Hungry for Far Away Places

Is it the spring?! Or is it my birthday?! Whatever it is, I get bitten by the travel bug every year, around this time, and I start planning for the road… After the hibernation of winter, I guess, I just feel like I am rusty and gotta move around… After the stagnant air of the winter, when all I did was gather moss from the cold and the rains, I get hungry for far away places to freshen up my eyes and my heart, and wash away the mold… It’s a return to my true nature, of a wanderer; it’s a return to our true nature of changing and moving… I read more travel magazines and sites now than ever in the year, and I dream… I dream big, and I dream far away…
I want my mom’s crepes in a sun-flooded Sunday kitchen and dad’s homemade pizza slices for brunch; I want to smell the freshly cut grass and gather it, and stack it in the pastures of the mountains of Bucovina; I want the taste of the first kiss after a hard day’s work at hay gathering, taste of wild strawberries and fresh spring waters… I want to go mountain climbing in search of mushrooms for dinner, and wild blueberries for dessert; I want to walk the streets of Iasi and eat funnel cake and laugh while flirting, and stop for coffee or a half liter bottle of beer; this time of the year, I smell the dirty Istanbul, a city with no public restrooms, that smells like an overflowing public restroom itself…; I want to climb the Pamukkale peak, and slide and fall behind, but still make it to the top, barefoot and wet from the thermal springs, but happy in the face of God’s miracle; I want to eat Turkish olives with every meal, and Turkish bread to go with them, and feel just…orgasmic pleasure…; it’s now that I start smelling the pot in Amsterdam’s bars, and eat the pizza in Vienna, and have some great, pure, smooth, light Austrian beer to wash it down with; I smell cow’s manure in the stables of Pojorata that I had to clean for years as a child; I dream of the one night stands without consequences, that I had when traveling in college, around Romania… the taste of the risk was so delicious! (I can’t say “sweet”, I hate “sweet(s)”); they tasted like freedom…
I miss roaming the streets of England, with the perfect curbs and the flawless asphalt (no potholes there!), the traffic on the wrong (yes! the “wrong”!!!) side of the street; the red brick houses everywhere, and the black iron gates of London; the polite English gentlemen who are still using “pardon me” to apologize for inadvertently stepping on your shoe while standing in “a queue”; the smell of the sea, at Margate; the stuffiness of the people of Cambridge and the openness of their “open” markets; I dream of burying my feet once again in the golden sands of the Bulgarian Varna; I even miss seeing the empty communist stores of Moldova, before the “Revolution”, empty and gray, and sad with the silence of the people bored. Everything I remember from my trips is so rich and I miss it so…I want to take it in all, at one time NOW!
I want to breathe fully the salty air of the Black Sea, and the dry hot air of the Turkish desert; the cold, humid and rainy air of the North Sea, the cold dry air of the Rockies, in January, so crisp, your nostrils bleed, the salty, stuffy and stinky air of the Atlantic on 4th of July in Charleston; the throw-up smell of New Orleans’s streets, and I want to hear the zydeco music hollering from the bars, while watching the kids dance in the streets, while I am getting a heavenly buzz form the “huge ass beers to go” offered in every street corner bar; I miss the stinky Boston seafood, so fresh and sea-stinking, your pee smells for days. I miss climbing at the top of the World Trade Center and feeling truly on top of the world, really feeling like I have, alas!, conquered my dream, of being an American.
But most of all, I miss the airports, and the planes, people watching, the sticky, sweaty feeling of being on the road for at least 24 hours, the crappy food, the espresso shots in the Amsterdam, Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna, Detroit, Newport, Chicago airports, and everywhere between home and … anywhere…
It’s food and smells and images of distant places that I don’t get to see everyday for me that I miss and long every year, around this time. And somehow, I know, each spring, that I will find the roads to take me back to these places, once again, or to open new doors towards new ones …
I am part Gypsy, and I know I will forever have the wanderer in me. I have a wandering heart and a wandering eye for sure … and I thank God for that! The minute I come home, I think of the next place to set off to… It’s a constant move, for me, just like life… And it’s freedom: nothing is stationary in this world, so should we be?! The settling is just temporary; being stuck is a temporary thing, just like the concept of “today”… Just like the river gets bigger with every drop of rain, so I get richer with every new trip I take. Fuller of life, experience, wisdom, acceptance, and love towards everything that moves and breathes and exists.
Yes, I get bitten by the travel bug, and a friendly bug it is. I guess it’s like the heroin needle (had I ever done it, I would know better…): gives you pleasure and pain, but more pleasure… :-) But unlike heroin, it doesn’t kill you, but it feeds you and enriches you, makes you grow and bloom, like the new flowers in the spring: makes you a new and whole person, once again.
This year, so far, I have these planned: Europe, Canada (new territory for me…), the beach, somewhere, and definitely some mountain trips…And the world was created infinite, so who knows what else…