Here I am again. This is starting to seem like a bad reoccuring dream. Sitting in a familiar Starbucks in Istanbul… Again. Not knowing what to do for the next ten hours I headed straight to find some good ol’ American refuge. Complete with an odd and overpriced cheese and veggie sandwich (which may have been quite a bit too hot to be eaten right away, thus causing the roof of my mouth a great amount of displeasure) and a large hot and delicious (however those not in the know would be more likely to describe it as burnt and too strong,) good ol’ Amerrrcn filter coffee.

Just a quick side note; carrots and zuccinis are delicious on sandwiches, why didn’t I think of this before?

Does Microsoft word still have that stupid grammar check funktion? I always hated that thing, it seemed to share the grammar level of a, well computer. I’m drifting, sleep is the remedy, either that or fight the urge to sleep and embrace the insanity.

I didn’t really sleep much last night. Cheap flights to Istanbul are not exactly five star hotels, nor are they comparable with a 7/11 Dumpster on a night for that matter. Ok, that was quite the bold assumption as I have never slept in either of those. However that is the feeling I get everytime I get off of one of those flights at six in the morning with a total of no sleep.

At the time I started buying all of these over priced plane tickets I did not expect leaving to be this hard at all. It’s funny how fast things can change. A few weeks ago I thought this trip would be great. Spend one more night in Istanbul and then head off to the warmth of Australia. Now I am sitting with an empty feeling inside me, like something extremely important to me has been taken away and I am stuck thinking I’m an asshole because, for 1. I bought this ticket and 2. I know loads of people who would love to do this, and all I can think about is going back.

I guess no sleep, a broken heart and the knowledge that one must spend the next ten hours alone with no money and no shelter is not the best way to kickstart the day. Maybe I should go find that 7/11 dumpster now.

I guess it is about time to write a nonsensicle Update post for anyone who still bothers to read this.

I have been extremely lazy these days when it comes to regular posting. I am sure a lot of interesting things have been going on in my life in the last three weeks, but as said, lazy.

So, here is how things are going to go for me. Tuesday early, around 2am I am flying back to Istanbul where I will stay until Wednesday afternoon. Then I embark on my 21 hours travel to Melbourne where I plan on staying for a few months.  I have decided to change my style of traveling. I feel like the last few months have been a little excessive. What with my pounds of electronics and annoyingly large back pack.  I have decide to shed some layers of skin in Berlin.  In Dresden I bought a backpack, about the size of  a school bag, this will be the extent of my means, enough clothing for a few days of cleanliness a sleeping bag and a notebook. My cell phone will be left along with my computer in Berlin.  Thus, although I am planning on writing quite a bit and taking quite a few photos, updates will be few and far between.  We’ll see how this all works out for me.

I will probably be murdered for posting this, but I like it.

However I am of the opinion that my brain is melting because of the ever growing distance in one of my oldest and most important relationships. That’s right, it’s true. However embarrassing, I haven’t had a night out with just a bottle of wine in ages. We used to be so close, it was never a love/hate relationship, it was love/love. We both (drinker and drinkee) loved to sit at home all night long on a romantic evening together. Including a coffee mug, a play list of obscure music and whatever crazy ideas I could come up with for new ( however never completed) projects to busy myself with.

Staying up all night just isn’t same without you.

Come back to me my sweet red love.

In the last few weeks I decided to have another look at religion and how I felt about it. In Turkey I got a good close look at Islam, and was quite enthralled. It could’ve had something to do with the fact that I have never before had a real chance to learn about the religion. It could’ve had to do with a fact that I had absolutely no understanding of what was being preached during the sermons nor did I understand one word of their scripture. However I still got the feeling that it did something good for me. That I could now open myself up a little bit more to understanding other peoples morals and beliefs. So after leaving Turkey with these new ideas in my mind that maybe I can finally become tolerant to the idea of religion as an entity, I was still confused as to how I felt. Leaving all of these thoughts at home for the holiday season I queued the necessary half hour in front of the church on Christmas eve with the plan of trying to enjoy the Christmas music and showing respect to the beliefs of the people I was spending the over saturated once Christian capitalist holiday with.

The church was full. Very full, people were sitting on every possible service and standing everywhere else. We had gotten there in time to get seats for ourselves and things started off well. The children’s choir came out first singing some Christmas songs to get us in the mood for the story of Mary and Joseph that was to follow. After a few rounds of song I was having the normal look around the place to see what kind of people where there, and even more so, wonder what kind of people would not think of, or have the slightest bad feeling about not going to church throughout the year, and then take a standing place in the crowded building on Christmas eve. When suddenly a terrible feeling shot over me. I was disgusted by these people and this whole ritual. I hated it. I wanted to get up and run through the building screaming until I found the first exit where I could finally free myself from the grasp of this awful institution. So many questions ran through my head. What we were doing here, who these people are who spend their lives sitting on these hard wooden pews. What are we accomplishing, who are we appeasing? This had not only to do with Christianity, all of the questions started running through my mind. Not eating pork for no reason other than that animals are dirty. Forcing women to cover their whole bodies in black because a book written by someone who we are not even sure exists tells us to. Spending thousands of young men and women across the world to kill innocent people because their god has told them something different from your god. When did these ideas start making sense to people? And how can they live there life this way.

This was by far the worst feeling I have ever gotten sitting in any sort of house of worship. I was suddenly so sad and confused, not knowing why people would be doing this. I guess I what I came out of this with was once again a strong disgust for the organization of religion. It has no place in our world. Spirituality is a great thing. It is amazing for people to believe in something is that is what they need to find purpose in their lives. But to live every second of their life, not for themselves, not for others, but for an all seeing all knowing all powerful entity that was created by men thousands of years ago, it seems like everything god gave them is being thrown away. This is just an incomplete list of my incomplete thoughts, believe what you like. Just leave me to believe what I like.

It all started on Christmas eve, which being the main day of Christmas in the wonderfully religious country that is just catching up with the North American capitalist ideas of how to live a “proper happy life,” is all about spending time with the family. We went in the morning to K’s parents house in order to decorate the tree and spend the day with them. From the time we woke up in he morning K wasn’t feeling great, by the time we left for church in the early evening she was feeling worse. After the 1-2 hour church service ** she was feeling about ready to die. So coming home we engaged in eating dinner together and started opening gifts. By this time K was laying on the couch hardly able to most and her fever was starting. The gift giving was wonderful, I can nary remember another that I enjoyed so much. Although I had just met two of those in my company that day and the other lay dying on the sofa, it was small, intimate and there were smiles all around. The gifts were sparse and only one lay with my name on it, which automatically gave me a wondrous feeling, as frankly I find the act of spending as much money as possible on giving people you pretend to care about useless shit, rather barbaric. It is as much better feeling to receive little and know you are cared for.

After the opening of the gifts and the near death of the friend, I played a round of backgammon with papa and we finally surrendered to muttis desperate attempts to keep her sick child there for the evening. In the end I retreated to my couch as K was put lovingly in her childhood bed by her care mother, shaking and fevering.

The next day she was not much better and had to miss out on the family celebrations, which coincidently worked out brilliantly for me as I would much prefer laying in bed reading to a sick girl all day than spending my time with the relatives of people I hardly know. The next days went along the same lines, I would go home at night and come back in the morning to spend the day laying around with K, trying to keep her occupied and sane (or insane, depending on how one feels about my company) and then going home late at night to lay sleepless for hours before doing the same thing all over again the next day.

Today is the first day I have not gone to see K laying in bed as I am finally expecting her home. The sickness is receding and we can get back to normal life… well she can get back to normal life, my daily routine of doing not much of anything at all has not been so affected by her ailments, as a matter of fact I believe I have probably done more in the last days than usual. Although in this time nothing really exciting has happened I couldn’t be happier. Of course I would prefer not to see a good friend miss Christmas all together as she is stuck suffering in bed all day, but the routine of laying around with someone I care about, reading books and smiling was better than anything I could’ve asked for.

Well I guess it all started when I realised that yes, even I in Europe, no wait especially I, as in Europe one in no longer under the comforting watchful eye of Homeland security, should be on constant alert of a terrorist attack. As we all know, these dang terrrrrists are everywhere, watching us and waiting to convert us from our wonderful Christian lives of freedom to such a terrible other religion that in no way has anything whatsoever ever to do with our almighty god. I’m sure if we ever bothered to read up about these other (godforsaken) religions, which of course we would never do as that is blasphemy, we would certainly not find that they consider Jesus to be a prophet or anything of the sort. Well anyway, I decided, with the every looming threat of terrorism these some 9 years after 9/11 (wow, 9 and 9, that has to be a sign doesn’t it?) it is about time that I check out the terrrrrrist threat levels as listed by Homeland security, you know, that corporation I put all of my trust into as in their desperate attempt to make as much money as possible at everyone else’s expense they of course have only the best interests of the American public in mind. So in checking the daily threat levels, (by the way, today as it is a special day being three days after Christmas and hardly special at all, we are at an elevated threat level, also represented as the beautiful colour – sorry I meant “color”- yellow. And if you are in the mood for flying anywhere you better watch out, because on such a normal day there is naturally a high risk of terrrrrism, also known as red) so this is where we get to the amazing website www.ready.gov. for me, as an average concerned American citizen, this is a great help. Without such a website I would never be able to make an emergency kit and my family would be in grave danger when the terrrrrrists decide to attack our backwoods Arkansas town. Thanks to www.ready.gov I now know exactly how much water, food and Additional Items to Consider Adding to an Emergency Supply Kit I will need in the case of an attack that will be dealt with in no less than three days. As a matter of fact there are even instructional videos to go along with it in the case I don’t understand the simple list format.

So I would like to thank my wonderful American government, for caring so much about me and my fellow citizens that they have allowed me to spend my pay checks on sending my child to the only under rated University I could afford and working a second job to pay for my mothers chemotherapy and in turn spending my taxes on such wonderful websites. Not only to they keep us prepared. But they remind us that we are not now, and will never be safe. The terrrrrrists are among us, they could be our neighbors, they could be our co workers, they could even be our kids. So don’t forget, stay vigilant, suspect everyone and never hesitate to phone homeland security the moment you see someone with darker skin than you, even if it is in the tanning salon.