"clear liquor and cloudy-eyed, too early to say goodnight"

I realize it has been an absurdly long time since I last updated this blog, and to any faithful readers I still have left out there--(that means you, Jeff, and Bri) I apologize. Traveling for a month will do that, and now that I've been back in Oxford for a proper week, I'm only now getting around to writing.

When I last left off (over a month ago, eek!) I had written about Paris and Nice. Here's the summation of the rest of my European travels around the Continent.

March 24th--Getting out of Nice was a shitshow, but I guess you can't win them all. Up at 5 am to make a 630 train back to Paris in order to make a 12 noon train to Geneva. Falling in the shower, bruising my tailbone literally black and blue. Paris was cold, windy, and a dust storm took over the gardens of the Louvre. What was pretty: our hostel, a 12th century monastery turned into 17th century aristocratic residence; Paris in the rain, the glow of the lamplights on wet street corners; stumbling upon Les Deux Magots; two hours in a cafe resting our legs, our alcove, the nuns in their habits, cherry blossoms, window shopping at Dior; hot chocolate and croissants.

You meet interesting people in these kinds of hostels: a photography student from Holland, two Americans studying at Bristol, a Zimbabewean soldier who works for Mugabe but also clears landmines. "What do you go to school for?" he asks me. "Writing," I say, and for some reason it sounds so privileged, so empty. Though of course it isn't. But I need to be doing something with it. It should be important. Not something frivolous. I need more life experience. I need stories to tell. "You don't talk much," he says. "I listen," I answered.

March 29--
Switzerland was: Annasy--a town that looked like Belle's village in Beauty and the Beast come to life. Amy's sprained ankle. Gelato, Italian schoolchildren, our first glimpse of the Alps. An impulse buy of a black wide brimmed sunhat like something out of Gigi. Perfect weather for two more days. Lakes bigger than anything I've ever seen. Wood oven pizza, Tuscany style. The Olympic museum. Hostel dinners; the most expensive drink I've ever ordered. The Old City of Geneva; jasmine tea; the view of the rooftops from the cathedral; a carousel playing the theme from Gone with the Wind; Dutch boys; Kazakh girls; a rowdy gang of British Punjabi guys in their late twenties who invite us to stay up and drink with them; three franc bottles of wine; Swiss chocolate; a cabaret. Orange cinnamon tea. Kim & Victoria. A stop over in a mostly deserted Zurich train station on our way to Italy. Crowded trains and old Italian men who help you with your bags.

Como is wet, cold, beautiful, in a Mediterranean sort of way. We've had almost perfect weather for two weeks, so I know I shouldn't complain, but I wish it had held out for us--it would have been gorgeous--these Italian villages dusted around the like, with the Alps in the background. Bellagio, the basilica, fishing boats, the massive villa. The cafe packed with bedraggled American tourists--the woman who just got her MFA from Bennington in poetry and teaches creative writing at community colleges in L.A, has spent a month traveling Italy, teaching writing in backwater German towns. Edits an online literary journal she gave me the name of and told me to submit to. A hot young waiter from Casablanca who spoke English, Arabic, French, Italian. The old Italian man who had lived in Bellagio all his life, who had, as Amy said, a certain je ne sais quoi. Who was part Uruguayan, who taught languages, who guessed our ages. Who passed a tourist guide into our hands, said of Bellagio, "This is my life," who told us to come back to Italy. The men who said "beautiful girl" as I walked past. A cozy hostel run by an Italian family with two little boys; they played board games every night in the common room. A Lebanese cook who flirts with the girls; postcards from all over the world on all the walls. People writing to keep in touch, to let them know--someone know--they were here. A guitarist from Holland who tours with the Dutch version of American Idol; the residudally stoned hippy nurse from Palm Beach who traveled the world; the art student from Wisconsin studying in Florence. So many people you meet when you travel. It feels like we left Oxford a long time ago--it seeems very far away right now.

April 3--
I miss...my mother. My brother. My own bed. Sharing a shower with four people instead of ten. Privacy. Personal space. Sleeping in. Sleeping through the night. Traveling is harder than I thought it would be. I'm grateful for all the opportunities it has presented but I'm sick of hostels, sick of making five, seven, twelve different agendas mesh. I want to go sit in a square and people watch for hours. Wander through musuems at a leisurely space. Strike off on my own but feel comfortable doing so. I think I'm probably just overtired.

April 5--
Italy was: the first moments of giddiness at seeing the canals of Venice; of feeling elation at actually being here, in this weirdly mythical city. Of it all being real. Winding streets where maps are useless and "you walk in the general direction of where you need to go." Anti-Bush graffitti scrawled on walls in the student quarter; paper machie masks and quill-tipped pens and rare manuscripts. Throngs of tourists; the Rialto bridge; an excursion to Murano and its glassblowers; a nap alongside a canal; gelato every night; a local Venetian restaurant and four bottles of wine; a Sarah Lawrence crowd--Amy, Fayyaz, Ashley, Matt, Molly; an orphanage of a youth hostel, in a rundown mansion with no heat, and a twenty five year old German chick and nineteen year old Mexican kid running the whole damn thing. A party every night; communal breakfasts; drinks mixed so strong I could only manage one. The Peggy Guggeinheim museum; San Marco square; gondoliers; so much surface glitter and "display only." Music, of course--as rich in that sense as Vienna is. Amazingly decadent, but without much of a pulse.

Rome was: Sun and piazzas; the Trevi fountain; the Pantheon and the Roman forum. Gelato all the time. Lazy park-filled Sunday afternoons. Crap limoncello, the Coliseum, Vatican City--the Sistine Chapel, School of Athens, the Swiss Guard. All that power is frightening--I'm not religious by nature, but even if I was, I don't think I'd find anything spiritual about that place. It's designed for intimidation; a show of wealth, not spirit. Sunsets on the Spanish steps; a search for the Medici villas, and, of course, the tremors of the earthquake. For some reason, I found the mix of the ancient and the cosmopolitan rather jarring; I enjoyed the feel of the city--that it did feel like a proper city--but I couldn't get past feeling as if I was in a stage set somehow; I wonder if Athens, equally ancient, would feel that way too. Maybe not, as their buildings were always designed for the aesthetic as well as the power. Rome cared more about power even then..

About this time I ceased writing in the hardback journal I brought with me, so lets see if I can conjure up Vienna, Prague, and Amsterdam from memory tomorrow. It will be back to regularly scheduled blog postings now. Really it will. None of this not-for-a-month nonesense! Yup.

Much love.