Killing Batteries

I’ve been inspired by last week’s list to make another list. Normally, I’m not a list guy. I just don’t do it. I can barely get it together to make a grocery list (e.g. yesterday I forgot mayo and contact lens solution), much less an authoritative, trustworthy list for public consumption. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me why this was, so I decided to give it some thought and make a list of why I don’t usually make lists:

1. Too much organization and work

That was it. Is it technically a ‘list’ if there’s just one item or do I have to downgrade it down to an ‘excuse’?

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As promised, my “Best/Worst of Tuscany” and “What Happened?” lists.

Best/Worst of Tuscany

• Best drive: People, it’s all good, assuming you’re in the passenger seat. If not, count on pulling over a lot for photo sessions. No need to signal, just stomp on the brakes. The 12 Italians tailgating you will understand.
• Worst drive: Trying to get anywhere but Rome when leaving Siena (honorable mention, any drive within the Livorno city limits)
• Best view from a hotel room: Hands down, the Albergo Guastini in Pitigliano

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I used to think that I was pretty damn amazing with my skills at direction and orientation. I always knew precisely where I was and the absolute best way to get to where I was going. Of course, this was because I lived in South Minneapolis, an Eden of grid-pattered, consecutively numbered streets where the university gave out masters degrees in navigation if you could pass the following test:

1) Simon says raise your right hand
2) Simon says raise your left hand.
3) Quick! Raise your right hand again!

You needed at least 66.61% to pass. Needless to say, most people get it in less than three tries. And yet, even with this abundance of exquisitely oriented people, there’s never a taxi around when you really need it. Strange place.

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Guess what?  I’m going to Romania next week.

Don’t worry, I’m not staying for long.  I’m not completely backing down from the vow I announced in August, made at the urging of my lawyer, psychotherapy team and concerned parties at the American Embassy in Bucharest.  Also, my dietitian said I needed to detox from eating pizza six days a week for 13 months straight, but what does she know?

I’m jetting in via Rome with budget airline Blue Air for 11 indulgent days - December 28^th through January 8^th – after being successfully lured there on the strength of the New Years Eve celebrations and the unhinged street parties that will follow on January 1^st to celebrate Romania’s photo-finish acceptance into the European Union.

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I leave for Paris tomorrow.  I’ll do two weeks of mild, worry-free travel in France and Italy - areas I’ve been through before - and then I’ll move into a ground floor, furnished apartment on Sardinia right on the beach, where I’ll edit for four months, as a 19 year old, dark haired, attentive village girl in an ill-fitting peasant shirt attends to my light house keeping and meals while slowly falling in love with me, like in the movie “Love, Actually”.

So why do I feel like I’m parachuting into Darfur with a week’s worth of beef jerky and orders to assassinate someone important?

This bloody pre-travel anxiety happens every time.  I don’t know how many trips I’ve been on…  at least a squillion.  You’d think I’d be pretty nonchalant about it by now, but no.  For days before each trip, whether I’m traveling for a weekend or ten months I get all bent out of shape.  I can’t sleep, I’m antsy, I babble (more so). 

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Paris was everything I’d anticipated and more. In three days, I spent nearly $200 in food and drink, gained about five pounds and took innumerable pictures of quintessential Parisian scenery like the snap below.

Now before you fly off the handle and write your congressperson condemning me for being a depraved, voyeuristic pervert, allow me to make two important points;

1)  I snuck this photo for the purely professional reason that it’d make killer cover art for the next ‘Lonely Planet Best of Paris’.
2)  I’m a depraved, voyeuristic pervert (natch).

Furthermore, believe it or not, I showed heroic restraint by only stealing this relatively harmless shot.  Moments later the view became decidedly more graphic when this young beauty straddled her lover’s torso and began to move her body in a way that would have made Shakira whistle.  I chose to be a gentleman and leave my camera in my day-bag (after the zipper got stuck during the initial, frenzied yank).

Speaking of syndromes, I personally suffer from a number of maladies (real or imagined depends entirely on the eye of the beholder), a large number of which were invented/identified by me, exclusively for me, and anyone else referencing them or suffering from them is required to cough up royalties.

I believe I’ve isolated yet another malady this week which may be one of my most mainstream, accessible cash-cow neuroses of all time; Sado-Masochistic, Econo-Traveler F*ck-Wit Syndrome (sadly, even when it comes to naming maladies, the art of brevity eludes me… but check out all those hyphens! I still got it!!!).

The theory is that Sado-Masochistic, Econo-Traveler F*ck-Wit Syndrome sufferers, whether voluntarily or not, seek out and inflict the most god-awful, sleepless, punishing travel arrangements on themselves under the auspices of saving time, money and/or maximizing convenience.

I’m a classic case. At the beginning of each trip, no matter what the length, scope or distance, I always tell myself I’m going to finally slow down, spend a little more money for comfort and basically consider my mental and physical well-being above all else. This trip was no different. I had 12 days to get myself from Iasi to Paris to San Francisco. A few lazy days in each place, day-travel only, in strictly non-ass pounding environments. Seems reasonable and carefully considered, no?

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My intended September/October travel plans have taken a small twist. 

Instead of traveling four countries in Southeast Europe by train, Lonely Planet is flying me to San Francisco for an author workshop!  Who else didn’t see that coming?

Moreover, since I’ll be right there, I’m going to do a three week stopover in Minneapolis after the workshop so that my mother can count my digits and I can replace my asthmatic Dell notebook with something that won’t audibly whimper when I open Adobe Acrobat Professional.

So!  Party in Minneapolis!  Woo hoo!  My lord, I cannot wait!  Real hamburgers!  Mexican food!  Thai food!  Indian food!  Omelets the size and weight of a gold brick!  And, sweet jesus, FREE REFILLS!!!  God bless America!!!

Even more exquisite is that September is the best weather month in Minneapolis, my favorite time of year.  I couldn’t have planned this better if I tried.  Indeed, there’s a lot of preparation to be done, not the least of which will be eating five meals a day for the next six weeks to get my stomach appropriately stretched out.
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I’m finally back from Kiev.  Actually, I’ve been back for two days, but I’ve been occupied with the Cricova champaign that I brought back (and the brain damaging aftereffects).

Aside from being targeted for a lamely executed tourist scam and spending part of my time in a hostel with no hot water and, briefly, no electricity, I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  My body however, would disagree.

My approach to breaking the back of a new city is to walk all over the damn thing, ridiculous distances and unfavorable weather be damned.  After three solid months of sitting on my fanny in front of a laptop, the transition to walking for 10 hours a day - in melt-your-hair heat in this instance - didn’t go over well with my legs, feet and physiologically optimum hydration levels.  There was much bodily complaining.  You’d think my body would be used to these extreme lifestyle changes by now, as they occur several times a year, but sadly it hasn’t gotten any easier.  Granted, I didn’t exactly ease into foot research mode in Kiev.  More like sprinted into it, literally.

In addition to walking about 15 miles and mildly sun burning all exposed skin on my first day in Kiev, I started things off with a semi-deranged race across the city center to get to an appointment with a local tourism official.  As a result of my poor time management, I ended up with only 15 minutes to walk (run) about five kilometers in 93°F (34°C) heat, carrying an over-packed day bag.  At the time, I hadn’t yet had the chance to uncover the complexities of the city’s metro system and 15 minutes before an important appointment didn’t seem like the time to tackle that trial-and-error process in a foreign language with a funny alphabet to boot.  Furthermore, I had been advised to not take a taxi without a wise local at my side, lest I get stuck with a $50 fare.
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Busy, busy. Lots to tell, but no time… except for this one tidbit:

The highlight of my first full day in Kiev was the attempted scam two jackasses tried on me.  I was walking down a fairly quiet street about 100 meters from a hotel I was visiting for the article when a guy pulled up next to me and started to match my stride.  He walked awfully close to me, which set off my Danger Sense right away and I didn’t have long to wonder what was up.  He did a nifty pretend-to-pick-up-off-the-ground, slight-of-hand move with what appeard to be a wad of cash (there was a fifty dollar bill on top, but you couldn’t see the rest of the wad), wrapped in plastic.  He was like, ‘Oh wow!  Yeah!  Hey you!  Good luck huh? You speak English?’

 ’Yes, funny you should ask, I speak the hell out of English.  Congratulations.’

 ’Hey, Russian tradition, we split it!  Go to a bar!  Come on!’

 ’No man.  I’m working, it’s all yours.  American tradition is ‘take the money and run!’  Bye.’

‘No, no!  Wait!  Russian tradition, we split it!  Get some girls…’

 ’I'm going in this hotel now, goodbye’

Just then another guy came running up, ‘Oh!  You found my money!  Please, can I have it back?’ and by then I was 10 meters away and accelerating.

I have to assume that in the end, the ‘owner’ of the wad of money would count it, claim money was missing and demand that I give him all mine.  Furthermore, I’m willing to bet that if some cops happened to show up, they’d be in on the act too.

The moral of the story is, never accept free money from anyone under any circumstances and be extremely cautious around anyone that wants to be your instant friend.  Females included.

OK, back to work.