Nine Hours And Three Minutes

Listening: There’s not a lot to say about the things caught in my mind. And as the day was dawning,my plane flew away with all the things caught in my mind.

With less than twelve hours until I hop the plane to Europe, I find myself thinking about what I'll be coming home to in a month. My kid sister will be gone. My grandparents will be gone. My job at Chez Henri might very well be gone as well. Friends have been slowly scattering over the past couple of years. Some are coupling. Some are moving away. Some are fading away. It's interesting to think about what this month may mean to my life and what will happen to it upon my return from Europe.

Today, amazingly enough, I was able to do just about everything that I set out to do. I have my cell phone unlocked, a pac-safe, got some family errands run, cleaned out my crap from the grandparents' place, packed my pack, watched the Red Sox win, had dinner with some friends, cleaned out my wallet, made photocopies of important documents, set aside my clothes for tomorrow, made important phone calls and generally got shit done. I wasn't a pleasant person for most of the day. I was stressed and just out of my damn mind.

It's half past three in the morning. I'm becoming delirious. I should just go to sleep. Yeah. Sleep. Cheers. See you on the other side. Oh and I almost forgot. For those of y'all who want postcards, e-mail me your mailing address and tell me where you want me to send you a post card from. I can't promise you all post cards, but I can promise you that I'll try. I mean, if I'm eating breakfast alone some days, as I'm sure I will once in a while, I could bang out a postcard or two. Peace.

Postcards From The Edge

Listening: Today, I feel close enough to smell you. Additional dates they were plannin’ just fell through. Florida’s out. We fly September 22 to Heathrow, but there’s not really long to go. Tonight will be a brilliant show. Lettin’ you know I miss you more than four hits the floor at a party. Send my love to everybody.

I have less than fourty eight hours until I hop a plane to Europe, and I'm completely wigging out. I still have a couple of things to buy before I go on my journey, but other things have popped up. It seems that I have to remove all of my belongings from my grandparents' place before I leave and I was informed this afternoon (Wednesday) at about a quarter to five. Yeah. I became an utter wreck. I'm suprised that my roommates tolerated me through dinner. I'm scrambling like I never have before and I may even take a half day of work tomorrow just to get my shit out. Hopefully my friend with the truck will be able to help me out and hopefully all of my shit will fit into the storage space in the basement here. It's complete chaos for me. When Junx was lulling off to sleep, I sang to myself, "No ZEN!!!, No wig!" to the tune of "No Woman, No Cry."

Right now, as Junx sleeps in the living room, I have stuff spread about the floor. I have clothes, travel tools, books, tickets, toiletries, gadgets and much, much more. Linh warned me to consider everything single little piece that I'm taking and I will. Right now, the pile seems rather small and compact. I dunno if that's how it'll stay. You never know with these things. I have some stuff that's hang drying that I am planning on taking. I feel, to an extent, that I am underpacking. But, man, loose ends are abound.

My list of things to do before hopping the plane include unlocking my cell phone downtown, buying a Pac-safe, buying shampoo and hair styling product, maybe buying a general guide to Europe so I don't forget everything that I have read about in the library books or online, and moving shit from my grandparents' place to my place. I also have to pack up all of the stuff that I'm bringing and make sure that it all fits and feels comfortable.

Just for anoyone who doubts that I'm going on this trip, or for me who wants to try out my new smugmug account, here's a picture of my airline tickets and my railpasses.



Anyways, back to the grind. I need to finalize my packing stuff tonight so I don't have to scramble even more tomorrow.

Doubles, Tasks and Touches

Listening: And I feel, so much depends on the weather. So is it raining in your bedroom? And I see, that these are the eyes of disarray. Would you even care?

Today is the first day I'm starting to feel prepared. Yesterday afternoon I booked my first two night's room through Hostelbookers.com. I used them, mostly because they had the most choices as far as availability goes. For instance, on Hostelbookers.com, I could get a room at the Flying Pig Palace in Amsterdam, but I couldn't on the other websites. I didn't end up taking a room at the Flying Pig though. I weighed out the options and figured that the best thing for me to do would be to have a single for the first couple of nights in Europe. I thought that if I had a single room all to myself for the first couple of nights, I could get acclaimated to the time difference without having to worry about crazy kids and loud music. I'm getting old aren't I? So I'll be staying at the Hotel De Lantaerne near the Leidesplein. I realize that the Leidesplein is kind of a party district, I think that my room should be fine.

I also purchased trip insurance from Travel guard International. That cost me about a bill and a bit. I now have medical coverage, medical evacuation coverage, different luggage coverage and trip interruption coverage. It's pretty cool. I tried researching it online and I didn't even know what I was looking at. Today, I called Travel Guard and asked a bunch of questions. They were so helpful, I decided to ignore all of the confusion on Insuremytrip.com and just go straight for Travel Guard.

Tonight is my last night at Chez Henri for at least a month. When I get back, I hope that I get my job back. Tonight I'll be training the saute guy to work garde manger. It's interesting training people, because I'm very particular about how I like my meez set up. Since I'm always the late guy, the other guy, in this case, the guy I'm training is setting up. It was a complete mess yesterday. I'm sure he'll find his groove though.

Anyways, it's time for me to head off to the Chez. Last big push. Three more days...

Ten Days

Listening: Don’t you get sad and lonely. You need a change from what you do all day. Ain’t no sense in all your crying. Just pick it up and throw it into shape.

I have ten more days before I hop a plane and begin living off the cuff for a month. With less than two weeks to go, I have been trying to figure out if I have everything. I still need trip insurance and a place to stay for the first two nights which will be spent in Amsterdam. I had a place that I was just about ready to book, but then came across several reviews that mention bed bugs. Not down with that. I'd rather deal with pot smoke than bed bugs. I may have to break down and spend the nights at a christian (blech) hostel or one that had lockouts and curfews. If I go to Milkweg or the Supper Club, I don't think I'll be making it back by a two or three o'clock curfew.

Another thing that I need to do is to e-mail my friend Steph (the cool one not the waste). I need to ask her if she knows the address of the pancake house that we went to a few years ago when we went to Dance Valley. I'd like to get me some good ol' fashioned dutch pancakes.

As far as gear-age, I think that I only need a few more things. I'm going to buy another packing cube or two, maybe some quick drying socks, a laundry bag, a new beanie (because a red beanie and a red soft shell just makes you look really dumb. I know, because I looked at myself in the mirror), some toiletries, some ziplock bags, and I think that's it.

This week, I'm working at Chez Henri from Tuesday through Friday night. I have Saturday and Sunday nights off so that I can go to my friend's wedding down in Newport, Rhode Island. That leaves me almost no time to get stuff done after work. So this week, I'm doing everything during my lunch hours and while I'm at my day job. I'll be getting business cards made up so that when I come across people that I want to keep in contact with, I have something to give them. I'm getting my last haircut before I go to Europe today at lunch. I may have to try to get to EMS on Boyleston Street during my lunch on Friday and I think I'm running family errands on Thursday during lunch.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get some stuff done on Saturday in the morning and early afternoon. I'm sure that I'll also be able to get a few things done online in the wee hours of the morning after I finish dinner service. Speaking of dinner service, I feel like I'm leaving Chef Bob in a bit of a pickle. They haven't hired anyone new for the garde manger station and the schedule this week really reflected what it'll be like without my flexible hours running around. There's only one person working Saturday night on my station for now, but I think that Chef Bob will try to get one of the regular fill-ins to fill in. I wish him luck, but a month is a long time to be patching schedules.

Anyways, I have to get back to searching for a hostel. Damn the bed bugs. I'm sure I'll find somewhere cool pretty soon. I had better.

Pass... Out?

Listening: Go on. Go on. Just walk away. Your choice is made. Go on. Go on and disappear. Go on. Go on, away from here.

So I finally figured out where I'm going to get my rail passes from. I have looked at a bunch of different websites, but this one definitely has the deal that I'm looking for. The actual prices on the passes don't change all that much between agents. What changes are the bonuses that you get along with the passes. In my case, I'll be getting free shipping, a rail map/timetable, and a phrase book. I have been contemplating the purchase of a multilingual phrase book, and even was on my way out of Barnes & Noble's with one when I decided to put it off since it wasn't like the book was on sale or anything. That's me. I'm a cheap bastard in some respects. Okay. I'm not really a cheap bastard. I just think I know what will have value for me.

Anyways, I got all ready to buy my passes when I realized that I had to decide where I wanted the passes delivered to. If I have them delivered by FedEx/DHL, which is how they send the passes, I would need someone home at the apartment. If I had them sent to the office, I would need to make sure that I stopped home right after work to put them somewhere safe. With my work schedule, you never know. So I decided to sleep on it. I'll figure it out in the morning or in the afternoon. If I order tomorrow, it'll get here on Thursday or Friday, because it would be sent as two-day air. If I had it sent to the office, and it got there on Thursday, I would have it in my hand on Friday, a day that I could go straight home and put it in with my airline reservation. If it arrived to the office on Friday, I would receive it on Monday and I never work on Monday anymore, and, hence, could go straight home as well. I dunno though. I'd have to think about it.

I do, however know what kind of pass/passes I will be getting. I'll be getting a Eurail Selectpass for five countries and ten days of travel within two months and a Two-Day Prague Excursion Pass. The Eurail Selectpass will cover me for my travel in Italy, France, Austria, Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg for all of y'all not in the know) and through Germany (though I won't really get to stop there... sniffle). My Two-Day Prague Excursion Pass will cover me from the Czech border to Prague and then back out. I'll have to pay for local transport for when I go out to see the Ossuary Chapel in Sedlec. Hopefully, it'll only be a half day trip. I have been reading about Sedlec and they say that there are only a couple of interesting things to see in that town.

So those are the bits of progress that I have made today. Tomorrow, I order my passes and throw down the seven bills and then move on to my travel insurance and my mobile communications plans. Seventeen days and counting. Stay tuned!

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

Listening: And if you find one day, find some freedom, merrily, with this freedom, maybe, maybe you will find some peace, with this peace baby, I hope it brings you back to me. Bring you home. Take me home.

This weekend was a productive weekend in gear-getting for my impending trip to Europe. As I said before I planned on getting a few things this weekend, and of the three things that I needed, a plane ticket, a Eurail pass, and a pair of walking shoes, I acquired two. I am now the proud new owner of a pair of Keen Bronx II shoes and an open jaw plane ticket from Delta Airlines that will take me from Boston's Logan International Airport to JFK International Airport in New York City to Amsterdam's Schilpol International Airport and then from Milan's Malpensa Internations Airport back to JFK International Airport and then back home to Boston. Woot! The best thing is that those two items cost me a total of $153.94 out of pocket. How great is that. That's a week's pay at the restaurant! It don't get much better than that.

All I have left to get now is my Eurail pass and my travel insurance. I think I'm probably going to go with World Nomad, as they seem to allow you to insure specific electronic devices in case they get stolen or broken on your journey. I'll probably insure my iPod and my digital camera just in case. I plan on having my Eurail pass ordered by the end of this week and my travel insurance by the end of the week as well.

I'm not working tomorrow evening (Tuesday) at the restaurant, so I'm planning on using that time to sift through all of my information on hostels. I hope to compile a list of priority hostels so that I know which ones have good reviews, good prices and good facilities before I set foot in Europe. I also hope to have my hostel for Amsterdam and possibly Prague booked before I leave the country as well.

Thanks to my wonderful roomie, I now have an itinerary calendar link on the left sidebar of the page. So, if any of y'all are interested in where I'll be going, there's the place to look. In addition if any of you have any ideas of where in those places I should stay at, visit or check out, feel free to drop a comment.

Anyways, it's late. I gots to get me some sleep. Mmmm... sweet dreams of European food, wine, and women.... I'm such a Europhile.

When To Place Your Bet

Listening: Everything's falling, and I am included in that. Oh, how I try to be just okay. Yeah, but all I ever really wanted was a little piece of you.

Over the past two days, the price of the airline tickets that I want have dropped over a hundred dollars. It seems that if I were to buy now, using my vouchers, I would only have to pay seventy-five dollars plus a ticketing fee and junk fees. That's amazing! Well, if I were paying that much without the vouchers, that would be amazing, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers.

So, I now have a bit of a dilemma. Do I buy now and take the current price, or do I wait a little bit longer and see if it goes down even more. Back about two or there weeks ago, my father came at me with a fare that was about fifty dollars cheaper than the one that I'm looking at now. I didn't jump on those fares because I was told that the fall fares weren't in yet. In some ways, I think that I should have gone ahead and gotten that ticket. Who knows if it will ever get as low as that first ticket?

I think that if I'm really sensible, I'll call Delta tomorrow and have a ticket put on hold so that I can pick it up on Saturday morning. I think that would be the safe and sensible thing to do. I think overall, I'm a pretty safe and sensible guy, though I wish that I wasn't so much. We'll see what happens though.

Something exciting has been happening lately too. I've been exchanging e-mails with a fellow traveler. She's going to be running around Europe at the same time that I will be, though she has a completely different itinerary. Our itineraries overlap in Paris for a couple of days, so we might get together for a meal or something. She's interested in the culinary arts as well, but not in the professional way that I am... because we know that the only reason I'm going to Europe is to "research local produce, cuisines and confections in a very intellectual manner." Anyways, I'm excited to know that I will have at least one other person to break bread with. I could eat an entire baguette by myself, but I think I would feel disgusting afterwards. And then I would have to drink a bottle of French wine to help me forget feeling disgusting, and then gorge myself on artisanal French cheeses to get over the hangover. And in order to properly enjoy the artisanal French cheeses properly, I would have to eat another entire baguette. It would be a delicious, I mean vicious cycle.

I realized the other day that when I get back from Europe, I may not be able to go back to work at Chez Henri. They're in the process of hiring another person for the Garde Manger station, because the one full time guy who works that station with me can't work seven days a week for upwards of ten or twelve hours a day. Since Jose quit, it has been Greg as the full timer, me as the part-timer, and there have been three other people who fill in a shift here and a shift there. I'm assuming that the Chef will hire someone on full time. With two full timers, there may not be much room for me to work there. Even if it's only one or two shifts a week, I would gladly pick them up when I get back.

This is not to say that I'm not planning for the worst case scenario, being that they have no available work for me. I know that they're looking for someone at Pigalle, and I think that I could get my foot in the door at either Spire or Upstairs at the Square. I think that regardless, I would want to pick up a night or a shift at another restaurant. I think that it would broaden my exposure to the industry. Maybe it would even get me networking connections into a restaurant in France.

Something else that I have been thinking about. I have had all this anger and sadness built up in me that I have been trying to let go of. The more that I try to let it go, it grips me tighter. As I was in the shower tonight after my shift, I thought to myself, maybe I should just stop trying to let go of it. Just let the anger and sadness be. Maybe then it will go away on it's own. Hopefully, I'll leave it in my laundry basket at home before I head off to Europe. I have heard that bitterness is a heavy thing to carry around with you, and I'm pretty sure I'll already have thirty-five pounds strapped to my back.

Regardless of sadness and the possiblity of me not being able to work at Chez Henri after I get back, life is good. I do well for myself, I think. Hopefully, I'm on an upswing. I guess with an impending trip to Europe, it's got to be.