Kansas after London

After I got back to Topeka, Aunt Heinrich Himmler invaded my house, and I should have known better than to say anything against her precious Kansas, even a criticism of the weather. Actually, she showed up about an hour after I got home, and she was soon followed by some of my local cousins, even though I really wanted to be alone. I said, “I’m finding it harder to adjust to the weather than to the time change. I’ve gotten accustomed to temperatures typically in the sixties.” She actually claimed that Kansas is a great place to live, and she said to go ahead and complain about the weather and such, because then people won’t move here, won’t know what a “wonderful place” it supposedly is. The only reason behind this that she actually expressed is the cleaner air in Kansas, something that she mentioned after I had said I occasionally blew my nose and saw black spots on my tissue. The majority of Kansans, like Aunt Heinrich Himmler, eagerly vote for politicians who are out to destroy the environment; as usual, her psychotic delusions are the height of absurdity. You can have your hellhole, and eat it too. Topeka pollutes the mind, the heart, and the soul. It is a fascist hellhole, a cultural wasteland, and an intellectual graveyard. Fortunately for me, however, I have books and Internet access and have turned my house into a one-woman artist commune. I may be in Topeka physically, but I am rarely here otherwise. Big cities have a reputation for being alienating and lonely places, but in St. Louis I was never as alienated as I am in Topeka.

This encounter took place in my house only an hour or two after I arrived from my trip. Not only Aunt Heinrich Himmler, but also a few other local relatives dropped in, and I would have been exhausted after traveling without having alienating relatives in my house. One of them is a teenage boy who was picking on his sister. Cooties. It all felt so invasive and inappropriate for them to come to my house when I had just got back from a vacation that my sister ruined and I desperately wanted to be alone. When they left, I hastily bolted the door, feeling deeply depressed. Relatives are an abomination.

Returning from London

We’re on the plane—it was a vicious struggle, but we made it. I definitely bought too many books—I should have at least bought a carryon bag for them, instead of using the Tower of London shopping bag! It was very sturdy for a shopping bag—plastic with plastic tubular handles—but not for being filled up with books and Cadbury chocolate and carried around. Bad, very bad idea. The handles fell off when I was in the center of Marylebone Street, in the meridian/walkway. I took the shopping bag and the big suitcase (now also heavy with books and souvenirs) one at a time when it came to stairs in the Tube stations.

During the ride to Heathrow, I sat down and worked at mindful breathing and felt so much better—I’d been nervous and jittery since I woke at 4:19 am, before the alarm would have gone off. After we got to the airport, Sally confused the woman behind the counter by saying that our flight was to Chicago, rather than saying that it was to Washington, D.C., where there will be a stop, and it didn’t occur to me to say otherwise. So the clerk disappeared from behind the counter for about fifteen minutes, came back and asked if the plane would be stopping in Washington, D.C., and we were alarmingly short on time by then. It was a jog through the airport, to get to the plane, but we made it, that’s the important thing. It certainly didn’t help that I had to take my shoes off to get through security.

We even had a few minutes to sit in the waiting area before boarding the plane. During that time, some names were called over an intercom, and to my amusement one of them was Buddha, or at least sounded like it. I said, “Buddha on board!” Even my sister was amused (for a change) and said that’s a good thing and that she could use some enlightenment. I was quite surprised to hear her say this. I mentioned that before taking the trip, I had thought of traveling to England with Gandhi as a sort of spiritual companion, because of his experience traveling to London. Brat actually admitted that it would have been easier to travel with Gandhi than with her. I nearly said, “That’s the understatement of the millennium.” I do not want to stoop to her level and be cruel, although that would have been a great opportunity to make some comment. Thanks to all these oppressive relatives, I may be leaning in the direction of becoming silent, no longer speaking, just as I had through elementary and junior high school. I need to, Buddha-like, not care what people think of me, even what relatives think of me.

Two seats away from us, a guy is reading the hardcover edition of The Da Vinci Code.


We started the flight for D.C. to Chicago. The clouds look like a fluffy white mountain range.
Flight Delay: It’s raining in Chicago, hard enough that the airport is closed off for the next 55 minutes. So here we are in Grand Rapids, Michigan! They’re refueling the plane. So Mom is in Chicago, already waiting for us, in part of the airport. Fortunately, Sally’s on her cell phone with Mom, so she knows what’s going on. Mom is circling around and around the airport (O’Hare), but we don’t expect to be there for at least one and a half hours. She said it’s raining really hard, so no wonder the airport is closed to all traffic.

Back in Indiana, where I'm grumpy and tired:
Mom pulled into the driveway and parked the car, and suddenly my evil stepsister whined, “Let me out.” Or something to that effect, demanding that I get out so that she could get out. “Would someone move so I can get out!” Since she was being (surprise) rude, I took my time, and she proceeded to yell at me. I snapped back, and the brat screamed, exactly like a two year old, “FINE! I’M SORRY!” The brat still hasn’t learned what the word sorry means. It is not something you scream at the top of your lungs, any more than it is something that you say as you continue to do the offensive act. She stomped into the house, and my mom went into the house, not commenting on the brat’s insufferable behavior (as if it were perfectly normal), but I stayed outside, to load my luggage into my car and to stay the hell away from the evil brat. Her very presence is repulsive to me. While I was behind my car, with the trunk open, Evil Spawn came back out and said to me in a calm voice, as if nothing had happened, “Are you coming in soon? Your curly fries are getting cold.” Mom had stopped at Arby’s on the way home, and I had asked for curly fries and a chocolate shake.

I turned and glared at the brat, and I thought at her, “GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. THAT IS THE LEAST YOU CAN DO.” But I just glared and didn’t say it. Living in Topeka, being around oppressive conservative relatives and all, has really got me acting as if I live in pseudo-Communist China and spies are everywhere and if I’m not careful what I say I’ll be imprisoned and tortured. I don’t remember what I said to the brat, but I was so enraged that I could scarcely speak to her at that point. The audacity of her, coming out there and pretending she hadn’t just had a two-year-old’s temper tantrum, not to mention that she hadn’t just marred my London vacation for the past two weeks.

It amazes me now that I actually had thought of that brat as one of the few relatives I related to and got along with—I had that belief for approximately a decade. Not so now. I shouldn’t have to go all the way to London to find out that my sister is a foul-tempered, sarcastic, disrespectful, condescending, contemptuous and malicious brat. I could care less if I ever see her again. I am deeply hurt—I feel so betrayed and disillusioned. My first visit to England would have been fifty times better if I had gone by myself, rather than with that odious brat.

She took situations—such as discovering that the hostel reservation was bogus—and made them fifty times worse than they really were. The reason I was so nervous in these situations was because of that evil brat’s foul temper and insults—if she hadn’t been there, I would have more easily taken things as they came. Even with the brat there, sort of in the back of my head (or perhaps more like the middle, just behind the disgust and rage that I felt at that insufferable brat) were thoughts like, “So what if we’re wandering lost in London in the middle of the night? That building next to us is three hundred years old! Enjoy the scenery!” But no, the brat has to be as negative and destructive as possible. She should be grateful that I was willing to travel with her—a foolish choice on my part—and if I had known that she was like that, I would not have chosen her for a traveling companion.

It’s pretty ridiculous to treat your older sister with scathing contempt when she’s gone through all the time, money, and trouble to travel to a foreign country with you. I really don’t want to spend any more time with that brat. I shall never confide in her like a friend again.
Part of me knows that the brat’s bad attitudes and evil behavior are her problems, not mine, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting me, especially since this is my sister, not some vague acquaintance, and I have for years now treated her and thought of her as a close friend, only to discover that she is definitely nothing of the sort.

I do not need praise any more than I need insults. However, I am starved of the former and suffocated with the latter, and at this stage the treatment others give me still affects me emotionally. I have a long way to go to become a bodhisattva.



Here I am in the house where I grew up. One thing that occurred to me when I was here just before going to England was that I was in the place where I started (OK, I lived in another house before this, but it’s somewhat metaphorical) and would be going to a far different place, a foreign country that I had never physically entered before and that sharply contrasted with this place. There are a great many places to go, and not just in this reality, but also in the inner world. The places that take me away from alienating and oppressive relatives are the best places, but I also have to shake off the pain they give me.

“To thine own self be true,” –Shakespeare, Hamlet.

How Not to Arrive in London

When we came up the steps from the Piccadilly Underground station, my eyes were greeted with wall-to-wall traffic and old buildings—quite striking, really, even when you’re lugging a suitcase and had fewer than three hours sleep on a plane. I felt dizzy with those elaborate old buildings coming into view. Many streets intersect and go off in all directions at Piccadilly Circus, and that traffic was crazy, even at about seven am. I got out the London map and thought I had it figured out more or less which way to go for Sherwood Street, where the Piccadilly Backpackers Hotel is located. So we set off, with all this luggage, only to find we were going in the opposite direction we should have been going. We backtracked to Piccadilly Circus and eventually ended up at a street that connects with Sherwood—it’s Glasshouse Street. Oddly, I saw no street signs in the sense that I’m used to—placards were on the sides of buildings, rather than signs on poles. I don’t know, these are perhaps normal street signs elsewhere.

Brat’s grumbling accompanied all this wandering. I had noticed at the airports that many people had suitcases that they pulled along with a handle and wheels; I’m thinking I’d better get one before I go to Germany next summer.

Anyway, we went up Glasshouse Street, only to discover we were at the cross street of Air Street, not Sherwood, which meant we were a little too far over. We ended up, interestingly, --at this point with a woman who had a Brit accent but was also looking for the same hostel, but to buy tickets to an event.

So, along with her (and she was smart enough to ask people for directions), ultimately we stumbled upon the correct street, and the bright yellow door to the hostel. We entered the lobby, a minimalist hall-like room with no furniture except the counter, and the guy behind the counter could not find my name on his list, but sent us up to the reception desk on the fourth floor. It is a popular floor, and a plethera of young people from all kinds of countries were coming and going. The people behind the desk upstairs couldn’t find my registration either, even though I gave my name (and figured my name was enough), but they needed a confirmation number. Finally, they asked how I made the reservation, and I said I did it on the Internet, but I couldn’t remember the exact website and hadn’t brought the printout. I mentioned that it was not their website but a website that had numerous hostels on it. That’s when I really started wishing I’d made the reservations on their website instead.

They gave us fifteen minutes to use their Internet access. My foul-tempered evil stepsister checked her hotmail account to see the e-mail I’d sent about the hostel confirmation, an e-mail that she had never gotten around to reading. It turned out that, despite the alleged $96.95 deposit, there was a notice saying that this only confirms that you made a reservation with this website—it doesn’t confirm that it was arranged with the hostel itself. Either I didn’t read that part, or I didn’t take it seriously enough and promptly forgot about it—I think it was more like the latter: it didn’t register with me. It wasn’t until much later—about a week or two before the trip–that I finally thought to do a keyword search for Piccadilly Backpackers Hotel, getting details like what it looked like on the outside. That explained why they couldn’t find my reservation. I felt extremely stupid, and my obnoxious sister’s foul temper, impatience, and snide comments were not making me feel better—quite the opposite. I wanted to shove her down an elevator shaft.

I made a mistake, and I apologized to the Brat. She, in contrast, has been deliberately vicious and verbally abusive and contemptuous. Just what I need two months after two verbally abusive aunts gave me a mental breakdown; at the same time I finally stopped being in denial about my mother's side of the family. I must have been very confused as a child, since I was constantly being told one thing--that this family is so wonderful--while constantly witnessing a completely different story and being brought up to not believe my own eyes or my own emotions.

I returned to the reception desk and asked if they had anything for two people for the next eleven nights. They were all booked up. I asked if they knew of any other hostels nearby, and the guy behind the counter (I think he was French—he was quite young and had big eyes, a big nose, and Crazy Tim Burton Hair) gave me the names and addresses to two other hostels. He added, “Be nice to them.”

I don’t know whether I was giving off intense vibes because I was reacting to my sister, or whether she was the only one giving off bad vibes. I certainly hope that her inexcusable behavior wasn’t rubbing off on me. Perhaps he just assumed it was both of us rather than just her.

I didn’t know what to say: my evil stepsister was displaying her foul temper in public and embarrassing me with her inexcusable behavior, right there in front of people who didn’t mean us any harm, and I felt downright ashamed to be her sister. I also felt like it reflected on me—her attitude affected me, and I may not have been as patient and polite as I would have been without the brat. When you are in a foreign country, you are a diplomat, and you should be on your very best behavior. The impression you make is also an impression people get of your country, not just the individual standing in front of them.

I struggled with my first experience using a payphone in England, and one of the hostels was booked, located on Oxford Street, and the other one had a constantly busy line for reservations so that I was with the receptionist, put on hold, and the pay phone wasn’t helpful—I believe it cut me off. After the first attempt with them, I called the hostel on Oxford St and found out they were booked. So I called the other one again, the International Student Housing, and got the same receptionist, and under the circumstances (since the lines were still very busy) he said he could check if two beds were available, but he couldn’t reserve them, so I agreed to that. He put me on hold briefly, and he got back and said there were two beds available, and I asked where the Tube station was located—Great Portland Street.

I led the way exhausted and frustrated, not to mention utterly disgusted with my foul tempered sister, back to Piccadilly Station, where I went to a booth and said to the tall, blonde and very English-looking guy behind the counter, “We’re new in town. Can you tell us how to get to Great Portland Street?” He very politely recommended taking Regent’s Park Station, because it was more convenient and in almost the same spot. It was only two Tube stops away, and after we wandered up to a street corner and found Regent Street (with Sally grumbling because we had no idea where we were, and with me wishing she’d vanish in thin air), we only had to cross one narrow street (please tell me it was one-way—it was that narrow), and we turned, and it was Great Portland Street.

As we started walking along Great Portland Street, Brat said, “Whoa! That’s it!” and there it was—the International Student Hostel, right there on the corner, marked in big bold black letters over the glass doors. That was a welcome sight, I thought. So we got reservations with this hostel instead—we have a double up to July 7, and after that (for the final two nights) we’re in separate single rooms that cost a little more. But at least we have rooms. Well, hopefully—check in is at 12:30, and we have about fifteen minutes left, and then we’ll actually be staying at a building that’s a ten-minute walk away from this building, but this is the one with the Internet café and the cafeteria.

Through this whole thing, Brat was foul-tempered and biting my head off, just making me angry and stupid and nervous and flustered and resentful. No wonder my mother thinks she’s a bad traveler. I was going to ask her if she wanted to go with me to Germany next year, but not so much. I’m reluctant to tell her that her behavior is insufferable and unacceptable, since I want this trip to go as smoothly as possible and don’t want to make things ugly with confrontation and argument, especially argument in public for all to hear. Who am I kidding? The brat already has made things ugly. OK, I don’t want to make things uglier.

In any case, I’ve learned from my mistake: instead of ordering reservations from a general website on hostels, do a keyword search for the specific hostel and order the reservations directly through that website. The same of course goes for stuff like ordering tickets. I’ve also learned that choosing this brat for a traveling companion was a really bad idea, and I shall never do so again.

Now that we’ve been chilling out in the cafeteria for over an hour, I finally used the restroom after more than 24 hours without--I get that way while traveling sometimes. I remember that back when I went with a high school group to the continent, I never used the restroom during the flight, not till we got to the hotel, and that in spite of all the delays and whatnot.

Who is this insufferable brat and what has she done with my sister? After we got a room for sure, we got to the other building, following the little directions and map that the woman behind the counter gave us with our keys. The brat grumbled along the way, because we had some trouble finding our way to the hostel. Of course, keeping calm and trying to find the hostel wouldn’t be a better idea than having a temper tantrum like an unusually vocal two-year-old.

Finally, we got to the building, and we were supposed to speak with the receptionist there, but they were out for lunch, and we got impatient waiting and finally used our keys to get into the hallway and headed for our room, which is on the third floor. We got up to the third floor and didn’t know at which end the room was, and of course we were still carrying heavy luggage, and I was feeling exhausted and disgusted in the brat but glad we were there and had a room. Suddenly the brat dropped her suitcase and marched forward down the long hallway, and I had no idea what she was doing. I decided against leaving her suitcase there, so I tried to carry it while I struggled forward. The evil spawn came back and screamed at me--yes, screamed--for not staying behind and waiting. What an evil spawn. Do excuse me for not reading your horrid little evil mind. I hate this monster and I want her to fall down an elevator shaft. I was so shocked by her inexcusable, arrogant, and evil behavior, I did not know what to say—shocked into silence.

I can’t believe I’m going to spend the next two weeks with this monster. This was supposed to be a wonderful vacation.