Nis, Serbia

I was right, thinking that I was not yet able to just let go of whatever fear I am harboring and travel freely. I am definitely still one of those captured, safe souls. I wonder how much of my need for planning is really a need for security and how much is actually a distrust in other people. As much as I seem to trust people easily, I really do not. I live as I think any woman does, as much as we don't admit it, in a constant state of aroused fear. So, hitchhiking to Serbia was an experience for sure. It was exhilarating, when we were not waiting on the side of the road for 2.5 hours for a ride, watching hundreds of half-empty cars go by. But we eventually got a ride, and I was eventually let out of Bulgaria (after half an hour of threatening severely to not let me back in), and eventually we got to Nis. Once there the matter of finding a bed became more important than saving money or traveling within freedom. So we enlisted the help of my phone and found ourselves an adorable little hostel called, "Art Hostel." We snuggled up for the evening, as young lovers are apt to do, and didn't leave our bed until well into the morning.

I wasn't overly impressed with Nis, which says a lot, seeing how I am quite an easily impressed person. It did have an excellent park, which is inside an ancient fortress. It is one of the amazing things about Eastern Europe: seeing history just spilled without care all over the present. Unfortunately, the entire city was covered in trash. Bottles, paper, and dead animals dotted every tucked away spot that might be pretty. I wanted to believe that it was just because of the jazz festival that we were attending, but I know that it wasn't. It just has the feel of a city that is too large and too small to be cared for.

The one thing that they did incredibly well was the food, especially the meat (says the ex-vegetarian). One of our evenings we went to a traditional style restaurant on the center, and stuffed ourselves full for about 11 euro. Their peppers were spicy and full of flavor, and their meat was indescribable. It was bliss for an evening. In the morning there were very cheap sausage sandwiches or burek with spicy peppers. A girl could not ask for much more in the way of food. AND their lytenitsa (hot pepper sauce) was actually hot, so my world began to make sense, finally.

Nis is maybe most famous for its skull tower, so we decided to go see it. I am not sure what I expected from the name "Skull Tower," but the way it is advertised I went in with my heart high and in a completely touristy mood. I was wrong to do so. It was very sobering to see this grotesque example of memoir. How these pieces of history persist I am uncertain. I turned melancholy for the afternoon, trying to wrap my head around concepts of pride, and war, and all of the evil things that humanity does to each other. I was angry that this tower was the prime tourist attraction to a city. I felt that it should be private, if it needs to exist at all; that by selling souvenirs the entire concept is cheapened, and turned into nothing more than the blockbuster violence that we all crave without understanding. It took at least an hour before I moved on (please hear the sarcasm and sadness dripping from that statement).

On our final morning our hostel-keeper gave us a shot of schnapps to go with our coffee and we were sad to leave, maybe not the city, but the time that we had created there. Hopefully there will be many more creations in the future. 

Traveling with the Internets

Last week I was reading the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, and it awakened in me a healthy wanderlust. That may sound strange because I haven't been home ever in my life and so I should not even be able to want to travel. It should be like breath for me... but sometimes I go to yoga and I realize that every second of every day we are missing out on much of the potential that our breathing holds. Travel is like that. You can do it, as a natural process that keeps you alive, or you can imerse yourself in it and feel the complete power of the movement within and around you. I have fallen into habit and so it was refreshing to be brushed awake by Calvino's prose.

After getting over the initial shock of his style (always different, even from his own) I began to enjoy Marco Polo's queer experience of foreign lands. Then, of course, I wanted to experience foreign lands of my own. I went out (I had to anyways, as there were visas to be applied for and Turkish food to be eaten),  walked around Plovdiv and I felt lighter and more aware than I had in months. I appreciated the garden and the streets in a more thorough way, as if seeing it for the first time even as I had to say goodbye. I wondered how Marco Polo would have felt in Plovdiv. What craziness would he have imagined there, and given to it as its permanent popularity? I daydreamed about what it would be like to go somewhere and not research it before hand. I realized that I now look up places to go, things to see, and line up a place to stay before going anywhere. My need to feel safe and secure has gotten so bad that I was not comfortable exploring the mineral baths only 45 minutes from my home until I felt that I understood them first. I even book my train travel online. Everything is planned through the computer, which holds the cumulative experience of every traveller before me and in the end, when the moment of truth comes, I have little more to do than lazily slide through the experience. I wonder what it would be like to go someplace new, without knowing anything about it. To show up and potentially miss the biggest, most important sites and to be guided by instinct to my personal wonders. Perhaps instead of seeing the blue mosque and the cisterns in Istanbul I would have forever imagined it as a city filled with tiny fish and spice markets and an ancient wall that lovingly wraps around it, going on and on to eternity. It becomes quite a different city.

As enticing as the imagination can be, I don't think I am brave enough to let go of the external storage that guides me. I like to be safe. I like to know where I will lay my head at night. I think most of the world agrees with me. More and more people are traveling these days. These are people who would not have traveled 20 years ago, back when things were a left just a little more to chance. They would have stayed safe in their own countries. Instead they hop on the internet and get the closest experience to home that they can, in 10 different countries. And being in the hostel gives me very little hope. I see a room of 30 people, every one of them on a smart phone or laptop. They are researcing their next destination or blogging about their last one. I wonder what hostel lobbies used to be like, with one computer and no wifi. People sat around and gave each other tips about where they had been, writing it down in notebooks.They talked. They processed their experience and all they had was each other. Stories waited in film canisters to be told at home. I imagine a greater camaraderie among travelers, borne out of necessity, and I am thirsty for that experiece. Of course, my laptop and smartphone are here... I am part of the problem. I need to put them away and rediscover what an intimate conversation is. Luckily I have time, and I have a great place to start learning how to be lost and clueless. 

Slow like honey

People say that love is slow. It takes time to build trust and respect between two people. When I was young I believed them. I consented that my full, pulsing heart was nothing more than lust and hormones. I didn't really know my lovers. How could you possibly know someone in a month, or a year? People spend lifetimes not even knowing themselves. So I let the elders tell me that I was young and foolish, and that I didn't know what love was. I second-guessed all of my emotions and my values. They came too easily.

Now, I call bullshit. Love does not, by definition, come in slowly. Sure, it can be slow and quiet. It can be a whisper so softly that you risk missing it altogether. But it can also be quite sudden. It can roar like a lion, the saliva from its jaw smattering your squinched-up face. It can rain down like acidic stars falling from the night sky, piercing your shell of false beliefs.

When I was young I learned what I could from my elders. I learned about moderation, balance and reason. I learned how to keep my heart in check. Now that I am sliding up the scales I am seeing how much I need to relearn from those that are younger than me. Love is, above all, simple. Quick or slow, easy or difficult, it is at least simple.

Leaving, kinda

I am jealous of the volunteers that suffered a finality, the ones that actually ended their peace corps service, their time in eastern europe, and their vagabond lives. They cleaned their houses, got on a bus or train, watched the Bulgarian landscape roll by, and were able to say goodbye. At least that is how I imagine it was for them. It is never that easy. It is never a clean break. But I need to believe there is.

I am on my "last train" yet again. It seems that I chug along at every beginning and every end. I can't find the threads that are supposed to seal and separate experiences. There were no goodbyes. The local singing group gave me a party. There were some fond recognitions and a few see-ya-laters, and then I left, but it was all posturing. They know I will be back, and so do I. I have to go back at least twice before I can actually leave, and honestly, I do not feel like I will actually leave until I leave eastern europe altogether. Who knows when that might be? With Turkey, Georgia, and now the middle east simmering in my future I might not make it back to the states any time soon, and until I do, these folks are my family. Guess that's what I get for being a tree in the wind... every slight breeze catches me.

Scouts that don't sing...

I won't say that I know a lot about scouting. I can't even say that I have much experience. Although the camp I worked at was a scout camp, at least two-thirds of the staff and participants were not actually scouts.
However, I do know that given the choice I will prefer to work at a scout camp over any other, and the scout method is something that I deeply respect as we struggle to find an understanding of adolescence. (And of course by we, I mean myself giving importance to an issue that has captivated my mind and heart.)

Being a part of the scouts in Bulgaria has been one of the most rewarding experiences during my peace corps service. I have learned about myself, my values, and prepared for a growth spurt in my field. I have met some absolutely beautiful people and, of course, some that I struggle with, and I have gained an eye-opening global perspective regarding scouting.

First, I learned that scouting in Europe is quite different from the infestation that is scouting in the states. Secondly I leaned that scouting in Bulgaria is a completely unique experience in itself. Being on camp I am able to see the way that culture guides and influences a scout program, which I had blindly taken as one and the same despite culture and history. But everyting from cooking to cleaning to building to programing can be traced back to the social habits of the people, placed loosely on top of a global framework that has been lovingly adopted.

For the most part I have acted as a child, accepting things, going along, and trying not to judge. I can tell that I finally am beginning to feel integrated because I can be irritated by some of the habits without feeling judgemental... and instead feeling a sense of pride and ownership. When things aren't beautiful I am dissappointed through my pride and responsibility. I feel like this group has become mine.

But there is one thing that I have not been able to get used to. As a whole, this organization sings very little compared to what I am used to. Coming from California where we sing at every opportunity and some unopportune moments it is very strange. There is no grace. There is no dismissal. There are rarely hiking songs. Originally I thought that this was normal for non-english speaking countries, but last week I learned that the French scouts definitely are a singy group as well. I just do not understand how the need to sing has skipped Bulgaria. I feel at constant unrest, waiting for my soul-cues, which are lacking. I still sing though. Just one voice, flighting in and out of a couple of others, searching but without purpose or a hold of meaning.

Labels that I am Not.

Packing has given me time to reasses my projected being. Usually I have a tendancy to look ahead and to try to create the person that I want to be. However, as the boxes become more selective and I find myself having to part with things that I am tender towards I find myself considering the things that I used to be and am no longer. The first thing that I had to get rid of was my climbing equipment. I realized that for many years I have defined myself as a climber, and for many years it was true. But for the last two years I have been toting the shoes and harness around as a symbol of what I thought that I was.

I am not.

A little harder is to finally admit that I am no longer a fire spinner. For so many years that was central to my personality. It was not just a cloak that I dropped over myself but it was the way that a large majority of my inner community knew me. It is hard to admit that girl is gone. But it is true. The girl who could not wait to light up, and climbed three times a week, is like another person to me. Looking ahead is exciting, but along the way to the future many of the goodbyes are bittersweet.

Waiting On Trains

I slept through the 8.30 train. I was awake but the bed felt too good to leave and I didn't see much of a point. To me the 10.45 is just as useful today. Of couse nothing is that simple. It is now 11.35 and I have felt the successful, exciting gratification of about ten feet of movement. The Bulgarians are rallying against this injustice. They want to know how someone could take their money without honoring their commitment. Of course by now I am fairly certain that we could all go in and get refunds and find a different mode of travel, but they don't do it. They would much rather complain about it and be offended. Bulgarians enjoy taking offense. It is one of those strange cultural quirks that I have failed to understand completely in my two years. Is it boredom? Maybe a need to feel important? I understand that connections are being missed right now. Transportation requires a very exact timing and the possibility for a smooth day for most of these people has passed. Luckily today is already one of those lost days for me. Nothing matters and I have the freedom to float. An extra hour on the train is insignificant when the hours don't have to be counted. Some day I will live more permanently in this peace. Learning to wait on trains is just a step.