Bad Things Happen

Alright first and fore most, sorry I haven't written in a while. I have good reasons though.

So I've been in Bratislava for a few days now. This town is very interesting, you can be walking down the street and there will be a grand and stately church, completely surrounded by old graffitied buildings that are falling apart and can easily be placed in the communist era. Steve, one of my fellow American students here, was placed in what he has deemed the matchbox because our rooms were still being renovated. Apparently this room was just big enough for the bed and his bike box to have all of his other things stacked on top of it. This is the housing for many students here. But on the other extreme, there is old town, which is easily the most picturesque area of the city. I wish I had my camera to show this but alas it has been stolen.

I've spent the last couple of days really just wandering around ordering random food, and hanging with my American friends. We have gotten small tours from various slovak students.

The former Slovak side atlantis students have done a good deal of showing us around and taking us to good places to eat. They also helped us get things like photos and sim cards.

The last two nights we've bought food and prepared it in our rooms. It's been a nice way to relax in the evenings considering the culture shock and getting ready for school to start. In general everything has just been nice and pleasant everyone has been very accommodating and helpful. And I just want to get all of this out there before I rant a little.

So the first night all of us American students were here together in Bratislava, we went out grabbed dinner and had a few drinks. We went back to our dorm and hung out for a while and you know bonded. This is really the first time we're all meeting one another outside of the initial oh you all would like to apply for the Atlantis program. We are almost the only ones in our hall way so for the better part of the night our doors were open and we were just in and out of our rooms, sharing stories, and celebrating a little. Around one we part ways, I go to bed and pass out. Sometime between one am and six am when I woke up. Someone broke into my room, and stole my passport, camera, laptop, ipod mini, calculator, and hard drive. In short they took off with approximately $1000 of stuff which was more or less all of my valuables and my connection to the outside world. Now stuff is stuff it can be replaced, however my gigabytes of music and photos can not. So at the moment I am computerless, cameraless and photoless and trying very hard to make the best of it. My classmates have been great and have been letting me borrow this that and the other, and hopefully I'll have a computer and maybe camera again of my own to be using relatively soon so I can get back to writing and documenting my trip easily.

I did get down to the embassy, I should have a new passport in about a week and whoever has my old one will at least be blocked from getting to the U.S.

I'm not going to let this ruin my experience here the town is great, the food is pretty good (I've eaten mushrooms and potatoes and enjoyed it so yeah...) the people save the thief have been helpful, accommodating and mostly full of smiles. So short of the thief returning my stuff there is really not to much more I could ask for.

I will write again soon, (just maybe not as soon as I would like).