Skip to main content

Back In the US of A

Hi. I haven't updated myself in a few weeks and I am choosing to blame it on my return to these United States of America. Things are different, but not that much different.

Have you ever moved? More, have you ever moved back to a place you previously lived? It's a weird experience and it's hard to describe, but if you've done it, I'll see if what I'm feeling matches up with what you felt.

Somehow, some way, it feels like we were never gone. Over the span of September 3, 2014 until June 3 2015, Jenna and I took about 9,000 photos. We took those photos in 16 countries, although it was primarily in Italy, where we visited 18 out of 20 provinces. We interacted with native speakers of approximately 20 languages and countless dialects. Thanks to the Eurozone we only dealt in four currencies.

By plane, train, and 3-times-rented-car (but not counting work-commutes and travel within Milan) we traveled an approximate 32,000 miles. Add in distance walked and you have another 2,000+ as we averaged walking about seven miles per day over 9 months.We saw (allegedly) the oldest man-made structure on Earth. We saw the largest brick dome ever constructed - and it was constructed over 500 years ago. We saw the largest concrete dome ever constructed - and it was constructed nearly 2000 years ago.

We visited 18 UNESCO World Heritage sites in non-Italy countries and an additional 22 in Italy (plus seven more on the tentative list of Italian UNESCO sites).

We visited three micronations, although only one is recognized internationally. The three are Vatican City, Uzupis, and Kugelmugel.

We saw current and former royal palaces in Milan, Rome, Torino, Naples, Venice, Caserta, Catania, Brescia, Verona, Vienna, southern Germany, Nice, Madrid, Lake Maggiore, Como, Florence, Vilnius, Bellinzona, Avio, Bergamo, Pisa, Amsterdam, and Prague.

We saw the statue of David, The Last Supper, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the Guernica, the Pieta, and countless works by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Monet, Bernini, and all of the Ninja Turtles.

Depending on your list, we've generally been to at least five of the ten most famous churches in the world: Notre Dame, St Paul's, Westminster Abbey, St. Peter's, the Florence and Milan Cathedrals (my two personal favorites, for what it's worth), St. Mark's in Venice, and lots of others.

We also ate gelato an approximate 80 times, swam in the Mediterranean Sea, skinny-dipped in a mountain-stream in the Swiss Alps, jumped through canyons, skied in the Austrian Alps, rode giant scooters down a mountain bike course, and between the two of us, gained and lost a total of about 70 pounds (bi-monthly 10-pound swings, roughly).

What I'm getting at is that we had a pretty good year. But now that we're back, we're back. Life has continued, as we expected it would. We don't dwell on how we ought to be going to Barcelona instead of Wal-Mart. We don't obsess over everything we did and whine about what we didn't get to do. We don't sit down every day and think about how different things have become, because we're just dealing with how things are right now.

That's all you can do as a human - deal with things how they are right now. You can't change the past and you sure as hell can't see the future, so you'd better do your best to focus on what's right in front of you right now, because that's all you have.

With that in mind, do whatever makes you happy. Especially if what makes you happy is going to Europe for nine months.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Have to Write about Basketball

I have about an hour to write out my thoughts about the NBA Finals since I didn't want to at 1 a.m. and I have to be at work soon (and I'll be there for a longer-than-normal day). So here goes. 1) Everyone wants to talk about Steph Curry, and everyone should  be talking about Steph Curry. I don't get it. He's the best shooter in NBA history - although Klay Thompson is hot on his heels - and yet there's something amiss at surprising times. I don't believe in "clutch" the way a lot of people do, because if Steph doesn't hit a million threes all the time, the Warriors are never in position for him to take a game-winner in the Finals (they also don't make the Finals). All of them are worth three points, so they need the first one as much as they need the last one. But something kind of happens, doesn't it? And doesn't it affect his legacy a tiny bit? Steph shot 34.3% on three-pointers this series. Toronto was all over  him defensivel...

Vienna Christmas, part 1

When I last left you, the two Koniecznys were about to arrive and we were going to do...well, something. And a week later we were all going to Vienna for Christmas to see some of my family members who live there (one of them is Norbert, who you might remember from canyoning). Carly and her mom got in on Sunday and we just kinda hung out the first day or two, but they wanted to see the sights and took off to see some nearby things and places, which is something they might tell you about if they were blogging but I don't think they are. Anyway, the real excitement started at the end of the week. Carly and her mom took an overnight train to Vienna on Thursday/Friday and Jenna and I had to wait until Saturday to go. We took a two-layover train; once in Verona to turn to the north and then a second stop in Innsbruck to switch onto an Austrian (OBB) train that would swoop through southeastern Germany en route to Vienna. It was a nearly 12 hour day of trains and, believe it or not, it...

New Year's Eve

One thing that seems to be a true worldwide phenomenon is the realization that my last name is used on New Year's Eve signs around the globe. At first I felt slighted, as if someone were cheapening the worth of my last name. In more recent years I've taken is as a weird sort of compliment and even occasionally tried to make it into a pseudo-attention-getting thing if I'm feeling very "look at me" on a particular day. But that's not what I'm supposed to tell you about because that's boring. What's not boring is that most of the big cities around the world do big exciting fireworks displays and celebrations that stretch way beyond a ball dropping down a pole and standing in a crowd of 500,000 people for nine hours. In short, New Year's in the states generally blows. In the northern US you either go overpay by insane amounts to go to a bar and then wait for three hours for a cab back home or you go to a friend's house and it's...fine. ...