It's Definitely Autumn in Europe!

We had to buy some new sorts of clothes while we were in Paris....it's freezing! We were surprised at how chilly it got so quickly. Large coats didn't fit into our backpacks, so they were left at home. So coats, hats, gloves had to be bought, and I imagine we will use them for the duration of our trip.


Joey and I are doing well, our health is good for the most part. It wears on you, always living out of a backpack. And, it's been somewhat difficult staying hydrated. How I miss the land of free refills and big glasses of iced water!! Here, you either pay 5 euro for a reasonable sized bottle of water at the table, or if you order tap water, it comes in the equivalent of a teacup, and don't expect a refill :)

Our sinuses started acting up in Paris, and have progressively gotten worse ever since. We have been waking up with sore throats in the morning and just feeling kind of crummy for the first few hours of the day. But I think I know why this is happening...


Just about EVERYONE smokes in Europe it seems, and we are not used to this! Although smoking isn't allowed inside restaurants, if you eat outside it is allowed and everyone is doing it. As you're walking down the street, you are bombarded with smoke. If you're in a bar, it is overwhelmingly smokey. Our clothes wreak of smoke. Did I mention I really hate cigarette smoke?


I can handle it in small doses, but our lungs simply are not used to breathing in such large quantities of second-hand smoke, and I think it has affected us. Anyway, nothing really to do about it, but I'm pretty sure that has affected our health somewhat. Don't Europeans know about lung cancer?


But on another note, we have been travelling nearly 4 weeks now, and I've been thinking about what it means to travel and why do it. We feel like we have been gone much longer than we really have, but that feeling is also mixed in with a time-fleeting sort of feeling. It's very strange. I'm reading A Year in the World by Frances Mayes, and she expressed the concept of travel in such a great way I thought. She writes,

"The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to go runs through me equally with an intense desire to stay at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home I'm dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport....Travel will be tied to a bigger word, freedom."


I can really relate to this idea, needing to go, coupled with the appeal of staying home. I am often yearning to take off and go somewhere new, to be unsettled constantly. When I feel like I'm getting too rooted, I want to shake things up again. But these feelings are balanced with steadiness and respect for those who are affected by my wanderings. And also a love for my home. I have my faith, my husband, my family and my friends to keep me grounded. I don't know that I'll always be this way, but I think perhaps an element of that will always live inside me---to go. But it's okay because Joey is right there with me. We both feel a need to see things and take risks a little while it's just the two of us, even though it is scary. But as long as he's around, whereever I go, I'm home. I don't think that travelling means to run from where you came, but perhaps to run to something new.

"Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna dei fusi. You open, as in childhood, and---for a time---receive this world. There's the visceral aspect, too--the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth." ---Frances Mayes, A Year in the World.


This is what I hope to do---because of course we will return home, bearing many precious memories to our hearth. But for now, we are hunters of freedom with happy hearts and pieces of home to carry with us as we go forth.