Welcome to reality...?

Too much caffeine, sugar and internet time coupled with not enough sleep, sunlight and exercise turned me into an absolute crazy woman over the course of last week. The balance was definitely OFF. I decided there was so clearly only one logical solution to get the Kate whom I am in love with back…flee the country. You know when your reality gets a little skewed and you just can’t focus clearly and you feel all blaaaahhhh? That’s how I was feeling and so a friend and I did a weekend in Belgrade, Serbia—yeah, I am still trying to wrap my brain around that—to fight back into the “healthy” reality and rescue our real selves back. You might be thinking “Good idea Kate, go to a torn-up country dealing with ethnic and religious conflicts to make you feel the warm tinglies again”, but sometimes a weekend completely separate from the reality you live everyday is the best medicine. I often find myself needing time to process information, emotions, scenarios, and thoughts after an intense time frame. Serbia let me do that and I am back in Budapest with more thanks than I can remember in a long, long time.

My reality here in Europe is different from that of back in the U.S. and my reality here in Budapest is so different from the one I encountered this weekend in Serbia. The closest I had ever gotten to Serbia before this trip had been through “60 Minutes” specials or the 6 o’clock world news so I had a rough idea of what to expect my eyes to see, but no idea whatsoever of how I would feel. I live in a world of want usually, being able to save up money not with the aim of purchasing essential necessities like food or clothing but for buying fun things like an i-pod or laptop. The world I felt though while traveling in Serbia was one of need—of industry, of money, of color, or opportunity, of up-keep, of so many other things I usually don’t have to think twice about. Talk about surreal. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what a permanent life there would be like and I have met so many people who come from such a place and they have so much drive and motivation and most of all, hope. That was the kicker for me—I felt sort of hopeless while in Belgrade because there was so much that needed to be done to improve the lives of those living there, at least in my eyes. But then again, if you have known nothing other than what you have lived for your entire life, I can see how in this example, a pattern of living for survival or to just barely reach the minimum threshold is all that makes sense sometimes. It was so hard for me to not think of how thankful I was that I would be leaving by the end of the weekend, that this wasn’t my permanent place.

I have something like a huge safety net while here in Eastern Europe—the fact that I am an American. If I don’t enjoy something or find something uncomfortable, it is easy and comforting to be honest, to know that there is an end, that I can retreat to a comfort I know will be there waiting for me in May. It is strange to know that while I can challenge myself for a specific period of time and then give things the “off” switch and head home to a home where I live in a luxury that now seems sort of absurd, it is also frustrating to me because so many others do not have this option. There is no “off” switch. The other day Wojtek (one of my roommates if you didn't remember) and I were at the grocery store and an awful Neil Diamond song came on over the loud-speaker. Right away Wojtek asked me what it is like to go basically to any place in the world and know that your language will be spoken, essentially that you can find a comfort in something wherever you go. I didn’t know how to respond. I haven’t ever known his reality. It is so different from mine—I can wave my navy blue passport in the air and fly away to anywhere on the globe to reach a hotel where I will hear instructions about how to get into my room in English, while he often has to take months to work out travel documents and plans and he rarely hears Polish being spoken outside his country. It is so hard to imagine this difficulty. I don’t know if I will ever be able to, but I hope that thought remains in my mind for quite a while to come.