So how amazing is this?
Why don't you ever answer?
I get to Manchester via very late Megabus around 10:30 PM. I'm very hungry so I eat some cheap Thai food and start to wander around the city looking for a hostel or cheap hotel or quiet bar to drink my first pint of Guinness. After circling the same area for a good while I finally find an alley with a seemingly quiet karaoke bar. I order a pint and sit down. My back was a little sore from my backpack, even though it's considerably smaller than any of my tour mates' packs. Oh, I'm alone now too.. The karaoke bar is awesome. Almost exclusively Asians singing songs I don't think I'd ever heard before. Hands down, awesome scene. I start to get a little tired so I call my Mom to ask if she can text message me the address that I had forgotten to write down to the hostel she had recommended earlier in the day.
My phone can receive text messages right now, but I can't send replies or new messages. Weird. I mean, I haven't paid my bill in two months now, so it's not a malfunction.. it's just weird that they let me make calls.. international ones at that. Something happened with my phone and I'm not getting text messages from my Mom and she's no longer picking up.. So I check my email via a BT internet phone booth (they're all over the UK) and she's both emailed me the address and posted it in the comments of this website. I look at the street map and I'm real close, so I start to walk.
It's just 2 AM now and the streets are full of kids and dudes getting out of the bars. There are cop vans all over chasing kids running down the street and the cop sirens sound unfamiliar and cool. I get to the hostel street and there's all kinds of crazy construction. There's a building from the directions.. John Dalton, part of the Manchester Metro University.. the hostel is supposed to be across from it.. this says "John Dalton phase 2." Shit. I get discouraged and I walk around the block. BOOM. There are signs for the hostel. I walk up and there's a night guard at the desk. It seems different from every other hostel I've seen. I ask him, "Is this the kind of place I can rent a room for the night." He replies "Not tonight." I don't know what that means, but I don't like the sound of just walking around in the cold for 8 hours before I take some mode of transportation to the airport. He tells me that I should come back rather than sleep on the street after I ask about other cheap places to stay and get a £45 pound reply.
I walked outside and a couple of kids go into the building. It looks like this is a dorm as well as a hostel. I think these kids go to this school and live in these buildings. Weird. They're drunk and cute and say English slang to me that I don't understand or remember. I paced outside and looked at old text messages. The night guard came out and said "Come here, you." I followed him inside and he showed me to an empty room with a bed, desk and a window. He asked if I had bedding.. I don't. He said I should talk to someone at the desk when I wake up to sort out getting a proper room tomorrow, but I told him it wasn't necessary. I plugged my laptop into the wall and I wrote all of this down. He knocked on the door a couple minutes later and had a "loaned" sleeping bag for me. What an amazing dude. I graciously thanked him, opened up m y Tesco orange juice and finished writing this.
I'm really, really excited and happy to come home, but at the same time I'll really miss these very unfamiliar and desperate travels. My first tour in Europe has been a financial disaster but at the same time worth every pence or whatever. I'm so glad I got to experience this way of touring here and I'm drop-dead excited to experience it the much easier and comfortable way (I'm just guessing) with Devendra Banhart in October.
PS- In the middle of writing this I got a phone call from a collection agency. I only answered it because I though it might be my Mom checking to see if I made it here okay. This asshole insulted me after I told him I couldn't talk because it was costing me $2 a minute. "Why don't you be a responsible adult and take care of this." I replied with "Cool, dude" before hanging up the phone. Who wants to be a responsible adult? I guess I do, but I don't think I have the capacity just yet. When I have money I blow it on stuff for my friends and avoiding working. When I don't have money I usually work. Being stranded and at the mercy of other people's kindness isn't usually how this works.. I'm sorry that it's like this and I thank you for all of your collective help. Money is so much like water with me.. it's just a weird drought right now. Keep in mind I live in Portland where it rains more than any city in the United States. I'll be wet real soon.
Jona, all your new Scottish pals (and this lonely Canadian girl-pal) are relieved to know you finally made it home safely. Thanks for letting us share your adventures. Take care. Keep in touch.
xo Krissy
Even though I have a job it kills me that I can't afford to go to heck fest, or visit Olympia to see friends when I want to. I usually have to wait for them to come here and visit me which makes me feel horribly bad. I wish that you could have like 5 requests per year, like for tires. I could use them right now. Im afraid im going to be driving down the road, get a blow out and then loose my job because im late to work. Crud.
I hope you make it home safe Jona, if I win Quinto i'll give you some money!
Lacey
manchester? you weird ghosty ghost travelling trails and lazer cameras. thanks for getting yourself home and stuff... i find this entry kind of scary in a dead people kind of way. i am the same way though, still carrying a weird backpack around when everyone else has homes... but you are much more optimistic than i am! where's rob?
peace
damn, you might just be the coolest person ever. lookin forward to your set tomorrow night at pdx pop.
Feeling you right now, dude. Just hopped over to Shanghai last night, without a place to stay or major cashflow, and ended up paying a random dude 25 bucks to drive to his hometown, where I'm staying now. I'm in Suzhou, a canal city-type place. It's very hot. I was going to teach english here but my contact dude told me this morning that the class was cancelled and he was trying to arrange something else. Bummer. Maybe I shouldn't have splurged on gifts in Yunnan. So at the moment, the water is a trickle, I got a ticket to Seattle in August, and I'm just chillin in China. Luckily food is awesome and cheap. I'm thinking that soon independent dudes are going to be able to tour here. There's so much music and energy, but it's not cohesive yet. So many little artist co-ops. I'm hoping to make some friends. Have fun in Portland. Are you still touring the South? Make it awesome, dude.
i really enjoyed reading the logs of your advertures, jona. i'm glad you made it back okay!
i hear you about the money situation... i'm able to say now i can indentify with that excitement/terror of being financially independent - aka broke. :-)
but you seem to be doing quite well despite the downs in your ups!
Wow, there are nice people in Manchester!!! Youll have to tell me where that kareoke bar is, sounds ace. Hope to see you guys over here or we'll come to you. :)
I'm home now. Safe and sound. I forgot to mention that the hostel night-guard told me to check in with the person at the desk in the morning about paying, etc. When I did this they told me just to leave and that I didn't need to pay anything. So weird and cool.