And I used to wonder why people called me strange

Excerpt from a recently written letter concerning a typewriter I bought at a flea market in Konstanz:

I was out walking about the downtown area here in Konstanz this weekend when I happened upon the biggest flea market I'd ever seen. The thing started at an intersection next to the river, near my university, and stretched into infinity in two directions. It was almost midnight when I happened upon this giant bonanza of secondhand commerce and it looked like the entire population of the city had come out to investigate the wares and had no intention of leaving before sunrise. The place was PACKED. Never before had I needed to walk sideways down a city street in the dead of night in order to make my way through the throngs of people blocking the way. When I began walking down one of the infinite rows of merchandise, I was unaware of its infinite nature. About a block down the line, I happened upon a very nice looking manual typewriter, of which I asked the price. The guy manning the tent told me to make an offer. "20 euro?" "Okay, sicher," he said. I hemmed and hawed for a while. "Möglicherweise später..." I wasn't ready to commit.

We (myself and two friends who were with me) continued on in search of treasure, picking our way over heaps of broken rotary-dial phones, trashy German romance novels, and used baby clothes that were held together more due to the adhesive properties of the spit-up that probably covered them by the material of the garments themselves - I couldn't verify this for sure though; spit-up stains are difficult to identify by flashlight illumination. Eventually, I spotted another manual typewriter, this time a smaller portable version, complete with carrying case. "Wieviel kostet es?" "Fünf euro." "Nur fünf?!" "Ja, genau." (As you can see, my German has progressed to the point where I regularly hold deep, philosophical conversations.)

I leapt at the bargain, accidentally knocking over two old women and a Chinese vase of Ming origins as I flew through the air. I'd always wanted a manual typewriter, since I tend to be silly and backwards in my tastes. At a price less than that of some sandwiches, I couldn't pass it up. Unfortunately, my new toy weighed on the order of an ass-ton and a half (with one ass-ton equaling the weight of 2000 donkeys)(and mind you, this was the portable model) and we still had the better part of an infinite distance to cover before reaching the end of the market. About an hour later, judging from a fractional sense, we'd made approximately zero forward progress. (I feel like this would be a good place to analogize my situation with a mathematical limit, but perhaps I'll refrain for everyone's sake.) My arm by this time was being held onto my shoulder by a few thin sinews of muscle that hadn't been torn free by the weight of the typewriter, so after running a quick cost/benefit analysis of the situation, I decided that heading back to my dorm and returning later to investigate the rest of the hodgepodge of miscellaneous offerings was probably a wise course of action.

So, upon returning to my room - which, incidentally, I like to call The Bat Cave - I was lured away from my bed, where I belonged, by the silky looking, cream colored machine sitting on my desk. It called to me there in the dark of night. It asked me to caress its keys. "I'm so lonely! Won't you come play with me?"

I didn't believe at first that it was actually talking to me, but then it began to ring the bell warning that one is approaching the end of a line. It was trying to get my attention. The motionless hammers looked at me with such a forlorn expression, I couldn't help but go and comfort them. I began by writing random words, simply to test the action of the keys. Then I started writing a letter. To whom, I didn't know, but I felt that writing a letter would be a proper use of such a noble beast.

I asked idly in my letter how the family was, if there was any news since the last time we'd talked, you know, the usual. After coming to the end of my paragraph, I stopped for a moment to think of what to write next, when before my eyes, my Triumph portable typewriter started drafting a response. It said, "I'm so glad to hear from you again. It’s been such a very long time since you last wrote. Billy and Pa are doing fine, though Stephie has been down with the measles, but Doctor Kindman says she should be well in no time at all. He says she has a very good constitution, and that if we keep giving her plenty of chicken soup and the medicine he prescribed, we should expect to see her out of bed early next week." The typewriter continued on for some time in this fashion, until it finally decided that it must be boring me with details and that it would allow me to go about doing more important things. I wrote back, telling it that there was no such thing as an unimportant detail and to not hold back. We exchanged communiqués at length before I finally decided to retire for the night.

When I arose the next morning, I found a message waiting for me. The typewriter was wondering why I hadn't written again for so long. Was I becoming bored with the accounts of the firmness or lack thereof of Sally, our milk cow's stools? If I was, that could be easily omitted from future letters if it meant I wouldn't neglect to write again. I said it was nothing in the letter that had caused the break in message sending, it was simply that I had things to do - namely sleeping - which prevented me from writing as often as my typewriter was demanding from me.

From the reply I received, I got the feeling my typewriter didn't buy my story. It said to me, "I know you have other priorities, but you seem to have been cold and distant recently. Is there someone else? Please, can we just be honest about the situation?" I was affronted by the accusation; I had had this typewriter for only just over a day and it was already leveling this terrible claim against me. "No," I said, "yours are the only keys my fingers dare to dance upon. I know it's difficult being apart for so long," - I imagine time passes much quicker for a typewriter, as I certainly hadn't thought our separation to be of interminable length - "but I need you to trust me if we're going to make this work."

I sat in front of the keyboard for several minutes before the hammers sheepishly banged out a reply. "I'm sorry I was so quick to doubt. You know how I'm prone to crises of confidence." Of course I was aware; if I had been sold for five euro at a flea market, I would start doubting my self-worth too.

We've been steadily making amends since that particular incident, and I feel like our relationship is really starting to blossom. I foresee writing many beautiful letters together. Anyway, I hope you don’t feel like that was too needless of a sidetrack into my personal affairs.

Hmm… what other mundane activities can I turn into unnecessarily long meanderings of a mind prone to hyperbole?

Hello all, I am actually still alive. I haven't posted anything here in a long while because I've taken to writing letters and postcards instead, and I'm pretty sure those have been reaching most of the people who read this blog anyway, so I don't feel too terrible about my delinquency.

I've got about three more weeks before I head back to the US, so I have to figure out what sort of traveling I'm going to do in that time. I have a friend here who is interested in going to Serbia, but I mentioned this to a Romanian friend of mine, and she said that she'd never been there, but that she heard there wasn't much to see. I think Kurt (not my housemate from Flint) is keen on going just because the US bombed the place in the not too distant past. Maybe I'll go, maybe I won't.

Since the last time I posted, I've been to a couple of places. First to Prague, then to Egypt, and most recently to Berlin. I suppose I probably should write something about Prague, but I think I'll come back to Egypt and Berlin later, since I wrote a couple of letters that really cover those quite well, so I think I'll go about attempting to requisition those back from the people to whom I sent them and perhaps post adapted versions of those letters after I get back to the US.

It's been about a month already since I was in Prague, so some of the details are starting to get a bit sketchy, but there were a few things that still really stand out in my mind. Kurt (this time it's my housemate from Flint), Steve (aka Loud Harold) and I went to Prague together and had a couple rather interesting experiences. The first one that comes to mind is going to "Central Europe's Biggest Nightclub," where we met a large group of Swedish high school kids on a school field trip. I think they were all 15 and 16 years old, which was extremely odd to me, although I guess is more then norm around here. In the same club, we also met a couple German guys who were very excited to hear our thoughts on Germany, and some Canadians who did nothing but talk about politics (which the Germans thought to be an absolutely ridiculous thing at a nightclub).

The other things I remember were Steve getting accosted by a couple of Czech prostitutes who ended up trying to steal his cell phone, Kurt and I getting accosted by a very angry, very ugly woman wanting cigarettes (I think), and talking to a very nice Czech woman and an old German man on our train from Prague back to Germany. We had had a salon compartment on the train, and at first the woman had been talking to the old man in German. After a while, he left to go find his wife, and I began talking to the woman, at first in terrible German, and then switching to English. She told me all sorts of stories about how she used to work in Nigeria and lived in South Africa, and then about all the progress the Czech Republic has made since the end of communism. Then the old man came back, and she asked him if he spoke English so we could all talk together. He said he spoke a little, and then proceeded to converse with us in the most eloquent English I'd ever heard from someone not reading lines in a play. He imparted upon us the wisdom he'd accrued over his years of living, one of which was to learn as many foreign languages as possible. He asked Kurt and I how our German was coming and we admitted that it was progressing very slowly. He asked if we had German girlfriends, and when we said no, he said, Oh, once you get a German girlfriend, you'll be speaking it in six months. (No, since that time I've ended up with a Romanian girlfriend, but unfortunately, my Romanian is no better for it. I guess her English is just too good.) The Czech woman told us that we should enjoy life early on and to not put it off until later. She said that she and her husband planned to work hard and save until they were 55 years old and then they would retire and do all the things they wanted to do in life, but that her husband died when he was 54. Since then, she said, she's been doing nothing but traveling and living life to the fullest, but she regrets that she didn't do it earlier. She also gave me hope that it's never too late to learn another language. She said that she spoke Portuguese (fluently I assumed) and she didn't start learning it until she was 60, and that she was 64 now (or there abouts).

Somehow, between Prague and Nuremberg, our train ended up becoming about an hour late, which makes no sense to me, since we left right on time. Anyway, due to the delay, we missed the connection we were supposed to catch to get back to Konstanz, and this nice Czech woman was so friendly and helpful that she stopped at the information desk in the Nuremberg train station to find out if there was a way for us to make it back to Konstanz that night (since the train we were supposed to be on was one of the last coming into Konstanz that evening). We could have easily gotten this information ourselves, but I was just so stunned by how nice this woman was in having honest concern that we safely make it to our destination. Fortunately, we were able to make the very last train back home and didn't have to spend the nights wandering the streets of Ulm.

I'm sure I've got plenty more to talk about, but I have to go work on a project for school. What?! School work?! Yes, I should have known it was going to come sooner or later. I was fortunate and it came later, but now I have to actually get to it. Hopefully I'll find some more time to write after I'm done with my finals.