Never mind.

My brother bailed on the trip, but that's ok. It's 2 months away. I have just booked four nights in a Budapest hostel.

I think it's interesting, the way my brain is handling the anticipation. I guess it can't get a good grip on how fucking cool the whole thing will be, so instead, I've been cycling through the most minute worries:
-should I pack this skirt, or that skirt. Or both. Or any skirts.
-Should I hold off reading that Nabokov book until my trip, and take that with me? Or should I take that book of short stories?
-Which flavor of Clif bars should I take with me? mmm.


What I really should be doing, though, is reading about Budapest, and Zagreb, and Vienna, and Istanbul. And Berlin. Booking various flights and rail passes. Big picture, important stuff.


Berlin has emerged as the anchor, the centerpiece of my trip for a few reasons.
First, because I have a very, incredibly, ridiculously generous friend there, an Australian expat. He is letting me use his apartment as my base, and aims to show me not what it's like to visit Berlin, but to move there and live there (This is no joke. This is a free place to stay in Berlin for like, a few WEEKS. Unless he gets sick of me and throws me out).
Second, because the idea of the place appeals to me. It is still cheap, still emerging. Interesting people are still moving there from all over. English is widely spoken. It sort of appeals to me in the same way that Detroit appeals to me (though it's in a much different place than Detroit, economically, demographically, etc. Obviously.). (Detroit is a once-great city but it's got vast swaths of unused land, it is a blank slate, it is lawless, it is cheap. It is barren but full of possibility.)

Finally, you know how new age types will say that "the Universe is trying to tell you something," or that "the Universe has revealed an answer to you" ? I hate to venture into that territory, but this weekend I was in the bar that used to be Hell (the bar that used to be the best bar in Chapel Hill), with one of my best friends, and we said, "we should move somewhere together."  And then suddenly, organically, out of a mutual interest, we were all talking about Berlin. About living there.


In closing, I would like to offer up a small request to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. PLEASE don't ruin my itinerary.  There's been some talk on the internet about "if flights remain grounded through June." EXCUSE ME????

Though I should say I do approve of how metal it looks here.