The aftermath

So the bubble popped, leaving me with a mild trauma that still disturbs my sleep. I did the math and figured it's going to take me a few months, a trip to Slovenia, three pairs of shoes, countless hours at the library and about five evening shifts in the tent as to fully recover. It was only this week that I finally came to understand Warsaw. All this time, I claimed we had a special connection, a bond that was beyond words, but I was so far from the truth. After the most intense and stressful ten days in my life (this is what I get for having wanted a real job, with an office, a schedule and a shitload of responsibility) I grasped the meaning of the word zbombardowany (bombed). Much like the city during World War II, I was a wreck. And had to start the rebuilding process from the very basics. On Sunday morning, having shipped the last group of guests back to Bucharest, I managed to catch my breath and hop on the train to Kato. And life seemed to be getting back to normal. I'm still far from having settled down, and under normal conditions I would have complained about the mess I'm in, but the past weeks have taught me a very valuable lesson: there is always a solution, even in the most desperate and edgy situations. So I was finally able to sit back, relax, and congratulate myself for having pulled through.

One year ago, I was in the process of adapting to a new city, crying my eyes out and wishing to go back to Bucharest, as nothing seemed to make any sense. The pieces of the puzzle just wouldn't match. The awful start is now just another reason for me to make fun of my impatience and crisis-management issues. Much in the same way, I'm dealing now with another brand new beginning, which puts ten times more pressure on my head, but which I seem to handle with a greater deal of calm. If growing up is all about being less hysterical and finding creative solutions to all thinkable and unthinkable problems, then I'm determined to stop fighting the ageing process. However, my biggest wish for next October is for it to find me in the middle of something. Anything, as long as I'm in the middle. I love beginnings, I'd start over and over again, as long as I don't have to do it in October. I'm afraid I'm developing a pattern and, if things carry on like this, I'll have not just a pattern, but a phobia.

Reality check

The bubble is about to pop. I'll finally be able to see Warsaw. I'll meet other bartenders, not just the staff at Coffee Heaven. I'll go dancing. I'll go back to the tent. I'll buy notebooks and post-its and go to school (yes, they accepted me. I'm doing an MA in translation studies at the University of Warsaw). I'll sleep.

As I was walking home, I passed a group of yuppies. Every now and then, perfect strangers do know exactly what to say and when to say it. Even if they have no idea you're walking by, thinking about the very same thin: the shit starts in two days.

This is one of those few times in life when I'm happy that every beginning has its end.

When I'm done, I'll tell you a story about the old ladies in Warsaw.

Happy

Once again, I feel like I can change the world. I'm not afraid the world will change me. And even if it does, I have a feeling it will be for the better. One more week, full speed ahead, and then I'm back to my normal life, back to my friends and the ones I love.

I'm so tired, I don't even know my own name anymore, but looking back at the past two weeks, I am very proud of everything I've done.

Now all I need is a few days to sleep and eat.

Apart from some minor sleeping and eating disorders, everything is going just great.

Salsa

Every now and then, I enjoy a good crappy movie, that does not require any kind of contribution or implication or interpretation. Sometimes, I even like them more than I'm ready to admit. That's why I'm not going to give any titles or even any clues about the latest good crappy movie I've seen, as it seems to have had quite a strong influence upon the deepest darkest layers of the self. But because lately these deepest darkest layers have sent me all sorts of signals, I couldn't help but remember the movie.

The weird dreams are back. As if my life wasn't complicated enough. Sleep is hardly relaxing, resembling hallucinations. Every morning I need a few seconds to remember where I am and why. I can't rest, I can't breathe normally, and because during the day I'm too busy to have time for panick attacks, I think I have them in my sleep. The nights are greenish-bluish-blackish, shady and noisy, and when I do manage to crawl out of bed I'm relieved to discover it was just (another) bad dream. However, two nights ago, there was a malfunction in the current pattern. I had a totally Disney dream. It was still greenish, but the green was nice and comforting. We were barefoot (the hippie-nightmarish dimesnion of the dream), the grass was wet and it sparked as if sprinkled with diamonds. And we were dancing salsa.

I still feel like dancing. Once my life is back on track and all the checklists checked, I'm determined to take dancing seriously. Ready to go pro :)

Double-dealer

I betrayed my agent. This morning I went to see another apartment. It was love at first sight. Once I'm done with planning a million events at work, I'll dedicate all my time and whatever's left of my energy to organizing my housewarming party. Until then, I felt the need to celebrate with a new pair of shoes. It recently dawned on me that it's going to be kinda tough being in my shoes, so they must be as pretty and as reliable as can be.

Where the Devil says good night

It has always been my dream to have an agent. Ok, maybe not always. As a little girl, I was convinced I'd grow up to be an archaeologist, move to Greece, study old rocks and learn The Iliad by heart. In the meantime, I gave up that thought, and all that's left of it is a trip I'm planning on spring break, from Sparta to Troy. Then I wanted to have an agent. And now I do. He's not exactly the kind of agent I had in mind, mainly because he's not in the publishing industry. But I still like to hear myself say "I just got a call from my agent".

So today I got a call from my agent, and we went to see some apartments. Because my agent didn't take the time to get to know me, he made some horrific errors of judgement. He took me to the quiet, green and peaceful areas in Warsaw. Where there's nothing but trees (he's also blithely unaware of the fact that I spent a year in the forest in Ligota, so he can't fool me with some parks), old ladies walking their dogs and / or their grandchildren, churches and grocery stores. In the end, I told him I wanted something in a noisy area, without trees, preferably near a bridge, and that I was lookng for some other kind of entertainment than the one provided in church. And then I popped the question: "What about Praga?"

Of course everyone warned me about Praga, the unsafe neighbourhood which people tend to avoid when looking for a place to rent, otherwise quite popular among artists, renowned for its hip coffee shops, galleries and parties.

My agent was not happy. He told me Praga was either for people who were born and raised there (I find that sweet, it means everybody knows everybody), either for poor people (I find that discriminatory and mean - for a moment, my agent sounded like Cartman "no way, dude, Kenny's family is poor, they live in the ghetto") or for artists, since they are easily accepted there (I find that perfect). He told me Praga was the place where the Devil says good night - far from the city centre and dangerous, where there's nothing much left to do after it gets dark - unless, of course, you're willing to take a risk. So he went on and on about the residential neighbourhoods, but I was not listening anymore. Without knowing it, he had just offered me the perfect reason for a drama of small to medium proportions. What he meant to say was that responsible people, who go to work from 9 to 5, need a cozy and safe home to go back to.

What I meant to say was that I needed a place that will match my out-of-office personality and lifestyle.

Unfortunately for me, I looked responsible. And it was me who fixed the appointment at 5.30, after work.

My first night in Warsaw was one of those perfect Kato nights.

to be continued...

Later edit

I barely got to smell the cool Warsaw air on my way from the airport to the hotel room, while trying to keep my enthusiasm within normal limits. Only this time, it wasn't just the enthusiasm of finally being reunited with my dream city.

In a way, I was enthusiastic about going back home.

Kato has never seemed so beautiful. The tent and its people were everything I hoped for, and a little more. I had missed them so much, and of course I assumed they missed me too, but once we were back together I figured it wasn't just an assumption, it was as real as it could be. Hearing them tell me we were finally back to normal (5 minutes after showing up in the tent I was already behind the bar, back in action) was one of the nicest things I heard in the past few weeks.

It was the best night at work (yes, now I have another job in Warsaw. A day job. Yet to be seen if it rises up to the standards of this blog, if it's worth being mentioned here.)

... followed by a perfect Sunday morning - in the tent, where else? - and a lovely lunch with Pan Janek and his family. When they told me I could spend my weekends at their place, and that I'll always have my place behind the bar, I got so over emotional that I felt the need to change the subject before I started crying.

So this means I'm back to my old pattern: two cities, late night trains and always having something to look forward to. It worked just fine between Bucharest and Brasov, I don't see any reason for it not to work between Warsaw and Katowice.

And because of this pattern, I'm back to my old self, the one I'm so happy with: energetic, ready to change the world, ready to take on any challenge. Happy to be in my shoes. I know now how it feels to be grateful for what you have.

The left ear

In Romania we love papers. For every situation, thinkable and unthinkable, there's a paper. A formal request, a petition, a memorial, a letter or an application. As if I didn't have enough of these things on a daily basis at work, where I suspect we'll end up writing petitions requesting permission to write petitions, today I started putting the pieces together for my MA. Given the fact that I'll be studying in Warsaw, I figured it won't be a big deal (I still have this tendency of idealizing Poland - nothing can go wrong there, nothing works against you). I was particularly impressed by their online registration process, which gave me a very good reason to complain some more about my own Uni here in Bucharest. For about five minutes. Then I discovered it's not easy at all. First comes this part of the registration, then the fun begins. Of course, it all comes down to papers. Apparently, Poles love them as well. When I came to terms with the fact that I also need to print my entire academic record, I finally faced the absurdity of the situation. The guys at the office in Warsaw informed me I cannot mail all these docs. Someone has to take them to the office. But it doesn't matter who does that. Doesn't have to be me, it can very well be some random person. I kept thinking about this, trying to find a reasonable explanation, and in the end I gave up, trying instead to find a random person with spare time on their hands.

And there's another thing I can't understand. The pictures attached to my academic record have very strict dimensions and characteristics (which makes sense), there's only one type of acceptable background (I'm ready to admit this also makes sense) and they have to be semiprofile, with the left ear visible (does this make sense?) And here's the irony: I have a picture that matches the description in the tiniest detail, but it shows the right ear - I took it shortly after shaving the right side of my head and I was very happy to expose it. Before getting my haircut, I pondered over the decision quite a long time, simply because I didn't know which side of the head to shave. And deep down inside I've always wondered if it would have looked better the other way round. Now I know my doubts were actually a premonition. The left ear knew her fifteen minutes of fame would come, sooner or later. I just didn't expect the University of Warsaw to have anything to do with it.

I used to be famous

So this is how they get you

The beginning was innocent enough to fool me. It looked like this: getting there early in the morning, exchanging polite smiles with the rest of the people in the office, asking thousands of dumb questions (South Park strikes back - I kept hearing the voice of Mr. Garrison in my head: Remember there are no stupid questions, just stupid people), trying to get everything done during the day and happily riding my bike back home. It lasted for about a week.

The first thing that worried me was that extra quarter of an hour spent at work. It is my firm belief that once you stop working freelance, you trade a limited amount of your time for a limited amount of cash. I thought it was an accident and tried to ignore it, until the next day, when it happened again. It didn't take me long to spend some extra 30 minutes at work. Not to mention I started smoking less, because I didn't have the time to go out of the office and smoke. This is another downside of the whole sharing-the-office issue. And anyway, you can only smoke on the corridor, which is still better than being kicked out of the building. 

When I spent a whole extra hour, I figured I had a good excuse, because I was just about to meet Ceci downtown. By the end of that day, I was starved to death (no time to eat, either, and anyway I hate eating while I'm working, unless of course I'm in my room, sharing some quality time with my laptop and writing whatever is it that I might be writing at that point), pissed off for having broken my rules, even more pissed off atfer having figured out that my rules were rather naive and it was going to take a lot of effort to stick to them.

However, in the meantime I managed to submit the translation for The Eye of the Moon, even though it took me quite some time to edit it, over and over again, just for the sake of having all the characters and all the fun to myself before sharing yet another brilliant Anonymous novel with the world. I did share it with my Mom, who's the master of proofreading, and unfortunately she came up with a very elementary and unproblematic explanation for my fascination. I'm still wondering if she's right, and if my efforts of putting the whole story in a theoretical framework  were marvelously useless. The other good news is that starting this month I've come up with a new column for our magazine, dealing with Eastern European writers, books, editors, translators and everything else that comes with the pack. I'm already planning a few interviews, none of them in Poland at the time being, so I'll have to slowly start planning my trips to Slovenia and Croatia, to begin with.

Getting back to the job thing, today I totally crossed the line. Not only did I spend the extra hour at the office, and probably would have spent another one if it hadn't been for the power cut, I also brought a file home, thus profaning the very last stronghold - Ceci's living room, which I am squatting at the time being. As I sat down with my laptop and lit a cigarette, it dawned on me that I've showed the file enough kindness by taking it out of the office, for a bike trip around Bucharest and a lovely dinner with Ana, and I figured it needed a good night's sleep in my bag.