next up in the life of liz: fall 2011

when i typed the title of this post, i initially typed "2010." that's wrong.  it's 2011 and really almost 2012.  when did that happen?! it really is true what they say, "time flies when you're having fun."  as my sister said the other day, "how much faster is it going to go when we're OLD?!"  i'm not sure how the acceleration of time with age works, but i don't want to waste any of my 20s trying to figure it out -- i know i need to enjoy it while i can; i only have one life. 

so what am i going to do with these epic years of mine, you ask? what have i been up to since my grand return to america at the end of july?  well, besides spending lots of quality time with all those people i missed last year, i've got some pretty sweet plans in the works.  i won't give away all of my hopes and dreams because, you know, i don't want to jinx anything.  but i will give you a high-quality preview. 

(an extended) labor day weekend: new york city! people i can't wait to see include: my long-lost ladybird, IST ex-coworkers who are educating the new york city youth at a charter school in brooklyn, J, who will absolutely be my first famous friend with her sure-to-be-rapidly-approaching broadway musical debut,  some sisters (a fellow ginger and twin b), my favorite princess (who's engaged!!), and many others.  i'll be there for pretty much a week and who knows, at that point the city may have sucked me in and i might never leave. 

if i do make it out, 

september 8th - 11th: dc/northern virginia!  again, so many of my favorite people live densely packed into this small area that i just hope i get a chance to see them all.  concrete plans so far include hanging out with V and her family; i have been suffering without my roommate/coworker/travel partner/friend since she left me in trieste on july 11th.  i'll get to see her as cheerleading coach in-action and i'm hoping her dad will cook us some delicious puerto rican food.  or maybe we'll make italian food?  we'll probably eat a lot; it will be delicious. 

later in september: a weekend in charlottesville for some other liz time (which will surely include a "cville highlights" journey before she leaves for oxford) and some concerts with friends and the family, some days at the beach (which days are yet to be determined), and then! an unprecedented alaska/canada/other places road trip adventure.  no, i have no idea what i've gotten myself into but i'm excited. 

other goals: i've been told i'd like chicago and seattle.  i also have some friends who are out of the country in some pretty cool spots that i might need to visit....

stay tuned for updates! 

x!

back to school riddle

happy back-to-school season!  this is the first year in a very long time that i am not going back to school myself.  i'm keeping in touch with all my teacher friends across the country and internationally and it's strange to hear about their back-to-school responsibilities and to not have some of my own.  i think i'm really going to miss teaching this year; once school is in the swing of things and i don't have a class of my own to brag about, i'm not quite sure what i'll do.  [teacher friends: get ready for me to want to come and hang out with your classes.] 

anyway, to keep my brain up and running to its highest potential, i gave it a little task this evening.  well, really, daddy-john gave me the challenge and i merely accepted.  once i found out that he hadn't actually solved the riddle, i was all the more eager to complete my assignment.  apparently einstein wrote this riddle last a very long time ago and said that 98% of the world's population would not be able to solve it.  was he right? 

___________________________________________

fish riddle

there are 5 houses in a row that are each a different color.  there is a person of a different nationality in each house.  the owners drink a certain drink, they each smoke a certain brand of cigarettes and also have a certain pet.  no owner has the same pet, smokes the same brand of cigarettes nor drinks the same drink. 

the question is: who has a fish? 

clues: 

- the british man lives in the red house

- the swedish man has a dog for a pet

- the danish man drinks tea

- the green house is to the left of the white house

- the owner of the green house drinks coffee

- the person who smokes pall mall has a bird

- the owner of the yellow house smokes dunhill

- the person who lives in the middle house drinks milk

- the norwegian lives in the first house

- the person who smokes blend lives next to the one that has a cat

- the person who has a horse lives next to the one that smokes dunhill

- the one who smokes bluemaster drinks beer

- the german smokes prince

- the norwegian lives next to a blue house

- the person who smokes blend has a neighbor who drinks water

__________________________________________________

immediately upon receiving the riddle, i assumed it was some sort of trick and the answer could easily be found within 5 minutes.  however, i worked on it for an hour.  to confirm your suspicions, all of the owners do actually live in their fun-colored houses (a question i had before starting, going along with the trickery theme).

good luck! happy back-to-school! 

x.  

virginia is for lovers

to many of you, it may seem that i don't like my home state of virginia; i wouldn't be surprised if you thought this, since i spend so much time leaving it. 

however, virginia is gorgeous and i love it here. 

yesterday as i drove from richmond to roanoke, right through the heart of the state and some of the prettiest of the blue ridge mountains, all i could think of was the beauty of the lush, green mountains and the clear blue sky.  they say that the day after a hurricane is always the prettiest and that could have been the reason for yesterday's divine conditions, except that the blue sky indicates that today will be just as nice. 

i'd like to think that my little bit of virginia is always this idyllically beautiful. 

planes, trains, and automobiles.

last week i had my first american train ride experience.  i took the amtrak from LA down to san diego in california and it was pretty similar to every train ride i've ever taken in europe (minus a particularly offensive smell).  the ease of travel by train in europe was always one of my favorite parts of living there and i wish that a comparable system existed here in the states but it just doesn't.  although there are trains running between many major cities, it's still often necessary to have a car ride to the actual train station.  in my opinion, this somewhat defeats the purpose of having efficient train transport.

we all know that i like to travel (see: my life).  however, in the past few months when it has been the main focus of all of my days, i have begun to especially enjoy the process of getting from point A to point B instead of only the destination.  you know what emerson said, life is a journey, not a destination.

view from the amtrak in california

my favorite mode of travel, i think, are train rides.   i don't get motion sick and can spend time doing the things i might not get around to doing during the chaos of each day (reading, writing, listening to music).  another thing i love is the scenery; we all know i love a good view.  in italy, the train tracks seem to cut right through many of the most beautiful places; i always enjoyed looking out the window at the olive farms and the endless rows of grapes waiting to become wine... i also remember thinking the same about the english countryside while taking the national rail in the UK.  it's so relaxing to sit and be transported while taking in views of countryside you might not otherwise be exposed to.  one of my favorite memories from my time in siena during the spring of 2008 was seeing the beautiful tuscan countryside with it's rolling hills and copius fields of sunflowers during a trip to or from my quaint medieval home.  i was happy to discover that the same is true of the amtrak in california; the view of the beach as i rode to and from LA was pretty hard to beat.

train rides are especially fun with a group of people such as my carnevale train ride in march.  it's logistically nice when you can travel in a group and no one has the responsibility or driving or navigating.  it's more relaxing when no one has to worry about getting lost or being on time.    

i also have an unusual obsession with train stations.  the efficiency of the system amazes me, especially in italy which is an incredibly inefficient country; the trains are the only thing around that don't seem to be on 'italian time'.  the tracks weave in and out and overtop of each other so much that a crash seems like it should be inevitable - and what about the intertwined wires running above the tracks?! what do they do?! who controls which trains arrive where?!  and all the lines and repetition are totally cool looking.  

i have never particularly looked forward to plane rides.  this may be beacuse i have taken them for granted for the past 24 years... obviously i enjoy the airplane as a means of transport but the actual ride and airport time involves a lot of waiting around and it often makes me wish i could teleport.  i am often immediately put to sleep when sitting on a plane which yes, makes the ride go faster, but it also makes me feel like i'm wasting time and then at the end of it all i'm groggy and my neck hurts.  

one thing i do love about plane rides are the unique bella vistas; what can beat the view from take off and landing?  the chance to see an entire city (and often the surrounding suburbs and countryside) is one that isn't possible from a train, you can only get that view from the air. 

view of san francisco from the sky

in a car ride, you have the most freedom; you choose the speed, the direction, the route, and everything involved with travel companions and entertainment during the journey.  i missed driving while living abroad but i didn't feel like i needed a car to travel in europe which was great.  in the states, however, there are few cities in which it's easy to live without a car.  and even while it may be easy to live in a big city without a car by using public transportation, it's often hard to leave the city without a car.  the thought of being stuck somewhere terrifies me.  

really, i'd just like a good one of these:

x!

some habits die hard

in my recent gallivanting around california, i've found that some habits are hard to break.  i've been following the same travel patterns that were a part of every trip i took last year.  my priorities have been to bask in the sunshine, write postcards, and drink good coffee.  i've been stalking illy coffee and it was surprisingly easy to find in california.  however, it was also not even close to as good as the real thing and i was often disappointed.  i remember having similar frustrations in eastern europe; i just don't know how to order coffee outside of italy.  i suppose i'll have to learn to survive without a caffe macchiato  or capo in b as i write during my american travels.

reflections on trieste

since returning to the states, i've been that kind of busy that makes your heart warm.  i've had too many phone calls and messages and i've eaten lots of delicious meals (mexican food!).  i've already been to cville, richmond, roanoke, wilmington, and the beach and have seen many of the people that i have missed this past year.  what little alone time i've had in the past few weeks, i've spent reading or planning trips to california, new york, and elsewhere to visit even more friends!  

so, obviously, i haven't really much time to officially reflect upon last year.  i mean, every morning when i drink my illy coffee and sit reading, i think about my roommates and our via della guardia daily routine, but that's not the same as really reflecting; it still feels like i'm on vacation and will be going back to trieste any day now.  

except that i'm not.  all that's left to do now is make sure i'll always remember how incredible the past year was. 

________________________________________________


in april, i started writing this post.  it was beginning to sink in that the end was approaching and i had finally begun to like living in trieste.  along with both of those things, however, i just got so much busier working hard and playing harder and i never found the time to actually post it.  then, just after i returned to the states, i discovered this article on travel and leisure's online site and i remembered that i had never finished the post.  it seems as if everyone is discovering trieste now, just as i have left the city, and having lived there, i feel some authority in my review of the place.  since everyone else is writing about my city, i might as well join in.  


earlier this year, this article on trieste was featured in a new york times blog.  i read it, enjoyed it, thought about it for a bit, made a note to reflect and blog on it, and then quickly got distracted and forgot to revisit the almost-post.  a few weeks later, i received an email from a friend of my grandmother's who was based in trieste during world war II, with a link to the very same article.  more recently, another article was printed in the nytimes travel section and the wheels in my head began turning.  why is everyone so into trieste all of a sudden?  before learning of the school and becoming interested in a job there, i had never heard of the city.  nothing major has changed in the city recently so it seems as if everyone has just stumbled upon trieste all at once. 

both articles in the times give overall positive reviews of the city but go back and forth before reaching their final conclusion.  the articles got me thinking, do i agree? what is my opinion of trieste?  i still haven't formulated a succinct answer for the inevitable question, "how was your year in trieste?"  and while this question will rarely receive an answer that does the truth justice, i should have something mentally composed.  

so.  what about trieste?  is it magical? miserable? mediocre?

in trying to form an official review of the city, i've been looking at some old blog posts.  very early in the year i said, "i love my city."  later... i was introduced to the rain + fog + bora combo that trieste is famous for and my opinion changed a bit.  at the same time as the weather became horrendous, i was reading jan morris' trieste and the meaning of nowhere, and by the title, you can imagine how negatively this impacted my opinions of the city. during the last few months, however, the weather was gorgeous, i knew my way around, had italian friends, and really quite liked it. 


in T+L, reggie nadelson describes trieste as "a handsome italian city."  for me, trieste was never as much italian as it was international.  having previously studied within the medieval walls of siena - rich in tuscan culture - i feel knowledgeable in what is truly italian.  trieste had about as much in common with siena as it did with america (not much), which really shocked me at first.  for me, trieste was the melting pot of italy and eastern europe with a bit of austria mixed in.  when traveling to italy, few tourists will choose trieste over the more popular, more italian, destinations of rome, florence, and venice.


in fact, one of the things i liked the most about trieste is its lack of tourists; i noticed that most tourists move through the city only on their way to more popular eastern european destinations just across the border.  as i'm sure most will agree, it's nice when your city isn't dominated by people wandering around lost and asking for directions.  since they weren't overwhelming in trieste, it was refreshing when someone came to visit or a stranger approached us to ask questions - we enjoyed the sporadic opportunity to share our home with visitors instead of growing annoyed with constantly having to show it off.  this is a fact that was reinforced for me when talking with my mom.  after their time in trieste, my parents went to venice for two days before heading back to the states.  they loved trieste but to sum up their days in venice, my mom said, "i'm glad i went, but it was crowded and expensive. i don't really need to go back."  the lack of large-scale tourism in trieste makes life more affordable and real.  trieste isn't a place to come and be a perma-tourist.  living in trieste is more like the real world, in a good way, instead of some fantastical life of constant vacation.


on the other hand, at times in trieste, i felt more alone than ever before in my life and these moments spurred great amounts of self-reflection.  while i didn't reinvent myself, i did have a lot of think time and did a lot of rediscovering myself.  there were many times in the beginning when i found myself resenting the loneliness of the city "for talking, thinking, writing, wandering," but one of the major things i learned about myself this year is how to spend time alone.  i confirmed that i am an extrovert; i love to be around people all the time which made it hard for me to prioritize "me time"  but i also learned to appreciate solo activities and how to enjoy the laid-back vibe that the city has; by the end, i loved the fact that the city was "for talking, thinking, writing, wandering".  


so trieste is relaxed and beautiful.  these things are great!  however, i'm a social 24-year-old and more-than-occasionally missed the obvious existence of social opportunities.  as jan morris so perfectly states, "at the end of an autumn day's work, the city hardly feels as though it is preparing for an evening out."  with an elderly population, the city shuts down quite early in the evening.  whenever i traveled to more bustling cities like berlin, london, amsterdam, i didn't want to leave.  being hidden and isolated in a beautiful corner between western and eastern europe was great for developing new hobbies and traveling to random spots but i struggled in the beginning because i didn't want to travel every weekend and i wasn't looking to discover new hobbies.  i didn't see all that much wrong with who i was when i arrived in treiste.  retrospectively, however, i am very glad i was forced to calm down.  i live a much richer life now than i did a year ago.  i cook, i run, i read, i write.  these are all things that i have always appreciated and i'm glad i had time to remember my appreciation.  even with the new appreciation of these hobbies, however, i did miss the bustle of people.


trieste is truly unique because it has all the components of a major european metropolitan city:  easy to get to (airport, train station, major highways, boat options), major events (la bavisela, barcolana), international schools (multiple), a good university, a double-decker sight-seeing bus, and incredible sights to be seen.  so what gives? where is the bustle i missed?  it's the people, i think, that give it the lonely feel.  no one is overly friendly, a majority of the population is over the age of 80 and the few young people in the city are either set in their ways and uninterested in meeting new people or go home to their parents' houses in nearby cities every weekend.  these circumstances create some difficulties in meeting locals.  i wonder if the people have always been like this?  has the city always been lonely?  and is that why many famous writers, including italo svevo, james joyce and sigmund freud, have written here -- did they come here to hide in their words?  how did they know it was a place "to be left alone...?" and why didn't anyone tell me?


the unfriendly nature of the triestine people could be attributed to the melting pot culture.  because many triestini have diverse, international backgrounds, they don't have as strong a national identity as they do a triestine identity and pride.  there is much smaller population of people with whom to relate.  even sandro, the unusually friendly man who accepted our hitch-hiking plea that one time from slovenia, spoke of the "melting pot" nature of the area that makes it unique.  we asked where he was from, and he said "i was born in trieste, but i have quite a mix. i've got austrian, croatian, slovenian, and italian, so this is where i live. we are all of mixed background here."  the triestini aren't italian, they aren't croatian, they aren't slovenian - they are triestini.  and you can't simply become triestini, it's what you're born into.  


so, trieste has the full spectrum of weather patterns ranging from mind-blowing sunsets to the treacherous bora and an aging population that is impossible to make friends with.  many people have written that it's a good place for the drifter, "a loitering kind of place."  morris says that trieste "gives me a waiting feeling as if something big but unspecified is always about to happen."  it's a stopping point on the way to greater places and greater things for those who stop through.  when i was there, it felt like a very inbetween place.  but what was i on my way to? i never could decide (and still haven't decided).  i was constantly asking myself, "why am i here?!" and "what am i doing next?!"  was it a coincidence that i spent this year of indecision in trieste?  while i was there, i remembered things that i had previously lost sight of; i cleared my head and rediscovered some of my priorities.  is that what trieste is for? to find yourself?   


i have not yet figured out why so many people seem to be obsessing about trieste right now, all at once.  but, i think it's ok.  adding a bit more tourism won't immediately turn the city into a fantastical spot for perma-vacationers.  maybe the added visitors will inspire the city to get a bit more bustle in its step.


i don't know all the answers but i do know that i am a lot different from who i was a year ago, before leaving for trieste.  for me, trieste was a place of discovered opportunities.  i realized things i was capable of and things that interested me.  throughout the year, i felt like i could do anything.  at the beginning, i wasn't sure if i loved it.  but i grew to like the city in the end.  maybe it just takes some time to get used to trieste, a natural adjustment period unique to the city?  you know, i have heard of a thing called culture shock.... 


i do think that without meaning to, the city of trieste helped me to focus on myself and what i wanted out of life.  whether it was because of the city itself or because of the specific circumstances surrounding my year in trieste, i don't know.  but i do know that i loved it, it was hard to leave, and i would love to go back someday - even if just to see another incredible sunset. 

home sweet beach house

before moving to trieste a year ago, i had never lived by the water.  however, i was lucky enough to enjoy a seaside home with the increasingly frequent trips my family took to our house on ocean isle beach, north carolina.  living on the edge of the adriatic sea was amazing.  the sea breeze was refreshing and the views of the sun setting over the horizon of the sea were some of the most majestic i have ever seen. 

since returning to the states and arriving at ocean isle for our annual family beach vacation, i have missed the elegant clarity of the adriatic sea.  i was predictably disappointed by the green, cloudy quality of the atlantic ocean and for the first few days i was reluctant to go for a swim; i was scared of what i wouldn't be able to see swimming below me.  the atlantic is also much warmer than the refreshing adriatic sea and i just didn't think it would be as good; i didn't want to forget the feel of swimming in the adriatic sea.  

i held out for a while but today, the sweltering heat gave me no choice and i took my first swim in the atlantic ocean in a year.  no, the water wasn't as cold, salty or crystal-clear as the adriatic.  despite the slightly warmer temperature, it did refresh me and i realized how much the familiarity of the waves and the rest of my favorite things about ocean isle beach are helping me to readjust to america.