THE END IS NEAR

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!


So i depart for America tomorrow. WOW. 3 months has flown by. The big question still lingers in the air "what am i going to do when i return??" Well, fortunately i am able to (despite all logical reasoning, but i suppose logical reasoning has never been my thing) postpone my return to the reality that is of the common world by engaging in the following activities.

1. driving to Indianapolis with my kiki la rue to see one of my favorite bands, gogol bordello!

this song is very appropriate for this time in my life.
because i want an excuse to post these pictures from their video i worked on...


the man himself. eugene hutz.

elijah wood & i hung out that day. crazy.

and here is the video i worked on.

OK ANYWAYS. BACK ON SUBJECT. Thanks for letting me relive those moments. haha

2. Immediately after the concert my brother and sister are picking me up and we are driving to Tempe, Arizona! My brother finally found a job..unfortunately i will not see him often, but it will be nice to have someone to visit out there and I'm so happy he found work. he has been searching for a while. i hope he is happy out there!

3. i decided after Tempe that i will go visit my best friend in the whole entire world, JORIE in Portland as i will be sooo close and it will only cost me 90 more to fly there for a week rather than flying back to Indiana. also, when i get situated and find a job in this crazy world, it will be so much more challenging to find the time to take off and the 500 plane ticket. so that is that.

4. then i return to Indiana for a week, and i drive to NYC for the Macy's thanksgiving day parade with my dear friend, Jayme, and we will see some of our big apple friends. This trip i am a little more nervous about as i will reaaaallly have no money. I'm considering staying there for the holidays if i can find a job, as i know i will make good money during the holidays there compared to Indiana. but i dont know. we will see about all that.

so what have i been doing since leaving Rome?

well i went to courtelay, Switzerland to visit my college buddy, neuman, who is traveling Europe as well. it was really great to see a familiar face! he was working at a home where these fantastic people lived. they were building a theater in their home and a gypsy band played that evening. it was great! all the people that lived there were so wonderful and the children were so interesting! they were learning trapeze and salsa and martial arts. so much cooler than i! they also grew all their own food and only used local products. i think it is the best way to live!

so after courtelay, i took a train to Zurich and walked around. beautiful beautiful place. but so so so expensive. people have told me before that Switzerland is expensive, but i had no idea it would be THAT expensive. we are talking 15 USD for a value meal at burger king. and the trains! ugh, i couldn't get out of there fast enough!

i took the train to Munich, which also is a really neat city. unfortunately, i was only there for the evening as i left to tour the Dachau concentration camp memorial in the morning. that was an intense experience. i had to carry my big old pack the entire time, which i think took away from the experience a little, but not too much.

it was really interesting to see how a society can turn into such a place. it was interesting to see some of the parallels of American society today. i dont think it will ever ever ever get that bad again, but there are some similarities.
of all the terrible things i rediscovered for some reason the fact that they fit 400 people into a room designed for 50 boggled my mind the most. ugh. absolutely insanity at that time.

after Dachau, i took the train back to mainz, where i started. i got in around 1am. it was so good to see malina and hanna!! the following day i did absolutely nothing and it was WONDERFUL!! it is exhausting traveling and felt nice to just relax.

we went to Amsterdam for 3 days. met up with neuman. what a beautiful city. certainly not as i pictured it in my head, as marijuana and prostitution are legal. but you would never know those things existed there if you were just walking around. very classy! the weather was gloomy, but we had a great time. i had a space cake and felt the effects for about a day and a half. it is not a comfortable feeling being elevated for that amount of time!

on our return back to mainz, we watched spooky movies, went to german karaoke, and ate a lot of delicious german foods!

i'm uploading my photos to my flickr account, so i hope to do a photo post soon.

thanks for reading! hope you are doing well <3