looking back

06.14.2010 continued

Dubrovnik, Croatia

I listened to a fever you can’t sweat out, pretty odd, mr. bad guy, I’m like a virgin losing a child and some other album which is escaping me at the moment. Got through border control, bought our tickets to split for tomorrow, took out a bunch of kuna, bought our local bus tickets and waited for the first bus to the pile gate. A friend of the bus driver helped us to the hostel, we checked in, changed, and headed into grad, the old city around eleven. We wandered the labyrinthine streets until 2:30, drank peach tea and split a fresh cheese pie before heading back for a much needed nap. We slept for two and a half hours until our roommates finally arrived. We thought it was going to be a group of high schoolers (since that is what we were told when we checked in), but it turned out that we were staying with a couple who recently graduated from duke. I’ve met so many Americans! It is crazy, I’ve never met this many Americans before, and so many are from the south. I wonder if it is a regional pattern or simply a result of the economy…? Either way, I think I am going to start taking notes so that maybe I can write some kind of ethnography on backpackers once we actually get on the road.

06.15.2010

Split, Croatia

So, we are now in split. I love Croatia, but I can’t wait to get away from the coast…well, mainly the ferries. I guess I didn’t realize that split was such a party city, but the disco trains to Zagreb should have been an indication. I wish I could meet other backpackers without embarrassing conversations. I wish I was traveling alone, with billy, or not at all. I just want to save money at this point, which maybe will be easier once we get out of Croatia, but it is hard right now. I feel like I am spending money for nothing. Maybe I should stick to cruises from now on – you always know where you are going to sleep, you can bring all the clothes that you want and you don’t have to do any of the planning. I don’t have the nerves or the heart to lose myself in traveling anymore…not like I used to. Traveling used to be an escape, a way to suspend reality, but I am finally happy with my reality - why would I want to suspend it? There is a street performer by the port right now, between the shops and the water and he is awful, but he started and ended his performance with ‘all you need is love.’ Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I just want to be with my fella. I don’t care about getting wasted and flirting with random foreign guys, no strings attached. I’m tired of settling, fighting the future, trying to forget who I am and where I’ve been. I don’t want to fit into some mold or be the perfect backpacker, or rack up another seventy facebook friends – I want to comit to my life and actual invest in it for a change. I am done running away and this is the last time to take a trip like this. I will have another eight stamps on my passport, a list of experiences with no one in particular to impress and not much else to show for it. I am excited about some of the things we will see, but I am more worried than ever and it is all because I have someone I’m obligated to look out for, someone who is also holding me back. Maybe a small part of me still wants to be self-destructive, but I don’t even have the freedom to indulge that side anymore. I guess I am finally growing up…this is it. There is a little children’s choir singing ‘we are the world’ right now which is making it increasingly hard to focus. Until tomorrow, journal.

06.16.2010

Split, Croatia

So, the days are starting to flying by again. I can’t believe that yesterday I spent the morning Dubrovnik, took a bus through Bosnia and Croatia to get to split and then spent the evening exploring . after we check in at split hostel siesta fiesta, I got on skype with billy and talked about all my concerns: I guess I can’t help but get depressed even when I’m in fucking Croatia. It comes and goes in waves and I guess I distance myself from my own emotions a little, the waves of sadness can be cathartic. There isn’t a thing I can do about the, but at least they allow me the cycling of seeing things anew. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a dullard, but then I realize that my character, my individuality and my intellect are all a package deal – the clarity, the connections wouldn’t exist without the counterbalance of the sadness. We are laying on some rocks on some beach the woman running the hostel recommended to us, staring out at the crystal clear water. It is so quiet and so peaceful, finally away from the city. The water is a perfectly transparent turquoise and I can see down to the rocks with the same clarity of looking into a mirror.

06.17.2010

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

We arrived in Sarajevo about an hour and a half ago. The bus from split took seven and a half hours and about ten minutes in I was already hating it. I sipped on water and tried to eat an apple and ended up throwing up said apple into a quart-sized ziplock bag after we passed the Bosnian border an hour and a half into the trip. I really thought I was going to hurl on the borders officer, but luckily I had the nerve to hold it back. We kept having to stop because the traffic cops didn’t want anyone on the roads in the rain so it took longer than it should have, but I have a good feeling about this city. Sometimes, there is something inexplicable and magical (that is so cheesy, but it just…elicits this feeling I can’t quite explain) about a city, a place that transcends a two-dimensional representation on a map and this is one of those places. Good morning, Sarajevo.

06.19.2010

Belgrade, Serbia

Between keeping notes on the backpackers I’ve been meeting, trying to plan and coordinate plans and babysitting, I still haven’t had time to write. Maybe next time.

06.20.2010

Belgrade, Serbia

I’m stuck inside a hazy dream and I can’t wake up. I know people go away for longer than this all the time, but I can’t do it. I’m not programmed for this, not built to these specifications. Home is feeling less and less like reality, but none of this feels any more real than home. I’m stuck somewhere in the middle and my feet are propelling me but they don’t feel like my own. My stomach is suspended and uneasy and my heart is tens of thousands of miles away. I miss my home, whatever that means, maybe I don’t have a home anymore, but I am ready to snap back into reality if that is the case. I am sitting next to the st. sava temple in Belgrade, Serbia and it doesn’t seem real. This kind of thing used to make me feel alive, but lately it just leaves me feeling empty.