run on sentences about european capital cities

Vienna 

Elaborate white facades frost the decadent viennese palaces and their trellis encircled gardens, tempting visitors and locals alike to indulge in spiced mulled wine, sweet tulip beds and endless, palate-cleansing fields of grass meant for picnicking, sun-basking, and silly games of duck-duck-goose. 

Easter Market Count: 2

Mulled Wine Mugs Consumed: 3

Budapest 

From her seat on the hill, Buda holds Pest’s youthful glow in her panorama view; street lights, club strobes and late night eats’ neon signs entice travelers over bridges, into Pest’s falafel filled dives and WWII ruin bars. As siblings do, Pest gazes enviously at her castle-crowned sister, coveting Buda’s pious church towers, fortress walls, and whispering, winding streets. Meanwhile, the sloping chains of Széchenyi bridge lock Budapest together, unifying their millennia of stories and linking their future history as a vibrant hub of Central Europe.

Easter Market Count: 6

Mulled Wine Mugs Consumed: 9

 Prague 

Old town Prague is the teapot of a china set, the centerpiece of the grand multi-district city. Exquisite cobblestone patterns coat Prague’s gently sloping streets, drawing visitors to meander the castle’s vibrant green grounds, ponder miscellaneous statues and marvel sky reaching gothic structures. If Prague were a sentence, she would run-on, dripping with archiac adjectives and chthonic 

clauses, each delightful detail jumping from the readers tongue like skipping feet on twisted pathways, towards the towering castle conclusion that life truly can be a fairytale, if we imagine it to be.

Easter Market Count: 4

Mulled Wine Mugs Consumed: 6

Ljubljana

Bring Downtown Disney into your mind’s eye, resize the buildings back to regular dimensions, replace Mickey Mouse with a bright green dragon, and draw a river down through the street’s center: you have a basic image of Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. Take a walk down that river, past the modern stores tucked inconspicously into old, pastel-painted buildings, and grab some strawberries at the daily farmers’ market down the river from town hall. Strawberry seeds stuck in your teeth, hop on bikes and ride your own amusement to central park, then go play in the old Yugoslav barracks-turned-art commune, filled with intense graffiti, monster sculptures and mis-matched steel structures meant for climbing. And so you’ll have spent a marvelous day in sLOVEnia.

Easter Market  Count: 1

Mulled Wine Mugs Consumed: 0 (unfortunately)

love from my bedroom floor, in the middle of a mess of clothes packing for tomorrow's flight to athens,

shonabell

dear pleasanton north rotary club

It’s been a while since i’ve sat down at my computer, stared at my travel journal, and tried to decide which story to share. It’s an interesting process, attempting to decipher my own scribbles, sketches, and anecdotes, sorting through which ones are appropriate to share with the wider audience of Facebook and beyond. So, here's a note I've been meaning to share.

Written on my flight back from my trip to see Clemence and her family in France:

Dear Pleasanton North Rotary,

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to me when I asked you to send me to abroad. 

Thank you for the opportunity to learn Spanish, which I keep up in small conversations with friends here and there and in my binge-watching of Spanish TV on Netflix (highly recommend ‘The Grand Hotel’ for anyone interested in a Spanish take on Downton Abbey). 

Thank you for the opportunity to learn to love foods like octopus salad, grilled squid and fried sardines. 

Thank you for introducing me to Europe, a place that I oftentimes feel more comfortable in than I do at home. 

Thank you for sending me to a place where I got lost (frequently) on public transportation; I now know that I will always manage find my way with a bit of creativity and by having no shame in asking locals for directions. 

Thank you for the opportunity to learn that it’s better to make up a word than be too shy to practice the language, a lesson which I put to use on a daily basis here in Croatia (much to many of my baristas’ amusement). 

Thank you, more than anything, for the family that you have created. Since you began the program in 2012, my family has added countless members. Not just my host families or the students that have come to live at the ‘Purple Door Ranch,’ but also the families of those students that my parents hosted, and the wonderful exchange students of District 5170. Two weeks ago, I sent an out-of-the-blue message to Clem, who stayed with my family a year or so ago, asking if I could come visit her in France on my spare weekend. Without hesitation, she send me an enthusiastic “OUI” and we quickly made plans for my trip. Keep in mind, I’d only spent a few afternoons with Clem because I was at school for most of the time that she spent with my family, and I’d never met her parents or little brother who had graciously invited me into their home. Also, my middle school french was more than a bit rusty, and I’d been warned that her family spoke minimal English (though I soon learned that they all spoke very well and were just shy about it!). So, off I went. And it was wonderful. A weekend full of cheese, wine, mountains, lakes, castles, and french jokes followed. Having spent weeks living alone with 20-something year olds, being with a real family again was refreshing and, simply, wonderful. So I guess what I’ve been wanting to say is: thank you. Thank you, PNR, for the family I now have around the world.

Love from somewhere in the sky above Europe,

Shonabell

hotel belvedere

It started as a simple trip to the beach, a ways walk out of town. We meandered, lounged, skipped rocks and enjoyed the sunshine and crystal blue waters. Restlessness hit us in gaggles, and over the course of an hour the large group slowly migrated from the rocky beach, along a windy cliff path to the scraggly hotel concrete and abandoned restaurant perches that dot that section of coastline. From there, a few of us jumped at the chance to explore one of Dubrovnik’s greatest war relics — the Hotel Belvedere. 

Strengthened by curiosity and comforted that our friend, Marko, would serve as our local guide, we began climbing the terrace steps towards the hotel’s lower levels. Passing by magnificent tiles of long-dry swimming pools and brightly colored graffiti still damp from application, we enjoyed our own private re-construction of what Belvedere might have, or could, look like. We ran into a few, quite literal, roadblocks where the city had filled the entrances Marko and his friends had used as children. Undeterred from our adventure, we made our way up pathways, windowsills, trees and door frames until finally managing to gain entrance to one of the hotel’s lower bedroom hallways. 

The soft carpet beneath my feet sharply contrasted with the harsh cracks in the walls, broken china, and vacant rooms of Hotel Belvedere. Simple, out of fashion wallpaper peeled from the hallways as if trying to escape this long-forgotten tourist hotspot. I lost myself in imagining how many men, women, children -- dressed for a dip in the pool and then afternoon tea -- ran their hands along these now faded walls. And as I watched my step for fear of broken glass or even gaping holes, I wondered how many times a young woman my age peered down at her own feet, trying not to trip in her slightly too high heels in this slightly too fancy hotel, on her way to an expensive dinner with a guy she’d like to impress with her (as of yet unperfected) ladylike charm. 

Perhaps I’m getting a tad bit carried away in my historical romance, as the hotel itself was only constructed in the 1970s, and my mom and her friend Shona most likely sailed, swam, or walked right past this hotel on their travels here in 1987. Or perhaps they were the young women eating nicely in the extravagant hotel restaurant… though I doubt it from my mom’s tales of meals of baguettes, cheese and apples on the cheap. It was only a few years later, in 1991, the the hotel was partially destroyed in the bombing of Dubrovnik, only to be occupied by Yugoslav soldiers and later lived in by refugees and looted by locals in the years since.

We climbed stairs, stairs, more stairs, discovered hallways full of bathtubs, tiptoed through bedrooms scattered with collected china, and incurred a few too many frights incited by our own reflections in unsuspected bathroom mirrors. Eventually, we made our way into the hotel’s decadent restaurant, with a gorgeous tile centerpiece still intact and a concrete spiral staircase that had seen better days. The view, same as ever, blazed into the restaurant though what were once walls of glass and now remain as open windows to the sea 100 feet below. Almost at the highest point, we were determined to make it to the hotel’s roadside entrance, though it took a pretty long jump and some intense bushwhacking (by which I mean the bushes whacked us, not the other way around), to reach the summit. As always, breathtaking views of the Adriatic and Lokrum island greeted us from our elevated perspective. Satisfied and exhausted, we meandered back down the path to the beach singing classic disney songs about how “everybody wants to be a [dubrovnik] cat” (ha).

love from dubrovnik,

shonabell

bumpy bus rides to far off places

I’m jolted awake as the bus hits a bump in the windy mountain road. My eyes take a moment to adjust, and I’m pleasantly surprised that we’ve escaped the snowcapped, ragged cliffs and full forests of frozen Sarajevo. The sun shines brightly outside my window, bringing a sparkle to the copper saturated, bright green rivers that meander through the region’s towering Dinaric Alps. 

The bus is heating up in the sun, and I’m sleepy enough that the bus seat feels analogous to my bed — both a bit stiff, a few lumps here and there, but overall welcoming after a long stint of adventure. 

And wow, what an adventure this weekend was.

We set off for Mostar early Saturday morning, packs full of clothes, snacks and knickknacks on our backs down the endless stairs to the bus stop. Full of excitement, we chatted through the twisting Adriatic coast, through three border check points, off the bus and through the rain to Mostar’s Stari Most (old bridge), built by the Ottomans in the 16th century. After a guided tour through Mostar’s cobble stone streets, we hopped back in the bus towards Blagaj, a smaller town about twenty minutes from Mostar. 

In Blagaj, we explored a natural spring erupting from the depths of a cave, set deep in the shadow of a towering mountain face. Ditching our mucky shoes and donning headscarves, my travel companions and I walked through the ancient mosque that sits atop the spring, marveling at the bright carpeted floors, stained glass ceilings, and whitewashed walls. 

From Blagaj, eight of us hired a private driver to take us through the snowstormy mountains to Sarajevo. Our airbnb host welcomed us into our penthouse suite with glasses of homemade rakija, the local liquor (a type of fruit brandy, in this case, pear). Truly located in the center of Sarajevo, our apartment was just down the street from the Eternal Flame, a memorial of the recent wars, and a ten minute walk from the old Ottoman village that forms the heart of the city. 

 

We spent Sunday tasting sticky sweet baklava, learning to properly pour teacups of bitter Turkish coffee, overindulging on bright tapestries and shiny copper treasures, and picking up souvenirs for our loved ones back home. 

And now, here I am, spending my Monday on this bus, writing to you.

love from somewhere near the Bosnian-Herzegovinian & Croatian border,

shonabell

sunglasses & wishing wells

Stradun is blinding today. The marble main street and gleaming castle walls intensify the sunshine, making sunglasses a staple of every old town walk. I’m perched on the ground outside of Sponza Palace, lounging against one of the pillars and watching locals and tourists pass by. Julia and I grabbed lunch from the bakery a little ways down the street and are munching our way through prosciutto & cheese baguettes. There’s still a chill in the air, especially within the city walls, so our spot in the sun couldn’t be a more perfect place to spend the lunch hour between classes. 

entrance to the monastery/university

Our university, Libertas Dubrovnik International University, is located just around the corner from Stradun, the main street, in an old Dominican monastery (which we still share with the monks who live there today). Classes themselves take place in the third floor of the monastery, where diplomats to the Republic of Dubrovnik (otherwise known as Ragusa) used to stay when conducting official state business. Not a bad place to be studying diplomacy and international relations. Oh, and did I mention the gorgeous courtyard that our school shares with the monks, visible from our classroom windows and the best spot for quiet study on a sunny day? There’s even an old well, perfect for making wishes before tough midterms and final exams. 

our shared courtyard (and well)

monastery bell tower

Classes at Libertas run in slightly haphazard schedules, often on the whim/demanding schedule of the professors, most of whom travel from abroad for a few weeks at a time to lead us through the material. Right now, for example, I’m about to finish the second week of my International Peace & Security course, taught by a professor from Zagreb. We’ll take a midterm early next week, then have two weeks off until a different professor, with slightly different expertise, comes to finish the Peace and Security curriculum. In the meantime, I’m taking the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, and the Art of Diplomacy, both with an amazing teacher who, rumor has it, was a diplomat for Montenegro a few years ago. Later in the semester, Negotiations & Conflict Resolution and Current Issues in International Affairs will begin, one of which is taught by a former Scottish prime minister. 

en route to class

Speaking of classes, I should get back to studying the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations for my quiz tomorrow.

love from dubrovnik,

shonabell

its raining cats and dogs

After less than a full night’s sleep, I’m sitting crosslegged on my matchstick box bed as my roommate struggles to find a place between asleep and awake. Jasmine green tea steams from a yellow mug on the already cluttered bedside table, and I’m peering out the window to see what the weather has in store for us today (google says sunny with a chance of rain). 

My calves and thighs ache from multiple journeys up and down the 200+ steps that connect our apartment to old town, but the daily workout is well worth the panoramic view of old town and the sea from our balconies, windows, and rooftop terrace. 

I can hear the boys next door drinking coffee on their porch, and the bells from one of the old town churches mean it’s time to get up. Let the fight for hot shower water begin…

I’ll pull myself back out of bed in a few minutes, flip on the kettle again and put some bread in the panini grill that takes hours to toast. So far, breakfasts have consisted of avocado toast, green tea, and oranges that are half the size of my head. All while overlooking the red rooftops of old city, of course.

Old city is easy to fall in love with. Empty of the summertime tourists, Dubrovnik’s marble streets glisten white in the sunshine, and are a slippery death traps on rainy days. I'm happy to report that haven’t fallen yet (knocks on wood), thank goodness for practical shoes. I don’t know how the locals survive in their sky high heels, but somehow they manage look perfectly composed rain or shine.

We’ll walk the city walls today, and I’m expecting to see as many local cats and dogs as old rooftops and waves against the shore. Pets are, apparently, uncommon in Dubrovnik, and the city instead is home to hundreds (thousands?) of animals who, fed and loved by locals, run the place like kings and queens. Plus, the cat that rules our closest flight of steps doesn’t laugh when I attempt to practice my beginner’s Croatian, so she’s currently my favorite local.

Time to join the rest of the world — doviđenja (goodbye for now)

love from dubrovnik

shonabell

Just Another Awfully Big Adventure

The last few days seem to have gone by in a blur: the flights, a few nights in Boston, then back home to Colby.

I'm not quite sure what to write. I've had a few messages from friends and family reminding me that I need to "finish" my blog cycle from Saint Petersburg. I suppose they're right: I should let everyone know that I'm back and not to expect many posts in the near future. I guess I could write a blog summing up my experience and discussing the many things I've learned. Maybe I could talk about the many things I'll miss from Russia - the people, the Neva, the food, the history - it would be a long list, I'm sure.

But I sit here typing at my keyboard, and I feel that I'm at a beginning, not an ending. I'm not ready to say goodbye to Saint Petersburg, to travel or to adventure, nor am I sad to be back at Colby and "normality." I'm struggling to "finish" my story because I feel that it is only beginning. Saint Petersburg was the first stop of many on the path that I'm walking. My journey has not stopped, only turned a corner, and I'm smiling as I look forward to the adventures to come.

So, for those of you that read this every time I click the publish button: I'm back on US soil and getting ready for classes to begin tomorrow morning. I'm thrilled to be back at a place that feels like home, with friends who have already begun to feel like family. I'm excited for tomorrow, and the day after that; who knows what my plans will be in a few months time. I have so many decisions to make, so many activities to pencil into the calendar, so much uncertainty in what the future will bring. In that uncertainty I see freedom: freedom to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, freedom to meet new people and try new things, freedom to explore new places, freedom to be myself, and freedom to be happy.

Here I go, off on another awfully big adventure.

Love from Colby,
Shonabell