Home Sweet Home

I'm back! Europe was Hot. Crowded. Expensive. Old. Busy. In other words, a blast. I'm still unwinding, getting over the fatigue of traveling. Haven't had a chance, or the will, to begin digesting all I've seen and done: Rome, Pompeii, Naples, Athens, Istanbul. The good and the bad. There's a story to be told involving figs and diarrhea. I've doled out the souvenirs and somehow it's sad to see the majesty of the Colosseum or the charm of the Almafi coast summed up by trinkets. No matter how much I try to explain with words or pictures, my friends and family won't be able to fully share in the experience of being there. In fact, I'm sure as time passes, my memories will start to lose sharpness, fuzzing around the edges until only impressions remain. Then the trinkets remaining will have to represent and they just don't do the trip justice. Ah well, that's what can expect when one has a mind like Swiss cheese.

I am glad to be back though because despite the awe inspiring columns of the Vatican or the beauty of Postitano, it's not my life. As much as I would like to have a steward clean my room every day, that's not my life either. My life is working 8 to 5, sipping starbucks, shopping at the mall, playing with my dogs, hanging out with friends and driving dangerously on the streets I know. Ho-hum, but comfortable and natural. Traveling is like sloughing off your skin for a while and trying out a different role one. As a tourist, everything is novel. But I think we only get an edited glimpse of others' lives. Italians, Greeks, Spainards, just like Americans, have to pay their bills, mop their floors and get on with their lives. Mundane, with better weather. Europe has such history and great works of art and architecture. I wonder though, if for people who have grown up with them, if such things are shrug worthy. Like the lyrics of Eva Cassidy's song, Penny to My Name:

Strangers say this mountain here is beautiful beyond compare
But it's just a dumb old mountain there; I see it every day