now you see it, now you don’t.

Even though I’m on vacation, I’ve managed to go running both of my two first, full days here. (Allow me to take a second to pat myself on the back.) This is the picture I took of Algorta, my home away from home, on my way back from my run on Thursday.

This is the picture I took after the same run, at the same spot, at the same time, just twenty-four hours later.

What a difference a day makes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d argue Carmen Sandiego done came and stole the place right out from under me.

no rest for the weary traveler.

I spoke too soon. Around 2:00 PM yesterday I (mostly involuntarily) slipped into a Spanish siesta-coma. Not only did I miss prime beach time, but I also completely screwed my schedule, sleeping for a whopping 3 hours last night. Watching the sunrise while tossing and turning in bed was not on my to-do list today, jetlag. Thanks, but no gracias.

buen viaje.

My PhD exams are over (and I passed)! The semester is over! I made it to Spain! So many exclamations! Some not-as-exclamatory excerpts from my travel diary:

• X and I flew out on the same day, but spaced apart by about 3 hours and with separate connecting cities in Germany. Ridiculous yes, but worth-$200-in-ticket-difference ridiculous? Meh, I guess we survived.
• My seat got moved to Economy Plus, which sounds exciting, except for the fact that it is a complete scam. There was no difference.
• The in-flight entertainment was a horror show: first One For The Money, then The Vow, followed by some show that featured re-enactments of dogs eating random objects and going to the vet to get them removed. I would ask How is that a TV show? but my bigger question is How has The Soup not made fun of it yet, thus letting me know that that is a TV show?
• Apparently the trick to conquering jetlag is to sleep for less than two hours total full day of travelling, in essence missing an entire night’s sleep.
• The day we arrived coincided with a heat wave with temperatures in the high 80s. Ah well, I guess we have to go to the beach… ¡Adiós!

la la land.

This just in: I don’t hate LA. Based on a couple visits in the past and just a general consensus by everyone in America except Californians themselves, I had convinced myself that I did. It’s too spread out! Everyone’s so douchey and fake! It’s culturally devoid! They are butchering Spanish names in every possible way! (See: Sepulveda, Hermosa, etc.)

Well, a quick spring break visit (in timing, not spirit; note the absence of CAPS and five exclamation points, as in SPRING BREAK!!!!!) has managed to convince me otherwise.

Granted, the first day was rainy and the following four were a good 20 to 30 degrees cooler than it was in Chicago at the time (END OF DAYS!!!!!; note correct use of CAPS and five exclamation points), but that didn’t hinder LA’s subtler charms — namely good food (such as Wurstküche Restaurant, pictured below), unique things to see and do (such as the Getty Center, also pictured below), and an actual pretty side which everyone tends to say doesn’t exist (such as Venice Beach, pictured above).

It’s no Chicago, let’s not get crazy. But at the same time, you have to admit that Chicago has some of the same issues that plague LA, such as stupid tourist traps and lots of lame and douchey bars and clubs. But somehow Chicago has better word-of-mouth. Maybe its our Midwestern loveableness. Or maybe LA just needs a better publicist. You’d think if anyone, they’d have that covered, though.

gema killed the you tube video star.

I don’t know who Gema is, but she’s really been cramping my style this week. Bittersweetly I’ll be saying auf Wiedersehen and leaving on a jetplane bright and early tomorrow morning (a.k.a. late this evening Chicago time). With any luck I’ll remember half of the things that I wanted to watch while here. Because I’m sure they were all super important, as YouTube video watching tends to be.

ich spreche kein deutsch.

Hallo und guten Morgen from the land of Heidi Klum and half of Michael Fassbender. A few notes on my first few days in Germany:

• Southwestern Germany in February = Northeastern Wisconsin in February. In short, I’ve been properly prepared for this trip. Fun fact: Tübingen is within 3º latitude of Peshtigo, so it makes sense geographically.
• On a related note, sight-seeing in winter is more fun than I imagined. As long as it’s sunny, which yesterday was, so it was perfect. Lots of pictures to come.
• I don’t think jet lag was so much a problem as the scheduling of my flight was. We left Newark at 5:30 PM (12:30 AM Germany time) and arrived in Stuttgart at 7:30 AM (11:30 PM Chicago time). So I was arriving at a time dictating that I should be waking up, when in reality I would normally have just gone to sleep. Shifting the flight back 6 hours would have made my life a lot easier, allowing me to actually sleep on the plane. That would have been time better spent than watching two highly mediocre (borderline bad) comedies: Our Idiot Brother and Horrible Bosses.
• On the plus side plane-wise, I counted a total of about 30 passengers flying coach divided among 40+ rows. You do the math. Actually, United should do the math, because I cannot fathom how that trans-Atlantic flight was very profitable.
• It irks me quite a bit that I know absolutely no German. I’m accustomed to traveling in hispanophone countries where I can impress the locals with my mad skills. Instead I’m left wishing I could tell each server, “I know two other languages besides English! I’m sorry one isn’t German. Please forgive me. And all other American travelers in general, while we’re at it.” Instead they just get a lot of danke schoens.

if these shoes could talk.

I bought my Sperry Top-Siders on a family trip to Texas in the spring of 2006. I remember them being on sale at some outlet mall we stopped at. Texas, outlet malls, discount shoes… I know what you’re thinking, and yes, my family does live in the lap of luxury while on vacation. But that’s not the point. My point is who knew five years ago such a purchase would leave a lasting mark on my life? My Top-Siders were not my first foray into prep style. (I mean, do you know me?) They didn’t leave a mark in that sense. More accurately, I left a mark in them — during almost all major milestones in my life since.

For starters, these shoes have traveled the globe with me. First on the streets of Buenos Aires, to the waterfalls of Iguazú, through the Andes-adjacent vineyards, and to the beaches of Uruguay. And now more recently on the streets of London, to the fjords of Norway, and to both the northern and eastern beaches of Spain.

They’ve made some major mileage stateside as well. They’ve accompanied me on friend visits from the east coast to the west coast and back again as I’ve made various pit stops in San Fran, NY, and Portland. And to the midwest coasts too — Minnesota and Ohio.

They’ve lived and worked in what I now consider to be my two hometowns, Madison and Chicago. And they also join me in every trip back to my actual hometown. They were on my feet at my graduation from UW and when I finished my Master’s here at UIC. They’ve even danced up a storm at multiple weddings of friends and friends of friends.

No other item in my closet is older than these shoes. Thanks to steady weight-loss over the years as well as a general cycling through styles, even staples of my wardrobe rarely make it past the three year mark. And although they’ve seen better days — both figuratively and literally — the longer I contemplate getting a replacement pair, the more unlikely it is that that’ll ever happen.

i dag er vi alle norske.

Almost exactly a month after visiting a place I had never thought I’d ever visit in my life, my heart goes out to Oslo, an incredibly endearing Scandinavian town (it’s seriously tiny), and its friendly inhabitants, both the ones I met and those I didn’t get the chance to.

Although all the photos I’ve seen have been impactful, I did have a double-take upon seeing this one this morning via The Big Picture:

Although I recognize many parts of Oslo in the news coverage (like I said, it’s tiny), I didn’t fully comprehend where the explosion was until I saw this photo. I remember thinking it was a shame I was alone walking by this building because I wanted to get a funny photo reading the newspaper with a petrified pal.

(anything but) studying abroad again.

The (wonderful yet fleeting) year that Becky and I lived together we had several recurring conversations, including but not limited to: anything and everything about our TV shows, where we were going to go Friday night for dinner (because neither of us was ever decisive in the slightest), and, most recurrent, incessant nostalgia about our experiences studying abroad.

Becky’s and my semesters abroad, in London and Buenos Aires respectively, were always regarded as the zenith of our (barely quarter-lived) lives. Sure, our experiences were culturally distinct in just about every aspect — language, food, general appearance of the attractive locals — but the quality of life was the same. Equally fantastic, yet ephemeral.

Your responsibilities were minimal as there was no job to be had and classes mattered, but, as anyone who’s been in college knows, classes “mattered.” (Cramming to write and/or study a few times a semester and voilà — college graduate!) Because of this peculiar situation, you were in this limbo area of freedom. You were free to do whatever you wanted in a foreign mega-metropolis, where you could literally do anything your young American heart wanted. (That ‘anything’ being limited to mostly meet people, drink, dance, travel, and repeat.)

Yet at the same time you were safe and secure in your study-abroad bubble. Money was available via grants, savings, or the Bank of Mom & Dad. You had a set beginning and end, easing both your mother’s worries and quickly extinguishing any ‘I miss the US’ moments. And more than anything, for both of us, we just felt this inexplicable and intangible happiness with everything that we did abroad. I think it’s something similar to what movies like Under the Tuscan Sun (which I haven’t even seen) try to capture on screen even though it seems utterly ridiculous and corny. But it happens. Or at least it can happen. To Me, Becky, and Diane Lane at least.

Something we didn’t realize at the time, however, was that the experience was unrepeatable. Never again would we be able to relive our time abroad and its weird perfect environment. It’s like when Peter and Susan can never go back to Narnia. Unfair!

Anyway, my rambling trip down memory lane has a point: I’ve somehow managed to travel through the wardrobe again. By that I mean my month here in Spain has felt like a curious case of study abroad 2.0, which delights me to no end. The parallels between Spanish and Argentine culture (and overlap of language, of course) help a lot. But more than that, I’m loving the fact that I’m getting to experience the country through a point of view different than that of someone merely on vacation. Living with X’s family feels like my new host family.

And, best of all, I’ve manage to rediscover the feeling described above. Everything just makes me happy.

saludos.

Greetings from Spain. I might blog about my five-week-long European extravaganza (London and Norway yet to come), but I’ll probably be too busy enjoying wine, beach, pintxos, etc. Stay tuned to find out.

I will say this though, what I’ve seen of northern Spain is gorgeously green and endearingly European in the best way possible.