This is your life, are you who you want to be?

I think I may finally understand why I am here. Or, part of why? Not in the big sense of, why am I here God? I think I understand why I came here, to Austria. Thousands of miles away from those I know and love, from a place that I understand.

I believe part of the reason I have come here is to figure it out. Or, if not to figure it out, it being who and what I am and what I want with my life, then to understand better. Right now I am faced with almost two full months of nothing, no classes. I have a lot of friends here, but they are those new kind of friends that you don’t spend all your time with. I am here to stand apart, and think things through. That is something I am loath to do. Life in all its complexity overwhelms me. And trying to understand what I want out of this scares me more than I would like to admit.

I always say that I want more time; that I will think about it and understand it better later. Really all I want is to escape and not think of it at all. I dive into the busy and distracting life that I have created for myself. But now I am away from that. I am not busy, far from it. Time is on my side. I am still afraid though. I am afraid to look at this and see that what is going on is not what I want. I am even more afraid of what I may have to do to make my path the one that I choose and desire.

At this point in my life I am sitting in the barrel, waiting for the pin to hit and fire me in any direction at all. I could be a soldier, a business man, a pastor, a lawyer, or if I try hard enough, even a doctor. Not only is my profession at stake here, I am at a pretty pivotal point in a long term relationship. There is a woman back home who within 2 years wants me to call her wife. I am still to confused between whether I really love her, or if I can never forgive her. Do I let go or hold on, if I hold on I may be hurting more than myself, and it is the same if I let go.

To choose a path from this dark and twisting forest I only have a few things to act as compass. Well, really only one or two. I am a Christian, and believe in what that entails with everything in me. I also have some idea of the man that I want to be, something like Atticus Finch, but with a better sense of humor. But considering a lot of the character of Atticus is based after Jesus, I think I could boil that down to one thing.

I am so scared that I am going to miss something, or that I will choose the wrong path. I think that what that means is that I am just scared of life. But I feel like if I could figure out which direction I want to aim, I will be able to grind my way to success, whatever that is. I think this whole free choice thing is a lot harder that it sounds.

Dog poop and Drugs

Please excuse me for taking so long in this most recent post. My objective is to write about my most recent experiences while here in Europe, with a central focus on my last few days in Amsterdam. I have so much I would like to express, but I am not sure if I will be able to. I suppose I must start somewhere.

I had to awake at 3:30 to take a taxi across the city to meet the bus that would drive me to Slovakia from Vienna so I could fly from Bratislava for cheap. I went to bed at about 1 the night before, so needless to say, I was freaking tired after I got to Amsterdam. As far as my flight over, I flew the cheapest airline I could find. So, as a result, my knees touched the seat in from of me, and the little air blower thing did not work. I usually find flights relaxing, but I experienced some claustrophobia instead this time. I arrived at my hotel, which for 20 euro a night was an amazing deal. The heater did not really work, but we had out own room and our own sink.

That night I tried a space brownie. I have tried weed before on rare occasions, but I was in no way prepared for the extremely powerful effects of the space brownie. Which I learned the next day was supposed to be shared between two people. I ate my own. After eating our “meal” that night, my friend and I decided to make our way to the Red light district. What better idea than to get high and walk around looking at prostitutes. Now the critical error I made here, was to believe that Amsterdam was like much of the rest of Europe and relatively crime free. I was extremely wrong. After making our way to the red light district, which I suppose I could describe as the shadiest place I have ever seen, my friend and I began walking up and down the streets. We had probably been walking for about 5 minutes before a man walked up behind us and announce that he had a gun and we were to give him all our money. Now, under normal circumstances I would probably instantly have moved to violence. I am more than capable to taking care of myself and I was pretty sure after about one second that he did not have a gun. Normally, I would have hospitalized this man and had a good time dispensing some well deserved justice. But sadly, being incredibly altered by my first reaction was confusion followed by fear. After telling the man that he would have to show me his gun(which was actually a pen or a key, there is some debate between my friend and I) I walked with my friend into a shop and watched as Stupid Fuck McRobber walked off. There is a little more to this story than I wrote, but that is pretty close to the summation of it. I think that this experience I shall use as my don’t take drugs lesson to my kids, basically, this guy thought he could scare two smoked out Americans into giving away their money. And sadly, it could have worked had I not been more pissed, or had I been more high. After our robbery encounter my friend and I were offered multiple hard drugs on our way out of the Red light district. On our one other visit we were followed and harasses multiple times; however that time we were more prepared. I guess what I am trying to say is, some places are much more dangerous than they appear. And also, people suck a lot more than I expected.

I suppose that would be the central experience I will carry in my mind from Amsterdam. In my time there I visited many museums and art galleries, I went to a lot of the infamous smoke shops and walked around looking at prostitutes (the novelty of walking around looking at prostitutes in windows never runs out). But the adrenaline and emotions have burned that into my mind as the summation of Amsterdam. And I think it is a very good representation of the city. Surprising, scary, and simultaneously stupid.

In my next blog I am going to try and write about the differences between Austrians perspectives on cold medicine and Americans perspective on cold medicine. Which are actually drastically different from each other, much to my dismay.

What the crap is worng with these people!?

OK, so I have to print a hell of a lot of slides out for my Bueracracy class. Unfortunatly, I cannot do that, because they have made it impossible to print anything in the computer labs. Not only can I not understand what the program is asking because it is in german. But even the germans that I have asked for help cannot help me. They are just as baffled at the complete fucking stupidity as I am. Seriously though, what is wrong with these people. This is a university, it really should not be this hard. You can't buy anything here or put money on anything unless you have the special card that requires you to open an Austrian Bank account. You can't check your classes or enroll in them, because not even the administrators have any idea how to do that.

I am so freaking sick of the idiotic crap. At first I tried to say that the logic here functions differently and that everyone else knew what was going on, at least the people who could read and speak german. But after a few weeks here, I have come to realize that no one in this stupid city has any idea of what the crap is going on or what they are doing. People don't know how to get anywhere, or how to work the phones, or how to do anything! There is no logic, it is stupid logic. It is like, hey if we use this obscure company that requires everyoene to buy this one specific thing then when everyone has that one specific thing it will be really efficient. What noone aparently realizes is that no one wants to get the specific thing, so everyone is screwed and nothing functions.

And now, the guy in front of me in the computer lab is looking at porn!
Bahhhg!

No more Schnitzel!

I have been eating germanic food for too long, I want something different. Bahhg, my body cries out for Tex Mex! On the good side, I have been forgetting to eat so much that I have lost weight, perhaos the 6 pack is not as unachievable as I once believed.

This Sat, I sat in a classroom for 8 hours and learned about the economic laws of the EU. I once thought that this subject could be interesting, but I was wrong, so wrong. So, from an American perspective, here is what I think of the EU. It is so similar to the articles of federation(?) that was the first draft of the american government it is scary. Understandably all of these countries would want to retain a lot of independence while still banding together. But everyone can veto anything, i am amazed that they get anything done. It seems that the way everything is set up is designed to produce stagnation, ahh well. Basically the rest of the class was about how Europe had perfected the art of Beuracracy. Everything that was explained was so painstakingly stupid I was in awe at the amazing beuracratic art.

Aparently spring refuses to come to the great nation of Austria, it is still freaking cold. And everyone I talk to is talking about how much they are enjoying wereing their flip flops. Screw you all!! I am wearing boots, and thermal underwear, and it is still freaking cold outside!(yes I am wearing more than jsut the boots and thermal underwear.)

I watched part of terminator 3 on the TV in the common room of my floor last night. It was in german, but it sucked so bad it did not really matter. Aparently Europeans are baffled at how Schwarzenager got elected gov. of California. I tried to explain the logic behind it, then I realized how amazingly strange we Americans are also. So, here is the moral of my story, everyone in the world is crazy. It is just that some of us are slam your head into the wall crazy and others are wash you hands until they bleed crazy.

I come from the land down under!

OK, well I am not in Australia, but I am in Austria. And actuall I have been hanging out with some Australians lately. Good guys, but boy do they drink.
Ok, so I think I am beginning to wear down here. The lack of sun and heat is starting to really take its toll on me. I don't know how these people survive, it is like all they ever do is smoke and drink, and wait around. It is cold all the time, in every building, except for when it is rediculously hot and you are about to die from the heat. It is like no one ever understood the concept of room temperature. Of mediation.

Ahhg, I am just so frustrated. There is so little rhyme and reason to everything. I want to go somewhere where the sun is not silver and people are loud and funny and smile. Seriously though, how can an entire country be so freaking straight faced. Someone needs to pump laughing gass into Austria.

Aright, enough ranting. I am just really frustrated. Part of this stems from the fact that you can do so much less in one day here than you can back home. Everything moves more slowly, and every conversation takes longer. I went to the IKEA store yesterday and it took me like 6 hours to go and get back. I am ready for action, for movement. I am afriad I am going to forget what it is to be energetic.

Well, at least I have found somewhere to watch V for Vendetta when it comes out, in english. WoHoO!!

I suppose some day I shall look at this time vision blurred by the filter of memery and smile.

Fabric Softener Really Works!

So, I did my laundry yesterday and we don't have a dryer, so I had to hang up all my clothing from the big rack thing that took up all the space in my room. Well, my clothers were finally dry this morning, and I started to fold them. Wow, I have learned the power of the little fabric softener sheer I throw in the dryer. I thinkk maybe my clothes could stand on their own. Well, we live and we learn. I am going to try and find the kind of cleaning stuff that has the fabric softener in it. So, hopefully my clothes will be better next time.

Damnit, I just walked all the way down to my school to enroll in a class, and I am like 4 days early. This stupid transposing of the month and day has foiled me again. Ahh well.

OK, so I have really been wanting to write about McDonalds lately. It is such an interesting phenomen here. It is like the American Embassy on almost every street corner. And as I have been around more and more people, it seems to be a symbol of all the is American to Europeans. This is really hard to explain. It is sort of like Mcydees is the stick by which America is measured. Some of my freinds like it, and will in the same sentence tell me that they like Americans. Or some of what America stands for. Others have shown outrage at the possiblity of eating at McDonalds and explained to me that it is the reason so many Americans are fat and stupid. I am not sure if I am comfortable with my country and my culture being judged and summed up in the entity of McSmells, but such is life. If nothing else, it has been quite interesting witnessing the naried reactions to the prominent restaurant. By the way, I have only eaten there 2 times since I have been there, and both times it was not my idea to go there. So, don't start thinking I am a McSmelles addict.

I shall soon be visiting Prague with one of my closest friends, it should be a great time. If nothing else, it will be a good break from the overwhelming ass kicking the € is giving me.