Eight - Seven - Six - Five

I'm sitting on the floor of our soon-to-be-vacated apartment here in The Hague.  About 90 percent of our belongs are packed, including the sofa, loveseat, and dining chairs.  Pretty much anything we might have considered planting our cheese butts on has been packed. 

By this time tomorrow our stuff will be off to Rotterdam to make the six week journey to Alexandria, stopping in Baltimore long enough for customs to randomly decide to unpack everything looking for drugs, polonium, Chinese refugees, or the most insidious of all substances, alcohol. 

We had to itemize our wine and Belgian beer stash, and we will actually pay import duty on it.  It's not a lot, a few bottles from our wedding in South Africa and about a case of beer all told. Still, I'm reminded of how puritanical America is.  What kind of world are we living in when our politicians can't solicit sex in an airport bathroom, and we can't drink our repressed selves silly?  I'm telling you what, the terrorists have already won.

Yet, we're on our way to the town hall to de-register.  Where the US government only professes to value personal freedoms, you can actually live off the grid, go on the lam, be a private citizen.  Socialist countries may actually grant you your personal freedoms, but they keep track of your every move.  If they don't know where you live, how else can they tax the hell out of you? 

What I've learned from living abroad is that every country has its thing, that thing that drives you nuts.  Not only is the grass not greener on the other side of the fence, in fact we're all mowing wilting crab grass that we don't actually want in the first place. 

So the trick is that you pick your poison.  We've made our choice.