ON TRAVELING ALONE
I spent a great deal of this trip traveling alone, which had its advantages and disadvantages. My favorite part of my time alone was that I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I made every decision myself and didn't have to consider anyone else's preferences. It was also much easier to meet new people since I was alone. I met many other lone travelers as well as some locals. It was, however, lonely at times. My least favorite part was eating alone. When I go to restaurants, I prefer to be with people and talk over food. I've come to the conclusion that I don't like to spend more than 3 or 4 days in a row on my own. The longest stretch I spent alone was about 8 days, and by the end of it, I felt like I needed some company. On my next trip, I know to make sure I have someone with me at least once every four days.
FAVORITE ASPECT(S) OF EACH COUNTRY
Luxembourg: The widespread enthusiasm of the people to do good for the country, for the environment, and for each other
Vienna: The loving, all-inclusive stop and go-lights
Prague: The beauty of even the least important of buildings and the rich history
Berlin: The commitment of the country to remembering, moving on from, and not repeating history
Copenhagen: The kindness of the people and the deliciousness of their Fødaboller
Oslo: The blue atmosphere and the thousands of ships
Stockholm: The clean beauty of the buildings
Rhodes: The sunsets on the water and the faint outline of the mountains of Turkey in the distance
PURCHASES ABROAD
(explanations in captions)
I will close with Elizabeth Bishop's full poem:
Questions of Travel
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. - For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, aren't waterfalls yet, in a quick age or so, as ages go here, they probably will be. But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, slime-hung and barnacled. Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres? What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around? The tiniest green hummingbird in the world? To stare at some inexplicable old stonework, inexplicable and impenetrable, at any view, instantly seen and always, always delightful? Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too? And have we room for one more folded sunset, still quite warm? But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road, really exaggerated in their beauty, not to have seen them gesturing like noble pantomimists, robed in pink. - Not to have had to stop for gas and heard the sad, two-noted, wooden tune of disparate wooden clogs carelessly clacking over a grease-stained filling-station floor. (In another country the clogs would all be tested. Each pair there would have identical pitch.) - A pity not to have heard the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird who sings above the broken gasoline pump in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: three towers, five silver crosses. - Yes, a pity not to have pondered, blurr'dly and inconclusively, on what connection can exist for centuries between the crudest wooden footwear and, careful and finicky, the whittled fantasies of wooden cages - Never to have studied history in the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages. - And never to have had to listen to rain so much like politicians' speeches: two hours of unrelenting oratory and then a sudden golden silence in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes: 'Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home? Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room? Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free. And here, or there... No. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be? '