Hitting the wall

(written a week ago in Poland-- now in Prague and feeling much more put together)

I've found my limit when it comes to travel. I'm in my eighth country in less than a month, and for most of that time I've been living according to other people's schedules. I wake up when my hosts wake up, go to sleep when they go to sleep, follow them to their rehearsals and hang out with their friends. It's exactly what I wanted to do, and this month has worked out as well as I could have hoped. However, all of a sudden, I realized that I'm physically and mentally exhausted.

I like to think that I'm pretty good at the nomadic, couchsurfing life. I can eat anything, sleep anywhere, can talk to all sorts of different people, and quickly learn my survival vocabulary in each new language. However, it's a useful lesson to learn that I do need the comforts of one's own home, friends, and routine every once in a while.

The last straw came on Saturday in Krakow. I was there to see a show by Polish hip-hop collective Planet Luc and to meet with Zgas, the beatboxer from the group. We'd been phoning each other for a bit, and I knew the name of the club where the show was. However, a lot was still unsettled when I got to Krakow. Zgas had said I could probably stay in the hotel where the band was staying, and that he'd send me directions to the club and the name of the hotel. He did neither, and I ended up having to find the club on my own. Around 8:30PM, I decided that I should also just find myself a hotel room, since I was having no luck contacting Zgas. I'd bought a map of the city and walked to a couple of different places marked on the map before settling on a student hostel that gave me a single room for a bit more than I really wanted to pay.

Finally, after the show (which I think I only partially appreciated, not speaking any Polish), I met Zgas and we talked for a bit about his background with beatbox and the growth of beatbox in Poland as a whole. He asked if I wanted to come back to his hometown of Wroclaw and see another one of his groups perform the next day. I was up for it, but was a little wary about the fact that Zgas was still taking the same casual approach to logistics. "I'll call you later tonight and let you know if there's a space in the car for you. If not, you can take a train-- I'll call you and tell you where the show is. We can figure out where you can stay once you get there."

I went back to my hotel, discovered that there was no internet, and realized that I'd had enough. In the morning, I woke up and relished the feeling of having the room to myself and not having to get out of bed if I wasn't ready to. I decided that I really didn't want to go repeat the experience in another city-- arriving with no idea of where I would stay, who I could communicate with, or where the show I was there to see was taking place. I hopped on a train and came back to Warsaw. Over the past couple of days, I've been visiting a couple of friends I met in Tuva last summer. Last night, we had a nice little dinner party and looked at a ton of pictures from our Tuvan adventures. I played igil for the first time in five months or so, and I feel much better now. I have a week or so before the beatbox championships in Berlin, and after that I plan to go to Budapest and stay more or less put for my last month.

Oh! And yes, I bought a plane ticket back to the states. I will be on American soil again on July 5th. Eeee!!!