Crossing Oceans

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I'm currently writing a piece for my workshop about my experiences this past spring in Europe. I'm finding it pretty challenging to take all that stuff - traveling is stuff, mostly - and build it into a story with one core message. So, as an experiment, I'm going to post unedited passages from my journal on this page. Not every day, just whenever I don't have anything else to tell you. I want to see if the bits I select somehow come together in the end to tell me what I'm thinking. Because I never know what I'm thinking.

I'll start at the beginning.

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[11:15 pm, Eastern time]

Three months ago I was a vegetarian and now I’m eating airline beef. I consumed the thoroughly disgusting meal in about five minutes, having not eaten for hours before takeoff, and takeoff having been an hour delayed. The meal included yogurt (Dannon La Crème) that was warm. Warm yogurt. I would not be surprised if the barf bag gets used tonight. It would be my own fault.

[Slightly later]

Here’s a suggestion: if you are going to fly, and that flight takes place for eight continuous hours, and you are sitting in coach, and in the middle seat of the middle block, and you used to be a vegetarian, do not eat airline beef.

[10:30 am, We should have landed but we haven’t…]

Because of the delay, we are still up. We need to be down. Down in time for my 12:35 connector to Berlin. I had not realized just how crucial it was to my best laid plans that this plane arrive exactly on time. I will have an hour if I’m lucky to navigate the notoriously user-unfriendly Frankfurt airport and catch that flight. If I don’t, I will definitely not make the train. (If I do, I may still not make the train – whoops, as it turns out there’s customs on the other side, how did I not think of that?) The 3:30 train is a stretch anyway, and that’s it for runs to Copenhagen today. I will have to find a place to stay in Berlin. But – travel adventures, right?

I have just had an airline donut, very packaged. And coffee with not enough cream in it. And I am on the second chapter of my J.S.F. postmodern journey to Everything [Being] Illuminated. I need to be studying German. Flughaven German. Bahnhof German. I’m going to need it.