Finding My Way - part 3

Youth ... it's a funny thing. Some people yearn for those days of old when life was much less complicated and when the brows were less furrowed from the stress of responsibility and the need to exist in a money-hungry world. Other folks recall their glory days and the way it "used to be". On the other side of the coin, there are also those that are more than happy to have seen the arse-end of their decade or two of trying to discover who they were to be, whether that be due to morally incompetent decisions or from the tortures of not fitting in with the "it" crowd in school. For the most part, I am a potpourri of all of the above. I do wholeheartedly wish I shouldered a backpack much earlier in life, but the lessons learned through the choices I made in lieu of going abroad have had their place. Some days I miss a handful of friends from the high school days and their impact on my life (may you rest in peace, Susan), but there is no chance in hell I would ever wish to repeat my teen years. I had some fun then, no doubt ... but once was enough! There is one aspect I do miss, though ... I'd hock a liver to the black market organ trade to have a spine that didn't crackle like a bag of corn chips every time I stretch or bend down to pick something up. Getting older truly is a pain!

To claim that I am in the peak of physical condition would be a stretch, but I have aged relatively well, if I do say so myself. Being blessed with a decent metabolism that didn't really start slowing until I was 35 has kept me from the curse of many others in proximity to my age that also enjoy the magical brew of combining hops and grains into liquid goodness ... the dreaded beer gut. I do have to make a bit more of an effort these days to keep the love handles at bay, but most days I would not be ashamed to shed my shirt in public ... at least physique wise ... though when it comes to my pasty white (nay, alabaster) complexion, you best avert your eyes in bright sunlight as the glare may just burn your retinas out. So, even though my gut doesn't stretch to the point where I would only be able to see my willy via a complex arrangement of funhouse mirrors and strategic positioning, there are other issues: The down side of becoming more learned at certain technical trades or any other profession that requires you to be parked for hours in front of a desk is that you have to really be mindful of your back and posture.

After moving to Czech Republic, teaching became my bread-making activity for a few years, and one thing that teaching requires you to do is move about. It's a theatre stage up there in front of your captive audience when disseminating the virtues of grammatically correct English, and you have to keep up a certain momentum ... back and forth to the blackboard ... through the students to hear them better or see what they have written (or to sneak in that subtle glance down the low-cut top of the busty brunette three seats back as you stand over her desk to ensure she understands the assignment in the workbook) ... and you must also animate yourself by using as much body language as humanly possible to get your point across. I didn't speak the slightest hint of Czech in those first few months, so how else was I supposed to explain things? There are moments when you must howl like a monkey, gesture like an angry New York Italian or contort your frame and hands into unholy forms that the Cirque du Soleil would be jealous of just to make yourself understood.

What I am trying to say here is that teaching English never offered me the chance to sit that much in the five years I could, literally, stand it. After what seemed like an eternity of attempting to remove myself from that life of repetition, boredom and the punishment of being stuck with the inevitable class of non-caring teens who constantly sat texting on their phones more and more often, as the mobile phone rose in accessibility and lowered in price, instead of giving the slightest of shits about being taught English by a native, I took a stab at proofreading and correcting texts. It was a natural progression, and from my English composition background and the constant harassment by students to give them a hand (for free, of course) with something they were working on, I felt I already had enough talent in this field ... and I also felt I should just as well get paid for it! This wasn't any more exciting or fulfilling, but it did get me away from the vacant-eyed zombie audience who only seemed to take the course because their parents required them to be, in all essence, babysat for another hour or so till they returned home from work. This could also be said for the business clients I was instructing, too. It was at this phase of my existence that my once over-active metabolism decided to bail on me. Life was now in a chair in front of a computer screen, and I was no longer on-stage executing live-action performance art. I was definitely ecstatic to no longer have to stare into to a sea of lifeless, non-caring eyes, but honestly, I believe I have shrunk about three centimetres over the years sitting before that four-legged particleboard beast of burden created solely to support a screen of flickering LEDs and a slab of plastic squares imprinted with numbers, archaic symbols and the letters of multi-lingual alphabets. Where once I had stood proud, a giver of language with my head in the air, there now hunched a creature twisted into something akin to Igor perching over the monstrous cadaver lying upon his master's table. Ok, ok ... I exaggerate, but it sure as hell feels that way some days. It is almost to the point where if I don't take a few moments before bed each night stretching, downward dogging, cat-cowing or hiring the Spanish Inquisition to strap me to a rack, then the next morning more-or-less means I need to be rolled out from under the sheets and gently propped upright by a system of ropes and pulleys. Remember the scene in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises after Bruce gets the ever-loving crap kicked out of him by Bane? That entire prison / back therapy segment is based on my true life story, don't you know? But I do twist and stretch when I have the correct mindset, and that does help a lot.

The newest curse of time came about just recently, much to my dismay. In preparation for the upcoming hike, a few of the local lads and I made the effort to get out on a gorgeous Saturday and do a leisurely 25 km walk from Olomouc to the town of Litovel (aka the Venice of Czech Republic ... or more importantly for my friends and I, the home of the Litovel brewery ... yes, one of the goals was to do a healthy walk concluded with drinking beer ... eh, we are only human). The landscape was flat, the paths paved in many parts and the speed comfortable. For some reason, I chose not to wear the boots I would be taking to Turkey, but instead donned my standard, worn out trekking trainers with the rapidly diminishing sole. Hey, I never said I was a glimmering beacon of unwavering intelligence. The journey was made in just over 4.5 hours as we were in no rush and a few happy snaps from the digital lens took place, but a creeping, growing, gnawing pang of "hey, that's not right" began to rise from the middle arch of my right foot as we entered Litovel. Rapidly, the sharp pain increased, and within a span of 15 minutes went from "Ok, this I can just walk out, because my feet aren't used to the distance" to "Cut it off!! Give me a hacksaw now, just make the pain go away! Anyone with a piranha? Please! Just let me stick my foot into a piranha tank and let them make quick work of it!" I went from jolly hiker to hobbling old fart in a span of 300 metres. "What the holy fuck-nuggets just happened?" I thought (really ... that's how I speak to myself when stunned by a situation). It couldn't have been a fracture or bruise from stamping down hard on a particularly pointy stone, because I recalled no such occurrence that day or any day previously. And I hadn't been round tap dancing elephants nor been afflicted with the stigmata either. Luckily we were at our destination, and the rest, food and beer would be well enjoyed ... but ... after our lunch break (hosted by a lovely woman who seemed extremely giddy with having non-locals back in her restaurant and town after a long winter), we stood to leave, and I nearly needed my other four travelling companions to carry me to the brewery, the pain was so bad. No matter the torture, I was determined to see it through, so stumble along I did to our final objective, where it turned out we were 15 minutes earlier than opening time for the brewery's on-site pub. Drat!!

A bit of a side note: A few in our motley crew, including myself, had been to the Litovel brewery before; once in the summer for two of us, and then to their open brewery yearly celebrations for the remainder of us. Each of those time, Litovel has blessed us with either unique batches of beer goodness available only at their headquarters or at least a variety of their brands within the pub. This is what we were questing for on our excursion there that day. But doomed to disappointment we were, for not a single, flavourful variant of liquid bread was to be found aside from the standard available at any bar or shop throughout the country. After perching in front of the gates to the facilities and appearing as desperate as heroin junkies outside a clinic, we soon discovered it had all been for naught. Double drat!!

The day was still sunny and warm, and we made the best out of our situation by settling upon the lawn before the pub clinking our glasses together in celebration for a splendid time and drinking our nice, cool, though standard, pints, and we enjoyed a humorous conversation of past deeds and perverse jokes as we waited for the bus to return to Olomouc, but we all, in our own way, came to realise something, though most only admitted it in the days to come: After a winter of being relatively idle, we may have overdone it just a smidgeon. We all pretended to put on a brave face, and though my abused feet suffered more that the others and was a source of amusement as I was forced to stumble along accompanying every step with verbal outcries of "ow, ow, ow", everyone else eventually dropped a slight hint making reference to their aching hips or knees or feet. Three of the five in our gang have youth on their side and were only affected by the past few months of cold and lack of impetus to do too much physically. Myself and one other had the years behind us. Three years ago, I was hiking paths in Petra, Jordan, hopping castle stones in Syria and zigzagging along trails in the Caucasus without the slightest of aches ... but that was three years ago, and my ageing limbs just don't automatically function in that "get up and go" manner like they used to before. All in all, I know I need some training before this walk through Turkey, and that was the main reasoning behind our outing from Olomouc to Litovel, but my youthful thoughts (and failed judgement call on wearing better shoes) forgot to take into consideration the maturity of my body, and we pushed it further than what it was accustomed to. My actions at times portray me as the immortal Peter Pan, but I am learning the painful way that this is far from the truth. I refuse to give up, slow to a crawl or don a tweed blazer and spend my afternoons in the park feeding the pigeons and playing draughts, but I do need to respect my increasing number of years and realise that there are certain adjustments to my life that have to be accounted for. This discovery is along the same shelf of realisation as how my many moons have altered the way alcohol affects me presently: I can still drink like a rockstar ... I just sure as hell don't recover the next day like one!

To be continued ...

Finding My Way - part 2

I despise buying airline tickets ... a month in advance ... on-line. Inevitably, the online registration process for reservation adds yet another load of crap to my inbox. News of new airline routes, summer sales, changes in regulations, reminders of the fact that "Hey, look where we fly, but you probably don't have the time or funds to go to when we discount our prices!" Bastards. Also, filling out the online reservation is paramount to applying for medical coverage or joining the Freemasons. The barrage of questions is one turnoff (Do you want insurance? Do you need to check any luggage? Do you wish to rent a car at your destination? Do you like films about gladiators?), and the code-like formatting that some of your details has to be in invariably never goes right the first 3 or 4 times (please enter a contact number; country code followed by a space, then change the font, make the first 3 digits in Roman numeral, double space, put your computer on standby for exactly 3.47 minutes, come back and enter 3 more digits in Arabic, get bled by leaches and complete the number afterwards ... and then it still gives you an extremely vague warning: "One of the fields has not been correctly filled. Please check the 27 places designated with a red asterisk"). After you finally decrypt the Da Vinci Code and click confirm, the server always crashes, leading you to go to your banking details and pray that you didn't get billed for the first erroneous booking before starting the entire 3-hour process once again. After all this, there is Murphy's Law. No matter when you search for or buy a ticket, there was or will be a better deal that pisses you off to no end. You look up prices one day, think "hey, that's not so bad, but I'll confirm tomorrow", come back the next day to see that the cost has doubled ... or ... you find a deal, buy the ticket and, two days later, the airline amazingly drops a "once in a lifetime deal" to the exact destination you want to go. Bastards! Obviously, there is also the concern that any time you reserve something a month or more in advance, a situation will arise and change your entire plans. Sickness, death in the family, job offer, Russian invasion (or US invasion for that matter), raging case of crabs ... you know, typical stuff ... life! I am parting with cash, so I am already stressed. Why does the process need to be made haemorrhoid inducing as well?

So, the flight tickets for the trek have been purchased. Our route will take us from Olomouc to Budapest by train for the first day, then off on the low-cost, purple and pink Hungarian Wizz Air to Istanbul the next. With only three weeks to attempt as much of 509 km as possible along the Lycian Way by foot, I doubt we will take even one night in Istanbul upon arrival. Depending on the final decision for our starting point (Hisarcandir in the east or Ölüdeniz in the west), we may as well just get off the plane and hop a bus so as to get right into the thick of it. This is not to say I wouldn't mind some time in Constantinople ... I mean, Istanbul (thank you, They Might Be Giants, for that song, which not only stays in your head forever, but was probably more information than we were taught under US scholastic curriculum), but one day is no justice to give a city with so much to offer. I would prefer to miss it all together than plant a flag to stake my claim of visitation status after a 12-hour sojourn. Overnights locked in a hostel and layovers at airports do not count as having the ability to tick another place off my list of countries or cities traversed, though I will state that I "have passed through" if given the chance.

Alas, the gateway to the East will have to wait till another day ... but I am not embarking on this excursion to slink about large cities filled with people, cafés, museums and wi-fi spots. I am going to breathe once again and to remember the days when my father used to take my sister and I up to the North Georgia mountains to get away from all the encroaching materialism of home ownership and monotonous weekends filled with lawn mowing, car washing and TV watching ... and to escape reality for a brief blink of the eyes.

To be continued ... 

Finding My Way - part 1

Oh, to still have all my hair!
Prague ca. 1999

I'm a wee bit scared. Anxiety attacks at night, even. After a few months of daydreaming and mulling things over, a good friend of mine, Mitch, has finally talked me into doing a long-distance hike. He has experience at these things, which I am grateful for, and I am well in need of a chance to disconnect from the Internet, TV, computer ... and just life. Unplug. Not spiritually ... just to remember the outdoors ... and to travel again. It has been a long, dry spell (or wet spell, as things are in reality in Central Europe during winter). That is not what keeps me from a restful sleep, though. Far from it. It's not the 509 km that the upcoming trek entails. This is the Lycian Way in Turkey! Planned out in 1999 and now a well-marked trail for both the hearty and those that get their luggage shipped daily from refuge to refuge by bus whilst they meander unencumbered with local guides. It's not the wild camping that we plan to do or even the possibility of scorpions stinging me in the nards as I crouch for a wilderness poo. This route has the possibility for accommodation, food and water throughout 85 % of its length along the Mediterranean coastline. What churns the blood through my veins with a pressure bordering on the same degree as to require Scotty from Star Trek to scream: "She canny take ne more, Captain! She's gonny blow!!" are the ramifications of the daily grind when I return ... or, should I say, the damage that the grind could do to me whilst I am away. I may be removing myself from the machine, but the pistons and gears will stay in perpetual motion no matter what I may do.

You see, I, like many others, am self-employed; doing what I have to do to get by in this life abroad. I could have done the office life ... the 9-5 ... I had that before. But there was always something missing, and I never knew about that until I wandered beyond the confines of the US of A and stayed at my first non-YHA hostel back in 1995. The Inverness Student Hotel in Inverness, Scotland was that defining moment, for better of for worse, that altered the fabric of space and time for me (ok ... it wasn't that religious of an experience, but it did start the process of opening my eyes to a larger world). Here were people enjoying the life of a transient. No one place to call home; no four walls of a cubicle to ensnare them. Those working at the hostel were Australian or Canadian; people who had left behind the comfort of their families and bed and the opportunity to earn a decent wage with health care and social security for a low-paying, temporary job on the move. This is what interested me! How do they do this? Why? And then, as the years went by, and as the stupid mistakes I made taught me a lesson or two piled up, I found something else of interest: people were damned interesting! I loved the sights, tastes and tough-love embrace of Scotland, and in those first few years, Ireland, Germany, France and Holland kept my enthusiasm as erect as a porn star being delicately tended to by a skilled 'fluffer' ... but ... I couldn't get enough of the mass of interesting live bodies that filled all these landscapes and architectural structures never seen before in the likes of East Coast America. Here were people that were only as distantly removed as the individual states in America, but from one border to the next, they had completely contrasting lives, food, drink, buildings and outlooks. At that time, before the EURO came into force, every country had their own currency ... and as for languages, well, Czech is not German ... for fuck's sake, some people would say that Scottish isn't even listed as being remotely English (especially at a West Highland pub after a few drinks)! In the US, we Southerners may speak a bit slower than our northern brothers, but it is close enough to be understood a majority of the time. Our big difference is supermarkets ... Piggly Wiggly in the South, Wegmans in the North. Outside of this and the speed and manner of which we say the same words ... not much else that is that major. I was in awe of Europe and this new, wider world I had entered, and I wanted nothing more than to stay and see ... to experience more. So I adapted, became a chameleon ... a jack of all trades. There was no other choice. I watched other North American travellers scurrying about with their daddy's credit card and their idea of: "Hey, my Eurail Pass put me into Berlin one night and then out to Paris the next. That's two 'countries' I have explored!" Australians were slightly better, though, being able to work legally in the UK for a certain amount of time and getting the chance to get involved in the culture to a larger degree, but I did notice an alarmingly large portion of them moving to places like Edinburgh and then surrounding themselves with other Australians at Aussie pubs watching Aussie cricket or rugby matches every chance they could get or having friends post them care packages of Tim Tams and Vegemite (which I fell in love with and stole every chance I could get ... nothing beats a morning breakfast of toasted bread covered in butter and salty yeast spread, followed by a coffee slurped through a melting chocolate biscuit). They moved countries, but not their surroundings. Of course this is a major generalisation, and there are some grand exceptions to the rule, but you will notice this more often than you care to.

If I wanted to learn something more than just the prices of beer and where to go for an overly-taken photo, I needed to stay in a country longer than one night surrounded by other travellers staking their claim to a new country via a vomit-inducing hangover or sexual conquest due to lack of inhibitions because the world back home would never know of your 'summer of love'. This is not to say I did not enjoy a night out with kindred spirits nor to say that I did not try my best to score with the flirtatiously drunken university girl (whom I usually lost out to a Scotsman for, with his damned "Alrigh, luv ... you look fookin' gorgeous, you do", spoken in a broad Glaswegian accent. The underpants just melted off many a slightly tipsy Canadian or American lassie with that 'oh, so romantic' line, for some reason). The question remained: How to stay in Europe longer than my rapidly decreasing credit card limit and limited stay US passport would allow me? Scrubbing toilets and making beds at hostels in exchange for a bunk in the staff quarters and some food helped staunch the bleeding of cash, but I was still nowhere near knowing what made the locals tick (or mutter, or whinge and moan). Then, whilst hitching through Germany and coming to the end of my funds, I ran into a fellow Yank, who suggested we make a last weekend in Prague before succumbing to the real world of jobs and finances once more. Luck would have it that the hostel in Prague needed bed-makers for the next two weeks ... so my weekend was extended in a new country. Something magical happened next. Germany was a struggle for me. I enjoyed the sights and meeting some new friends, but the language has never been for me. Not only is "Ich liebe dich" just the complete opposite of sensual (apologies to all my German-speaking friends), but staunch German regulations had no place for a transient American looking for "black work" and getting paid "under the table". But after I was in Czech Republic a few days, people noticed I could pronounce this new-to-me Slavic language without sounding atrociously like most Hollywood actors portraying the stereotypical, evil Soviet killer (Da, Ameerican capitoolist peeg ... pree-pair to dye. Ok, comrades ... shoot heem!). And the history was so unlike anything I had ever even remotely heard about in our Mississippi high school history classes, which usually amounted to one brief week of studying about the Nazi blitz into Poland and the Soviets taking control, after good ol' Uncle Sam saved the day, of course, and wanting to destroy our democratic way of life ... that was as close to Central Europe as it ever got for us! It was heroin for me ... and I wanted more. My drug buddy came in the form of an Australian girl working at the hostel with me; she had discovered a connection in the form of the Czech Republic's desperation for native speakers of English ... and even better for them if they didn't care about earning anything more than cheap wine and potent plum brandy. As I was constantly (and still am) without cash anyway, and as I discovered I didn't have to do this new profession only in Prague, I became a teacher of English conversation to kids in a small city in the east of the country called Uherské Hradiště. Though it took me over a month just to learn how to say the name of my new abode, I was granted a working visa and was left in charge of the language skills of budding minds ... with a profession I had no clue about, save that I used to get decent marks in English in my school days. But I was in ... and a new path had presented itself.

To be continued ...