Cleveland isn't Prague

A friend posted "Cleveland isn't Prague" as his Facebook status. It kind of stopped me in my tracks because it just reinforced the fact that I haven't done the world traveling I had expected to when I was younger.

And it sucks.

And just to clarify, I was referring to Prague, not Cleveland.

I have done a little traveling. And, as an actor, I've had the opportunity to live in different communities, not just work there. Most of these places are limited to the east coast of the US - Maine to Florida. But I did have the opportunity to spend a July in Alaska and it was quite the learning experience. Although, as much as I got to see in Alaska, we never stayed in one place for more than two or three days.

Outside of the US I've been to Canada, Mexico, the Carribbean, England, Paris, and Northern Germany. And none of those in recent memory.

My husband travels for work. He's been all over the world: Europe, Asia (China and India), Australia and New Zealand, Africa. While I stay here in New England, holding down the fort and washing dishes.

That part sucks too.

So I say to you would-be travelers: Go! Travel while you're young and have the time and no committments. Don't wait, because it may not happen. You may find yourself middle-aged and renewing an unstamped passport, and using a picture you really don't want to have to live with for the next 10 years.

That part sucks most of all.

The Traveler, Part 1

I was attempting to make my way through the basement with a machete this afternoon when I came across a box of beloved books. In that box I also found a porceline "post card" from a woman who befriended me when I was young and far from home.

Oh, sob-sob.

Back in the dark ages at the end of my high school career, I applied for a summer exchange program through AFS. I wanted to go to Germany since, after barely passing three years of high school German, it was the one language, other than English, I could imagine attempting to converse in.

And what could be better than to spend my summer days frolicking in the Schwarzwald.

I was sent to Germany. Upon arrival in Frankfurt, my host family retrieved me and we drove many hours to the small university town of Marburg. Imagine my delight. Cobbled streets too narrow for cars. A castle on the hill. Wow! A $2.00 glass of bottled orange juice. Outrageous. It wasn't possible to get fresh OJ in third world country of Germany. And 300 years ago, $2.00 was a lot for a glass of OJ. (Did I mention I'm immortal? 300 years ago was barely a drop in the bucket to me.)

We left Marburg and made our way to our final destination. Hamburg. Or, more accurately, a suburb of Hamburg. Having grown up in a suburb of New York, this was much like home. Almost everyone spoke English. I couldn't imagine a place I'd less like to be.

Where was the damn forest?

I was living with a family of four in an apartment that was actually two apartments with the wall in the middle broken down. There was a cage full of canaries in my bedroom. Noisy, stinky canaries. Well, to be fair, I'm not sure which was stinkier... the canaries or the hard boiled egg they were fed. But they were noisy.

Where was the damn forest? And the house made of gingerbread?

And what was the German equivalent of M&M's?

So many things to adjust to. Such a wrong time in my life to go. I'd just graduated high school and left all of my friends and all of those "summer-before-college" parties for eight weeks in the suburbs of Hamburg.

What the hell was I thinking?

WAS I thinking?