One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

There's a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Robert's character, Liz, makes a simple Italian meal for herself and plants herself on the floor of her Roman flat, where she spends an entire afternoon just savouring each bite of her food.  This scene is significant to me for two reasons - the first, is that I just finished reading the book on my European travels (Sidebar: did anyone else find it really hard to get through the India part of the book?); and the second is that I had several of these EAT moments in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but I can see how people were pissed that so much was missing from the book.  Definitely a rental.

From my acorn-fed jamon in Barcelona to the lasagna I had in Markaska, Croatia, to the (several) cheese and wine combos in Paris, I've gained two new friends - I've named my lovehandles "Carbs" and "Consequences."  (Those "C" twins are so evil.)

I stare at this photo when I'm hungry.  It's the way of encouraging myself to write a lot of award winning books, gain the income to hire the chef that made this award winning lasagna, and hire a trainer to work off the weight I'll gain from eating this for every meal, everyday.

I've had a great time in Europe so far - besides the excellent food, I've experienced so much in the past five weeks that have opened my eyes to the fact that I am still as not as well traveled as I hope to be, that there are still things I need to work (cough...communicating my feelings...cough) and that I can really get used to this life of just wandering from place to place and not doing anything.  Now if I can only find a way of making income out of doing nothing...


Traveling has also given me a couple of story ideas to tinker with and hopefully that will result in the income that will allow me to travel some more, which will result in more story ideas and more income...you see what I'm getting at here?  Sigh, it is hard not to get ahead of yourself when you have this much time on your hands to just dream.  (Insert the Bob Sinclair Love Generation song from the Lotto Max commercials here as I dream about my next vacation.)


There are several highlights of this trip (besides the food - wait, I said this already) that I can't wait to start blogging about in my following entries - they include:


- celebrating Spain's Eurocup win in Barcelona on Las Ramblas and watching people drunkenly climb the lamp posts and praying they didn't fall to their deaths, 
- meeting a seminary student on the train from Zagreb to Split, Croatia and talking to him about everything from politics to religion to Croatian reality TV for about four hours as our train was delayed by a fire on the track (no, not dangerous at all),
- waking up every morning to the sound of the Adriatic waves splash against our boat and then jumping into the clear blue waters after breakfast on my Split - Dubrovnik cruise,

Life is hard when you have to jump off a boat everyday.

- the most random Sunday I've ever experienced which included a Tim Burton-esque circus exhibit, followed by running into a random Brazilian drum band and random carnival rides that made my friend Lindsay and I sick.


Each place I've visited in the last five weeks have left quite the impression.  Portugal was a friendly destination where surprisingly everyone spoke English with you, because they are probably tired of foreigners butchering Portuguese or speaking to them in Spanish.  Spain was incredibly hot and a great place to meet interesting characters on our Trafalgar tour - including some older Aussies and New Zealanders who insisted that the Spanish speak English.  Croatia was relaxing after three weeks of bus tours and an eclectic mix of young Australians - there were only Aussies on this part of my travels, I was quite the minority as an Asian Canadian (or Canasian).  And well, Paris, it was all about living the life of a Parisien, so much so that I was even getting annoyed with the tourists and saying my "Pardon!"s with an annoyance that would make any local proud.


What makes life so great at the moment is that my European adventures are not over.  There's still the London Olympics and Scotland and all of its foggy glory left to experience!  


It's not hard to keep saying to myself - fuck, I'm so glad I decided to take this break.

Looking towards the next two months in Europe and the Future.

Fifteen days.  The perfect amount of time for rests between my two big trips this year.  With China, Tibet, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia knocked off my travel bucket list, I look forward to my next two months in Europe.  

I had some epiphanies on my trip to Asia, of which my need to work on my procrastination was identified and then ceremoniously set aside for a later time (my lack of movement on my Asia blog posts is evidence of that).  One of the more important epiphanies is my sense of optimism and how it has changed over the last decade.

When we were young, we spent an overwhelming amount of time thinking about what we'll do when we get older.  When I was five, I wanted to be a singer.  When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a medical examiner (I had a weird obsession with the show Quincy M.E. before CSI became uber popular).  When I was eighteen, I was overwhelmed with the choices of what I wanted to be and do when I became an income earning adult.  This focus on the future filled me with hope, optimism and happiness - more than my 140lb body could contain.  

I'm not sure at what point which I stopped looking forward and started looking back.  I guess, I can't pinpoint a time, but perhaps a period in which this happened.  When I was 22, I wanted to be eighteen and have university to start all over again.  When I was 25, I wished I was ten years old and had no bills to pay, no responsibilities to attend to.  When I turned 28, I wished I was seven again, with my family all happy and together.  Needless to say, the latter thought was pivotal in my decision to quit and depart on this adventure.

What happened to make us this way?  When do we stop looking less towards the future and start dwelling on the past?  We become preoccupied with the niggles of the present and start drowning in the regrets of what we coulda, woulda, shoulda done.  This shift in the scales between past and future prevent us from truly reaching our potential - with each shift of the weight back to the past, our hopes and dreams seem to sink with it.

These past four months of being off have provided me with some perspective of what I need to change about myself.    I have to stop regretting decisions of the past and realize everything has led me to a point, this point, in which I have an opportunity to make some great life changes.  I look forward to my months in Europe where I can live a carefree life, eat amazing food like it's my job and overwhelm my visual cortex with the sights of Europe.  I look forward to the new experiences with friends and new friendships I'll forge along the way.  I look forward to finding inspiration for some short stories or perhaps a novel.  And I appreciate the fact that I'm one lucky son of a bitch for being able to take this trip.  I really do.

For those of you curious of where I'll be, here's my itinerary - which is pretty much set:

Hong Kong - June 8 - 11

London - June 12 - 13

Lisbon - June 14 - 18

Porto - June 18 - 19

Faro / Lisbon - June 20 - 21

Madrid - June 22 - 24

South of Spain - June 25 - June 30

Barcelona - July 1 - 3

Zagreb - July 4 - 6

Split - Dubrovnik Cruise - July 7 - 13

Paris - July 14 - 22

London - July 23 - Aug 2 (OLYMPICS BABY!)

Edinburgh - Aug 2 - 11

London - Aug 12 - 15

Taipei - Aug 16 - ...

So here's to looking forward...and never looking back. 

Always look forward.  Looking back is a waste of time.