After some good fun, amazing food, and an incredible/surreal experience down in Montevideo, I said goodbye to Lisa and hopped on the for the first of three flights in my return leg to Seattle. It was sad to leave. It was the end of an era in my life. I’m returning to start my new job in less than a week and a half, with a to do list with things like, “move into new place,” and “aquire car.”

Things didn’t really hit me until I was walking around Washington Dulles airport on a lay over. Suddenly I could understand all the conversations around me, easily talk to anyone, and able to read all the books sold in the airport mini-bookstores. In fact, it was really weird speaking English to the cashier when I stopped to buy a Coke. The things that defined my lifestyle, adventures, and comfortability with the uncomfortable for the last 130 days were done and gone. And I missed it so much already. I found my hearing drawn toward conversations in Spanish and Chinese, grasping at straws of difference and difficulty in a sea of complete comprehension.

When the plane flew within sight of Mt. Rainier, my heart sank and my eyes were momentarily misty. I was back. Around the world in 130 days.

Amazingly enough, it seems that my reverse culture shock was limited to the hour and a half I was in Washington D.C., because as soon as I stepped off that plane it was back to life as usual. It was even a little scary–as I progressed through the day I could feel my old methods, feelings, and lifestyle emerging instinctively. Is this what it means to be home? It was a little scary and I can’t say I want them back. I know that I grew and changed a lot on my trip and I expected that I would need some time to integrate and readjust.

And it’s not just my surroundings, it’s also what I do. I ran some errands with Uncle Ben and we stopped by Costco (no surprise there) and he asked me if I knew where they had contact lens solution. My answer, given without possibly of doubt, just sprung right out of me. Things like knowing the best places to park, what streets to take to avoid traffic, and familiarity with the bends in the road are still second-nature to me. A huge change from always walking around in unfamilar cities, where I’d see something new every day, surrounded by a culture, language, and people I was trying to hard to see, understand, and experience. Now I’m back. I am the culture, language, and people.

I can already tell that my brain processes have switched modes. Reading Argentinian version of Google News this morning, I found my attention span to be short and felt slight bits of frustration with my comprehension. I can tell already. I’m far too comfortable.

I want to be knocked off-balance again.

I’m baaaccckkk!!!

I’ve been in Montevideo for four days now and it’s been a bit of a surreal experience. The notion of coming down here started out as a really silly (crazy) idea that I got back in Bosnia and behold, three weeks later I’m actually here! Coming all the way down here was not something I had prepared myself for when I started planning out my trip, so to walk around the streets of Urugay has this, “wow…I can’t believe I’m actually here” feel to it.

In our conversations before I arrived, Lisa had purposefully skimped on the details of getting from the airport to her apartment because she planned on surprising me at the airport. Although she’d told me she would be at work when I arrived, I had already suspected that I’d be finding Lisa on the other side of customs. “Planned” is the key word in this story however, especially since I walked through the frosted glass doors of customs to find no Lisa in sight! I would later read an email titled “the best of intentions” that was written by a frantic Lisa after she realized she’d overslept by three hours.

No problem. I have been doing this four months, haven’t I? I used the Spanish skills that I’ve been developing for the past two months as I trained across Europe and hit up the airport information people to figure out what busses I could take from the airport to somewhere close to Lisa’s apartment.

My actual destination was actually the hostel that Lisa told me was across the street from her apartment. Made it there without a problem, the airport information people were spot on. I checked in and dropped off my bags and decided I’d go for a walk to orientate myself. Before I took on the town though, I figured I walk across the street and ring the buzzer for Lisa’s apartment just for the heck of it. I did just that and not surprisingly, nothing happened. But suddenly I heard a loud yell somewhere off to my left, and I turned around to see a super-relieved Lisa running across the street and at me with arms outstreched for a hug. She had spotted me while turning the corner, coming back from the cyber cafe where she had just sent me the hugely apologetic and aforementioned “best of intentions” email.

Things since have been a blast. Lisa’s been taking me around to visit her friends and giving me a sample of her lifestyle here, which is awesome, both in the sense that I’m having a good time and that she has a great life down here. We’ve walked around the city, went to various markets and ferrias, went to a Roteract reunion, and a couple of church services. More about these some other time, I’m far too tired to type them up now. Lisa’s español sounds incredibly fluent to me, although I know she’d disagree. I’ve been really impressed with how well she’s able to communicate in all aspects of every day communication.

The non-standard approach I took to learning Spanish by reading, writing, and looking up tons and tons of words (even if I couldn’t remember them) seems to be paying off. Although my speaking skills are non-existant, my comprehension skills are the point where I can get the gist of some conversations, especially with Lisa and her roommate Sandra. All this is just inspiring me to learn more. The biggest hinderance to understanding and experiencing a culture is the language. I’m having an amazing time going around to all these aspects of Uruguayan culture, but can’t help but wish I could communicate with them better.

The wish of any traveler. =)

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written, but the pace of trip has upped significantly since my last posting. After spending four days longer than planned in the amazing city of Budapest, I’ve had to rush my time to make it through the cities of Prague and Berlin.

A little bit about the places I’ve been…

Those of you that get my mass-emails have already heard about my rave for Budapest. I arrived in Budapest after dark and the moment I stepped off the train I was just struck with a euphoric vibe emanating from the city. It’s tough to explain it beyond that, but there’s an energy from Budapest that cannot be quantified…it simply felt good to be there. Immediately, before even seeing a single bit of the city, I was already thinking about expending my stay.

Budapest is literally subdivided into sections of Buda and Pest by the river Danube. Most of the major tourist sights are located on the hilltops of Buda close to the Danube while the centers of city life are in Pest. I found I liked the flatter Pest better just for its style and people. The hilltops of Buda are filled with tourists and tourist buses while the streets of Pest are filled with locals mingling with a much smaller number of tourists. As is the trend for all of Eastern Europe I’ve visited so far, the locals are friendly and the younger crowd speaks good English. I met a couple of locals on the train in that have taken the hostel crowd and I around and told us about the best local restaurants. I’ll note here that Hungarian wine is both cheap and excellent. Definitely an up-n-coming in the wine realm. If any of you guys out there are planning a Europe trip, go out of your way to see Budapest. It’s overtaken Sarajevo as my favorite spot in Europe.

Went from Budapest directly to Prague (Praha). Stayed in the awesome Hostel ELF and went on a walking tour with Steve, a semi-permanent hostel guest. He’s stayed at the hostel for over a year just because he loves backpackers and telling them about Czech history. Steve was a history professor in Germany for 25 years and really, really knows his stuff. He also hates tourists with a passion, which can be really entertaining as he’s loudly making bad jokes about them on the tour. The tour was good, but I didn’t like Prague nearly as much as I liked Budapest. Prague has an amazing amount of history and sights to see, but I’m a little toasted on the sightseeing at this point in my trip and tourist buses are really out in force there. I did manage to get into Prague around the 60th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, where some mock battles and vintage military equipment were being displayed, complete with dressed-up soldiers. I wasn’t able to catch any of the mock battles, although I did get treated to an amazing fireworks show over the river there.

Went from Prague to the highly modern and historical city of Berlin. Was again toasted on sights, but managed to see the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and the newly opened Holocaust Memorial (opened the day after I arrived). All of them were really cool but I was really impressed with modern German architecture in design. As Germany had so much rebuilding to do after the WWII, they’ve emerged at the forefront of the design style known as “modern.” This made for some beautiful buildings and interiors, including my hostel, which easily had the nicest decor of any hostel I’ve stayed in. You might be also amused to know that East Berlin is actually nicer than West Berlin these days as all development has been taking place on the east since the wall came down. There’s still a lot of construction going on in the area and I’m guaranteed to be surprised when I make it out there next time. Definitely a place I didn’t spend enough time–although not quite the same, there’s a similar energy and good vibe from Berlin.

Now I’m in the low countries and hanging out with my friend Anna, who used to live up the hall from me in the dorms back in my first year of college. She lives in the small city of Kampen, which is ten minutes out from Zwolle on a diesel train. Really charming little town. Anna’s place is practically under the bell tower, which is programmed to play cool melodies and even occasionally has a real musician playing, but doesn’t accurately keep time. Going to hang out here until Tuesday morning, when I head out to Paris for a night before flying south!

Chau!

New photos up:

• Budapest
• Prague

I’ve updated my travel itinerary to reflect my new flights to Montevideo and back to Seattle. Can’t tell you how happy I am to delete my Delta flights onboard their Boeing 757’s.

http://www.mikelu.org/travelinfo.php