unknowingly started to go through something called “diabetic burnout.” At some point many diabetics will experience the notion of feeling like they can’t go on because of their disease. They become tired over the mathematical labor it takes to act as your own pancreas, so their diligence becomes lazy and worn out. Except my burnout was the opposite. I was overzealous with my equations in the kitchen that doubled as my laboratory. If you take one pound of cauliflower rice with X ounces of protein over four days divided by Y sodium preservative sauces from Trader Joe’s, how many times will Liz cry by the end of the week? I wanted to be accurate and exact. I couldn’t turn into the diabetic person who is the case for the misinformation most people receive about the disease. I didn’t want to lose my toes. I didn’t want people to see me as someone overweight and finding out I had diabetes and saying “Oh yep, that makes sense.” I even pulled out of a comedy show that required me to strip to my degree of comfort. “Comic Strip” looked fun and exciting and it was refreshing to see a comedy show that didn’t involve smoking weed or drinking, and at the time, it felt like most of these comedy shows weren’t for me at all. My self worth was at an all time low and I couldn’t get a break from the autoimmune disease taking up so much of my brainpower.

I started contemplating killing myself. There wasn’t a cure and there most likely won’t be, so why slog through the next 40 years at limited capacity? At first, I didn’t know how I’d go about it, but I narrowed out things like using a gun. I didn’t even know where to get a gun. Knives seemed drawn out and painful and the IKEA brand stainless steel edges weren’t going to be effective. I thought about using medication but I didn’t want to have my last experience in life be that feeling where you take mushrooms and then just sit there idly waiting for them to kick in. I was too short for the rail in my closet. This insanity in itself was exhausting, and I ended up mentioning it to my endocrinologist, who submitted me to the ER when I told her the ideations I was experiencing. I was crying a lot, tired, dragging my feet. I was at my appointment in sweatpants and the slippers I wore to rehab because I stopped caring about my outward appearance when I wasn’t on the clock. I looked like I had a drug problem with all the drugs I wasn’t actually on. I was losing my hair from being stressed, I stopped wearing make up, and I rarely responded to text messages.

My endocrinologist walked me to the ER where my mom met me. I’m the only one in my family with diabetes so before my diagnosis, no one had any familiarity with the disease, and a lot of my stress manifested through having to explain to everyone around me why I couldn’t have dinner yet, why I was sweaty and clammy behind the wheel of a moving car, why I’m eating dessert after dinner before everyone else, why I needed to stop at the 7/11 for extra Skittles to keep in my glovebox. I explained to the ER social worker person (I’m clearly still unsure of her exact title) who met with me that I wasn’t in danger, I’m just tired and frustrated I can’t have a break. I told her I’d rather have cancer since I’d maybe have a chance to beat it. I told her that my life was narrowed down to prescriptions and the fear of President FuckFace ultimately making it so that my life would become completely unmanageable while living in the expensive, Amazonian oasis that is Seattle. I spilled out all of my fears, frustrations, all while trying to stay sober at the same time. I went home and called my boyfriend, who scolded me for not telling him of my ideations sooner. I had spent six hours under the care of medical professionals and when I finally returned home to the small closet I was renting on Alki, I was essentially shamed for having any kind of emotions. It was a real “I’m not sad, just disappointed” kind of vibe. Looking back on it, I understand his concerns. But at the time, it really wasn’t what I wanted or needed to hear.

I returned to my job at the consignment store the next day and was promptly laid off. The store had been hemorrhaging money to make it a competitive environment for people who wanted to buy and sell furniture. But with the economy the way it was, people were more interested in receiving money for their flatpack crap they had lying around for months in a damp garage than spending money on a cosmic shaped couch dubbed “The Jetson.” This was the third time I had been laid off in my life and the only one where I remained sober of the rest of the day. I was becoming overwhelmed, aimless, and unclear about how to proceed, so I ended my relationship, deleted Facebook, and I wish I could say I hit the gym and lawyered up, but instead I resorted to eating cereal twice a day and sleeping through the literal days of my two favorite seasons. I quit comedy for roughly six weeks. The last thing I wanted to do was present my unpresentable self in front of a bunch of my peers and a bunch of strangers. My sense of routine was demolished, but finding a routine elsewhere and doing the research to find some structure wasn’t completely out of reach.

90% of the time before I go to sleep, I’m on Reddit with my phone three inches away from my face. I scroll through the qualms of history and Seinfeld gifs retrofitted to current politics. The expat subreddit came up, r/iwantout, and I looked at the kinds of questions people were asking about moving abroad. I had wanted to move abroad for years but never did the thorough Googling it entailed, and since I had all the time in the world in the middle of the night because I didn’t have a job or a relationship, I slowly started compiling information about the former communist bloc country now known as “Czechia” except no one calls it that. Like I’ve stated in this blog before, the reasons I moved were preserving my quality of life and improving my cost of living. Being an insulin dependent in Seattle without health insurance was going to be a gamble. So I did what Reddit suggested. I got out.

At first my decision was met with extreme hesitancy. “The Czech Republic? That seems drastic,” my mom told me. And over the next few months, I completely inundated her with information about cell phone plans, rent, the language, transportation options, healthcare in the US vs public healthcare in what was going to be my new home, geographical points of interest, how far away I was from Russia and the Ukraine, and carb counting on the metric system. While my mom was concerned, my dad was pleased. I was almost 30 and reached a point where I was no longer clinging to anything in Seattle. No boys. No future in comedy. No job. I made a list of reasons I would return to the US; a family member getting seriously ill or dying, zombie apocalypse, or an outbreak of nuclear war were all reasons to book a ticket home. Some people estimate I’ll be gone forever. Others estimate I’ll be home by March.

And so here I sit on New Year’s Eve, in Brno, with the sound of rumbling and bumbling fireworks all around my concrete home. I wonder how bad the PTSD is here from the multiple transitions of power that took place in this country over the last 100 years. I’m finally living by my own guidelines instead of the false, fabricated, grandeur expectations of others. There’s a lot of verbs I could apply to my situation. I escaped. I failed. I lived. But whatever I’m doing, my ham of a kitty hasn’t left my side and I’m making new friends while learning a very difficult language and I’m staying in contact with my family at home. I’ll be going to a friend’s flat, another expat from the states for boardgames and home-cooked vegetarian food. I don’t know how to sign off on this, much like the beginning of all this bullshit regarding not knowing how to begin. So I’ll say fuck this year. Actually, no. This year wasn’t bad: it was just different. I’m assuming 2018 will progress in the same way. That seems like a good note to end on. Goodnight from Brno, Happy New Year.

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.