Month 12: Layers

Layer 1.

The best things in life are layered.

What comes to your mind when I say the word "layered"? Indeed, it's a very layered word. Here are the things I think of:

The Opera cake that I once helped Sarah make in Calgary.

Onions.

People. You can learn so much more from layered people. There's something unnerving about people who lay all their cards out right away. At first you feel special. Then you realize you're more like a microphone, an object that people whisper their deepest feelings to, then walk away from. I feel better around people that I know are hiding something from me. It commands respect and patience.

Bed sheets and clothes. I used to have dark blue bed sheets, and going to bed was like diving underwater. Deep layers are dark and safe.

Erosion. See picture.

Pretty cool eh? (But maybe not quite the greatest thing in the world, um…)

Art. Any masterpiece was once nothing but a few blobs of colour. The colour you choose for the background of a painting can make or break it even before it's made. And certain media are impossible to master if you don't learn to layer, e.g. watercolours.

Flavours. You wine connoisseurs know what I'm talking about. And enough has been said about the importance of aftertastes – "the scent lingers on the palate," "he left a bad taste in my mouth," etc.

Layer 2.

Expecting me to say something a little deeper?

I'm finding that the experiences gained from living abroad come in waves.

At first there is that giddy nervousness that comes with facing the unknown. Then there is empowerment and a sense of ownership. Nobody can tell you where to go or what to do. You know better than everyone else because you've been there and done that.

Then there is the sheepish humility that surfaces when you realize you don't know anything about anything. You're just another foreigner trying to feel special in someone else's space. Once you've absorbed that wave, you feel motivated to adapt. You want to fit in, so you try to learn the language and the lifestyle in order to re-integrate yourself into society. Empowerment comes from belonging.

You ride that wave for a little while. You're doing good. Then all of a sudden you realize you're miles from the shore. People back home are either straining to see where you've washed up, or have given up on following your course altogether. Serves you right – you forgot to look back when you drifted off, and you have no idea how you got to where you are. You want to grip onto something familiar, but you're lost at sea and ain't nobody coming to find you.

At this point any big impetus is useless. It's also useless to give up. You have to take it slowly, pick a direction you think is at least roughly right, and aim for it. Maybe this is the hardest time – you need more confidence and optimism than ever, and yet you have every reason to believe that even if you make it back, everyone will have packed up and left. On the bright side, no matter which way you go there's something new to learn. You also begin to appreciate home in a way you never have before.

Layer 3.

Down here it's warm and cozy, like I promised. It might seem that reality is pretty far from here. That's ok. Here is the place where you tell stupid jokes and boogie to really loud music in your room (hey tikitakirikiraka macarena, hey lakalikarikiraka macarena. Hey rakarikalakataka macarena, heyyyyyyyyy macarena!). Here is the place you stick your tongue out to falling snow and goose your friends. You probably pick your nose when you think no one's looking. Here is where you laugh so hard that you snort, and then laugh harder because you're snorting. Things are simple. Everyone loves everyone. You know where this is. Yes, you do. And it's not that hard to get there.

Month 11.2. Thoughts on the Balkans.

Part A.

One interesting thing about living in the Balkans is finding out what the Balkans actually are.

I remember hearing a long time ago about an outbreak in a region called "Kosovo" that wanted to separate from some other region. I didn't know what that other region was. I had to look at a map to locate Kosovo. Once I saw where it was, the news still meant nothing to me. I remember wondering, somewhat guiltily, why I should be concerned. I didn't know anyone there. I didn't know the region's culture, geography, language, religion, or history. It only seemed important because it was everywhere on the news. It was also in Europe, and I had family there. And finally, there was a song I really liked that mentioned Sarajevo – and that was somewhere near Kosovo, and had to do with some kind of separatist movement too. The song was by my favorite band at the time, the Cranberries, so I figured something important must be happening over there. (That really was my reasoning. I felt emotional about the war in so far as there was a pretty song about it. My Istanbul roommate later made it clear that I have absolutely no understanding for wars or sympathy for the people involved, probably due to my peaceful upbringing in a peaceful country.)

Now, ten or fifteen years later, I live "over there." I've learned a few things since first finding Kosovo on a map. Kosovo separated from Serbia, which still doesn't recognize Kosovo's independence. Kosovars are mostly Albanian-speaking Muslims. In some towns, Serbian and Turkish are also spoken. Kosovo is landlocked and hilly. The people are relatively poor, but have been more consistently helpful, personable and hospitable than in any other country I visited. Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was one of the central areas of fighting when Yugoslavia broke apart. Bosnia is divided between Muslims in the north and Catholics in the south. All speak the official language of Bosnian, which is basically another dialect of the ex-Yugoslavian language of Serbo-Croatian (and the meaning of "Serbo-Croatian" is a whole other story).

So where is "over here"? Many travelers have asked me about what the term "Balkans" actually means. Is it a geographical term? Political? Cultural? From what I've researched, there is no consensus. Greeks, Croatians and Turks have told me that "Balkan" is officially a geographical term, sometimes defining the regions south of the Danube and sometimes defining other borders. But then one Greek guy went on to say, "I have no job, I drink espressos all day, and I don't worry about the future. So, you see, I'm Balkan." For him, the term "Balkan" has a de facto cultural meaning regardless of its official geographical meaning. And the Turks who agreed upon the geographical definition did not see themselves as Balkan even though they fit their own criteria.

The lines are equally blurry along the northern borders. Slovenia lies north of the Danube. Its geography is similar to Austria's. It's an EU member. But Slovenia is an ex-Yugoslav country. The language is closely related to Serbian and Macedonian. The cultures are similar. The term "Balkan" is often contrasted with "European," and Slovenia is torn between the two. As is Croatia. You can see Austro-Hungarian influence in the north and Italian influence in the south. Everyone is talking about when Croatia will join the EU. And yet, the daily life resembles the "traditionally" Balkan countries of Serbia and Macedonia. Unemployment is high, students stay students as long as possible, family is important, coffee is important, meat and alcohol are popular, most people smoke, men are manly and women are feminine. (I noticed around Split today the same half-built block concrete houses as I saw in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo. So even the architecture ties Croatia to the east.)

So now that I've lived here almost five months, I can't really tell you where the "here" is that I now feel close to. Yes, I feel linked to Croatia. But I also feel linked to Slovenia. And I don't feel linked to, say, Dubrovnik or Rijeka. Within Croatia it's really just Split I feel, because here everyone sees themselves as different from other Croatians. And everyone everywhere in Croatia seems to feel different from everyone everywhere else in Croatia. So when I try to think of where my home is now, I can't tell you if it's Split, Croatia, the Balkans, Europe, or just my own little room in our apartment on top of Marjan Hill. Things are blurry. Borders are blurry. And therefore they're not really worth fighting over.

Part B

Mornings were priceless in Split. It was mid-November. Cheesy woke up early and left the house without a coat on. The sun was white and the sky was the kind of deep, pure blue that you only get in autumn. The mandarins were ripe and the vines were shedding their leaves. She walked down a side street to get to the center, dodging construction workers and dog-walkers. She saw the burek-man pushing his cartful of pastries from the bakery to the shops. She was going to the fish market. It was a calm, clear day, so the catch would be good. She smelled the market before she saw it. As always, it was buzzing with people and flies. She wandered around a bit, observing some monstrous creatures she could never imagine being in anyone's stomach. Finally she bought a kilogram of mullets for $2 and brought them home to refrigerate.

The point of this story is that there is so much beauty in such simple things. Sometimes only foreigners can see it. That's why there are still tourists, even though everyone always complains about them. When you see something from the outside, you see a beauty that gets lost when you get caught up in all the complications within. This is why storybooks always end when the love-stricken man finally gets the beautiful woman: after that, the simplicity of her beauty gets lost under familiarity and personality. Cheesy didn't think that familiarity and personality were bad things, or were impossible to love. On the contrary, after many years love re-directs itself to precisely those things. But still there was real truth to the saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The Balkans were beautiful to Cheesy, and more so because Cheesy was not Balkan. Cheesy had the privilege of watching the world from without while living within. She was the starry-eyed beholder, and to her there was no beauty like those simple autumn mornings in Split.

Month 11. Clarifications.

Ok folks. We need to take tabs. (Can't we say that in English? I wanted to use it in a translation, but I couldn't find the phrase "take tabs" online anywhere.)

This will be a meta-entry. A blog entry about blog entries, and about Cheesy. If you're satisfied with all my other entries, you don't have to read this one.

Cheesy is called Cheesy for a reason. I've mentioned this before. Don't take her too seriously. It's the only way to understand her. And don't take her too personally. Sometimes she slips in a comment just for you – yes, you – but most of the time she's just thinking out loud to herself. If she meant offense to anyone personally, that person would know it.

I grant that cheese is heavy. Cheesy can be that way. But cheese is also goopy and changeable. It dribbles all over the place, then hardens up into a different form. Cheesy is like that too. There's no need to worry about any kind of permanent meltdown – if she's dribbly, she'll get back into shape. Or maybe it's the tough crust you don't like. Don't worry, if you cut her the goop will still fall out. And when you cut open camembert, what's your reaction? Do you cry? Do you panic that the whole round of cheese is going to fall apart? I promise you there should be no other reaction than laughter, and hopefully some appetite for more. Cheese is fun. If Cheesy's blogs are depressing sometimes, dribbly and romantic, well it's just the state of the cheese at that moment. There's nothing underlying.

The thing I've come to realize about writing is that it is always subject to interpretation, like art. At least when you speak to someone, you have extra clues like intonation and body language. But with writing it's just words. And sometimes I think to myself, "Oh damn, people are really misunderstanding me. I must be a lousy writer." But even the best writers end up ambiguous. Take Hemingway. He uses choppy sentences. You think he's getting to the point. It's quick to read. Then suddenly you're at the end of the book and you realize you've missed the point entirely. So I'm sorry if you don't always get my point. The thing is that (a) sometimes there is no point, I truly am babbling, and (b) no matter how hard I try, words can't always convey the point. It's okay if you interpret me. It's okay if the way you interpret me isn't how I intended it. But if you interpret me in a bad way, then it's your loss, because I don't mean anything bad against anyone.

The situation sucks because this blog is the only way for many of you to get details of my life now that I'm in Europe. Maybe I should treat the blog as a conversation with all of you, rather than a conversation with myself.

The next thing is a response to a few of you who have suggested, in your own ways, that I'm one of these white upper-middle-class girls who obsessively seek out problems in their otherwise perfect lives. It's a valid opinion. Maybe I'm a white upper-middle-class girl. And okay, maybe I like problems (ha, ha). But don't you dare conclude that I don't appreciate everything I've had in my life. I love my parents. I more respect for them than any other adults I've met, and not just because they're my parents. I'm constantly amazed at how generous, caring, understanding, wise, helpful and open-minded they are. I love my brother. He's simply tops in my world. You mess with him and you will feel my wrath. (And I don't mean that personally to anyone.) I love my whole family. My grandparents are such an inspiration. My aunts and uncles are like old friends, and I love their company. I love my friends. I'm not naming names but you know exactly who you are, don't doubt it, and I look up to you every day. I love my dogs. I grew up in a great house in a great neighbourhood. I've had a great education. I've had priceless opportunities to work and travel and learn. Do you understand yet? Are you convinced I'm grateful? Here's the point, no misinterpretations: I'm grateful, and I'm thanking you.

I remembered just now all of you who have advised, "Don't be defensive." Well yes, I guess I'm justifying myself here. But mostly I'm just trying to explain. I don't feel angry at anyone for interpreting what they interpreted from my blog.

And here's another argument justifying certain "moody" undertones in my writing. There are four parts to the argument: (a) Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, (b) The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, (c) The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, and (d) autumn. If you read (a)-(c) during (d), I guarantee you won't feel like a million bucks either.

And so: happy happy! To hell with existentialism! We are all exactly what we were meant to be! Maybe there even is a god! Hoorah!

Actually I do think that if you've never read any existentialist works, then maybe you won't fully understand the blog. That's not an incitement or a self-classification or a definitive conclusion. It's just a thought. Treat everything Cheesy says that way.

Almost forgot the last thing I need to clarify. Here's the point, no misinterpretations: I'm not running away from anything. I'm not fundamentally against North America or Montreal. I just think there are some things that Europeans do better. And I'm just having a good time living in different conditions, learning different languages, different lifestyles, different frames of mind. I truly enjoy entering into different frames of mind. I truly do enjoy becoming different people for periods of time. I imagine you might not understand this. For some insight, you can read Invisible Man (great novel, see link). The point: I sometimes say things that "I" don't really mean, because I'm in the frame of mind of someone else. The way to understand other people's beliefs is to truly buy into them. Then you can evaluate. How can I learn about a foreign culture without ever really entering into it? I need to become European in order to understand Europe. Hell, I need to become European in order to fully understand North America. Cheesy is also there for that reason: she represents the fact that I'm taking on different points of view. I'm not "becoming" anything. I'm just curious about how other people think, and I find it amusing to try to think the way others do. I'm cheesy. I take many forms, but I take nothing too seriously. I know I often seem serious, but don't let appearances fool you. Cheese always comes with a grain of salt. I'll be back in Montreal soon enough.

Month 10.3: The Approach of Halloween and Other Things Still in the Future

In the last while, I've received a few comments about my blog that have made me happy to be alive. Some have noted how much I've "grown" over the past year. Just to play the devil's advocate, I disagree. First, I think I've finally entered my immature teenage years, which I never really had as a teenager. I'm more selfish, more spontaneous, more disorganized, and lazier than I've ever been. So just be glad that I'm getting it out of my system all the way out here. Second, I've always thought this way. I mean, what I write in my blogs comes directly out of my head, and my head hasn't changed so much over the years. Maybe I've just become more open. Regardless, everything that is good in me comes from someone else. You're really special to me. If you're reading this blog, and I know you, you are more important than maybe you realize. So I just want to start this entry with a big, cheesy old thank you to the people who have been there for me and have inspired me. I'm yours, and while I'm not so good at knowing how to help people, I will do whatever you ask for if it will make you happier to be alive. (And if for some of you it's for me to come home – I'm working on it.)

Most of you know this, but I'm planning on starting a master's degree in translation in North America beginning September 2011. It amuses me how some of you are doubting my intentions with this program. I think some of you honestly cannot imagine how anyone could be interested in translation. I'm not just doing this to have something to do, it's not just for the lifestyle, it's not just to be able to say I've done a master's. But I won't pretend to have noble intentions either – those are indeed amongst the reasons why I'm applying.

The problem is that I'm still not convinced that the future is so important. Maybe this attitude comes from the Balkans, where the future truly is irrelevant to some people. It boils down to this: what is more important, the future or happiness? If a person is happy even if there's not much in store for him, then what's the problem? Should we condemn him for being happy? Or should we condemn the man who forgoes daily pleasures because he's too busy planning a perfect future?

I was pretty happy living spur-of-the-moment during my travels. Now that I have "plans" for the future… it's not that I'm unhappy. But now, there's a reason to be indifferent to the present. All the good stuff is in the future, so why bother with today? Why travel, when traveling isn't the point anymore? The point lies somewhere ahead, and anything you do now is fleeting.

Maybe it's only a problem for impatient people like myself. If there's a plan, then let's do it and get on to the next thing. I find it hard to focus on other things when I know there's a plan that needs fulfilling.

I would now like to draw your attention to Georgia. I met a Serbian girl who was obsessed with it. It's a very old country, and the language is perfectly insane. It has a pretty alphabet, too. Georgia borders the Black Sea to the west, Russia to the North, Turkey to the south, and Armenia and Azerbaijan to the east. There is a nice movie called "Mimina" about a Georgian man during Soviet times. There was a war between Russia and Georgia right up until 2008. There are two regions in Georgia which Russia recognizes as independent countries: South Ossetia and something else whose name looks like "Akhdhavilli" or something. Joseph Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Georgia is mountainous, the highest peak being over 5000 meters. Anyone want to come to Russia and Georgia with me next summer?

Month 10, Part 2. Cheesy faces autumn.

One day you sit back and realize it's gone out of your system. Whatever was once spicy has become bland. Nostalgia begins to appear disgusting rather than romantic. And you'll say to yourself, "Forget about the past." And for once, it will be a genuine urge. There's something depressing but relieving about moving on with life. It's like breaking an addiction. You want to want it again, but you just can't anymore. It's a deflated passion. The world loses its sparkle and falls back into grayscale.

Cheesy knew this was happening to her. She suspected that it was directly related to her having settled down. Urges and passions were giving way to old habits. It was calming but boring. The worst was that she found no desire to un-bore herself. It was nice to get up before everyone else in the house, to walk to the market, to cook a big lunch, to draw a bit, to write a bit, to read a bit, to walk to work in the evenings, to wander home, to go for a run, to have a glass of wine and slip into bed. Maybe she needed a bit of brain-death after months of constant turbulence.

But hand in hand with the return of routine, existential thoughts crept back into her mind. Once everything is habit, then everything is meaningless. That was what shocked her about the headscarves in Turkey – women put them on and took them off unthinkingly. Their conviction had turned into habit. Cheesy could no longer fool herself into thinking that routines were harmless. Routines veiled the truth. The truth was twofold: (a) there was some original purpose to the actions (like pleasure!), which has become lost through routine, and (b) the universe is actually chaotic, and to give into a routine is to be in denial of the true nature of existence. Cheesy thought both versions of the truth were related. Sometimes, after the purpose of an action is lost through routine, then routine becomes the purpose of that action. Thus we live unconsciously, for the sake of routine. And here was the danger: the entire world could open up to us if we simply let go of the routine. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well do whatever we want. We cannot if we are constrained by habit.

But why that sinking feeling, with all this freedom that Sartre and Camus offer? There is something demotivating about existentialism. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well stay home. To follow a habit is to deceive oneself, to break a habit is to face meaninglessness. The worst curse is really awareness of the conflict. What to do? Camus tries really, really hard to answer this in The Myth of Sisyphus. Basically he says to have a lot of sex and be an artist. Cheesy suspected that if Camus had pursued his reasoning just a bit further, the whole thing would have amounted to one grand justification of hedonism. Not such a bad deal. But in between the swigs of booze and cries of passion, the existentialist would still have to face the truth that everything is just for show, and when he dies there will be absolutely nothing to remember him by. And that kind of awareness sucks.

Cheesy thought it was possible to be driven completely mad deciding between the masquerade of routine and pointless frivolity in life – especially so if one is aware that this decision must be made. Because if one is aware of the need to decide, one is already aware that routine is just a masquerade of self-comfort in a chaotic universe. So the first choice is automatically eliminated (unless you can really re-deceive yourself after having become aware of the truth). So one is forced to admit the pointlessness of life. And yeah, it's fun to be frivolous, knowing that nothing matters. But somehow frivolousness never quite makes up for pointlessness. So one tries to lose oneself in routine again, tries to find a purpose. Eventually one turns back to frivolousness, disgruntled by no longer being able to deceive oneself by routine. And so the teeter-tottering begins. And (Cheesy knew Camus would roll over in his grave for this) Cheesy thought that suicides were often the result of people getting tired of teeter-tottering. There is no "decision" being made in suicide. It's just tiredness, of having to decide something all the time, of always having to deal with one's own thoughts, of never really being able to just live. Bah what did she know. Is it ever more than a thought that drives a person to suicide?

But wasn't there a testament to the danger of routine simply in the fact that Cheesy had begun to think about all these things again?

Month 10. Dip into Austria.

Austria somehow gets more beautiful every time I see it. Maybe I'm just getting uglier.

Sometimes it happens that a thought comes out of nowhere, grabs you like a leech and won't let go. I was sitting on the train, minding my own business, then… bam! A thought, saying, "Think me! Think me!" The thought was simple: Austrians are sweet. They are sweet in a way that Croatians and Italians and Americans never will be.

When this thought came into my head, I didn't really know what it meant, or whether I even believed it. So I had a chat with the thought to try to figure it out. It comes down to details (as always). Austrians pat people on the back. They wink at you. They sing. When you pass them by, they smile at you. The smile is sometimes mischievous but always sweet. And you know what? It feels good to be smiled at for no particular reason. It makes you feel sweet yourself.

People have often told me that I'm tiny, gentle, cute. I've always thought it was a patronizing thing to say, as if I were a pet. Sweetness is meekness. But now I realize that if I've made anyone feel good just by smiling sweetly at them, then I've done pretty well. And just because someone is sweet doesn't mean you can get anything you want from them. Austrians are just as hardy as Croatians. They don't let themselves be trampled upon.

After I dealt with this thought, another one came into my head. We're seldom what we think we are. Once we realize we're something, we often cease to be that thing. So true self-awareness is impossible. For example, drama queens are never really that dramatic. Their lives are seldom tragedies. Smart people are often only aware of all the things they don't know. Generous people often only give things away because they feel they're too selfish. Once a generous person realizes that he's generous, his guilt is relieved and so he stops giving things away.

I have never thought of myself as sweet or tiny in any way. But now that I've witnessed the sweetness of my relatives and friends in Austria, I'm wondering if maybe everyone has been right all along, that I'm just a sweet little girl who enjoys a sweet pat on the head by someone smiling sweetly at her. So if I finally accept this identity, will I turn into a bitch?

I realize that most of these blogs deal with heavy psychological business, like self-awareness, personality, and, well, me. Sorry about that. I can imagine it gets boring for the more practical among you. But anyway it's my blog, I can write what I want and you can't trample on me (especially since I'm in Croatia and you're over there). And the truth is that I'm only capable of writing about certain things. It bores me to write about architecture or wildlife. People are just more interesting. Of course there's always sex, drugs, and food, but those are also boring to talk about unless you're participating.

I could talk about linguistics if you like. Austrians in the southwest replace "s" by "sh" in the coda position of syllables (the final position in a syllable). For example, "Kastanien" (chestnuts) becomes "Kashtanien." Slovenian somehow sounds exactly like Austrian. "Exit" is "izhod" in Slovenian but "izlaz" in Croatian. Albanian sounds a lot like Italian due to a large amount of word borrowing. Many Croatian words come from Turkish, such as sat "hour" and kutija "box." I noticed that neither German nor Croatian has a locative clitic similar to the Italian ci or the French y. Actually German doesn't have any clitics, which is a shame because clitics are pretty cool. And even though Croatian doesn't have determiners ("the," "a"), definiteness is marked on adjectives modifying masculine nouns. For example, "star pas" means "an old dog" whereas "stari pas" means "the old dog." Austrians elide pre-consonantal liquids, resulting in compensatory lengthening (check out my link above if you're curious). For example, "alt" (old) becomes "oit" and "Karte" (ticket) becomes "koate." But I will never be able to tell you why German is just so much goddamn harder than any other language I've worked on.

And just to round it all off, I'll finish this entry talking about landscapes. The most beautiful place on earth is in the Dolomites. I don't care if I haven't seen everything. I don't care if generalizations are forbidden amongst anyone with an intellectual conscience. There is nothing more beautiful than the Dolomites. That's all.

Month 9. Cheesy visits home.

       It took Cheesy 30 hours to get from Croatia to Montreal.  

    Cheesy had had a flight booked from Split to Montreal at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday. On the day of her departure, friends from France were visiting her in Split. One was a street musician and wanted to play a show that evening, so they drove her to the airport at 6 p.m. Cheesy checked her bag in and decided to wander around to kill the next 5 hours.  She left the airport and walked along the highway for a bit.  An African man in a Smart car pulled over and asked if she needed a lift.  He didn't seem to understand the concept of just wandering around.  He gave her his phone number and drove off. She was hungry but all she found was an abandoned fast food bar on an abandoned beach.

       Bored and hungry (a combination Cheesy knew all too well), she wandered back to the airport.  Her flight was the last one of the day, and it was delayed.  She arrived at Zagreb at 1 a.m. and slept on a bench until her flight to Frankfurt at 8 a.m.  That flight was also delayed, because they had loaded someone's bag into the plane who didn't ever board the plane.  Once she arrived in Frankfurt, Cheesy ran at top speed to her gate.  She got to the gate at 9:58 a.m.  The 10:00 plane to Montreal had just left.  So they re-booked her on a flight to Ottawa at 1:30 p.m.  From there she took a flight to Montreal at 6 p.m., or midnight Split time.

       So you can imagine that by the time Cheesy got to Montreal, she felt very, very far from the life she had set up in Europe.  She began to notice things she had never thought twice about in Montreal.  Here are her observations.

1. Advertisements were force-fed to passengers on Air Canada. There was a screen on the back of every seat. Within 10 minutes of flight, each passenger had images of restaurants, Mitsubishis, and MasterCards whirling just inches from his face.

2. Food and company names were way kitchier in North America. Cheesy's snack on the plane was called "Maized and Confused Corn Chips." In Canada, shops that sell cheap Chinese trinkets were called things like Dollarama or Buck-or-Two. In the Balkans they were called… China shops.

3. Company signs were way simpler in Split. They said something like, "Ivanovic Brothers. Garage doors." Or even just, "Furniture." In North America whole careers were devoted to studying which colours and shapes attract consumers more. Fortunes were made and lost depending on who came up with which logo first. Flashy was seen as favourable.

4. The point: Croatians were much more to the point than North Americans. The best example was the communication Cheesy had witnessed between the airplane pilot and flight attendants over the loudspeakers. On the Air Canada flight, one announcement went like this (no joke): "Hi folks, your pilot speaking. The reports of turbulence from the other planes flying in this area are beyond my comfort zone, so I'm going to have to ask the flight attendants to please pause what they are doing and have a seat until further notice." On Air Croatia: "Flight attendants, sit down."

    And it seemed that in the Balkans, if someone felt his point was not getting across properly, he just started yelling. Cheesy had been on one bus in Montenegro where a passenger, some young French tourist girl, had lost her bus ticket (they really do just look like receipts, Cheesy had nearly lost one herself). The co-pilot found the girl without her ticket, and lost it completely. So here was this gigantic Balkan man howling at this skinny French girl in a language she couldn't even understand, She just looked up at him and burst into tears. On the bright side, she did get the point.

5. Despite their apparent curtness, Croatians frowned much less than North Americans. They walked around with perfect posture, slim and confident. If they made eye contact with someone, they smiled or said hello. North Americans checked each other out secretly. They looked down in shame if someone noticed them staring. Then they would peek again when they think the other person was distracted. North Americans frowned when they saw a line-up ahead. They frowned when things fell behind schedule. They frowned when something cost more than expected. They frowned when they were tired. The brilliance of the Balkans was that everyone somehow knew how not to worry. The line-up is long, but life is short, so smile and make the best of it.

6. For some reason people had lovely abs in Split.

7. Montreal had better graffiti than any other city Cheesy had seen anywhere. In general Montreal was way more artistic that most places Cheesy had seen. People wore broken fishnet stockings, dyed their hair green, wore fake retro eyeglasses, and still managed to pull off a fashion statement. People spoke freely about art and sex and drugs. Locals went to the museums and galleries, not just tourists.

8. But even if Montreal values were very open, the people were not. Cheesy had had many random conversations with many random people in the streets of Europe. But when she went to a café in Montreal and started to chat up the barista, all she got was a weird look and an expensive bill. (Okay well maybe soy milk wasn't the hottest topic to start new friendships with… but Montrealers were foodies, weren't they?)

9. Cheesy did appreciate the fact that Montreal and Split share similar coffee cultures. When people had nothing better to do, they went and got wired up on espressos all afternoon. Except in Montreal they tended to eat sandwiches or cakes with the coffee, and often people would bring their laptops along to do work.

10. Work! North Americans were obsessed with it.

11. Rules were generally stricter in North America. What clothes to wear to school, which way to drive on the street, how much money to tip the waiter, how long to take to finish university…

12. Down to food business. Quebec sorely lacked burek. The Balkans sorely lacked poutine. (Cheesy sensed a genius restaurant idea coming on…)

13. The attitude towards food in North America was totally schizophrenic. No wonder people were either too fat or too thin. You opened a magazine and the message was this: "Lose those extra pounds! Here's exactly how to do it. We have all the weight-loss secrets. You don't have to think at all. You will be perfect. You are not perfect now but you can be perfect just by obeying these five simple rules. Everyone will love you and then you'll be happy." And then on the next page: "Indulge yourself! You deserve it! You're unhappy and you work so hard! Double fudge chocolate cake only $13.99!" - They always wrote "only," even if the price was obviously exhorbitant – "and only 500 calories per piece! You will learn to love yourself and then you'll be happy."

And so the deep questions of North American life were these: Am I happy if others love me or if I love myself? And is that kind of happiness achieved by eating or by not eating? And if the price is right and the calories counted, is happiness guaranteed?

There was an enormous attachment to calorie-counting and rule-following that Cheesy still couldn't see the logic behind (note the irony). Did North Americans not want to think for themselves? Did they want their health and happiness to reduce to nothing more than a set of numbers? Maybe it was very comforting to believe that something as mysterious and fleeting as happiness could be achieved algorithmically.

(Wrong! Cheesy's brain screamed. It's instinct, happiness is achieved by instinct! North Americans have lost their instincts, and so they have to follow a set of rules in order to mimic the results that instinct achieves naturally! My god, Nietzsche must have been one of the most brilliant assholes ever to have lived. And for those who couldn't care less about Nietzsche, just watch American Beauty again.)

14. Chopsticks.

15. There are more things like reusable shopping bags, recycling, and hybrid cars in North America.

16. The following grim observation, as well as a few of the above ones, was courtesy of a friend of Cheesy's: In North America, they chopped down trees and then named the streets after them. (Although to be perfectly fair, they had just razed down a park of old trees in central Zagreb in order to build a shopping mall.)

17. Final thoughts back to Cheesy's age-old question about whether and how people can change. Sometimes one believes one has had a deeper or shallower change than one has. People might say, "Oh I know I've changed a lot," and they're still the same goddamn person (if they would just admit it, then they could begin a real change). Not everyone notices change, either in themselves or in others. Cheesy also realized that sometimes a change could reverse itself, as she fell back into her old Montreal habits. But Cheesy suspected that if one puts oneself in the right environment, one can re-reverse a change. And when she stepped out of the airport in Split, and saw the highway she'd wandered along 12 days earlier, and smelled the sea, and saw the dry Dalmatian hills in the fog, she actually began to cry with happiness. Her instincts had suddenly re-aligned and everything just came together with a perfect clarity. Her instincts had told her to come here, and she did, and she was happy, and there was no greater happiness than finding out that you were right to have trusted your instincts. There was no greater relief for Cheesy than finding that the great wave she had been riding was right in mid-air where she had left it.

Month 8. Settled in Split.

I think a lot about shiny happy people. I wonder if they are circular. They are happy because they are shiny, and shiny because they are happy. I wonder if I would be happier if I were shinier. I wonder how easy it would be to make myself shinier. I wonder to what extent shiny happy people are natural or self-made. Maybe if you believe you can create your personality, then you can. And if you don't believe you can, then you can't. I don't believe I can, even if I want to believe. (But I do believe others can, so that's at least a step towards optimism.) (If you consider the belief in self-made personalities to be optimistic.) (I do.)

The other thing I think a lot about is thinking. I think thinking is bad, so I've been trying to not do much of it. Hence my silence. (I'm also sure I've written all these things before, only with slightly different wording.) Writing forces you to think. So I was thinking, maybe if I don't write, then I won't think. But in the end, thoughts come back. Cogito ergo sum. Or sum ergo cogito.

And I figure, if I can't suppress the thoughts, then I might as well start writing them down again.

So here I am.

Split is hot and lazy. But then you go to the center, which is like an anthill of tourists right now, and suddenly you're all strung out again. Who are all these people? What are they looking for? If I point them in some direction, will they kindly disappear? But they don't. The sun sets, and streams of people come tumbling out of the buildings like cockroaches. Screaming Brits. Bickering Spaniards. Drunk Aussies. (The Italians are well-behaved though.) And I guess they must all be having fun? I don't know. My least favourite cities were Venice and Florence, because I felt like "just another tourist" there. So I can't imagine that all these tourists are truly happy about being tourists in Split. They all arrive and say, "Why is it so crowded?" Well duh, because you came here.

So in a matter of weeks, I've become the prime "local" couchsurfer of the city, turning down a bazillion couch requests per day but trying to take everyone else out on the town, pretending that I know all the "best" places, pretending that Split is peaceful and chill town… which it was three weeks ago…. But damn, you get jaded quickly when you're surrounded by drunk tourists. I say to each of my surfers, You're not seeing Split at its best. (What I don't then say is, Split's best is when you're not here.)

You see? I'm being jaded. I'm being cynical and not shiny the way I'm sure I could be. I do like meeting people, I do like going for drinks and discovering new little alleyways, I do like the bustle, and I do love couchsurfing. So why aren't I shiny, dammit? I want to be glow-in-the-dark, I want aliens to see me all the way from Mars, I want to be the next aurora borealis! I want people to look back and say, Remember 2010? Steffi made the lightbulb obsolete that year…

Okay I'm just being an idiot, thanks for your patience. But if you, reader, have some insight on how to shine, please let me know. I've been told it's good to hang around shiny people. But that doesn't always work, because if you are rusty and you stand beside a shiny person, then sometimes you just feel rustier.

A note on rustiness: All of you must investigate Salad Fingers.

Or do you think that maybe it's okay not to be shiny? After all, Salad Fingers loves rusty things. And rust is more interesting than shine. There are more nuances, more surprises, when you run your hand over a rusty spoon than over a shiny one. And that's why David Lynch and David Firth are brilliant. Because they know how to tap in to that part of the human mind that loves dark creepy things, that rejects perfection and orderliness. For example I think people understand sado-masochism a lot more than they will ever admit. (If you haven't seen any Salad Fingers or Lynch films, you may be totally lost. Maybe that's for the best. Because if you get what I'm saying, that dark part probably exists in your mind. And maybe you're better off without it. Lynch and Firth are maybe just creating comfort zones for messed-up people, rather than providing any real insight into psychology.)

(Another aside: Most people I've met claim to like shiny happy people. Almost no one ever says, "I like people with deep insecurities and serious mental problems." But one guy I met, way back in Montreal before any of this running-away business ever started, told me that he was always more attracted to girls with "issues." I really respected him for admitting that. Because if Firth and Lynch do have a following, then some of you out there like darkness more than you're willing to admit. So I encourage you to admit it to yourself if you have some creepy habits that you enjoy. And I encourage you to be okay with that, because someone out there understands, and someone out there might even like you more for being crazy and messed-up, and without doubt someone out there is very similar to you.)

Soooooooooo… Split.

Month 5: Cheesy makes plans

Ok guys! So now that no one is reading this blog anymore, I have updates!

1 - I found a hitchhiking buddy to get back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

2 - I'm going back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

3 - I'm moving to Split, Croatia at the beginning of July for an undetermined length of time. Ću tamo ići to volunteer sa udrugom za pomoć mladima. = I'm going there to volunteer with an organization that helps troubled youth.

Biggest fear: paralyzing boredom resulting from moving from a city of 15 million to a city of 100,000. Best solution: hula hoops, yoga, and rakija. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! (I can only hope they don't expect me to be a role model for the "troubled youth," hahaha)

Month 5: Cheesy meets rival

Cheesy had said something she regretted. In fact Cheesy often said things she later regretted.

Cheesy's problem was that, once she started something (anything), she couldn't stop. For example: talking, complaining, eating, singing, traveling. Cheesy was an absolute failure in self-moderation (especially given that after doing something obsessively for a while, Cheesy would suddenly stop it completely until some new obsession came along). For a while, Cheesy wasn't able to stop herself from philosophizing about facebook and spying on people, until she crossed the line by criticizing people who give constant updates about themselves. There are lots of people who give constant updates about themselves. Cheesy was beginning to realize that the desire to talk to people was probably normal. So constant updaters were probably socially healthy people from whom Cheesy could learn a lot, ha ha. With that realization, Cheesy's short-lived obsession with the facebook privacy issue ended abruptly.

In the meantime Cheesy had met a friend who complemented her perfectly in the social sphere. Let us call her Tally (since of course Cheesy was still obsessed with the blogger's privacy issue, ha ha). Tally was good for Cheesy, because Tally was always talking, smiling, and laughing. Cheesy was learning from Tally what it was like to be a normal, happy, sociable person. For example, Tally demonstrated that it was possible to live well without changing one's country of residence every few weeks (ha, ha). Tally was also crazy about things like "positive energy" and "cleansing one's aura" and so on. Cheesy was thrilled to have finally met someone cheesier than her. Tally also accepted Cheesy's atheism, which had been making Cheesy feel like a deviant weirdo in Turkey. In brief, Tally made Cheesy feel a little bit less alone, and together they would float for hours through their strange cloud of cheesy energy.

Nonetheless Cheesy's itch to move was getting stronger and stronger. She was surprised at how much she missed the weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She was also disappointed on how slow she was at picking up Turkish - she had learned as much Turkish in six weeks as she had learned of Serbo-Croatian in two weeks (and yes, she was losing her English skills) (and yes, she just said "Serbo-Croatian" even though that's a big no-no) (what was she supposed to call it? She was in Croatia for one week where they told her not to learn Serbian, then she was in Serbia for one week where they told her not to learn Croatian, but in both places she learned the same language, so she had decided to give the finger to politics and just call it "Serbo-Croatian") (oops did she just say too much again? Dear reader, she means no offense).

Cheesy's final thoughts on the matter were about self-restraint. Cheesy believed that when there is an itch, one should scratch. Isn't this the cornerstone of hedonism?

(Too many days, too lazy to count): Out of the silence…

…come some random thoughts from Istanbul.

1. Sorrrrrry! Ok most important update: I made it to Istanbul! Hahaha. Only 5 weeks ago.

The truth is that I was going to give up the blog. As all bloggers eventually must, I had to decide (a) whether I really want to be spied upon, and (b) whether I'm too lazy to provide people with the necessary tools for spying on me. To be honest, for a while I didn't feel like telling people what I was doing. Don't take it personally – if you know me well, then you know I have my moments. If you don't, well: I have my moments. Haha. Then I wanted to write, but so many things had happened and I just felt too lazy. Bad excuses, I know. And know I come out of the murk with some crappy apologies and crappier lists, but hey, no one's forcing you to spy on me anyway J

 

2. Turkish people are tough. I wouldn't mess with them if I were you. (when I hang out with Turkish people I feel like a silly little bird who thinks she knows her way, but really everyone knows she's lost…)

 

3. I think it's possible to get addicted to leaving things. Istanbul is always clogged with traffic and people and noise. It's true that I find it energizing. But I also really miss the rush you get when you're standing at the side of a highway, and there's nothing but the swoosh of cars going by and the future waiting for you at the other end. Is it only proud people who get a good feeling when they abandon things? Because in a way, abandonment is an act of defiance, and proud people are defiant. When you abandon a place or a person, you are saying that you think there are better things out there for you. So are all travelers assholes?

 

4. I get tired of hearing my own voice. Just look at #3 above, it sounds so snobby. So that's my 3^rd excuse for not writing in a while. (I don't think I'll ever understand the people who put a new facebook update every 5 minutes. Don't they get bored of themselves?)

 

5. Let's talk more about boredom. Maybe it's the chronically bored who end up traveling, not the proud. You get bored of one place, you move on. It's easy and it's fun.

 

6. It's pretty frustrating to teach anything to people who don't want to be taught. It makes me wonder – why teach? Clearly these people have better things to do with their time than to learn. I'm not sure whether I'm doing the right thing when I have to force students to learn things for an exam that they just couldn't care less about. In a way I respect them. I don't feel like making them learn any more than they feel like learning. So I wish I could just say to them, "Ok let's make a deal. I'll give you the average grade if you just shut up in class and let me teach the people who care." But unfortunately most 15-year-old girls wouldn't really understand. Especially if I say it in English. (haha)

 

7. Last week it hit me for the first time that I'm in a Muslim country. Once again, a little slow.

Day 62-65: Cheesy is up in the air

     All of a sudden Cheesy was about to leave for Istanbul. All of a sudden Cheesy was absolutely, uncontrollably petrified. Just as Cheesy was getting to know and love the Balkans, she was leaving. It was only the second time on her trip that she felt truly afraid. The first time was when she entered Slovenia. But Slovenia was still more or less central Europe. For God's sake, Slovenia was EU. Now Cheesy was going to Turkey. Cheesy was a young female atheist with pink and blonde hair. She had no idea how it would be like in Istanbul. Cheesy wanted to stay under her covers in her cozy little apartment in the cozy little town of Struga, Macedonia. But instead,

Turkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkeyturkey

    And the bus ride would only be 18 hours….

Day 1,213,924: Cheesy’s Mind Begins to Wander, Too

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Part I.

    Once upon a time, a man named Oscar Wilde wrote a book that transcended all limits of time, space, and physicality to wind up in the mind of Cheesy Magenta. The book was called A Picture of Dorian Gray. In the book, there was a character named Lord Henry, who was by far the most intelligent fictional human being Cheesy had ever come across. Lord Henry said something, or Oscar Wilde wrote something, that Cheesy thought about often. It went something like this: a good artist puts all of his energy and creativity into his work, and as a result, has a personality that is totally empty and dull.

    In Trieste Cheesy had met a couple of Germans hitchhiking from Central Europe to South Africa. The girl became a bit of a fascination to Cheesy. She was tall, blonde, broad, and silent. She ate a lot. She carried around a backpack that nearly doubled her size. She had rosy cheeks and straight white teeth. She reminded Cheesy of health and stability, so let's call her Stable Sally.

    Stable Sally had gone on all sorts of fabulous adventures. Cheesy couldn't even remember half of them. The one that stood out was Stable Sally's month of hitchhiking alone in Mongolia. There were no roads in Mongolia and no cars. People got around on horse. Later on, in Zagreb, Cheesy would find out that there is also a beautiful culture of throat-singing in Mongolia. Stable Sally, a young blonde girl from a quiet German town, integrated herself into all of this without ever speaking a word of Mongolian (or whatever they speak there).

    But the strangest thing, Cheesy thought, was how silent Stable Sally was. A true adventurer was supposed to be bubbly, reckless, and aloof. Like Steve Irwin, the crazy Australian crocodile-hunter. Stable Sally was, well, kind of boring. Where was all the adrenaline? Where were the strange creatures hiding in Sally's backpack? Where were the dirty teeth and crooked haircut? Then Cheesy thought of Oscar Wilde. Maybe Stable Sally had directed all of her inner insanity into her journeys, and had nothing left to perk up her personality. Maybe Stable Sally was the traveling analogy of a great artist.

Part II.

    Cheesy most definitely did not feel at home in Serbia. Maybe that's why she liked it so much. After leaving Italy, everything had changed. She had begun to see all sorts of things, some of them more like Montreal and some of them much less. The biggest change was in the colours of Eastern Europe. She saw streets entirely covered in graffiti art; she saw orange churches, green palaces, and yellow houses; she saw pink platform shoes, pink coats, and pink hair (and YES! Cheesy desperately missed her pink hair too). Eastern Europe was all about people. History, politics, architecture, and nature were all secondary.

    Cheesy's host was a typical-looking Serb. He had big, deep-set gray eyes like the tete-a-claque cartoons, and full pink lips. He had a wide jawline and a bristly beard. He was short and stalky. He ate fried meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheesy hadn't seen him eat a single bite of fruit or vegetable. He was the worrying type. He was small and awkward, which sort of reassured Cheesy since she often felt that way herself, but sometimes she also felt awkward that she made him feel awkward. Awkward is contagious. And it's a really awkward word if you say it enough times.

    Cheesy's host took her to his hometown of Novi Sad, a bit north of Belgrade. They were hit by a monstrous snowstorm and didn't get home until two days later, at 3 a.m., burnt out and hungover and grubby. But Novi Sad was gorgeous – half quaint and half commercial, like many Balkan cities. Zagreb was that way, too. There are zones of wide roads, blowing wind, and concrete. Then there are zones of blocky residential buildings, sometimes looking cramped and neglected. Finally there are the "pretty" zones with statues, markets, and cobblestone streets. Okay, so that makes three halves, but that's just how great Eastern Europe is.

    Sometimes Cheesy was nostalgic for her kitchen back home. She had secret pangs of longing for broccoli, soy sauce, and bran muffins. She was holding up alright, although she couldn't stop her stomach from turning when her Belgrade host would wake her up to breakfasts of deep-fried fish burgers, sliced ham, fried sausages, and chicken wings. On the other hand, she had made a life-changing gastronomical discovery in Croatia and Serbia: rakija! It was usually translated as "brandy," but in Cheesy's opinion, rakija couldn't be equated to anything else. She especially loved the ones made with honey, called medica or medovača (pronounced "meditsa," "medovacha"). Her host in Zagreb had made a big pot of his own medica, made with lemon and cinnamon, and they had drunk it by the bottle-full. In Novi Sad Cheesy and her host went to rakija bar where they drank rakijas made from quince, raspberry, and walnuts. And it was dangerously cheap…

    Cheesy was also working on her language skills. After finally buying a book about Serbian/Croatian, she had uttered her first whole sentence to a stranger in Serbian: "Ne govorim srpski," which of course means "I don't speak Serbian!" Also, she had met a guy at the fortress in Belgrade who spoke nothing but Serbian. They had managed to exchange phone numbers. Since then, the guy kept sending Cheesy text messages in Serbian, which Cheesy would frantically try to decode and then answer with the help of her book. Needless to say, misunderstandings were common… for example, he had asked her what time she would be coming back from Novi Sad and she replied that she hoped it would not rain (it snowed, anyway).

Part III.

    In fact, Oscar Wilde wouldn't have been the only one to agree on the analogy between traveling and art. Cheesy's good old friend Albert Camus wrote that art was the ultimate existential hobby: the artist constantly creates in order to bring meaning and magic to life, although in the end his efforts are pointless. Similarly, every city brought something wonderful into Cheesy's life, which she would then have to leave behind. If Cheesy was going to dedicate her life to meeting and then abandoning great people, she was going to have to build a bit of a backbone. Or just go back again and again, trying to re-create the initial magic. But should she risk the disappointment? Should good things stay in the past?

    Should good things stay in the past?

Day 47: Go east, young woman

    This afternoon, my hosts in Trieste drove me to the train station on the Slovenian side of the border. In the car, it dawned on me for the first time that I was far, far from home. Home has nothing to do with me now. Home is a concept whose meaning is gradually loosing footage in my mind. Right now I am on the train to Ljubljana, and within miles I'm the only thing I know anything about. The language is different. The trees are different. The fences are different. Yesterday I met a couple of Germans who were hitchhiking to South Africa. They had also hitchhiked in Mongolia, Iceland, Romania, Scandinavia, and Africa. They made me wonder whether having a "home" becomes more or less important the further you go.

    By the time I left Trieste I was finally beginning to feel at home in Italy. It is not the magnificent country that you learn about in school. Its glory is in its past. As a result, the people are afraid to move forward. Italians talk endlessly about how their country is too closed, how the people are too near-sighted, how the culture is too limited. But there is a reluctance to change. Italians are complicated, beautiful, and sad. I would go back without hesitation.

    Trieste was a lovely city. It has the atmosphere of in-betweenness. It is cornered between the mountains and the sea, between eastern and western Europe. It is sort of small, but sort of big. There are some tourists, but not many. It is decidedly Italian, but there is a significant minority of foreigners (due in part to the center of theoretical physics nearby, which attracts nerds from around the world). The architecture includes Roman ruins, baroque palaces, and modern art statues. There are areas which my host described as being "like beaches," where you can sunbathe but not swim, and where women and men have their separate zones. In Trieste everything is in between, more or less.

    I would like to tell you about the Slovenian countryside passing below me. It is a new world that I want to share with you. But I haven't yet told you about Padova and Venice, or even about Bologna. Oh, my poor reader, how I've kept you out of touch! Bologna was my favourite city in Italy. Instead of big piazzas, pompous white palaces, and gnarly oak trees, Bologna is full of archways. Orange archways. Yes, yes, I know the city is old, but I insist that it was totally 1970's. Bologna is groovin. Bologna got game. It's laid-back, it's open, it's orange. My host was, without doubt, the cook with the lowest stress levels that I will ever meet (yes Sarah and Dave, that one's for you!). Although he did tell me that he was showing me only one side of Bologna, and that there exists a whole other world of people who are all about "fashion."

    In Padova I had my first experience with one such "fashion" Italian (they use "fashion" as an adjective to describe these types of people, e.g. "He's a bit too fashion for my tastes"). At the Padova station, I was greeted in all my travel grime by a young man in smart, spotless clothes and brought to an apartment where I swear there was not a speck of dust anywhere. Coming from Bologna, all this was a bit of a shock to me. I felt as though I had suddenly been dropped into a world that I didn't want and that didn't want me. But as always, my reaction was too hasty. It turned out that my host was as strange as all the other Italians I'd met, and as such, we got along famously.

    … I'll tell you about Trieste some other time. Right now, it's all about Slovenia. It's the coolest thing in the world to walk down the street and not understand a thing on the posters and street signs. Let's get lost!

Day 39: The road out of Rome

    Ah my faithful reader, Cheesy has not forgotten about you. But as she was drifting on through Europe, real life was catching up to her. The thrill of embarking on a four-month voyage was subsiding to more practical challenges of every-day life in Europe. And in general, daily challenges are far less interesting to write about than epic voyages. Cheesy was not epic – Cheesy was cheesy.

    Rome, on the other hand, was epic. Everything was huge, gray, and ancient. But Cheesy couldn't help but feel that all the myths and monuments were a façade hiding the true character of the city. Rome was somehow more elusive than all the other towns Cheesy had visited. After ten days, Cheesy still hadn't discovered any particular neighbourhood particularly well. She had spent an evening in San Lorenzo, the student ghetto near the train station, where she played board games in a bar with other couchsurfers. She had spent two evenings in Trastevere, which is a bit like the Plateau in that you either go there because you're cool or because you want to look cool. For example, in one Trastevere bar Cheesy had had a shot called a "69" composed of chocolate, absinthe, cream, and peppercorns. But Cheesy still hadn't found a vibe that unified her memories of Rome, so she decided she'd just have to go back again one day to figure out Rome for once and for all.

    The Roman people were certainly nicer than the Fiorentini or the Torinesi. They smiled more and wore more colourful clothes. They talked less about politics and more about history. They hadn't caught on to the north Italian trend of wearing glasses the size of goggles. They looked at you in your eyes when you spoke, and actually seemed to be listening.

    Despite the countless monuments and tourists, Rome paradoxically gave Cheesy the impression of being empty. Maybe it was because the buildings were so big, they dwarfed everything around them. Rome was full of wide piazzas, wide roads, and wide parks. Cheesy couldn't really tell where everyone lived. When she asked, the Romans answered the "Periferia," the neighbourhoods forming a concentric circle around the center of Rome. Indeed, Cheesy's host was in the western periphery in an area called Casalotti. It took Cheesy an hour to get to the center of Rome from Casalotti using public transportation. (Rome only had two metro lines, although it was at least twice as big as Montreal. One guy claimed that the metro only covers 30% of the city).

    Life in Rome was a mixed bag. On the down side, having an education wouldn't guarantee a job. The jobs that were available were mostly short-term or menial. Rent was nearly as high as Paris. Salaries weren't great. The bread was lousy. On the plus side, having four or five weeks of vacation per year was normal. Food prices were reasonable. The winters weren't cold. It was easy enough to make friends. A bus ticket only cost one euro. So did a cappuccino. And it was Rome!

    On the train to Bologna Cheesy was already feeling nostalgic. She felt sure she would return to Rome one day. And next time she wouldn't be sick at home for five days – she would live amongst the Romans and discover all the secret corners she knew she'd missed. But she knew she'd have to plan it better. The Romans were bombarded by couchsurfers. A couchsurfer listed as a host in Rome received an average of 9 or 10 requests every day during the down season. During the summer it was basically impossible to find a host. And Cheesy was not, by any means, going back to the hostel she'd stayed in her first night.

    Nonetheless Cheesy was looking forward to Bologna. She had been told it was a great student town and the capital of left-wing politics in Italy (however weak it may be). She had also learned that spaghetti Bolognese was an American invention that did not actually exist in Italy (neither did fettuccini alfredo). Her host was a young pastry chef new to couchsurfing. So let the good times and the pastry dough roll!

Day 29: Cheesy visits a rut

    Experienced travelers know that, when you're on the road, all things go wrong at once. First, Cheesy couldn't find a host in Rome, despite having sent out dozens of messages to dozens of people. Second, she couldn't reserve a bed online at the only hostel in Rome, because reservations had to be 48 hours in advance and Cheesy had been hoping until the last minute to find a couchsurfing host. Third, Cheesy couldn't stay an extra day with her host in Florence, because he was expecting new guests. Fourth, Cheesy found out Monday morning at 10 that she had to be gone by 11 because the housekeeper was coming.

    So all of a sudden Cheesy found herself in the train station of Florence, heading to Rome with no idea what to do once she got there. But she still felt positive, because she managed to get on a train that she knew was heading to Rome (unlike in Marseille, where she got on the train not knowing when or how to get to Torino where her next hosts were waiting for her). On the train, she got into a conversation with an Italian man sitting opposite her, who actually knew quite a bit about linguistics. But Cheesy's good humour was premature. Cheesy hadn't marked the date on her train pass yet, since on the Marseille train she only wrote the date once the ticket-man came along. And so the ticket-man on the Roman train came along. And Cheesy hadn't marked the date yet. And the ticket-man fined Cheesy €50. And so began Cheesy's descent into Rome.

    Once arrived, Cheesy took the bus to get to the hostel. In Rome, there are crosswalks on the street without any traffic lights. So the pedestrian is expected to saunter out into the highway and hope that all the cars will stop. Cheesy had to cross such a street to get to the hostel. She was cautious. She waited until a bus stopped to let her cross. So she dashed towards the yellow line in the middle of the highway. The cars on the other side of the highway hadn't seen her yet. Once she arrived at the yellow line, the first car saw her and stopped suddenly. The car behind it of course hadn't seen anything, and went flying into the car that had stopped for Cheesy. And so Cheesy's entry to the Roman youth hostel was punctuated by a major car accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, and Cheesy was able to creep away from the scene to get to the hostel.

    The hostel was €19 per night. Internet use was €3 per hour. The wireless system was down. Breakfast was not included. Laundry cost €6. The lobby was unheated. There were no locks on the doors. There was no soap in the bathrooms. And in order to go anywhere, you had to cross the damn highway again. Cheesy was not pleased. But the employees were really nice, and placed Cheesy in the same dorm as another Canadian girl who had just arrived. So there was hope for Rome.

    However, the next morning, Cheesy began her tour at the hospital. No, dear reader, Cheesy is quite fine. But (and I'm sure you'll be very interested to know), Cheesy had developed an infected ingrown hair, and it had become so swollen that Cheesy thought she might do well with a prescription of some kind (Cheesy had learned early on from her parents working in the pharmaceutical industry: when in doubt, seek drugs). Cheesy managed to get out of the hospital by about 1 p.m. and was happy to have some time to walk around. Of course, it promptly started raining. So Cheesy found a café with a wifi internet connection and settled in. She had 64 new emails, breaking her previous record of 32 in Florence. Most were just couchsurfing business, which was taking up much of Cheesy's time.

    After tackling the emails, Cheesy braved the rain and managed to do some sightseeing. She stumbled across the Parthenon by accident. Not that it was hard: the Parthenon was huge. Rome was huge. In fact, with all the traffic and monuments and people, Cheesy was beginning to think that the only thing cooler than Paris was Rome. Cheesy was a city girl, no doubt. After the Parthenon, Cheesy visited the Castel Sant'Angelo. The castle was surrounded by more of the lovely Dr. Seuss trees that Cheesy had first seen in Marseille. Then Cheesy went to the Basilica San Pietro, which she did not realize was right next to the Vatican. She also didn't realize that she could actually go into the basilica without paying, so she lingered around outside for a while. She did manage to get into the crypts of the dead popes. That was nice, but not like seeing a real mummy, skin and bones, like in Torino.

    After her touristy afternoon, Cheesy returned to the hostel. She had managed to find a host, and was to wait for him there until 8 or 9 p.m. Italians have big days. They work from 9 a.m. until late into the evening, come home to have a multi-course dinner at 9 p.m., then maybe go out dancing until 2 or 3 in the morning. Maybe it's because they're always running late. In any case, Cheesy wasn't surprised when her host called to say he'd only be arriving around 9:30. Cheesy didn't mind. She was happy to be leaving the hostel and hopefully also the rut she'd gotten into since heading to Rome.

Day 28: Firenze to Roma

    Have I already been in Europe four weeks? When was my last blog post, anyway? Yikes time flies.

    Italy is slowly warming up to me, or maybe I'm slowly warming up to it. Maybe it's because I understand the language much better now, which means the culture and the people are more accessible. But what I'm finding out is strange. The Italians seem displeased with their country. My second host in Turin spoke to me for five days straight about the horror of Italian politics and the shame of a culture based entirely on soccer, coffee, and fashion. My host in Florence told me that work is hard to find, earnings are low relative to cost of living, work conditions are deplorable, and rent is high. He told me that the Florentines aren't so nice. In Turin, my hosts told me the Turinese aren't so nice. Everyone seems to think that all the nice people are in the south. But the further south I travel, the further south I have to go to find people who describe their city as friendly. So maybe I'll have to go right to the southern tip of Sicily to find the elusive friendly people of Italy…

    Not that my hosts haven't been nice. But Italians are surprisingly serious. I've met only two people who had an easy smile – one was from Sardinia, the other from Napoli – both of course from the "far south." Italians seem to age quickly, too. Thirty years somehow seems a lot older here than in Canada. I have yet to meet the bubbly and flirtatious stereotype.

    So why do Italians stay in Italy if they're tired of living here? At first (in my well-established naivety), I thought it must the charm of Italy sucking people in like magnets. But when I asked my hosts, the replies were curious. Italians are lazy. Italians are xenophobic. Italians are too attached to family and friends. One person even told me (please don't be offended, dear reader) that Italians are f**ed up. And after telling me this they admit that they have no real proof for characterizing Italians this way. So my impression is that Italians are a people of strange convictions and even stranger inclinations. Their actions don't match their beliefs and their beliefs don't match reality.

    I'm heading to Rome now, where I'm sure I'll be told that Romans aren't nice, and I should go further south. Actually I've had a lot of trouble finding hosts in Rome. Tonight I'm hoping there will be room at the hostel. Also, I got fined €50 for not having put the date on my Eurail pass before getting on the train. So my entry into Rome is starting out rough. Nonetheless, the countryside between Florence and Rome is absolutely gorgeous. I also asked my hosts to tell me something good about Italy (for God's sake). The first host had no answer. The second said, "the weather." Ha, ha. Well it's true – the sun is out and it's warm today. Although it rained for my first three days in Florence, and my first five days in Torino. So basically after two weeks, I'm still unable to attribute a single quality to Italy with any certainty. Oh wait, they eat a LOT!

    I suppose I should say something about Florence. Here goes: it is FULL of Americans. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Honestly it's so bad that I was embarrassed to be an English-speaker in Florence. And it's full of college Americans. (No offense intended to Americans reading this, if there are any). So the streets fill up with twenty-year-old ditzes and jocks taking advantage of the sixteen-year-old drinking permission in Italy. And we're in the down season now. My advice: do not, under any circumstances, go to Florence in the summer.

    Still, Florence is a lovely city for walking. The streets are windy and cobblestony, there are tons of old churches, the Duomo is majestic, the river is lovely, and the gelato is goooood. The markets are big but more expensive than Torino. In general things are less clean and stuck-up in Florence than in Turin, and more charismatic. But then you hear someone squealing in an American drawl, and your shoulders sink a bit. Sigh.

    Alora perché non voglio essere una turista (i couchsurfers sono 'travelers' e non turisti), e sopratutto non voglio che la gente pensi che io sia americana, finisco questo blog in italiano. Ciao e baci a tutti!

 

    

Vi presento Torino!

Piazza San Carlo - a reflection of the grandiose architecture of Torino
Overlooking the city, brrrr
Fiume (river) Po, with kayaker, Alps, and the Mole
Silvio, my second host in Torino, filming a documentary about the darker side of Italian politics (assuming there is a lighter side)
My first hosts Piero and Eva

Day 19: Buongiorno, Italia

    I arrived safely in Torino on Thursday evening. My first hosts were Piero and his Bulgarian girlfriend Ewa. When I arrived at the apartment they were standing side by side in the doorway, smiling, the classic image of Italian hospitality. They took me to a huge restaurant / grocery store called "Eataly" (ha, ha) which specializes in local, organic, and slow food. The slow food movement started near Torino, although I honestly couldn't tell you in what way the movement is actualized around here. Not that Italians eat quickly, but it's not like there are timers on the table to make sure customers pace themselves. Anyway I ate a delicious pasta al succo di terra (tomatoes, eggplants, olives and pancetta), which I ate very slowly out of principle J

    By the way Lynda, now that I think of it, I've always made a conscious effort to spell Canadian so I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe my computer does auto-correct without me realizing?

    Anyway yesterday morning I took my first stroll through Torino, although I didn't get very far. On my way towards the city center, I happened across a huge market full of vegetables and clothes and jewelry. Of course I got promptly distracted, and then got promptly lost. It was great – that seems to be the best way to get to know a city. But Torino is laid out in a more straightforward way than Paris or Marseille. It is less frequent that a street suddenly changes names. The layout is less spiderwebby and more griddy. So it didn't take me long to get to the center, where there is a huge piazza surrounded by arcaded walkways. France didn't seem to have open squares like that. France didn't seem to have much open space at all. There are no more two-burner kitchens here, no more isolated chambres de bonne. Everything is clean, comfortable, attractive, spacious. No piles of excrement on the streets, no crowds of people anywhere, no stench of sulfur.

    But still, they call Torino a "little Paris," and with good reason. The streets are lined by trees, the buildings are stately and baroque, the skies are gray. And there's a weirdly shaped tower poking out of the middle of the city.

    Here, cafes are called "bars," and in Paris, bars are called "cafes." What's nice is that here you can sit to drink your caffe in the bar, and order a brioche (=croissant in Italy, but brioches and croissants are different things in France) if you like. But in Paris and Marseille, you don't sit to drink your coffee. You stand at the bar, or you sit and order a $15 meal with your coffee. I missed the middle-ground café in France, so I'm glad to have found it here (in the form of a "bar") (are you confused yet?).

    Yesterday evening Piero and Ewa took me to a big dinner party with a bunch of Piero's friends from work. Forgive the stereotype, but it was sooo Italian. Everyone was talking, yelling, laughing at the same time, there was tons of food (not a single fruit or vegetable in sight, all bread and cheese and pizza and pasta and coldcuts), and the wine ran out after an hour. I couldn't participate much because there were always too many conversations going at once, and within each conversation everyone was talking at the same time, andeveryonewastalkingsuperfastandsuperloudanditwasprettyoverwhelming. Fortunately there was a Russian guy who spoke English, but not Italian, so we talked a lot. And Piero was very attentive, trying to make sure I was having a good time even if I was a bit lost.

    The Italians strike me as being aloof. Their eyes are always moving, moving, moving. I have a feeling that the so-called Italian charm comes from the fact that it's rare for an Italian to sit down, look you in the eyes, talk to you, and pay attention. You're in trouble once they do. You get all high on yourself and start fluffing your feathers, because usually the Italians are running around talking to ten other people at the same time. Although I should hold my tongue - I've just met my next host, Silvio, and he seems to be a great one-on-one conversationalist. Still, the eyes are moving, moving, moving…

    Italy is not big on wifi, nor the internet in general (which is actually due to Berlusconi, so says Silvio, but that's another story), so I don't know how often I can write. It's also very difficult for me to post photos on the blog – it takes a long time, and I need a wifi connection to upload the pictures from my own laptop. So again, I'll have to redirect you to facebook. Mi spiace!

    
 

    

Day 17: Some departing thoughts on France

 

    Admittedly I've only been to two French cities, and so I warn you to generalize at your own risk. Nevertheless I give myself permission to comment on France, since (a) that's what blogs are for – exaggerated and biased commentaries that misrepresent the world to the world, and (b) with couchsurfing I've had the privilege to live amongst the locals and get a better glimpse of what life is really like here.

    According to the Parisians (according to the Marseillais), France consists of two regions: Paris and everything else. The everything-else part is called "province." Non-Parisians find these terms insulting. I don't blame them - I know I'd want to hit someone of Canada suddenly became Toronto and everything else. But it's true that when foreigners think of France, they usually think of Paris first. Maybe they'll think of the Cote-d'Azur next, basking in sunshine and money.

    In Paris life is like this: you live in a room that fits a bed and a desk. Your bathroom fits one square shower, one toilet and one sink. Your kitchen is either the size of your bathroom, or is actually in your bedroom – it is a half-size fridge on top of which are two burners for cooking. Full-size fridges and stoves are a luxury. Baths are a luxury. Space is a luxury. You pay at least $1000 per month in rent. You navigate through the immense spider-web of metros every day to get to your menial job on the other side of town. You work six days a week. It's cloudy. You're a smoker. You've paid $15 for one drink in a bar several times. But! Wine and cheese are cheap. You eat pastries and baguettes and brioches every day. You live on a beautiful old street in a cool building with creaky wood floors. You meet boys who actually like to dance and cook. You meet girls who are classy and crazy. You have lost your inhibitions. You go to parties in boats on the Seine. You go for walks and get lost in the parks and walkways. You have forgotten what boredom feels like.

    There is something addictive about Paris. You ride its energy, you leave in relief of peace, but you are soon hungry for more. In Marseille it is the opposite. You arrive strung-out and needy. You leave numb and satiated. In Marseille, life is like this: work is a luxury. You go for boat rides down the coast and organize barbeques on the beach. You have paid $2 for a drink in a bar several times. You eat Arabic specialties every day – honey cakes and doner sandwiches and mint tea. You listen to local music and speak to your friends in the local accent. You are part of a community. It's sunny and breezy. On the down side, every day you navigate through piles of dog excrement instead of metro lines. If you have a job, you work in a poor and isolated suburb. And some things are like Paris. You have a two-burner stove and a half-fridge as your kitchen. You're a smoker. For breakfast, coffee and bread are basic necessities, along with jam or Nutella, but never eggs or cheese. You don't complain, nor feel the need to.

    I'm going to miss France sorely. I'm on the train, and with any luck I'll arrive in Torino tonight. But you'll either chuckle, cringe or roll your eyes when I say that there actually is no train to Torino from France today. I botched my plans. I was under the impression that I would be able to just hop on the train and sail merrily away to Italy today, but the train schedules are apparently irregular. So I'm going to the French-Italian border and from there I'll cross my fingers (an expression which I tought to a young German named Norbert with whom I went hiking on Tuesday) that a train will take me to Torino. A couchsurfer is waiting for me to arrive tonight, so it's kind of important…

    I realize that I haven't written much of what I've actually done in Marseille. The photos will be self-explanatory (when I'm finally able to post them). It's also true that the best moments are sometimes photo-free – no subliminal messages there, but sometimes a camera spoils the moment.

    Just arrived in Cannes, so if you'll excuse me I must go saunter with the great comédiens français, à bientôt!

 

 

 

 

Day 14: Cheesy waxes philosophical

After a week basking under the provençal sun, Cheesy’s thoughts had begun to drift towards the more abstract. In Marseille the only thing higher than the rate of unemployment was the rate of drug consumption. One person told Cheesy that the reason he did so much drugs was to feel tired in the evening as if he’d just finished a hard day’s work.

Some might call Marseille a paradise. The unemployed receive €1300 per month in welfare. They can sit on the beach all day, smoking cheap product from North Africa, without having to worry about paying the rent or getting up early for work the next day. But Cheesy was not convinced that the Marseillais who lived like that were fully happy. If a person sits at home all day, it doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t want to go out. Humans are pathetically susceptible to inertia. The more of something we do, the harder it becomes to do anything else.

Cheesy was also coming to believe in the existence of social inertia. She had always thought of herself (with displeasure) as one of those shy, quiet, naive, and basically boring young women who sit waiting for more interesting people to come along to spice up life. Cheesy was meeting plenty of people, Cheesy was being sociable, Cheesy was having a grand time, but Cheesy was still Cheesy. She wanted to be more open, so what was the problem? It was slowly dawning on Cheesy, to her absolute horror, that maybe people don’t change. If the shy are all envious of the bold, then the shy should just go out and be bold. This was what Cheesy had had in mind when she set out for Europe. But what if Cheesy had once again built her plans around naïve hopes? What if the reason that the shy are envious is that they can’t change?

And so Cheesy felt a bit sad but also a bit at home amongst the Marseillais. Everyone here was caught in a lazy inertial flow that led nowhere. On the other hand, inertia can realize itself in many ways. Cheesy thought about people who couldn’t stop moving. Cheesy knew people who had almost 700 friends on Facebook. People like that must be insatiable. Nothing gives them a sense of satisfaction or calmness. Was there no middle ground? Cheesy dreaded that she would be boring her whole life. Or whether she would become caught in a travel-inertia, constantly trying to improve her life without ever changing herself. These thoughts made Cheesy sad and scared, and for that reason she decided to change subjects.

After her first night staying at the hostel in Marseille, Cheesy had moved into the apartment of a fellow named Julien. Julien lived in Vitrolle, a town in the outskirts of Marseille. Julien introduced Cheesy to rap marseillais and taught her all the local lingo. The accent was strange and there were many Arabic loanwords in Marseillais. While Quebecois pronounce “tu” as “tsu,” the Marseillais say “chew.” (For the wino’s interest, Parisians say “van” (writing with a Quebec accent), Quebecois say “vin” and Marseillais say “vinne” or “ving.” Anyone wishing to hear marseillais first-hand should listen to “Je danse le mia,” a famous marseillais rap song that came out in the nineties.) (Oh and apparently it’s not cool to drink red wine if you’re a meuf (girl, young woman) in Marseille. Emma will be pleased to hear that it’s all about rosé and white here)

Julien first brought Cheesy to Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica perched on a hill in Marseille. From there Cheesy could see the whole city, which sprawls out endlessly along the coast. The center of the city is the Vieux Port, which is a rectangular harbour jutting into the city. Opposite the city, in the Mediterranean, lie the Frioul Islands. One of the islands is occupied by the Chateau d’If, which is where the Count of Monte Cristo took place. A solitary highrise stood on the opposite side of the harbour. Cheesy thought it was pretty ugly, but voilà, gotta stick with the times.

Marseille was a strange city. It had the feel of a small town, although it was one of the largest cities in France both in terms of area and population. The public transit system closes at midnight at the latest. They had recently built a tramway system, which was more or less useless because it followed the same path as the metro. The metro didn’t cover even half of the city area. Cheesy was told that the north part of town is basically a massive selling ground for drugs – if you go walking in the streets there, you’ll be approached just as if you were a shopper in a marketplace.

Marseille was known for having one of the poorest city centres in France. The rich live along the coast in the south part of town, and ironically the poor get to inhabit the more historical areas. One such area was the Panier, where Cheesy stayed for a few days after leaving Vitrolle. The Panier was where Marseille was first founded (as ‘Massalia’) in 600 B.C. There were huge gnarly ‘platane’ trees (oak?) everywhere, little madonnas carved into the corners of buildings, and remnants of old windmills that once produced olive oil. The streets stank of sulfur, fish, and excrement. Fanny, Cheesy’s host in the Panier, said that there were plans to gentrify downtown Marseille. Fanny was convinced that this was the best time to be in Marseille, because in a few years it would be as snobby, expensive, and soulless as Paris (Julien had well informed Cheesy of the undying animosity between Parisians and Marseillais).

While Cheesy missed busy, bubbly Paris, she had a few good nights hitting the town around Marseille. She had tapas and mulled wine in Aix-en-Provence, danced up a storm at the Cours Julien in north-central Marseille, met up with other couchsurfers for pastis, and wined and dined with Fanny and her friends. She had only two more items on her list of things to do before leaving for Italy: play tarot cards, which were invented in Marseille, and walk along the calanques, the famous cliffs overlooking the sea. She had plans to do both, and was trying hard to remain optimistic despite her high rate of failed travel plans. Oh well, if all else failed, at least wine was cheap in France!

PS Still no net on my own computer so pics will have to wait :(