the mass email i just sent out:

pretty much an update of the last 6 months of my life...

i think i wrote it more for myself to remember everything that happened rather than to update everyone...

enjoy!

intrepid readers!
I’ve gotta apologize for the drought of emails from my
end of the world. the summer has arrived here in
Edinburgh and in the past month and a half we’ve had
about 10 days of solid full day’s worth of sunshine
(days? days’? does the worth of sunshine
actually belong to the day? or is it just some
saying?) and for the other few weeks we’ve had good
bouts of sun between the clouds and rain. because of
this I’ve been infront of a monitor for far less than
usual. it has been amazing actually – I wore shorts,
a tshirt and my flip flops through a whole day and
night without being (too) cold or get rained on once –
sweet deal – I felt like I was back in socal for the
day, just without my fellow oversized beige
cargo shorts/plaid shirt crew from socal…(you know who
you are…I think…). the entire attitude of the city has
changed since the short day winters. hell, my own
attitude has changed – the day I got back from holiday
(more on that in a bit) I couldn’t stop smiling
because it was 9:00PM and the sun was just setting. a
far cry from the 4:30PMish I left from. this still
doesn’t mean that I don’t miss the states – actually
the homesickness has been striking lately more than
usual, but it is much easier to deal with since the
sun is out!
and really, what better time than the sunny summer to
be unemployed? I sure can’t think of a better time –
so I have been in such a position for the past month.
okay, this isn’t entirely true. after returning from
holiday (again – more on that later) I came back to
the video store at my usual 12 hours/week. a week or
two into this arrangement (which provided enough cash
for me to feed myself modestly) it was promptly cut
down to 4 hours/week (which, well, doesn’t really
allow me to eat much at all) because the store’s
owner/manager was leaving for a 3 month holiday and
wasn’t planning on returning – oh yeah, and the fact
that the store wasn’t really making much money either.
damn. suddenly my unofficial plans for semi-extended
semi-unemployment were made a bit more difficult.
fortunately I had put aside enough money for about 2-3
months rent before leaving for holiday (I’m getting
there, I swear – patience!) so I really only had to
worry about the food issue. during this time I put in
a few volunteer shifts at the forest café
(hippie collective /hipster veggie café/public space)
and with the sudden drop in food income led me to the
natural conclusion:

volunteer shift = free food
mat = no food
forest café + mat = not hungry

during my time at forest I was able to pick up some
beer money through the tips I earned each shift and
also managed to pick up a few side day gigs (helping
people move and whatnot) for some more cash. in the
meantime I fastidiously did the thing nearly every
modern college graduate has done – scoured the
classifieds and emailed off my CV all over the place.
really though, my heart wasn’t really into any of the
jobs I had applied for (save the NMR technician or
film festival worker) and like any modern college
graduate has done, I got no replies. really, I like
to think that I was just so overqualified for them
all, they didn’t feel the need to tell me. maybe, but
there is something a bit defeating about not even
getting a letter, call or even email from anything or
anyone.

in the meantime I plodded on at the forest while
waiting for some sort of job to turn up. during this
spare time I discovered that the forest was donated
loads of darkroom equipment and were looking for
volunteers to put a public darkroom together. having nothing much more to
do in my semi-unemployment than earn more free food
(haha, seriously though, I did this for the chance to
do it more than anything) I took the job (with another
seriously involved volunteer and a few other ‘when
they have the time’ people). thus far we have cleaned
out a seriously under organized store room/workspace,
built a new wall (with door) to split the room in two,
removed a sink, painted the walls, and had a new sink
installed with attached wet bench. we’ve still got
loads of work to do, but by august we should have a
fully functioning darkroom with 3 enlargers. it will
be public access and inexpensive to use. it will be
amazing. I am excited.

alright, now I’m ready for the fun holiday bits.
before all of this I quit both my jobs, took my built
up holiday pay and decided to do the major goal I had
whilst out in this end of the world – travel through
the Balkans. I don’t know since when, but for ages
I’ve always wanted to get out to this end of the
world. I think it began in 10th grade world history
when I wrote a paper (okay, this was 10th grade, it
was a report) on Slobodon Milosivec – or it could be
something that stuck around from my excessive atlas
reading days when I was really little (which I’ve been
getting back into). this wasn’t without some detours
starting with brighton where I visited Hannah – a
member of the UCI English girl crew. she was
producing a production of Little Shop of Horrors and I
came to support before leaving the island. the
difference between Edinburgh and brighton was mostly
noted by the difference in weather (by the way,
Britons talk about the weather ALL the time and in
this email I have joined them). being 5 or 6 hundred
miles south the air was considerably warmer and the
sun up longer – though we were treated by a freak
snowstorm after the show it was bright and shiny the
next day.

brighton reminds me of all my favorite parts of SF, it
was the first place outside of Edinburgh that I would
seriously consider living in the uk. I probably
should spend a few more days there before deciding
something like that, but sometimes when you know, you
just know. it probably helps that I had a great time
with Hannah and her roommates. we got along really
well and that made the weekend that much better.
sadly my time was cut short in brighton as I had to
return for my last week working in Edinburgh then it
was off to Birmingham (okay, still haven’t left the
island for holiday yet – I’m getting there). In
birmingham I met another UCI English girl crew member.
she had invited several of her friends to come along
as well so a heavy weekend was in store. we did a
walkthrough the city center in a shopping area called
the bullring. I made it through about 30 minutes of
walking through the mega-overhyped-mall atmosphere
before having to leave the madness of the shopping
crowds. I found a huge set of market stalls, fruit and
veg and warehouse shopping. much more deal-withable
than the bullring and I saw the coolest butcher ever.
huge foot high blond mohawk. I took a photo. great
stuff…

we also spent a night hitting up the Birmingham
nightlife. a semi-fun free club night was spent in
the downtown area. as per my usual club experience I
was almost not let in due to my general slovenliness
(well, mostly it was just my lack of ‘quality’ shoes).
but again, as per my usual club experience, I was
surrounded by beautiful ladies, who were able to use
their female charm to get my dirty ass in. hooray for
that.

two days later I was headed to London for my easyjet
(the british equivalent to southwest) flight to
Budapest. the uneventful flight and even more
uneventful pass through passport control/customs led
me to my bag and my temporary flatmate for my time in
Budapest – andi. she’s a friend from UCI and we
actually met before I even became a tour guide (ie. a
long time ago). immediately we hit it off like old
times and she treated me to my first real Mexican meal
in ages. delicious. real chicken mole and carne
asada nachos. what a great way to begin my
non-english speaking world devegetarianization.

my official plans had me staying in Budapest for a
little less than a week, but urged on by my great
hostesses I stayed for an additional week an a half or
so. this gave me more than enough time to really
explore the huge city. coming during the end of
february kept the city very cold (a few days of snow
blanketed the city in the beautiful way that only a
few fresh inches can do) and relatively unspoiled by
tourists (save for myself). the cold was no problem
except when schlepping my backpack around with my
jacket and loads of layers. this made for some quick
sweaty conditions, but otherwise it was great and
dealwithable.

aside from being my hostess, Mexican food maker,
flatmate, tourguide and language teacher (within a
week, I was speaking more Hungarian than a few of
andi’s friends who had been there for nearly a year
[ignore the fact that each of these people could each
speak 4-6 languages and didn’t feel the need to learn
another – bugger]) andi was also my social director.
she knew the places to go and introduced me to all her
(cool) friends. we had loads of dinner parties and a
few nights out as well. was great spending time with
someone who had lived in southern California;
remembering all the things we miss from there, the
things we don’t miss, talking about the general
attitude of the place, everything.

whilst there I turned 24 and had a great birthday
hiking through the hills west of Budapest. to get to
the where I was planning on hiking I had to take the
‘children’s railway’ a holdover from heavy socialist
times. it was designed to be (I think) managed and
run by kids under 15 to teach them the values of hard
work and working for the body politic. despite
hungary’s recent joining of the EU and not-so-recent
acceptance of free market socialism the children’s
railway still exists and still is run by kids. very
cool having your ticket sold by and collected by kids.
weird, but cool nonetheless. after a great short day
hike in the snow I made it back to andi’s flat where
she was kind enough to have a birthday dinner for me.
amazing!

through andi I met a Serbian guy named marko. we got
along great and he convinced me to change my plans a
bit and head to Serbia directly from Budapest. andi’s
university had a long weekend so her roommate, andi
and I hopped on the overnight train to Belgrade. I’ve
done loads of train travel, but this was one of the
worst trips I’ve had to make. mostly because we were
making the trip with this girl who had an excessively
large bag – so big she couldn’t carry it herself. it
wasn’t so bad once we got on, but the damn bag made
getting on a 30 minute disaster. once we were settled
the train ride wasn’t *so* bad and we woke up the next
morning in a cyrillic infused land.

we hadn’t reserved a place to stay, but had been told
that there wouldn’t be a problem trying to get a place
so we weren’t worried. we started with some hotels
near the train station, but kash and I were set on the
only hostel in the area… long story short, this
didn’t happen and we had to return to one of the first
hotels, hotel Beograd. another on my list of
communism era holdovers we were placed is a more than
adequate inexpensive 3 bed room with great shower and
friendly ex-soviet mafioso staff (the in-house coffee
shop was staffed by a tuxedoed waiter and had the same
mafioso cronies smoking cigarette after cigarette and
drinking black coffee each morning).

fortunately for us andi’s roommate kasha spoke Russian
(among several other languages; her Hungarian wasn’t
so good haha) which a lot of the 30+year olds could
speak and she also helped us out with the cyrillic
pronunciations (until I learned). most twenty
somethings could speak at least some english and many
were quite (almost annoyingly) fluent. we really had
almost no problem getting by lingually. we spent the
first day exploring the main drag of the city, a very
European (think all the normal brand name highstreet
shops) walking boulevard. it wasn’t quite springtime
yet, but you could tell that when the weather was a
bit warmer the street would be packed with outdoor
cafes and the like. we picked the best possible day
to arrive really, although a bit cloudy when we
arrived to the main city park (where the Danube meets
with another river…the name escapes me now) the sun
burst through in the distance and left us with an
unbeatable view of novi Beograd and the two rivers.

the next day we met with two of marko’s friends – we
hit it off great and they were able to give us more of
an inside look at the city. definitely one of the
highlights was discussing punk music and the oc with
them (tragically they were only at the whole oliver
debacle at the time). we stayed up all night chatting
and enjoying yugoslavian hot chocolate (a thick hot
pudding really). save for the next day my whole
serbian trip would have been perfect.

I woke up the next day with some serious difficulties
breathing. I was hoping it was the start of a cold or
something, but as the day wore on it was obvious that
it was something more than just a simple sickness. my
lungs started to become more and more useless and I
trudged my ass to a hospital (once I finally found
one). after a bit of an adventure searching through
numerous buildings demarcated entirely in cyrillic and
several security guards being questioned later I found
my way to a cardio pulmonary doctor. she was very
helpful and through the limited English of a family
friend of her last patient we were able to
communicate. the translator left after I explained my
symptoms and then through lots of smiles and even more
games of charades when suddenly my pants were down my
shirt was off and I was hooked up to what looked like
a 50s era prop from a bad sci-fi film (but what was
really an 80s era soviet ekg machine) by this creepy
short balding guy with scientist glasses on. said ekg
was taken and revealed nothing. apparently I was 100%
healthy (I think, again this has all been done with a
great set of charades) and just had a negative
reaction to the sudden change in weather (oh yeah, we
suddenly got a great day of sun and warmth that day).
personally I think I was having an allergic reaction
to the bedding at the hotel, but it eventually worked
itself out and by the middle of the next day I was
breathing like normal.

kasha and andi had to return to school so I was taken
in by marko’s friends who we had met earlier, andrija
and sveta. they stay in novi Beograd, the (even more)
socialist era concrete apartment blocks outside of the
city. they took such good care of me while I was
staying it was great. we really hit it off even
better than when we first met and just ‘clicked’.
they took me to their university where we met their
friend milijana. she took us over for a dinner at her
flat and again, we all got along swimmingly. all
being architecture students I cruised their photo
books and came across a house from reno featured and
photographed through one of the books. aaaah.

a few more days in Beograd and I was off to the
capital of croatia, Zagreb. looking at the map this
makes no sense travel wise, but andi and marko had
a(nother) long weekend and were traveling there. we
all met up and managed to see most of the city in a
day (and some change). it reminded us of disneyland
mainstreet with little buildings and cottage-type
architecture. a lovely little city – somehow with a
population nearing one million. really nothing to
super exiting, worth a visit, but I don’t think I’d go
back. marko, being Serbian, was given some trouble
through the nature of his Serbian accent by a few
people. fortunately we didn’t have a complete loss of
faith in the Croatian people, by meeting a super
friendly videostore clerk (birds of a feather…). a
weirdish chap (birds of a feather???) with the same
film taste as myself (birds of a feather!!!). on our
last night the three of us stayed up all night
chatting and drinking beers. a great way to say good
bye to my travel buddies. bleary eyed I walked them
to the trainstation at 6 in the morning and I
struggled to stay awake so I could make my train two
hours later.

soon I was on my way to sarajavo. an boring and very
long trainride was made interesting by the sudden
influx of a company of Bosnian army cadets into my
train from banja luka. I was a bit out of place,
unshaven beard, backpack and all, but they were
friendly and we didn’t bother eachother (aside from
the overcrampness of the compartment). I arrived at
sarajavo at about 7 at night with no bosnian marks. I
scrambled around the area near the train station
(where the infamous holiday inn is situated)
desperately looking for a bank or atm or currency
converter or something. lucky for me I found a bank
with late hours and got there 10 minutes before the
damn thing closed down. with converted money in hand
I trekked back to the tram station to head for the old
town and (where I hoped) a hostel bed would be
waiting. the hostel was filled up and they set me up
with a room in a private house.

my god.

worst. room. ever.

I’ve been in some shitty places in my life, and this
really wasn’t so bad. it was clean…but that’s about
all I can say. it smelled of stale air and stale
bedding. the heater didn’t work, the water only went
from cold to slightly less cold and I was infinitely
thankful for my uber warm down sleeping bag since the
bedding was scratchy as hell.

aside from that room, I think sarajavo has become my
favorite European city. it is nestled in high
mountains which would be great for hiking save the
land mines scattered about. the muslim/Turkish
influenced old city was filled with amazing
coffeeshops/desert houses, jewelery stores, fruit and
veg convenience stores and bakeries (my favorite thing
about the Balkans me thinks). a bit further out was
the main highstreet which was a typical European
pedestrian street. parallel to both was a river
forming the valley cutting through the mountains
towards the train station. although the city was
great, I was tempted to move on since the room sucked.


tired of the room I was stuck in, I hopped on a bus to
mostar, a small city about two hours outside of
sarajavo. I was taken in by omar latzke, a former
german professor who’s English was mostly limited to:
‘room?’ and ‘when?’. his hospitality was immediate as
I was welcomed with two shots of plum brandy and a
load of food. each day he prepared breakfast and fed
me at least one other time per day (despite saying he
wouldn’t). brilliant. I went to see a French metal
band at the community center which was a dome built in
the center of a bombed out sports arena. hooray –
reclaimed space!

great times were had before I returned back to
sarajavo. omar hooked me up with some of his friends
in the city and they took me in for another 2 days.
they had their son pick me up in my car. he had just
got a ragtop vw rabbit, same color, same seats, same
everything (though not quite as beat up) so weird.
for the second time around in sarajavo I spent one day
skiing in the nearby mountains (where the 1984 winter
Olympics were held) and another wandering the city.
I left for trebinje (where milijana and her family
live) and almost didn’t make it since I didn’t have
enough cash and the bus left from in the RS (Serbian)
part of sarajavo (ie, far from the city center) and
not near any sort of banking facilities. I found one
fortunately (after a short 30 minute search) and with
a quick drop in my stomach (the atm didn’t take one of
my cards) I was on my way.

milijana picked me up with her mom and the Balkan
hospitality continued unabated. they showed me around
the small city where it proceeded to rain consistently
for three solid days. it really was a beautiful place
to be despite the fact that my hosts kept reminding me
that it is even more beautiful when the sun is out.
of course the day I left the city it was sunny and
(overly) warm. milijana’s took a bus with me to
Dubrovnik in croatia and hooked me up with her aunt
where I was to stay for the next few days. on the way
over I was pulled off the bus and had all of my gear
searched by border patrol. a bit menacing, but
nothing too crazy. they didn’t search too hard
because I was carrying these two jars of jam that
distinctly looked like a parcel of some sort of
illicit material because of the way I had packed.
although I was a bit embarrassed, I didn’t mind
because it got me off the overheated bus and in the
shade for a bit (I did feel bad for my fellow
passengers who were stuck because of me though).

milijana spent a lovely day in dubrovnik with me where
we jotted around the old town and enjoyed the newly
emerged sun. we spent a few hours on a rocky beach
and I took (most of) my clothes of and went swimming
in the still wintery chilled sea. milijana’s parents
came to pick her up that night and I was back alone in
the small town. this place definitely deserves a
visit by anyone in the area. the sort of place you’d
like to travel on your honeymoon – albeit a bit
touristy.

during this time I got an email from marko and andi
saying they were nearly finished with their exams and
that I should return to Budapest to party with them.
I looked up flight info and discovered that it would
be easy and inexpensive for me to make this journey
(it only would take me a 30-odd hour travel up the
Croatian coast then across through to hungary- no
problem!). I started my epic journey with an 8 hour
ferry ride where I (finally – took me 6 years)
finished catch-22 inbetween enjoying the sea freckled
with little islands. this took me to split where I
had 3 hours to look around before having to catch my
train to Budapest. I looked around the
socal-coast-esque town for a bit then head back to the
train station. my traveling buddy was a Japanese guy
named hiro – super Japanese and super friendly. the
train tracks had broken, so we had to take a bus past
the breakage and then hop on an overnight to Zagreb.
the bus left at 11pm – arrived at the train at about
3am then rolled into Zagreb at 6am. this was not fun.
especially when some german backpacking chick got
sick on the bus and puked into her hands (which I
suppose is better than some other places she could
have done it). back in zagreb I waited for two hours
and tried my best not to fall asleep (I’d of missed my
train had I rested my eyelids – and probably woken up
sans backpack). I got on my final train in the
Balkans and made a great friend from Bratislava who
had been traveling through the Balkans as well, we hit
it off great and I do hope to meet up with her in the
future.

back in hungary I spent a few days helping people
shrug off their exam stress and being (a bit of) an
asshole to andi (sorry babe!). we spent a day at a
Hungarian cultural festival in this huge stadium and
watched loads of folk dance and music and whatnot. at
the end they played music for everyone to dance to –
this fancy line dancing sort of stuff – of course I
joined in. good stuff.

my funds were slowly starting to dry up and as any
backpacker knows, you go where the free bed is. my
sister was in the middle of a semester in italy so off
I went. I was sure I was on the correct flight as I
was surrounded by a class of 30 overly fashionable,
huge bug-eye sunglassed kids. my parents in their
semi-retiredness were visiting my sister at the same
time and met me at the rome airport. I landed in rome
two days after the pope died so that place was a
madhouse and we left that day for Florence (where my
sister was studying). I never really have had much of
a desire to head to italy so I wasn’t so surprised to
not be overly impressed by Florence. not that it
wasn’t a beautiful place, but aside from seeing my
family I really didn’t feel much of a need to be
there. Florence is overrun with American students
(ask dan about that!) add to that the load of tourists
and parts of it are almost like ‘little USA’.

I was a bit over the place in a few days, so it didn’t
surprise me much that my favorite part in italy was
the short hike we took about an hour and a half
outside of Florence in an area called cinque terra.
an easy two hour number along the coastline connecting
5 seaside villages. amazing cliffside hiking plus
outdoorsyness plus beautiful wee Italian villages =
happy mat.

another free bed was calling in Amsterdam with a
friend from burningman. he had been traveling through
Europe as well and we had decided ages ago to meetup
somewhere on his travels. being the budget traveler I
am I discovered the cheapest travel was to take the
train from Florence (leaving my sister’s place at 4am)
to turin (far north of italy) to London to Amsterdam
(arriving late in the evening – another full day of
travel – hooray). somehow I managed to lose my phone
in the London airport and nearly my passport as well –
but I made it through with no problem.

two great days were spent amongst the fantastic dutch
people. each time I’ve been to the ‘dam I seem to
explore different sides of the city. I started with
the ‘first-timer see as much as possible during the
day and get stoned at night’ trip with dustin and
eric, which was followed by the ‘hardcore redlight
district trip’ with my cousin; this time I was exposed
to the ‘dutch design and shopping scene’. I spent the
last of my expendable cash on a shoulder bag (more of
a courier bag than a man purse – so I tell myself) and
then had to bug off back to Scotland.

I had a few days to reorient to things like being able
to read all of the signs and knowing what all of the
items on a menu are before my dad (on his way back
from italy) came to visit. we spent a few days in
Edinburgh and fife when he decided that we ought to go
traveling together somewhere while he was up. as it
was so last minute it was hard to find somewhere to go
and in the end we decided on the Shetland islands –
the far far north of the UK.

a one word description of the shetlands
bleak.

okay, maybe I need another word
desolate.

alright, one more
puffins!

for those of you who have traveled through northern
Nevada (outside of reno), Shetland is what nevada
would be like if it rained and had the occasional
sheep rather than sagebrush. it is a neat little
place, but well, a bit weird. there is loads of money
from the north sea oil business, but being so
separated (overnight ferry from aberdeen – on the way
up I discovered that I don’t do stormy seas so well)
from the mainland a slightly different culture has
developed. we rented a car and toured through all of
the main Shetland island. in the far south there is
an incredible bird sanctuary area which is staved off
from development (although there isn’t much) where
puffins coexist with other cool sea birds. during the
trip my dad and I saw a bird (and osprey I think)
snatch a fish from the ocean and (accidentally?) drop
it from about 20 ft in the air. very cool.

eventually my dad took off and I was left in my
unemployed state that I was in at the beginning of
this email.

tragically this email has taken me nearly 3 weeks to
write (or maybe tragically this email is nearly 5000
words – are you ready for this sort of commitment??)
and so a lot has changed since I started.

I’ll do this quickly to get it done with:

-one of the kitchen managers at the forest café quit –
I’ve applied and now am one of the (paid) managers at
the best veggie place in Edinburgh

-the g8 came and went in Scotland. being a veggie
café/collective/community space we got slammed for the
whole week. I now hate hippies, anarchists AND
vegans. oddly the cops became my friends.

-during the most intense of the protest days I treated
a regular forester for a concussion and profuse
bleeding from the head. nope – (despite what some
onlookers were asking/hoping) she wasn’t subject to
police violence, just excessive drunkedness and
inability to balance (and take care of her kids).

-the g8 crowds overwhelmed our sewage system and we
had to close down for a night to fix the problem.
tragically the sewage pipe running under the darkroom
(in construction) was the one that decided to burst.
the plumber had to put a hole in one wall and in the
floor to fix everything. construction has taken a bit
of a break while we work out what was destroyed and
not destroyed by the excess fecal matter swimming
through the room (BLEAGH)

-one of my friend’s band was invited to play at the
major Scottish weekend long music festival. he
invited me to be a roadie for the weekend. hooray!
free concerts, camping and escape from Edinburgh.
caught Jimmy Eat World (finally) – did a super job,
played my favorite song (Lucky Denver Mint) and didn’t
play many new songs (worries me that they might be
relying too heavily on their breakout album Bleed
American).

-CHECK OUT MY FRIEND’S BAND!!!
http://www.thevery.com

they’re a ‘the’ band somewhat in the style of The
White Stripes. listen up and lemme know what you
think.

-the weather is still pretty good (despite the
occasional rainshower), I’ve managed to get a bit of a
sunburn, but nothing too bad.

I think that’s about it in my life right now. I do owe several people personal emails – they’re coming - I swear.

please let me know what it going on wherever you are and whatever you’re doing…

miss y’all
mat