Rome!

While I am recovering from a mean sunburn after a day of reading on my Veranda in Greece (cue jealous looks) I figured its time to reflect on Rome.

Oh Rome…where do I even start? The beauty of its brokenness hinting at the splendor of its former decadence? The hot-headed Italians who really did (!) speak with their hands? The crazy traffic? The food? The wine? The 38-year-old former illegal Mexican immigrant who now lives in Italy on whose couch I slept?

Uh…let’s start there.

Couch surfing—if you have never heard of this, it may sound like a sketchy college kid haven where you shuffle from frat couch to frat couch with the hope of maybe a shower and the assurance of a party wherever you go… that’s at least how I thought of it…but that is a far, far cry from its actual purpose.

Couch surfing is an online network of world travelers who aren’t necessarily interested in the COUCH so to speak (though staying with someone for free is quite the bonus) rather the potential for legitimate cultural exchange by staying with an insider on the place you are visiting.

Instead of following Lonely planet tour guides and seeking out the “insiders tips” on where to eat when visiting [insert country of choice] where you end up seeing all the other tourists who ALSO found google’s top search hit for “great places to eat” or “what to do in Rome”, you get a real insider to show you where to go, how to get there, and what to order.

What better way to learn about the culture and the lifestyle and the real daily life of people in another country than to stay in their house and actually TALK to someone who lives there? Seeing the Colloseum tells me nothing about Italians, about their daily life, or how to blend in.  All I got from seeing all the touristy things in Rome was a picture, and a big check mark next to my “been there done that!” list.

The 3 hour long dinner and conversation I had about life and politics and the importance of language and dialects was, however, something I will keep with me probably forever and something I was so thankful to have had while wandering through Rome the next day.

I didn’t ask Alejandro if I could blog about him, so if you’re interested in some of the ridiculous stories I heard or the actual experience I had couch surfing, I’d love to tell you about it via email. And for all of the worriers out there who aren’t quite sold on the idea of legitimate cultural exchange with a stranger—I’m still alive to write this blog! And full of real stories and insights on Italy (and Mexico incidentally) to boot.  And if you still doubt you can check out couchsurfing.com for an overview. It was a very cool experience, and something I think I would do again.

But now for the fun stuff on Rome!

I learned several things about Romans and Rome by experiencing it first hand. For example, My original plan was to see a few sights, but to plop myself down at a café and write write write while I drank coffee before sharing a few meals with friends and eat eat eat my way through the trip.

I found out, that because of the “bar” culture (not alcohol bar, but Espresso bar) Italians take more 15 breaks throughout the day to enjoy this espresso than most  northern Europeans, but they don’t linger and hang around to drink a cappuccino in the afternoon as one might imagine.

Cappuccino, first of all, is a breakfast drink and only ordered in the morning before 10:00. After that, it is 15 minutes breaks for espresso.

The breakfast cappuccino itself is actually drunk pretty quickly as well.  Served at a tepid/drinkable temperature with a croissant, the breakfast enjoyment lasts about long enough for one to skim the morning paper and then be off to work.

While I sat down to order my drink I was surprised at how rushed I felt to get out of there after about 20 minutes. What? Isn’t Italy supposed to be about “dolce della vita?” The sweetness of life?

I found out yes, but that comes with pasta and wine… not coffee.  

Twist my arm... I'll go meet up with a friend and take a long lunch with lots of wine! So I meandered my way through the crowded touristy streets of Rome and found the small piazza tucked behind tall buildings where my friend Marie and I were to meet for lunch. 

Me and Marie in wine bar/restaurant #1

3 hours and 3 bottles of wine later we found ourselves being ushered out of the Restaurant because everything apparently shuts down around 4:00 for a break before dinner. We still had an appetite for the "sweetness of life" so we found a cute little place called Coco Wine bar that happened to be open during the 4:00 pause and served delicious finger food. Score!

After eating and drinking our way through the afternoon we walked along the streets of vatican city back to her apartment where we napped (there may have been a little too much sweetness for one afternoon)  before heading out to another delicious italian dinner. 

Post dinner on bridge to Vatican City.... gonna blame the picture quality for the big bellies, but the food was pretttty good....

The next day I found a good fountain and journaled and people watched for a few hours before meeting up with another friend, Emily Johnston, with whom I toured the ruins of the Forum and enjoyed the sunshine of southern Italy. 

All in all it was a wonderful trip of learning, talking, sharing, seeing, and the perfect balance of old friends, new friends and alone time. 

Now I'm in Greece, constantly floored by the beauty of the Mediterranean, and gathering photos for Spring break blog post #2. 

Happy Easter!

Eat Pray Love

I think the only person who knows the real reason why I’m here in Germany this year is my Mom, and even she doesn’t know the whole story.

I wish I could say there was some grand academic drive or some other reason as equally reputable or worthy of Fulbright’s name, but the real reason I’m here is the book Eat, Pray, Love.

In the summer of 2009 I, like most almost-seniors-in-college, was freaking out about jobs. Where was I going to live?! What was I going to do!? I had to decide the fate of the REST OF MY LIFE and the direction of my FOREVER FUTURE at that very moment. The concept was as scary as it was unrealistic.  At the time, however, the feeling was very real. And very very scary.

All the while, as I was contemplating completely un-plannable things like If apply to jobs this job in this city, then what if I get stuck there, and I don’t really want to raise my kids in that school district (who thinks this as a 22 year old—really?) my mom kept asking me the very simple question “What do you WANT to do?”.

As simple as that question is, I think we all know how challenging it is to really answer and answer honestly.

What we want should be dictated by what makes us happy—right? Well, that gets complicated when what makes us happy is so intricately tied to someone else’s happiness too.

I am happy when my friends are happy. I am happy when I please my parents. I am happy when my professors are impressed with my work. So what makes ME happy? Well… I guess it depends on what makes all those other important people in my life happy.

Even when you try to theoretically eliminate those people from your decision making… it just doesn’t work. The people that surround you are as much a part of YOU as you are to yourself.

So back to the summer of 2009…trying to decide what I wanted to do and being very unsuccessful at separating my happiness from the people who were so very important to me—my boyfriend, with whom I was painfully in love, in particular.

After a long, hot, heart-wrenching summer of mulling over my future and dealing with the absolute misery of being in love I finally got a much needed vacation and headed to an isolated island in South Carolina with my family.

This is when I finally picked up the book I’d been carrying around with me all summer. I’d heard a lot about it and was more curious to see what everyone was talking about than the actual content.

If you haven’t read it (or seen the movie) it starts out with writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, lying next to her husband of 7 years feeling very alone and wondering how she got there. 

In a moment of desperation and confusion she prays to God (or talks to him? She’s not very practiced at this—which should prove to everyone her desperation) and ask what should I do? Just tell me what to do!

As a back story for her desperation she describes herself this way:

”..I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have my everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time--everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”

I found myself identifying with her pain, her confusion, her desperation, and more than anything her realization that her happiness was entirely entwined with someone else.

In the book she realizes she has never defined her OWN happiness; she has never found her SELF, so she decides to go on an adventure of self-discovery. She resolves to do the things she has always wanted to do and for some reason never got around to. She goes to Italy to eat, India to pray, and Indonesia to learn… but the book is not called Eat, Pray, Learn, so (not to ruin it for anyone) but you can guess what happens instead.

I found myself inspired by her independence, her drive, her courage to go and find herself, find her faith, and learn to what makes her—Elizabeth Gilbert, and no one else—happy.

One of the criticisms of the book, however, is that she, as a 30 year old, is just selfish and irresponsible. 

You can’t just drop everything and jet off like that! How selfish of her! What about her husband? What about her job? What about all the people that rely on her?

While I think most of those critics are probably just jealous bitter women who have been in that same lonely and desperate place but couldn’t drop everything and travel the world for a year—probably because it IS pretty irresponsible and very few people can actually afford to do that—I still see where they are coming from.

The older we get, the more people DO rely on us. The more intertwined we become with responsibility, families, husbands, wives, children… the deeper you get into real life, the less and less likely (slash less and less responsible) it becomes to be selfish and go on a quest for self discovery.

This is why we have our 20’s.  And I was about to throw my 20’s away by skipping along my revolutionary road to…what? A hypothetical marriage and kids? Who was I kidding…

I didn’t want to be 30 years old and wonder what I wanted. I didn’t want to wake up with 2 kids and think—I never got the chance to go to Greece…well, maybe when the kids are older we can go…

While I had the chance I needed to do something completely decided by ME, and only me. In a burst of energy and motivation I looked up the office number of my advisor and called him. I was surprised he picked up and the surprise almost shook my from my bravery, but I held on to that scrap of confidence…

“Hi, professor Kramer? Hey, it’s Meredith Freeman…great how are you?... yeah, so this is kind of random, but you mentioned last spring something about the Fulbright scholarship?...yeah…is it too late to apply?”

And that’s how I ended up here, but that’s just the beginning. There is a lot more of this story left to write, and I am about to go write it.  

Tomorrow, I will be in Rome. Alone. With my journal and my bible and a stomach ready for some delicious wine and pasta. I am about to have my own, official, Eat Pray, Love adventure in Italy. After that, I will meet up with my friends in Greece for Easter and a week of reflection, writing, and laying out on the beach.

Eat—check. Pray—check. Not sure about Love, but I’ll let you know when I get back.

So for now: Arrivederci! I’m off to Rome!

Real Life

Like Scout Finch's obsession with the mysterious Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, I (and many other 20-somethings I know) have an almost obsessive curiosity about the "real world". It is a place that is defined only by its lack of definition.  I don't really know what this "real world" IS, but I certainly know what it ISN'T.

I can only conclude that college, for example, is not the real world. Living with your parents is not the real world. And more than anything, my incredibly ridiculous life in Germany, where I travel every weekend, can walk along the beach to Denmark after dinner, am only allowed to work 12 hours a week, and where my JOB is to experience as much as possible and simply soak it all up, is also absolutely NOT the real world. 

From what I have gathered in my almost 24 years of life in a not-real-world is that pretty much anything that is fun about being youthful and spontaneous is lost when you enter ever elusive world of realness.

So it makes perfect semantic sense that because I do not live in the "real world" I do not have a "real life". My life is, in essence, "Unreal".

The fact that I am, right now, sitting on my little sofa in my little apartment with my feet up on the 1984-Holiday-Inn-Carpet-Patterned ottoman listening to the rooster crowing and the wind blowing between the rhythmic ticking of my kitchen clock, watching my coffee cool and my newly painted toenails dry in the sun is UNREAL. Why is this unreal? Because it is perfect. Nothing could be better right now.

The fact that I am pondering whether I should go for a run on the beach, or heat up the delicious savory bread pudding with fresh tomatoes and pesto parmesan (which I got from Holland last weekend) that I made with my international dinner crew last night is UNREAL. Why? Because who has this much fun? And who has a a group of friends consisting of someone from Denmark, Norway and Germany and has a dinner club with them?

My life is Unreal. That is true, but this morning between paying bills, cleaning the kitchen, hanging my laundry, and making a shopping list for things I need to get before I head off to my italian/greek adventures, I realized that even though this life is UNREAL, this IS my real life.

Everyday is my REAL life. I am REALLY living it, and everything I've experienced--every beautiful mundane aspect of my life--is real. And it is wonderful.

Whether I enter the "real world" tomorrow, or whether I entered it when I was born, I hope that everyday is as beautiful as my unreal life.

I have a feeling it will be.

Daylight and Team Spirit

Of all the beautiful (or not beautiful) things about daily life in an extremely northern town, the most comment worthy miracle, I think, is how quickly the average day length changes throughout the year.

I’ll admit it was pretty miz in November when I was used to having daylight in October and it was suddenly stolen from me due to the “fall back” time change and the lightening speed of day-length decline that my continental brain could not grasp.

November and December meant rain, cloudiness and ever increasing darkness and I ended up walking to school at 8:30 in the dark and the rain, and arriving home around 4:00 ALSO in the dark and the rain.  Where there were once beaches and sunshine in my life I only had, well, darkness and rain.

After a few months of this, though, one tends to grow accustomed to a life deprived of light. I learned to enjoy the laziness that a cloak of ever-present nightime allows and learned that if I was patient enough, the sun would go down and I could justify not going to the gym and convince myself it was probably in my best interest to stay home and bake/eat instead…which was nice.

Now in April, thanks to “spring forward” suddenly the sun doesn’t go down til about 8:30PM, which is just preposterous. Now that I’m used to the darkness, you’re going to rob that of me, too? … And what is this warm stuff on my skin? Is that…THE SUN!?

My newly developed vampire qualities were quite not prepared to accept that I could not curl up with warm food, a glass of wine and a good book when the sun went down at 5:30…so it has been a slow process trying to wean my way off the couch. But there’s hope for me yet. Yesterday I found myself craving fruit and a salad instead of warm heavy pastas, and today I might even get to go for a run after school! Oh the possibilities!

The most unbelievable thing of all is this amount of daylight is just the beginning. I heard that around summer solstice in June the sun comes up at 4:30am and goes down at 11:00! Gurl could get crazy with that amount of vitamin D…

I know you all are probably enthralled by the minute-by-minute updates of day length here in Northern Germany but I’d like to change topics to something completely unrelated, but equally northern-German, and that is Handball.

There apparently are a few rare Americans who have heard of Team Handball and maybe played it for a week or two in Gym class, but for me, this sport was something as foreign as cleaning stairs and being environmentally conscious.

I saw it first while flipping through channels one night in September. Still being new to Germany I was not quite prepared to sit down and “lazily” watch some German soap opera (which would require concentration, translation and that equals OPPOSITE of lazy) so I settled on the universal language of sports.

As a back story for any of you that might not know me I played Water polo for a good chunk of my youth and teens, and lacrosse picked up where I left off with water polo and I followed that sport into college. As far as athletic prowess goes, brute strength, speed, and field sense are the name of my game, but the minute I need to do something with refined skill... well, it's time for a substitution....

So anyway, flipping through channels I could not find any fun sports to watch on TV except for this weird game being played in a gym. From what I could tell, all these people were doing was running fast, jumping really high and bowling people over.... OH yeah, and throwing a ball really hard. Seemed interesting enough.

As I continued to watch I realized that their positioning and field sense was a PERFECT blend of lacrosse and waterpolo. I instantly understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, and after only a few minutes of watching I felt my pulse start to quicken.

Like the hulk suddenly transformed (well, maybe a girlier version of that?) my body suddenly felt the urge to jump of the couch, run out the door and start throwing a handball ball. Running fast? Jumping high? Throwing hard? I CAN DO THAT!!!

I needed to play this sport. It was urgent. 

Well, due to traveling it took a while, but I've finally joined a team and my life is complete. (Actually if you scroll down to the bottom of this page you can see my "entry into the team" article  on the team website). They are in the highest league for U-20 (I can play with them b/c I'm an American and I won't be here long...)

Ugh, I'd like to tell you more, but I'll leave this as a taste of handball (and a clip of what it looks like) and will comment on the wonderful world of handball (and the CRAZY world of german team bus experiences) later. 

For now I am off to Amsterdam with college friend Jackie Goodell who is here to visit for a week! Woo hoo!!