On a Wednesday night in Milan, we strolled home after a filling dinner that began at 10:30 pm. The strolling was less an attempt to mirror the Italian tradition and more a necessity of the quantity of food we had consumed. When we had gone to dinner, the streets had been lively, filled with people…
The good news about the Polish language is that it’s in the same family as a language I speak. The bad news is that it’s not a close-knit family. What that means is that I can understand about 30% of what I hear (up to 40%, if someone magically speaks slowly), but I can say…
It’s been 7 weeks since we left the US, so B and I were discussing what has made the biggest impression on our trip so far. The incident which most impacted B is an unexpected one. We were in Copenhagen, traipsing to see the Little Mermaid statue. We had exited the bus in a residential neighborhood…
For the last few weeks, my coughing has been worse than usual – which is a feat. Clearly, taking pre-emptive Advils to relieve my inevitable sinus headaches is not a long-term solution. My dad suggested that I explore foreign medicines. After all, perhaps they had discovered a remedy missing in the US; not unheard of,…
I knew that Stockholm was having a street festival today, but I didn’t look up where it would be. I figured that if we happened to walk into it, great; if not, oh well. After a day of walking to and around parks in a fruitless attempt to find a beach, B and I were…
We were wandering about town one evening in Copenhagen. We had no set destination, but were enjoying the many people, restaurants, and plazas we encountered on each cobblestone street and alley. But we soon grew hungry, so our wandering grew more purposeful: we stopped to peruse menus. Unfortunately, the need to divide the currency listed by 5 did nothing to…
Yesterday, we made the requisite pilgrimage to the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. It’s an indisputable tourist trap, made even more depressing by the need of most 13- to 30-year-old male visitors to have a photo of themselves groping her. The statue itself is located at the edge of the city, not far from a…
This morning, we drove into a small town called Dunmore East, where I immediately spotted a bakery. B had availed himself of leftovers for breakfast, but I was ravenous. I carefully examined each item in each display, since this was clearly not a decision to be taken lightly. As I was making up my mind, I made a…
I was walking home yesterday, lost in my own thoughts. (Mom: In a safe area in daylight with other women walking alone there.) I had just passed by an elderly woman, and I was approaching a group of teens: approximately 6 of them, somewhere around 15 years old. Suddenly, one of them makes a beeline…