Travel Blog

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I swiped the cap of my soda, and watched as it elegantly spun up the micro-engineered plastic ramps to make a dizzying whirlpool of branding on its top. That sound it made, like rocks in rushing water. With a single inverse flick of my thumb I screwed it back on, watching the same motion in reverse. The cap was now fastened to the bottle. I unscrewed it, and screwed it. I continued this pattern. I wondered how many years of research it took to create such fine engineering, sharp definition in a simple mass-produced mechanism. I unscrewed the cap and took a sip, appreciating the sublime nature of the soda bottle.

A thousand, a billion, a trillion. A lot. I could’ve been any distance from home, somewhere beyond numerical evaluation. I took another sip and settled my eyes on the machine that lay beyond my sweet golden bottle.

“Bob!” I yelled, no response. “Hey Bob!” I yelled again.

“What!” he yelled back.

“How’s it looking in there?”

I could hear a Bob sigh from inside the machine.

“She ain’t pretty. You really fucked up this time.”

Tom was sitting by his desk. Arrayed out in front of him was (1) empty mustard jar with the labels peeled off, (9) 2 oz bottles of Jagermeister still in original packaging, with only the corner ripped open, and (1) bottle of Austrian made, American owned apple soda. He clenched the black seal and uncorked. Sssssssss. He screwed it back on again. I was sitting behind him, staring at his back. I looked at the bottles of Jagermeister. “These bottles reminded me of old medicine, which always holds both a terrific fascination and morbid curiosity,” said Tom. “I know what's in these bottles, but if I don’t open them I can pretend they are something more than an impulse buy at the supermarket. What really bothers me, though, is their packaging. It's ugly, technicolor, overbearing, and above all, modern. But to remove it would mean destroying the perfect structure in which the rectangular prisms sit. Standing side by side, if you look at them at just the right angle you’re instantly transported into an 18th century english doctor’s office.” He held the package for a moment at just such an angle and admired the bottles, pondered them.

I cleared my throat.

“Uh, Tom…”

He was visibly annoyed.

“Whats up?”

“You’re the one who called me in here.”

“Uh huh.” He was staring intently now, his eye nearly touching his subject.

“So I was just wondering what you wanted to talk about.”

“The thing.”

“The thing?” I replied incredulously

“Yeah that thing you were just doing in the uhh, the factory thing downstairs.”

“You mean the machine in the workshop?”

He snapped his fingers and gestured violently, still staring at the bottles. After he retracted his left hand he began to paw around the table near where the mustard jar was. “Yeah, that one!” he replied.

He slowly grabbed the mustard jar, his fingers rolling it into his left hand. He gingerly placed the bottles back where they were and took the jar up to his right eye without moving his head.

“Have you ever thought about it?” he asked me.

“About what?”

“Jars.”

He set down the jar, unscrewed the cap of his soda, took a key out of his pocket, used it to open a locker under the desk, then carefully placed the empty mustard jar, the bottles of Jagermeister, and the cap, all on separate rows inside before closing the door and relocking it. He grabbed his soda and took a sip, then turned to face me.

“I wanted to talk to you about the Machine.”

I checked into my Macedonian hotel room at midnight. It had an unsettling air, and the light switch was hard to find. When I did manage to clear away the darkness, it was green. Green and white. Something about those colors is disconcerting. Like green and red is to Christmas, green and white is to shabby hotel rooms. Rooms where human trafficking victims are kept. Rooms where people go mad after extended stays. Rooms that are always featured when a character gets killed in a thriller. Green and white. There was a Gideon bible in the bedside table drawer.

After relieving myself of my many burdens I prepared to go out. I was hungry, and I saw a fast food place not too far from the hotel. When I opened my door, Tom greeted me.

“Oh hey, I was just walking by. I didn’t know you were staying in this hotel.” Tom said in a stilted, purposeful, planned, monotonous tone; leaning against the wall beside my door, completely unsurprised by my presence.

“I think we’re all staying in the same hotel.” I riposted. Tom laughed fitfully and forcefully.

“Yeah, so anyway,” he began, “I was wondering about that concert you were going to.”

“What concert?” I feigned.

“You told me about it last week.” Tom took his hand out of his pocket and awkwardly brushed his hair.

“Oh, right, heh, yeah, that concert.” I parried. I didn’t remember ever telling Tom about it; in fact, I remember explicitly telling myself not to talk about it with him. It wasn’t even a real concert, I just needed an excuse to be alone for a while, get away from my ever present employer.

“Yeah, so what's it like? Who's playing?” Tom inquired.

“It's like, an indie thing,” I scratched the back of my neck. “you probably haven’t heard of them.”

“On the contrary, actually, I’m very much into that whole scene.”

“Oh, well, uhh, the band that's playing, uhh, I can’t remember, I think it might be the umm, the Deckswabbers?”

“The Deckswabbers, huh, what an interesting name. Yea. So, anyway, I don’t think you’ll be able to go. You see, you’ll have some business to attend to. It concerns the Machine.”

I was at Bob’s funeral; he died while operating the Machine.

It was 12:00. I was eating lunch in the Den of the Dead Wolf, a famous and underappreciated local restaurant. I ordered the Omelette mit Kase, which roughly translates to Egg Salad with a touch of dairy, homestyle tomatoes on the side. Served with a slice of pumpernickel.

I took a train from Macedonia to Belgrade. Tom wasn’t able to join me. The ride was pleasant. Unlike in a plane, I had a dynamic view. It even had spotty wifi and ineffective air conditioning. Serbia is very flat. Farmlands stretching miles, small towns dotted the landscape. Roads cut veins into an otherwise sterile land. I sat, I read, I played a game on my phone. I pondered. I thought about what constituted a mistake. If I had a choice to sleep in one of two hotels, A (which is cheaper), or B. I  would decide, as a budget conscious traveler, to stay in A. Hotel A burns down, and while I narrowly escape, I lose all my valuables, costing me more than if I were to stay in B. Was it a mistake to stay in Hotel A? Well, no, since at the moment of decision, there was no way I could’ve known that A would burn down.

I could’ve taken the night train, but I was hasty and took the afternoon instead.

As I was thinking, a police officer approached me. The train had stopped just before the Serbian border. She said something in a foreign language, then sighed and said, “Passport” with a thick accent. I handed it too her. She took it, flipped through it once, then again, then a third time, put it in her pocket and walked away with a concerned look. Scared of questioning petty authority, I stayed seated and silent. Five minutes later, she came and gave me a terse smile, handing back my passport. It took about 20 minutes for them to check the entire train. We started off again.

About 30 minutes later, we stopped just beyond the Serbian border for another round of passport checks. About 20 minutes passed. Then 30. I began to wonder when we were going to depart. It wasn’t until the AC turned off and the temperature inside the train reached 120°F that I became suspicious. I got up and walked around for a bit. In the adjacent car, people had taken off most of their clothing and were splayed out on the couchettes. The car after was completely abandoned. They were outside, getting refreshments, cooling off, chatting in Serbian.  Multiple people made passing comments to me in exotic languages. It's very common to catch someone’s eye while looking around, yet rude to look at other people without them knowing. You begin to notice things like this when you’re stuck in a small car with the same people for 5 hours. Is it so wrong to look, to observe another?

The train started again. We ambled to Belgrade, 3 hours late. I booked a ticket for the morning and a hotel room for the night.

The hungarian cook in Vienna described a movie about my home town that I’d never seen.

My train to Budapest was miraculously rerouted to Istanbul. I only realized when I woke up.

It doesn’t take long for foods in foreign names to become annoying instead of exotic. I had a bottle of purified water, and the only word I could recognize on it was mineral.

It was Bring Your Daughter to Work Day at the border check in Edirne. A little Turkish girl came up to me with a scanner and a stern expression, flung her hand out and said, “Passport” in the most authoritative voice she could muster. I handed it to her, and she splayed it open. Fliping through the pages, focusing intently on the contents, but her eyes weren’t moving. After seeming satisfied, she slid the barcode through the scanner. Then again. Then once more. After multiple attempts, she yelled something in the direction she came from. A few moments later, a man in a full military uniform, assault rifle slung around his neck and pistol at his hip, aviators, a beret and leather gloves: the full package, came lumbering to her side. He took his sunglasses off and looked at the scanner. Oh, he exclaimed, then hit a button. The girl tried again. It beeped, and after a very giddy shimmy she recomposed herself and handed me back my passport. The man gave me a terse smile before re-equipping his sunglasses and moving on. Lucky for me they forgot to check if I had a visa.

Tom was sitting on the rocks by the Bosphorus. I didn’t expect to see him, but there he was, admiring the sunset. Staring at his back, as always, I let myself sink into thought. The Mediterranean sunset was beautiful. Sunsets and sunrises are a wonderful things. One time on the night bus to Indianapolis, I noticed the most serious, stoic looking businessman, staring out the window in the early morning hours, just waiting for the sun to rise. I remember seeing the nape gently glean just over the dunes of the Mojave; a red band-horizon. The sunset to the sunrise should be like the same process in reverse, but each spin round the earth produces something slightly different; its own unique view. Every day the rolling hills of the southern Balkans are draped in different shadows and new lights. Pinks, oranges, golds and reds. Greys, blues, greens, and yellows. A reel of sunsets rolled in my mind. I thought about all the places I’d been, what a life I’d lived. It flashed before my eyes.

Tom spoke.

“So you made it.”

Made it? To what? “Uh, yeah, course.”

“That's good, This is an important event, or rather, it was.”

“Definitely.”

“I’m still wondering how you managed to accidentally wander over here.”

“What do you mean, accidentally?”

“You got an email, right?”

I checked my phone against his turned back.

“Yea. I did.”

“You were supposed to reply to the email if you got it. A sort of RSVP.”

“Oh, I guess I forgot.”

“Sure.”

Tom got up, standing tall, directly in the path of the setting sun. He was still turned away.

“You see that?” Tom said, pointing to the sun.

“Yeah.”

“There's one like it, everyday. I mean, exactly like it. That's what special about Istanbul, the sun never changes.”

I couldn’t verify that knowledge but I trusted it for some reason.

“There's something so beautiful about the ultimate nature of the sun. It has been there since before humans, and will continue to sit there long after.”

“That's pointless to think about.”

“Why?”

“Because it's beyond our comprehension.”

Tom turned to face me. He was holding the Jagermeister, the package completely torn and multiple bottles missing. I gave him a look signifying my disrespect for his lack of principles.

“Oh, this,” he said, as if to reply, “I can always get another.”

Tom opened a bottle and chugged it, then drunkenly tiptoed across the jagged rocks. After stepping onto the shore he came up and embraced me.

“What was it about, the event?”

“There was no event. I made it up so we could see the sunset.”

He cried.

I cried.

He drank another bottle of Jagermeister.

“It's about the Machine.”

“What is it, Tom?” I said caringly.

It broke.