The Honeymoon Odyssey: Dresden

You can’t leave Germany without seeing the East.

Matt 2012

Dawn 2006

I think the best way to see Dresden is to take a day, or even a few hours, and wander around the city and along the peaceful river Elbe.

For me, Dresden is about quiet contemplation of what took place there.  The scars are still on the surface- more so than other popular cities in the West.

Staring at the blackened buildings and monuments you can’t help but think about the World Wars.  Before WWII Dresden was an arts and cultural center, even referred to as ‘the jewel.’  The sad fact is, this place really didn’t need to be bombed, it did have some manufacturing but it was filled with civilians and as a slap in the face, this jewel by the river was destroyed.

In 2006 I spent a few nights in Dresden on a business trip and I remember it being much quieter than it is now- which is a positive sign for it's development.  I remember empty lots of rubble, chain link fences and bulldozers.  Now there are tourist restaurants, shops and a bustling town center.

Puzzle pieces, old bricks next to new structures

As Dresden repairs itself it’s aiming to attract young people and students.  It just so happened that my cousin Shane was doing an exchange at one of the Universities.

This meeting was perfectly serendipitous because Shane is the son of my Uncle Charles, who visited me in Munich six years earlier.

My Uncle was doing business in Belgium at the time and went out of his way to come see me.  He took me to dinner and spoke to me as one adult to another.  I felt so grown up and had so many questions.  He was so refreshingly honest with me about how difficult yet rewarding it is to be a parent, and how important it is to travel.

I’ll never forget his advice or how much fun we had that night.  I had to put him in a cab after the trademark Jameson shots came out- what can I say I was in my 20’s?  Still he hung in there like a champ and I was proud to have him as an Uncle and a friend.

So taking Shane to lunch was something I insisted on, even though Matt and I were yet to be alone a week into our Around the World Honeymoon.

I’m a traveler and a gypsy but at heart- I hate to admit it- I’m a home body.  Because family means everything to me, I can still function so far away from them.  The physical distance is enormous but I carry them with me in every waking moment and often in my dreams at night.  They are in me.  In my accent, my style, gestures, attitude and all the experiences that make me the person I am today. 

My biggest wish right now is that my family and friends understand that I haven’t left them behind for another life, but that I’ve just taken all of us into a bigger life than we once imagined. 

Now I have Australian relatives, and so do all of you. 

The Honeymoon Odyssey: Berlin

After a whirlwind four days in Buffalo- the flight over to Europe seemed peaceful.  And quick! Compared to the haul from Melbourne to New York.

But first- the only snag of our entire trip: Which seemed like a bad omen at the time, our flight from JFK to Berlin was cancelled.  We were rescheduled on another Swiss air flight which left three hours later and it would mean a stop in Frankfurt before Berlin, after a 9 hour layover in JFK. 

After all the traveling I've done, it still stresses me out when things go wrong. I often need to remind myself that this is all part of the journey.

Frankfurt Airport

Hey life and your lemons….How about a massage and pedi in the airport terminal?  Lemonade please for the journey.  I wish every airport had one of those little spas.  It was just what I needed.  They even let me hang out in one of the massage chairs for a while because it was slow.  Plus there was a Duty Free.  A black and brown Longchamp bag ended up coming along on the journey too.

By the time we arrived in Berlin to say we were exhausted would be an understatement.  A fact that was lost on my high school buddy Clark, whom we would be staying with for the next three nights.

He was excited to have visitors and ready to be our “Berlin Genie.”  He asked me what I wanted to see and do but it seemed he already had a plan in mind- luckily it was a good one because he likes to be in charge.  On that first night I had to argue with him to take us home once I hit my final wall of exhaustion before getting seriously ill.  

The following two days we had the perfect strategy to see Berlin.  Clark and his wife belong to a car-share where they are able to book convertible mini-coopers.  The four of us piled in and drove around the city checking out the landscape to get a feel for the layout.

Matt meeting my old friends for a change

We stopped at the Berliner Dome and claimed to the top. I’m not great with heights but it was a great way to get a bird’s eye view of the city.  The architecture clearly shows where East and West Germany met.  Stark simple buildings on one side and “normal” architecture on the other.

Berliner Dome

The sense of history in Berlin is unreal.  It’s still being rebuilt brick by brick.  Tower cranes scrape the sky in every corner, constantly changing the skyline of this rapidly growing metropolis.

View from the Top

We parked the car near the Berlin wall and had a little scribble on it.   

Then we took a boat ride at sunset.  I got a little camera happy after a couple Weiss Bier’s and shot a few beauties.

We hung out in a Biergarten that night and the next day rode bikes around the city, taking in the sights, sounds, people and traffic.  It was as if we started out in the sky and zoomed in on bits and pieces that make this city so unique.

Dunkel and a Pretzel

Apparently there is a low cost of living so Berlin is attracting lots of up-and-comers.  Clark thinks it has some real  potential for a boom in the next 5-10 years and he's happy and proud to be there to be a part of it.  It's funny how mature he seems now, as I'm sure I do to him. We were both a little wild and left-of center growing up.

Clark and I were reminiscing about our cheeky high school follies while our spouses could only smirk at our idiotic tales.  It was awesome to shoot the shit with a mate like I often see Matt doing.  It makes me homesick sometimes so I didn't mind that he had to sit through a few laughing fits and inside jokes.It’s so strange when all the sudden we are grown-up, married, with adult responsibilities.  I’m proud of myself for getting into trouble, and living such a fast-paced youth.  I ignored warnings to slow down because I was hungry for life.  

Slightly rebellious but still responsible, I would always do my homework before going out to clubs and pubs.  My roommate used to wait for me to get out of class at 10:00PM, where I would jump into the passenger seat of my car while she drove us out.  Sometimes I even painted my nails on the dashboard.

I always wanted and needed to have it all.  This is partly why I’m so ready and excited for a (slightly) quieter life.  It's just a different type of fun this time.  I can enjoy every second because I didn’t miss out on one thing about being young.  I went to parties, made mistakes, kissed the wrong boys, bought clothes on credit, and ran around the globe searching for something.

A weekend night, a bottle of wine and Matt are honestly just as entertaining to me now as going out drinking & dancing was to me then.   Maybe even more so.

This stage in life comforts me in a deeper way than I have ever known.

People ask me what it’s like being married.  My answer is simple.  My husband and I are officially family.   

It’s difficult to explain what that feels like without being cheesy or trite but it really is wonderful.  I’m building my own family and that is more satisfying to me than building a city, skyscraper or business.

The Honeymoon Odyssey: Leaving Melbourne

Photo by Four Frames Photography

It’s a little pathetic that I have not updated this blog in a year.  I have my excuses and I’m sticking to them.  Two weddings on two different continents and to top it off, a honeymoon that would take me and my super-married husband around the globe.

More wedding posts to come but for now I need to start with the Magnificent Honeymoon Extraordinaire.  Part one:  The Tullamarine Airport.

 Packed-up, checked-in and in the airport gift shop is where I made my first honeymoon purchase.  A little novel by the name- “Fifty Shades of Grey.” 

Let me explain.

I put off reading this little gem while I was busy getting ready for wedding II and planning our trip.  The book had been all over the US for months now and it’s now caught on like a bush fire in Australia.  A few friends had read it but I refused to let them talk about it in front of me until I was able to have an opinion.

Everyone in the US had already read it- Including my mother (the woman who covered my eyes during sex scenes until well after I became an adult).  So thought it would be funny and very cliché to read these on my honeymoon while I was getting my freak on.

Turns out- I didn’t have to bother.  Yes the first book was a little “shocking” and saucy but it only eludes to the stuff that is supposedly super kinky and out-there.  And as the books drone on (with their impossibly repetitive adjectives) it gets more and more vanilla- to the point where I found myself skimming the sex scenes or skipping them all together.

I’m by no means wild between the sheets- but I have a feeling this would be much more shocking to Soccer Mom’s who married at 23 or divorcees who are realizing that the grass is not greener with hubby number two.

In the end I forced myself to finish the darn things because A. they are a great mindless read when you’re on your fourth flight of the day and your brain is like a colander, and B. because I wanted to be able to have a point of reference when I was trash-talking the books and people who like them.

Never once on my trip did I fret about being able to find the second and third books in the series without having to lug them all around at the same time.  I could easily leave “Fifty Shades of Grey” in Italy and pick up “Fifty Shades Darker” in Spain, dump that one in a hotel room and pick up “Fifty Shades Freed” in a lingerie shop in Amsterdam.

Cinquanta sfumature di Grigio

These books are front and center in every bookstore, in every country and in every language.  It’s unreal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad women now have their own porn- words are so much sexier than strippers.  Now let’s hope someone comes along with some talent who can really titillate us.  Pun intended.

Home Sweet Home

 

I cried for days the first time I returned home from Europe.

Sitting on the floor next to my unpacked suitcase, I pictured getting up at 7am for the bus tour, strolling through museums, sipping wine, photographing cobblestone alleyways.  My soul longed to be back in Italy and I was only 18 years old.

It was the same after many stunning vacations and even 13 months working in Germany, The Netherlands and Finland.  Depression inevitably followed.  None worse than the time I came home from South East Asia, where I met Matt.

International travel is different for me these days.  I’m always schlepping the 24+ hours to the exotic Buffalo, New York.  Collecting stamps from my two homes, Australia and the USA.

The first few times I arrived back in Aus from a visit to my native land- I felt a little lost.  Homesick for my people.  However, my most recent return to Melbourne felt much different.  I arrived chattier, brighter, excited.  Suitcases were unpacked within 24 hours.  Mind clear, I slept through the night.

Was I revived by an injection of Buffalo Summer?  Maybe.  Or perhaps this is what it feels like to be really, really happy where I am present? 

Yes my new home is a very far distance from where I grew up, the place where my feet were always itchy.  The sheer expanse of the distance has it’s negatives which I can distill down to two basic things:

1. I cannot get home in an emergency.
2. I cannot go home spontaneously. 

Yes, these two things suck.  Sometimes more than others.  Guilt is a weight I’m trying to release yet will always carry with me (especially as long as my Mom is around).  I won’t be there to see my nieces and nephews grow up or visit my grandmothers when they’re sick.   My parents will only have planned visits with their grandchildren.  I feel bad for all of this, I do.

But in trade you all get a healthier, more at peace me.  Someone who is so much more capable of being that friend, daughter, sister and soulmate.

I value and cherish my roots yet I think when I feel like a visitor in the place that raised me- it means I’m where I belong for now.

Pear

Matty + business dinner= mac and cheese for dinner and ME time.

I rescheduled my personal training appointment, put Adele’s new album, on repeat and set out my newly purchased acrylics.

Not sure why I chose the pear as my subject. I bought two lovely ones last week. Matt stayed home from work on Monday and I took one of the pears to work. I sent him a text saying “It’s alright if you already did, but could you not eat that pear cuz I want to paint it.”

His response “You’re going to paint on a pear???”

My literal thinking man. Our kids will be lucky because if they are dreamers, or somewhere in between-I'm pretty sure we've got the range covered.

The easel Matt give me for Christmas is like a work of art in itself, or at least a fancy piece of furniture. I actually tried to avoid spilling paint on it.

The result of my evening and three rounds of Adele- a pear study in shapes and colors. Very abstract- unavoidable really when using brushes from the Chinese dollar store. My professional easel makes me embarrassed for using such crappy brushes.

I ate the pear for breakfast today. It felt kind of wrong but delicious at the same time.

Writer's Block

Not sure if most writers have this problem or if I’m especially more constipated by fear than most. But when I sit down to write, I just think up any excuse not to- for example at the moment I’m looking for birthday presents for my brother. He’s 26 on the 26th this month.

Writing is my love, fear and hate all wrapped up into a burrito which I avoid like I’m on a diet. See, I’m even really struggling for a decent metaphor here.

The feeling and sounds of my fingers as they trip across the keys, watching words appear and disappear as the courser zooms back and forth on the screen. I love it all. Honest. Even as a child, when I wrote stories, I never finished them. What to do?

In college I took a creative writing course taught by an ageing poet (by that I mean he was like 100 years old) and short story writer who coughed so hard that each time he gasped, I held my own breath and waited for him to collapse in front of the U shaped table where we all sat.

I had immense respect for this man ever since he read aloud some of his published beatnik poetry, I could imagine myself being in love with his all-black, beret-wearing self in the 1960’s. Or if I were about 50 years older.

Before the class, coincidentally, I had read a few books for fun about writing- one by favourite childhood writer, Stephen King called “On Writing.” In it King wrote about how to avoid becoming attached to your own words and how at times, even the greatest paragraphs are better off deleted. I understood.

For this reason, I was better able to take criticism than most of the students in class. The elderly-cougher, he was tough but honest. When he said something was not genuine, or made no sense, that was the truth. The other students would get pissed off at the criticism and start defending one another.

This class taught me that writers were more sensitive to critique than our drama major counterparts. How could this be? We English students were supposed to be open-minded intellectuals.

But with every craft, I suppose the creator feels a certain amount of attachment. It’s this umbilical cord that sometimes gets in the way of seeing the big picture. The danger is in having the cord so tight that it barely allows breathing room between you and the page- you can only see one sentence at a time, let alone paragraphs or chapters.

In that creative writing class I wrote what I knew; boys, school and waiting tables. Practically turning journal entries into fiction simply by changing names, the results were descriptive and surprising.

One story (about a guy who said he’d call and didn’t call and gave me some lame reason for which I forgave him) our professor saw in it irony and naivety. I was embarrassed because I didn’t realize at the time that I’d been duped by Italian Chuck. When I reread the story later, I saw the tragic narrator for who she was, and it actually made for a good read!

One day while gathering my notebooks to leave class, the Professor asked if he could speak with me. I immediately panicked, which is always my reaction. I really wanted an A in the class.
“Did you ever finish the story you started about that waitress in the deli?” The professor asked (of course I had not.)

“No, not yet,” I said shyly.

“Well, you should,” He said. “You should write…. (the pause was deafening) A lot.”

My eyes probably popped out of my skull. That was seriously by far the BIGGEST compliment he had given anyone all semester long. I was floating on air all the way to the parking lot.

The moral of the story is, I should write. A lot. Even when I don’t think I have much to say.

Another day, Another Existential Crisis

This has been my last 10 months:

Moved to Melbourne permanently, found and set up an apartment, worked 4 different jobs, endured guilt-driven emotional warfare from Mom, travelled overseas to Buffalo for Christmas, got engaged, celebrated, helped Matt renovate his investment property, painstakingly prepared documents for a partnership visa…

It’s no wonder I’ve lost track of myself in recent weeks.

A lot of it comes on the cusp of that final separation from parental praise- by that I mean, my Mom completely disapproves of me living in Australia so for the first time in my life I've stood my ground and barely emerged alive from the battle.

I read this quote today, which helped:

“A joyful life isn't about others; it's about the brightness that is associated with being alive. Your path to it is through anything that replaces thinking with pure flight, pure joy.”

I can no longer rely on "others" to validate my life choices and it's time to readjust my focus on what makes me happy.

And now, being forced to changed jobs again it’s like someone is in my face demanding to know who I am and where I see myself in five years. Without anyone else controlling the validation, praise or judgement there are almost too many options.

Yes I come from a culture where what you do is who you are, but I don’t personally buy into that theory- so why is it so daunting to pick a career? Or even a direction?

So it must be fear of success- or is it fear of failure? Unfortunately completing one undergraduate class in abnormal psyche means I’m no expert on psychoanalysis. (A little knowledge about lots of subjects.)

"Can’t someone just tell me what I’m supposed to do?" But of course not, that would take all the fun out of it.

I wrote an email discussing the topic of work/ life purpose to Sara. She nailed it when she wrote back:

“For a really long time I wanted someone to tell me what to do. I thought if someone could just tell me what direction to head in I could go and do it and do it well. But I know that would never make me happy nor would it you. I think part of the problem when you are smart and talented and good many things the idea of choosing one and heading in that direction is scary what if you fail what if you succeed? They are equally scary.”

Sara should start an advice column. And Oprah should have her own religion.

And today I read another brilliant article discussing how sometimes, when your path ahead looks fuzzy- all you need to do is adjust your lenses. Simple and true.

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Are-You-On-the-Right-Career-Path

This article hit me right between the eyes.

After work, I bought some paint. When I got home I downloaded some new music. Matt and I went to the gym and out to dinner and talked about wedding venues. It's a successful start.