Category Archives: Travel

11:37 pm - January 22, 2014 - gooollysandra

What we can’t do in life, we live through the movies

What we can’t do in life, we live through the movies. This is what came to mind as I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Watching Walter Mitty go on his adventures was inspiring, but also unrealistic. We would all love to undergo a drastic change in our lives by going on adventures of that magnitude, but unfortunately there are a myriad of reasons why we can’t – work, money, family, responsibilities, time, and fear to name a few. But this is what the movies are for and what makes them so remarkable. Even if we can’t do something in our own life, we can watch it on screen and in a small way experience it ourselves. Having adventures like going to Greenland and hopping on a helicopter only to land in the ocean before being rescued onto a boat, or going to Iceland and experiencing a volcano eruption, or going to the Himalayan mountains to witness the sighting of a snow leopard are made possible by the movies, even if only in our imagination. And this is why I love the movies.

Walter Mitty’s transformation throughout the film stood out to me as the focal point and it was apparent in everything from his clothes to his personality to his interactions with those around him, including the woman he was trying to impress by his adventures. The soundtrack, which included David Bowie, Arcade Fire, Of Monsters and Men, and Rogue Wave really made the film. It added so much feel-good sentiment that I don’t know if the adventures would have been quite as exciting and inspiring without the soundtrack or had there been different song choices. It was just perfect. It was definitely fun to watch, although a bit confusing at times because of Walter’s zoned out tendencies, which sometimes made it hard to decipher what was actually happening and what was just in his imagination. It did, however, become more clear after his first couple of zoned out episodes. Ben Stiller, as the main actor and producer of the film, did a great job, and Sean Penn’s small role added just enough oomph. I would say the moral of the film is to embrace the person you would like to be and just go for it. Also, to go on adventures.

Categories: Film, Foreign, Travel Tags: adventure, Greenland, Himalayas, Iceland, imagination, movies, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

1:57 pm - December 16, 2013 - gooollysandra

The peculiarity of place

A sense of place is a strange thing. We never seem to be happy where we are because we’re thinking of another place we’d rather be, or not necessarily rather be but be as well. On the rare occasion when we’re content in the moment with where we are, we must soak it in because it doesn’t come by too often. We always think about what we could be enjoying somewhere else, and fail to realize what we could be enjoying right where we are. But I guess this applies to other things in life besides just place. We always want what we can’t have…

Categories: Nature, Philosophy, Travel Tags: place

11:54 am - October 17, 2013 - gooollysandra

Living in my grandparents’ house

I recently moved for a new job, which is conveniently located where my grandparents live, and while they do not live at home but in a nursing home, I am living in their house. Living in someone else’s house can be strange, especially when it’s still full of all their things. However, when it’s someone you know or are close to, it’s not quite as strange. In fact, I am rather enjoying living in my grandparents’ house. Of course, I am lucky because they have a rather nice house. It’s full of art, books, records, Scandinavian furniture, culture, and history. I can feel the culture and history because I know about my grandparents’ past, but to a guest who might not know about my grandparents’ past, the culture and history might not be as obvious. My grandparents are immigrants from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and they escaped when the Russians invaded. Their story is very interesting to me because I can’t imagine going through what they had to go through…having things like their homes taken away from them, their rights to do certain things, and ultimately leaving their families behind to have a better life elsewhere. So with these things in mind, I look around the house and take in all the history and culture as much as I can. There is something that feels very foreign about the house, but in a good way. It transports me to a different time and place that is unknown to me, but no less interesting.

Categories: Art, Foreign, Travel Tags: culture, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, foreign, history

10:09 pm - October 14, 2013 - gooollysandra

Identity

Establishing a place and identity has been difficult for me since I was born in Italy, lived there for 8 years, and then moved to the United States where I have spent last 14 years of my life. Wow, that’s a long time. I don’t like counting how long it’s been since we left Italy, so I often lose track of how long it’s actually been. But I’ve always had this conflict within me of not really knowing where I belonged. It hash’t been overwhelming to the point where I feel completely lost, but rather just indifferent to both Italy and the U.S. Despite being an American citizen and living in the U.S. for most of my life, I do not feel very American and certainly don’t feel patriotic in the least. At the same time, I can’t say that I feel very Italian either. I was born there and spent those early formative years of my life there, but I am not ethnically Italian, and therefore, was more like an outsider living in Italy. Of course, the Italian people are very warm and embracing, so we didn’t feel like intruders or out of place. I am extremely grateful for my childhood in Italy, as I realize this is an opportunity that not many American children have. I have the fondest of memories of my birthplace and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

That being said, my love for Europe and desire to go back exceeds my interest, or lack thereof, to remain in the U.S. and build a life here. But then again, my family is here in the U.S. and going to Europe on business seems challenging for non-EU citizens. So I suppose it will continue to be a conflict, but will hopefully be resolved at some point in my life, if I’m lucky.

Categories: Foreign, Philosophy, Travel Tags: Europe, identiy, Italy, Rome, U.S.

8:20 pm - October 10, 2013 - gooollysandra

Life transitions

I recently made a big life transition – I moved away from home and started my first serious post-college job. Having graduated from college a year ago, I spent my first year out of college working a couple of part-time jobs that I wasn’t particularly fond of. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like them, they just weren’t what I thought I would be doing after college. Getting your first ‘real job’ after college is exciting, but also scary. I was definitely scared/worried/nervous about moving far away from home, living by myself, and not knowing anyone in the town I was relocating to. But, as everyone does, I knew I needed to get away from home, gain independence, experience a new kind of environment, and do some soul-searching (i.e. figure out what I want to do with my life).

So, the transition has actually gone really smoothly. I love my new town and my new job (well, more so than what I was doing before anyway), and am actually enjoying the time spent alone. It can be scary and certainly sad and lonely, but only if you let it be that way. Spending time alone can be a great opportunity to think about your life, explore different things, and do things that you wouldn’t otherwise have time to do like read, watch movies/shows, exercise, go out and explore, work on projects, etc.

Taking that big first step is difficult and scary but, for me at least, it has been well-worth it.

My lovely new home

Category: Travel Tags: first job, post-college, transitions

11:00 am - July 22, 2013 - gooollysandra

Fantasies

We all have fantasies about what we want to do in life. But the question is, how do we decipher a fantasy from what we want to turn into reality? I’ve often thought about different things that I would like to do, like teach English abroad, make movies, be an interior designer…but I can’t tell if these are things I would actually do, or if I just like to think about them. What propels one to actually carry out an idea rather than just think of it as a fantasy? I think it takes a great deal of perseverance to carry out what you actually want to do. Sometimes it’s easier to settle for something that you might not like quite as much, but is still somewhat enjoyable.

Categories: Film, Foreign, Philosophy, Travel Tags: fantasies, film, interior design, reality, teaching, travel

11:05 am - July 19, 2013 - gooollysandra

A different world

I recently had an encounter with someone on a completely different level from myself, just from a different world. I was out east visiting my grandfather in Massachusetts, and I met with one of my his former students that was in town and went to visit him. As she speaks about her life, it seems as though it is just so cultured and beyond what I can imagine to be someone’s actual daily life. She is Indian and she lives in Oslo and has also spent time in Singapore, she knows how to speak French Norwegian, and Hindi, besides English, she has had a successful career in finance working on Wall Street, she was educated in Ivy League schools, she lived in Paris when she was younger and then New York, she is married to a Norwegian, and she has three kids with very bright futures ahead of them. She also just built a nice modern house in MA with custom touches throughout. While in MA she plays golf everyday and enjoys summer plays. As I listened to her speak, I found her very cultured and interesting, but also privileged, critical, and pretentious. It’s great that she has had the background that she has and is able to live the way she can, but not everyone has the same opportunities. Not everyone has a multicultural, worldly family, not everyone can go to an Ivy League school, either because of prior education and grades or financial means, and not everyone can have a successful career in stocks. So while I was very interested in her and inspired by her as a model to aspire to, I was also discouraged because it seems unattainable for most people, including myself.

Categories: Foreign, Travel Tags: culture, ivy league, Oslo, Singapore, stocks, wall street

9:50 am - May 29, 2013 - gooollysandra

Memorial Day – another reminder of how un-American I feel

Having been born in Rome, Italy and grown up there for the first 8 years of my life, moving the U.S., especially Indiana, was not such a happy prospect for me. Consequently, I have never felt very American…I have just never really identified myself as an American. Not that I identify with being Italian either, since there are no Italians in my lineage and it’s been 10 years since I have been back to Italy, so I guess I can’t identify myself with any nationality, which is sometimes a scary thing. Where do I belong? I often think, on a day in Indiana when I am particularly aware of its unpleasantness, certainly not here. But then, on other occasions, I think it’s not all that bad. My family is here after all, and your family is really all you have.

On this Memorial Day Weekend, while all the true Americans were having their cookouts and drinking beer, I was reminded of how un-American I feel. I just can’t relate and I don’t fit in. It kind of disgusts me actually. I am not patriotic and I don’t understand it.

Categories: Foreign, Travel Tags: Memorial Day, nationality, patriotism

10:57 am - May 10, 2013 - gooollysandra

Worldly connections

Do you ever wonder what random people in other parts of the world are doing? Or how you can personally be connected to people in other countries? What parallels might run through people living completely separate lives in completely different places? Since I love traveling and have been to most of the countries in Europe, I sometimes think about what people might be doing at any given moment in Rome or Paris, or Singapore, a place I have not been to. This thought occurred to me this morning as I was waiting at a stop light and there was a man on a moped in the lane next to me. In northern Indiana, this seemed very out of place because one in a million people drive a moped here. But as I grew up in Italy, I was used to seeing people on mopeds constantly since it is such a common, natural way to get around there. So when I saw this man on the moped this morning, I thought about Italians that were riding their mopeds in Rome at that very moment, a world away. It is interesting how something like that can remind you of something that occurs in a different part of the world, and while you are not personally experiencing it in that other part of the world, by seeing it where you are, you are connected to others that might be doing it somewhere else in the world.

Sometimes I think – How can I be connected to every single person in the world? We can, quite easily actually, because we are all joint by human nature. But we are also connected on a more personal level in that we share similar experiences of thought, emotion, hope, despair, etc. even though we may be worlds apart and lead very different lives. This is one of the things that makes life beautiful – to think about people in other parts of the world and feel connected to them. I only wonder if they share the same feeling…

Categories: Foreign, Travel Tags: connections, mopeds, people, travel, world

8:28 pm - February 3, 2013 - gooollysandra

The City

What is it about the city that I love so much? The lights, people everywhere, the noise, and just the overall feeling that comes over me when I’m in the city. What’s interesting about a city are the things that come together to make the city what it is; things that on their own, wouldn’t classify as a city, but when brought together measure up to a city. It is the things that I mentioned earlier, like the buildings, the cars and public transit, the people, etc. that make a city a city.

Beyond that, there are some cities that are intentionally created as cities, and others that accidentally become cities when all the components come together on their own or by accident – as Dostoevsky writes in Notes From Underground, “Cities can be intentional or unintentional.” Here he refers to St. Petersburg as being an intentional city that was planned and erected all at once, both spatially and intellectually, instead of coming together over time. Are cities that form unintentionally perhaps more authentic and enjoyable to live in? Who knows, but the Underground Man might think so, as he is not fond of St. Petersburg in part because it is so precisely and methodically planned out. The city’s plan, more so than just being physically planned out, also seems to have a plan for its residents; people are expected to be and act a certain way and the Underground Man doesn’t like it.

Cities that I am particularly fond of – Chicago, Rome, Paris – have been partially planned out to a certain extent during certain time periods, but not entirely planned out all at once like St. Petersburg. They have gradually come together over the centuries and are still continuing to form and develop. So what is it that I like about the city so much? There is something about a city that encapsulates infinite possibilities in a way that the country does not offer, to me anyway. The country, which seems to go on forever in every direction certainly can seem to possess infinite possibilities, and it may well do so, but in a different way than a city does. When you look out onto a city, a big one anyway, it also may seem to go on forever in every direction, but that is not the kind of infinity that I mean. I mean, that cities seem to offer infinite intellectual and cultural possibilities for what one can become as person in that city. And this is what I like about the city…all the things that one can do in the city, and all the things that one can become in the city.

Categories: Photography, Travel Tags: cities, photography