Feeling nostalgic

I keep meaning to write a long, ranty open letter to Israel about Lebanon, but I'm feeling a bit of nostalgia at the moment and I have someone on my mind and they won't get off.

Maybe it's the letdown from being on vacation and coming home to large range of crappy problems. See, I dealt with crappy problems everyday on vacation, things like "Oh my god it's Friday night and we only have 50 pesos (5 bucks) till the bank opens on Monday" and "What do you mean you want 450 pesos for a room with no hot water or air conditioning" and the most frequent of our problems (because the naughty prof is a veggie) "Can we see a menu? Do you have anything without meat? No, without chicken or pork too- sin animales por favor? Are your beans made with oil or lard?" I never thought I would have to know the name for lard in Spanish- but if you're wondering it's manteca. Mantequilla (which is butter) is kinda like little lard.

But those are fun problems really. I like the feeling of throwing yourself to the wind in a place where your normal language skills and cultural knowledge have to be stretched and pushed to their absolute limits, like silly putty on newspaper. But being home means a list of time consuming, mundane problems that that just keep coming. No amount of creativity or brain power will solve them. I have to use the skill I suck most at- patience.

So in the midst of all this I distract myself with thoughts of someone I shouldn't be thinking of. So to distract myself from my distraction- I am planning next year's trip. Eastern Europe and all it's glory of pickled veggies and potato dishes, vodka that is not the craptastic stoli (which made the kick in my nightly malaria tonics- the only thing that has kept my royal ass from winding up laid out like a tropical heroine in a trashy romance novel) and somewhere- a church made entirely of human bones. I'm so excited. I made the suggestion of visiting all the cities considered to be the new Prague, but that would take a year.

So far the intinerary includes: Krakow, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, somewhere in Slovenia (naughty prof has a friend there) and maybe Dubrovnik, Croatia. And if we are going to be in Slovenia, then a quick trip to my favorite, non-touristy small Italian city is in order- Trieste- where coffee is brought into Europe and roasted and where James Joyce conceived Ulysses.

But thinking about Italy makes nostalgic thoughts worse- so maybe I will think of Fidel keeling over and travel restrictions finally being lifted. Cause if that happens- Eastern Europe will wait but Cuba is screaming my name. Until then- espero y sueno por Cuba libre (I wait and dream of free Cuba).