domesticity

late nights revising and rewriting
hoping and praying with my fingers
on the keypad
for something more stable
my ankle boring into the wood floor
the fridge humming
where is the dog?
i wonder if I will get anywhere
i wonder if i was a gypsy too long
if no one will believe me
when i say
i want to lay down roots
-but i do-
i'm tired of traveling
i'm tired of moving
i want the boring life
a house
a family
a stable job
tea in the morning
and broccoli at night
my piano in the living room
my best friend at my side
he'll be home soon
with a van full of stuff
ready to start a new life
--together--

Traveling is a mindset, not a place

It's been two years since I returned to the states. In 2012, I did not take one flight. This year, I joined my sister and friends on a short jaunt to Iceland (which I wouldn't do again- I'm no longer built for those hasty American glimpses into foreign lands, skittering along the surface and returning exhausted). Though I've visited copious amounts of our fair country since arriving back via old-timey automobile transport, I'd say the theme of the last year especially has been slowing down and traveling in place. 

Traveling has very little do to do with actual movement, and much more to do with your mindset. I can travel just as easily in the Portland metro area, as I can anywhere else. My years of actual travel have honed my observation skills and opened my mind to listening to people's stories and interacting with strangers. I find myself traveling every day, in different ways. 

It's in the small interactions with folks around town. It's listening to my patients who are from all over the world and relating to them, having been in their home post office in Phnom Penh or their home town of Saigon or Lviv. It's visiting fill-in clinics not knowing what I'll find and making friends unexpectedly. It's seeing the light change in the sky and the weather shift from season to season. It's meeting couples on the hiking trail, and having them show up in my exam room another day. It's mulling things over and working it out on paper. It's approaching each day as an experience to be had with things to learn. 

My travels have made me a better person and better able to relate to others. I've learned to appreciate simplicity and beauty. I've learned to forgo shopping in favor of wandering. I've learned to be open to chance encounters and appreciate a friendship, even if it only lasts ten minutes.

It's been a strange experience not wanting to go anywhere. I feel rooted in a way that I could not have been before embarking on my time overseas. It's taken me a while back here to feel that I was on solid ground. I have a good relationship. I have family. And I'm in a place I love. I've been able to work and enjoy my patients. And bike and feel healthy with the great food we have in the Northwest. 

Maybe it's my age. I'd spent my entire childhood and early adulthood doing everything right, moving at the fastest pace possible, crossing off all the markers of adulthood, never taking time to understand what I thought was important about life. Now that I'm back, I feel relaxed and happy to be in one place. Hugged by trees and mountains, and free to breathe the fresh air of the Northwest, I think I've found home.

[looking at flowers and light]

[my bike takes me through the world, the best form of transport]

Taking the overnight bus towards home

[Top Gun's playing in the other room, as rain plunks down outside.

Take My Breath Away. It is strangely comforting.]

I've revised my schedule over and over but I think I finally worked out something that's logical and can stick for the last twenty days of my holiday. Traveling long term is like an art project, always a work in progress, but you have to know when to quit before it gets ugly.

Tonight I have an overnight bus to Lviv, where I plan to spend at least three nights, then will catch a train to Warsaw, where I'll have four nights. I'd gotten a Belarus visa but then got nervous about visiting Minsk (political unrest), and decided that Brest was probably the best option since it is five miles from the border of Poland and the EU and only an eighteen minute train ride. Brest will either be a day trip or just overnight couch-surfing.

After Warsaw, I head to the Masurian Lake district of Poland (three nights in fancier lodgings), then to Gdansk for five nights, then down through Torun or Poznan before heading back to Berlin, where I'll stay with my friend Ruth the night before I catch a flight back to Chicago August 10th. It's an apt send-off from Germany, leaving from the city I love most with a good friend who I met on the road.

So figuring out a schedule and the ensuing lodging reservations frees me to wander with mind and foot through the rest of my days here. It's like being in the clouds for a while, drifting from place to place, knowing soon I will be landing in the USA, dropping into the country which was home for thirty-one years.

People back home fear that I'm going to be bored or regret returning, but I feel the time is right, and I'm ready. I read somewhere that home is where people accept you. Or home is where people miss you when you are gone. In that case, I am headed home, to family, friends and my country.

This last day in Lithuania, the sky is falling again. Hopefully there's a break in the clouds so I can make it to the station without a free shower. If not, I have a raincoat and waterproof backpack, so I am prepared for anything (I hope). Next report from the Ukraine...

When the Bulgarian border patrol decides to take apart the train, and other fun times...

Two days ago, I planned to take the 18:00 bus from Sarajevo to Nis, Serbia. I set out for the bus station at 4:15, got there at 5:30 to discover the bus wasn't going. It wouldn't leave until the next night. I checked my options and decided to take the 22:00 bus to Belgrade, where I didn't want to go. I slept the whole night, but woke up a lot due to border crossings and whatnot. At 6:00 we arrived to Belgrade. I tried to find a bus or train to the Serbia border where I'd planned to cross into Bulgaria to a hiking town, but there was only a train leaving at 15:30 and was arriving at 11PM into the town. Not a good idea for a single female traveler, and knowing Serbian trains, I would've arrived at 1AM or so. So I checked the schedules and decided to reroute myself to Sofia, Bulgaria and then decide what to do.

The train left at 7:50 and was supposed to arrive at 14:47. I could have walked or hitchhiked faster and with less harm to my personal health, because I smoked an equivalent of 10 packs of cigarettes in second-hand smoke. But never mind that, the train was overcrowded and people were standing. Then the Serbian border people took about an hour to search our train, and the same with the Bulgarians, who actually rode with us for a while and started to take panels off the the inside of the train. They came into our compartment and patted down the woman who had gotten on just before the Bulgarian border but did not find anything. **However, once they left, she jumped up and pulled out her hidden smuggled cigarettes and other things. So they had the right person, they just did not try hard enough...

Also I'd only had 4 small carrots, a yogurt, 2 chocolate pieces and 7 pretzel sticks the whole day. They did not sell food on the train and I didn't have the right money anyway. I hadn't planned on a 27 hour trip.

Anyway. We arrived in Sofia about 7PM. So I had to stay the night. I called Hostel Mostel where I'd stayed last time. They had a bed. The Bulgarian biologists who I shared a compartment with helped me find the tram, and gave me 1 Leva to buy a ticket inside and asked, "Do you need someone to go with you?" I said, no, then many thanks and hopped aboard.

I missed my stop by one stop and it was quite a distance but I wasn't bothered because I needed the exercise after sitting for so long. I found the hostel and went in to register myself. The guy at the counter said, "I hope you have a reservation because we are full." I said I'd called. He said he had no record and acted like I was an idiot. So he called his boss and then said they were only waiting for Pablo. I realised I'd called their hostel in a different town and told him what I'd done. He looked at me again like I was a hopeless moron. I said, "Do you have another suggestion?" He said, "Hostel Sofia." I asked where they were and he showed me on the map. I asked if he could call them before I walked there. He said, "Our phone does not work." I said, "Ok, I'll just take your map then."(It was a photocopied map.) He said, "No, we are running short, you cannot have it." And was done with me.

I started walking to the other hostel, Lonely Planet in hand, a bit confused and exhausted. An Irish voice behind me, "Do you need help?" He pointed out the way and nearly walked me to the hostel. I was standing in front of it, but it was hard to see, just a black metal gate with Hostel Sofia on the front, the first hostel in Sofia. I rang the buzzer and the door unlocked. The stairs were dodgy and dim and I went up two flights to a door answered by a rotund man in shorts about 70 years old. He showed me a bed in a 9 bed room, and pointed to the empty ones (two top bunks). Three guys were in the room, and one said, "Would you rather have a bottom bunk? You can have one of ours, we don't mind." I said ok, since I was pretty tired and unsure about getting down from the top in the middle of the night if I had to pee. They were from Israel, and I was impressed with their kindness.

The owner offered me tea. I said ok. He said, "Black or Herbal?" I chose herbal. He returned with a large cup with a lemon slice floating on top. I sat on the couch happy to be there. He thought I was from NZ because he'd heard me talking to the Israeli guys. I said I was American. He lit up and said his daughter lived in America. In Oregon. In Portland. I said, "I have to show you something and pulled out my OR driver's license and said I was from Portland too!

He came back with a picture of his daughter and the American from the Peace Corps who she'd married. She'd worked in marketing for a NZ company (Icebreaker) and now works in design for Nike. Small world... Next the old man came back with a bowl containing four freshly washed apricots. He sat with me on the couch and played Bulgarian music on the TV for me, and said he'd been a professional musician when he was younger. He left and returned with very old pictures, from around 1968, with him playing guitar in a band and pictures of his wife (who I think is dead) who he called "my love." She looked just like his daughter.

I was thinking as I sat there how happy I was just to be sitting on a couch in someone's home in Bulgaria. I really enjoyed it. It was not the place I would have picked to stay, but it was just what I needed.

This morning I went to get cash after TWO espressos at my hostel. (Yes, he had a real espresso machine.) And then the buzzer was not working so I was locked out. I had to go to a floral shop where a lady customer helped me and the shop let me make a call to the hostel. But then the old hostel man did not understand what was wrong so the customer lady helped me again (though her english was not so good either) and the old man let me in, and we fixed the buzzer together. So everything was good.

In the bad, there is always good. This little hostel was a good reminder of a lot of things, and my one night there was worth the pains of yesterday... it was a reminder of the good in humanity and what is important in life... and sometimes that is just sitting on the couch watching bad music with apricots and a person who does not speak the same word language, but still can be understood.

Three Month Vacation, Day 1: Skopje

Skopje is crumbling and constructing at the same time. (Like me.) Maybe that's why I like Eastern Europe countries so much.

An onslaught of emotions assault a person embarking on an extended holiday, especially in conjunction with an international move and job erasure. The last month was not fun with daily surprises associated with my move. But less than twenty-four hours from my departure, it all feels to be in the distant past. New horizons beckon, and worries have been lifted.

I arose late and breakfasted with several other hostelers from around the world. A communal feast and travel talk lifts all spirits. Plus, tips from fellow travelers are generally better than any travel book's advice. I felt instantly at home- lifting any residual anxieties I had regarding my choice to travel again for an extended time.

However, I made an error in packing. It's hot and humid, and some of my German clothing are a bit much, so I took a special trip to the post office. Well, two trips- one to find it, and one to mail the clothes. I don't mind going on odd errands as such, because it's usually a cultural experience as well. This was no different.

The woman behind the counter didn't speak English, but several of the people who were there did, and kept helping. One man even came outside and gave me more instructions in his broken English. It was heartwarming. Later when I returned, the counter lady smiled and packed up my things into a small box that she had behind the counter. About $30 later, I was 5lbs lighter, and feeling happy at the experience.

So here I am at day one again, feeling good and ready for the road ahead.

The post office. I could not see it even when it was right in front of me.

Excellent sugar-free coffee. (They just whipped the milk/creme.)

The package to America.

The longest ash ever on that lady.

Perhaps, a pair...

(I was standing there waiting, when I saw the mirrored door.)

But he has the bigger camera.

I love Turkey. (Still veg though.)

Look at these lazy Turks! I'd have a mind to do the same thing every day. If I could let myself.

Ok, so E insisted on documenting my "pajamas." Yes. That's correct. I always acclimate to "freezing my ass off" regardless of the temperature. I tucked my nightie into my jeans, so was all proper like.

Independence and being "on the way."

Thanks to years in Portland, I see rain as romantic and beautiful and cleansing. It also bring out the colors in everything.

Istanbul: Day 1

I am so driven by color-- I know these are tastier than usual - being so beautiful. This was Breakfast Dessert.

On the Bosphorous.

The pretty flowers. PLASTIC! I'm thinking I might be part Turkish. And when I grow up rather than killing things, I'll just stick plastic plants everywhere. No one will know for better. If anyone gives me crap, I'll just tell them I'm saving the earth by saving water. Or mention my guilt at serial plant killing, which is a talent of mine.

Second coffee of the day (but I think our hostel served us instant so that doesn't count.). First Turkish Coffee of the trip.

Third coffee. First espresso. Best smelling coffee in a long ass time.

I think this is Mosque Sofia.

I want to make this tree and put it in my room. Or my living room. Or my kitchen. Or the bathroom.

I used to have a problem with puzzles. But after therapy, ok never mind-- I'll never be cured.

Look at those two guys on the left. I had to sneak-take this picture... at the Grand Bazaar.

More dialogue to follow...

As usual, this trip is verification that I have a severe incurable travel addiction.