I really enjoyed staying in Michalovce, being not a tourist for a while but instead a curio. Natalia had to go home for Jobseekers’ busy-work so Amalia took me to see the gigantic artificial lake down the road from her village. There were a huge series of holiday camps from the communist era along the side – fast food stalls, water chutes, restaurants, a pavilion, a waterfront disco, an immense white concrete shopping centre. All utterly deserted, some for years, a few still open in the summer for Poles and Ukrainians. The Czechs and Slovaks are gone to Croatia and Bulgaria. A very strange place, especially at night.
Then we had some food and hitched into town with some speed-maniac to watch a film with Amalia’s ex and some friends of hers and his and drink calimocho.
Yesterday I got on the 12 hour coach back to Prague. It was more a bus than a coach really, but there was nobody sitting next to me so I could stretch out and get at least a couple of hours interrupted sleep. The price was right, so I can’t complain. Then back to the Clown and Bard in the early hours and to bed for a while.

So I’m back here then. I can feel the English fog lifting from my brain, slowly. My mind slowed down to a hibernation pace while in Brighton. Not enough stimulation and too much stress, a word that seems fixed to the UK. It may be a brief lived feeling though. I had some Czech lunch, did the laundry and then came here (Planeta internet cafe) to be again continually frustrated at being unable to get a fucking job in Japan because I didn’t finish my degree in Film Studies. Apparently this applies to quite a few other countries too. Should I just fly somewhere and apply for anything I can get? Should I give up and go out into the Czech countryside and settle there instead? That would weigh heavy as a disappointment in my mind.
Maybe I should just give up on the search for today, stop babbling on Livejournal, go and get drunk and see what advice I’ve been offered in the relevant forums tomorrow.
This sounds like a good plan.