So it's official, i'm going to Germany. to be honest with you i am shitting myself. now i know alot of people are all like, 'it's character building', 'you'll meet heaps of new friends', but until that happens i literally have to check my 'reg grundies' on the hour every hour. last week i went and reapplied for my birth certificate (my old one has worn away with age - something akin to paper mache) and it kind of struck me then that i was doing something massive. today, however, i sent off for my passport, paid for my medical and travel insurance and put a deposit on my ticket - this is where i got scared. or to be more honest terrified. there is no going back now.
i don't know what to do there, except drink beer and not talk about nazis and jews, apparently the former's bad ettiquette. i've checked out a few tours, but i don't think i want to spend 5 hours on a bus travelling past things that look cool, only to stop off at some european devonshire teahouse with the blue rinse set. that however is secondary to my fear of flying and a growing insane paranoia that i will not have any money once i get there. this is what keeps me up at night. 'will i have the cash to see out a year?' 'will i be able to pick up the german language when all i know now are stupid sayings and swear words?' 'will my flight be high-jacked or worse, be sat next to child?' (incidently my travel insurance pays $1000 a day if i am taken hostage, but only for 8 days total. which does nothing for my irrational fear. if it's included in the insurance then it must happen!?!)
over the past week i have been waking up throughout the night with an impending sense of doom. i can trace this sleeplessness back to the 20th of July, which is, you guessed it, the day i got my birth certificate in order to obtain a passport. i can only dread what is going to happen now i've organised everything apart from my visa. which leaves me in another bind. what happens if they don't allow me a young person's working holiday visa? (as long as i'm not 31 i'm counted as a young person which is nice) what happens if i can't scrape together the $4800 i need in order to prove i can survive? i can't reschedule my flight and i can't not go. i've worked myself up into such a frenzied state of excitement and fear and trepidation, not to mention i've told the world what i'm doing. there's no turning back from this. my only sanity lies with a few valiums and a large bottle of scotch. which by the way i'm paranoid about taking on the flight because i'm scared that i'll pass out in hong kong and miss my connecting flight. the only question left to ask is, 'when did my anxiety take over and let me become Woody Allen?'
*i'll get back to you on how the sleeping pattern goes now - my guess is not very well*
my trip into the heady rush of first time travel. i'm going head-first into germany for 12 months with no expectations and no idea what i'm doing.
About Me
- t j adams
- a young man trapped in a life without direction just trying to fill in time
.JPG)
Blog Archive
blogs that everyone should read
- man about town - everything and more from a well connected melbournian artisan
- stop the world mummy, i want to get off... - geek and green come together
- live from crack province - diary-esque blog that's too good not to read
- maintaining the rage makes me tired - occasional blogger and wonderful person
- zero punctuation - the best video game reviewer ever
- hobo teacher - the amusing ramblings of a high school teacher
- blog cabins - movie/tv/pop culture armchair reviews with great links to similar sites
- a wild young under-whimsy - pop culture at it's most shiny
- beaming beeman - inside look into heroes by the director/producer
- horror movie a day - exactly what the title states
- skull a day - sort of an amusing companion to horror movie a day
- ...the adventure of a lifetime - now defunct blog, but with excellent posts about living in africa
2 comments:
Remember, scheisen hausen means shithouse and schwarzkopf (as in the shampoo) actually means blackhead. Also, Leppitsch (after Justin the Lions player), means bum licker. I kid you not.
When I first arrived in London I had to park my bags at the hotel at 8am and wasn't due to check in until 2pm. A flight plan very well thought out. After a 20odd hour flight, you'd imagine I'd be knackered. And a bit smelly. Ewwww. But I was so jazzed about being overseas for the first time, the tiredness dissapated, and my sister and I walked around, like dickheads with expressions of awe and wonder and delight on our faces.
It was January, the middle of a European winter, and there was nary a cloud in the sky, the sun had just risen and it was one of those beautiful, crisp, clear winter mornings. Either Londoners are not used to seeing such happy faces, or we must have come across as the pathetic tourists that we were. I'm opting for the latter. I didn't care, I was absolutely fucking thrilled to be walking around in good old London Town.
After the initial sightsee down Oxford Street, home of 42 shoe shops alone, the National Museum, window shopping and eating sandwiches out of one of the thousand sandwich shops they seem to have, we finally got to check in. Our hotel was right near the corner of Marble Arch and Hyde Park. A couple of hours later, after a much needed hot shower, I crashed, and woke up at 6 the next morning. I literally bounced out of bed and hit the streets again. The real jet lag didn't hit me until I got home from Paris two weeks later, along with a swollen right ankle and sleepiness that lasted a week.
All part of the experience, and you do have to experience it. I can't wait to go OS again. New York is my next destination.
Au Revoir and have fun,
Kim
Post a Comment