DAY 2

Ok, the panic hadn't hit at this point yet, I woke up with a cold and set out to visit my father and his wife and kids, whom I hadn't seen in five and a half years. My mother and I agreed that it would be best if I take a taxi since I have a cold. Taxis, by the way, cost the same here as they do in New York. They are basically the same except that the guy driving the taxi is a skinhead with a fucking German Reich cross hanging off of his mirror and rockabilly taste in music. So I basically spent the entire ride hoping that this dude either doesn't hate jews, or doesn't notice that I'm one of them, and wondering why he's so into Fats Domino if he's not into ethnic minorities. It's a total mystery.
Oh, but I haven't mentioned the door system here yet. They've got these magnetic door locks on all the building doors, so in order to get out of a building, you have to press this green button which then politely tells you that you can now open the door. So when I left my mother's apartment that morning, I was all chipper because everything seemed to be working out with the other ten billion doors that I had to unlock and then lock on my way out, and then I get to the downstairs door, push the green button, push on the door, and bam, nothing. It's just not opening. I think to myself that this can't be happening and try to open it again and again and again and finally give up and call my mum on her cell. She calls me a retard and tells me that she'll come down and open it for me. I keep trying. I can't describe the level of frustration that not being able to perform the simple task of opening a door will cause in a person.
Of course that didn't compare when someone opened the REAL door from the outside, and I realized that I'd been trying to open the WALL that the green button was mounted on next to the door, instead of the door itself for the past 15 minutes. I called my mum back and told her that yes I was a retard.

Second day everybody.