To start us off...

An exceptional piece of food writing, taken from a foodie magazine called The Lucky Peach. It just struck me; I think it's beautiful in its whimsy. In the article, the Texas-born author was reminiscing about the foods he makes sure to eat whenever he heads home:

"6. Peanut Patties, which are sometimes called peanut rounders. They are shockingly pink peanut-imbued sugar monstrosities shaped like flattened universes. They are getting harder to find. They are going extinct. The world is darkening. The fairies are getting weak."

Brilliant. And, in case you are curious, I found an image of these elusive Peanut Patties. They are appropriately repulsive, and appropriately Texan.

Google Rules

Two books on my nightstand right now, 1 purely for fun and 1 mostly for personal development: World War Z, and How Google Works. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

I interviewed with Google about a year and a half ago, and that whole process (mostly my research and intense interview prep, since I only had the first round interview. I was massively under qualified and too fresh from school to be impressive) made me a bit obsessed with that company. Many current Google employees actually interviewed several times before landing a job, and I'll give it to you straight--I intend to be one of those people. With this future goal in mind, I've taken out some library books on the subject of Google, and so far I've been working on Google Works, by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (Google's executive chairman and Larry Page's advisor, respectively).

Their intelligence rings clear in their writing, and I especially appreciate the snide remarks and humorous insertions, which are pretty abundant, actually. But I have also learned a lot about both sides of the employment equation--what it means to start and run a successful company, and what it means to work at one. The chapter on hiring, in particular, speaks to me and my life right now:

In one section advising business leaders to "Hire learning animals," Rosenberg and Schmidt advise managers to "hire them not for the knowledge they possess, but for the things they don't yet know."

They continue, "Most people, when they are hiring for a role, look for people who have excelled in that role before. This is not how you find a learning animal."

I should make copies of this section of the book and give it out to all potential employers, along with my resume before interviewing. This is exactly my problem right now; I know that I am smart and versatile, and despite the narrowness of my official expertise, my past education/experiences actually cloud the truth: I can do just about anything! I have been thrown into sink-or-swim job situations before, and even if I doggie-paddled my way to success, I ultimately killed it.

Should these guys start a petition to reinstitute the old way of interviewing, I'll sign:

"Judging character during the interview process used to be fairly easy, since job interviews often included lunch or dinner at a restaurant and perhaps a drink or two, Mad Men style...What happens when he lets his guard down? How does he treat the waiter and bartender? Great people treat others well, regardless of standing or sobriety."

In all honesty, though, I think the lunch environment would be a good way to do it. In some ways, it would be super challenging because there is more room for error and more opportunity for casual conversation (or the alternative, awkward silences...), but I also think it is important to see how people order and how people interact in a restaurant environment. Quick server rant: WE ARE PEOPLE. To borrow another Google adage, "Don't be evil."

And so it ends! (For now).

I'm currently sitting in CDG Airport in Paris, watching Friends Trip--perhaps the worst French tele-reality series in the world, but also clearly the best--and awaiting my flight. It's just another plane, like the billion others I have taken this year, with a couple key differences: 1) It's not RyanAir. 2) It's taking me HOME.

Tonight, when I finally stop fighting the jetlag and lay me down to sleep, it will be in my own bed, at home in Washington DC. Cuddling my cat; I missed that little bugger. All in all, it's a mind-bending thought, although I know that as soon as I'm home, novelty will wear off within five minutes, to be replaced by simple comfort. (And, within a couple days, the yearning to go abroad again).

Friends at home, look out! I'm comin' in hard 4 hugz.

*This post has no photos, because I have broken all my phones this year. Mean streets of Europe strike back.*

Again and again...Italy

So I recently listed all the cities in Italy that I've visited, and I was shocked.

Verona, Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence, Padova, Genova, Cinque Terre, Napoli, Modena, Bologna, Palermo, Torino, Soave, Sanremo, Imperia, Pisa, Prato, Siena, San Gimignano, Assisi, Sorrento...well I may have missed one or two but you get the picture.

I still have tons of places to see--though I don't think I can accomplish any more this time around, considering that I leave in a matter of days! Italy pulls me back time and time again. I know that you can never really tick off a box after visiting a country as if to say, "Done! Don't need to go back there." But it's getting a bit ridiculous how often I try to sneak back to Italy, as I have managed to do thanks to Workaway and one extremely generous (and adorable) Italian family.

Workaway is a site that allows you to find and contact various Workawayers all over the world, and you provide whatever services they require in return for shelter! A lot of it is farm-y, manual labor type stuff, like working vineyards or family farms, but there's a fair bit of kids who need looking after in this world, too. After searching the listings for months, I found a family whose schedule worked with mine, and they extended an invitation for me to come to Soave, Italy! I had to Google it, but perhaps if you're a wine connoisseur (wow that was hard to spell) you already know it, as the city shares the same name as a famous white wine that comes from the area. Just outside of Verona, Soave is a little medieval village nestled in rolling green hills. It has amazingly-preserved walls all around it, and the castle standing sentry atop the hill is in great condition (in fact, it's one of the best in the Veneto region, which I discovered when I finally got to visit the interior this past week).

So in this final stretch in Europe, I've been living with the lovely parents (Ludo and Matteo) and their 2 beautiful girls (Lavinia, 2, and Matilde, 7) in Soave. I try to help out around the house a bit, and I'm an extra hand with the kids, but since they have 2 great sets of grandparents, there's actually not a whole ton of work for me to do! I do lots of roaming, however, in and around Verona. The Veneto region is in pretty fierce competition with Tuscany in this Beauty Contest, if you ask me.

SOAVE

VERONA

The Adige River and the Ponte Pietra, as seen from Castel San Pietro

Veronese rooftops

Verona as seen from the Santuario Madonna di Lourdes, which apparently a lot of tourists neglect to visit (according to Cesare, the most beautiful Italian boy I have ever seen in my life, whom I met last night in a foccacia shop...where I ended up sitting for like two hours, if only to look at his face some more). But it was stunning! 

No wonder Romeo and Juliet had a thing. This place is painfully romantic. (Well, painful probably just because I'm here alone. Cesare, where you at?!)

 LA MIA FAMIGLIA ITALIANA

The little nuggetinos: Matilde strikes a pose while Lavinia...dances?

Matteo, hard at work making gelato for the bar! 

Ludo and Gaia (the dog) chilling during our family picnic near Lake Garda

 Life in Italy: The Pros. I've been working on a little list of things that I love here, trying to work out what I love so much about the country and its people. Here's what I got so far:

1. Little kid repetition is way cuter in Italian than in American. (NOTE: After spending more time abroad this year and making so many friends and acquaintances from the U.K. and other Anglophone countries, I more and more see the need to differentiate between American English and other varieties). “Ancora!”, or “again”, comes after anything you do that is even the slightest bit amusing. Often, it’s lifting the child in some playful fashion, and after a chorus of ancora’s, you’ll find that your arms hate you a little bit. “Diamo care!” which actually means “andiamo giocare,” aka Let’s go play! This one usually comes around 8 AM, and whether you like it or not, it’s playtime, punk. 

2. Gesticulating is not a way of communicating. It’s a way of life. I think of the dinner during which Matteo, deep in conversation with his father, unintentionally threw his pizza crust into the salad—then used the offending hand to gesture frustratedly over what he had just done. 

 3. Eating quickly and vivaciously is apparently the only way to eat. Even the kids get into it: I’ve seen my little nuggetinos eat—enthusiastically—loads of cured meats (practically had to fight off a 2-year old to get to the speck) and fancy salamis, stuff undressed rucola into their tiny mouths, reach for a slab of runny Gorgonzola, and fight a parent for slices of purple cabbage. None of that “plain buttered noodles please” nonsense for these kiddos. In Italy, the little ones inhale stuff that I didn't even consider until my second decade on Earth. (Granted, this was largely due to lack of contact with some of this stuff, but Dog Gambit, I live in the capital of arguably the most powerful country in the world! Why do I have so much trouble finding some passable Prosciutto!?). 

4. The price of wine is still a shock to my system. My first instinct is to drop to my knees and praise Bacchus or whatever deity brought me this gift. My second is to treat said gift as if it may disappear at any minute, grabbing as many bottles as possible and taking home to care for them and love them…until the last drop. 2 euros for a sound bottle of wine; 60 cents for a glass in a respectable neighborhood bar. (My advice? Follow the youths. The students—my fellow cash-strapped winos—know where to go). It’s unreal. The hangover, however, is very, very real.    

Ciao for nao. Hoping to have a post about my side trips soon, but we'll see if that gets done before I leave Italy! I remember writing posts about France long after my return to the States, trying frantically to catch up on my blog, and it was a little depressing. I'll do my best to avoid the "posthumous posting" this time around (sorry that phrasing is so morbid, I just couldn't think of another way to put it). 

THIRTY-EIGHT (Idle Time in Italy)

Though my trip with Jared--my last bout of bouncing around before "settling" in Italy, where I am now in my final stretch with a beautiful Italian family near Verona--began and end in Paris (see previous post; "SEVENTEEN"), there was some time spent in Italy as well. We mocked ourselves for essentially just repeating the style of trip we did two years ago in 2013: a week in France and a week in Italy. In our defense, Paris was the only repeat city!

This time around, we hit:
France- Paris, Digne, Aix, Cannes, Nice
Italy- Genova, Rome, Napoli

1. Genova. Genova was chosen largely because we were able to get there fairly easily by train from Nice (Nizza in italiano, I love that), and we found a cheap flight to Napoli from there. Lucky for us, we also found an amazing Couchsurfer to host us. Alfredo was just an all-around cool dude, very smart and funny, and so generous with his time, his home, his food, and his city knowledge (which was impressive!). Jared and I couldn't get over the extent to which we lucked out in finding Alfredo. He was a poet and he didn't know it, but he was also a great friend to make.

I think I was considerably more excited about the fact that pesto sauce comes from Genova (hence, pesto alle genovese) but did you know that apparently Christopher Columbus hailed from there as well? The building below...is like something that has to do with him. Maybe his house? I donno--where is Alfredo when you need him!?

Ah, here he is. Droppin' knowledge bombs on Jared, LIKE A BO$$.

This is the baller view from Alfredo's house. Epitomizes the world "villa," don't you think?

2. Napoli. Napoli was the great thing that almost wasn't. Originally, when we decided to do Italy (in planning the trip, South of France was the sure thing, but we were considering tacking on Spain), I was pretty vocal about having my heart set on Napoli. For whatever reason (read: pizza), it has been a city on my list for a few years now, ever since I really started dreaming up trips with some inkling that they could really happen. Later, I backed off as it started to seem unrealistic to get from Nice all the way down to Naples, then 2.5 hours North to Rome in time for our flight back to Paris, all in a matter of days. 

If not for the persistence/optimism of my traveling companion, who seemed to pick up on how much I wanted to go (and who wanted to go, as well), I don't think it would've happened. So I am so thankful for him, because we found a flight to Napoli from Genova for about 50 euro, and I got to see an Italian city unlike any other I've visited. Naples is like it's own little world apart from the rest of Italy; the closest Italian city I could compare it to would be Palermo, in Sicily, which has a similar grungy-ness. Naples is just doin' its own thing. It is laid back and chaotic, beautiful and ugly, young and old, all at once. It's certainly colorful, and diverse both in population but also in all that it offers: visits to Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Sorrento, the ocean--there's so much within reach! 

"This year will be legendary." If Napoli says so, I'm inclined to believe it. Considering that I rang in 2015 in Berlin and am currently writing a post on traveling Italy, I'd say the prediction has certainly held true thus far. I feel very, very lucky. 

We visited Herculaneum instead of Pompeii, in the interest of time. It's smaller and less-visited, but ultimately in better shape. It took us a few hours to see everything there was to see, but it was so worth it. We even saw skeletons, which drove home the fact that people really lived there perhaps a bit more than the remains of frescoes and murals on the walls. 

We stayed in the amazing Six Small Rooms Hostel, which has a great location and a lovely small staff (internationals who work at the hostel in exchange for a bed, mostly) who are more than willing to help you out and make personal recommendations. One American chick who welcomed us, Anne, actually helped me plan our entire itinerary for our limited time in the city! It was ABSOLUTELY NOT a party hostel--as the name suggests, it is cozy and fosters a feeling of community in an almost familial way. It is not the place to stumble home drunk at 5 AM--in fact, there's a midnight lock-up (though no fear, you can get keys from the front desk, so we managed to experience the nightlife a bit). But I've never stayed in a hostel with such a warm, home-y atmosphere (that's a lie, Mosquito Hostel in Krakow was like a home away from home; I never wanted to leave). But it's rare. I'll stop now, but we loved it. I want to live in Napoli--preferably there. I'm thinking a couple of months would do me--maybe in 2016, so that year can be legendary too.

And I'm deadly serious about wanting to live there, for many reasons. I felt myself falling in love with the city alarmingly quickly. The chaos is just shy of overwhelming, and the grunge factor is mixed in with so much color, so much life, that I just relished it. It felt like the people there were exactly the stereotypical image I had in my mind's eye when asked to conjure up "an Italian." The language is spoken loudly, quickly, and with abundant hand gestures. There are markets in the streets and stalls fighting for space amid stores whose wares seem to be spilling forth out onto the uneven stones, and old ladies dragging their purchases behind them do battle with loud, smelly motos. It's great. (I'm mostly on the sideline trying to avoid death-by-car, eat a quickly-melting gelato, and take a picture all at once).

But let's be real, I could also stay just for the pizza.

Dinner on night #1, at Di Matteo, where we split a bottle of wine, a bottle of water, a plate of fritti misti, and 2 pizzas...for 20 euro. Unreal. That's the other beautiful thing I forgot to mention: Napoli is cheap. It's fantastic. 

The cheapness extends to the nightlife, which is unlike anything I've ever experienced, but should be adopted by all countries&cultures. Bars are rendered moot, replaced instead by bar-like shops where you get super cheap drinks (my delicious German beer was 1 euro a bottle!) and stand outside in the piazzas, lounging against stone fountains and church steps, making random friends and enjoying the nice summer nights. 

3. Rome. The upside to being an extremely lucky human with a couple of generous, well-educated and well-traveled parents is that even at a young age, I had already visited quite a few places. The downside? My appreciation was limited, and so are my memories. So when I say that I had been to Rome 3x before this trip, it can't mean much. Certain places, like the Vatican-area (see below), looked like postcards pulled from a box inside my head, I remembered them so clearly. But most things, and certainly the general vibes of cities, are lost to time. 

Still, I was reluctant to return to Rome, since I didn't remember loving it, and I have found that most people have a strong love or hate relationship with the place, and the binary is strict. It was a Jared pick, but RyanAir took his side, and so we went to Rome. 

I'm so glad. 

It was overwhelming in some ways, like in the seemingly constant presence of hordes of other tourists, and in the overloaded column of things falling under Sights to See. We had only two nights there, which was not enough and which forced us to run around all day and wake up way too early every morning, but we still had a great time. Lots of walking, lots of waiting in line (NEVER AGAIN WILL I GO TO THE VATICAN MUSEUMS, THAT IS MY SOLEMN VOW--Jared, if you're reading this, that was for you kiddo. But NEVER again). But it was beautiful, it was lively, it was so fun to explore--and there were so many neighborhoods off the beaten track that merited a visit. I want to go back again and spend time in those places, now that I've refreshed my Swiss cheese memory. 

Praying to the Gods of queues--MAKE IT GO FASTER

This night was magic. This is our friend Patrizia, in her son's restaurant, where she runs the game. She is wearing my necklace, which she complimented, so I gave it to her. (Want to know how to become instant best friends with a sweet Italian lady? That's how). Little experiences like that set Rome apart for us--it wasn't just jostling tourists and pounding the pavement, throwing elbows to get a good picture of Some Old Thing. It was a beautiful place, where real people live and authentic kindnesses and interactions occur. You just have to wander a bit, maybe...say, to Bistrot San Lorenzo!

SEVENTEEN (Frolicking in France)

Alternate title for this post: When Everything that Could go Wrong, Did go Wrong, and it was Beautiful.

There’s no such thing as a perfect trip to Paris, however romanticized in gold-tinged Sepia tones, eau de toilette’d and otherwise unblemished the city may be in the minds of most Americans—especially (unsurprisingly) those who haven’t yet been. Don’t get me wrong; I am a firm believer in the magic of Paris. That place is so magical, it’s bout fit to burst—ask anyone who has seen the sunset Seine-side from where the île de Saint-Louis drops down to the river, only to climb back up the stone steps after darkness has fallen, crossed the little bridge, and been smacked in the face by the glory of Notre Dame by night. The church is otherworldly at night, once the tourist-hawks’ shops have shuttered, the tourists themselves have gone to their too-small (the website threw around adjectives like “cozy” and “quaint” with abandon, a gilded veneer of the truth: “so small you’ll hate your spouse within 2 days and your kids long before that—p.s. luggage not recommended if you plan on actually sleeping within the confines of the cage, excusez-moi, room) chambres d’hôtel, and the fairy lights have come to life. Ask those who have ventured further on their nightwalk, temporarily occupying a nook on the Pont Neuf to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkling against the dark sky—glittering with less permanence, but more power, than all the multi-faceted gems in the windows at Cartier, that oversized jewel box perched on the Champs-Élysées. Lasting only a handful of minutes, those sparkles—when you finally manage to catch them, running up the stairs of the metro to do so, glancing at your watch and cursing the 6 minute wait for the train—inevitably cause a sharp intake of breath, and then nearly no movement at all until they are gone just as quickly as they came. 

But, like any big city, Paris ain’t no postcard. Behind that pretty exterior hide all the evils of any major metropolis; I’d argue that for some reason, these evils are exacerbated in Paris. The place has a tendency to chew you up and spit you out (perhaps because it knows you’ll always come crawling back?). I’ve certainly been used and abused a time or two…or ten. A particularly painful memory comes to the forefront of my mind, however, involving a severe lack of sleep, two enormous suitcases, a slew of judgmental looks, and my public weeping outside the train station after one of the longest days of my life—but I just keep going back. And every time I do, I feel a rush of comfort, the kind that only comes from returning home after a long time away. The bad times happen, but they happen in PARIS, and that’s the beauty of it. 

So it’s with a sort of rueful, self-deprecating nostalgia that I look back on my most recent stint in the City of Lights (and Darks), which went comically wrong. (Admittedly, the vast majority of the misfortune fell upon my dear Punky, and though I wished it upon myself time and time again, Paris had other plans). I’m going to step carefully around the trouble we had on our trip—maybe it is too soon for it to be comical, I suppose—to get to the point: it was amazing. Never in my life could I have dreamt that we would have a reunion after all that time and under the circumstances, and certainly not one so epic. I use that word in all seriousness; it was really and truly one for the record books.

And where did it begin, and where did it end?

Paris. 

One of our other little nagging problems on the trip was our physical inability to see the sunset. It was the one thing I wanted to do every single day, and for whatever reason, we simply could not get our act together to see it happen! But from night #1, we tried, first on the hill of Montmartre, at the feel of the majestic Sacre Coeur.

Crêpes helped. With all problems. Always.

Picnics too.

We followed the sunshine and headed South, to see my new stomping grounds. That meant lots of hikes and picnics in and around Aix-en-Provence, one wild night in Nice, and even a day trip to my hamlet, D-les-B.

Le Barrage de Bimont, aka a really big dam at the foot of Mt. St Victoire. Hehe, I almost put an n on the end of dam. Guess which word I use more frequently?

Cezanne's mountain, in the...stone

Café au lait & un croissant au chocolat for breakfast--parts of la vie française that are easy to adopt, non?

Conquering the mountain in Digne...

and in Aix. This one was considerably tougher, due to the constant gusts of wind battering us against death-defying cliffs. No big deal.

The view from La Croix de Provence was worth it!

Oh I forgot! We popped by Cannes for the afternoon on the way to Nice, mostly because the film festival was going on and we wanted to see the scene. Didn't see much except for other gawkers, but it was pretty exciting. Also, I got to swim in the Mediterranean! Cannes>Nice on that score, since the beaches there are sand, not rocks.

See for yourself.

But Nice is pretty Nice too! (Apologies. Couldn't help myself). 

The fountains on the big square in Nice; our hostel (Villa Saint Exupery Beach Hostel) was amazing and just around the corner. We were only there for one night, so we scooped up a bunch of people in our dorm and went out together. It was highly successful--9 people in a 10 bed dorm all on a wine-fueled adventure :)

MORAL OF THE STORY: But like, Paris doe. 

Post-Tapif Tour Comes to an End!

God this is taking me forever, but here is the final piece, I promise!

Finished off my solo-dolo ramblings in Vienna and finally Budapest, and loved every minute of both, up until my Adventure for 1 ended on May 11 with the arrival of a special guest (but I will get to that). In Vienna, I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I didn't have the highest hopes--I expected a very cold, very imperial city, and while it is some of those things, it's not cold. There's a lot of life. It is expensive, but all you have to do is avoid falling into the trap of old beautiful cafés calling you in for an afternoon coffee-and-cake break (although it seemed to be all that anyone else was doing; I suppose it's easier for me to resist because I can't eat a sachertorte anyway, since it's a chocobomb) and maybe limit your palace visits to one. That's what I did, anyway, only paying for the Royal apartments at the Hofburg Palace, which were beautiful, and later strolling through the grounds (the free parts, anyway) of the summer palace, Schonbrunn.  

Check out some of the highlights of Vienna--which I will forever imagine in its true spelling, Wien, thanks to some initial confusion at the ticket office...

Lots of Art Nouveau decor/architecture spattering the city, which I loved. If I remember correctly, these façades were spotted near the Naschmarkt, the great big food market and the "belly of Vienna." I recommend Dr. Falafel--try their pomegranate wine!

Vienna at sunset, seen from the U-bahn stop Schwedenplatz. Coincidentally, this is where my boat dropped me off when I first arrived, coming from Bratislava. DID I MENTION I TOOK A BOAT?! The excitement has yet to fade. 

Hehe. Statue butt. 

Schönbrunn Palace and Gardens, the royal family's summer getaway.  

This was one of my best finds, a beach bar within the city itself, a little sandy oasis in the concrete jungle, where I dug my toes in the sand, sipped a big ol' bottle of Ottakringer Radler (not so much beer as lemonade, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm super into their beers. It's the last remaining brewery in Vienna, apparently. 

Also in Vienna, I fell in love with the whimsical architecture of Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser, who was a fan of color, water, uneven terrain and unbalanced spaces, and clearly wasn't a huge fan of straight lines/symmetry. So dope. 

More Hundertwasser

Also in Vienna, I went on the best run of my vacation, along the 21-km long Danube Island. Didn't cover all of it (not nearly!) but my run was longer than intended because I was trying to reach the castle atop the hill on the far right in this picture--turns out you can't cross the river there, but I figured that out too late. Along the way, I saw some unusual things, like a man giving his dog a full-out haircut, and a slew of naked picnics. Like, real real naked. 

Nabbed a bus to Budapest at the last possible minute, and crashed on the couch of a buddy I met through Couchsurfing in 2013, in Modena, Italy (he was actually the roommate of my host, but he showed me around all the same). It was my second time there, and in case you were worried, Bootypest is still actively killin' it. Such a fantastic city. Even after a second trip, I wasn't ready to leave, and I am ready to go back.

Worlds collide in the ruin pub (me and Eddy-friends from the 2013 CS experience, Amber and Shaun-a couple Aussies who shared the same CS host with me in Ghent earlier in the trip, and Matthieu and Sam, my Canadian buddies from the hostel in Bratislava!). BOOM.

Plus, on this trip, I got to see a couple of the things I missed out on last time, namely the shoe memorial to the Jews lost in the Holocaust, and the Parliament building just nearby (saw it by day and by night, thanks to some well-timed runs). LOOK HOW PRETTY

Also, next time you have a Sunday morning in Pest, check out the transformation of Szimpla from a thumping ruin pub to a super cool farmer's market! When I was there, there was also live music and some happy Hungarians doing traditional dance. It was awesome.

The one thing pushing me to leave and end my merry meandering was the thought of the person waiting for me in Paris--well, technically I beat him there, because my flight arrived a few hours earlier than his, but still--good old Punky. Guess I ruined him for life; he just couldn't stay away from Paris I suppose!