The behind-the-scenes stuff to this trip is the wide array of ppl I've met along the way. I usually don't take selfies or to post about it b/c it feels 'out of tune' with the moment. It's easier to just show a pic of a building and say 'here' than to capture the experiences with other ppl...the Luxembourg DJ in Slovenia who wants to move back to Ljubljana, a United Nations lawyer in Bordeaux who got fed up with int'l orgs, a Finnish theatre moving back to Helsinki, Canadian architect who hated religious art, A Marine vet and young chef driving from France to Spain and cooking all along the way whatever local food is around them, two American architects who picked apart the hotel in Florence for its use of space, Italian meditation teacher who talked about breathing and thinking from the solar plexus (and not through the head) for power, half the ppl on the Tuscany tour (hey, shout out!!), a Chicago political consultant working for socialist party in Vienna to bring 'Bernie Sanders' style organizing and micro-fundraising to the Austrian left, a Mexican college graduate going back home to work in the prison systems, an arts history student in Venice who thinks Kanye West is the troubled genius of our generation, Florentine chef who moved to nyc and had some success/press cooking a regional Tuscan dish for Americans and then had to move back home to Florence to take care of family (and now works in a sandwich shop near the Uffizi), the Egyptian interior designer who's traveling to Montreal for a long-term project and hates the city and plans on taking short breaks to Montana, and on and on.
I could fill a book with odd, charming, hilarious, sad, twisted stories told by other travelers. More than buildings, I'll remember the tall tales, soap operas, odd quirks, and contradictions that human beings reveal to other travelers on the road.
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