Long way to go

Hi! I've created this site as a way to keep my friends and family informed of my travels. If you don't know me, some background: My name is Jesica. At the beginning of February 2006 I quit my job in Chicago, which was awesome - I was a technical writer for a software company and had been working from home for over three years - to travel extensively for a year with my best friend, Atomly. The trip has two parts: Berlin, and RTW (around the world).

Right now and until mid-July, I am living in Berlin, and travelling around Europe to visit friends in London, Paris, the South of France, the Netherlands, and a few other places. I don't have a job anymore, though I am doing some freelance writing for a month and hope to find more work. Atom is an electronic musician (techno, breakcore, jungle, IDM, and whatever else he feels like), and already has a few bookings here.

So to family and friends: we made it safely! Next time though, I think I'd fly to Berlin direct; we flew United to London and then took EasyJet to Berlin Schoenfeld, which wasn't as good of as an idea as it sounded. For starters, it was a really long exhausting day, and any money we saved on flying not to Berlin we spent in London getting around. It's crazy expensive there, though the fish and chips are delicious and the Jameson's is cheap.

When we did finally make it to Berlin, we crossed our fingers and hoped that the sublet Atom lined up for February would work out. And it did! I love our apartment: 20 foot ceilings, huge Eastern European architecture, a meat slicer built in to the kitchen countertop, and a bedroom bigger than my whole apartment was in Chicago.

Right now I just got up from sleeping 13 hours, which is nuts because I am a lifelong insomniac. Last night we got into our apartment around midnight, and walked around the neighborhood at 1am looking for a place to eat. A few blocks away we found a place where we got a tasty sandwich ("homus" and "falafel" are the same in any language), two big pizzas, three glasses of wine and a Coke for 17 Euros, with a ton of leftovers to eat for dinner tonight. I'm relieved Berlin is so much cheaper than London.

Anyway, it's dark out now, time to go explore the city. Chrise is working on a design for this site, so it'll be prettier soon (thank you!). More later, including, of course, many pictures on my j3s.net photolog.