Living a Dream

Early in our travels, Jenna and I developed a theory called "follow the music." This simple plan was based on the idea that anytime we were in a public place and heard music (not just a crazy person humming to themselves), we should follow that music and see what was going on. The first time we tested this theory was in Brussels. We were in a big public park with tall hedge-rows and heard something through one of them. We ducked through a small opening and were surprised to see a small stage-area with 15 or so people singing to a group of about 70. We were delighted by the songs even if we didn't understand a single word of any of them, and when the group onstage started inviting audience members up to sing with them it became a real treat. The size of the choir doubled and everyone sang along as if they had all been part of this choir as kids. Thankfully we weren't invited up to sing. Anyway, it was a fun experience and gave us the lesson: If we hear people s...

When the situation calls for it, I am a mature person. I can talk comfortably about reproductive health, I can watch a movie with a sex scene and not make a joke, and I can look at nude statues and think nothing of it beyond art. Hell, my senior yearbook quote was about how maturity is just knowing when and where to be immature. I won't laugh when you fall down because you might be hurt and I absolutely do not laugh when an animal humps something because it's instinct and the animal can't help it. I believe you shouldn't laugh at something if the thing you're laughing at is helpless in the situation. But sometimes you find your limit. The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (abbreviated MANN in Italian) pushed me near my limit. See, Naples is home to brilliant and interesting historical artwork. With the nearby town of Pompeii buried under the ash of Mt. Vesuvius, tons of pristine artifacts which were rescued from Pompeii ended up in MANN. Some of these p...

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...

Not the one in Ohio - I probably would've thought the same thing. No, I'm talking about the one in Greece. However, upon exiting the plane in Greece I happened to notice a man wearing an Ohio State shirt who informed me that his daughter was currently in Athens, Ohio, as a student. On Dads weekend. What a guy, huh? Anyway, he also informed me that he was in town for the marathon, so we accidentally went to Athens on the weekend of the Athens Marathon. Oops. I won't waste much time talking about what the city of Athens represents, because a bajillion websites can do that better than I can, I'll just say that it was the starting point of basically everything that we still use today. They started things, then the Romans tweaked them to become slightly better, and then they pretty much haven't changed in thousands of years, except now the internet tells me that everything in the world is getting worse. So let's talk about 40 hours in Athens instead. First, w...

According to legend, if you visited Italy 20 years ago, you would have never heard of a place known as Cinque Terre National Park. Then some time in the early 2000s Rick Steves mentioned it as one of his favorite little places in Italy, and the tourist revolution was invigorated. Most likely, people had been visiting, but his endorsement tends to put things over the top. These days, it's one of THE stops on an Italian adventure. I can personally count almost a dozen people who've been there, and that's pretty weird considering it has no ancient ruins, no canals-for-streets, no Alps, and no world-renowned art. What it does have is all the majesty of the Italian Riviera: jagged rocky coastline, incredibly steep mountainsides starting at the shore, locally produced wine, tiny villages built into the rock-faces, hiking trails, and some of the best sunsets on Earth. Graham and I visited in late 2012 and it was the first place I've ever been where I thought "if I d...

One non-negotiable fact in my relationship with Jenna has been that some day we would have to go to Ireland. It's her dreamland. The majesty of the patchwork Irish countryside and the rocky coastlines and such - it's just been her dream to go there. I certainly didn't object. So when we realized that we'd be starting classes on Monday, the 22nd of September, we decided to book our last long-trip til Christmas - we'd go Wednesday to Ireland, and we'd come back really early Sunday morning. Flights were cheap, we could day-trip to the Cliffs of Moher, we'd spend a couple of days in Dublin, and then we'd rent a car and drive around on Saturday. Bulletproof. We arrived on Wednesday and began wandering Dublin. It was, shockingly, a pretty overcast day, so nothing looked quite as pretty as we'd hoped. We visited Trinity College and decided not to pay 10 euros to see the Book of Kells, watched a man feeding swans at St. Stephen's Green from his hands...

There's something to be said for a reputation. I know that, and I understand that. Michael Jordan is widely considered to be the best basketball player of all time - a claim which I won't dispute. He is a living god to the city of Chicago, and if you badmouth him in any way, locals will take it worse than if you'd said unkind things about their wives/mothers, etc. In Europe, when someone asks where we're from, Jenna answers Chicago, and if I answer, I say Cleveland via Chicago (or something like that). Invariably, everyone's response will mention one of two names: Barack Obama or Michael Jordan. But Jordan *much* more often than Obama. For the most part, I get it. He was the most dominant player for the better part of a decade. He was the face of the NBA. He starred alongside Bugs Bunny in one of cinema's greatest accomplishments. That's all true and inarguable. But there's a big part that I don't really get. For instance, I have a student of...

So yes, the plan was to just travel as much as we could before we knew our schedules. During the first couple of weeks there was a lot of emailing, interviewing, and finding out what we might be doing for work. It came slowly, and the stress of not knowing where we could work and what exactly we would be doing motivated us to take short breaks in the form of weekend trips. A quick Google-Flight search showed us round-trip airfare to Brussels for about 40 euros per person. Again, that's round-trip. So that's how we settled on Brussels, and we knew next to nothing about the city.. The first course of action was to peruse wikitravel, which told us some things to see and do. Second course was to ask a friend of mine who lived in Brussels for quite some time, and he gave us a suggestion of a place or two to eat. Some time around noon on September 14th, we flew over the Alps and discovered that this was going to be a whole year of unbelievable new things. Our flight lande...

Here's a slice of life from our time here in Milan: Anytime you walk down the street and see something and your first thought is "wait, that can't be..." you're wrong. It can, and it probably is. Lots of things happen in day-to-day life in cities that defy logic, but Milan is leading the charge and blowing four years in Chicago out of the water. Allow me to give you some examples. Wait, is that car parked on the sidewalk? Yes it is. Not only is it parked on the sidewalk, it's actually parked beside another car that's parallel parked a full four feet from the curb. Wait, is that guy smoking a joint as he walks past an elementary school? Yes he is. This happened in front of me last night on my way home from work. He was in his 40s or 50s and looked relatively put-together, so this wasn't a homeless man who had no respect for anything. Just a dude smokin a joint. Wait, does that person have a dog-poo bag in their pocket and they're just leavin...