I Expect You All To Complain.
I'm feeling a little better today. No longer do I feel the need to sleep all afternoon. I actually felt hungry, before I actually ate lunch. I don't want to actually walk around and discover Munich - partially because I don't want to fall ill again, and partially because I still look like a freak. I'm spending all this money on a proper hotel room precisely so I can confine myself to it. So today I'm simply bored. But within days the sores will fade, the scars will heal and I'll be a normal person again.
So here's the thing. Five nights ago I nearly fainted during an Air concert, before lying awake with back spasms. I nearly fainted again the next day, in line for tickets at the train station. I had to travel from Vienna to Munich (where I actually had accommodation booked) by not one, but four separate trains, while barely being awake enough to show the Polizei my passport. I then had to walk to my hotel with all of my things; check-in, looking freakish; then ask for a taxi to the hospital. My first taxi driver refused to take me to emergency, worried that I might be contagious (he told me to call an ambulance... for chickenpox!) He ejected me outside a random hotel, and I had to haul myself inside, shivering, to ask for another taxi driver. This one finally obliged, where I finally got treatment. By this time, I was sheathed in sweat, I had a temperature of nearly 40 degrees, and I could have passed out at any moment.
In a few days, I will be completely healthy again. However, the doctor did take pains to point out that no less than 20 per cent of adults who get chickenpox are offered free pneumonia upon each recovery. (Seriously, this is real.) And after this week - and hell, after everything over the last month - I don't want to tempt those frightening odds. The only thing I want to do is catch a plane back home.
And despite any of my original plans, that is what I intend to do.
Complaints?
12 comments:
Sounds pretty logical to me...
You're coming home now?!!!
Global warming and terrorist attacks notwithstanding, Europe will probably be around for a few more years. If you get pneumonia and die, you won't. I'd say returning home to live has a lot going for it.
Jase: Thanks for the support. Really, thanks.
Enny: That's more the kind of response I expected! I know a lot of people are going to think that I shouldn't leave until I've done EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! Or that I'm weak for stopping halfway. But I've still got the money I saved up, and I plan to come back next year. The last four weeks feel like a whole year has passed. Then I got really sick, and now I totally need to stop this bandwagon and start a much happier, brand new one at home. Well, this bandwagon starts about 750km away from home...
Hen: Europe will indeed still be around for a few more years. Tentative return plans for next September. Europe will still be there, although I'm afraid I may have missed the UK. That baby seems to be going down.
Ah - you see - I left it open on purpose :o)
On the one hand I want you to go home NOW for erica's sake; on the other I want you to enjoy it and not later resent her in some awful unlikely way.
I am totally living vicariously through this.
And I would totally have been on a return plane as soon as I landed as I could never even do as much as you have alone, particularly with new love abounding. Much resepects to you, sir!
Complaints? Well, given your run since you got there, and everything that began just before you left, I, like everyone else, couldn't blame you at all for coming back now. The fact of the matter is, there's no point going on with the trip right now if 1) You run a risk, however minimal, of contracting a life-threatening disease, and 2) You're just not enjoying the experience anymore.
Hell, I guess my point, really, is that we're your friends - and we'll support whatever decision you make/have made already but just want feedback on. Melbourne or bust! (but don't forget to eventually make it back to A-Town...)
Well...buy me a t-shirt! A t-shirt dammit!
Enny: Believe me, it will be for my sake, not just for Erica's. After all, we were on the telephone for pretty much my entire afternoon, passing comment on our respective music video options (my MTV, her Rage). Thank goodness for international calling cards and phones in hotel rooms.
And I could never resent her. I didn't know whether to broadcast this, but my plans to return are actually Erica's and my plans to return. And it will be so much sweeter...
Justin: Excellent. It's not so much that I'm not enjoying the experience anymore, it's more that - hell, it's a long story. Notice the rather cynical tone of most of this blog. As I just told Enny, I do plan to return, with Erica, by the end of next year...
Steve: How's this: 'Rev went to Europe, caught chickenpox in Vienna, got hauled up in a hotel bed in Munich, came home early and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt!'
What kind of T-Shirt? I can get you a Ukraine national shirt from the shop down the street...
Hooray! :o)
both of those t-shirts! Yayyyy!!!!
There'll be a Coopers waiting for you here, mate! Or a nice glass of red. Or damnit, both! :P
It seems these work computers don't allow me to write blog posts. I had an excellent opening sentence in my head, too. I can write comments, as is obvious by the fact that these words are appearing in a comment.
I suck...
For those concerned, Ben is doing well, though bored, and perhaps coming home on Friday. And by home I mean my home, which will be his detour towards his own home.
There will possibly be proper blog words from me tonight.
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