Long way to go

I´m back in Buenos Aires. It´s nice to be someplace familiar again, but I have definitely settled into the rhythm of travel and can´t wait to go to the next place. Which is La Paz, Bolivia, the highest altitude city in the world. The more people I talk to, the more I am beginning to regret signing up for a tour of the country. I was a little nervous having heard that Bolivia is very rough, so I booked a 10 day tour. I haven´t taken a tour since 1998, really prefer to travel on my own. However, from talking to people at hostels it sounds like it´s quite accessible, and I would have been fine on my own. Ah well. The bright side is I can turn off my brain a little, not have to think about scheduling buses or finding hostels for a few days.

The bad news is I am spending money more quickly than I thought. My original plan was to head to Chile after Bolivia, then back to BA, then back to NYC. Now I think after Chile I´d really like to head south to Patagonia for a week or two...if the money holds out.

As for Cordoba, I was sad to stay there only one day. Admittedly, much of my stay was augmented by how nice of a hostel I stayed at; the asado (BBQ) Saturday night was a blast, as was checking out the rest of the town: the big Parque Sarmiento, Paseo de Flores, the Museum, and a couple clubs and bars.

My bus left Cordoba, or rather was scheduled to leave, at 11pm yesterday; at 11:20 there was still no sign of the bus. I was getting kind of nervous, but did a good job of not getting upset once I understood that I hadn´t just missed it. Eventually I found a middle aged Argentinian woman who was on my bus too, and we waited together. She didn´t speak any English, but told me all about her family and her vacation, about half of which I understood. We cheered together when the bus arrived, finally, at almost midnight. After I had taken my seat upstairs (she was sitting on the lower level of the bus), the woman found me, gave me a macrame and bead bracelet and necklace she had made, a hug, and her email address, wishing me bueno suerte. It was so sweet! Little things like this make me quite happy, and remind me why I travel.

Now that I am back in the big city, I should mention a few things about it before I forget, both good and...interesting.

- amazing steaks, so cheap. My favorite so far is La Cabrera, but I want to try other places too
- the Sunday market at Plaza Serrano
- the MALBA Museum´s permanent collection of contemporary Latin American art
- cortado (coffee)
- really cheap breezy dresses and clothes
- asado culture, BBQ is a universal activity
- seeing my friend Maurizio play good music at parties
- always needing to have small bills on hand; portenos don´t like to give change for much over a 5 or 10
- so many beautiful plazas and parks everywhere
- good cheap argentinian wine
- Palermo Viejo, a really cute neighborhood
- the difficulty in finding English books not in the genre of Clive Cussler, Danielle Steele, or Stephen King
- the weather: sunny, hot but not humid, always a breeze
- the eagerness with which portenos offer directions
- Parisian-inspired architecture
- dulce de leche
- dulce de leche ice cream at Alta Volta Heladeria

I´m sure there will be more, that´s just off the top of my head. It´s a ridiculously pleasant city.

Posted by j3s at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm back from a week running around London and Amsterdam. I had an absolute blast, especially because I met up with a dozen friends from Chicago, New York, London, and Taiwan, but I was really surprised at how much I missed Berlin. I've barely been here a month and a half, but it feels like home. Strange that it happened so quickly.

My prepaid phone ran out of money on the first day I was away, and I only checked email twice in the entire week, so it was the most unplugged I've been in a very long time, probably since the month I spent in Ghana.

As opposed to the last time I was there, I really enjoyed London this time around. We stayed at Kris's awesome flat in Hoxton, where we met up with Nicole, Brian, Joanna, Tim, Sam, Jude, and Lauren. I also got to see Aidan, who lives in London, which was really nice because I hadn't seen him in a while.

I was a bit overwhelmed at first; it had been some time since I had been surrounded by a lot of people who have known me for a while. So I got very excited (and possibly a bit obnoxious), as well as loquacious, which was funny because as several people pointed out, my English had deteriorated a little. (Though after a week of talking to my American friends all day every day, it's back to normal.) We walked around a ton, rode the tube, shopped at some markets, ate a lot, drank a lot, and goofed off. So much fun.

While we were in London we went to a dubstep/grime night at Old Blue Last, where David Banner played. Saturday evening I went to the Tate Modern and saw the Albers and Moholy-Nagy and the Martin Kippenberger exhibits, which were both amazing. I also met up with Doris and Tony for the Alexander Robotnick show at Plastic People, which was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, I got some really bad food poisoning or something on Sunday, so I spent a whole day in bed when I wasn't vomiting, ugh. I was better the next day, which was good because we had to fly to Amsterdam. The day I was sick I loaned my camera to Brian and Joanna, and will post the pictures they took on Flickr when they finish uploading. The photos I took in London are on my photolog, of course.

Next update: Amsterdam, once I get the pictures posted and a little more downtime. Friends are in Berlin until Sunday, and there is much running around to be done.

Posted by j3s at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I've been here in Berlin almost a month now. At first it was exciting, then strange, then various permutations of fun, frustrating, somewhat comfortable, and increasingly more familiar. Now, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I can look around and honestly say to myself that I am happy here.

To update the housing situation: we did find a new flat, not as nice as the one that fell through, but pretty sweet in a different way. For starters, it's a loft right off Rosenthaler Platz, which is very Mitte. The area feels similar to the Milwaukee North and Damen intersection in Wicker Park of Chicago. The flat is one huge room and a separate bedroom; I get the bedroom and Atom has the main room. We are subletting it for March and April, and the owner makes techno, so he left his turntables and records and stuff. It's really nice to live with a stereo again.

But the most interesting thing about this new flat is that a friend of mine from Chicago, Ben Goldberger, stayed here in this exact apartment when he lived in Berlin a few years ago. Such a small world.

Right now Atom is in London for DMZ, and to meet Rob, who is flying in from Chicago to visit; they'll both be back here tomorrow night. I woke up this morning to an empty apartment and realized how much I kind of miss living by myself. In my life I've had something like 25 roommates, but spent the last year and a half living alone for the first time, which I loved. So now I am enjoying a quiet flat all to myself, before I meet up with a friend tonight for dinner.

It's funny to think about how easily I am meeting people here, or at least, it's so much easier than when I lived in Sydney. Maybe it's because I'm at a very different stage of my life now than I was then; maybe it's just Berlin.

So yes, things are going well. Doris and Tony were in from London last weekend, which was great. It was fun hanging out with old friends again, and Tony's set with Karl at Berghain was a blast. We didn't even get to the club till 4am, and got called wusses for only staying out till 8am. That still kind of blows my mind. In Chicago, I went out more than almost anyone I knew - as a consequence of working at home and living alone, I had to go out every night or else I went nuts. I also stayed out later than most people (except the friends I was staying out till dawn with), yet here, I feel like a bloody amateur.

It's been a month and my sleep schedule is still so strange. I don't get tired till at least 5am, but I guess that works. A regular yoga practice helps with the (lifelong) insomnia, somewhat. My dreams reflect the strangeness of my biorhythms, or something like that. Rather vivid and intense.

Also, I've been thinking about Alicia a lot lately. I know there's a pretty strong chance that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her. And while I love Berlin, I'd be in Chicago in an instant to have her back again. So, I guess I'm just feeling a bit conflicted, and kind of sad in an esoteric, unresolveable way. It'll pass. I am so lucky, so glad that she was in my life, and that her passing could inspire me to get off my ass and actually travel, like I have always wanted to do.

Posted by j3s at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's 4am and I just finished posting pictures on my photolog from my last week in Chicago. I could post pictures from here and London, but I feel the need to tie the Chicago loose end. It feels really weird to be looking at pictures that I took last week in another continent. For years I was really into taking artsy pictures of rust, texture, urban decay, architecture, stuff like that, but the last couple months I've been all about photographing my friends.

I'm really lucky to have known and gotten close to such an amazing group of people. I'm jetlagged and thrilled to be in an amazing city, but I'll be overly sentimental for a second and just gush about how very lucky I feel to have such people in my life. Especially after last summer, which began tragic but ended up awesome, because it brought so many people together. People I had known peripherally for years became some of my best friends, and I realized I loved people I had drifted from very dearly, no matter how long it had been.

OK, enough of the mushiness, I'm not even homesick! Our neighborhood is rad, I remember more of my high school German than I thought I did, and I love my life. I just did something I have always wanted to do: quit my job to travel. I also know that I wouldn't feel as comfortable doing so if I didn't have the support of my awesome friends and family.

So, 4am, I should go to bed. Thing is, it was not abnormal for me to stay out till 4am on a Wednesday night when I was working in Chicago, and it's only 9pm there now. I guess I did miss a day of sleep travelling, and didn't really sleep for a weekend before I left. I'm so glad we have an apartment here that Atom lined up, this is so much better than a hostel.

Posted by j3s at 03:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)