rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

so yeah, man, Europe’s almost done.
went to Vienna yesterday for the day. wasn’t bad. freezing cold, very clean. while I can understand everything a little better – I took german, and it’s a romance language – I prefer Hungary a little more. dirtier. cheaper. less touristy.
I did the entire day in flip flops I bought at a mall in Budapest, which didn’t go very well. they rubbed the wrong way, and I got some rough scars on the tops of my feet. I’ll always remember Austria.

Mar and I are staying with her homeboy from the university. Irish guy named Eric. real nice guy, riding his bike back to Ireland in the next few weeks. that’s like, what, couple hundred miles?
he’s sitting next to me, looking out the window and eating Gummi Bears. he’s wearing a Cardinals t-shirt, though he wasn’t aware of where that team plays until I told him. also, he doesn’t drink.
he’s an Irish guy who doesn’t drink. one in a million?

there’s a pretty good chance I lost my phone while over here, which pisses me off to no end. I had it when we left for Romania and Bulgaria. I left it one of the bags we kept here; jammed it in a side pocket. I went back looking for it, and it’s not there. which means I put it somewhere else. god damn it.
bad time to lose it. had a lot of numbers on that shit, man. and I’m moving far away. not easy to talk to anyone with a land line. maybe this is a sign, time to ditch the cell. yes?

tonight, Mar says we’re getting goulash. Hungary likes goulash. okay, Mar.

and, I bought “Non-Fiction” by Palahniuk, which I’m giving a mixed review right now. he gets a lot of press because of who he is, but he realizes that, so it makes him a bit less despicable. also, he’s pretty fucking funny.

alright. Chicago tomorrow. I’ve put the word out; I’d like mom to bring a White Castle to the airport. White Castle didn’t make it to Europe, or hasn’t yet. how very sad. Burger Kings, the obvious McDonalds, Subway, but no White Castle. these motherfuckers just don’t know, man.

Mar and I just ran the gauntlet.
we got on a train last night Sofia, Bulgaria at 10:30. got off it again at 6 a.m. in Belgrade. got on another one at 8:15 to Budapest. then got off again at like, what, 4:15? that’s a eight hour trip, and it’s about 200 miles. jesus christ, man.

we spent the weekend in Sofia. friday, I don’t think Mar and I were digging it. but sunday reversed fortunes. Mar and I, growing frustrated with bus travel, decided to hire out the service the hostel provided: a real live English-speaking Bulgarian will drive you to whichever Bulgarian national historic site you wish to visit. fuck it. we were game.
this pisses me off, but neither Mar or myself can remember that motherfucker’s name. but he was cool as shit. something like “Stolye,” “Stonye.” either way, he was legit. his English kind of sucked, but he was friendly and talkative. friend of one of the hostel employees.
made small-talk all the way out to Rila Monastery, which is about 70 miles south of thie city in a mountain valley. swarms of tourists. my man driving like he had something to prove. the monastery, while beautiful, isn’t a long-term visit, and we after walking through it, checking out the ancient church and the serious-looking Bulgarian monks, we got in the car to come back. halfway out the valley, my man hits the brakes, hard. throws it in reverse. pulls off and down to a restaurant, which is directly next to a flooded, fast-moving river.
“I need to get drink. hokay?”
so we go in, we get a table, the three of us, and we check out a menu. I start eyeing a Coke. I say this. he looks at me, and goes
“I think you drink beer with me, yes?”
waitress arrives, he rattles through an order, and pretty soon he and I and Mar are drinking Staropramen, which is a Czech beer. cheap.
we all raised our glasses. “cheers,” he says, and immediately drinks about half the glass.
I knew, right then, that I was overmatched.
and he keeps ordering them. and I can’t keep up with the motherfucker.
either way, a bunch of Bulgarian finger food comes out, and we’re eating cold cuts and grilled chicken hearts, which are, uh, interesting. and the beer keeps coming. and we get to talking, and it turns out that he’s a professional stunt man for film companies that come to the country for its low production cost. Jean-Claude Van Damme? “he is … alright.” Steven Seagal? “he is ass. also, he is fat.”
so I got tipsy, and Mar took note, and we got to know him pretty well, and we listened to “gold digger” on his cell phone on the way back to Sophia. when he dropped us off, he told us “do not forget Bulgaria.” then he tore ass down the street. he moved Sophia up a notch.

later, as we walked back to the train station, this junkie singles us out for the obvious tourists that we are, and latches on. for being someone with an obvious drug addiction, he spoke English pretty well, which is intriguing; very few people speak English in Bulgaria, but this guy had a decent command over it.
“hey, I am just like you, you know, I sleep in bus station because it so hard to rent room is too expensive and I just want to go home, you know, I help you out and translate, because I no f-ing liar, you know, man, I just come to Sofia, but Bulgarians not nice people, they not help you, I just need some help, you know …” endlessly. he kept talking.
so I gave him five lev, which was both my first mistake and all of about two bucks and all the loose currency I had on me, but he keeps talking. Mar, being the more experienced traveler that she is, moves on ahead. but I can’t shake this guy. he stays on my hip over two blocks, through traffic, only backing off when we pass in front of a police car, and he seriously won’t fuck off. the entire time, talking.
so finally, he breaks me, and I say, “christ, man, alright. here.” and give him five dollars. and he evaporates, like that.
that guy used up all of my homeless goodwill. I fucking hate train stations.

back on Friday.

alright, enough. I need a shower, man. bad.

me and Mar are in Sophia, Bulgaria right now. after going through a dozen churches today, Mar said, “dude, I think I’ve doubled up on the number of Orthodox I have ever been in.” there’s a lot of them, for sure.

the train ride yesterday from Varna ate dick. this country is roughly the size of Tennessee, but everything gets slowed down in eastern Europe. took like eight or nine hours. the windows didn’t open, I’m pretty sure we doubled back once or twice, and Mar started to hallucinate about Panera. like the restaurant, Panera. weak, Mar.

holy fuck, man, look at this.

our hostel’s alright. called the Backpacker’s Inn, or something. we’re sharing our room with a couple of Israeli spelunkers, who seem to be pretty settled in, so it’s funny; it’s a bit territorial.
that’s about it, man.
parting thoughts: Spencer, remember “Toejam & Earl”?
Smith n’ Josh: what’s your email addresses?

I’m in Varna, Bulgaria right now. at an internet cafe called FRAG. around which there are lots of local teenagers playing internet games and listening to techno. no one speaks English, everyone plays English video games. hmm.
so Mar and I tore ass through Romania over the last couple of days. we stayed in Brasov a few nights ago, which was legit. a very medieval city, what with walls and battlements and streets that make no sense. above the town on a nearby mountain, they’ve erected a Hollywood-esque sign – BRASOV – and it lights up at night. nice.
what else. Romania’s largest gothic church is there, which was legit. and the hostel we stayed at was interesting. an old man was also staying there. he smoked Pall Malls, was missing one of his front teeth and spoke only in French, which didn’t slow him down from talking to me, at great length, a few different times. honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I caught “Elvis Presley” in there somewhere. and Mar and I had dinner with an Australian guy, about my age, who’s been traveling for about six months. we got to talking politics, and he got kind of pissed when I brought up the Sydney beach riots from last year. whoops.
the next day, we took a bus out to Bran Castle, which was described as the inspiration for Dracula’s castle by all of the guide books. according to the walking tour we took through the grounds and its halls, it has absolutely nothing to do with Dracula. which sucked; I had planned to stop Mar in the middle of the tour and say “this is the place that evntually spawned Count Chocula,” but I didn’t get the chance. honestly, though, that didn’t really matter. I got to walk around in a 12th century castle, and the Transylvanian countryside is really pretty. the bus ride out there was worth it.

moved on down to Bucarest, Romania’s capital, which is apparently an awful amalgamation of …
wait, they’re playing Dr. Dre now. christ.
anyway, Bucarest. nothing but communist era apartment blocks and stray dogs. within minutes of getting off the train, I lost my slippers and the sweater I had wrapped them in. they were tied to the top of my pack; they warn you of pickpockets and the like in Bucarest, but chances are the slips fell off, and I didn’t notice. fuck.
the hostel was kind of out of the way, but was cheap and clean. we only stayed the night, as we had a train to catch the next morning, and to be honest, I wasn’t really hating on Bucarest’s ugly sprawl. then I paid a dollar to take a shit at the train station and walked into the lavatory to find some eurotrash jerking off into a urinal, and decided I didn’t like the city anymore. I very smoothly turned around and got on a train to Bulgaria.
now Mar and I are here. the hostel we’re staying at is right in the heart of town on a pedestrian street, and almost empty. run by a British expatriate. one of the guys was watching “The Deer Hunter” when we walked in. small world.
what else.
I like cyrillic, even though I haven’t any idea what I’m looking at when I read it. very utilitarian, though. Bulgaria is very poor, but very pretty. the trainride here was legit. if, of course, you don’t mind the odd local coming up to you and rattling off something totally incomprehensible. you just shrug, and they’ll notice something on you, usually your clothes, which makes you pretty clearly western. and you keep rolling on. I’m nowhere near used to being an absolute tourist, but that comes with this territory. it’s worth it.

also, Spencer. don’t hate on Roseanne, dude. and how did you know?

alright, Im in Budapest. the keyboard is fucked, so the punctuation will be appropriately shitty.
Ive been here since thursday, and havent seen everything. but a lot. Mars apartment is legit. is centrally located, and has a sick courtyard. big windows, high ceilings. her roommates are cool, public transportation is amazing, and air conditioning is unheard of. someday, they will understand its glory.

tonight, we take a train to Bresov, Romania. Bresov, for those of you not in the know, is basically in the middle of the country, in a little neighborhood known as (yes) Transylvania. they have Dracula theme park. Im making Mar go. its going to be sick.
then, we go to Bucharest, the Capital. I hear bad things, like lots of soviet architechture, but thats fine.
then Varna, in Bulgaria, on the Black Sea. then Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.
then a nearby monastery, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. then, into Macedonia. then Serbia, and Belgrade. then back here.
then London for a two hour layover and then a certain city in a certain midwestern state that starts with a C, ends with an O, and in the middle theres a HICAG.

this is subject to change. drastically. but just for kicks, Im putting it up.

alright. Mar wants the computer. Im out.

what a fucking week it’s been.
to recant it all in a single entry would be more than I could muster right now. but I’ll go over some key events, highlighted in bold:
stayed at the original Motel 6 in Santa Barbara. it was too expensive. it is, after all, just a Motel 6.
San Francisco (in its entirety). pretty cool. ultra-liberal, mega-hip, super-expensive. nice place to visit, but I don’t know if I could live there. Alisha is smitten by it. she plans to move there in the fall for grad school in fashion design. my thoughts on this are varied and deep, and they’ll be explained at another time.
we took US 50 through Nevada, which is about as desolate as fucking desolate gets, man.
I drove halfway across Kansas in third gear. and I really have no excuse.
also, I said “motherfucker” directly in front of a Kansas state trooper when he implied that I might get a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. quick backstory: Alisha picked up a cop for speeding just as she exited the highway at a truckstop so she could pee. we didn’t even notice him. I took my belt off to go pick up a Big Gulp and some jerky, and bam, there he is, tapping on the driver’s window and we’re getting a ticket. John Law’s all like, “how long you had your seatbelt off?” and it had literally been seconds, but I didn’t think he’d believe that, and I said “motherfucker” as a reflex. nice.
ate a Dagwoods sandwich for the first time in a long time. it was pretty tasty. I missed Logan when I was there. my bad, man, we’ll get a beer next time I pull through town (couple of weeks).
Mike Smith looks like shit, but that’s nothing new. also, he has a nice apartment, with tasteful furnishings. you’re in my prayers, sweetheart. tell Megan to draw deep breaths. you’ll be fine.
at about a half a dozen different times during the trip, Alisha almost sent me over the edge. but now, I’m in Valparaiso, and I miss her like fire already. yes. I know.

so now I’m back in Valparaiso again. eight months later. just played poker over at Dave Weinberg’s house with the usual collection of idiots. he and his roommate pay a friend 30 dollars to clean their entire apartment, and she apparently really needs the money because she agrees. Dave is probably the most consistenly filthy motherfucker I’ve ever met. at one point in the evening, she came out of Dave’s bathroom with his wastebasket in hand and emptied the entire thing into a black garbage bag. this released one of the worst smells I’ve experience in a long time. it seriously cleared the room. three or four of us made for the porch, where a couple of people lit cigarettes to try and mask the stench. meanwhile, Dave actually began dry-heaving, ran into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. not kidding.
while on the porch, the rest of us discussed what the smell might have been. I was partial to “dead animal,” but consensus gathered that it was probably shit. like, literally shit. feces. how that ended up in the wastebasket is anyone’s guess, but either way, it was one of the most awful things I’ve ever experienced.
sidenote: their friend cleaning the place didn’t even fucking flinch through the entire ordeal. I don’t know what that’s a tribute to, but it’s got to be something. also, her job is a thankless one. when she was finished and was watching television, Dave was pouring wax from the Glade scent candles all over himself and the dining room table top. that place will be filthy again in a day or two, without a doubt.

alright. that’ll give you something to think about. I leave for Europe Wednesday to meet Mar and immediately dislike her friends and be ultra-sarcastic. and that takes time and energy. so I’m out. see you in a few.

I’m going to try to be as succinct as I can for this first paragraph, because I’m exahusted, I feel pretty uninspired right now, and with that in mind I’m writing because I see an extended absence from this coming up. maybe a month. I’m working and cleaning the apartment for the rest of the weekend. then I’m driving back to Indiana. then Mar in Budapest. and then, well, I’m moving again, and moms don’t have the internet for the in-between times. I mean, fuck, mom doesn’t even own an answering machine. so it may be a while until I have an internet connection that I can abuse with this.
everything else tonight can be summed up as half-thoughts or bullshit. there’s not going to be any well-developed segues, no witty metaphors. just necessity. get ready.
so.

it’s 1:15 in the morning, and I’m switching between “SLC Punk!”and “Busty Cops 2,” both of which have their merits. the merits of “Busty Cops 2?” tits.
also, it should be pointed out, if there’s a “Busty Cops 2,” I’d imagine there’s a “Busty Cops: the beginning.” probably pretty heavy on the plot development. and that’s awesome.

but more important than the softcore porn I’m not really paying attention to; I took the job in Charlottesville. as Josh said today, “it’s the responsible decision.” true …
ohh, snap, the busty cops are taking off their shirts! sample dialogue:
busty cop #1: were you on the train that was robbed?
busty witness: yeah. but I can’t see very well. but I think she was hot and I would have done her.
busty cop #2: so you don’t remember what she looked like?
busty witness (leans over and looks at huge busts on the busty cops): I’m not sure. let’s go over to that tree. maybe it will jog my memory.
busty cop #1: I got something that will jog her memory …
and, end scene.

yeah, so I took the Charlottesville job. you should’ve spoken sooner, Logan, god damn, man, take your time.
but anyhow, I’m much more confident about it now than I was last week. decision has been made. it’s done. no more debate. Spencer is already on the ball. put me in touch with his homeboy, who’s actually a girl, but that doesn’t matter. word, Spencer.

alright, what else.
Alisha gets here tomorrow.
her grandfather died last week, which tore her up, and she didn’t pass her math course, which is more-or-less exactly what happened to me last year. she gets here tomorrow, and she hasn’t graduated college, and I haven’t told her that I’m taking another job on the other side of the continent, while she wants to move to San Francisco to continue with the schooling and such. so she’ll be a volatile bundle of nerves for the next week. and we’ll be in a pickup for most of it. jesus. talk about bad timing.
I feel fucking awful for her. I mean, what do you tell someone that basically gets their life put on hold for the immediate future? chin up? cause it didn’t work for me. I was a ball of rage for about a week and a half. all that I said about riding her ass if she didn’t pass? unnecessary. she knows. what’s the point of saying “I warned you” anyway? damage is done. I’d be a pretty low asshole to pile on at this point.

and, I got me some new glasses. Kenneth fucking Coles, man. I look slick. word.

something funny I heard in the Coachella crowd while watching Rage Against the Machine play.
while everyone waited for the band to come back for its encore, the live camera that was broadcasting the performance on 20 foot television screens from stage scaffolds focused in on the moon. if only to focus on anything. maybe the production director thought it would be a nice touch for the lull in the storm.
but someone in the crowd chewed through the bullshit immediately and said, “hey, man. it’s ‘Rage Against the Moon.’” then he goes, “‘we’re gonna play a song now called ‘fuck the moon.’”
it was really funny, I swear.

anyways. I was offered the Charlottesville job. in Virginia. I don’t know if I mentioned this, I think I did, but I was offered the Minnesota job as well.
one is regular employment at a modestly larger daily than the one I’m with presently. the other is seasonal employment.
one is a desk job with barely a break that will look good on a resume. the other is camping and canoeing all summer for relatively little pay.
one is a desk job. but it’s a real job. the other is, what, a distraction? but it may be the last time I could pursue such a distraction. what, am I going to go fuck off and canoe for a few months when I’m in my late twenties?
and if all of this is so true, why am I having such a hard time deciding on this?
ideas, prescriptions, please sound them out.