Friends in Faraway Places

Most of my travel this semester in Italy has been spent visiting friends rather than exploring new places. I’ve taken a few trips this semester, but instead of discovering new lands, I’ve focused on seeking out my faraway friends in their new homes. I haven’t stayed in one hostel or eaten any bad touristy meals. From Dublin to Florence to my most recent trip to the French Riviera, I’ve been spending my limited time in Europe this year balancing my desire to travel with the fact that I simply miss my friends!

During the first few days of June, I had the pleasure of being able to visit some friends I made in Istanbul last year who now live in Nice, France. I’ve been to Nice before, but every place is different when you’re with locals. We ate lots, drank lovely wine, and got to visit a cute hilltop town in the Provence countryside.

I get spoiled when I visit friends. While traveling around to new places is invigorating, staying in hostels and getting lost and falling into tourist traps gets tiring. Visiting friends means that you not only get to hang out with people you rarely see and really like, you get an automatic local guide to the city.

My friends in Nice, Maite and Çağdaş, were with me during my time in Istanbul, so seeing them was like reliving a small part of Istanbul. When you spend time in places with people, whether a week or a few months or a few years, they will forever be a part of that place for you. Seeking out faraway friends thus becomes a game in seeking out memories of those places. It’s a special kind of friendship and probably my favorite part about life abroad. People and places become intertwined, not one is the same without the other, but you can still enjoy both and get a taste for a time that once was when the place and the friends were joined. So instead of sharing a Taksim hamburger at 2am, we get gelato in front of a church in Nice and enjoy our small world.

I have many faraway friends whom I unfortunately can't see all the time, but at least I know that for the rest of my life, I’ll have friends to hunt for all around the world during my travels and this is a beautiful thing.

Where have you been all year?? (part 2)

After spending Christmas at home in San Jose, California and New Year's in San Francisco with friends, I took off again, this time to Europe, first to Italy to visit friends and then off to live with my dad in Istanbul for 6 months.

For all of January 2010 (3 1/2 lovely COLD winter weeks of January to be exact), I was in Italy. I met up with one of my best friends, Shawn, to stay with a friend's brother for a week and be touristy in one of my favorite cities... ROME. Shawn was teaching English in Spain all year and had spent the Christmas holiday with friends in Italy. It was amazing to get to spend a full week with him doing fun touristy Rome things and just simply hanging out. We did the Forum, the Vatican, and wandered the city for 6 days.

One of the most memorable things we did was we went to the Befana market in Rome, which is the most famous market of it's kind. What is the "befana" you ask? Well, according to Wikipedia... "In Italian folklore, Befana is an old woman who delivers gifts to children throughout Italy on Epiphany Eve (the night of January 5) in a similar way to Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. This Italian gift-giving spirit is also known as Saint Befana, La Vecchia (the Old Woman), and La Strega (the Witch)." Honestly, it was kind of strange to see a witch associated with Christmas, especially a witch that gives gifts, right?

After Shawn left to go back to work in Spain, I spent the rest of my time in Italy with my dear Italian friend Carlotta, who had just gotten back from spending 6 months interning at the Italian consulate in Indonesia and traveling all of southeast Asia! We spent time at her house in Frosinone (a town just south of Rome) where Buffalo Mozzarella comes from (which is just about the BEST mozzarella EVER) and then took a roadtrip up north stopping in Florence, Bologna, and Padua to see friends of ours.

We had a lot of fun visiting and enjoying Italy. It was FREEZING cold, but we made the best of the weather. We even took a pizza pilgrimage down to Naples to see a UCSD friend! I love Naples! It's so dirty and ridiculous. Carlotta had never been, even though she lived in a town an hour away from it for years. Pizza in Naples is literally THE BEST pizza you can ever imagine eating. It is truly incredible.

Some say that it's the [dirty garbage] water and the [coffin] wood ovens that give the pizza there a taste impossible to replicate anywhere else in the world...
The day before I left, I popped off the button on my jeans, so clearly I enjoyed myself food-wise a little too much.... Hahahaha. Luckily Carlotta's grandmother (Nonnaaaa!!) was on hand to sew a new button on my pants.

Italy was a nice relaxing trip to see old friends and enjoy places that I had missed like crazy since leaving in July 2008 after my amazing study abroad experience. It was nice to be back, but I was ready to go on.

Next was a 5 day stopover in London to see another dear friend who was doing her master degree there at the time.