Right now I'm in: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Next I'm going to: Mazatlan, Mexico
Before this I was in: New York
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Folks, my deluge of Romania travel posts on Gadling.com has begun today with this post.
Again, I should be posting 3-5 times a week for the next four weeks or so. Set your feeds accordingly and leave a ton of comments so the other writers feel unpopular and wretchedly envy.
I’ve just signed a variety of scary looking documents to seal a travel-blogging deal with Gadling for the duration of my upcoming one month trip in Romania. I’m going to attempt to post 3-5 times a week in posts of 750 words or less (testing the upper threshold of my powers of brevity) about subjects such as post-EU changes, food, drink, hitchhiking, how kick ass my LP guide to Romania is and why you should never take directions from drunk dudes.
Post frequency here will suffer as a result, but hey, 3-5 times a week is more of me than even my ex-wife could handle, so you should all be plenty sated.
See you down the rabbit hole.
Five weeks has zapped by with alarming quickness here at Killing Batteries, Minneapolis Edition. So fast that I’m still three pounds short of my goal to gain eight pounds while home. And not for lack of trying.
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my friends and family and riding public transport that is sort of reliable and speaking English like a native and saying things like “Best. Censure. Of. A. Sitting. President. Ever.” and getting a reaction other than a blank stare, but the last few times I’ve been in the US, the perk I’ve really savored is the food. Hell, when I’m abroad I can get most of that other stuff done through email, whereas food is totally out of my control.
(Or would that be ‘doofi’?)
I have a dirty little secret. Every time I fly in or out of Italy or Romania, I’m scared shitless. Actually, when I fly into either of these countries, I’m merely very concerned that I won’t see my luggage for a week. Inconvenient, yes, but not in an underwear soiling sort of way (which is advantageous since I’ll be wearing that pair of underwear for the next six nights…). But when I fly out of these two countries, I need two shots of tequila, a blindfold and preferably a stick to bite on.
The reason why I’m this scared is this: I don’t completely trust the ground crews in these countries. I know this is not going to go over well in my voluminous Italian and Romanian fan clubs, but the fact is that I’ve lived in both of these countries for a fair time and it was hard to overlook a few character flaws that these people have in common. That being, they tend to be inordinately distracted from critical duties by inconsequential matters. Distracted from driving their car in a straight line by adjusting the stereo. Distracted from getting the hell out of my way by lighting a cigarette. Distracted from closing the luggage bay door on an airplane by an SMS message from their girlfriend or what have you.
Well, it’s been a bizarre and roundly disagreeable week here at Killing Batteries, Minneapolis Edition. To start on a lighter note, I was finally forced to address a, erm, ‘condition’, that presented itself virtually the day after I arrived in the US. Since the US is the only country in the world where I don’t have health insurance at the moment, because pharmaceutical companies have more power than our president, a home remedy was invoked – which seems to be working thankfully – to avoid a gigantic medical bill or a full day in a dodgy free clinic. Unfortunately, the remedy temporarily required me to go cold turkey off caffeine and alcohol. Being a former Hypochondria All Star, I don’t want to go into detail about my condition here in case it all turns out to be psychosomatic, but I’ll tell you that a possible diagnosis of my symptoms rhymes with Benlarged Brostate. The painful irony was going off caffeine was infinitely worse than feeling like I have to pee 24 hours a day.
Enthusiastic coffee drinkers who have been forced to stop drinking overnight will know the singular, mind-boggling distress I went through during this ordeal. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit that I only lasted three pitiful days, where I hardly left the house, before the pounding headaches and dwindling will to live prevailed and I wretchedly made myself a coffee. And, oh, the joy. My energy increased instantaneously, my neural functions tripled and I think I saw Jesus’ face in the coffee grounds.
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