Roaming, and Everything that Comes with It

I quite literally spent the morning sitting on a windowsill.

Fortunately, it's a European windowsill, and therefore broad, and comfortable. I feel almost incapable of ceasing to hang out the window here in Prague. It's so incredibly beautiful that just being here is deeply romantic.

This is not an emotion I felt in the other European cities I've been to so far. Venice was a disappointment, to say the least. I felt as if I was visiting a theme park, or the Las Vegas strip, only on water. Staying in a hostel had its benefits and its downfalls: I met other people to wander with, but the general atmosphere was rather juvenile. There were so many people just drinking and sleeping their way through Europe that it was rather depressing. I was happiest when wandering the museums alone. There was one particular day, that I spent at the Palazzo Ducale, and the Ca'Rezzinico (an 18th Century palazzo full of art), that was quite beautiful, but that still felt a little empty.

I thought that traveling alone would be something I'd enjoy...after all, my nostalgia for last summer living alone in Seattle and traveling to North Carolina for work was vast: I remembered fondly the pleasure of being entirely comfortable with my own company. I remembered how my pursuit of beauty gave my loneliness meaning, and I craved that loneliness after spending a year again at home with my family.

But I underestimated the impact my family, my friends have had on my view of travel. I had thought that what made travel fun, was the travel part. I've been forced to admit these last two weeks that it was always my family, or my companions making every moment a constant enjoyment. Adventure does not feel like adventure alone. This is a lesson I learned last summer! A lesson I wrote about on this very blog. But I forgot! I looked back to my solitude with longing, and so pursued 3 months in Europe mostly alone, and now have to face the consequences.

Milan was better. I spent one day with my friend Monica, conveniently nannying a few towns away. We met an English girl named Helen, and had a marvelous time running around the city seeing random sites and talking each other's ears off.

I stayed with my friend Tatiana and her family, and her parents really treated me as their own daughter...Italian hospitality is not overrated.

I spent one glorious day on the beach in Cinque Terre before I made the long, beautiful trip up to Vienna, the city being vastly outdone by the Austrian countryside.

One of the great tragedies of this journey so far is that no matter how beautiful everything is, something in me is failing to respond. There's some dull, flatness stuck in my chest that resists movement. The absolute admiration I felt looking up at the full moon last summer on my balcony eludes me, no matter how beautiful the scenery. The picturesque Austrian villages, the Bavarian forests, the small castles around every corner, the splendor of sunlit valleys between ancient mountains...they're all wonderful, but I feel incapable of appreciating their reality. I would attribute this to my solitude, had I not evidence to the contrary.

And now I'm in Prague, at an old friend's apartment. Next door to the American Embassy, down the street from Prague Castle, and up the street from the St. Charles Bridge, her place is a haven. Small, but comfortable, on a quiet street in one of the most beautiful parts of the city. I'm relieved to have 3 weeks in one place: to really explore the city and make parts of it my own. I refuse to let this dull observation be my status quo for the next two months. Prague has been the first city to stir anything in me, and I intend to pursue the city's secrets, at all costs.