"Tales From the Sleep Deprived Mind" and Other Stories Volume 3

So I wrote this when I was stuck in Basel, Switzerland and had gone 40+ hours without sleep. I saved it to notepad and added some things to it.

The better part of two days without sleep has an interesting effect on a human being. Physically, lack of sleep makes the body feel sluggish and heavy, the upper body seemingly dragging the lower extremities around in a comical fashion. The body starts to shake and fidget as the muscles demand a respite from being forced to do, well, anything for two straight days. Dark circles grow underneath the eyes, while the eyes themselves burn intensely, as a result of ones eye lids being forced open, threatening to crash down at any moment. Mentally, the brain loses all sense of purpose, quite ridiculously forgetting that purpose is to THINK. Mundane things become fascinating, and the mind recoils in horror after spending two hours trying to figure out who in their right mind would ever fly in an airplane (one is essentially hurtling through the air in a giant, sheet metal hot dog, but I digress). A person winds up making silly errors that results in their being stuck in a train station in Switzerland, babbling on about how interesting lack of sleep is.

AND people are making out next to me. In the train station. It's me, an Asian girl reading a book, and two people making out on a bench. High five! *+

*Editors note: Customs agents arrested a loud Asian man and hauled him back and forth through out the train station. Also, what is the deal with people making out around me? Everywhere I go, people are engaging in tongue kung fu with each other, usually within 10 feet of me. Am I some kind of walking aphrodisiac for other people? "Quick Matt's here, let's make out!"

+Editors other note: I made it out of Switzerland, by the way. There are two train stations in Basel, and the bus at the airport takes you the one called the SBB. This train station only has trains that run throughout Switzerland and France. The other one, Badischer Bahnhof, is the German train station, which is where I needed to be. However, I didn't realize this at first. I was vainly trying to find "Freiburg" on the little ticket screen and ran across "Fribourg". Fully sleep deprived, I somehow convinced myself that "Fribourg" must be what I'm looking for, and that's simply how the Swiss spell it. Turns out this Fribourg is in France. And I had already boarded the train. And it was already moving. So after a brief conversation with a train officer guy who spoke bad English, I had to get off at some town called Olten and head back to Basel. By the time I got to Basel, and by the time I realized I was at the wrong damn station, it was 12:30 am and the next train to Freiburg didn't leave until 5:19 am.

I was happy to be home for Christmas. Germany was getting to be frustrating and two weeks at home allowed me to centre myself a little bit and prioritize. I'm going to worry less about how I'm doing in school and focus more on the opportunities I have living abroad for a year. I'm not necessarily giving up on school this year, or anything like that, I've just come to the realization that there are probably more important things I could be doing right now. I am practically in the middle of Europe. I might as well live it up while I'm here, because who knows if I'll be back?

The only down side to coming home at Christmas for two weeks is that I have effectively forgotten a good chunk of German. I'm not really at square one again...more like square three and a half. Which basically means, I've got all the German grammar rules down, but I can't understand what the hell people are saying to me. I was just starting to get the hang of it, even if I couldn't reply very well. Oh well. It was worth it to come home.