24 Feb How To Survive When Your Internet Breaks Down

A terrible tragedy happened to me recently.

The day started off just fine.

I woke up at 7 am, groggily got out of bed, started preparing my coffee by taking out my Moka pot from the cupboard. I poured fresh ground beans in the tin container, filled the lower level with tap water, screwed the pot shut, and placed it over the stove to work its magic.

As my coffee maker started to hiss, I had already bitten into my toast, on which I had carefully spread a thick layer of peanut butter. The crunchy texture already filling my taste buds with the familiar savory-sweet flavor of breakfast.

Steaming mug in hand, I sit at my desk and prop open my laptop to start working.

A few hours go by and I remembered that most of my energy makes itself available only late in the morning, around 11 or so, so I take my early lunch break and head to the gym. After an hour of working out, I head back, take a shower, and snap open my laptop to resume my work.

“Internet disconnected.”

I stare in disbelief at the running t-rex Chrome almost mockingly placed on my screen.

I look over to the router which was happily flickering its green lights in all the right places, except for the button “online.”

What? Why?

I try turning it off and back on again. Nothing.

A rush of anxiety runs up and down my spine a few times. I feel my palms getting sweaty.

I call the manufacturer’s customer service number – mind you, I live in Hungary – and after an endless 3-4 minutes, the female voice recording finally said “press two for English”. I click and wait to speak to an operator.

Finally, I talk to a human being, who after a few minutes of questioning drily stated: “we’ll need to send a technician, someone can come to check out your router in a couple days”. She chose her words carefully, her voice cautious, maybe she sensed I was a millennial about to have a nervous breakdown without internet.

I agreed to have the technician come inspect my router at his/her convenience.

I kid you not, my life passed before my eyes. All my most mundane activities require internet nowadays. Netflix, social networking, checking my bank account, texting friends, even saving my grocery list to Google Keep.

Now what?

I hastily grabbed my laptop, its charger, my phone, my wallet, a snack (of course), and dumped everything into a backpack I hadn’t used since traveling in Asia and headed out to search for Wi-Fi.

I felt like a cavewoman hunting for food. I peeked through countless coffee shop windows for just the right environment. “Too crowded”, “too noisy”, “too hipster”, “the coffee’s not good here”, “what? They don’t have blueberry-studded muffins?!”

I finally settled on a cute café near my apartment. The air was thick with fragrant fumes of freshly baked banana bread, the coffee machine periodically grinding shiny chocolate-colored beans for fancy artisan cups of espresso, and the barista lazily switching the music every once in a while to some indie song probably only she knew, all while waiting as the non-dairy milk steadily foamed into a white cloud under the frother.

I sat, plugged in my laptop, inserted the password for the Wi-Fi and began working.

Sometimes, I looked up at my surrounding environment, curiously – an elderly man was reading a book in the corner, a couple was laughing as they sipped lemonade and held hands across the table, and a group of girls was seated in a circle buzzing with gossip as each friend passed around a phone, looked down, and giggled. Probably looking at another friend’s latest Instagram story.

I pondered over how peaceful it was to be anti-social while surrounded by people, it felt comforting to know that even if I didn’t remotely intend on speaking to anybody, I could at any moment. It made me feel part of something as I peeked in from the outside at the same time.

When I finished my work and completed all my tasks for the day, I shut my laptop and returned home. By then, the air had gotten a lot chillier and the sunlight had shifted into dusk. It was 8 pm. I remembered I could not continue watching my show on Netflix.

I reluctantly took out the book I had been slowly working on for a while, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

I loved her novel and truly enjoyed reading it, but I always seemed to get distracted by the colorful “nice” cream (dairy-free banana ice cream) bowls on Instagram or some article on Facebook I read but never remembered the details of.

Anyway, the next couple days without internet meant it was game on, I would finish the novel and finally get on with my life and start another book from the pile laying next to my bed prodding me to read every night.

And I did.

Without the internet, I read, blogged, sketched, and walked out to discover other coffee shops with buttery, flaky pastries and intricate glossy cakes in Budapest. As if it just sprung into existence and it hadn’t always been in my possession, I felt grateful for how portable my laptop was.

Finally, the day arrived. The technician came to fix my router.

The green light turned back on “online” and I was back to having internet in my house.

“Definitely more convenient”, I thought to myself as I snapped open my laptop again to conveniently access a parallel world of information from my recently-vacuumed living room couch.

I wouldn’t go back to not having Wi-Fi at home, but I’ve definitely discovered a small new world.

With my newly acquired knowledge I know I’ll be visiting more Budapest coffee shops in the future, learning more about my surroundings in this new city I now call home.