After Vacation

So I just came back from a five day vacation in Jasper National Park. We were living in a campsite, cooking food on the grill, living in a tent, hiking a lot. We saw plenty of green, and wildlife, and mountains, and water. Everything was great, but people still surprised me – they were flying by in their cars, or impatiently crawling up ours from behind, as if they were in a hurry to catch a sunrise or something. “You are on vacation too, no?” I kept thinking. My girlfriend who drove kept vocalizing her anger toward the drivers, and I felt like I was back in a city, just with a different view. Anyway, we had a really good time. We saw a lot, took 200 pictures, I kept a diary, writing by the campfire at night. Then we were back to the city on Tuesday late afternoon and got right into the peak hour. The way people drove here was nuts, obviously. No surprises, but for a little while it felt like the serenity I’ve acquired on vacation was getting out the window, seeping out slowly. I managed to get a hold of it. After all I didn’t drive. Just tried to stay positive and support the driver.

There was a certain lightness within me for the whole next day, even though I had to work already. I still felt the excitement of the experience of previous several days in Jasper. The work day was not a very busy, but things had to be done, people met with, and I was planning to go to a AA meeting with a friend who needed it more than me, perhaps, and he cancelled. So I went anyway. Did I think of drinking because I had such a short vacation and my friend was being frustrating? Absolutely not. Did I feel like going drinking anyway? No, definitely out of the question. So why did I?

In this program of recovery which AA is it’s not all about how not to drink. Sure, my first 300 meetings I went to, that probably was all about how not to drink, because for me not to touch a drink for two days was a miracle. But there is life that should be looked after beyond drinking as well. Drinking, as the AA book says, is only a symptom of our life being out of whack. Yes, we alcoholics have a certain disposition of body and mind that makes us react to alcohol in much stranger way and desire it more than others, but that is not the only thing. We have/had our lives running weirdly out of control, so drinking was a perfect escape. Now that the booze is out of the picture, we still have plenty of things to look after. We have to rebuild our lives after the years of havoc. That’s what the Steps are for. Then the life doesn’t become completely perfect either (which is why we keep doing the Steps throughout our lifetime). It still runs on its own rules and we have to keep it sane and tolerable.

That’s why I have to keep going to meetings. Even if I had a great day, I still get angry, vengeful, very impatient, and sometimes I tend to isolate and procrastinate. I need to keep going to meetings to listen to the stories of others, talk to them. I still have to write about these experiences like I do now. Some days life is still not going the way I always want it to. Some other days life makes absolutely no sense. I have to come up with that sense. I have to keep it sane for me. Even after a successful vacation with plenty to see and plenty of relaxing and taking the mind off work. Granted, it was a better experience, compared to my last year summer vacation which in some sense was a disaster (you can read about it here, if you wish). And yet life is still weird and I still have to make an effort to not go completely bonkers. I have the skills for dealing with that. I just have to remember to apply them and take action. Not think about taking action, but actually taking it. Do the right things.

Vacate Now!

So I went on vacation.

When I came back they asked me how it was. And the first thing I said was “Awful. Just awful.” And try to close the door behind me.

They asked then, “Well, where the hell did you go to?”

I’d keep my foot in the door for what I think is going to be just another five seconds and say: “Austria and Czech Republic. Two weeks.”

“Why was it that bad?!”

To which I’d say what was going to sound like a never ending mantra for the whole next week: “I got sick on the way there. Ate some fish on the plane over Atlantics. Next 1.5 weeks were crazy and I had to think about a toilet all the time. It was hot non-stop. And too many people.
And planes were insane. Especially Paris.”

But they kept asking. And with every time answering, I was realizing more of what I experienced and learnt about it.

What is a vacation? You take time off work and you do something else, perhaps, like me, travelling to another country to get a different perspective on things.
Well, I guess I had to travel to Papua New Guinea to have a totally different perspective. Reason being, I work with people. I live in a city with several millions of people. If I go on vacation to Europe like I did, it is strange to expect I am going to have rest or at least that I will come back unstressed, full of serenity and calm like a fish. Why?

OK, so here is the transportation schedule of my vacation, start to finish.

Plane1: Edmonton-Minneapolis-Paris-Vienna
Train1: Vienna-Salzburg-Vienna
Train2: Vienna-Breslav -Olomuc-Prague-Vienna
Plane2: Vienna-Paris-Toronto-Edmonton

So first of all, in the beginning of my vacation I get myself into a tin full of people, fly to another country, enter and spend time in a huge building full of people running all over the place (called Minneapolis airport), then get myself into another tin full of people and fly into another airport (in Paris), and then repeat the action one more time to get to Vienna. Vienna is a capital city, therefore a tourist Mecca. Lots of people here besides the original population.

Secondly, the weather was 29C on the first day after my arrival and it grew to 32C and stayed that way throughout the whole of the trip. The day I flew back to Canada it was supposed to be 37C in Vienna so I am very glad I left early in the morning!

Also, on the way to Vienna I ate some fish on the plane and that screwed me up. I was dealing with this thing called “extremely unsettled stomach” for 1.5 weeks. I basically had to get on a diet without fried or barbecued food, without any deserts, no pop, no veggies, etc. So imagine you get into unique Austrian and Czech cultures and realize you cannot try their cuisine, instead eating rice and oatmeal! No fun!

The main idea of the trip was to meet with my family: Mom, Dad, and my brother. That was accomplished. All four of us spend some time in Vienna while Dad worked and Nikki and I explored Vienna a bit. Then we all went to Salzburg for two days and then Nikki and I took off
to Czech Republic and spent about 5 days together which was great.

Salzburg was cool. For a long time I thought it was some sort of a village only famous thanks to Mozart who was born and lived there, but it was much larger than just that. During two days we only saw 2/3 of it, I think, last half a day moving too fast. We stayed at this hotel for some reason called Motel 1. Cool place. Good breakfast. Lots of pictures altogether. Good sights. So were Olomuc and Prague that followed.

The good thing about Prague was that first of all we lived in a river boat hotel. It was very cool, small, but cozy and I always had some special feeling about being there. Probably because I never been on a boat. The water was just up to our windows. We could see ducks in the day and swans at night.

The bad thing… or better a lesson to learn… was that flying and being sick and hot and misanthropic wasn’t the main point. I hadn’t had much rest. In Olomuc we just had no time to rest, we were only there for two half days. In Prague we spend four or five days and still ran around like hell hounds. I took half a thousand pictures and they were great. Though some time I felt like I was the protagonist in the Salvador movie, running around with camera glued to my head.

Then on the way back my stomach started acting out again. All was great in Prague, and now it’s having issues. Must have been the stress from the upcoming and then ongoing flight.

On the way back in Paris things went nuts (no stomach-wise, thanks for that, but still crazy). First there was no time at all to sit around. Line-ups were everywhere and line-ups were long. Line-ups were going around the corners as if the airport workers were trying to avoid some areas, hiding stuff from the travelers. Weird. Finally I got to the terminal and realized the boarding is on already. That’s when my phone started acting out. I had plenty of issues with setting my “roaming” right and after working well for most of the time it still screwed around plenty. I was trying to send the message to my girlfriend in Edmonton and it was not working very well.

OK, everybody got into the plane. For the next two (2) hours we were sitting in the plane at the airdrome because the crew was having some issues with fuel. Then we finally started moving. The flight was going to be the standard seven hours, arriving to Toronto. Then I was supposed to have a switch-over to fly to Edmonton and the wait time was two hours. So there was a very real chance to miss my flight to Edmonton now after sitting at the Parisian aerodrome for that long.

But that was not all. For some reason, both on the way there and on the way back, after landing and before taking off in the De Gaulle airport the plane had to drive along all possible lanes for about half an hour to get to the right spot to finally take off. I don’t know why, there must have been a lot of space. Each time it was driving me insane, especially when I knew we were going late.

As soon as we got into the air and the stewards went around with beverages the guy on my right started drinking whiskey like water. He was calm and caused no issues but having that smell of alcohol in my face was no fun. Watching Hitchckock movie where the protagonist loses it and starts drinking was helping to face madness and craze care and I was OK.

I missed my flight in Toronto but they prepared another flight in one hour for me so that was OK. I had to run around, however, because the disorganization virus came through from Paris to Toronto. In the end, even though they gave me the first row on that plane which provided more than enough room on both sides and for my legs, I was very stressed out, tired, and for the last hour (out of four) couldn’t stop rolling in my seat, as if my butt was on fire.

So all these factors put together make it a strange vacation. I must say it was good. It sure was. I had a chance to spend some time with my family who I haven’t seen for two years. I spend several days with my brother touring Czech land and that was all very good and I made hundreds of pictures. The places we stayed at were cool and people were good as well. Yet for some reason when I came back to Edmonton I felt like punching a hole in the wall. Now I know why – it felt like I blew my vacation on running all over the places with camera pressed to my face as if my life depended on it. All the other negative factors listed above can shape a decent picture of why a person coming back from a vacation is not guaranteed to be an epitome of relaxed and all-patience.

Two months later. I wrote it down. I thought it through. I looked at the pictures I made and they are just great. I recall so many things connected to them. I feel like punching a hole in the wall again, but that’s because I’d like to have another vacation.

I know (I hope) what I am not doing on my next vacation.

… I do?