Month 10.3: The Approach of Halloween and Other Things Still in the Future

In the last while, I've received a few comments about my blog that have made me happy to be alive. Some have noted how much I've "grown" over the past year. Just to play the devil's advocate, I disagree. First, I think I've finally entered my immature teenage years, which I never really had as a teenager. I'm more selfish, more spontaneous, more disorganized, and lazier than I've ever been. So just be glad that I'm getting it out of my system all the way out here. Second, I've always thought this way. I mean, what I write in my blogs comes directly out of my head, and my head hasn't changed so much over the years. Maybe I've just become more open. Regardless, everything that is good in me comes from someone else. You're really special to me. If you're reading this blog, and I know you, you are more important than maybe you realize. So I just want to start this entry with a big, cheesy old thank you to the people who have been there for me and have inspired me. I'm yours, and while I'm not so good at knowing how to help people, I will do whatever you ask for if it will make you happier to be alive. (And if for some of you it's for me to come home – I'm working on it.)

Most of you know this, but I'm planning on starting a master's degree in translation in North America beginning September 2011. It amuses me how some of you are doubting my intentions with this program. I think some of you honestly cannot imagine how anyone could be interested in translation. I'm not just doing this to have something to do, it's not just for the lifestyle, it's not just to be able to say I've done a master's. But I won't pretend to have noble intentions either – those are indeed amongst the reasons why I'm applying.

The problem is that I'm still not convinced that the future is so important. Maybe this attitude comes from the Balkans, where the future truly is irrelevant to some people. It boils down to this: what is more important, the future or happiness? If a person is happy even if there's not much in store for him, then what's the problem? Should we condemn him for being happy? Or should we condemn the man who forgoes daily pleasures because he's too busy planning a perfect future?

I was pretty happy living spur-of-the-moment during my travels. Now that I have "plans" for the future… it's not that I'm unhappy. But now, there's a reason to be indifferent to the present. All the good stuff is in the future, so why bother with today? Why travel, when traveling isn't the point anymore? The point lies somewhere ahead, and anything you do now is fleeting.

Maybe it's only a problem for impatient people like myself. If there's a plan, then let's do it and get on to the next thing. I find it hard to focus on other things when I know there's a plan that needs fulfilling.

I would now like to draw your attention to Georgia. I met a Serbian girl who was obsessed with it. It's a very old country, and the language is perfectly insane. It has a pretty alphabet, too. Georgia borders the Black Sea to the west, Russia to the North, Turkey to the south, and Armenia and Azerbaijan to the east. There is a nice movie called "Mimina" about a Georgian man during Soviet times. There was a war between Russia and Georgia right up until 2008. There are two regions in Georgia which Russia recognizes as independent countries: South Ossetia and something else whose name looks like "Akhdhavilli" or something. Joseph Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Georgia is mountainous, the highest peak being over 5000 meters. Anyone want to come to Russia and Georgia with me next summer?

Month 10, Part 2. Cheesy faces autumn.

One day you sit back and realize it's gone out of your system. Whatever was once spicy has become bland. Nostalgia begins to appear disgusting rather than romantic. And you'll say to yourself, "Forget about the past." And for once, it will be a genuine urge. There's something depressing but relieving about moving on with life. It's like breaking an addiction. You want to want it again, but you just can't anymore. It's a deflated passion. The world loses its sparkle and falls back into grayscale.

Cheesy knew this was happening to her. She suspected that it was directly related to her having settled down. Urges and passions were giving way to old habits. It was calming but boring. The worst was that she found no desire to un-bore herself. It was nice to get up before everyone else in the house, to walk to the market, to cook a big lunch, to draw a bit, to write a bit, to read a bit, to walk to work in the evenings, to wander home, to go for a run, to have a glass of wine and slip into bed. Maybe she needed a bit of brain-death after months of constant turbulence.

But hand in hand with the return of routine, existential thoughts crept back into her mind. Once everything is habit, then everything is meaningless. That was what shocked her about the headscarves in Turkey – women put them on and took them off unthinkingly. Their conviction had turned into habit. Cheesy could no longer fool herself into thinking that routines were harmless. Routines veiled the truth. The truth was twofold: (a) there was some original purpose to the actions (like pleasure!), which has become lost through routine, and (b) the universe is actually chaotic, and to give into a routine is to be in denial of the true nature of existence. Cheesy thought both versions of the truth were related. Sometimes, after the purpose of an action is lost through routine, then routine becomes the purpose of that action. Thus we live unconsciously, for the sake of routine. And here was the danger: the entire world could open up to us if we simply let go of the routine. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well do whatever we want. We cannot if we are constrained by habit.

But why that sinking feeling, with all this freedom that Sartre and Camus offer? There is something demotivating about existentialism. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well stay home. To follow a habit is to deceive oneself, to break a habit is to face meaninglessness. The worst curse is really awareness of the conflict. What to do? Camus tries really, really hard to answer this in The Myth of Sisyphus. Basically he says to have a lot of sex and be an artist. Cheesy suspected that if Camus had pursued his reasoning just a bit further, the whole thing would have amounted to one grand justification of hedonism. Not such a bad deal. But in between the swigs of booze and cries of passion, the existentialist would still have to face the truth that everything is just for show, and when he dies there will be absolutely nothing to remember him by. And that kind of awareness sucks.

Cheesy thought it was possible to be driven completely mad deciding between the masquerade of routine and pointless frivolity in life – especially so if one is aware that this decision must be made. Because if one is aware of the need to decide, one is already aware that routine is just a masquerade of self-comfort in a chaotic universe. So the first choice is automatically eliminated (unless you can really re-deceive yourself after having become aware of the truth). So one is forced to admit the pointlessness of life. And yeah, it's fun to be frivolous, knowing that nothing matters. But somehow frivolousness never quite makes up for pointlessness. So one tries to lose oneself in routine again, tries to find a purpose. Eventually one turns back to frivolousness, disgruntled by no longer being able to deceive oneself by routine. And so the teeter-tottering begins. And (Cheesy knew Camus would roll over in his grave for this) Cheesy thought that suicides were often the result of people getting tired of teeter-tottering. There is no "decision" being made in suicide. It's just tiredness, of having to decide something all the time, of always having to deal with one's own thoughts, of never really being able to just live. Bah what did she know. Is it ever more than a thought that drives a person to suicide?

But wasn't there a testament to the danger of routine simply in the fact that Cheesy had begun to think about all these things again?

Month 10. Dip into Austria.

Austria somehow gets more beautiful every time I see it. Maybe I'm just getting uglier.

Sometimes it happens that a thought comes out of nowhere, grabs you like a leech and won't let go. I was sitting on the train, minding my own business, then… bam! A thought, saying, "Think me! Think me!" The thought was simple: Austrians are sweet. They are sweet in a way that Croatians and Italians and Americans never will be.

When this thought came into my head, I didn't really know what it meant, or whether I even believed it. So I had a chat with the thought to try to figure it out. It comes down to details (as always). Austrians pat people on the back. They wink at you. They sing. When you pass them by, they smile at you. The smile is sometimes mischievous but always sweet. And you know what? It feels good to be smiled at for no particular reason. It makes you feel sweet yourself.

People have often told me that I'm tiny, gentle, cute. I've always thought it was a patronizing thing to say, as if I were a pet. Sweetness is meekness. But now I realize that if I've made anyone feel good just by smiling sweetly at them, then I've done pretty well. And just because someone is sweet doesn't mean you can get anything you want from them. Austrians are just as hardy as Croatians. They don't let themselves be trampled upon.

After I dealt with this thought, another one came into my head. We're seldom what we think we are. Once we realize we're something, we often cease to be that thing. So true self-awareness is impossible. For example, drama queens are never really that dramatic. Their lives are seldom tragedies. Smart people are often only aware of all the things they don't know. Generous people often only give things away because they feel they're too selfish. Once a generous person realizes that he's generous, his guilt is relieved and so he stops giving things away.

I have never thought of myself as sweet or tiny in any way. But now that I've witnessed the sweetness of my relatives and friends in Austria, I'm wondering if maybe everyone has been right all along, that I'm just a sweet little girl who enjoys a sweet pat on the head by someone smiling sweetly at her. So if I finally accept this identity, will I turn into a bitch?

I realize that most of these blogs deal with heavy psychological business, like self-awareness, personality, and, well, me. Sorry about that. I can imagine it gets boring for the more practical among you. But anyway it's my blog, I can write what I want and you can't trample on me (especially since I'm in Croatia and you're over there). And the truth is that I'm only capable of writing about certain things. It bores me to write about architecture or wildlife. People are just more interesting. Of course there's always sex, drugs, and food, but those are also boring to talk about unless you're participating.

I could talk about linguistics if you like. Austrians in the southwest replace "s" by "sh" in the coda position of syllables (the final position in a syllable). For example, "Kastanien" (chestnuts) becomes "Kashtanien." Slovenian somehow sounds exactly like Austrian. "Exit" is "izhod" in Slovenian but "izlaz" in Croatian. Albanian sounds a lot like Italian due to a large amount of word borrowing. Many Croatian words come from Turkish, such as sat "hour" and kutija "box." I noticed that neither German nor Croatian has a locative clitic similar to the Italian ci or the French y. Actually German doesn't have any clitics, which is a shame because clitics are pretty cool. And even though Croatian doesn't have determiners ("the," "a"), definiteness is marked on adjectives modifying masculine nouns. For example, "star pas" means "an old dog" whereas "stari pas" means "the old dog." Austrians elide pre-consonantal liquids, resulting in compensatory lengthening (check out my link above if you're curious). For example, "alt" (old) becomes "oit" and "Karte" (ticket) becomes "koate." But I will never be able to tell you why German is just so much goddamn harder than any other language I've worked on.

And just to round it all off, I'll finish this entry talking about landscapes. The most beautiful place on earth is in the Dolomites. I don't care if I haven't seen everything. I don't care if generalizations are forbidden amongst anyone with an intellectual conscience. There is nothing more beautiful than the Dolomites. That's all.

Month 9. Cheesy visits home.

       It took Cheesy 30 hours to get from Croatia to Montreal.  

    Cheesy had had a flight booked from Split to Montreal at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday. On the day of her departure, friends from France were visiting her in Split. One was a street musician and wanted to play a show that evening, so they drove her to the airport at 6 p.m. Cheesy checked her bag in and decided to wander around to kill the next 5 hours.  She left the airport and walked along the highway for a bit.  An African man in a Smart car pulled over and asked if she needed a lift.  He didn't seem to understand the concept of just wandering around.  He gave her his phone number and drove off. She was hungry but all she found was an abandoned fast food bar on an abandoned beach.

       Bored and hungry (a combination Cheesy knew all too well), she wandered back to the airport.  Her flight was the last one of the day, and it was delayed.  She arrived at Zagreb at 1 a.m. and slept on a bench until her flight to Frankfurt at 8 a.m.  That flight was also delayed, because they had loaded someone's bag into the plane who didn't ever board the plane.  Once she arrived in Frankfurt, Cheesy ran at top speed to her gate.  She got to the gate at 9:58 a.m.  The 10:00 plane to Montreal had just left.  So they re-booked her on a flight to Ottawa at 1:30 p.m.  From there she took a flight to Montreal at 6 p.m., or midnight Split time.

       So you can imagine that by the time Cheesy got to Montreal, she felt very, very far from the life she had set up in Europe.  She began to notice things she had never thought twice about in Montreal.  Here are her observations.

1. Advertisements were force-fed to passengers on Air Canada. There was a screen on the back of every seat. Within 10 minutes of flight, each passenger had images of restaurants, Mitsubishis, and MasterCards whirling just inches from his face.

2. Food and company names were way kitchier in North America. Cheesy's snack on the plane was called "Maized and Confused Corn Chips." In Canada, shops that sell cheap Chinese trinkets were called things like Dollarama or Buck-or-Two. In the Balkans they were called… China shops.

3. Company signs were way simpler in Split. They said something like, "Ivanovic Brothers. Garage doors." Or even just, "Furniture." In North America whole careers were devoted to studying which colours and shapes attract consumers more. Fortunes were made and lost depending on who came up with which logo first. Flashy was seen as favourable.

4. The point: Croatians were much more to the point than North Americans. The best example was the communication Cheesy had witnessed between the airplane pilot and flight attendants over the loudspeakers. On the Air Canada flight, one announcement went like this (no joke): "Hi folks, your pilot speaking. The reports of turbulence from the other planes flying in this area are beyond my comfort zone, so I'm going to have to ask the flight attendants to please pause what they are doing and have a seat until further notice." On Air Croatia: "Flight attendants, sit down."

    And it seemed that in the Balkans, if someone felt his point was not getting across properly, he just started yelling. Cheesy had been on one bus in Montenegro where a passenger, some young French tourist girl, had lost her bus ticket (they really do just look like receipts, Cheesy had nearly lost one herself). The co-pilot found the girl without her ticket, and lost it completely. So here was this gigantic Balkan man howling at this skinny French girl in a language she couldn't even understand, She just looked up at him and burst into tears. On the bright side, she did get the point.

5. Despite their apparent curtness, Croatians frowned much less than North Americans. They walked around with perfect posture, slim and confident. If they made eye contact with someone, they smiled or said hello. North Americans checked each other out secretly. They looked down in shame if someone noticed them staring. Then they would peek again when they think the other person was distracted. North Americans frowned when they saw a line-up ahead. They frowned when things fell behind schedule. They frowned when something cost more than expected. They frowned when they were tired. The brilliance of the Balkans was that everyone somehow knew how not to worry. The line-up is long, but life is short, so smile and make the best of it.

6. For some reason people had lovely abs in Split.

7. Montreal had better graffiti than any other city Cheesy had seen anywhere. In general Montreal was way more artistic that most places Cheesy had seen. People wore broken fishnet stockings, dyed their hair green, wore fake retro eyeglasses, and still managed to pull off a fashion statement. People spoke freely about art and sex and drugs. Locals went to the museums and galleries, not just tourists.

8. But even if Montreal values were very open, the people were not. Cheesy had had many random conversations with many random people in the streets of Europe. But when she went to a café in Montreal and started to chat up the barista, all she got was a weird look and an expensive bill. (Okay well maybe soy milk wasn't the hottest topic to start new friendships with… but Montrealers were foodies, weren't they?)

9. Cheesy did appreciate the fact that Montreal and Split share similar coffee cultures. When people had nothing better to do, they went and got wired up on espressos all afternoon. Except in Montreal they tended to eat sandwiches or cakes with the coffee, and often people would bring their laptops along to do work.

10. Work! North Americans were obsessed with it.

11. Rules were generally stricter in North America. What clothes to wear to school, which way to drive on the street, how much money to tip the waiter, how long to take to finish university…

12. Down to food business. Quebec sorely lacked burek. The Balkans sorely lacked poutine. (Cheesy sensed a genius restaurant idea coming on…)

13. The attitude towards food in North America was totally schizophrenic. No wonder people were either too fat or too thin. You opened a magazine and the message was this: "Lose those extra pounds! Here's exactly how to do it. We have all the weight-loss secrets. You don't have to think at all. You will be perfect. You are not perfect now but you can be perfect just by obeying these five simple rules. Everyone will love you and then you'll be happy." And then on the next page: "Indulge yourself! You deserve it! You're unhappy and you work so hard! Double fudge chocolate cake only $13.99!" - They always wrote "only," even if the price was obviously exhorbitant – "and only 500 calories per piece! You will learn to love yourself and then you'll be happy."

And so the deep questions of North American life were these: Am I happy if others love me or if I love myself? And is that kind of happiness achieved by eating or by not eating? And if the price is right and the calories counted, is happiness guaranteed?

There was an enormous attachment to calorie-counting and rule-following that Cheesy still couldn't see the logic behind (note the irony). Did North Americans not want to think for themselves? Did they want their health and happiness to reduce to nothing more than a set of numbers? Maybe it was very comforting to believe that something as mysterious and fleeting as happiness could be achieved algorithmically.

(Wrong! Cheesy's brain screamed. It's instinct, happiness is achieved by instinct! North Americans have lost their instincts, and so they have to follow a set of rules in order to mimic the results that instinct achieves naturally! My god, Nietzsche must have been one of the most brilliant assholes ever to have lived. And for those who couldn't care less about Nietzsche, just watch American Beauty again.)

14. Chopsticks.

15. There are more things like reusable shopping bags, recycling, and hybrid cars in North America.

16. The following grim observation, as well as a few of the above ones, was courtesy of a friend of Cheesy's: In North America, they chopped down trees and then named the streets after them. (Although to be perfectly fair, they had just razed down a park of old trees in central Zagreb in order to build a shopping mall.)

17. Final thoughts back to Cheesy's age-old question about whether and how people can change. Sometimes one believes one has had a deeper or shallower change than one has. People might say, "Oh I know I've changed a lot," and they're still the same goddamn person (if they would just admit it, then they could begin a real change). Not everyone notices change, either in themselves or in others. Cheesy also realized that sometimes a change could reverse itself, as she fell back into her old Montreal habits. But Cheesy suspected that if one puts oneself in the right environment, one can re-reverse a change. And when she stepped out of the airport in Split, and saw the highway she'd wandered along 12 days earlier, and smelled the sea, and saw the dry Dalmatian hills in the fog, she actually began to cry with happiness. Her instincts had suddenly re-aligned and everything just came together with a perfect clarity. Her instincts had told her to come here, and she did, and she was happy, and there was no greater happiness than finding out that you were right to have trusted your instincts. There was no greater relief for Cheesy than finding that the great wave she had been riding was right in mid-air where she had left it.

Month 8. Settled in Split.

I think a lot about shiny happy people. I wonder if they are circular. They are happy because they are shiny, and shiny because they are happy. I wonder if I would be happier if I were shinier. I wonder how easy it would be to make myself shinier. I wonder to what extent shiny happy people are natural or self-made. Maybe if you believe you can create your personality, then you can. And if you don't believe you can, then you can't. I don't believe I can, even if I want to believe. (But I do believe others can, so that's at least a step towards optimism.) (If you consider the belief in self-made personalities to be optimistic.) (I do.)

The other thing I think a lot about is thinking. I think thinking is bad, so I've been trying to not do much of it. Hence my silence. (I'm also sure I've written all these things before, only with slightly different wording.) Writing forces you to think. So I was thinking, maybe if I don't write, then I won't think. But in the end, thoughts come back. Cogito ergo sum. Or sum ergo cogito.

And I figure, if I can't suppress the thoughts, then I might as well start writing them down again.

So here I am.

Split is hot and lazy. But then you go to the center, which is like an anthill of tourists right now, and suddenly you're all strung out again. Who are all these people? What are they looking for? If I point them in some direction, will they kindly disappear? But they don't. The sun sets, and streams of people come tumbling out of the buildings like cockroaches. Screaming Brits. Bickering Spaniards. Drunk Aussies. (The Italians are well-behaved though.) And I guess they must all be having fun? I don't know. My least favourite cities were Venice and Florence, because I felt like "just another tourist" there. So I can't imagine that all these tourists are truly happy about being tourists in Split. They all arrive and say, "Why is it so crowded?" Well duh, because you came here.

So in a matter of weeks, I've become the prime "local" couchsurfer of the city, turning down a bazillion couch requests per day but trying to take everyone else out on the town, pretending that I know all the "best" places, pretending that Split is peaceful and chill town… which it was three weeks ago…. But damn, you get jaded quickly when you're surrounded by drunk tourists. I say to each of my surfers, You're not seeing Split at its best. (What I don't then say is, Split's best is when you're not here.)

You see? I'm being jaded. I'm being cynical and not shiny the way I'm sure I could be. I do like meeting people, I do like going for drinks and discovering new little alleyways, I do like the bustle, and I do love couchsurfing. So why aren't I shiny, dammit? I want to be glow-in-the-dark, I want aliens to see me all the way from Mars, I want to be the next aurora borealis! I want people to look back and say, Remember 2010? Steffi made the lightbulb obsolete that year…

Okay I'm just being an idiot, thanks for your patience. But if you, reader, have some insight on how to shine, please let me know. I've been told it's good to hang around shiny people. But that doesn't always work, because if you are rusty and you stand beside a shiny person, then sometimes you just feel rustier.

A note on rustiness: All of you must investigate Salad Fingers.

Or do you think that maybe it's okay not to be shiny? After all, Salad Fingers loves rusty things. And rust is more interesting than shine. There are more nuances, more surprises, when you run your hand over a rusty spoon than over a shiny one. And that's why David Lynch and David Firth are brilliant. Because they know how to tap in to that part of the human mind that loves dark creepy things, that rejects perfection and orderliness. For example I think people understand sado-masochism a lot more than they will ever admit. (If you haven't seen any Salad Fingers or Lynch films, you may be totally lost. Maybe that's for the best. Because if you get what I'm saying, that dark part probably exists in your mind. And maybe you're better off without it. Lynch and Firth are maybe just creating comfort zones for messed-up people, rather than providing any real insight into psychology.)

(Another aside: Most people I've met claim to like shiny happy people. Almost no one ever says, "I like people with deep insecurities and serious mental problems." But one guy I met, way back in Montreal before any of this running-away business ever started, told me that he was always more attracted to girls with "issues." I really respected him for admitting that. Because if Firth and Lynch do have a following, then some of you out there like darkness more than you're willing to admit. So I encourage you to admit it to yourself if you have some creepy habits that you enjoy. And I encourage you to be okay with that, because someone out there understands, and someone out there might even like you more for being crazy and messed-up, and without doubt someone out there is very similar to you.)

Soooooooooo… Split.

Month 5: Cheesy makes plans

Ok guys! So now that no one is reading this blog anymore, I have updates!

1 - I found a hitchhiking buddy to get back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

2 - I'm going back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

3 - I'm moving to Split, Croatia at the beginning of July for an undetermined length of time. Ću tamo ići to volunteer sa udrugom za pomoć mladima. = I'm going there to volunteer with an organization that helps troubled youth.

Biggest fear: paralyzing boredom resulting from moving from a city of 15 million to a city of 100,000. Best solution: hula hoops, yoga, and rakija. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! (I can only hope they don't expect me to be a role model for the "troubled youth," hahaha)

Month 5: Cheesy meets rival

Cheesy had said something she regretted. In fact Cheesy often said things she later regretted.

Cheesy's problem was that, once she started something (anything), she couldn't stop. For example: talking, complaining, eating, singing, traveling. Cheesy was an absolute failure in self-moderation (especially given that after doing something obsessively for a while, Cheesy would suddenly stop it completely until some new obsession came along). For a while, Cheesy wasn't able to stop herself from philosophizing about facebook and spying on people, until she crossed the line by criticizing people who give constant updates about themselves. There are lots of people who give constant updates about themselves. Cheesy was beginning to realize that the desire to talk to people was probably normal. So constant updaters were probably socially healthy people from whom Cheesy could learn a lot, ha ha. With that realization, Cheesy's short-lived obsession with the facebook privacy issue ended abruptly.

In the meantime Cheesy had met a friend who complemented her perfectly in the social sphere. Let us call her Tally (since of course Cheesy was still obsessed with the blogger's privacy issue, ha ha). Tally was good for Cheesy, because Tally was always talking, smiling, and laughing. Cheesy was learning from Tally what it was like to be a normal, happy, sociable person. For example, Tally demonstrated that it was possible to live well without changing one's country of residence every few weeks (ha, ha). Tally was also crazy about things like "positive energy" and "cleansing one's aura" and so on. Cheesy was thrilled to have finally met someone cheesier than her. Tally also accepted Cheesy's atheism, which had been making Cheesy feel like a deviant weirdo in Turkey. In brief, Tally made Cheesy feel a little bit less alone, and together they would float for hours through their strange cloud of cheesy energy.

Nonetheless Cheesy's itch to move was getting stronger and stronger. She was surprised at how much she missed the weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She was also disappointed on how slow she was at picking up Turkish - she had learned as much Turkish in six weeks as she had learned of Serbo-Croatian in two weeks (and yes, she was losing her English skills) (and yes, she just said "Serbo-Croatian" even though that's a big no-no) (what was she supposed to call it? She was in Croatia for one week where they told her not to learn Serbian, then she was in Serbia for one week where they told her not to learn Croatian, but in both places she learned the same language, so she had decided to give the finger to politics and just call it "Serbo-Croatian") (oops did she just say too much again? Dear reader, she means no offense).

Cheesy's final thoughts on the matter were about self-restraint. Cheesy believed that when there is an itch, one should scratch. Isn't this the cornerstone of hedonism?

(Too many days, too lazy to count): Out of the silence…

…come some random thoughts from Istanbul.

1. Sorrrrrry! Ok most important update: I made it to Istanbul! Hahaha. Only 5 weeks ago.

The truth is that I was going to give up the blog. As all bloggers eventually must, I had to decide (a) whether I really want to be spied upon, and (b) whether I'm too lazy to provide people with the necessary tools for spying on me. To be honest, for a while I didn't feel like telling people what I was doing. Don't take it personally – if you know me well, then you know I have my moments. If you don't, well: I have my moments. Haha. Then I wanted to write, but so many things had happened and I just felt too lazy. Bad excuses, I know. And know I come out of the murk with some crappy apologies and crappier lists, but hey, no one's forcing you to spy on me anyway J

 

2. Turkish people are tough. I wouldn't mess with them if I were you. (when I hang out with Turkish people I feel like a silly little bird who thinks she knows her way, but really everyone knows she's lost…)

 

3. I think it's possible to get addicted to leaving things. Istanbul is always clogged with traffic and people and noise. It's true that I find it energizing. But I also really miss the rush you get when you're standing at the side of a highway, and there's nothing but the swoosh of cars going by and the future waiting for you at the other end. Is it only proud people who get a good feeling when they abandon things? Because in a way, abandonment is an act of defiance, and proud people are defiant. When you abandon a place or a person, you are saying that you think there are better things out there for you. So are all travelers assholes?

 

4. I get tired of hearing my own voice. Just look at #3 above, it sounds so snobby. So that's my 3^rd excuse for not writing in a while. (I don't think I'll ever understand the people who put a new facebook update every 5 minutes. Don't they get bored of themselves?)

 

5. Let's talk more about boredom. Maybe it's the chronically bored who end up traveling, not the proud. You get bored of one place, you move on. It's easy and it's fun.

 

6. It's pretty frustrating to teach anything to people who don't want to be taught. It makes me wonder – why teach? Clearly these people have better things to do with their time than to learn. I'm not sure whether I'm doing the right thing when I have to force students to learn things for an exam that they just couldn't care less about. In a way I respect them. I don't feel like making them learn any more than they feel like learning. So I wish I could just say to them, "Ok let's make a deal. I'll give you the average grade if you just shut up in class and let me teach the people who care." But unfortunately most 15-year-old girls wouldn't really understand. Especially if I say it in English. (haha)

 

7. Last week it hit me for the first time that I'm in a Muslim country. Once again, a little slow.

Day 62-65: Cheesy is up in the air

     All of a sudden Cheesy was about to leave for Istanbul. All of a sudden Cheesy was absolutely, uncontrollably petrified. Just as Cheesy was getting to know and love the Balkans, she was leaving. It was only the second time on her trip that she felt truly afraid. The first time was when she entered Slovenia. But Slovenia was still more or less central Europe. For God's sake, Slovenia was EU. Now Cheesy was going to Turkey. Cheesy was a young female atheist with pink and blonde hair. She had no idea how it would be like in Istanbul. Cheesy wanted to stay under her covers in her cozy little apartment in the cozy little town of Struga, Macedonia. But instead,

Turkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkey

    And the bus ride would only be 18 hours….

Day 1,213,924: Cheesy’s Mind Begins to Wander, Too

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Part I.

    Once upon a time, a man named Oscar Wilde wrote a book that transcended all limits of time, space, and physicality to wind up in the mind of Cheesy Magenta. The book was called A Picture of Dorian Gray. In the book, there was a character named Lord Henry, who was by far the most intelligent fictional human being Cheesy had ever come across. Lord Henry said something, or Oscar Wilde wrote something, that Cheesy thought about often. It went something like this: a good artist puts all of his energy and creativity into his work, and as a result, has a personality that is totally empty and dull.

    In Trieste Cheesy had met a couple of Germans hitchhiking from Central Europe to South Africa. The girl became a bit of a fascination to Cheesy. She was tall, blonde, broad, and silent. She ate a lot. She carried around a backpack that nearly doubled her size. She had rosy cheeks and straight white teeth. She reminded Cheesy of health and stability, so let's call her Stable Sally.

    Stable Sally had gone on all sorts of fabulous adventures. Cheesy couldn't even remember half of them. The one that stood out was Stable Sally's month of hitchhiking alone in Mongolia. There were no roads in Mongolia and no cars. People got around on horse. Later on, in Zagreb, Cheesy would find out that there is also a beautiful culture of throat-singing in Mongolia. Stable Sally, a young blonde girl from a quiet German town, integrated herself into all of this without ever speaking a word of Mongolian (or whatever they speak there).

    But the strangest thing, Cheesy thought, was how silent Stable Sally was. A true adventurer was supposed to be bubbly, reckless, and aloof. Like Steve Irwin, the crazy Australian crocodile-hunter. Stable Sally was, well, kind of boring. Where was all the adrenaline? Where were the strange creatures hiding in Sally's backpack? Where were the dirty teeth and crooked haircut? Then Cheesy thought of Oscar Wilde. Maybe Stable Sally had directed all of her inner insanity into her journeys, and had nothing left to perk up her personality. Maybe Stable Sally was the traveling analogy of a great artist.

Part II.

    Cheesy most definitely did not feel at home in Serbia. Maybe that's why she liked it so much. After leaving Italy, everything had changed. She had begun to see all sorts of things, some of them more like Montreal and some of them much less. The biggest change was in the colours of Eastern Europe. She saw streets entirely covered in graffiti art; she saw orange churches, green palaces, and yellow houses; she saw pink platform shoes, pink coats, and pink hair (and YES! Cheesy desperately missed her pink hair too). Eastern Europe was all about people. History, politics, architecture, and nature were all secondary.

    Cheesy's host was a typical-looking Serb. He had big, deep-set gray eyes like the tete-a-claque cartoons, and full pink lips. He had a wide jawline and a bristly beard. He was short and stalky. He ate fried meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheesy hadn't seen him eat a single bite of fruit or vegetable. He was the worrying type. He was small and awkward, which sort of reassured Cheesy since she often felt that way herself, but sometimes she also felt awkward that she made him feel awkward. Awkward is contagious. And it's a really awkward word if you say it enough times.

    Cheesy's host took her to his hometown of Novi Sad, a bit north of Belgrade. They were hit by a monstrous snowstorm and didn't get home until two days later, at 3 a.m., burnt out and hungover and grubby. But Novi Sad was gorgeous – half quaint and half commercial, like many Balkan cities. Zagreb was that way, too. There are zones of wide roads, blowing wind, and concrete. Then there are zones of blocky residential buildings, sometimes looking cramped and neglected. Finally there are the "pretty" zones with statues, markets, and cobblestone streets. Okay, so that makes three halves, but that's just how great Eastern Europe is.

    Sometimes Cheesy was nostalgic for her kitchen back home. She had secret pangs of longing for broccoli, soy sauce, and bran muffins. She was holding up alright, although she couldn't stop her stomach from turning when her Belgrade host would wake her up to breakfasts of deep-fried fish burgers, sliced ham, fried sausages, and chicken wings. On the other hand, she had made a life-changing gastronomical discovery in Croatia and Serbia: rakija! It was usually translated as "brandy," but in Cheesy's opinion, rakija couldn't be equated to anything else. She especially loved the ones made with honey, called medica or medovača (pronounced "meditsa," "medovacha"). Her host in Zagreb had made a big pot of his own medica, made with lemon and cinnamon, and they had drunk it by the bottle-full. In Novi Sad Cheesy and her host went to rakija bar where they drank rakijas made from quince, raspberry, and walnuts. And it was dangerously cheap…

    Cheesy was also working on her language skills. After finally buying a book about Serbian/Croatian, she had uttered her first whole sentence to a stranger in Serbian: "Ne govorim srpski," which of course means "I don't speak Serbian!" Also, she had met a guy at the fortress in Belgrade who spoke nothing but Serbian. They had managed to exchange phone numbers. Since then, the guy kept sending Cheesy text messages in Serbian, which Cheesy would frantically try to decode and then answer with the help of her book. Needless to say, misunderstandings were common… for example, he had asked her what time she would be coming back from Novi Sad and she replied that she hoped it would not rain (it snowed, anyway).

Part III.

    In fact, Oscar Wilde wouldn't have been the only one to agree on the analogy between traveling and art. Cheesy's good old friend Albert Camus wrote that art was the ultimate existential hobby: the artist constantly creates in order to bring meaning and magic to life, although in the end his efforts are pointless. Similarly, every city brought something wonderful into Cheesy's life, which she would then have to leave behind. If Cheesy was going to dedicate her life to meeting and then abandoning great people, she was going to have to build a bit of a backbone. Or just go back again and again, trying to re-create the initial magic. But should she risk the disappointment? Should good things stay in the past?

    Should good things stay in the past?