Paris: A beautiful shithole, and I mean that in the best way possible. I had a lot of fun with Kylie in Paris, there were some ups and downs in the trip, a visit to the hospital, and we were chased by a large man holding string. This part of the trip was nice to have someone around to make a fool out of myself while in the company of another person. It is much funnier in situations when another person is there. The bread and food in Paris, specifically in the open air markets is absolutely fantastic. I wish that people in the states would learn how to fucking make bread. It seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do it the same way, but then again we are talking about a country defined by it's bread and food for a couple hundred years... so, i guess i'll forgive the morons in the states for not figuring it out. Paris has the train system, TRULY, figured out. You can go anywhere you want at any time, and it is fantastic. Chicago really needs to step it up a notch, for reeeaaaal!
Amsterdam- I am not sure whether to start on Amsterdam with that it is a very romantic and beautiful city, or with that traveling alone is maybe one of the most life changing eperiences possible. In Amsrterdam the first night I got completely high school high stoned and also got some sort of flu or food poisoning. I was up the entire night, stoned out of my mind, throwing up. I was completely and utterly freaking out... and was glad when it was over (the illness). I wavered back and forth in my lone travels between feeling completely free and able to do anything as I pleased and the feeling of being absolutely and overwhelmingly alone. In Amsterdam, I laughed, I cried, I was happy and scared, free and claustraphobic, I went through the entire spectrum of emotions in the short days that I was there. I went to the Anne Frank House, which was a very good experience that struck me kindof intensely. I met some people from New York that were also in Amsterdam travelling, and we went to some coffeeshops and bars and had a genuinely amazing time partying till about 5 a.m. I also met a conspiracy theory freak from Wales who smoked and smoked and smoked and the theories got more and more entangled and ridiculous, and it quite possibly could have been the single most interesting person I have met in my life...
On the last day, I had to check out of my hostel at 11 a.m. and my train didn't leave until 8 p.m.. I couldn't find the lockers in the train station to lock up my stuff, so I was carrying my giant blue backpack through the city the whole day, and around 3 got too annoyed to do anything and went to the train station and bought and read a book. The only book in English in this store other than really cheesy novels by authors like Danielle Steele, was Memories of my Meloncholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's a short novella about age and dying and really about living... and for whatever reason made me completely flip out while I was sitting there freeying my ass off on the train platform which is outside. I had this whacked anxiety attack about getting old and dying without doing the things I wanted to do all along, and at the same time realizing that I am doing the things I always wanted to do and it sometimes doesn't even matter. Life is short... it's really fucking short and you really have to say and do the things that cross your mind, no matter how crazy, because if you don't you come to some point and look back in complete regret, not of the things that you did that make you look like a fool, not of the things that brought you to your wit's end and made you quite possibly clinically mad, but the things you never did because the whole time you were thinking that it might or might not end up badly and in trying to avoid some pain or humiliation, you just went with the grain in the cycle of the world and did absolutely nothing. Also, I have come to the conclusion that in my life, I am completely satisfied and content being at what might seem like rock bottom, in this raw vulnerable depression that hits most people at some point in their life time. Here is something I wrote in my journal when I was alone in Amsterdam at a cafe eating the food that made me so ill:
"I am completely content and fulfilled being depressed and feeling unfulfilled. Strange maybe, but it's true. Time passes so quickly when everything is wonderful, and while I can try and trick my mind to thinking that time passes quickly when I am completely at my wit's end, unsatisfied, and lonely, time passes ever so slowly and painfully. But, along with this, I don't see a problem to be so dreadfully aware of myself and the time, each second and minute wavering past my soul with currants of complete emptiness. Without this flow of time from occasion to occasion, the soul ( and I say soul not in the religious sense, but the mind, body, thoughts, sentiments embodied all in one aura or magnetic field or body... soul...) becomes sickenly over sweetened with contentness and joy, that like a body on too often the same antibiotic, it becomes immune to the remedy of pain. And then, without the remedy of pain, comes the absolute mundaneness of life when one is always happy"
There you have it, the inside look on Heather's brain.
From Amsterdam, I took a train to München to visit Jack, whom I haven't spent time with in a very long time. It was nice to see someone and remember the good ol days with for a while, and also to drink multiple litres of beer with and have an amazing time with for a couple of days. From the beautiful city and stay in München, I came back to Nürnberg, also beautiful but not quite as large, and have had a great time here as well. Saturday when I returned I hung out with Juni and Iris, had dinner and smoked and drank wine and talked and laughed for a long time. Yesterday I went to the countryside with Juni, Iris and Iris' son Jim, to a Franconian restaurant for an amazing lunch and a walk in the countryside which was splendid and beautiful. Now, here I am typing on a computer and done and here are some pictures for you all to look at...... bye for now.
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