A letter about the world

Or: an untimely post after months of silence, but for good reason because of the high opportunity cost of using my time abroad to obsessively edit my posts as I can't help doing if I'm writing them (scribbling down incomplete sentences in my journal is much more efficient).

Please check out this audio letter I've recorded for a non-textual account of what I've been up to during the last six months. Put some headphones on, close your eyes, and imagine as hard as you can. Posts about places coming soon, I promise I've been writing them up!

Just north of familiar

I wake up every morning with a top bunk view of a wall-sized world map, certainly apt foreshadowing for what's coming in the next few months. It's been a few hours over a week since I've arrived in San Francisco, our program's point of departure.

It's a familiar place in my memories, from the early (playing Pokemon with my brother and cousin while out to dim sum with our family in Chinatown) to the mid (watching my uncle's house change colors from blue to yellow to pink over the years) to the late (Bi-Rite ice cream with friends from Brown at Dolores Park after a summer of separation). Now, there's more time to do San Francisco on my own terms: "Mission: Mission food" during lunch, running on humorously steep hills (this one literally has stairs on it?!), and seeing The Zombies (for free) at the Stern Grove Festival.

That is, when we're not in class or on a trip. It's been a while since I've had to follow this much of a schedule, and it does get a bit exhausting at times. We've had class, sessions to help us prep for processing and dealing with everything that's coming up, guest lecturers, and site visits. It's incredible hearing from people who are so knowledgeable and actively involved in issues that are infinitely more than just textbook content - issues that are of our problematic reality. I've already learned so much about communities, politics (and how I'll never, ever get involved with them), and how implicit philosophies play out in our relationship to the environment.

The privilege of travel has been on my mind, since the beginning of the summer and especially now again after discussing it in class today. This trip and all my Euro-hopping are things that are completely unimaginable for the majority of the global population. I ask myself, why should I be able to do any of this? Why do I have access to so many resources when too many have so little? What's the opportunity cost of these travels in time to devote to others, money for resources to those without, in carbon emissions from the sheer transportation aspect of it? Sure, I'm going to learn as much as I can about a critical global issue. But no matter how I think about it, I can't give myself an answer that I can feel anything even close to 100% good about when it comes down to it.

But as we discussed, guilt is only good for about five seconds. This in mind, I'll do all I can to give back when I am able. I hope that my life's work will do some good for someone. That I can make someone else's burden lighter, for my burdens weigh so little and I have hands to lend.

On a completely different note, it's been interesting going into this after four semesters of primarily math/economics/computer science coursework and a shameful lack of more liberal artsy classes. I can already see how that background's pushing me to ask so what's the answer? Where's that best solution? even when the answer is clearly not simple enough to be easily stated. I catch myself filing information away in terms of inputs, outputs, externalities, and cross elasticity effects (my environmental economics professor would be proud). I'm definitely enjoying this change of pace, though, and how much I'm adding to and questioning my viewpoints on things from the definition of wilderness to the commodification of natural resources.

The fact that I'm not writing about this until the end definitely reflects upon my tendency to float off into my own mental world, but I must wholeheartedly say that the people around me on this program are particularly wonderful and thoughtful. I haven't made this many friends in such a short period of time since freshman orientation. Here's to getting to know each other intensely through the highs and lows to come!

Oh, and I'm in love with San Francisco. We're childhood friends, but I feel like our relationship has really blossomed into something new over the last week. Yeah, I'm probably moving too fast, but I'm guilty of fantasizing about our future together.

More to come, including pictures which I've been lax about!

Sea change

Now that there's some distance between me and the last few months in Europe, it feels a little like a dream. And when I have a good dream that I don't want to forget, I think of and write down as much of it as possible. I've found myself doing things like looking up recipes for potica and translating familiar but formerly incomprehensible words (though I definitely guessed "sadje in zelenjava" correctly, it wasn't difficult in context). I'm retracing memories of sitting on church steps and riding bikes. Post-trip withdrawal, I guess? If this desire to read travel blogs persists, though, I might have to take it as a symptom of the travel bug...

But I'm happy to be home. 

Cement Ship at Seacliff Beach, Aptos

Home is beautiful and full of lovely people and memories. I've mentioned to several friends over the last few days that I hope to move back to the Bay Area after graduation if possible, ideally San Francisco. It's such a special corner of the world, and I'd easily be able to drop by Santa Cruz to see my parents on any given weekend, something that has become more important to me after being away for so long. Not to mention that most of my friends will probably be around as well, both from high school and college.

Steps, of which there are sometimes too many.

I'm so tired and finally taking the time to loaf around now, after three days of going around town and out of town seeing friends and family from almost the moment I got back. I'm sore from running and carrying huge bags, bruised from train steps and doorknobs, and jet lagged from a nine-hour time difference. I think some sitting in bed while drinking tea and watching movies is in order.

A week and a half, though, and I'll have to hit the ground running again for the fall semester, which promises to be even more adventurous than the last two months. In the meantime, I'll be repacking my bag, attempting to learn some rudimentary Vietnamese and Arabic, and finding every possible way of keeping mosquitos off of my body.

I'm so thankful for everything in my life right now, and that I'm in the position of being able to sit here and write these words about these parts of the past and future.

On that note, I'll end this with a link to the Humans of New York page, because Brandon has been out on a world tour sponsored by the UN and posting some of the most meaningful photos I've ever seen, so far of children playing and teenagers dreaming and people just being people in Iraq, not members of a war-torn country made nameless and faceless by the media. Whether closer or farther away on this earth, we're all just neighbors, aren't we? Thank you for bringing this fact to our attention.

Time soon to meet the neighbors...

Iceland: thinking of beginnings from the end

SKYR LOVE IS TRUE LOVE

I'm starting this post on hour 6 of 11 at Keflavík Airport on my 57-hour return trip home (with 30-hours of layover goodness). I guess this is the time to transition, between time zones, places, and states of mind.

Sleeping on top of lumpy backpack is really uncomfortable. I won't be able to listen to Of Monsters and Men for a while after hearing the same sample from "Mountain Sound" play once every 10 minutes as part of a tourism ad on a monitor right above my sleeping settlement. I'm being tempted by all of the wonderfully licorice-y Icelandic candies being sold on the other side of this atrium. There are pastries baking behind me and that is also tempting, especially since they seem to be wafting the smell right at me.

I've been considering walking to Keflavík proper, but it's cold outside, a 45-minute endeavor each way, and I'm carrying about 40 pounds of stuff that I have to take with me via non-backpacker backpack and tote bag. It feels like time wasted, but then again it's 5 in the morning and I've hardly slept for the last day and a half, so I'll let the inertia slide this time.

Tjörnin, Reykjavík

Being here in this airport harkens back not only to the beginning of this trip, but to my first real self-determined travel experience as well, back at the beginning of the summer between high school and college when I came to Iceland with my friend Katie. For a lot of reasons, it was a travel experience that's hard to rival for a number of reasons. Anyone who knows me well has probably heard me talk about my love for Iceland at some point; this trip was taken around the height of my obsession, after I had spent two years learning all sorts of things about the country. I knew the majority of the CDs in every record store we went to in Reykjavík. I learned how to pronounce the alphabet and practiced by reading signs everywhere we went ("Neyðarutgangurinn"? No problem! Or you might say...no emergency). I asked people to teach me words, and greeted everyone in Icelandic (my vocabulary consists of basic travel phrases, obscure words from song lyrics, and the tiniest bit of grammar picked up from a month-long attempt to actively learn the language). I had read endlessly about all the places we were going, and could spout a ridiculous number of facts about things like huldafolk and rímur.

And if that wasn’t enough, this was the first time I’d tasted independence like this: all day every day for that entire week, we would do whatever we wanted, and if you couldn't tell from the paragraph above, there was a lot that was wanted. The possibilities were endless, and much sleep was sacrificed in order to cram them all in.

That week was also a turning point in realizing that the world is actually a much friendlier place. And it sounds silly to say, but that strangers were less likely to be sources of stranger danger and more likely to become friends. I'll qualify this by drawing attention to the fact that we were in Iceland, an extremely safe country with one of the highest standards of living in the world, but still, people are people no matter where they are and there's goodwill somewhere no matter wherever you go. We made so many friends in so many random ways, and sometimes I wonder what these people that I'll likely never meet again (minus a few, and to one in particular if you're reading this you know who you are and I'll come to a music festival with you someday, I promise) are up to now. All of them helped me along my way to being friendlier and more sociable after years of keeping up my status quo as a quiet person - high school was over, and this trip was the beginning of a change.

This is still one of my favorite photos ever.

Speaking of communication, I thought about language while sitting next to a three-year-old Icelandic boy on the plane over from Amsterdam. I've heard it mentioned by people time and time again and it's always amusingly relatable: "Whenever I hear children speaking foreign languages, I'm always so impressed at how fluent they are! And then I think about it."

Language is a signal of belonging. After spending two months with little more than "dober dan"s and "grazie"s before resorting back to English (and feeling lucky that I grew up fluent in the language that the rest of the world has decided to learn), I've become very aware of this. It's the most outward and obvious reason that I don't really belong in any of the places that I've been to lately. Nothing says, “I’m trying to connect to you” like speaking someone’s language, especially when it’s unexpected that you can. Being able to communicate with someone with the words that they think and dream in is a whole different world from engaging them in their second or other language. I try and use Spanish whenever I meet a native speaker for that reason – people never expect to hear it coming out of an Asian girl’s mouth (the opposite of that surprise effect occurs, however, when I try and speak Chinese, which I speak more poorly than Spanish. No surprise points there).

If the right combination of time and motivation ever hits me, I’m going to make an effort to learn Icelandic. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s one of the more rarely spoken languages in the world. In my world, it’s spoken frequently enough. It’d be a way of solidifying that meaningful connection to this place that’s been so peculiarly important to my life and who I am.

While traveling, going around and seeing sights isn't the most important thing to me. Trying to internalize thoughts like these while trying to understand this world, is.

Reykjanes Peninsula from the sky

Postcards from Slovenia

Some snapshots of a day out with the others from work.

Castle in a cave, Predjamski grad

Merbuisiness

Italy on the left, Croatia on the right...

Piran in the afternoon

You can get to Trieste or Venice from the harbor.

Slovenija je super

I hate to use the tour guide phrases that seem to get stuck in my head all the time despite never going on guided tours throughout this entire summer, but Slovenia deserves the title of hidden gem.

Quick, where is Slovenia on a map of Europe? 

If you knew where to look without searching, I applaud you for being infinitely more knowledgeable about it than I was a few months ago, when I first found out I'd be coming here for the summer. Here's a quick guide that my bosses sent me when they realized they wouldn't be at their former office in Munich anymore by the time I got there, anticipating that I wouldn't even be able to find it on a map, and another article as supplemental encouragement of its awesomeness a little later on. And it is not Slovakia.

"Due to name confusion, staff of the Slovak and Slovenian embassies meet once a month to exchange wrongly addressed mail."

I'm a huge fan of the Slovenian flag, which is superbly naturey. The coat of arms shows Mt. Triglav (TREE-glau), the country's highest peak (which I unfortunately didn't find the time to climb, "you're not a true Slovene until you climb Mt. Triglav"), some six-pointed stars from the coat of arms of a 14-15th century dynastic house, and wavy lines representing the Adriatic Sea (which I did swim in).

The country itself is certainly naturey: driving or taking a train through the countryside, you see that the majority of it is mountains, forests, rivers, and fields. You could pretty much take a photo of any part of the countryside and turn it into a postcard, it's so picturesque. Like seriously, look at this casual snap from the train window. And there isn't even a river in this shot.

And then you have the cities. Ljubljana (like the rest of the country) is relatively small, with a population of about 300,000 (roughly the population of Iceland, which of course is the first metric to pop in my mind), but jam-packed with things that make it wonderful and livable like awesome public transportation, tons of festivals throughout the year, a castle, a huge park/mountainous hills 5 minutes from my doorstep, miles of cafes along the Ljubljanica River (which runs through the city center), and the recurring motif of dragons.

Some flavors of Ljubljana for your enjoyment:

It pretty much matches my ideal conception of "quaint old European town".

Metelkova, art commune.

Any day is a perfect cafe day. Much of its cafe culture came from its northern neighbor, Austria.

People seem to like their pink churches. One in the center and one on a hill by Tivoli Park.

Everyone here seems to be incredibly friendly and polite...and multilingual. One of the guys at work speaks six languages, what. And I can't think of a single time when I felt unsafe or threatened throughout my entire two months here - I'm more comfortable walking by myself at any hour here than I ever am at home. Slovenians also seem to be super active - regardless of when I go out, there are always people going on walks with their pets and/or kids, roller blading (it's such a big thing here), biking, or jogging. Guess you've got to enjoy the awesome nature and Mediterranean summer.

Speaking now from my last day in Slovenia, I can definitely say I'll miss this lovely little country, and am super grateful that I got the chance to get to know it. Adijo, Slovenija! Until we meet again.

Wien, before and after sunrises

Preface: I am a huge fan of both classical music and the movie Before Sunrise. Thus I was already very predisposed to liking Vienna before verifying that I actually did. Which I definitely did.

The Opera House, which was unfortunately closed for all of July and August. But if you go about 90 minutes before shows when it's open, you can get standing tickets for only a few euro!

There are a lot of sprawling open spaces punctuated by statues or carpeted in lush gardens, but there are also long streets lined with shops and restaurants, a bit wide and not so crowded. Windows that are consistently grand, always orderly and ornamental. The rush of wind before the subway arrives, the personality of each station, watching people watch people from across fountains at Museumsquartier, thousands out at Karlsplatz to hear some free Viennese pop (Effi!). Red trams dinging for you to get out of their way and ornate hotels named after famous musical names. The new and living amongst reminders of Vienna's grand past.

To anyone who likes music in any shape or form, I highly recommend going to Haus der Musik, a museum where you can learn not only about the famous composers that have made the city such a capital of the arts, but also about the phenomenon of sound itself - and in a very interactive way, involving singing into microphones that turn your voice into frogs and sticking your head into compartments that surround you with the sound of Beijing, Venice, or interstellar space.

Pictured to the left is a door to one of the dozens of apartments that Beethoven, who was apparently a horrible tenant, resided in during his time in Vienna. You can see all sorts of other stuff that makes me giddy with the happiness of being near things that belonged to famous people, like Strauss' baton and Mozart's first compositions.

Of course I had to walk around and find some of the landmarks that Jesse and Céline visited in Before Sunrise, a movie that was coincidentally perfect to watch right before leaving for Europe (it's very conductive to daydreaming about cinematically romantic situations on trains).

This cafe is from the night scene with the fortune teller, if that means anything to you.

Thus we ended our first day at the historic Prater amusement park. Though we didn't go on the red ferris wheel because it was ridiculously expensive, we did go on this lovely spinning swing thing for an unbeatable view of the city. I had my moment of thinking "you know, I could imagine myself living here - if only I spoke German" while way up in the sky. It's hard to say why, but it involves some combination of its musicality, tidiness, great public transportation, and my affinity (despite the lack of understanding of) for the German language.

This lovely experience was followed by smacking our faces into walls in a glass maze. Always a good end to any day.

Before catching the train on Sunday, we made it over to Schönbrunn Palace, just about 20 minutes away from Wien Westbanhof. It was the summer residence of the Hapsburg monarchs, who apparently needed a different palace for every season. There are miles of impressively well-kept gardens, which I now oddly associate with Garrison Keillor after catching up on episodes of A Prairie Home Companion while strolling through them. Definitely a strange pairing, imperial gardens and stories about small-town Minnesotan folks - but not a bad one.

And there, another magnificent view of the city.

There are some faraway places I've been that I get the sense I'll see again. Who knows when that next time'll be, but Vienna is one of them.