There’s a bar in Wichita that I (and my parents) have frequented. It’s called Kirby’s and it has had a very eclectic set of clientele of artistic, intelligent, and different people. The interior of the bar is a jumbled up mess of posters, grime, and history that at one time or another has been painted in eclectic tones to match the people.
I bring up Kirby’s because we spent yesterday evening at place that Kirby’s would like to be someday. It was a Turkish coffee bar that was very wonderfully decorated. It had traditional Turkish couches, pillows, and stools in little booths secluded either by hanging clothes or in separate rooms.
We had a fantastic time and the group included many of us from the States but also a bunch of the Macedonians who had worked with us. I had a lot of fun getting my two roomies, Erik and Matt, a little drunker than they had intended. Erik gets drunk after two beers, so we bought him four. Matt can do way better than that, so I kept buying him beer after beer that he insisted he would nurse, but he kept drinking them so fast we had to buy him more. It was a lot of fun.
Today was mostly boring, interspersed with a little terror, and a lot of bleah. We got up at 8:30am, three hours after we had been getting up so it was way late. We ate breakfast, packed, and waited. I was done packing by 10:30am. The bus left at 2:00pm. It was a long boring wait, only moderately helped by the Simpsons Uno game that would not end. I should note that the bus trip was a little interesting, given that to cool it off the driver drove with the sliding door open most of the way.
Anyway, we got on the plane just fine, but here’s where the terror part came in to play. This was probably the most turbulent flight I have ever been on. I was not helped by the fact that the lady sitting next to me was horribly afraid of flying in the first place, and her twitching set my nerves on edge anyway. There were several really big immediate altitude changes and a lot of buffeting. Of course this all happened on the ascent so we had most of the flight to wonder about whether we would make it or not. We did make it, of course (either that or the afterlife has wireless), but it was nerve-wracking. Fortunately, the flight from Vienna to London was great. It was not full at all, the seat next to me was empty, and the flight was smooth and relaxing. The Airbus A321 has a lot more legroom than the 737-700 which helped a lot too.
I’m here in London now and I should apologize for this post becoming temporally muddled. I started this entry at the Skopje airport, added more just after getting to London, and am finishing this on Wednesday morning. I stopped last night because Eddie, Mia, and I went to a pub. After the first flight I really wanted a beer.
By the way, speaking of temporal confusion, it has been pointed out to me that the journal entries are not shown on the journal at a consistent time. Some of them reflect me making the entry in Central time, others in English time, and others in Macedonian time. LiveJournal’s timestamps come from the computer the entry is made on so if I make on the laptop I’m carrying, it is on Central time. If I make it at Eddie’s or an Internet Cafe, that will have local time. Don’t know how many noticed but I thought I should explain it.
So I’ve got some laundry done, and once it’s out on the line I’m headed out to Windsor this afternoon. Tonight there’s a crew going to the pub (surprise) and tomorrow I start roaming. I’m going to go to Wales, I think, and then on Friday afternoon I’m going to head to Birmingham to see Clare and Tom. Then we’ll see.