Eleven months and continent later...
Feb. 4th, 2021 04:37 pmCircumnavigated the globe in 2020: three continents, four countries, seven major cities, buses, trains and planes, and ended up here.
Haven't written much in a year, here, or elsewhere. Last time I posted on this blog I was sitting in a hostel in downtown Vienna.
I still cannot quite grasp how fast everything went to hell. Leaving Taiwan was like leaving a bubble. Everything was and is under control there, and I had a job, friends, and life. Looking back now on moving to Europe was like a slow-motion fall on both a personal and a global scale.
I did manage to find a job, which I had for all of a week until things got so bad in Italy that Austria closed down. We ended up stuck with all the border closures. Unable to return home to Taiwan or flee back to Canada. Canadian embassy actually suggested we walk to Germany. It was crazy.
We even mailed our moving boxes back to Canada during the initial locking down, hoping to join them. We weren't able to and luckily, so as they were returned to us within days after Canada closed.
I didn't leave that one room Austrian apartment for the entire month of April. Pretty sure I managed to watch more Star Trek than is actually healthy.
I was there until June 30th, the lockdown eased and we managed to get out and go back to Canada. The most stressful three flights of my life. Two weeks of quarantine in my hometown and then less than a week later, we ended up moving to Edmonton. Now I am freezing in minus 20 weather and working at a sodding Starbucks.
I try to remind myself that I managed to the second half of my 20s in a way that other people wish they could have, but it’s hard being here with what feels like nothing to show for it. I look around this apartment and just want to fucking scream. I turned 30 and spent it watching Netflix and serving people coffee out a drive-thru window.
At this point, I'm darkly curious where 2021 will drop me.
Haven't written much in a year, here, or elsewhere. Last time I posted on this blog I was sitting in a hostel in downtown Vienna.
I still cannot quite grasp how fast everything went to hell. Leaving Taiwan was like leaving a bubble. Everything was and is under control there, and I had a job, friends, and life. Looking back now on moving to Europe was like a slow-motion fall on both a personal and a global scale.
I did manage to find a job, which I had for all of a week until things got so bad in Italy that Austria closed down. We ended up stuck with all the border closures. Unable to return home to Taiwan or flee back to Canada. Canadian embassy actually suggested we walk to Germany. It was crazy.
We even mailed our moving boxes back to Canada during the initial locking down, hoping to join them. We weren't able to and luckily, so as they were returned to us within days after Canada closed.
I didn't leave that one room Austrian apartment for the entire month of April. Pretty sure I managed to watch more Star Trek than is actually healthy.
I was there until June 30th, the lockdown eased and we managed to get out and go back to Canada. The most stressful three flights of my life. Two weeks of quarantine in my hometown and then less than a week later, we ended up moving to Edmonton. Now I am freezing in minus 20 weather and working at a sodding Starbucks.
I try to remind myself that I managed to the second half of my 20s in a way that other people wish they could have, but it’s hard being here with what feels like nothing to show for it. I look around this apartment and just want to fucking scream. I turned 30 and spent it watching Netflix and serving people coffee out a drive-thru window.
At this point, I'm darkly curious where 2021 will drop me.