I am not a blogger

Hey all! John here again and I am writing to you from an internet café in Paris. Today marks the end of my first week here in Europe and I have been having a blast. Riding on the hopes and dollar signs of my credits cards, my vacation has turned out to be amazing. The people over here have been so much fun and I have been making the best of every day. This morning I am really tired because I was out last night at a dance club here in Paris and so I needed some time to decompress and drink some espresso. The food in this city has been my favorite so far even though I have been to London and Paris. Tomorrow I am off to Amsterdam though so I may end up having to change my mind about that.

As I said last time I wanted to try and get to some skiing spots during this trip but I have not really found the room financially and it looks like that option has passed. Since I am heading north tomorrow I think that my opportunity to go to the slopes was here over the past three days. After a few days in Amsterdam I want to see Berlin and then I will be leaving from there to go home. My plan had been to try my best to fit it in but I wanted to see how financially everything was going to work out when I got over here. OF course I have been living off the support of my credit cards and so it has been just a constant accumulation of debt. I did get a loan but that was only for living expenses so everything else has gone on my visa card. Luckily for me I have a good credit score and as a result, a few credit cards. When I get all of the bills from this trip paid off I should have a pretty good credit score because there certainly have been a lot of bills. My big goal right now is to just cut down all spending since I have become a little bit too lacks with my extraneous purchases.

Tomorrow morning I will continue this trip on to its final leg and then I will be back in town with the rest of ya’ll. I think I’ve gotten my energy back for now so I think I’ll leave it at that and just say salute for the day. Hope everyone is getting ready for the fall or on a journey like mine.

I think I caught some kind of bug this summer because ever since the first session began I have been wanting to just get out of town. No matter how much I have been telling myself that this is normal and that it is all part of being a student, I am really just hitting my breaking-point every single day. That is why I have decided to do something totally compulsive and go on a vacation. I took some time this month when I wasn’t working or studying to compare hotels and compare airfare. That is right folks I am getting out of this place, and fast!

I spun my globe and put my finger down on a little place called Europe. This magical land of wonder is where I will be spending the next two weeks of my life. I will be living the lavish lifestyle of a poor student from Baltimore staying in cheap hotels, motels, and villas, all across the lands of the old world. I have never been to this part of the world so I am really excited to see if it is all I thought it would be. I definitely know that I want to hit up plenty of pubs and wineries, to see what Europe is really all about. You don’t really know a country, at least I think, until you meet the people who populate its bars. I also want to try to make my way to some of the ski lodges over there because I have always wanted to try and snowboard the alps but so far it has been just a dream. That will be a little bonus if I can find some time and money in the mix of it all. I won’t be bringing much money or provisions. It will be mostly me and my pack with very little spending money and a lot of energy for new experiences.

Hopefully in two weeks when I come back you will be hearing from a totally new person. I hope that above all of the little petty details of a vacation that I really learn something. I don’t care if I came back without any of my stuff and totally broke, if I learned something then it was all worth it. But I hope that I do come back with all my stuff anyway. Wish me luck out there and I’ll try to drop a line from the south of France where I should be in just about a week from now.

I want a car dude! This studying thing is all well and good, but when it comes to the hallmarks of adulthood and independence, nothing really beats a car. Your own space on the road - go wherever you want whenever you want, listening to anything you like. Ah, it's a driving life for me. I've always fancied myself as a bit of a journeyman; a Kerouac for the 21st century. Only with my own ride. Customised, souped-up. Pimped. Whatever - this is all a pipe-dream and pretty much unrealisable without the money or the impetus.

At the moment I suppose I don't really need a car, being as I'm trapped at school most of the time. Still, I'm getting a little antsy for the speed, the thrill of the road. My Dad used to own a classic 1956 Ford thunderbird and boy did that thing turn heads. Siting in the front seat of that thing was the coolest. Sure it was pretty impracticle; and the idea of owning something so prone to breaking down these days would be a nightmare, but it was beautiful and could go like the wind. Or that's how I remember it. He was so proud of that old t-bird. He'd spend entire Sundays laid out on his back under that thing; or with his nose stuck under the hood, just tinkering, polishing. I swear he'd just take it apart just to put it back together again. Sometimes I'd get a little angry with him - he'd promise to do things with me at the weekend, then get swallowed up by his car and put the whole thing off. But when he took me for a spin in that car all was forgiven.

I coulda sworn he and that car became one and the same thing on those long straight roads. I know I know - sounds kinda cheesy, but one day I wouldn't mind that kind of relationship with a car. Guys, you know what I'm talking about. I still remember the day Dad came home late from work one day, and told us all about how some hick had slammed into his side at the lights and written off the t-bird. I don't think he's ever really gotten over it. Sure, he had car insurance, but mom made him get something more practical - a station-wagon that was about as exciting as a yak - and I suppose it was a relief in some ways in that we could all fit in the car much more comfortably - but I intend to get myself something like that old thunderbird as soon as I can. Spend some good weekends down in the garage with it, then take it out to wherever I like. You gotta have a dream. Right?

I am a man of action. Sometimes that action could mean doing nothing, or it could mean changing everything all at once. But usually it is somewhere in between. As I had said a week or so ago, I am not totally satisfied with my systems of sort of floating through this whole college thing. I don’t have total confidence in the idea that it is going to works when I finally decide I want some of those little K words running around pooping everywhere. So I have decided to start my move towards being a responsible person by adding a couple shades of responsibility to my life.

I went out last week to our local pizza shop, everyone knows it because any weekend at two am there is a line two blocks long that doesn’t go away until after four. I wanted to see if they could get me a higher paying job as a delivery driver. I have a buddy who has been doing it for three years now and he makes pretty good money. HE has recently had to make some changes to his system since gas is getting so expensive such as biking the close deliveries and not trying to fly around town when it is really busy. HE told me that he has been able to actually stay on top of his debt because he makes so much in tips. Then he uses his paychecks to finish off his rent and party expenses, his are quite high. When I went in there to see about a job he was in there so I was basically already hired right on the spot. They told me I could start the next night.

When he told me I would be making tons of money for just driving, or riding, around all night I was thinking I would have enough money by the end of the summer to ease some of this pressure I’ve been feeling. The problem with my vision was that I didn’t think about how much of their business comes from students. Families in this area don’t buy pizza from the college pizza shops, they stick to the chains. Now that students have been gone for a month now I am not as surprised that the shop gave me so many hours to start. They weren’t seeing a great employee, they saw a desperate person who would make sure the random deliveries were taken care of all summer before the real business starts in the fall.

My plan now is to just stick out the uncomfortable summer months and then start to really rake it in when the fall rolls around and people get back in to town. I have been hearing that business has been getting better the last couple of years for them so I hope I am riding on that wave when the leaves start to fall again. So here’s to a summer of hot car seats and steaming bags of pizza in the seat next to me. I’m gonnna go for a drive while I bake in the sun, broke and burnt.

Is it just me or is there something interesting in the air this week? I look around and I don’t see people walking around campus with that confused look on their face that follows any attempt at watching primary results this year. It’s almost as if all of us has been bearing this big weight for months and months now we’re trying to figure out what the hell was going on every week and why none of us could get any real answers. I don’t know what everyone else was going through or how much anyone cared but for me it was very interesting. I don’t think I would have known as much about the election process if it had not gone this way but at the same time I don’t know if I really care all that much. What really matters is that it is all over and I am happy with the way it all went down.

On our campus there was a pretty large movement for both sides and I couldn’t get through one single party or even a drink at the bar without hearing about it. Everyone was interested and sort of captivated by the whole thing. It was an electrifying excitement that made me think of the coffee houses of nineteenth century Europe. There the common people would mingle with the aristocrats and talk politics over a luxury drink of coffee. In our case now it is more like jager, just kidding, or in my case a Guinness draft. People who I wouldn’t have even though would watch the news were trying to engage me in discussion about how excited people in Europe are about this election. I would tell them to just look at how excited everyone here is and that is just a small step up from how interested they all are over there.

Now we have a presumptive nominee out there in Barack Obama and it’s time to move on to the next phase of the elections; the fist fight. From here on out every one of us who owns a computer or a television will be bombarded with attack ads and debates, slander and pander, and best of all the baby kissing walks through the dinner in some midwestern dust bowl town. It’s a strange thing, the election process in America. What I had thought was a beauty contest on a national scale has turned out to be a real process of representative democracy. What was in many of our minds a lost cause on the part of anyone who watched the nightly news has really become something that everyone feels like they are a part of. Especially on campuses because I feel that we all take a huge interest in politics now as we have grown up in a highly charged time. I am really excited to see what happens in the next few months because this is really what making history is all about: today.

I'm back to talk travel...you know why?

Soccer. I play it, I watch it, I like it. I'm not so hot at it, but I like it.

Thank you Miss Posh Spice for bringing over your husband and for giving it a diamond-studded stamp of approval. I jest. I don't care for diamonds, but I like the game.

It's Euro 2008 next week right? Keeping in theme with my preference for a lot of things European, I'm thinking that coinciding with the brotherhood tour (that is still in discussion), is this competition, and we wouldn't have to travel too far to get to either Switzerland or Austria and catch one of the games. I don't actually want to catch any old game - not so interested in Croatia etc., but as a faraway Manchester United fan, I really want to see Cristiano Ronaldo up close - he sure isn't going to come over and join Beckham in LA is he, unless it's to stir it up on the Sunset Strip. So, if I could get to see him playing for Portugal...that would be sweet. Very sweet.

For a few weeks in June, I can also catch Fernando Torres and Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas rocking out for Spain. I want to actually be in Spain for that one, and am not too fussed about catching a live match. I want to party in Seville or something, and watch it in some hot dingy Tapas bar, drinking beer and eating too much. Imagine, playing 'football' in the streets of Barcelona, sun on your back, shades on...

...I don't know, it'd just be a cool detour I guess. I'd like to be part of the whole experience, and even though my pals like baseball way more than soccer - none of us get that long hair on men thing - we'd get into the flavour of it all.

I'm already ahead of the game (pun intended), and have done further browsing for tickets and travel insurance, so I don't have to be reminded. AA Travel has been checked by yours truly and I've been looking at interailing routes that'll help us get from the sultry ladies in Rome to the soccer fields of Switzerland.

Watch this space.

What ever happened to board games? I will just say it right from the top. I don’t understand why video games have become this mammoth thing, which I am not personally a huge fan of, and they have replaced one of the last few ways that humans actually socialize together. That’s not to say that people don’t have other ways of socializing but I mean come on. If you think that spending eight hours a day talking on your cell phone or typing on Instant messenger is social then I am going to have to ask you what a human actually looks like. This is just on of the many traditions I think that as Americans we have all lost and with them we have lost the communication and contact that comes along with it.

When I grew up we never had video games in our house. I always thought it was some guilty pleasure when I got to go over to my friends’ houses and play all of their cool new games. Beginning way back with the original nintendo and going right up until the first playstation. After that I realized how much time and energy I was wasting just sitting in front of a screen. The other part of it I didn’t like was the screen itself. I mean how does that not hurt everyone’s eyes to stare at those lights flickering in front of you all day long while the sun is shinning perfectly good light outside. I know my opinion is a bit radical because when I turn on the tube the only thing I am doing in watching the game or the news. I find what I want, I watch it, and I am done. Most of the time I only watch it after the sun has gone down anyway. Maybe I just grew up in a different sort of house with parents that actually had expectations of me but I mean come on people. GO OUTSIDE.

Now after I got that out of my systems I just want to make it clear that I don’t hate television or video games by any stretch. I have watched and played my fair share. I am also in a frat full of guys that gather every sunday and fill our livingroom until every game is finished and every hot wing has met its match. I am usually right in the middle of the crowd. Though I try to chat more than anything else, I still have to, out of lack of conversation topics, watch a good portion of the games on tv. I hope no one out there is reading this while playing their game and instant messaging any while cooking dinner in the microwave and researching for a paper due next week. If you are though then you may want to heed my message here.

So, as much as I would just love to keep living the dream forever, I had my first semi-sleepless night the other day, stressing about what I was going to after I graduated from college. I have some post-graduation plans in the pipeline, but I'd still like to take some time off academia first, just to go out and do something different - to go and sew my oats in the world of employment.

The problem is - what does a young buck like me do for a living. sure, I'm smart, I can work a room, and a computer. I have my part-time job now, but it's not real, you know? It's not a resume kind of job.

So, am thinking I need to sort my resume out, get it whooped into shape, ready to show off my skills. Except I'm nervous I don't have any, not concrete ones anyhow. Or maybe I do, and I just don't realise. Am sure, if I put pen to part I could quite easily paint a pretty picture for the work-force. Realistically, I think I could be placed in the cosy corner of some production company, running out for coffees, and generally being a dogsbody. Or do something like it.

I have been browsing the internet, getting to grips with recruitment, trying to find opportunities for a guy like me. I'm just looking for that something, to seesaw me from student to solicitor. I merely use that as turn of phrase - without a major, I'm walking lost and confused...woe is me.

It's pretty cool in a way - I can use my lack of experience to never get a job, and catch myself in the vicious, but oh do comfortable cycle of unemployment with an allowance.

I was driving to a friend's house the other day. I had the radio on, and it was that time of day when it's not too cold and it's not that hot and a little sunlight hits the windows of your car and it's all leafy and bright. Life was being sweet.

I stopped off to get gas and I was hungry too, so I got a bag of chips, a bottle of water, some gum and put my shades on. Seatbelt on, and I was off again. It was one of those days when I wasn't thinking anything or nothing in particular and I was just pleased to be on the road, on a nice day, listening to my sounds.

And that's when these things happen I guess. Halfway through my journey I drove by the big mess of crushed car on the side of the road. I slowed down a little because there was nothing ahead or behind me. Just me and this car, and I was wondering why the dump had just been left there. It didn't look recent and it didn't look like it was even an accident; it looked like it had been bulldozed and abandoned. There was no glass-shrapnel all over the road; no police bands cutting the area off. Just this rusty old dump of a car: it was like some piece of art.

Maybe I only noticed it because there was nothing else to see. Maybe the sun lit it up for me, and I saw it that way. But with all the light on it, just sitting there waiting to be pulled away, I was kind of fixed on this thing.

Of all the things to think about, I thought about car insurance. I realised I hadn't renewed my car insurance for the year, and this car of mine, if it ever got beaten up like that? I'd never be able to cover costs. I went to my friend's house and we sat outside, but I couldn't get the car out of my head.

So, when I got home, I went onto the internet and got straight on with searching car insurance (can't remember how I did it before, think I used my parent's policy). After some browsing I found Beat That Quote and I got my deal.

It's good that I get my own car insurance anyway for the long-term and I found a quote, did all my administrative duties and had it sorted out, thanks to an artistic car wreck on a sunny day.

I'm thinking about travelling. A lot of my friends have talked about heading out on some European journey this summer, and honestly think, that without a doubt, Italian chicks will love them. Ok. So I may be a little young. But I know enough. And I've seen a few of those European films (once saw La Dolce Vita on TV at like, three in the morning, and Italian chicks are not like American chicks ). This woman was from some other world. Even the senior college girls who do Theater classes are not like the woman in that film. And even with my adolescent arrogance, I know where my limits lie.

Anyways, so they're talking about heading out, with Italy as their Holy Grail. Why? Cos they know a few phrases in Italian and they think can impress a few of the local girls. I'm pretty sure that Italian guys are better equipped at doing that kind of thing.

When we went to Mexico, they drank so much Jager that they could not speak. In Italy they have that Limoncello drink - I've had it before. It's really sweet, the kind of sweet that sticks to your tongue and stays there. It gets you wasted. That's one of the neat things about the Europe thing - we can drink ourselves stupid, which will be hilarious. But we'll be losing any sophisticated social skills that could impress any girl, let alone a European one. I'm sorry, but it's true. They're like 'Dude, we've already been on the cheap flights website, just ask your mum for the money and we can get on it'. As if that's the complicated bit over. As if my mum's juts gonna hand out the money (actually she will, but...).

Ok, so even If I get my cheap flights around Europe, I've then got to organise my travel insurance. To be honest, that's not a huge problem. I used to do it last thing, with Go Travel, online, no stress and no dent to the wallet. But it's getting the funds for hotels and for general good times when I'm there, for my limoncello shots at the bar. And I like checking out the museums and stuff, you know? I don't mind living it a little bit rough around the edges, but if I got to share a bunk bed with some stranger I don't know? No. Can. Do.

I've travelled around Europe, and I've enjoyed the finer things in life. I'm no snob, but Europe's got a certain kind of class doesn't it. It has a crisp chino charm. Surely the whole point of basking in the Italian sun is to do it in a kind of upmarket way. I'll say it again. I am no snob. I don't even mind staying in some pretty unsavoury places, as long as I have my own bed.

Saying that, I just found a whole load of hostels that don't look too terrible at all and I guess what I save on accommodation I can spend on chinos.

More importantly though - do I want to go on journey with my fellow frat brothers in search of girls? Can I be suave, cool, sophisticated? I need to get me some Italian phrases...

Voglio vederti stasera.

I think this means: I want to see you tonight. Great: I can show off my exquisite dorm room...