Munich, Budapest, Bucharest, Cameraless

So I spose I'll cover the last part of that title first. My camera was stolen on the train from Munich to Budapest a couple days ago. There's alot more to this than that though, so read the whole post!

All three of us were sleeping in a cabin - Evan and I were sleeping across the seats and cody was on the floor. The conductor and passport control were constantly in and out (as it is with every overnight train anywhere between borders) checking tickets and passports, and cody and I had been extremely dilligent relocking the door after every check. It would appear that the one time we forgot, someone who had obviously seen me get on the train with the camera on my person, got in and took it. How it happened must be some form of inversed miracle. Cody's head was up against the door, and he woke up first every time anyone would open it for a check because his head would get bumped. The camera was also farthest away from the door on the luggage storage rack above the seats behind my big bag. Someone must have then silently opened the door, and then proceeded to climb over our three bodies, stand on a seat, reach up into the top corner, take my camera and leave again without waking us up.

I woke up at about 6:30 am to go sit outside our cabin. I did notice the door was unlocked when I left, but I didn't think anything of it. When we were grabbing our stuff to get off the train in Budapest, my camera was nowhere, and that's about that. I checked everything and walked through a bunch of the cars, but I knew as soon as I saw that it wasn't by my bag that it was gone.

As far as my reaction and such, anger never crossed my thoughts, and panic had a hold on me for about twenty seconds before I realised it was gone. I had been praying alot about the camera over the past few months, and about what its role is as far as something entrusted to me from God is. God took it away and that's honestly fine by me. I had the pleasure of using for six months a fine piece of camera and the things I've learned about photography, and some of the pictures me and other people have taken with it, are worth the lease price.

If I wasn't mad, there was a definite sense of loss that I've been working over the past couple days, mainly because I lost more than a hundred pictures on the memory card that I hadn't yet backed up on cd. I had a couple pictures from the last night of bible school, and everything from our trip so far. Out of every hundred pictures I take, there are a few that would really make me sad if I were to lose them, and naturally there were a few in this round too that I really don't like not having, but there's not alot I can do about that. It's definitely weird not having the camera around my neck all the time anymore, and not processing aspects of my surroundings in new places through a viewfinder is weird. Budapest and Bucharest are very cool cities in only slightly similar ways (despite the role of communism in both places), and not taking pictures while I was there definitely made it slightly odd.

There's definitely no room for cynicism in this. Even if anyone thought it unwise for me to be toting around europe something that valuable, and knew this was going to happen, it really doesn't matter. One of my goals for being at bible school was to start trying to actually understand from the center of my soul, that things as it were, are just temporary transients. I'm still not there, but this helps. It's a complicated bunch of business that I can't expect to figure out entirely. I'm game for any words of wisdom!

I've been writing lots and lots in the past couple days, cause I want to take away as much about myself from this as I possibly can.

When I first lost it, I thought I might not buy anything (disposable, or cheap film camera) to replace it while I'm travelling, but I'm going to try. It's another one of those weird lines everyone has to figure out. If God took it, does that mean he doesn't want me to replace it (however cheap the replacement is) at all? I've come to the conclusion that he has given me the ability to take good pictures, so a good picture taker would use this chance to try his hand at taking good pictures on a cheap camera. The possibilities are definitely many!

I think I've done justice to the stuff I've written in my journal, but I'm sure there are at least a few missing holes.

As far as our trip goes, we're having lots of fun, and we're seeing lots and lots of stuff. Train rides are always interesting here, and the people end up in conversation with are always cool. Going to Romania was really cool. The country side and the villages we could see from the train looked infinitely nicer than Bucharest. Bucharest still looks like it's freshly recovering from communism. I'm almost done reading tortured for Christ which I got from the school, which is the story (Oma will doubtless be able to finish my sentences for me here) of Richard Wurmbrand and his work with the underground church in communist Romania. It's not an easy book to read despite being relatively short, mainly because you have to think about everything he says. Seeing the country out the window while reading his story was cool.

Anyways, I've used all my internet time writing this. We're in Vienna at the moment, but we're going back to Munich tonight. Tomorrow we're going to the Dachau concentration camp, spending another night in Munich before we go north the next morning. We're gonna find a small German town to hang out in for the day and then go up to Berlin that night. I'll respond to emails and stuff when I get some more internet time (hopefully tonight).