The day I left Florence, a man emptied his pockets. Dressed in a fine Italian suit, the smaller in stature Italian reached into his pockets and emptied them for the hand outstretched in front of him. The Florence Train Station, Santa Maria Novella, can be a place of chaos. College backpackers settle into the floors, sleeping until the next train out of town rolls into the platform. Masses of people congregate in front of the departures sign, waiting and waiting for their platform number to finally be listed. In typical Italian style, it never shows up until just before the train is set to Continue Reading
Is Travel An Excuse?
The late night romantic comedy blares in the background with the usual plot line unfolding. A relationship falls apart. A job is lost. The lead is sick of their job, maybe even sick of their family. The woman meets her man. The list goes on and on. The main character often makes the decision to travel, to get away from the job, the man, or to go find the man out in the wilds of the world, far away from home. While in Italy this summer, I often pondered the question, “Is travel an excuse?”. Amidst a language not my own, customs I didn’t uphold and that never ending feeling of not fitting in, Continue Reading
Deciding Where To Travel From The Comforts Of The Dentist’s Chair
I sit in the dentist’s office, waiting for a cleaning of teeth, teeth that have chomped their way through Europe and back to the United States. On the wall of the waiting room, a large map of the world stares back at me. What great decorating on my dentist’s part, transport your future patients around the world, distract them from the inevitable waiting behind a shutter-like door. Still figuring out my travel plans for the next few months, I start to examine where I have been on this map. I realize the portion of the world I have seen is very small, causing me to drum up plans of my next Continue Reading
Quantifying and Qualifying Bragging And Travel
I sit in the Rome Airport waiting to board my flight. A man standing behind me loudly converses with some passengers I believe he met on his tour through Italy. Their conversation hints they know each other only on a surface level. I hear him proudly boast it was his second time to Italy and now he’s “done with Italy”. “Seen it," he says so casually. Somehow I doubt that as he sports the typical Italia jacket found in every tourist center throughout the boot. He goes on to drill his new friends, randomly asking, “So how many 50 states have you been to?”, similar to that of a child on the Continue Reading
When You Stop Smelling The Roses Of Travel
Arriving to a destination, there are unfamiliar sounds that quickly transition into the familiar. In Italy, the noises that wake me up in the morning are those of street sweepers that resonate more like that of a tsunami blowing through town. At around 5AM the garbage trucks arrive. If you live near a dumpster, you hear what sounds like a million bottles crashing to the ground just in time for sunrise. No need for roasters or alarm clocks. Italy has garbage men and women and diligent street sweepers. These sounds become familiar after a time. You don’t notice the garbage trucks at 5AM. The Continue Reading
When The Traveler Gets Mistreated
I keep making eye contact with the waiter. Eventually our eyes meet, mine of a more hopeful nature and his of avoidance. He comes around to every table of native Italians asking how their food is, making sure everything is up to par. For me, I am not so lucky. He comes by to take my order, bring me my food, and our relationship ends for the evening. Getting the check is a whole different story. After asking several times and no slip of white paper with Italian scribble produced, I am left with getting up and being “that diner” who heads up front to pay for no one will acknowledge their Continue Reading
Travel Lessons From A 5,000 Year Old Iceman
One by one, they line up to pay their respects to an old man. Forming a snaking line, each person has their time to say hello and goodbye. What sounds like a normal funeral is somewhat different today. No one at this funeral knew the man behind the glass case. In fact, no one on the planet knew him. They don’t know his name. They don’t know the content of his character, the life he lived, or even why they are paying respects besides the fact that this man is 5,000 years old. The story of Ötzi, the Iceman, technically began between 3350 B.C. and 3100 B.C., before Stonehenge and the pyramids Continue Reading