My sister may be the most innocent looking human being. Petite, blond and an incredibly fast walker, she is not what you call a “suspicious looking” traveler. This past week, she went through security and that all changed. As she walked up to security, she is pulled over for the full body scanner. Not knowing you can “just say no” to these “how are they legal” machines, she went through. After putting her hands in the air and rendering all sense of privacy, she was then put through a pat down, as was every other person that went through the scanners. Questioning how well these scanners Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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