Hamburg, Germany: a guest appearance by Sista Kate & Cat, a nude bar slipnslide and a muck beach...among other things

July 25 - August 13

3 weeks in one place. Feels like forever! Hamburg was a great chance to catch my breath, relax a bit and spend some time with my sister, Katie, and her friend Cat. There were many adventures which are too many to include here but I shall try to share some of the highlights

I'm sure Katie's Germany book will do the details better justice (: hint, hint!

So we had a house almost all to ourselves in northern Germany for 3 weeks total, thanks to a house exchange arranged by my parents (see credits). Luckily the airport was not far from the Wendy's house because I took several trips there. A miscommunication brought Andy Wendy, the German family's son, and I to the airport the day before my sister and Cat were to arrive (he thought they were coming that day, and I thought we were going in the car to the harbor)

On the correct day we found Cat but discovered that Kate was delayed 5 hours...as if the trip wasn't long enough! Well it could've been worse because her airline, Lufthansa, was on strike. I suppose she was lucky to get off the ground at all. Cat and I were superb chauffeurs later that day except for the fact that neither one of us made a note of where we parked the car. I felt like we were in an episode of Seinfeld, welcome to Hamburg, Katie!

Our first evening was a relaxed one with the most exciting excursion being to the neighborhood park, only to discover that the Germans have MUCH better toys than Americans. The usual players were there - swingset, slide, merry-go-round. But would you believe they also had a zip line??? Amazing. Ask me how much fun we had in this park after dark with bottles of wine. The answer has something to do with Lots.

Over the next few days we toured the city on foot, by bus and by bike. Our bike tour included detours, some more scenic than others. Not usually a wise idea to poke around under the bridges over the Alster, we discovered as we happened upon men literally pissing the afternoon away in the river. Hamburg has charm!

There were 2 forays into the Reeperbahn, which is Germany's red light district. The first was cut short because we discovered that we'd turn into pumpkins stranded in the city if we didn't catch the last metro at a disappointingly PG13 Rated hour of 12:30. Bollocks. Fortunately this was not before seeing a stag party of Brits, one of whom decided it would be a great idea to strip down and slide down the bar naked. Looked more painful than sexy. During this evening we also noted the comeback of the fannypack as a rather saucy accessory. "Why are all those girls standing around wearing fanny packs"......Ooooh. Prostitots!

The 2nd foray into the Reep will warrant limited details, but had something to do with a vampire, a pirate's wench and transexuals. Boring.

Moving on. How great is the invention of GPS? Those that know about my sense of direction (actually would you believe I think it's getting better??) understand what a magical thing I think this is. Slightly more tricky when it's in German though. We took a day trip to a town called Schwerin to see a castle and had some interesting times trying to figure out how to work the damn navigation system. [PS Katie - After dropping you and Cat off at the airport I got lost on the way home (obviously) and figured out that the GPS can be put into French! After that, it was a breeze...if only we had known that the whole time!!)] The castle was amazing although I think I would prefer it they hadn't put so much work into restoring it. Okay, yes please make sure the walls won't fall in on me while I'm poking around, but why does it have to be made to look Brand New?

The Wendy's neighbor, Sabine, told us about a beach in a town called Tonning, where the tide goes out in the middle of the day and you can walk out where the water was. We took the train(s!) at 7am and brought a picnic to spend a day checking out what in reality was Much more interesting than a typical beach. It was a Muck Beach.

We sat and had our picnic in front of the beach, behind which was a wind farm with maybe a dozen wind mills. (These are very much a part of the German landscape in general. Last year the energy produced from the windmills provided 7% of the energy consumed by the country).

Afterwards I went in. The muck was mid calf level and definitely an interesting thing to walk in. But truly, the scenery was beautiful. The showers next to the beach along with a dock and slide indicated that it was normal to get in the muck...so. We did. We had brought bathing suits because it was a "beach", so why not? Katie decided to document the hillarity and Cat and I went all out. Head to toe. Rolling in the muck literally. Threw muck on the slide and slid into the muck. Had a muck throwing fight. Haven't had this much fun since I was 5.

A lot's missing, but anyway we had a great time with hillarious blunders. I'll leave it at that!

CREDITS in Order of Appearance

MelissahFoss
Andy Wendy

Katie Boss
Cat the Environmental Texan

Pissing German man
Sabine
Bonquishia
Stuart
George Gidget
Ralph aka Raph aka Rauph?
Confused German woman in Schwerin



Special THANKS To





Lufthansa
The Wendy's
PopSecret
BahnBikes
fanny packs
The Alster
Chef Mel
Schwerin & 007
a multi-lingual waiter at the Lokhaus
Tonning and its Muck Beach
the Reeperbahn
THE O'Neills

NO Thanks To

The Erotic Art Museum
German drivers on the Audobon
Schizophrenic German weather

Berlin...the first guest, the magic of Kreuzberg, sandy shoes and missed mass food fights :(

July 25 - 28

Luck be a lady. A lady named Siona Früh. A couple days before I left Prague I met a German girl who was staying in the same room in the hostel as me. We got to talking and it turned out that she had just signed up for Couchsurfing a week before. She hadn't yet hosted anybody and lived in Berlin. She mentioned that if I ever visited the city that I could stay with her, and I mentioned that I was actually headed there the next weekend! Perfect match, so we agreed to get in touch and that I would meet her in her neighborhood, Kreuzberg, in eastern Berlin.

What a cool girl, just 20 years old and she's already travelled all around Europe and just spent 6 months living and teaching in Ecuador. When she arrived there, she didn't speak a word of Spanish. This girl's got nutsfah.

We toured her neighborhood, one of the Best in Berlin, she informed me. Lots of charm with local shops, street art everywhere, bio stores and Turkish food thanks to the large population of Turkish immigrants in Germany, and in particular Berlin, but especially in Kreuzberg. We spent a sunny afternoon having a picnic in this huge park with two of her friends, Anna and Kitti and tons of other people all around. Talking, playing and music everywhere.

That night we all went out to this club that was basically a huge house. Each room, including the kitchen (with appliances and all) was a different part of the party. The entire yard was a giant sandbox...just try to keep that out of your shoes, your clothes after some drinks. Life gets gritty.

Normal touring of the city, a flee market, and people watching. Siona mentioned that Kreuzberg is also superior because of its population of "alternative peoples". Yes Berlin style is very unique. Some people look like works of art, truly. But it's open and it's creative which is beautiful no matter whether or not you like it personally. People in Kreuzberg sometimes enjoy pastimes which may include performing interesting coups against corporate sponsored neighborhood decoration. A massive new glitz n glamour concert venue just got plunked down in the middle of the neighborhood despite massive public outcry and Siona pointed out the guard that is stationed around the clock to protect a huge advertisement television screen. The apparently very real fear is that it will be color bombed with balloons of paint. The distance would make this difficult but I think maybe some kind of slingshot would get the balloons to their target.

The last day we slept in and accidentally missed the best day of celebration in Kreuzberg. Somebody has organized it once a year to have a massive food fight to determine the superiority between Kreuzberg and its neighboring hood. Well...we walked through the war zone after the fact and saw the unbelievable wreckage as well as some of the victims. What a great mess! This was a sad sad day to have missed all the action.. Sleep is for the birds.

Prague - a Bohemian wonderland (hostel charm, Brasilian friends and disappearing castles...but mostly architecture to made you a hazardous pedestrian)

July 23 - 25

Praha. After hearing so many people raving about this Eastern European city, I assumed it would be easy to be disappointed. But no, actually it truly is every bit as beautiful as everyone says!!

I stayed in a hostel again, which is always an adventure and especially when you discover by accident that the rooms are coed. ha. My new Brasilian friend, Rita, nearly had an interesting run in as I noticed and informed her that she'd been showering in the men's showers the whole time. Charms of hostelling.

Anyway, for a city that has been so entwined with historical upheavals, it's remarkable that Prague has somehow remained almost completely intact. There are examples of Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture everywhere. There is absolutely nothing plain about this city! Every building is so ornate, even the lamposts and sidewalks are decorative in some way.

I took so many pictures of buildings which I'm sure will seem pointless later, but everything was so amazing to me I couldn't help but play a shameless tourist. My head was cocked up looking at structures so much that I would forget to pay attention and maybe was a danger to myself a couple of times with traffic..

My new friend Rita was a really great part of this short visit. She's from Brasil but has been living in Ireland for 2 years. It's really amazing the connections that you can have with someone that you've just met. Just a couple days of wandering around Prague together and I felt I'd found a great friend. One of the most beautiful things I have found during this time is to find out all the fundamental things we have in common despite cultural, political, economic, or any other differences. The most important matters of life and of the heart transcend all of these.

We spend a day together in search of Prague castle, which, despite being a famously large castle, was extremely difficult to locate. Or that's what it seemed. According to the map, we were walking around right where the castle was supposed to be, but there was not a "castle" in sight. The buildings were beautiful and we were marvelling at the unique architecture everywhere...but no castle! Actually it turns out we were IN the castle. It's so huge, there's no one building that is the castle, the entire are we were in was the grounds of the castle. You can laugh all you want, but I was not the only one mystified.

Unfortunately, I suppose my visit to the Czech Republic was relatively tame comparatively, but maybe that's a good thing! I wish only that I would've had more time. There are plenty of people who don't mind having a whirlwind 2 day trip to cities, but to me I much prefer having more time to wander and get a feel. Also I just have to say that staying in a hostel just can't compare, and I struggle against the feeling that I'm not seeing anything this way compared to the experience I'd have staying with a local!!

A last adventure in Budapest: I wonder what the punishment is for fleeing from Hungarian authorities?

July 21 - 23

Unfortunately, before I could leave Budapest, just to keep things interesting, I had a run in with a Hungarian man in some kind of position of authority.

I had my pack and was taking the metro to the train station, with just enough time to make it. Having purchased the right ticket for the metro, I thought it no problem when the Hungarian controller stopped me to ask for my ticket on my way out of the metro at the train station. I gave it to him and after looking at it, he started to say something to me in Hungarian. When I asked him if he spoke english, he said yes and told me in perfect english "this is not good, miss. you were supposed to validate the ticket at the transfer. you owe me 6000 Forint".

"I'm so sorry, I didn't realize. It was an honest mistake. I've just been here a few days and am catching a train to leave the country in a half hour". I tried to be respectful but he was not swayed and replied that it was my problem and that I owed him the money anyway. "There are signs posted everywhere", he said. I was getting ready to leave Hungary so didn't exactly have an abundance of their currency on me. He so kindly mentioned that there was a cash machine up in the train station, and that he'd be happy to take me there.

Lovely. He obviously was preying on tourists, and my backpack made me an obvious target. I didn't like his attitude (obviously) and kind of felt like he might be taking advantage of his position, but what could I do? He escorted me safely up into the station and lit up a cigarette outside as I went in to this shop to use the ATM. I was fuming. I walked inside and saw only tellers and no ATMs and decided to go back out and plead with him once more. I apologised and asked this cocky bastard if there was any way he'd consider giving me a warning this time.

He took his cigarette out of his mouth long enough to say, "It's not my problem. It's yours."

So I walked back into the shop and noticed through the mental fog of rage that there was a back entrance to the shop that let out in the other side of the hallway of the train station. I didn't think about it, I just walked out. Figuring I had maybe a couple of minutes before he finished his cigarette, I started walking towards the other end of the train station with my passport and my train ticket in hand.

I showed my ticket to another controller who pointed me in the general direction of my platform. If I can just get onto the train, he won't be able to find me, I thought. So with this hope I entered back into the main area of the train station, where he had been moments before. I walked along the walls and thought to myself...I wonder what will happen if he finds me? Maybe he'll charge me a double fine. Or if he's legit, I wonder what kind of punishment they would give me here in Hungary?

Finally arriving at my train, I had 15 minutes to ponder whether or not I had told him where I was going and if he would be able to figure out which train I was on. Paranoid for these last few minutes I decided to hide out in the bathroom until the train left the station. These are times when I wish I had witnesses to see me in my finest moments. There I was huddled in the WC, paniced about my fate and whether I would ever get to see this beautiful city called Praha..

But the train left the station, and I emerged from my hideout to find my seat waiting for me with no catch. Safe at last.

Buda and Pest: Eastern Europe, the Forint and Thermal Baths

18 - 21 July

I felt like I must be headed for some really crazy place. Not a single stamp to represent visits to Spain, Portugal or Italy but 4 stamps just for the train ride from Florence to Budapest. It was an overnight train that had some serious history under it's belt and nothing but seats. I was a bit spoiled because the last overnight train I took, from Paris to Rome, had couchettes so I had a bit of a sleepover with 5 strange men in a cabin. Everyone was perfectly respectful and it was NICE to have a bed for such a long trip!

About every 45 minutes we were woken up during the night - "Passport!"...."Ticket!". Seriously. I was just trying to sleep through the night and these interruptions were endless! I was like, really where am I going?

I had met this great couple at the hostel in Florence. Danielle and Thomas were from Canada but Thomas was Hungarian so they filled in a couple pages in my journal with a mini phrase book and food recommendations. They also reminded me that Budapest is not yet on the Euro so I'd have to get familiar with Forints. Right now 160 Forints = 1 USD. I have no idea how much money I've been spending because this is a tough conversion! I kept pulling out 10000 Forints from the back thinking this was a TON of money and then it would just last the day.

Again, had to resort to a hostel because I just wasn't having any luck with finding someone to host. I arrived in Budapest and took the bus going the wrong way so it took 30 minutes to reach my hostel when it should've been just one stop. I prefer to say that I was taking the scenic route. (It's times like these when I think, maybe travelling alone is my fate. I can't imagine anyone wanting to join me when I'm so averse to planning and am pretty much perpetually lost. I hardly ever really know where I'm going, how I'll get there or what I'll do once I arrive.)

The food so far is pretty good but lots of meat and really really greasy and fatty. Hungary loves sour cream and I do too, so that's okay. So if you were me, how would you have spent the day today?

Well, you would've rented a bike because riding bikes makes you feel free, and then you would've ridden along the Danube River to The Grand Market Hall in search of Langos. (This is apparently some kind of deep fried dough that is covered with cheese and sour cream. Delicious.) The hall would've been closed because you're missions are often derailed or at least detoured.

You would continue your search but finally run out of time before your rendezvous with girls from the hostel. So you'd cave in and just get falafel. You'd present a considerable annoyance to the small shop owner who doesn't have change for the 10,000 Forint that you just got from the ATM. He would have to go next door and purchase things just to make change. He would forgive you when you find out he's french and have a conversation with him that he's probably been starved for because it seems very few people speak french in Budapest and he lives there but doesn't speak Hungarian.

Then we procede to the best part of the day: the Széchenyi Thermal Baths. This is so decadent. They must have 20 baths, indoor and outdoor, of all different temperatures. They also have a sauna that rivals the temperatures in the Native American Sweat I did last winter. Intense. My new friends, sisters from Australia Chloe and Marie, and I spent all afternoon at the baths. At the end of the day we were in basically a giant hot tub outdoors and a proper storm blew in overhead. Our lower halves were submerged in bath temperature water as our heads got pelted with really cold rain, beautiful! Really special moments. I took off when the rain let up because I needed to return the bike. Of course the rain would start back up full force once I got going so I had an adventure of a ride across town to try to get the bike back in time.

Drowned rat would be the best way to describe the way I looked. But I felt more relaxed than I have in several months so there was not much that could bother me at that point.

Tomorrow I take an overnight train to Prague. I'm so excited to see what all the fuss is about. Everyone I've ever met who's been there raves about this city!

Firenze> Parliano Inglese o Frencese?

It finally happened that I had to resort to a.....Hostel! Actually it was perfect. I found a hostel online that was a bit outside the city center of Florence and it looked so beautiful and peaceful. I got to the right bus stop all right but then was a bit confused when it appeared that the hostel was actually a small house that was empty and under construction. I thought, that's what I get for booking some random place online.

Luckily there was a man headed up this dirt road who happened to be french and he explained that it was necessary to walk up this road for about 5 minutes to reach the hostel, which was actually a renovated villa in the middle of the woods. There were water lily filled fountains, renaissance-scene painted ceilings and sculptures in the stairwells. This was a really nice place to have a few days of tranquility after a crazy weekend in Roma.

Mario had taught me how to ask, in Italian, if someone spoke english or french. To me, this is one of the best things you can learn in a foreign country. Of course it seems that most people speak at least a little bit of English wherever you go in Western Europe, but it seems rude to me to walk up to someone and start speaking english when it's not the native language there. As if you expect that they should be able to accomodate you. Anyway, I actually had a lot of luck finding Italians that spoke French so I had some really nice conversations with people and it came in very handy.

I had a really nice time in Florence and loved wandering the streets. But I found it to be really expensive. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that I was a tourist and didn't really know the best places to go for food, etc. But regardless, Florence was tough on the pockets. I had planned on also going to visit Venice, but this would've necessitated doing the short 2 days in each place stint which I really don't enjoy. I realize that a lot of people find a lot of value in seeing as much as possible while they're in Europe, but I prefer to have time to get a feel for a place.

Towards the end of my trip I met a couple girls from the UK, Eve and Natasha, who entertained me to NO end. We spent a day together wandering around and it was a really nice change from spending days alone. For a couple of hours before they caught their train, we sat on the steps of the Duomo Cathedral and people watched. After a few minutes we noticed that there was an Asian guy trying to be sneaky and sitting next to me while his friends took a photo. When we realized what they were doing, I started posing with him just to be silly. So then he gets up and another one of his friends comes over and sits next to me and she asks if I'll put my arm around her for a photo? I will now be in the photo albums of 4 different people in Asia. I have no idea why! They acted as if I was somebody famous or something, but I'm pretty sure I don't resemble anyone like that. Eve and Natasha decided they thought we were the Spice Girls.

Roma, Italy: Gelato, Negroni and Scooter pains

July 10 - 17

I'm getting worse at this, yes? Okay, just a few bits of memory from Italy.

So I was rescued from a hostel-fate at the last minute by a CS host named Mario. He lived in a house with a bunch of guys that was actually kind of reminiscent of my last apt in DC. Welcome home!

I spent Friday exploring the city on my own while Mario worked (what is that about?). It was great to visit St. Peter's Basilica. I remember so well seeing photos of this famous basilica projected up on the walls of classrooms during my first art history classes. I am not a religious person but this place was magnificent. Truly. The floors, the walls, the ceiling. Even the speakers were painted faux marble to blend in with the decor.

There was a castle, there was really really hot sun and there was plenty of gelato. We decided that my visit to Roma could be summed up by 2 words: gelato and Negroni. Negroni is a famous local drink that Mario and one of his roommates, Carlo, love. It's made with Campari, sweet vermouth and gin. It's not what I would call delicious. But I'm not going to lie, it's so strange that it kind of grows on you. No one seems to know how it got it's name, which literally means "big black men".

I look back on my entries and think that it sounds like I'm not doing much of anything and maybe blazing a trail around Europe ignorant of all the amazing history, etc. I swear there is lots of culture going on in my journey, but I never really intended for my blog to be very educational. Hope you don't mind.

Mario and I played pro tourists all weekend. We rode around the city on his scooter and we did this great tour for the Colosseum and the Palatino. Scooters are such a blast! However, let me warn you about the exhaust pipes. Most of them these days are covered because they get VERY hot. However, some people prefer to ignore the potential for injury in favor of having gleaming chrome exhaust pipes. They park their scooters very close together in Roma. Do you see where I'm going with this? Yes, I am the proud owner of a nasty burn on my leg from the quickest brush against the neighboring scooter as I was waiting to hop on Mario's. It's in the shape of a backwards D and is a little bigger than the size of a quarter. It's healing well and I suppose if it scars then at least there's a good story.

And you guys were worried about it being dangerous to travel alone! So far the most dangerous things have been the seagull incident and now the scooter burn. (Knock on wood). Actually my friend Kieran from Galway sent me an article that reminded him of me, entitled "Woman Savaged by Swooping Gull". Apparently a woman ended up going to the hospital for treatment of 4 puncture wounds from a gull in Ireland! I told you, these birds are no joke.

Lisbon, Portugal: Beaches, Mosaic Sidewalks and FADO

June 24 - July 4

Yes it appears that I am two countries behind so I will try to catch up!

Lisbon is magic and my friend Miguel was a great guide. This is such a beautiful city and I love the sound of the language, though I definitely don't speak it. I learned a few key phrases including my favorite (inspiration from my sister) : "please don't arrest me, I'm a foreigner". Luckily I only had to use this one in party settings where I was looking for a laugh and not reprieve from official repercussions for who knows what.

It was a great time to be in Lisbon because thanks to Miguel I had a home, friends and a family to spend time with. This is a friend who has not lived in his home country or city in 6 years so during his 3 months there this time, he had many many engagements to keep. So I got to see some REAL portuguese culture that I would never get the chance to participate in otherwise. This time in Portugal was some of the best time I've had during my travels so far for this reason.

During the days I wandered around on my own while Miguel worked long hours at his internship with an investment bank. I wandered around the Old Town and Barrio Alto through winding streets with tiled buildings and stone mosaic streets and sidewalks. Lisbon is beautiful from the roofs to the ground...it seems concrete does not exist to the Portuguese and I loved this. All the streets/sidewalks that you walk on are set in stone mosaics, many times with designs or symbols.

One day I decided to be a super tourist and take a guided bike tour. It turned out that there was just the guide and one other woman, from Canada, so it was actually a lot of fun. We went all through the city and down to the river and then rode along the river all the way out of Lisbon to where the river meets the ocean. We heard lots of stories about the history of the city and I got lots of inspiration talking to the guide, who spent a year travelling around the world and who has turned his love of seeing cities by bike into a profession. What a beautiful thing.

Friday came around and Miguel's sister, Carolina, invited me to go to a show at the bank where their mother works. The bank often does cultural events to stay engaged with the community and this night they were having a show of "Cirque Invisible", which is a show that is done by one of Charlie Chaplin's daughters, Victoria Chaplin, and her husband, Jean Baptiste Thierrée. They have been doing just 3 shows for the past 10 years and it was so entertaining!

For 2 hours the two took turns doing short bits of a kind of performance theatre (the picture above is from the show). Some of the pieces were only 30 seconds long and they all involved really extravagant costumes and props. It alternated between Thierrée's silly shows of magic and slight of hand tricks and Chaplin's transforming costumes. I can't imagine how they come up with these ideas but she would come out on stage in some complicated dress that she would deconstruct and remake in a way that all of the sudden she would look like some animal.

My favorite piece was when Chaplin came out on stage covered in a costume of bowls, plates, and glasses. She walked around the stage creating a tune from hitting different glasses and bowls and knocking her knees together, etc. It seemed like entertainment for children but I felt afterwards that it was actually deceptively simple. Thierree would go for easy laughs but actually a lot of what they each did was really strange and kind of surreal.

During the weekend we went to the beach with friends of Miguel's. They have all known eachother since they were 3 years old and it was great to get a different picture of a person that I only got to know in DC. We went to a surprise birthday party for one of Miguel's cousins and had a blast. His cousin Diogo lives in the UK and has just made it through the first round of some astronaut program in Europe. I told him that I've definitely never met a potential astronaut! Lot's of interesting people and luckily for me, there were a lot of people who spoke english.

Even during family gatherings though, for example a lunch on Sunday that was all in Portuguese, I discovered that there was still a lot to enjoy. When you don't understand the meaning of the words or what the conversation is about, you start to pay attention to different things. It was actually fascinating to just watch body language, facial expressions, to the ways that people relate to one another in these ways.

But finally, I will say that my most simple and favorite pleasures of Lisbon were the pastry pastel de nata and the music fado. I think I probably ate one of these patries at least once every day. I was on the search for the best espresso and pastel de nata in Lisbon. Who knows according to anyone else's standards, but now I know I have my favorite.

And Fado. I travelled a long way to finally hear this music in person and I told Miguel ahead of time that really the only thing required of him as my host during all my time there was to take me to see Fado. The last night we went to a place recommended by Carolina as the best Fado house in Lisbon; Mesa de Fades. Just a small hole in the wall, as most truly great places. There were old toile-like paintings on the tiled walls and when the music was about to begin, the doors were shut and everything stopped except the instruments and the singer.

This particular singer is only 23 years old but sings Fado like she has an old soul that has weathered times of beauty and hardship. What a voice and what a performance! Fado is a music local to Lisbon and it has a great history of being born of an amalgamation of cultural and social forces beginning in the early 1800's. The word Fado literally means "fate" or "destiny". This music is achingly beautiful even when you don't understand the words. To me, actually, this is the mark of great music, when it can touch you through the music alone, and without the aid of the more intellectual meaning of words.

Barcelona = Couchsurfing the original way, more flesh than sand and the Festival of Saint Joan (watch your step!)

June 20 - 24



I swore the last time I visited Barcelona that I would be back! I have the best memories of wandering the streets and finding random music and the best breakdancers I´ve ever seen. And oh, the beaches.



Thanks to my new Dharmahouse friend, Keiran, I was able to stay with him at his friend´s house: Herbert and Carol...what a beautiful apartment. It took a good bit of train travel and then some adventures by metro but we surfaced above ground in Herbert´s neighborhood by the metro stop Llacuna, which is just a 10 minute walk from the beach. We were both a bit confused to have our first breaths of Spanish air accompanied by what would seem to be gunshots. Exactly what type of neighborhood is this that we are going to be staying in, we thought??



It turns out that we were in the last few days leading up to the biggest festival of the year in Barcelona, which is the Festival of Saint Joan. The sounds we kept hearing all weekend were not firearms but firecrackers. People were testing out their new toys for the party to come on Monday night. No one seems to know exactly what the story behind the festival is. What they do know is that it´s the cause of the biggest parties all night on the beaches, on a Monday night. It´s normal for the vast majority of people to take off of work for at least one day after the festival. More on this later.



So my days in Barcelona were lazy ones of wandering and beaching. That first day I headed off in the direction of the beach and was greeted by a seriously intense scene. Truly, you could see many more bodies than spaces of sand. Also, I forgot that it is completely normal to be topless on the beaches in Spain. I staked out a small space for myself and set up to watch the world go by in front of the Mediterranean. I´m seriously trying to soak up these moments...I don´t know that things like this will ever come again!



I was very happy to have the day alone on the beach, but I quickly discovered in the heat of the Spanish sun, that there is one significant dilemna to beaching solo. There is no one to watch your things while you swim. It was very hot and the water was beautiful. This was a problem. Of course everyone around me was speaking spanish and I´m absolutely certain that I could´ve figured out how to mime to someone my request, but I decided to wait it out for a while. Luckily, just when I had decided that maybe the water was not for me this day, two guys sat down next to me and I heard them speaking french. Saved!



We started chatting and I finally got to experience the sea. They are from France but living now in Barcelona...and loving life. It turns out that one of their good friends, who is living there but is actually originally from Philadelphia, is also a couchsurfer. I have just one night that I will need a place to stay and had not yet figured out where to spend it. They convinced me that their friend, Brendan, has a couch and that of course he would love to offer it to me! (It´s so easy to volunteer space when it´s not yours)



With some arranging it actually did work out for me to stay with Brendan, but he warned me via emails that for Monday night he did not plan on sleeping because of the festival so he hoped that would be alright with me. Had no idea what to expect but already knew that I was game, regardless (:



So we met up on Monday after he finished work and he took me to a barbeque at a house of one of his friends. What a blast! He told me that we were going to be with his Portuguese friends, and they were so much fun. Brendan has lived in Barcelona for 4 years now and all his friends swear that he is Spanish at heart, not American. Around midnight we started out for the beach, but not without some ominous warnings.



In Barcelona, they will sell fireworks for very cheap, to anyone. Even a 5 year old. In the States, this is maybe not what we would call "safe". Nonetheless, you have to be prepared for the fact that the Spanish love their fireworks and on a night like this, during Festival of Saint Joan, there are people of all ages and abilities setting off fireworks in the streets. On the sidewalks. In the sand on the beach. Literally, everywhere. I was warned to watch my step. The way to the beach was fraught with certain danger, but we reached relative safety once there and I can tell you that it really was worth the risk.



There must have been thousands of people, all along the beach where we were and apparently all along all the beaches in the city. There were huts set up with bars and music blasting out over the sand and sea. We found a space for our little group and stayed there all night until they booted everyone off of the beaches at 6 in the morning. It was such an amazing feeling, to be dancing around in the sand with music all around and fireworks going off in the air. I´ve never been to a party like this. What a great way to end my visit to Barcelona! They are famous for their nightlife and up until this point the weekend had been relatively quiet. This one night more than made up for it.



Tuesday morning at 9am I had a flight to Lisbon, to stay with my friend Miguel. After less than one hour of sleep, of course it was destined to be a difficult journey. I was certain that I´d left myself enought time but everthing took longer than expected. I got to the airport alright but it was a mobscene and I started to realize that there was a large chance that I would miss my flight. (Actually, had I noticed the "Last minute check-in" line, I would have been fine! With lack of sleep, etc working against me, I suppose I was really not at my peek performance. I will say it again: there is a very steep learning curve involved with travelling this way. These things seem like the simplest common sense just after the fact.)

I was determined to reach my destination and I was so mad at myself that in some warped way I thought it would be suitable punishment to help me learn my lesson if I had to waste money on a new flight. Luckily, with a relatively small amount of monetary movement, I was again on my way to Portugal just a couple hours later than intended.

The Dharmahouse: getting back to nature and almost meeting Radiohead

(the view from the Dharmahouse lenigh)

June 14 - 20

I learned of the Dharmahouse online on one of my favorite sites - Idealist.org (good source for all things in the non-profit sector). They´re located in this small town in the south of France and are in amidst the Cezannes Mountains. They have organized retreats but in between you can stay there and meditate, play in nature and and help out around the house. Very nice change of pace.

To get there I had to take a two trains and a bus. My overall trip was made two hours longer because the second train didn´t have any seats left so I would arrive at 8pm instead of 6. It was only during the last leg of the journey, on the bus, that I began to wonder about how exactly I would get from the bus stop/train station to the Dharmahouse.

The website had been very specific about directions up until the point of saying that the nearest town was St Ambroix. I had kind of assumed this meant that it would be walking distance once I got there but I realized that I didn´t have walking directions and it was getting obvious that we were definitely headed into the middle of nowhere. I pictured myself wandering around this town asking random french people if they had heard of this place, the Dharmahouse. I tried not to worry and decided I would just figure it out when I got dropped off.

The bus stop didn´t appear to be near much of anything. There were a few women getting off at the same stop so I started asking them if they were familiar with the area. Turns out one of them, Trish, was also headed for the Dharmahouse and had reserved a taxi, which was necessary to get there! (So my late train put me in at the same time as the only other person headed up that day. This is why I don´t believe in coincidences. I love when things work out in a way that is more perfect than anything you could plan. Not coicidence: Meant to be.)

So I spent five days with the Dharmahouse crew which was 6 people while I was there. Of course let me not forget to mention the Dharmahouse Madame, which was a black cat who happened to be named Lily (Katie she looks just like a kitten Mischief!).

We woke up to meditate for an hour each day at 7 and had "noble silence" through breakfast. For three hours in the morning and again in the late afternoon (after a lunch and a siesta) we worked on projects around the house and on the land. There was another hour meditation in the evening and then volunteers took turns each evening cooking dinner for everyone.

Not a bad way to spend time...trudging around in rivers, picking wildflower bouquets, washing clothes in a bucket outside, carting rocks around, debating whether to brave the compost toilet ("Thunder Box Saloon") and picking greens from the garden for salad. These days were spent with some really beautiful people.

Nick, the former punk rocker who currently runs the Dharmahouse most of the time, informed us my second night there that someone from the band Radiohead had emailed him to ask if they might be able to bring their composting to the Dharmahouse because they were touring around France with about 60 people´s worth of organic waste. Ha! Of course he told them that would be fine, and there were brief dreams of meeting the bandmates and jamming out on the Dharmahouse lenigh.....unfortunately they never did turn up :(

Nice to know that they are friends of green though!

The views all around the house were really breathtaking. Mountains in every direction you looked. I heard a real cuckoo for my first time....I don´t know that I realized there was a real one outside of the ones that you used to see in cartoon clocks.

So I had planned to head for Barcelona, Spain, on Friday the 20th after my rest at the Dharmahouse. Half my visit there had passed and I hadn´t even started to make arrangements for travel to get to Spain. I was also finding out that there was some truth behind what everyone in Marseille had been telling me, that it was very difficult to find a couch to surf in Barcelona. It was starting to seem that I might have to actually resort to staying in a - GASP - Hostel!

As luck or whatever would have it, a fellow Dharmahouser, Kieran from Galway, was planning to leave to visit a friend in Barcelona on Friday as well! So I booked the same trains as him, and he even offered to call his friend to see if I could also stay at his place. As Smash would say....Good Times!

So it´s on to Spain! The next portion of my travels will be significantly more difficult as I will no longer be in places where I speak the language.

Alors, au revoir la France........à la prochaine j´èspére

PS I just wanted to say to friends and fam, thanks for the comments! I think of you often and it´s really nice to read words from you. Miss you.

Marseille Cont´d: Leashed bird guides at Les Calanques and expert french lessons

Since my visit in Paris, I´ve been hearing about Marseille´s famed Calanques. They get described to me in french a couple times, by people in Paris and then in Lyon but I still don´t quite understand what I´ll be going to see when I visit them. Like a jerk, I forgot my camera that day but this photo actually appears to be the particular calanque that I visited.



Calanques literally means "creeks" but as you can see from the photo, that doesn´t quite sum it up. Marseille, and also Cassis just down the road, has rocky cliffs along the sea and there are these little inlets that you can climb down into.

I went on my own and forgot the directions (normal) so was a bit unsure of what I was doing to get there. Luckily I´m never to proud to ask for directions, because I know I inevitably need them. I took the metro to a certain stop and picked up a bus line which I rode to the very last stop. The bus driver pointed in the direction of a hill so I started walking.

It was really nice to be on my own this day. I had heard that it was about an hour hike down into the calanques and that in general it was a pretty physically intense feat so I was a bit surprised to see an old woman walking up ahead of me. I´m not saying that old biddies cannot hike, but she didn´t look like she was geared up for hiking down rocky hills on this particular day. I ended up walking next to her and noticed when she greeted me that she had a black bird perched on her hand, with a red leash attached to his foot from her wrist.

The woman spoke perfect french but was just visiting from Madrid. When I asked her about the bird and if it could fly, she replied that of course it could and flicked her wrist to start him going. Unfortunately for him the leash had only about a 5 foot lead so he reached the limit and when his foot caught, he returned to her wrist. Mean trick. I asked her if she thought he minded being leashed and she said simply that of course he did, and that she was sure that he hated her right now.

She walked me up to the viewing place and turned back after pointing me in the direction of a specific calanque. The scenery was indescribable and just kept getting better the further down into the inlet I got. There are beautiful paths most of the way and then some rockish climbing for shortcuts. Once down in the inlet there are different little beaches where you can sit out on the rocks and go for a swim in some very cold but perfectly clear turquoise water. This was a very good day.

I still haven´t figured out why, but when i was floating and my ears were under water, it sounded like rice crispies. You know, like snap crackle and pop. True story.

On my last night in Marseille after my day in the calanque I was definitely exhausted so I ended up hanging out with Ludo´s girls and watching Edward Scissorhands in french. Antoinelle and I started talking and ended up having a french pronunciation lesson which was hillarious. We spent a good bit of time doing french R´s (the reason why my KReid loves the language so much!). She was sitting there and explaining in french about the vibration and going back in forth with me doing r´s. Some kind of symphony that was.

The next morning we were having breakfast and I found out that the thing she had been working on so diligently the night before was a french grammar quiz for me! This was probably one of the sweetest things that´s happened so far. We sat for an hour or so and she explained different concepts to me, gave me little quizzes and corrected them for me. 58 out of 68. Je ne suis pas completement nul en francais! (:

Marseille: France´s oldest capitol has flying babies gone wild

June 9-14

Okay, so Marseille. Who wouldn´t love the blue sky and the clear hot sun of this proud city in the south of France? From the minute I stepped out of the train station, I was done for. My host, Ludovique, proudly informed me that Marseille was actually the original capitol of France, hence the national anthem being "Le Marseillaise".

So my host was Ludovique, and her two daughters, Colombine and Antoinelle (12 and 11). We stayed in her flat which was in a neighborhood called Le Panier, just next to Le Vieux Port (the old port - Kev you would´ve been floored to see some of these boats that were stationed in the port. Talk about lifestyles of the rich and famous!).

The first evening I met up with some couchsufers that Ludo knew were getting a drink in her neighborhood. During conversation I heard noises that would seem to have been produced by an infant, but they were coming from the night sky above me. Strange. Zaz, a Marseille CS host, looked at me and Danny Tan from Singapore, and said, they sound like flying babies but it´s actually the seagulls. I swear to you they sound like babies.

During my first full day I walked the city with Danny. We walked all the way up to Notre Dame de La Gard, which is a really beautiful cathedral up on a hill at the highest point in Marseille. I´m not usually affected very profoundly by churches, but this one was really special. One section of walls was made up of huge stones that each had an engraving (some dating back to the 1700´s) that was a thanks dedicated by different ships to the cathedral for protecting them on their journeys.

After a while I noticed that I could just faintly hear chanting. So I went looking, hoping to find a group of monk´s locked in vocal meditation of some sort. What a special thing to see! Unfortunately all I found were speakers. Ha. "Put the chants on shuffle on the iPod your Holiness!"

But back to the flying babies. There are two islands off the coast of Marseille - L´Ile D´If and L´Ile de Friole. The Chateau on L´Ile D´If is the one where the Count of Montecristo was kept imprisoned in Dumas´famous tale which has apparently been adapted for cinema 23 times. I took a very fast boat ride out to spend a day visiting the two islands. After checking out the prison chambers in the Chateau D´If (creepy), I wandered around the island for a bit. Those that know me will not be surprised to know that I may or may not have wandered off the set path a bit...

So I´m walking around and hop up on this rock wall and all of the sudden I see these Huge fluffy baby somethings running around making hell of noise. I have just enough time to think to myself, "those are the biggest baby birds I´ve ever seen! Oh they must be baby.." SMACK. It felt like somebody really hit me upside the back of the head. I had made the biggest nature faux pas and gotten too close to animal babies!

PS these seagulls are the biggest ones I´ve ever seen in my life. They really have a wing span of like 4 feet. So picture me, covering my head, running for shelter as this massive seagull circles in the sky above me. Hillarious! I was seriously disappointed when I looked around and saw no witnesses. Really, did NO ONE just see me get divebombed by a bird?? My friend Annie would say she told me so. She hates birds for what I thought were always silly reasons. No longer.

Lyon: Rivers, music and candy parties!

Some brief words on my 5 day stay in Lyon before I move on to hillarious stories about Marseille (:

My couchsurfer in Lyon was a music - singing - teacher named Yann Marek, originally from Paris. He was great and eventhough my later-than-expected train didn't get into Lyon until midnight, he greeted me with couscous and conversation!

Another couchsurfer, Ellen from Canana (eh?!), shared the "couch" with me for the next few days and she and I had a lot of fun touring around Old Lyon. France has a rental bike system that's amazing and I actually think they might be starting one in DC so I hope that it will catch on like it has here. Seeing the city by bike was a blast!

Ellen and Yann both play the guitar so that first night the three of us just sat around drinking wine and playing music...very nice moments.

Oh, I made a faux pas that gave us good laughs for the next couple days. I got seriously reprimanded at a fruit market. Okay, let me first say that this man was abnormally protective of his fruits and veggies. Also I think he just didn't like me in particular. So there Ellen is, pawing through the fruits at this market...then I got to pick up a peach and smell it and he starts in on me. Here's a brief recap of what he said to me in french:

"Don't touch the peaches! I'm saying it to be nice you know, I'm not mean....don't touch the peaches! Don't get upset though, I'm just saying it but I'm not being mean! But seriously, don't touch the peaches!"

I don't know if it's as funny now, but in the moment it was because he was going on and on and I was just standing there staring at him, like...okay I really don't care about your peaches, it's okay, I just want to eat some but you can pick them it's really okay. haha. It was just really funny because there Ellen was picking around and she doesn't speak french but then when I pick up just one peach..anyway maybe it's one of those "you had to be there" kind of things.

So the couchsurfing community is very tight in Lyon so we definitely went to some parties (:
I will leave the details out but there was another night spent on the Rhone River on a peniche (the french love their party boats!) and then a birthday party with the theme: "eat me". So everybody was supposed to look like or to wear something foodlike. There was candy everywhere! Pretty much everyone resorted to candy of some sort strung around their necks. PS French marshmellows taste better. I don't know if that's how you spell marshmellows.

So there were like 30 or 40 people crammed into this itty bitty french apartment, and I have no idea how it really could be true but we were there dancing drinking singing for 7 hours! Met all kinds of fun people - there were two young girls (19 or 20) who had hitchhiked all the way to Lyon from their homes in Estonia! Don't worry momma, I'm really not tempted by that (:

There was a great moment during this party when somebody started singing this french song called Melissa, by a singer named Julien Clerc. I've had this happen a couple times when I was studying in Paris, I'd meet somebody and they would break out into song when I told them my name. It's apparently a song about Melissa from Ibiza who walks around all the time in the nude, completely innocently. ha. I wanted to put it in here, but YouTube didn't have a great video of it.

So before you know it there are like 15 people singing this song! That was a great moment (:

Lyon is a beautiful and amazing city. I didn't have a lot of luck with weather but once things did clear up, I saw the city come alive. The rivers - the Rhone and the Saone - are very popular places to hang out and they have great paved roadways all along. I would not have minded staying longer, but it was time to head to...Marseille! To the sun and blue sky of the south of France!

Moments in a limbo space

I have some catching up to do!

I will not include too many details about my extra day in Paris, because there's too much to say about that...but it was an amazing experience. It's completely surreal to sit in front of someone that you haven't seen in 3 years and to pick up right where you left off! It was a difficult and beautiful time. This will only make sense to a few, but just had to make note that I finally got to hear in person a song called "las consequencias de tu intimidad". This is a very special song to me and to have it played on the guitar and sang to me was almost too much!

Ezequiel and I both agree that we don't believe in coincidences, but regardless the timing is both great and aweful. I will leave it at that for now.

par hasard

well. so where to begin about Paris?

Well first of all, I know some (maybe many!) people will think that the idea of Couchsurfing is crazy but I have to tell you, I don't plan to do my travelling from here on out any other way!

Here's what the Couchsurfing project is about, in their own words:


The CouchSurfing 2.0 Mission
Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time

CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding.
As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal.
CouchSurfing is not about the furniture, not just about finding free accommodations around the world; it's about making connections worldwide. We make the world a better place by opening our homes, our hearts, and our lives. We open our minds and welcome the knowledge that cultural exchange makes available. We create deep and meaningful connections that cross oceans, continents and cultures. CouchSurfing wants to change not only the way we travel, but how we relate to the world!
http://www.couchsurfing.com/about.html


And it's magic. I got to Paris and found out how difficult, and expensive, it was to find a hostel so I found some interesting profiles on the site of people who live in Paris and sent them messages...they all wrote back and all of the sudden I had places to stay and new friends to meet! I arrived at my host Sam's apartment and the minute that he got home, we hopped on bikes and rode to his improv theatre practice. French people doing improv=awesome. The nice thing about improv is that even if you can't understand everything that's going on, it's still HILLARIOUS!

We got drinks with his friends afterwards, I met the other guy with whom I would share Sam's couch - Jesse from SanFran - and we had a blast! Over these past few days there has been dancing, cooking, partying on a boat on the Seine, Rockband with wigs on, a picnic, etc. This is the real Paris. I could not find these things or have these amazing experiences without having this organization (I should do a commercial)

It's amazing what can happen when you reach out to people. I'm discovering more and more that in general, people have such a capacity for kindness and generosity it's unbelievable. I've met several couchsurfers now and so far they're all great! Some of these people have really been all over the world... this is a different kind of living than what we see in general in the states.

Incidentally, the world it seems, is rather small and clever. My current couch neighbor, Delphin, and I, were walking down Rue de Moufftarde to a bar for a CS meeting yesterday evening, and who should I see walking along the opposite way but my long lost friend Ezequiel? This is a very unusual coincidence, it has been 3 years since we last saw each other here in Paris. I didn't think he lived here anymore, and I know he would never have thought to run into me here!

My plan was to leave for Lyon today, but I think I will stay another day or 2..

vive la France!

NOTES to self:

1. always be able to laugh it off and keep it light! l'humour, c'est essentiel!
2. everything happens for a reason
3. it is true that aussies are, in fact, loads of fun
4. sea legs are well earned on 24 hour ferry rides
5. do not ever let ANYONE write on your eurrail pass, guard it with your life
6. if you can speak even some french in paris, you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish!



well I'm officially in France but NOT without some difficulty! Apparently I needed to prove that I really wanted to be here before I would be allowed entrance! So here's a recap of the journey that proved that it is absolutely essential to maintain one's sense of humour when travelling...

SO, originally I was supposed to take a ferry from Rosslare, Ireland over to Cherbourg, France. So After a 2 hour bus ride (that I almost missed due to my famous sense of punctuality) from Waterford to Rosslare, I was only slightly amused when the bus driver informed me that there was no sign of the ship! Due to bad weather he says...

Turns out that due to the winds that are blowing in a most unusual direction and at great force, we will instead depart from Dublin. Not just that, but we will now be arriving in Rosscoff, France due to a strike at the port in Cherbourg (as a general rule, there is always at least one strike going on at all times in France it seems, part of the culture ha).

Trip details:

3 hour wait @ Rosslare harbour
3 hour bus drive back up to Dublin
2 hour wait @ Dublin harbour (during which I meet three super fun girls: Claire the Aussie AKA the Condiment Queen, Heather the Canadien Blarney Stone and Flora the French language guru)
23 hour ferry ride (during which it was at last proved that things DO in fact happen for a reason, as the cabin that I had been given at the price of a regular seat just so happened to boast 3 empty beds, perfect for mes nouvelles amies! They were eternally grateful to escape the fate of a night spent on a floor or in a only slightly reclining seat)

After some jokes from the border guards - aaah les americaines, en force!! - we decided that the late hour, 10pm, would necessitate the use of overnight accomodations. This went relatively smoothly so I'll spare the details.

The next day some of us were headed towards Paris so we had to catch a train to a bus. This was going well as we had successfully located the bus station and it actually arrived on time....then disaster struck. Do you know how careful one must be with a Eurrail pass? VERY. I learned a difficult lesson this day. Do not EVER EVER allow anyone else to fill in your the date for your travel day, otherwise they might do something like take up 3 ENTIRE travel days to write that days date! So I hopped on the bus with the thought that I might have just lost 3 of my 10 travel days.... there is a very steep learning curve in this process.

Anyway. My french came back from some land where apparently it had been living without my knowledge, and came in very very handy at a train station in Paris where I found a perfectly lovely and amazing french ticketing agent. I explained my situation to him and he spent about a half hour figuring out what we could do and then deciding to reissue my eurrail pass entirely! He even left off that days travel so now I'm back at 10 days.... J'ADORE la FRANCE!

ps cheese is delicious and the smell of the metro was the first thing to make me wistful, true story

The Tart with the Cart

Apparently also known as The Dish with the Fish and The Trollop with the Scallops (My personal favorite)

This sculpture was created to commemorate the actual person that the song, "Molly Malone" (also known as "Cockles and Mussels"), was written about. The fact of her existence, and the nature of her trade is debatable, but the song is a very popular one which has acquired the status of an Irish anthem in Dublin.

That seems very Irish to me. By the way, Guinness is surprisingly delicious.

A bit of advice

here are a few interesting pieces of advice that have been given to me so far. Hillarious.

My good friend Kristen, who is known for giving especially sage advice, which she herself ignores:
"When you're in Ireland, avoid the redheads! I've demonstrated enough times, I believe, that this is just bad news. DONT DO IT!!!"

My boss, who calls me "Polly Purebread" (obviously his perceptions of people are right on :)
"If a man invites you to his penthouse that's down a dark alley, DON'T DO IT. Because he doesn't"

My grandmother, who has a fantastic wit and no concern whatsoever for being politically correct:
"Just as long as you don't come back married to anybody black, or anybody who doesn't speak english" (When you're 85, I suppose you're allowed to say anything you want!)

words to live by

"...You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that -- but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself..."

words from a letter written by Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke
"letters to a young poet"

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/xxx100.html

Footage from Discovery's Planet Earth series + Peter Bjorn & John = genius

Planet Earth makes you want to watch the grass grow.

que la vie est belle

T Minus 18 days till the jump! So much to do and lots to think about. It's such a special time right before you leave a place, everything mundane in your life there takes on special significance...everything is more potent.

I know DC will still be here, but this particular period here will be like no other that takes place later on. Life in the District has been unexpected and wonderful. Landing here after college with no plans worked out better than I ever could have anticipated.