some people must think i'm really weird.

Since I've been home, I've basically been a lazy ass. It's really unavoidable, being unemployed and all. Let's remedy that at some point, kay?

In the meantime of the fruitless search for work, I fill my days with internets, writing, and I'm just getting around to starting to scrapbook last year. I ordered 800 prints of photos and am just waiting on the scrapbook pages to be delivered so I can put on The O.C. and have a marathon OC and scrapbooking week (last year it was Gilmore Girls and China photos).

In that spirit, yesterday I went and did this:

I'm sure you can tell what part of it is - my ticket when I saw Harry Potter last year, but it's sitting on top of a nice little square of the red carpet which I took from the Premiere of HPDH part one last November (FAMOUS PEOPLE WALKED ON THIS. lol). A forever momento of my geekdom of which I have absolutely no regrets.

[insert gif with chicken spinning on disco dance floor with text "I regret nothing."] or that would be there if I had that gif.

In less than a month, Harry Potter will be over. Well, not quite. We still have Pottermore to look forward to, and if it's anywhere near as awesome as I'm picturing in my head, it will be AWESOME. Pottermore, I will see you in October.

filtered particles

I have a thing for "squares of sunlight" in stories. The squares of sunlight that fall in through windows onto beige carpets where cats crawl into them and bask for hours as if there's nothing they'd rather be doing than lying there. I always write them in, the squares, not necessarily the cats, and I stopped to wonder why today.

When I was growing up, I lived on the Oregon coast, which anyone can tell you, does not get a lot of sun. It's known for being rainy and dark, cloudy and windy and cold. Our house faced north-south so on those rare occasions when it was sunny, it always started in my parent's bedroom on the east side of the house. As a child, I was convinced that Sunday was the day of sun because I can't remember a single rainy Sunday. I'm sure there were, there had to be given the location, but I can't recall a single one.

On those days, especially in the summer, sometimes my mom would be in her room sewing something (and uselessly trying to encourage me to be crafty in my own sense). Their room had this light yellow curtain on the east-facing window and the sun would always stream in in big, bright patches on the carpet (it was grey not beige, but who's counting. The beige comes from living in Arizona where sun was all too plentiful). All those mornings were lovely and have apparently ingrained themselves in my memory.

So when I write them into stories, I'm writing in a moment of happiness. It might be obvious, what with the sun being metaphorical for happiness, but it's really more than that. We haven't had many sunny days lately and I should add that I've never been a huge fan but I like the rare bursts of happiness it always seemed to bring.

I think I'll go write one into the story I'm working on, as this post was all just a huge procrastination on my part.

You know what I love about Amerrca?

Pink eyeliner.

And that everything is open on Sundays. On a related note, my birthday was yesterday. I just went up to Portland and did a little shopping and had lunch. So now I'm officially 24 and living at home. UGH. Can anyone say pathetique? GIVE ME A JOB. omg.

Munchin' in Munchen (Munich)

Continuing the late-posting of trips: Munich

For our little trip, we decided to go places none of us had been (although Mad had been to Munich before), but we thought, Germany? Awesome! And Munich? Even more awesome. Beer, pretzels, Bavaria. Could it get better?

We flew there since it was the same price as a train and would take about six hours less. Our first night, we saw the glockenspiel which is apparently the 2nd worst tourist attraction in Europe after the Astronomical Clock in Prague. It's the little dancing people around a clock that goes off three times a day - 11AM, 12PM, and 5PM. I don't know why five o'clock.

And where could we go on our first night in Germany but a beer hall?

There was delicious pretzels, sauerkraut (although I'm still not a big fan), potato dumplings (omg, I must learn how to make these), and crackle! We spent most of the three days we were there drinking different beers, eating pretzels, and wandering around downtown Munich. We also took a little jaunt out to the Olympic Park and saw the swimming pool which was pretty cool.

Munich is also well-known as the place that started it all - Hitler's ascent to power. He started in a beer hall which no longer exists, and ran his headquarters from Munich for a long time. All over Munich, there are subtle little reminders of the Nazis, erased but not totally erased. Like the little golden path down one side street that marks a form of Nazi resistance by the citizens.

A little outside the city lies Dachau, Germany's first and most important concentration camp. Walking in is surreal as it's surrounded by trees and twittering birds and you think to yourself, "this doesn't seem so bad," but then the guide points out that none of this was here back in the 30s and it was all desolate landscape. 

work sets you free

I suppose if you really want ambiance, go to Dachau on a rainy, dreary day. It was obnoxiously sunny and hot when we went. We drank away the sadness that night at Englisher Garten, a very large beer garden in a huge park.

Munich is also the birthplace of the Lesbian Jacket, which I don't feel the need to explain as it's sort of an inside joke and doesn't really make sense at all unless you were there. 

Munich was super cool and people drink at 9:30 in the morning. They're even worse than in France ;]

dancing the Viennese waltz

I've been so bad at updating since I got back to the states but I'm finally going to post about one of my trips: Vienna!

Vienna was in the middle of the whole trip so we'll skip the beginning and end for now and just pretend we dropped right into Vienna.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Vienna, and there were several times where we thought that perhaps we should have done a touch more research before fumbling our way down there, but we were there and there was no excuse to do stuff.

During my whole two week sejour, the weather was beautifully sunny and at times, far too hot. This made Vienna an interesting place to be. I'd say there are about a hundred gardens in Vienna, and we spent a lot of time lazing around in them. There are also thousands of museums, but seeing as I'm not a big museum fan, it wasn't a big draw for me.

The city of Vienna is an interesting place. The city is rather large and spread out when you get down to it, but the center part is compact and mostly old palaces now converted in museums. The Hapsburgs were apparently a pretty big deal. It seems most of my history classes failed to mention them, though. Although, Marie-Antoinette was from Vienna (French connection! They're everywhere).

Vienna is also home to Austria's favorite composer(s): Strauss and Mozart, although Mozart is really from Salzburg, a story for another day. This basically means that there are statues of them around every corner. Strauss even has two while the original is under construction.

Vienna is also famous for coffee so we had to have a sit down in several cafes to try some. It also happened to be erdbeer season (aka strawberries) so I had this mountain of deliciousness:

Normally, I hate admitting that I'm a tourist, although I've gotten over this slightly in recent years (it's impossible to blend in in China, so you just have to give up), but I still like to draw the line somewhere. That line is usually those bus tours that you seem to find in every overly-touristy city. However, since I was not alone and we really had no idea what was in Vienna, I got talked into going. It was quite fun!

Notice our little foto-bomber driver in the background.

We saw all the major sights including a giant church in the middle of town, the Danube river which is blue but not as blue as the song leads you to believe, and lots of horse-drawn tourist carriages.

Highlights of Vienna:

1. The hot dog with cheese baked into the middle. Yummm.

2. European coca cola. So much better than others. Maybe because it comes in a glass bottle.

3. The crazy guy with a trumpet

4. Waiting five minutes for a segway tour to actually move so we could watch

5. Trying schnitzel finally and deciding it's totally not worth it

In conclusion! Vienna is cool but I think I prefer Munich. Perhaps I'll blog that next.

crazy trumpet guy.

je prends les moules frites, s'il vous plait

My last day in France. It's bittersweet. I want to go home but at the same time, I don't want to leave France. I don't feel like I'm quite ready.

For my last meal in France, I decided to have something that truly belongs to le nord. I had moules frites!

Moules frites are traditionally northern French - mussels and fries. Yum yum deliciousness! I'll be sad to leave this place. I know most people think the nord is just gloomy and wet and boring but I found it to be fun and yeah, a little wet, but the people are nice and the food is good, and I get to practice my French on a daily basis as opposed to someone living in Paris.

Tomorrow it's two more trains and one more plane, and then I'll be in Iceland for a day or two. I will hopefully be actually adding blogs of my past few trips now that I've got the pictures on my computer, so look for those in the coming weeks.

Otherwise, it's finally back home to Oregon to attempt to find me a real job and start a real life. Oh God. Real world, are you ready? I think I should be the one answering that question.

"It's wrong no matter why you kill, no matter whom you kill and no matter who does the killing."

I've mentioned it before, but my senior year of college, I took a gen-ed class called "Eastern European Film in a Social Context" in which we watched many films, all dating from 1918 (the Russian revolution) to the mid-nineties (Balkan wars). Lately, as I've been traveling around Eastern Europe, it's made me think of a lot of these movies and today I went on a hunt to find all the titles. I want to share them with you in the hopes that maybe you'll watch a few of them.

Before the Rain – Baltic, Macedonia

No Man's Land – Baltic, Serbia/Bosnia

Ivan's Childhood - Russian

Kolya - Czechoslovakia

Brother - Russian

Burnt By The Sun - Russian

Closely Watched Trains – Czechoslovakia

Daisies – Czechoslovakia

Knife in the Water – Poland

The Mother – Russia

Potemkin – Russian

Tito and Me – Yugoslavia

Children of Glory – Hungarian

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days – Romania

A Short Film About Killing – Poland

Man of Marble – Poland

Alice - Czechoslovakia

They're all in their native languages with English subtitles if you can find them (my University library has a lot of them so they're out there - even a few are online as I had to watch them there for class).

Which ones do I recommend? You should be aware that several of these could be very triggering in the violence/gore category, and of course, it does help the know the social context before watching. Still, there's no excuse not to watch these. 

Those I don't recommend for the squeamish (but are really excellent films due to this) are "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" as it pertains to abortion and there's a rather gruesome shot near the end of a fetus. Also, "A Short Film About Killing" is, as the title indicates, a short film about killing and is rumored to have the longest death scene of any film ever made (7 minutes and you see it all), but it's a great social commentary on death. Note: at one point, the entire class of 200 people gasped in sync it was that ... shocking, I guess I could say.

Aside from those two, I'd recommend "Closely Watched Trains," "Tito and Me," "Brother," and "No Man's Land." Those were some of my favorites. 

As I wandered around Budapest today, I thought to myself (much as I had when I went to Prague), that when I was born, no one even dreamed of going to Hungary. Nobody could. The Soviet Block was still intact and Eastern Europe was closed. Today, I went to the House of Terror, former home to the secret police of Hungary and location of brutal actions (it's now a museum dedicated to this fact including the prisons in the basement where people were kept and tortured, and one very poignant room in which there stands a singular pillar with a noose at the top). Just twenty years ago, Budapest was under this constant threat and in certain places, you can still see the bullet holes from the 1956 Revolt that was quickly quelled by Soviet troops and thousands died. (watch "Children of Glory" if you'd like to know more).

Sometimes I still can't believe how recent our history is and how countries are still waging wars over insignificant differences (watch "No Man's Land" for that one).

I guess I'll just leave this list here and hope someone watches one of those movies. But don't watch "Potemkin" unless you enjoy silent movies.