Beginning
Hello hello, and welcome back! Yes, it has been a little while hasn’t it - ignore the cobwebs, if you can, this place may be dusty but it’s still home…
I’ve had quite the haitus from writing. Truth be told, I’ve had quite the haitus from quite a number of things - this last year has been interesting, in a few ways.
Actually scratch that (why do I start acting all aloof when I write blog posts?), it was just really fucking hard. I came within inches of quitting my job (and with it, my degree), I watched as a community I loved got damaged by the ego of someone who was supposed to care for it, I tried to do what I thought was right and lost a friend and mentor in the process. And even after I left that place and my responsibility to it, life found a way to still be hard.
I’m skimping on details like crazy here, I know, and when I feel up to it I’ll probably write more about it all. But I can’t say if or when that will be. I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin, how to even start getting across how dizzyingly odd and busy and tiring and full it all was. My 3rd year of Uni felt just as long as the previous two, combined. And I am different, now than I was when I last sat down to write in here, and I don’t fully know how what in me has changed, yet.
But. As I say, musings on what has happened will follow in time. Today’s post, and the rest of the week’s, will focus on the now.
Now
Well, not now now, today isn’t finished yet!
Okay, yesterday
Actually some context to this whole (mis)adventure would probably be useful.
Two weeks ago
Sitting at my desk, realizing I had only a fortnight of my delightful work placement left, I decided to go on a trip after I was free again. After perusing flights, I decided on Prague and Berlin.
Wow, what a setup to the rest of the adventure. Such foreshadowing, such pathos…
Look I really can’t say much more than that I spontaneously decided on this. These are two cities I’ve always liked the sound of visiting, and I’ve wanted for a while now to experience what it’s like to travel solo. And Belfast… much as I love you, I needed to see something else for while. Nothing personal.
So yesterday…
So yesterday I set out! My flight was at 16:30, from Dublin, so no early start required. The coach, security, finding the gate, all easy, all relaxed. Those of you who know me will know that I have a lot of nervousness around flying, and while this was no different on takeoff, one we were in the air I was calmer than I’ve been for a while. I was feeling like this whole solo-travel thing was pretty stress-free.
Stress
This soon changed. On landing, I got through customs and fetched my bag, then made my way out of arrivals. Once I was outside, I looked at my phone and saw an ominous ‘E’ at the top of the screen - EDGE data, which my carrier Lebara has hit with me with occasionally before, and which is effectively zero data at all, despite nominally there being full bars. This is not what I wanted to see, stepping out into a foreign country and needing to navigate to my hostel, and I immediately get pissed at Lebara given I checked and double-checked there roaming policy (full support in EU countries).
At this point though (almost 21:00, local time), I’m tired and want to get to my hostel as fast as possible. So I use the airport WiFi to find the right bus, and get on. It’s an hour until we stop, and the entire time I am frantically pulling out every trick I have to try and fix my data - airplane mode on and off, rebooting, changing the APN settings… nothing. I accidentally close Maps in the middle of this and start to panic, since now the directions to the hostel aren’t loaded and I have no hope of remembering the name of the tram stop I was supposed to go to (Czech placenames, I am learning, are as easy for an English speaker to remember as a random string of digits).
And so the bus stops and I rush off to try and get the station wifi as fast as I can, since I can remember that whatever tram I was supposed to get, it was soon. And wifi there is, and I rejoice silently and get my bearings, and strike out towards the tram stop. Halfway there, I feel an odd twitch in my left hand, and it feels weirdly empty. That’s weird, I think, of course it feels empty, there’s nothing in… oh. I feel my stomach descend to somewhere below my colon as I now see that in fleeing the bus in search of Internet access, I strolled confidently right past my own bag.
The bus is, of course, long gone, so I take some deep breaths and keep walking, telling myself that I’ll call them up in the morning and find it, that it’s only clothes and that I’ll be fine. And this is all true enough, but unfortunately the amygdala does not understand such things, and so when I reached the tram and saw the number 9 pull in, I got on out without hesitating. A few minutes into the journey I look at the screen for my stop and can’t see it listed. I can’t see any of the stops Maps tells me I should be passing. Because of the aforementioned difficulty in reading Czech names it takes me almost 5 minutes to be sure of this, and when I am I get off on a dark street.
I’m now at my wits end, and am finally in the right mindset to talk to strangers, so I ask someone how to get to the station I’m looking for, and am pointed to the other side of the track - I’d gotten the correct tram number, but the wrong direction. I thank him profusely, and 20 minutes later I’ve found my hostel at last.
The hostel
The place I’m staying is called the Mad House, and it’s a pretty cool place. When I found it and got buzzed in I was greeted with the droning of some Eurobeat song coming down a spiral staircase, and when I reached reception I was offered a free beer. They do excursions during the daytime, communal dinners in the evening and a group night-out every night, all of which I’m planning on attending today and will write about tomorrow.
Back to last night, after all the travel-stress I’d had for the last hour all I wanted to do was sleep, so as soon as I’d gotten checked in and shown around that’s what I did. I’ve got decent earplugs (ongoing construction work on the Catholic chaplaincy next door made them a necessity last year), and everyone was out at some bar or another, so I drifted off pretty quick. And then woke up some hours later, to the bed… rocking.
The less said the better I suppose. I tried to pretend someone was just moving their bags around for a while but that lie died a death as the vague jostling motions became… rhythmic. All props to them though, they made no noise audible above the rooms fans, which I’m grateful for. But I didn’t manage to sleep until they were done, and the visitor had gone off to his own bunk. I really hope she doesn’t bring someone back again tonight, I don’t know if I have it in me to complain. How ackward. And I’ve seen her around a couple of times today and have yet to make eye-contact. I know, she knows… but this is Europe, liberal and liberated, so perhaps it’s not even going to cross her mind as something to feel ackward about.
Anyway. The hostel experience, I suppose. I knew I was signing up to a loss of sleep, compared to a hotel.
The now
The data problem persists, and is a real issue in a city I do not know. So as I write this I am downloading custom firmware to flash to it - I won’t even begin to try and explain what journey of troubleshooting has led me to this solution, but trust me when I say that the combination of Lebara with my funny, tiny phone has forced this path upon my. And with 8 days of travel left, I can’t afford to not fix it now.
As for the bag, I called and it seems they found it, but it’s been taken already to the City Hall lost and found. Which isn’t open on Tuesdays? Bizarre. So I won’t have it until tomorrow, when it opens at 8AM. Fantastic.
A rocky start all round, but I say it’s only up from here. I’m getting ready to channel my inner extrovert later, when I have the chance to properly meet the others here. Hopefully I can stick with people who know where they’re going, if my phone isn’t working still.
I will update on all this and more in tomorrow’s post. Ahoj for now.