The Wandering American: Volume I

"...Welcome baaaack, welcome baaaack, mrak is baaaack!!...
See the names have all changed since i've been around....
but the game ain't the same since i left the town..."

As I sit on the train heading back to vienna conversing with Mase, i decided my theme song should be blasting when i step out of the train station.

If not, all the street cred i assembled in the Slovenian countryside slingin' strudel (3 euros a gram for cheese or cherry, but 3.75 euros a gram for apple - mainly cause the re-ups on the 35 kilo apple stash deliveries are wire-tapped like a goddamn recording studio) would have been totally, completely, utterly, 100 percent, most definitely, absolutely, invariably, blatantly, truly, obviously, entirely, wholly, clearly, no doubt whatsoever, in vain.



i didn't even use a thesaurus. except for "wholly." that is a big word. a $1 dollar word if you went to the Evergreen School for the Gifted. :)

...Trevor. Eva. Ron. Zachary. Dylan.

Before we start, a few words of appreciation to all who took the time to post on our sweeeeet-ass facebook group:



"Thank you, thank you, thank you. You far too kind
Can i get an encore, do you want more? Cook and brawl with the Sea-town boy
...Get 'em Elia Rubin Mrak-Blumberg!"

SHIT!!! that doesn't flow at all!!! It anti-flows. I guess my name is bad for rap. dreams. crushed. :(

Unless i renamed myself LaElia.

Anyway, honestly people, all of your kind words truly means a lot to me. Like boobs to mitch.

[way too easy to put a picture here....easy. like Ed's mom] haha.

And now a few words of dis-appreciation concerning other responses to the Epilouge: Yes, Jen, that is how it is spelled. If you were a second generation american maybe you would be able to spell correctly, like the native English speaker that i am. Do you hate freedom!? Jeeeez. :) ...And to all others who haven't written anything, it's really nothing personal, but go have a good life and burn in hell.

SIKE!! :)

but seriously, at least go blanch yourself in hell.

...anybody who gets that is either sleeping with Emeril Lagasse (BAM!), or...well, hmmmm, yeah. actually, that really would be the only valid explanation. (nevermind the fact that i wrote it..............

WHAT!?! Emeril's a good provider!!....just look at that passion!!!!



......uh....i mean....hmmmmmmm.......moving on...

BREAKING NEWS: I have scrapped my initial plan to study dance and have dedicated the next 11 months of my fellowship to a Pro Americans-are-not-all-complete-fucking-retards public relations effort in hopes of undoing this: WATCH AND CRINGE AND LAUGH!! THEN CRY.

This clip is the working definition of Shit-Show, Train-Wreck and Hey-world-i-just-ruined-my-life all wrapped up into one. And now I have to answer questions about this girl to everyone of my European friends. Thanks South Carolina.

Now this is the sentence where i would normally call out my friends from South Carolina and tell them how much their state blows. This is the space that this would happen...

If had friends from South Carolina. But I don't. Which makes me feel better about myself. Anyway, to all Gamecocks: Feel free to secede whenever you need to. Fucking Lincoln. The next Civil War is all yours.

This picture NEVER gets old.

So, to no one's surprise, I have said almost nothing at all about my last 3 weeks. So because I have blg ADD and will invariably start rambling if I stick to this traditional, capitalist-imposed-Microsoft Word-mandated-word-processing-6-sentence-to-a-paragraph form that is suffocating our literacy creativity and choking all other forms of written communication that don't fit into a 1" margin and a 654-word page, i feel it necessary to revolutionize!! let us move to a bulleted list.

Here, for your reading efficiency and in honor of the beginning the college football season, is the top 25 things that have happened to me in the last 3 weeks, listed in order of random importance:

0: "Zero." The Middle East invented it. European hostels perfected it. You are assigned your room, and suddenly become ecstatic. you are thinking that because your room is located on the first floor, you are the blessed one that doesn't have to take the stairs, and can actually just do somersaults all the way to your beige-breakfast (cornflakes, bran muffin, white bread, a splintered 2x4.) hahaha... just kidding. they don't actually have bran muffins.

Anyway, you are walking on water, floating in the clouds, thinking that you the first person in European history to actually live on the first floor of ANY building, especially when you have 2.8 tons of luggage like I do. Why? I have no idea. This excitement lasts until you realize that they have named all of the first floors "Floor 0." WTF people. That is anti-math.

And yes, this was the most important thing that happened to me. By far.

1: times i correctly spelled any Slavic names I heard. The name was Elia.


well that pretty much seals the deal... :)

2: times in each European contemporary dance performance that someone gets naked. I think Europe is involved in some sort of revolutionary textile boycott. Just a hunch. Sell your LaCoste stock short, Wex.


I have never wanted to be a camera Flash more in my life than right now.

3: seconds it takes me to eat any form of Eastern European pastry.

4: seconds it take me to buy another one.

5: times i have ordered a cappuccino at an alternative artists' beer bar at 2am to stay awake and got weird looks. "HEY PEOPLE: YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE GUY THAT ORDERED A PINA FUCKING COLADA AT AN IRISH BAR IN FREIBURG, GERMANY AND THEN WATCHED IN DISBELIEF UNTIL 4 IN THE MORNING AS THE SEAHAWKS BLEW A 21 POINT 2ND HALF AND A SOBBING DICK VERMEIL WALKED TRIUMPHANTLY OFF THE FIELD AS OUR PLAYOFF HOPES VAPORIZED, ALL THE WHILE TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY TO DROWN MYSELF IN A MELTED SOUP OF PINEAPPLE, COCONUT AND ICE, BUT ULTIMATELY SUCCEEDING IN GOUGING OUT MY EYES WITH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE MINIATURE DRINK UMBRELLA."

you know what? make that a venti cappuccino. hvala.



6: times each minute an average guy thinks about sex.

7: times each minute i thought about what to include in this blg. which is embarrassing. (see #6)

8: consecutive times i lost in foosball in one night. joel, you are good, but these guys were INCREDIBLE. honestly, i haven't seen that kinda wrist action since i walked in on mitch freshman year.



9: countries i will have visited from august 1st to November 1st. actually not that hard. europe is the size of East LA.

10: words i know in German.

11: words i know in German, Slovene, Croatian, and Hungarian combined.


I ordered off this menu. Unsuccessfully.

12. entire pigs i have consumed in 3 weeks. too bad pigs are smart.

13. number of times i regretted #12.

14: postcards I bought at one store. that better be a record. if not, then someone else is more successful than me at making friends think i am trying to "stay in touch." :)

15. times a day i have been tempted to grab the cell phone out of a European's hand and stomp on it mercilessly after it blasted some horrible techno song at about 110 decibels. death to technology. or bad techno. or my eardrums. whichever comes first.

16: days of rain. which is sweeeet, cause i get to walk around town in my rain jacket, middle finger to the umbrella game, showing people how we rep it from the 206. we are like ducks and the rain just sheens off our backs. y'all heard!! (for those of you from Mill Creek, Bellevue, Kamiak, Goldbar, etc., now nodding in agreement claiming the 206, nice try. that includes you nate, tracy, j-dash, shefali, ridge, tracy,) :) whew, got 6 more off the list.

17: number of rat-tail mullets i saw every 0.000078 seconds in spain.



18: number of weird looks per day from other Vienna subway goers as I practiced my popping and locking waiting for the trams. I think 87% of Eastern Europe now thinks I have Tourette's.

19: glasses of wine i drank in 36 hours while in the Slovenian countryside....or was that 17? or 21? wait, where was I? what am I talking about? am I still drunk?



...okay, so i like wine. i want a vineyard :)

20: facebook messages/wall posts I wrote while #19 happened.

21: number of dance performances I have seen in the last 3 weeks. 4/21 = the number that I understood.

22: times a week a local asks me, "wait, what are you doing here???" Also the number of times i respond with, "what are YOU doing here???"

23: happy almost birthday nhkb :)

24: consecutive revolutions on this steel ring, making this dude pretty much the coolest person ever. he has the advantage that when he gets hammered and the room starts spinning, he's like, "been there. done that." . (this is why i have a PICTURE, and he has a VIDEO).




25. University of Michigan's current ranking in Div III football. Having fun Jakle?? :)

Infinite: number of amazing people, dance classes, foods, wines, conversations, festivals and experiences i have had the past 3 weeks.


By the way, this is why Eastern Europe has no Hip-Hop Scene.

A gas station mini-mart?! Really???!!!


Well, as they say in Austria, and in semi-right-of-center-republican-
pro-big-business-racist-father-checkered-history-steroid-induced-
but-overall-not-as-bad-as-could-be-circles all over california...

Hasta la vista, baby. :)

~ Elia


P.S. - personal postcard contest for everyone but Mitch and Eva: the first three people to tell me all of the two word combinations in the English language that are spelled the same but pronounced differently gets a personal postcard from me. :) For example: Bass and Bass (the music and the fish - spelled the same but pronounced DIFFERENTLY). hint: there aren't that many.

Too bad only 2 people actually read this far.