Somewhere while sauntering at the colorful vintage and antique Portobello Market and lazing on a comfortable couch in a basement teashop at Camden Stable Market, I came to a conclusion. To enjoy an unfamiliar place you are going to visit, you need to lower your expectation and stop looking at images of the destination.
Prior to the London trip, I’d been brooded for two months mainly because of my secret vow to never return to the same country, let alone the same city, before completing my Euromega–seeing every official country in Europe. I was in London six years ago during my first trip to Europe and didn’t like it at all (long story). The idea of returning to a city that bore no impression on me didn’t resonate with me. On top of that, people’s telling me how big and expensive the city was added to my woe. But I wanted to see an old friend who flew all the way from the US and picked something from her.
The first European country I visited is coincidentally where I live now. The year before at a summer camp in California, I met Danny, a Czech guy from Prague, who ‘marketed’ his city. Some guidebook even commented that “Prague is the Paris of the Eastern Europe.”I had an internship in Poland in summer 2004, exactly one year after I met Danny and remembered all the nice things he said about the city. Seeing that Poland was neighboring the Czech Republic, I booked a flight ticket from London to Prague for a quick sightseeing trip before taking a train to Poland.
After months debating whether I should add another tech gadget to my increasing collection of stuff, I succumbed to the temptation and purchased the Amazon Kindle 3. (Talk about maintaining a life of simplicity.)
It took a while to get used to reading on an electronic device especially if you like the feel of holding a physical book and flipping worn-out pages. At first, my head got a bit dizzy from reading small texts in .pdf format. My fingers ached from holding the device. I left the Kindle on the shelves for three weeks thinking I had made another unwise purchase. Things changed when I bought my first Kindle book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There by Rolf Potts and started reading it on my bed the same night.
Traveling is responsible for a large chunk of my happiness, that’s why I post this exercise I did for a workshop I am currently attending.
Homework
Shakespeare: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Or, as Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” These I [my teacher] pulled off the Happiness Project and some other places; take some time and answer the questions as honestly as you can and bring the answers with you.
Questions & Answers
The article was submitted by LISA.
Bill wrote Fools Rush In in 2005. It’s an intense memoir of the sequence of events that led him to board an aid bus to Sarajevo, evade sniper’s bullets, and as fate would have it, help U2 broadcast Sarajevo’s struggle for survival during their Zoo TV tours. You could even say this young guy from California had a hand in stopping the war.
By Alinesarajevo
I’ve started the school year at a small school in Sarajevo after spending ten months teaching teenagers in Southeast Asia. Teaching assertive Bosnian students takes some getting used to. Typically, half my class time in Bangkok last year would be spent coaxing trembling students to speak more loudly and loosen up. Many of the Thai children were anxious about embarrassing themselves, to the detriment of their language learning.
This article was submitted by ISA BELLE, a Dutch student studying in Herzegovina.
Beggars are not only a Balkan problem; they can be found everywhere from Beijing to New York and in rich and poor countries. However, beggars are definitely in high number in the Balkan. No way you can visit Bosnia or the Balkan and not have an encounter with them. In Bosnia, there are many Romanies (or gypsies) begging on the streets. They belong to an ethnic group migrated northward long ago from Central Asia and India and ended up in Eastern Europe.
This article was submitted by ISA BELLE, a Dutch student studying in Herzegovina.
The Ottoman rule over Bosnia officially ended in 1908 when the country was annexed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They have left the Bosnia for over 100 years now, but their influence over Bosnian culture is hard to ignore. The famous burek was a traditional Ottoman food; Bosnians still drink a lot of Turkish coffee; 40% of the population are Muslims; folk music sounds remarkably Turkish, and most old buildings in Old quarters were built in Ottoman style.
This article is submitted by a former English teacher in Sarajevo.
I wake up at 9:30 and walk to the bakery five minutes from my door. I pay half a KM, about 25 cents, for a buhtla cokoladna – a warm roll with chocolate inside that I buy regularly but can never pronounce correctly. Returning home to eat, I watch an older episode of Oprah, which, as with all television programs in Sarajevo, is in its original language with local language subtitles. This has been a useful way to improve my vocabulary.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
