Landed

I am back in Boston…. and have been since the 15th. It’s time for fall Residence Life training, so I’ve been a bit MIA. However, there have been updates:

The photos are now organized into albums and collections according to countries, subject matter, cities/regions and attractions.

Also, since being in the US I’ve met folk from all over due to the fact that I travelled this summer. Factoid: Luxembourgish is an entirely separate language. Another interesting realization was that American ex-pats have just as much exotic appeal as true foreigners, even when they return to the US, even when we only speak Amerian English. Hmmm….

La Tribune de Geneve

Here’s the link to the article in La Tribune de Geneve. A friend is doing a translation into English for me, and I’ll put that up when it’s done.

The article is really well done, although he misquoted me on the last sentence by leaving out my negative. I actually don’t see myself staying in the US in the future… if only just for a while.  

The web page also doesn’t list the name of the reporter. For the record, his name is Henri Della Casa.

Enjoy!

Photos… finally!

Click on the link to my Flickr album in the sidebar. Right now they’re not organized into albums, annoted, rotated, edited, etc., but they will be shortly. (Famous last words, eh?)

Back in the states in 3… 2… 1…

Almost there

Today’s Lineup:

• Wrestling Match of Suitcase vs. Girl 
• Clean apartment
• Last goodbyes
• Cab ride to aiport
• No knife in bag? Passport present?
• Takeoff, no I would not like a peanut, sleep, landing, etc.
• Short subway ride
• Home Sweet Home

So close I can taste it….

Foiled

It’s been a total nightmare lately. Here’s the latest… and maybe you experienced travellers have ideas on how to get through this mess?
 
Somewhere between England and Hamburg I got robbed (again), and my passport, wallet, bank cards, drivers license, etc. are all gone. The police in Hamburg were very helpful and managed to get me back on my feet. I spent most of the night with them trying to track down the bus I was on, finding the specific driver, making reports, and figuring out how to get my passport back. After a series of harry border crossings sans identity, I made it to the (nearest) embassy in Amsterdam and am currently staying with my voice teacher in Gouda. I tried to get back to Munich in order to go to the consulate there, but the railway wasn’t accommodating to the alternative forms of identity documentation that I have in the meantime (e.g. airline boarding passes, Eurail pass, police report).
 
My fingers are crossed that an emergency passport will come through tomorrow afternoon, as the consulate has promised. That being said, they can’t guarantee that it’ll come through tomorrow, and the most likely train possibility puts me to arrive in Munich on Thursday morning. The consulate knows that I have to fly back to America on Friday. They’ve assured me a passport will come through in enough time to get me to my flight, but they haven’t been open to hearing about the train timetables. I’m not sure they’re even referring to a specific timetable at all. Other than that, I’ve got nothing definite… except a recent history of awkward border/security checkpoints. Remember that ”concealled” butter knife?
 
Other details… the keys to the apartment got stolen as well. When I get back to Munich, I’m not going to have a way to get into my apartment to pack, shower, and collapse because I don’t have my keys. My phone charger also got stolen, hence my phone has been dead for a while now. No way into the apt. No access to cash for a pay phone. No access to wire transfers because I don’t have a photo ID. Four euros to my name for food for the next two days. And, even if I do make it back to Munich without a photo ID, I have no landlord phone number, because, yes, it is also locked in my apartment and in my dead phone. 

I may be a real person tomorrow again at 14:30. Maybe.

Postsecret auf Deutsch

Saisfying the emo needs of lonely souls everywhere with creative slips of paper in German, in French, and in Spanish. I’m ecstatic. 

Read it and weep. 

No, not literally!

York

Activities of the past week have included…

• Visiting the old York fortress tower 
• Walking the city wall
• Visiting the site of York’s first bomb threat
• Tromping through medieval burial grounds
• Reading plaques on Elizabethan wood frame houses that incorporate labyrinthian floor plans in under 1500 square feet
• Talking with archeologists about the wealth of unexumed bodies lurking beneath the surface of, well, everywhere in York
• Exploring Viking and Roman history
• Experiencing pain over the impact Poundage Sterling is having on my bank account
• Visting The Shambles- Elizabethan neighborhood that serves as the site of many a period movie
• Going to the York art gallery/museum
• Investigating The Minster
• Asking everyone around me to repeat their question because I enjoy the sound of my native language so very much 
• Practicing
• Making lots and lots and lots of travel arrangements
• Chewing out airlines over the phone
• Comparing English and American language (e.g. ACclimate vs. acCLImatize)
• Reunion with one of my best friends
• Good food, good beer, good stories, good times

I don’t really mind the extra days in York. In total, I will be here 10 days. The longest I’ve been anywhere in Europe except for Muenchen. Of course, this happens in a country where I can’t work on my language skills. Leider. 

Street Cred

I went to a typical English pub this evening with friends. Good, hearty food and beer a plenty. When I looked at the menu, my heart jumped in my chest like little lambs in springtime because they served not one but TWO of my favorite beers-Chimay Bleu and Delirium Tremens. I went up and ordered the Delirium. The jolly (very) English barmaid looked at me, blinked a few times, and said a bit puzzled, “In all my time working here I have not had one girl order that beer!!!!” She then proceeded to tell everyone in my group this choice piece of information as well as most people in the bar. Then she repeated the ritual when she brought the food to our table. No lies, no exaggeration. You can ask Emily, my friend in York. You can ask a York City Tory Councilman. My English street cred just shot off the charts. 

Needless to say, I enjoyed that plate of beer and chips very, very much.

Five Minutes of Fame

Courtesy of a lovely bloke named Henri Della Casa that I met randomly in Geneva, my mug has appeared on page 16 of La Tribune de Geneve under the section Histoire d’Ete. The article is titled “Les Touristes de L’Auberge: Voyage en Europe, au gre des vocalises”. 

How awesome is this????

Scattered Reflections on Travel

My unspoken rule for the summer was that I wanted to go to the places that singing and/or study would most likely not take me in the future. Hence, I followed through on going to Brussels, even though many people told me that Bruges had much better things to do. I purposefully did the same thing in the Netherlands, embarking on short larks into Amsterdam for museums and returning to Utrecht to get to know the glint off the local salt. I’ve gone to Geneva and York for much the same reason.

I’ve come to know this summer that my interests in other cultures and countries (indeed, they are two separate entities) are very different from my previous perception of how one goes off to “see the world”. I love packing in as many museums as I can, eating local food, seeing monuments, and taking in the scenery. It’s awesome. No question about it. If that’s all I did, I’d still be totally psyched about my summer experience. Nevertheless, my desires for the summer–both conscious and unconscious-have evoked multi-dimensional perceptions of culture, and if I hadn’t taken my time to get under the touristy skin of these places I don’t know that I would have been satisfied with my travels. A few, err… many examples: I came to know that Dutch views on food imports may have may have more to do with religion than economics. I caught a small glimpse of the way African communities in Brussels, mostly Senegalese, navigate poverty, economic disparity, exile, tradition, optimism, and activism within a bustling city-scape; and around the dinner table I learned how gay men in Germany feel the terms Activ/Passiv define, confine and refine them. Even with American friends, I’ve found a deeper understanding of the culture and my friends as a result of the traits they complement (or don’t) in each other. In York I found that archeologists, chemists and composers can share a common bond in Vikings and that the people here still experience the effects of Medieval diseases because of the plethora of burial grounds that are still being exhumed. In Geneva I found a group of people from Kosovo that tried to wait hand and foot on me purely because of America’s relationship to their country. These are things that I wouldn’t have experienced if I only made my rounds of “things to do”. In fact, most of these things were learned just going for a walk or sitting on a couch shooting the shit.

I once read a bit piece once about a person who said, “I’m attracted to every person I see.” However laughable that statement, the writer made an interesting point. (If I remembered where I read it, I’d link to it, but I don’t remember.) The problem isn’t in the word “every” its in the word “see”. What happens when we only see what’s attractive? Or when we only see what the world has designated for us to see? What goes on outside of tourist attractions that we don’t see? There’s no comprehensive answer to those questions, but it’s impossible to catch glimpses of a larger picture when our gaze limits itself to only that which rests on the laurels of “attraction”. 

At the beginning of this summer, I didn’t have words for what I wanted to accomplish. I knew there was a wide world of splendor to see, but I knew also that a world pulses beneath palaces, fountains, men on horses, mountain tops and gilded picture frames that looks astonishingly different. It was waiting to be seen as well as the mountaintops that jut between the worlds. That’s what I wanted to find. In truth, I probably only peered through the doors between the touristy world and the worlds of each culture, but it’s enough. Any more would have been intruding on something that wasn’t mine, and I owe my intense gratitude to the people who welcomed me into their homes, their lives, and their communities. My life will be forever richer for it.