Reflections on Ramblings

So, this isn't actually a continuation of my Berlin blogs. But I have words that need saying today.

My beautiful little sister left early this morning for China. She is interning for an NGO in Southern China, and then spending a semester in a University "South of the Clouds." She will be gone for six months. This is her "year abroad." (You can check out her blog Mind the Hilly Road and read her lovely writing!)

Yes, she's been abroad before. She's been to China before, as a youngster in high school she picked herself up and was gone for three months. But, this is university, this is an internship, this is the product of her research, she found these programs on her own made them work, and off she goes. She is not a kid anymore, she is off on her own, to travel and work and be a student.

I am so proud of her, so happy for her, and I will miss her so much.

She was, reasonably, nervous yesterday. Asking "why would I want to leave all this",  family, friends, dogs, home. And it has made me think about my first time leaving.

I was running away. Away from college, away from life in the same city, and away from myself. I needed to go, to be somewhere else. But it's true. I am lucky enough to live a beautiful life where I am. I remember walking through security for that first flight on my own, away to foreign lands, away to the unexpected. I was terrified. Knee knocking, bone deep, petrified.

And I am SO PROUD that I did it.

It wasn't easy. Let no one tell you that it was. I was homesick, sick-sick, scared, away from everything I knew. There were times that I thought about giving up and going home.

But because I knew I could go home, because I knew that I was loved and supported no matter what my choices were, I was able to fight my demons, and stick it out. I learned a lot about myself that first year abroad, far more than I ever expected. I learned what I need, what I want, how I travel, my own little ticks and quirks that only come clear in strange and unexpected circumstances.

Going abroad, be it for two weeks or a year, it teaches you about the world, about different cultures and peoples, but most of all it teaches you about yourself.

I encourage everyone to go spend time abroad. Go study somewhere that isn't home. Leave your comfort zone even a little. Spend a month in London, six weeks in Tibet, a year in Ecuador, it doesn't matter. But GO.

I can only hope that my sister has as wonderful an experience as possible. I hope that she makes good friends, sees amazing things, learns pointless trivia about old statues, and remembers to call home every once in a while. I won't say I hope she has a perfect trip... things always go wrong. It is perfectly inevitable. She will get lost. She will get homesick. This is natural and normal. But I hope she learns how to deal with obstacles, how to be safe and strong, in spite of anything.

So, there you are. A bit rambly, but that's to be expected from me. I ramble, I roam, I wander.

Travel has made me who I am today.

So, who are you?

Being in Berlin: an arrival and a departure

"I'm currently in Berlin with the lovely Alicia. I've known her amongst the longest of my friends, and so we have quite a history of hilarity, madness, and merry-making behind us."

The above was all I managed to get written about Berlin while I was actually in Berlin. I was very busy running around, seeing sites (or sights), eating good food, and getting into decorous hijinks with Alicia. Oh the fun we had.

But really, that's not where I'm going to start on Berlin. I'm going to start with another love song to trains. I could, probably shouldn't, and maybe someday will, write a book about my adventures and musings on trains.

The trip to Berlin started out with what I like to think of as a bang. I hopped the train from Flers to Paris, metro'd from Gare Montparnasse to Gare du Nord, and purchased myself a ticket on the night train to Berlin.

Did that sink in?

The night train!

Oh so exciting! So I spent about three hours killing time in the train station and at 7:00 that evening I boarded a train. We had a full sleeping car. Six of us, folded into one little car. There are six board-like slats, three on each side of the car, that march up the walls as make-shift cots. Everybody gets a pillow, a sleeping bag style sheet and a blanket.

Did I enjoy it? Oh yes I did!

Something about sleeping on a train appeals to me. Perhaps mostly because I've read too much romanticized fiction... but it also just seems so practical:
-Step one: Get on train. Consume dinner if you wish (I brough my own sandwich and cookie and was very happy)

-Step two: Brush your teeth and prepare for bed.
(Lucy Travel Tip: I ended up changing from my jeans into leggings and was very comfortable. Others didn't change. Were I to Night Train again, I might wear leggings under a skirt for ease of changing, but it depends on what makes you happiest.
Second Lucy Travel Tip: Bring water! I got a bit dehydrated on the train, and was glad for my bottle of water. I brought a bigger one for the return trip because I didn't like the water in the sinks for brushing my teeth. It tasted funny.)

-Step three: Sleep.

-Step four: Wake up and  you are at your destination!

Bam.
Wasn't that easy?

I slept remarkably well on the way there, and even better on the return voyage four days later. It's really sort of a soothing motion, and I usually pass out on trains as it is... so actually getting regular sleep on one wasn't that much of a leap for me to make.

My cabin on the way east was full. It was a Friday night and everyone seemed to be headed to Berlin for a holiday.

I was the only girl in the cabin that night. There were two German-Arabs who had immigrated to Berlin when they were children. The chatty one was a friendly taxi driver who spoke Arabic, German, English, and a smattering of French. (That'll take a you a notch or two down when you are so proud of a University degree in a second language...) The skinny one was a cigarette addict and spent much of the waking hours of the trip sneaking off for a smoke in the lavratories.

We also had a father and his two young boys. They were headed off to meet friends in Berlin. The boys swarmed like monkeys up and down the ladders and happily took the uppermost bunks (which none of the adults had wanted in particular-- they are suuuper tall!). I got the impression that the father didn't do lots of active parenting, as he seemed slightly befuddled as to how to get the boys to eat their dinner. The older boy was about in 6th grade, bemused by the idea that I liked living in a little village (they lived in Paris, oh city children), and addicted to the iphone. It was a nice family.

Coming back west I ended up on a nearly empty train. I shared a cabin with a girl from Colombia who had come to Paris to study French and then art. She wants to be an illustrator, hopfeully a science illustrator- diagrams, text books, the beautiful and fiddly images that I grew up seeing in all my father's books. She had been in Berlin with friends for a music festival.
She is far cooler than I will ever even dream of being, wrapped up in pleather leggings, colorful hoodie and a leather bomber jacket. We talked about books, art, and travel; how important it is, and how hard it is, to leave everything you know and love behind to see the world and follow a dream. She impressed the hell out of me, and I really hope she does well! I think she will.

So I'm basically totally sold on the Night Train. It's comfortable, inexpensive, and certainly less stressful than flying.

Lucy Travel Tip: Flying to Berlin from Paris was about the same price as the night train. Excluding the cost of a hotel in Paris for the night (as all cheap flights out are EARLY), cost of the train to the airport, and the cost of having to be at the airport at 5am. Bascially, the train "takes longer" but only if you look at just travel time and not the full picture. With the train I went from city-center to city-center non-stop, with no hotels or complex security checkpoints to endure. Basically it boils down to: consider the whole journey, not just price and air time when you are plotting a journey.

This further underlines my burning desire to take the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul one day. It's happening people. It is.

So, this isn't really about being in Berlin. It's an ode to Night Trains and the people you meet on them.

Next up: Being in Berlin part two: or why I love to travel with a friend!

Broken resolutions and long plane flights

To all and sundry, and those to bother to read (Hi Susan!),  I am not dead. I’m even very much alive, and (be amazed!) back in the States.

Yes, I managed to break my resolution, you all only got one update in May. Any ideas for how best I can give penance? I will accept any and all ideas. And I will make it up to you, however you see fit. There may be a vote, if I get more than one suggestion. 

However, I do fully intend to keep updating here. Before, on my return from Europe-land, I let the blog go. I didn’t update at all. In my defence I was being very busy and graduating from University. But, I’m very much in a wondering, wandering, rambly phase of my life right now. I barely know what I’ll be doing in two months, and the four-month mark is lost in the uncertainty fog. I cannot tell you where I will be or what I will be doing. And if that doesn’t sound like it won’t make for some good blog posts… well. 

So then. There will be (as promised) at least two posts a month for the future from me. Some of them I think will be back-dated. Stories about Domfront, France, my travels and the people I met. The things I wanted to share with you but never had the time to get down. I have tales of skiing, of mums in France, of packing, of strange men in airplanes, of Huston-style culture shock, a trip to Seattle, and many things to say about trains (on TWO continents). I still haven’t shared my tales of Istanbul (I repeat, the foooooood), or London and the harrowing drive home (you can put cars in trains now. Did you know?). Nor did I ever tell you about my weekend in Paris with Caro, or about JP and his mum and how she loves to stuff me full of good food (oh the fondu... I can't even...). Or Berlin! I went to Berlin. I have photos to share (yes, multi-media...oooooh), and some fairly hilarious quotes that are the product of putting Alicia and I in one room for any length of time.

There will also be posts about my present. And no time like the present to get started on that is there? 

I am back in lovely Oregon, which is slightly surreal. Coming home after a long trip away is always strange. Half of the time Domfront feels like it was just a dream. The other half of the time, it’s Oregon that feels like the dream. Really though, I can’t complain too much, as my “reverse” culture shock hasn’t been too strong this time around. Though the reality show about troubled cats did make me want to weep, and I actually did do some hysterical giggling to keep that undercontrol.

My amazing and lovely sister moves home soon, and then nearly immediately moves away again. To China. Yup, I’m the sister that travels to “normal” places for long periods of time believe it or not. 

And then mid-July, I’m off east. I’m headed to Minnesota, where I will be spending a month teaching at a summer camp. It’s a language camp. Two weeks of intensive English for foreign kids. I’m terribly nervous, and terribly excited all at the same time. I wish it was more than a month of employment, but eh. I won’t complain. I get to spend a month in the middle of nowhere MN, which is just as good as the middle of nowhere France, only probably with much higher humidity and much bigger mosquitoes. (I will be sure to faithfully report if they are actually as big as helicopters, I promise!)

And then the end of August, I can’t yet tell you where I will be, or what I will be doing. I’m in the joyfully terrifying land of the post-college, unemployed twenty-something’s’. Such fun. 

So adventures and rambles await! I hope you faithful few keep on reading. I will certainly keep on rambling. 

And seriously, how are you supposed to make up for the breaking of a resolution? I've got no clues people.