I'm not gonna lie, you guys, writing through the recovery pain of having a wisdom tooth pulled is not the easiest thing I've ever done. I want to just lay in bed and try to sleep this off, but I know from the past that laying around doesn't actually make me feel better. It just causes new aches and pains. So let's get writing.
At least, as I'm preparing for pain, the universe still holds me in its hands, and says, "We've got cha."
Sometimes it seems that every time I turn around, someone is there with a gesture of kindness.
Waiting to get off the bus at the airport terminal, I back into a lady behind me. "Oh! Sorry! I'm just trying to wait for everyone to get off, cause my bag is heavy, I don't want to hit anyone with it."
She smiles and says she's waiting too, before calling something across the bus in German to her husband. He gives the luggage rack a once over, grabs the straps of my bag, and looks up at me. "Is this one yours?"
"Yeah, it is."
He hoists it off the shelf and holds it up for me to slip my arms in.
"Thank you so much!" I exclaim, and set out on my way.
At the gate, the ground stewardess makes me buy an extra seat for my guitar (a completely absurd and ridiculous thing to do, since it fits in the overheard and I've already paid for extra luggage, but that's a whole rant I won't get into). I board, obviously miffed, and the passengers in the rows near mine are immediately on my side, agreeing loudly about how absurd it is.
"Is it at least a Gibson?" A man asks me, smiling through his impressive gray beard, "That it deserves a seat?"
"No!" I exclaim, laughing, "It's not nice at all!"
I sit down after storing my things, and the woman next to me leans over. 'Would you like a sweet?" She asks, offering up a bag of hard candy, and I accept gratefully.
As the plane begins to roll down the runway, and eventually take off, I gaze absentmindedly out of the window on the opposite side of the plane. The man in the aisle seat across from me seems to think that I'm staring at his giant bag of M&M's, however, and wordlessly holds them out to me with a smirk.
The motion catches my attention, and I stare at him blankly for a tiny second. He shakes the bag a bit, laughing, "Go ahead, I can practically hear you wishing you had some."
"What?! No, I was looking out the window!" I laugh.
"Uh-huh, sure."
His wife leans around him, chuckling, and tells me to go ahead and take some.
Well fine, if they insist.
Sometimes I wonder if I look like a stray dog or a wet cat or something...something people want to take in and help. I don't know, but whatever the reason, I'm glad there are still kind people out in the world. People who share with strangers.
Wednesday morning found me planted on the floor of an independent book publisher in Dublin for 3 hours, reading about psychology and the stress induced by our world of technology.
Wednesday afternoon found me having a jam sesh in the airport with a busker from Galway who happened to be flying at the same time as me.
I put my bag on the scale and start to check myself in, but I can't stop glancing at the kid with the guitar case. I swear I know him...but I feel that way often while traveling. Always faces look familiar, but never are they who I think. Besides, what are the odds?
But I can't stop glancing over.
"Small world, isn't it?" He cracks a smile without looking up.
"Yeah," I laugh, feeling caught, but relieved to know I was right. "Ridiculously small."
And by Wednesday night, I'm booking it down the streets of Prague, running desperately toward the convenient store, which is half a mile away and closes in five minutes. But I haven't eaten today, and this is my only hope.
The bell jingles on the door as I open it, and I hear the attendant before I see her. An audibly dramatic sigh comes from behind a row of shelves. She rises slowly into view as she stands, and stares me dead in the eye, pink and blue hair framing her face, as though I couldn't be more of an inconvenience.
"I'm about to close."
"Can I just grab one thing?"
She hesitates.
"I literally ran here," I continue, hopefully, giving her a small smile.
She relents. "Fine, be quick."
From morning in one country, to nightfall in another, the possibilities are limitless. I love traveling.
Thursday I take myself to the dentist as an early birthday present. I guess I'm an adult now or something. Ha. It's meant to be just a crown and a filling or two, but when I arrive, the dentist tells me we need to pull one of my wisdom teeth.
Crap. Okay.
When all is said and done, I sit up in the chair, and she gives me after care instructions.
"Okay, that was a surgical procedure, so you need to rest for a few days. At least until Sunday. No sports, no exercising, or anything like that. Okay?"
"Okay," I respond automatically. I don't think it's necessary to mention I'm about to walk two miles in the sun back to my room. Walking isn't really what she means when she says exercise, right?
On the way home I think back to the last time I had a tooth pulled.
I lay in the driver seat of my car, trying not to puke and telling myself I'll be fine to drive home soon.
What a joke. Eventually I relent and call Ixchel.
She and Luke come to collect me and my car, and she laughs at me as I climb nauseously into the passenger seat.
"You thought you were going to drive yourself home after getting a tooth pulled?" She asks in amused disbelief.
"Yeah, well...I guess I'm not as tough as I thought."
"You're crazy, girl. Just call me sooner next time, I'll come with you."
Now I walk along, spitting every 15 feet, and I wonder if maybe this trip really has made me tougher, because as much as I'd love a friend for comfort in this moment, I'm not nauseous, and I could certainly drive myself home. Perhaps I've come into my skin, finally.
The receptionist at my apartment tells me it's not possible to extend my stay, so in the morning, though I'm still spitting blood, I hitch my pack onto my shoulders and set out for an hour long walk to the bus station. Surely this doesn't count as exercise?
I make it with no issues, and settle in for the five hour ride to Berlin, but as we near the Berlin Central Bus Station, I realize there may be a slight problem in my future.
When I looked it up before, it appeared the bus station was only a thirty minute walk from my hostel, but as well pull into the final stop, I realize my data was absurdly mistaken. It's a two hour walk to where I need to be, and darkness has already fallen. I try to connect to internet to get an Uber, but after a few failed attempts, I say "F it", and set out.
By the time I arrive at my hostel, I've walked 16km today, to and from bus stations, with my pack on my back, which has certainly grown heavier through the last 6 months, as the tender bruises on my hips can attest.
I guess at this point, we can call it exercise. I need to be sure to rest tomorrow.
Within a day of arrival, everyone in my room comes to know me as "wisdom tooth girl". I'm surprised by this, since I only told one person, but I guess news travels fast in hostels, and it is a bit out of the norm. People are curious. I wake up on my second morning, and despite being a total recluse the last two days, I come to find I've made a friend somehow.
"Good morning!" She says brightly when I sit up, "Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah...I think so."
"I'm going down for breakfast, do you want to join me?"
We eat breakfast, and quickly become glued. We spend two and a half days together, exploring the city, going on tours, riding subways, and generally experiencing Berlin.
Somehow it still surprises me how easy it is to make friends while traveling.
Sachsenhausen. Fuck.
I try not to cuss too much in this writing, because I want it to be family friendly, but in this case... Fuck.
Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp built in 1936, located right outside of Berlin, which was intended to set a standard for other concentration camps, both in design and in treatment of prisoners.
I'm sure I don't need to type this...but this place is immeasurably...dark. Sinister. Terrifying. Sad. It was built specifically to inspire fear in it's prisoners, using a design the architect called the Topography of Terror. The only way you were leaving was to die. "Arbeit macht frei", embedded in the fence prisoners passed through when brought to the camp. Embedded in the very mindset of the Nazi's. "Work will set you free." But that's the only thing that will.
A camp which rewarded brutality. For example, one general kept prisoners standing in the yard for role call for 18 hours straight, with just their stripped pajamas, in the middle of winter. 140 men dropped dead during this, and the general was rewarded and moved up in rank for his efficient way of saving resources and reducing population.
If you were good at torture, brutality, and murder, you'd do just fine as a Nazi in these camps.
So, naturally, standing inside of this concentration camp...seeing what remains, reading survivor accounts, and hearing history explained in the actual place it happened...was beyond heavy.
I felt quickly drained in this place. Barely able to lift my feet by the time we were leaving, after four hours of being here. My heart was heavy with the knowledge that humans can treat each other in such inhuman ways. And so recently, too...not even 100 years ago.
My friend messaged me, "Don't worry, that was a long time ago, we're learning from our mistakes."
And yes, some of us are. But as recently as 1993, neo nazi's broke into Sachenhausen and burned down one of the memorials to the Jewish victims. 25 years ago...they couldn't even stand the idea of a memorial to dead people...that's how deep the hatred still goes.
So those of us that are learning...please, be diligent. In your kindness. In your strength.
Leaving Sachenhausen, passing under Tower A, where a guard with a machine gun would have once been posted, shooting anyone who even looked suspicious, I can't help crying (certainly not the first time in this tour). I chose to come here, and I am choosing to leave. An option I am blessed to have.
After such a heavy day, I just want to go back to my room, and watch Netflix, and be sad by myself. But thankfully, I've already made plans to meet with an old friend from middle school who's been living in Berlin a few years.
I'm relieved when we get together and hang out with some of his friends, and have a completely normal and chill night. It's funny, when you're traveling, lots of people want to take you to tourist sights, or the best clubs, or the craziest bars, etc., and while all of that is fun and different, sometimes I just want to have a normal night in with friends.
Stephen and I share some beers and reminisce about the stupid, crazy, fun stuff we did at 12, 13, 14 years old, and I can't believe we've known each other a decade. And that I now get to drink beer in Germany with someone who saw me through my awkward teenage years. Life is pretty cool.
By the time I separate from the group, I feel much lighter and I remember to have hope. Because an American, a Turk, a Belgian, a Mexican, and an Italian just shared laughter and pizza and beer together on the streets of Germany, and no one could give a damn. A sentence no one would have said, or written, or read 100 years ago. But today, there's nothing strange about that. And for this fact, I thank my stars, and pray we continue to move forward in this direction.
I sit at the table with two Canadian guys from my room, sharing breakfast.
"Yeah, I figured I had to come here, because I've literally been mistaken for a Berliner five times on this trip. I guess they have a look?" I laugh, remembering multiple strangers approaching me and speaking in German immediately.
"They do," one of them responds, "And you definitely have it. It's this grungy, dark, 'I'm a nice person, but also, fuck the system' look. You do it well."
I have to just laugh. You never know how you look through other people's eyes. But I'll take it.
Because, turns out, I am a good person.
But also...
Fuck the system. ;)
To wrap it up this week, all I can say is...remember to laugh, sing, dance, and play whenever you get the chance. Wear what you want. Study what you like. Read things you find interesting. Speak your true thoughts. Love who you love. Visit places you want to visit. Be yourself.
Because you can.
And that's more than countless individuals throughout history have been offered.
So don't waste it.
<3
 |
| Shopping center in Dublin |
At least, as I'm preparing for pain, the universe still holds me in its hands, and says, "We've got cha."
Sometimes it seems that every time I turn around, someone is there with a gesture of kindness.
Waiting to get off the bus at the airport terminal, I back into a lady behind me. "Oh! Sorry! I'm just trying to wait for everyone to get off, cause my bag is heavy, I don't want to hit anyone with it."
She smiles and says she's waiting too, before calling something across the bus in German to her husband. He gives the luggage rack a once over, grabs the straps of my bag, and looks up at me. "Is this one yours?"
"Yeah, it is."
He hoists it off the shelf and holds it up for me to slip my arms in.
"Thank you so much!" I exclaim, and set out on my way.
At the gate, the ground stewardess makes me buy an extra seat for my guitar (a completely absurd and ridiculous thing to do, since it fits in the overheard and I've already paid for extra luggage, but that's a whole rant I won't get into). I board, obviously miffed, and the passengers in the rows near mine are immediately on my side, agreeing loudly about how absurd it is.
"Is it at least a Gibson?" A man asks me, smiling through his impressive gray beard, "That it deserves a seat?"
"No!" I exclaim, laughing, "It's not nice at all!"
I sit down after storing my things, and the woman next to me leans over. 'Would you like a sweet?" She asks, offering up a bag of hard candy, and I accept gratefully.
As the plane begins to roll down the runway, and eventually take off, I gaze absentmindedly out of the window on the opposite side of the plane. The man in the aisle seat across from me seems to think that I'm staring at his giant bag of M&M's, however, and wordlessly holds them out to me with a smirk.
The motion catches my attention, and I stare at him blankly for a tiny second. He shakes the bag a bit, laughing, "Go ahead, I can practically hear you wishing you had some."
"What?! No, I was looking out the window!" I laugh.
"Uh-huh, sure."
His wife leans around him, chuckling, and tells me to go ahead and take some.
Well fine, if they insist.
Sometimes I wonder if I look like a stray dog or a wet cat or something...something people want to take in and help. I don't know, but whatever the reason, I'm glad there are still kind people out in the world. People who share with strangers.
Wednesday morning found me planted on the floor of an independent book publisher in Dublin for 3 hours, reading about psychology and the stress induced by our world of technology.
Wednesday afternoon found me having a jam sesh in the airport with a busker from Galway who happened to be flying at the same time as me.
I put my bag on the scale and start to check myself in, but I can't stop glancing at the kid with the guitar case. I swear I know him...but I feel that way often while traveling. Always faces look familiar, but never are they who I think. Besides, what are the odds?
But I can't stop glancing over.
"Small world, isn't it?" He cracks a smile without looking up.
"Yeah," I laugh, feeling caught, but relieved to know I was right. "Ridiculously small."
And by Wednesday night, I'm booking it down the streets of Prague, running desperately toward the convenient store, which is half a mile away and closes in five minutes. But I haven't eaten today, and this is my only hope.
The bell jingles on the door as I open it, and I hear the attendant before I see her. An audibly dramatic sigh comes from behind a row of shelves. She rises slowly into view as she stands, and stares me dead in the eye, pink and blue hair framing her face, as though I couldn't be more of an inconvenience.
"I'm about to close."
"Can I just grab one thing?"
She hesitates.
"I literally ran here," I continue, hopefully, giving her a small smile.
She relents. "Fine, be quick."
From morning in one country, to nightfall in another, the possibilities are limitless. I love traveling.
 |
| Got to see the Astronomical Clock this time! When I was in Prague in May it was being worked on, and therefore covered. |
Crap. Okay.
When all is said and done, I sit up in the chair, and she gives me after care instructions.
"Okay, that was a surgical procedure, so you need to rest for a few days. At least until Sunday. No sports, no exercising, or anything like that. Okay?"
"Okay," I respond automatically. I don't think it's necessary to mention I'm about to walk two miles in the sun back to my room. Walking isn't really what she means when she says exercise, right?
On the way home I think back to the last time I had a tooth pulled.
I lay in the driver seat of my car, trying not to puke and telling myself I'll be fine to drive home soon.
What a joke. Eventually I relent and call Ixchel.
She and Luke come to collect me and my car, and she laughs at me as I climb nauseously into the passenger seat.
"You thought you were going to drive yourself home after getting a tooth pulled?" She asks in amused disbelief.
"Yeah, well...I guess I'm not as tough as I thought."
"You're crazy, girl. Just call me sooner next time, I'll come with you."
Now I walk along, spitting every 15 feet, and I wonder if maybe this trip really has made me tougher, because as much as I'd love a friend for comfort in this moment, I'm not nauseous, and I could certainly drive myself home. Perhaps I've come into my skin, finally.
The receptionist at my apartment tells me it's not possible to extend my stay, so in the morning, though I'm still spitting blood, I hitch my pack onto my shoulders and set out for an hour long walk to the bus station. Surely this doesn't count as exercise?
I make it with no issues, and settle in for the five hour ride to Berlin, but as we near the Berlin Central Bus Station, I realize there may be a slight problem in my future.
When I looked it up before, it appeared the bus station was only a thirty minute walk from my hostel, but as well pull into the final stop, I realize my data was absurdly mistaken. It's a two hour walk to where I need to be, and darkness has already fallen. I try to connect to internet to get an Uber, but after a few failed attempts, I say "F it", and set out.
By the time I arrive at my hostel, I've walked 16km today, to and from bus stations, with my pack on my back, which has certainly grown heavier through the last 6 months, as the tender bruises on my hips can attest.
I guess at this point, we can call it exercise. I need to be sure to rest tomorrow.
 |
| Section of the Berlin Wall left standing |
 |
| Sign at Checkpoint Charlie |
Within a day of arrival, everyone in my room comes to know me as "wisdom tooth girl". I'm surprised by this, since I only told one person, but I guess news travels fast in hostels, and it is a bit out of the norm. People are curious. I wake up on my second morning, and despite being a total recluse the last two days, I come to find I've made a friend somehow.
"Good morning!" She says brightly when I sit up, "Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah...I think so."
"I'm going down for breakfast, do you want to join me?"
We eat breakfast, and quickly become glued. We spend two and a half days together, exploring the city, going on tours, riding subways, and generally experiencing Berlin.
Somehow it still surprises me how easy it is to make friends while traveling.
 |
| Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe |
 |
| If you look past the reflection, you can see empty book shelves. These are installed under Bebelplatz, with space for over 20,000 books, as a reminder of the knowledge the Nazi's stole and burned in this plaza. |
Sachsenhausen. Fuck.
I try not to cuss too much in this writing, because I want it to be family friendly, but in this case... Fuck.
Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp built in 1936, located right outside of Berlin, which was intended to set a standard for other concentration camps, both in design and in treatment of prisoners.
I'm sure I don't need to type this...but this place is immeasurably...dark. Sinister. Terrifying. Sad. It was built specifically to inspire fear in it's prisoners, using a design the architect called the Topography of Terror. The only way you were leaving was to die. "Arbeit macht frei", embedded in the fence prisoners passed through when brought to the camp. Embedded in the very mindset of the Nazi's. "Work will set you free." But that's the only thing that will.
A camp which rewarded brutality. For example, one general kept prisoners standing in the yard for role call for 18 hours straight, with just their stripped pajamas, in the middle of winter. 140 men dropped dead during this, and the general was rewarded and moved up in rank for his efficient way of saving resources and reducing population.
If you were good at torture, brutality, and murder, you'd do just fine as a Nazi in these camps.
So, naturally, standing inside of this concentration camp...seeing what remains, reading survivor accounts, and hearing history explained in the actual place it happened...was beyond heavy.
I felt quickly drained in this place. Barely able to lift my feet by the time we were leaving, after four hours of being here. My heart was heavy with the knowledge that humans can treat each other in such inhuman ways. And so recently, too...not even 100 years ago.
My friend messaged me, "Don't worry, that was a long time ago, we're learning from our mistakes."
And yes, some of us are. But as recently as 1993, neo nazi's broke into Sachenhausen and burned down one of the memorials to the Jewish victims. 25 years ago...they couldn't even stand the idea of a memorial to dead people...that's how deep the hatred still goes.
So those of us that are learning...please, be diligent. In your kindness. In your strength.
Leaving Sachenhausen, passing under Tower A, where a guard with a machine gun would have once been posted, shooting anyone who even looked suspicious, I can't help crying (certainly not the first time in this tour). I chose to come here, and I am choosing to leave. An option I am blessed to have.
 |
| The "Neutral Zone". A strip of rock before the barbed wire and electric fences, on which you would be shot immediately if you were spotted. |
 |
| Remnants of the body ovens |
After such a heavy day, I just want to go back to my room, and watch Netflix, and be sad by myself. But thankfully, I've already made plans to meet with an old friend from middle school who's been living in Berlin a few years.
I'm relieved when we get together and hang out with some of his friends, and have a completely normal and chill night. It's funny, when you're traveling, lots of people want to take you to tourist sights, or the best clubs, or the craziest bars, etc., and while all of that is fun and different, sometimes I just want to have a normal night in with friends.
Stephen and I share some beers and reminisce about the stupid, crazy, fun stuff we did at 12, 13, 14 years old, and I can't believe we've known each other a decade. And that I now get to drink beer in Germany with someone who saw me through my awkward teenage years. Life is pretty cool.
By the time I separate from the group, I feel much lighter and I remember to have hope. Because an American, a Turk, a Belgian, a Mexican, and an Italian just shared laughter and pizza and beer together on the streets of Germany, and no one could give a damn. A sentence no one would have said, or written, or read 100 years ago. But today, there's nothing strange about that. And for this fact, I thank my stars, and pray we continue to move forward in this direction.
 |
| This dog really wanted the pool balls |
I sit at the table with two Canadian guys from my room, sharing breakfast.
"Yeah, I figured I had to come here, because I've literally been mistaken for a Berliner five times on this trip. I guess they have a look?" I laugh, remembering multiple strangers approaching me and speaking in German immediately.
"They do," one of them responds, "And you definitely have it. It's this grungy, dark, 'I'm a nice person, but also, fuck the system' look. You do it well."
I have to just laugh. You never know how you look through other people's eyes. But I'll take it.
Because, turns out, I am a good person.
But also...
Fuck the system. ;)
To wrap it up this week, all I can say is...remember to laugh, sing, dance, and play whenever you get the chance. Wear what you want. Study what you like. Read things you find interesting. Speak your true thoughts. Love who you love. Visit places you want to visit. Be yourself.
Because you can.
And that's more than countless individuals throughout history have been offered.
So don't waste it.
<3
You are a blessing, and I'm crying for so many reasons now, that my brain hurts....thank you, for being a good person, AND for saying, "F#CK THE SYSTEM"
ReplyDeleteDon't cry, mom ♥️ I love you!
Delete