8. Open Topic

I thought it would be interesting to ask my girlfriend (no, she's not a lesbian--my name might be Marzipan, but I'm not a woman) about her experiences with life abroad, to better flesh out my understanding of how we're operating overseas. After all, life is no good without perspective. And that's what this is all about.

Why do you think you travel?
I feel like the actress side of me kind of just wants to experience everything I can and just let it soak in—not necessarily ponder about it and you know, discuss it, or even muse—well maybe muse to myself but nothing extraordinary, just letting something seep into my conciousness makes me grow as a person
Shit, wait, forgot how to spell conciousness—
--without even knowing it.
Do you feel like there’s something inside you that you’re looking for when you’re traveling?
Yeah theres a romantic part of me that feels like I need to be able to sit at a café and just enjoy an experience. I want to travel specifically with you—im trying to—channel that, and almost work on it, but really its very hard for me to do in my regular day. But every time I travel I do get closer and closer to that, just being able to experience, not necessarily do, something, at all times, and not have a to-do list, but just be a part of life.
What disappoints you about travel?
Um…I mean, practical things. You know. Traveling with my family is always bad, always disappointing, because I don’t get to experience what I want to experience.
Which is what?
Which is you know, the social scene. With my parents I don’t get to experience, like the real Italians, I just get to experience the culture and stuff, which isn’t really interesting to me because anybody can just read about that. But being at the Berlin Wall and just seeing it doesn’t really do it for me, as it would hearing about an experience about what happened in ’89. I dunno.
What’s the difference between travelling and going somewhere, you think?
What do you mean, going somewhere? Like to the store?
Well yeah, aren’t you technically going to the store when you go to the Duomo? You just perceive it differently. What do you think of those mental labels? The word “travel,” as opposed to other things.
What? I didn’t hear you.
The word “travel.”
Right, what about it?
It has its own labels on it, [the word "travel" having some romantic or adventurous connotations].
Right, time to do what you wouldn’t do in normal life. Something now part of the norm.
Why cant you do what you would do traveling but at home?
Because if we lived like how we do in Florence, you’d go broke, and you’d almost dilute the experience of—I think, maybe, might not be true—dilute the experience of exploring a new culture, because then you are just acquiring business cards,  when you want to be focusing on real life and being happy and responsible. Because being just a traveler, that would become your identity. It’s kind of like your job, What you do is not who you are, you know, and when you travel you get to have a little education for yourself. Or when you read a book its like traveling, or going to a museum its like traveling. You have this time to yourself where you learning about the world in a way that normality doesn’t offer. The tags of traveling I think, we romanticize it, but when you expand that definition it does include, you know, museums, books, films, you know, things that are hobbies. To me. I know that’s not true, but to me, personally. Probably because I’ve traveled so much in my life, it didn’t used to mean anything to me. You know, "I can’t go over to my friends house this weekend, I’ve got to go over to Dads or Moms, [and such and such]."
So you do like traveling then?
I love traveling.
So if you like traveling, and reading books is like traveling…
Oh my god.
Why don’t you read more books.
Hmm. Because reading books and going to museums and stuff liekt hat doesn’t have a time set aside for itself. You have to integrate it into your normal daily life. And when you do that, you start to priortize, and make alist of “Oh this is what Ill do on my vacation.” And of course, when youre traveling, you don’t want to read a book.
I thought you meant that by reading books, it’s a subsititue for traveling.
It is a little bit, but its hard to do that in real life. You know you get home from work, you unwind a little bit by doing something you love, like a video game or watching TV or a film, you know, something to unwind. Then its dinnertime, which after dinner, you probably could read a book but if you do, you'll probably fall asleep because you’re so tired you gotta ake up early, its just the mundane daily life, you kinda have to—well nevermind, that’s a different subject—but you have to set aside weekend time: read a book. And that’s like travelling, that’s like going to a museum. In the end, it will make you grow, for sure. It will change you a little bit.
Cool.
That’s good, made me think. You writing that down?
Yeah.
That’s cute.

photo courtesy of Adam Leotta; Ashley Skidmore a Capri

"…he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs pinned into the white faces of young men [...] In the hush his entrance creates, the excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the counter shows him amplifies his strangeness. He orders coffee quietly and studies the rim of the cup to steady the sliding in his stomach. He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America?" (John Updike-- Rabbit, Run)



The issue of communicating myself properly in Paris is a daily obstacle that I will most certainly not overcome before leaving in December. For the most part, I can understand everything someone is saying to me in a conversation—especially if I remind them to speak lentement, and they gesticulate—but I can rarely respond “naturally.” Of course I should expect to have such trouble speaking, even with my six years of studying French—my American friend who has lived here for almost a year and majored in French at NYU still has trouble communicating to French friends what he really means. Even if my brain doesn’t freeze before I respond, I have such limited proficiency in speaking that my responses sound as if a seven year old girl had said them (although, come to think of it, I think a seven year old Parisian could probably speak more eloquently than me). It’s quite frustrating, because I desperately want to convey my knowledge of subjects I am quite interested in—in order to converse with a French person to understand their perspectives on our shared interests—participating in engaging conversations is one of my favorite pastimes. Yet, when I attempt to speak about any subject more complicated than basic small talk, my years of knowledge become truncated to obtuse sentences: J’aime beaucoup l’environnment. I can just see their kneejerk internal reaction in the way they nod their head: You like the environment! No way! How intriguing, I’d love to learn more about you and your varied, unique interests. I am just a boring, dense American here. I think that’s what bothers me the most—that I can’t prove their American stereotype wrong because of my lack of language proficiency. It’s hard enough to communicate my thoughts into English, but at least I find a somewhat satisfactory way to do so most of the time. It’s a very rare occasion when I feel solidarity and understanding with a French person—and it’s frustrating because there’s nothing I can do to bridge the gap, especially during my present time here. And even if I lived here for years, I just know that there’d still be a thin layer that I could never bridge.

When I observe English conversations between friends, I realize a lot of our shared understanding is not only based on our shared language but also shared cultural background (I’ve had many miscommunications with people from the UK, even with the same language). I’ve realized that most of the things I find truly humorous are based on certain cultural phenomena or specific, shared past experiences. Which doesn’t mean I never find funny what the French find funny, or that I have never understood a French person—I often do share moments of mutual understanding, but such moments here dissolve as quickly as they appear. Once I open my mouth to say the next thing, I usually distance myself yet again by mispronouncing a word wrong and creating yet another awkward misunderstanding.

With this whole discussion of communication and understanding, I am quite tempted to jump into an overdramatic analysis of whether or not one person can ever truly understand another—it could be argued that, sure, I can’t really fully understand most French people, but do I ever truly understand most Americans—even my closest friends—anyway? I often feel unable to fully communicate to even the closest people in my life, so perhaps I subconsciously figured that in coming to France, my inability to communicate wouldn’t be that new of a phenomenon, since I am so convinced that I am perpetually isolated anyway. Yet, I think, in coming here, I realize that I’ve been lying to myself for quite a while. I feel more isolated and closed off than normal, which perhaps indicates that I had some degree of “true” connection and understanding and solidarity between my friends and I at home—or perhaps indicates that I have given up on bridging the gap between me and the French (at least for the time being). I may have also have had overly- high expectations, thinking that I’d understand the French even more— at least on a non-verbal level—I so idealized the French attitude previous to arriving here and felt so annoyed by the prevalent “American attitude” (even believing that the American culture somehow largely contributed to my feelings of disconnection). Oh man now I just sound like a whining Marxist. But I’ve always found isolation/ alienation a quite interesting subject—and have been convinced that I’m always isolated, never able to fully breach that which separates me from another person—but now realize that there exists not “full” understanding or “absolute” isolation, but rather a continuum between both poles. I now just wonder how close a human being can get to each end. Is their position on the continuum dependent on how much they truly want to (or believe they can) breach or exasperate their isolation?

(photo by me... ooooh how I love parisians and their velibs )

I have a confession to make. Community service was not something that attracted me to Ghana. I came here for purely selfish reasons. I remember reading about the community service opportunities from my apartment in NYC and thinking that I might just be in the minority of students who didn’t do any community service during my stay in Ghana. I was entirely wrong.

Originally I felt sort of pressured to do community service during my semester here. Everybody else in the program seemed genuinely passionate about it, so I felt obligated to participate. Many of my friends have even told me that the community service aspect of the program was what drew them to Ghana in the first place. So, out of obligation and a slight feeling of guilt, I signed up to do community service at an orphanage for trafficked children. I can honestly say that my first day at City of Refuge changed my life. I went with two of my friends who had signed up to work at the same orphanage. We made the hour long commute into Tema and met some of the kids for the very first time. Little Portia, the three year-old firecracker who loves attention more than anything else, was our first introduction. She latched onto me and acted as a reminder of how much I love children. Somehow I had forgotten.

Our meeting with Stacy and Johnbull, the directors of the orphanage, only made me that much more ecstatic for the upcoming semester. They told us about the issue of child trafficking (which I would go on to make a documentary about for my film class) and explained what we would be doing with the kids for the next few months.

Thursdays and Fridays at City of Refuge have since become routine. We show up and the kids are playing games: football, duck duck goose, hand games, tag, and more. Eventually it’s time to wind down and bring them inside for class. I tutor them in reading, writing, and math. And then it’s play time – unstructured silliness rules the building and courtyard. It’s hard to remember being so easily entertained. My relationship with these kids has grown overtime and the bond I feel with them is getting stronger and stronger with every day that I go.

The most significant, eye-opening, and insightful part of this whole experience for me, though, has been making this documentary. Stacy and Johnbull invited us at the beginning of the semester to come to the Volta region to a set of small fishing villages where they save most of their children from. We jumped on the opportunity. Talking to chiefs of the villages, slave masters, and even a child slave in person was a very humbling experience. The issue at hand is vast, and making this documentary I feel that I might be able to actually make a difference.
It is impossible to express in 500 words the amount that this semester and my experience with community service at City of Refuge has altered my perspective. Al I can say is that I have been changed.
 

Me looking at photographs of my "host family" in a freakishly oversized living room Photo Credit: Kate Stockhecker 

Like most of my peers, I was really nervous about doing my first homestay. When we got our family assignments at the pre-homesay meeting, I was relieved to find out that I had been placed with the same family as my friend Kate. Atleast that would take the edge off. Or so I thought…
 
The host families were supposed to pick us up at the AFS (the company that organizes the homestays, apparently the longest running program and most renown) center at 3:00. We were told we should get a ride with our friends host family who lives close by to where we were staying for the weekend. At 6:30pm, Nikil, Kate and I, along with an AFS representative were dropped off at Friday’s (a restaurant in Spintex) Soon after, Nikil was picked up by his host brother and Kate and Iwere assured that our host brother was just stuck in traffic on his way to get us. About an hour or so later, food and beers were ordered and a male friend of the AFS rep showed up. About another hour or so passed with these two older men, and the AFS rep said that he would just drive us to the house. In the car ride over, we were told that our host mother would be so happy to see us, and that we will have three host brothers and a possibly a host sister.
 
When we pulled up to the house (which was about a ten minute drive, not the distance the AFS rep had told us before) he pointed out our home stay house and then lead us into another. There we met his “Serbian friend” and we sat uncomfortably on his couch for about a half hour while he watched a movie in Arabic and chain-smoked. We finally questioned the AFS worker  about our home stay and were lead into the house. It was really big and not too furnished (the living room legitimately looked like a ballroom with a couch shoved in the corner). The three boys, about ages 20-25, seemed surprised to see us. There was no dinner ready (it was now around 9:30pm) and they told us our room was not ready yet. The AFS rep and his friend were still there hanging out with our hosts and told us we were going to go back to Fridays, where two of our friends were going to be with their host family. Kate and I both went to the bathroom and when we returned, they told us that we were tired, and should eat some pasta and go to sleep. The boy who showed us to our room did not know where any of the light switches were located, which lead us to believe that he didn’t actually live there. He showed us to our room that took a long time to “put together” but there was only a bed with a cheetah carpet on top in it and a curtain on top of that. The entire night Kate and I laid in between a curtain and a carpet as we nervous laughed about out eminent death.
 
We woke the next day to find that there was in fact no host mother, or family for that matter. Only one of the boys (not sure of his name as he never really introduced himself) and some friends lived in the house. He eventually revealed to us that he travels for work every week and most weekends. He sat with us while we ate our breakfast and questioned us about veganism (the diet that we both follow) He seemed open-minded about the topic, but then proceeded to take out his cel phone and show us a video of him and his friends sacrificing a cow in his backyard the week before. We asked him to put it away and he did. He then asked us about our religions and prayer practices, even though he said he could sense our discomfort about the subject. We told him we had a lot of homework and couldn’t stay another night. We left right after breakfast.

Alone, it seemed almost pointless to leave the house, but maybe it was okay because the house would have been lonelier and emptier. There are always people looking at her, she can’t tell if they’re dirty looks or interested looks or lusting looks (she hopes it’s not this, she’s done with these men and that disgusting carnal attention). She’d leave the cover of the awning, but it’s pouring and there’s nothing back at the house, there never is any consolation there, is there. So she’s standing, leaning on the wall, looking up at rain. Dark and rain. Don’t you like it when it’s night and there are lights shining up at the rain, so it’s bright white and yellow rain, not just the dark.
 
But she’s just staring and not expecting, lips parted, arms limp at the sides. It’s cold and there’s thunder and she’s not adventurous enough to leave yet, but she supposes standing and waiting won’t stop the rain. While she’s empty and thinking only flitting thoughts, her isolation is interrupted. He says something, but she can’t understand him, it’s too fast (piano, piano!). She must look alarmed and he knows something’s not right. She tells him where she comes from and he understands. But he’s nice, well, he seems nice, and his attention is okay.
 
He tells her about himself, how he’s “dark,” which means only wearing black, and she thinks he looks a little silly, but she likes silly, even if she’s a little embarrassed to be in his company. He tells her about his little sister and what she wrote on his hand, he tells her about his pet that died, and he tells her what he thinks about rain. It’s like cleansing. It’s true. The rain makes her calm and renewed and the previous upset she felt is washing away.
 
They have a hard time understanding each other, neither speaks the other’s language very well, there are so many obstacles in the conversation. But it’s okay, they’re okay together, they have an understanding and they’re both (seemingly) nice people. She’s never kissed a man before with so much metal in his face, but she likes it, and it continues to pour and the rain cleanses all and she’s not alone.

I sometimes see British people that look like people from back home and it makes me think about them. After I realize my third grade babysitter definitely moved to Florida, not the UK and after realizing that the man in the trench coat is not my boyfriend paying me a surprise visit, I think about whoever came to my mind in the quick and visual misunderstanding. Sometimes I will even go so far to imagine that the British person who brought the quick image up, really is that person I am remembering. I do this for a thought exercise.
    
When you see someone you know in way that you don’t know them at all, whether it be the clothes, the swagger or just the place, it’s easier to remember what it is you do know about them. Something about this game though, besides being sort of unfair to the poor person that’s modeling for me, is that my person ends up feeling like a ghost. It’s like I’m  looking in on their world and they can’t look back, not only because they are not who I am imagining they are, but because I’m making them into this doll. The strings are sort of arbitrary. Part of the way they seem has just to do with the style of the actual individual that happens to be walking in my path.

Maybe it’s the light that made their hair that reddish brown. I mean I could remember that reddish brown anywhere though. It is the exact same as my godmother’s. What I wonder in retrospect is if the stranger really had a sneeze the same pitch as my Nancy (my godmother) or if it was just my desperate desire to make sense out of the people in my life that made me believe it was that because if enough hadn’t come to mind to make this navy-blue-sweatered-stranger seem like Nancy I probably wouldn’t have thought about her for the next ten minutes.

It is not though that I desire to reminisce for the plain old sake of reminiscing. It’s not that I’m desperately home sick. I’m just curious about what comes to mind while I dwell on the people that are touchstones in my life. I like my distance. And I think this thinking process for whatever its worth is not crazy. I think it’s a healthy way of finding inside myself what I will eventually be coming home to.

It's been thirty five years since the punk rock movement; forty five since "Swinging London". So why did I have the idea in my head that this city was going to be a hotbed of youth culture, bursting at the seams with underground fashion, music, and art?

Not that London's a dull city by any means. There's no lack of sights to be seen or fun to be had. It's just that compared to New York, it seems like a relatively conservative town. There are more pressed khakis than skin-tight skinny jeans, more prestigious museums than downtown galleries, more old-school pubs and mega-clubs than live bands at dive bars.

There are pockets of trendiness. East London's Shoreditch and Brick Lane attract throngs of belligerent hipster kids, dancing to dubstep and drinking red stripe (London's PBR, apparently.) Camden Town is like a never ending St. Marks, all street vendors and posturing punks holding up posters for their respective head shops/ record stores/ tattoo parlors.

It's just that I had such high expectations. The word London to me, in and of itself, evokes The Sex Pistols, Alexander Mcqueen, Damien Hurst. Something exotic and distant and cooler than I will ever be. But the reality is that everywhere you go is going to be different from the idea you had of it in your mind- whether that idea has negative connotations or positive ones. 

With the weather starting to settle into autumn and the air starting to acquire its yearly wintry crispness, I decided it should become a top priority to visit Queen Mary’s Gardens in Regents Park before all the flowers had disappeared and all that was left was bare thorns. I had heard much about the English roses and had yet to witness their beauty for myself except when vicariously living through friends’ pictures, which is no appropriate substitute when the gardens are such a short walk away. After completing a paper due the next day, a quick lunch with my roommate, and clearing my schedule for a free afternoon ahead of me, I set out on my own for Regents Park. The skies loomed grey up above with the occasional break in the clouds, but I was confident that the rain would hold off long enough for me to get my fill.
 
I have walked through the park before, but this was the first time I wasn’t rushing off to a different destination or preoccupied with conversing with a companion. Thus I strolled along the dirt paths, stopping occasionally to snap a picture or two or twenty. I didn’t stop to consult the map about how much further I had to walk until I reach the gardens. It seemed a much better idea just to wander, to get lost in the park if need be, only to find my way when I least expected it.
 
After about ten minutes of wandering through the park, I found the gate to the garden. I had expected it to be a small patch of grass and a couple of small rose bushes, but I was mistaken. It was an enormous area filled with grassy fields, wooden benches to sit on, rose bushes of every color and breed, little dirt paths leading through thickets, and natural treasures waiting to be discovered. I had only intended to spend an hour in the garden, but I soon got carried away and two hours had passed before I knew it. I took every winding road I came upon and was always shocked to find there were more flowers just around the corner.
 
While I was in the gardens, it didn’t feel like I was in the city of London anymore. It faintly resembled Central Park minus the towering skyline and with added natural beauty. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it felt like I was in some sort of secret garden where I was disconnected from reality. Everything felt serene and there were no people around at that time of afternoon to disrupt my tranquility. There were a few intermittent rain showers, but nothing that didn’t pass over in a couple of minutes or that I couldn’t hide from underneath the cover of soaring trees. In fact, it felt more refreshing than annoying. After the showers, there was always an extended period of bright sunshine that warmed the air and illuminated the gardens and amplified its beauty.
 
At the end of the day, I didn’t want to leave the park. Everything inside seemed too perfect and I was worried that the next time I come for a visit, all there will be to see is dark barrenness. It was almost poetically ironic that as I left, the sky started to grow an ominous shade of gray and the winds started to pick up, two signs that the torrential rains I had heard everyone talking about all day were now imminent. I had to bundle up my jacket and tie my scarf more tightly around my neck as the cold settled in and I walked back to campus.

Here are a couple of pictures I took:

I couldn’t think of anything to write because my brain is a puddle of soggy biscuits drenched in the bottle of wine that accompanies me right now. Today is the aftermath of The Great Fall of the Emerald Empire. I’m Emerald, but you don’t really care. What I’m talking about is the 3000+ word paper that absorbed all my brain power like the brand new model of an apple product does its battery after a month. Malfunction. I malfunctioned. But I don’t do that. I talk ever so much self-assured shit about my academic prowess. Not in a douchey way. I swear not in a douchey way. But when it comes up, my ability to churn out a decent paper in a short amount of time might be mentioned. I don’t stress about school because I can’t handle stress. So I avoid it. Duh. That makes sense. 

I mistriangulated. I always finish my papers two days before they are due. Count them. 48 hours--  How many minutes is that? I don’t know math, I’m in Gallatin-- before they are due. I hate feeling rushed. 

But abroad you don’t function on your normal schedule. I mean for fucks sake, I don’t even know what’s going on in Gossip Girl! I’m all out of whack. I’m a wino, now. But everyone says that’s OK because writers are drunks, “you’re a mess, Emmy. it’s good though.” That’s what they say, my awesome friends! So when I said, no I’m just staying in tonight. When I said, no I have work to do. They told me they’d be over in half an hour and K. came out into the hall because she heard voices and we should come over to next door to play drinking games and let’s go to Tesco to get mixers for that Smirnoff of yours because N. never gets drunk because he is 17 feet tall and takes five hours to drink one beer and is too cheap to by a second. Let’s have fun, we’re in London. “Are we  going to talk to each other after this?” “Of course we are, we didn’t know each other before, we know each other now, well, we have to”. And then we pondered for half a second about whether any of us meant that and who we were before we came and who we would be when we return and are we the same person now or just in some weird transitory limbo. Because when N. is sober he always says “Emmy didn’t you come to London to find yourself?” and I say, “Yes. EMMY!! EMMY!! Where are you?!” But when N. is drunk he says ever so candidly, “Emmy I love you. I want to know who you were before here. Were you a whore?” 

Then I wrote my paper, with a stunning bibliography, and it mostly sucked. 

This was the last photo I took. It was of two performance artists that stood on the bar at La Fabrika and made funny jokes in Czech that my friends and I couldn't understand. But we laughed anyway. The night was wonderful, the beer was cheap and plentiful, the company was--of course--amazing. And we called it an early night, if I remember, by awkwardly walking through a mesmerized crowd while the pair were still cracking jokes on stage.
---------------------
I was walking with my friend to dinner when a group of Hare Krishnas marched passed, loudly singing and bringing oodles of merriment with us on our walk. The non-tourist in me was thinking "okay, they're just Hare Krishnas... no need for a photo op." But the tourist in me demanded that I document the revelers. I whipped out my camera and began snapping pictures before I realized that the focus was... well... out of focus. And the pictures were being saved on my memory card as these blurry messes. My heart instantly sank; the weekend before an exciting trip to Slovakia and my camera bit the dust, never to be revived (and indeed, two days later the lens went completely black). That heart wrenching episode was at least a month ago. Since, I have visited Slovakia and gone on two overnight trips in the Czech Republic. I have no photo evidence of any of these exciting things, which I suppose isn't such a bad thing. My lack of a camera has been liberating in a way; while I can no longer effectively blog about the food I eat (a hobby of mine), I take in the sights with a conscious effort, knowing that the views I get will be the last. It helps me savor what I see, I think.

Regardless, I thought it important to have some sort of camera at least in time for fall break (which is in two days for us Praguers). So my mom offered to lend me hers for the remainder of the semester, and mailed it to me (along with some udon noodles, vegan cookies, and vegan marshmallows... the care package of the Gods). One note about the Prague mail system: it charges a tariff on packages over $30 in value (except when it's a gift... which I don't think my mom knew about). To side step this, when she mailed my package she declared the camera as being $5. Big mistake.

She mailed it two and a half weeks ago. It was due to get here in 7-10 days.

I'm pretty sure that it's lost to the world, and any hopes of cataloguing my fall break trip (as seen through my eyes) is ruined. While using disposable cameras will undoubtedly be a ton of fun, I have to say that I'm really bummed that a) her camera is lost forever and b) so is my care package (the first, and probably only, care package of my time in Prague). But I guess traveling is a lot about learning to live without. And it's been about a month without a camera, and I'm still alive, aren't I??

It is rather hard to believe that I’ve been in Florence for over a month and a half already. Two months from yesterday I will be back in the states, jetlaggedly celebrating my 21st birthday (the perks of which I cheated by pre-gaming in Europe for the 4 months leading up to the occasion), and after that who KNOWS when/if I’ll ever see Florence again? Living here, I almost take it for granted, but I know that once I’m home I’m going to miss it like crazy and feel very lucky that I got the chance to spend so much time here.
 
I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help but take out my frustrations on Florence. At times, this city is not big enough, too touristy, or lacking in too many of the comforts of home (fast food, cheddar cheese, microwaves, taxis you can hail), depending on my mood. Sometimes I feel guilty about this, but I realize that this happens everywhere. I’m always going to take out some of my frustrations in life on my environment. When I’m here, I miss NYC like crazy; when I’m in New York, I miss home. I (and I’m willing to say that everyone does this) idealize, and even romanticize sometimes, the places where I’m not.
 
Because I’m IN Florence and not far away thinking about the time I’ve spent here, I let myself point out its flaws. De Botton said that disappointments are natural in travelling. The man he discusses who traveled to Egypt after romanticizing it and lusting after its culture for years encountered the same disappointments. He says that properly understanding Egypt meant realizing that it was not everything it had seemed from home.
 
Florence is always touted as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And it is. The architecture is beautiful, the art unparalleled. But Florence, like every other city, is just that: a city. People live in it. Therefore it has what every other city has: graffiti, crazy people and homeless people, broken beer bottles on the sidewalk, and trash. Before I came here I only saw Florence as a postcard, but it would be stupid and naïve to say that I didn’t expect to find garbage and graffiti. Of course I did, and the fact that I know Florence on THAT level doesn’t even lessen its beauty in my opinion. In fact, I’d even venture to say that it enhances it. Tourists skim over the top of Florence, seeing everything their travel guides label as must-sees. I know the dirty areas and run-down places that tourists don’t come here to see. I know the guy that sells handbags and leather belts up the street. I know the “real” Florence, if there IS such a thing. And having a real relationship with the city means being able to be frustrated with it, know its flaws, and see its beauty all at the same time.

(Photo my own)

 

Chile. Chile. Chile. I have to admit it wasn´t the first place I wanted to travel to for ¨Spring Break¨, yes, its spring break down here instead of fall break because the seasons are switched. I am not sure why Chile wasn´t a first choice, but it wasn´t on the same priority level as Brazil or Peru. Chile is the longest country in the world, a fact not forgotten on our 24 hour bus-ride to San Pedro de Atacama located on the Tropic of Cancer in the tippy top in the north eastern part of the country. The scenery is Nature on Crack. Andes to the left, volcanoes flanking the desert valley on both sides, salt fields creating lagoons, flamingos, llamas, thermal baths, and many other natural phenomenons. On one tour we saw Valle de La Luna which is characterized by mountainous sand dunes that make you feel as if you were trekking through the Sahara Desert. (pictured above, courtesy of Anais Katz) That night we watched the sunset over the mountains. 

 

I couldn´t help being reminded of this parody I saw on Youtube ridiculing English/Australians who go on a ¨Gap Year¨. Gap Year is basically a year of travel for the off university student. The cultural imperialist attitude and pretenscious musings that defines these students is what the video pokes fun at. However his line about being insignifigant amist nature played over and over in my head.

 

 Since living in Buenos Aires and spending my whole summer in New York, I forgot what such open spaces can feel like. I spent literally days gazing at the horizon in a stupor. It was the absence of thought that was so stunning to me. To be able to stare and have your mind completely blank is something that I don´t get to experience that often. In fact, it is this kind of eternal peace that I look for in Yoga or in dance. Traveling through Nature brought me into the recesses of my mind and allowed for silence. 

 

Chile. The experience will remain present with me for a while. Maybe my mood was inspired by being there at the same time they pulled the miners out of their three month incarceration in the mine. The whole world with their eyes turned on Chile, and I was right there, traveling up the coast, past villages with the red while and blue flag held high over tin panneled roofs, stopping only at road side services stations which sold hotdogs and pollo. 

Walking alone through Innsbruck at 5:00 in the morning wouldn't have been my first choice - except that it was.  The train ride from Innsbruck to Vienna takes four and a half hours, so I figured: The earlier the better!  Walking alone through a strange city at practically the middle of the night?  A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.  I mean, I decided to spend my whole fall break in Austria; the least I can do is make it to Vienna. 
 
A word about the trains in these German-speaking countries: the subway and local transportation run like clockwork, but the long-distance trains can be counted on to reach their destinations at least 20 minutes late.  It's really a five hour trip to Vienna, but they sell more tickets by lying and promising to get there at 10:30.
 
Four hours of sleep, then five hours on a train: these are the hardships I went through for one day trip, but it's a testament to the city that Vienna was completely worth it.
 
As soon as I finally got off of that train, I forgot all about my ridiculous morning.  I bought a cappucino and a subway pass and just wandered through the streets.  I'm telling you, I don't think a city could ever be more beautiful than Vienna.  It reminded me of Washington, DC, because every building looks historical and important, except that the Viennese buildings don't just look like monuments and museums: every block looks like a palace.  It's impossible to photograph, although the photo above of the State Opera House is just a typical street corner.  The art museums are beautiful inside and out, then there's the Imperial Court Theater, the Spanish Riding School, and holy crap, the National Library.  The Nationalbibliothek is housed in the Hofburg Palace, which used to be the home of the Habsburg dynasty, so it makes sense that the building is impressive.  Actually, impressive is an understatement.  It was unsettling to stand next to this monstrous feat of architecture.  The Hofburg Palace was so beautiful that it was difficult to look at, like something out of Greek mythology.  The whole of downtown Vienna is like that.
 
The problem was, every street looked a) so pretty that I wanted to take pictures and b) so important that I felt guilty for not knowing what every building was.  Eventually I made my way to the more touristy shopping district and visited a couple churches.  At least I knew what the purpose of a cathedral was.  The first cathedral (there are at least two) had a free organ concert starting at 3:00, so I stayed and listened to the organ playing for about 20 minutes; it was good to just sit and absorb, take a break from the the city for a while, although obviously the inside of any European cathedral is not the place to escape from ornate decorations.  After this church I went to St. Stephan's Cathedral, and although this gothic architecture was still breathtaking - I kept staring at the towering columns inside the church - it was full of tourists and cameras, so I don't think I fully appreciated it.
 
By the time I made it to the Belvedere Palace, I was becoming immune to fancy architecture, and my high expectations beforehand meant that my impression of Belvedere was a little disappointing.  I appreciated that it was gorgeous, but I think once you visit too many palaces (including a couple castles in Germany), you can't really take it in like you should.  Belvedere has a permanent art collection, however, including Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, which was very cool to see.  I'm glad I went to Belvedere, to see the palace, to see the paintings, and especially to see the residential neighborhoods surrounding (more like the cities I'm used to, although definitely still more beautiful than any neighborhoods in New York or Berlin). 
 
I was abruptly broken out of my spell of enchantment when I got lost trying to leave Belvedere.  Apparently there are three train stations in the area, and they are all named "south-something."  I took a bus to Südbahnhof, only to realize that the subway doesn't go there and I needed Südtirolerplatz, so I needed to find another bus to get to the subway - fast, or I wouldn't make my train back to Innsbruck.  Long story short, I made it back in one of those hurry-and-wait frenzies without saying a proper good-bye to Vienna.  I really loved it and I'm so glad that I went; six hours in Vienna were definitely worth ten on the train.  I feel bad that while I left I was cursing the bus system instead of taking one last look at the gorgeous city... I guess that just means I'll have to go back someday.

The two conversations dominating the NYU scene around here:
"So what are you doing/ where are you going/ how much did you spend on/ etc...FALL BREAK" And these questions are met with the appropriate lists of European destinations, transportation companies researched, travel buddies, and expressions of excitement.

or

"Soo tired/ soo much work/ test-paper-test-paper/ due tomorrow/ thesis/ etc...MIDTERMS"

These comments are met with sympathetic support, expressions of equal stress and fatigue, and concern about grades. Sometimes, a conversation even develops on the difficulties of researching 1) without Bobst and 2) without being able to read and speak Czech. The conversations usually lead into each other and are conducted loudly and emphatically. And I couldn't be more amused.

Of course midterms are stressful. I'm not remarking on that fact but rather on the way we seek comfort in mutually whining about it. No matter what people say about study abroad classes, these exams really are work and studying is all the harder when there is a whole country to explore. The funny thing is that midterm-season seems to prompt the same response from (American?) students no matter where they are. Deep breaths, everybody. We'll survive; we always do. Although I have to say that I'm not looking forward to trying to study/write for finals while trying to come to terms with having to go home. I have a policy of not worrying about the future, so that's really not a worry...but it's a thought.

Upon hearing a snatch of the second conversation, one of my most well-travelled professors asked the students if they had ever seen the film "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium." I haven't--though I'll look it up once I'm back in the Avery-Fischer center--but he explained that the film follows the adventures of a city-hopping group of friends on a Eurotrip. He then cautioned the students who were discussing their plans to hit 12 cities in 10 days that they should try to take time to actually be in these places. A very frequent phrase overheard in the computer lab these days is "X is a beautiful city! We were only there for about 6 hours, but I wish we'd had more time. It's a really cool place!"

Now I know I sound arrogant and cynical. For the record, if a person is content to collect snatches of experience to justify identifying as well-traveled, that's his or her business and it's fine by me. (Check out the play 'Dinner' by Moira Buffini, keeping this all in mind.) I certainly don't have room to talk; my 'plans' are far from planned and it's true that I probably won't see Sweden this trip. That's really ok by me. The picture above is from a silver mine in Kutna Hora...2 hours outside of Prague. There's so much I haven't seen or done here. I just want a fall BREAK: time to go to a place and take it in. Why spend obscene amounts of money marathoning a continent? I just don't understand. Here's wishing everyone the best of luck on their midterms. I know you're stressed and tired. Me too. Have some tea, get some sleep and look forward to your break.

Here's also wishing everyone safe travels over the break. Be careful. Be open. And remember to stop every once in a while to breathe the air and the history of the place you're in. I hope you find everything you hoped for and more.

After spending a couple months in Europe, my daily observations along with some knowledge of current events have led me to see a major difference in the work ethic and labor habits of Europeans as compared to those that exist at home in the states.

Since the beginning of the semester and my arrival in Italy the French government and its president, Nicolas Sarkozy, have been attempting to pass a bill that will raise the legal minimum retirement age by two years in France. The Government says the change is necessary to help reform the welfare state it one of many European countries with a poor old age dependency ratio (ratio of retirees who depend on welfare to the number of people in the workforce providing this welfare).

The French populous’ response to the change has been negative. Workers of all types have been striking and are expected to continue doing so until either the government retreats or the bill is passed.

The change is part of necessary reform to the welfare state in France. The current system cannot be sustained considering the current and future demographic strains of the country. A two-year change seems to be only a small step but has prompted a big reaction.

The French, however, are only joining in on what seems to be a big fad in Europe. Last month, the Spanish government made moves to pass legislation regarding labor and tax reform in an attempt to reduce its huge debt and budget deficit resulting in a huelga general, or general strike. Across the board, union workers protested the reform. On September 29th the country was commercially shut down.

In the U.S. there is no minimum legal retirement age. Workers begin to collect their social security savings at 65 but the age of retirement remains a personal decision made by an employee and an employer. Also in the U.S., an across the board general strike is unheard of. Never would workers from all industries agree to be docked a full days pay.

On a smaller scale, I see differences day to day. Three out of four class days, my first class begins at noon. This means that I leave my apartment around eleven or shortly before to begin my trek to school. What shocks me is that I am far from the only one starting my day at this lazy hour. Any given day, there is no shortage of suited business people heading to work toting briefcases.

This work ethic is also exemplified by retail shops, many of which are only opening or have opened within the past hour as I head to school.  Each morning the man at the leather store near the bus stop is only putting out his displays as I wait. In the afternoon, many shops close for an hour or two so the employees can simultaneously take a lunch break. A friend and I once waited two and half hours outside a Vodafone shop bearing no sign to advertise its hours waiting for the ladies who work there to return from lunch.

To me, this is sharply contrasted by my job at a bagel shop. Employees had to arrive at ungodly hours to begin preparation for the day, breaks were always scattered so as to avoid being short handed at any time and over the course of my 3 years there, I saw a gradual three hour lengthening of the store’s daily hours.

Differences in labor practices illustrate lifestyle differences between the U.S. and Europe. The attitude and work ethic here seems much more relaxed. Personal life takes precedent. Several European countries limit the work week to 35 hours specifically to allow workers more personal time to relax. Economic indicators like GDP and budget deficits might not encourage European style work ethic but people must manage to make it work because life here does go on. If the Europeans are happy, maybe they have it figured out while we, high-strung, work-centered Americans climbing out of bed before sunrise each morning, are left in the dark.

-Image of a gas station in France. Fuel supply runs low at gas stations and airports around the country. France's 12 oil refineries are shut down because of striking employees.
           
Source:
“Plenty in the Tank.” The Economist 18 Oct. 2010.