In the last twelve days, I have left my apartment only once but, to be honest, it’s been okay. You’ve probably seen those introvert memes that say things like, “stay home and avoid everyone? I’ve been preparing for this my whole life!” I gotta say though, I feel like moving abroad and trying to be a full-time writer have prepared me well. Before this pandemic, I already worked from home and had to use technology to talk to most of my close friends and family. E and I don’t live paycheck to paycheck, we haven’t lost our jobs, and we don’t have children. We both have health insurance and we’re…
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Have Fun and Be Safe
At the start of this year, E and I were in Vancouver, where my brother and his partner RJ live, celebrating the holidays. RJ is a librarian and at the branch where they work, patrons were invited to share new year’s resolutions on a bulletin board. One of the resolutions, clearly written by a child’s hand, said, “I want to have fun & be safe :)” After RJ shared this wholesome, heartwarming nugget of wisdom with the rest of us, we agreed “have fun and be safe” was the energy we wanted to bring with us into 2020. It’s only mid-March, but I think we can all agree that 2020…
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Do other people’s life decisions ever make you question your own?
A blogger I’ve followed for years (and met once in person) just announced that she and her husband are moving back to the US after two years in Italy. They moved to Europe with their dog and young daughter just six months before E and I moved abroad. When we announced our move on facebook, she commented, “Welcome to the fun side of the pond!” It was just one small comment, but I did feel welcomed — to the Americans abroad club by someone who had gone before me. Earlier this year, a college friend who moved to Berlin a couple months before us left for a job in Toronto.…
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How to Write a Book and Celebrate Your Accomplishments
I recently finished the third draft of my manuscript. (Pro-tip: when you’re writing a book, you’ll feel much fancier if you call it a manuscript.) My manuscript is 87,000 words long and some of those words are even good! Two years ago, after I typed “the end” on my first draft, I stood up from my desk, went into the bedroom, and sobbed. I couldn’t believe I had actually done it and I felt overwhelmed with emotion. I’m a crier (the working title of my book is Crying in Public), so this wasn’t an unusual reaction for me. But it felt like an appropriate way to respond to such a…
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Wrocław, or Emma Tries to Convince You to Visit Poland
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Poland should be on your European itinerary. When I backpacked around Europe six years ago, Krakow was one of my favorite stops. I met awesome people there, learned a lot about the city’s history, and ate so many delicious pierogi. Why Poland? The thing that drew me to Poland in the first place was my mother’s family. If we talk ancestry in terms of percentages, I’m mostly English, but if we talk in terms of cultural heritage, I feel most connected to my Polish roots. I called my maternal grandparents, “bopshe” and “jaju” (Americanizations of the Polish babcia and dziadzio), we…
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My Biggest Travel Mistake
E and I forgot something really important when we went on vacation recently. It was worse than the time I arrived at London Heathrow Airport without a return flight booked. The UK doesn’t like to let people in without knowing when you’re leaving and the only thing that kept me from being detained was white privilege. Our recent mistake was even worse than the time I ate questionable samosas in India and got violently ill on an overnight train. Okay… that one was pretty bad. I should have known better and I suffered the consequences. But the most recent mistake E and I made was practically unforgivable for a couple…
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We owe one another our attention
Today is the eight year anniversary of my dad’s death. I’m happy(?) to report: it doesn’t hurt the way it used to. The last couple years, I’ve been struck less by how much I miss him and more by how much he has missed. I notice big things he missed, like my wedding, and smaller things, like books he would have enjoyed. Since his death, I’ve traveled on five continents, my brother and I both moved abroad (in opposite directions), and my mother retired. I also spent several years in Boston working at the Museum of Science, and my dad would have thought that was the absolute coolest job. I…
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Getting to Know Schöneberg
The temperature reached 94 degrees (Fahrenheit, obvi) yesterday, so it seems safe to say summer has arrived in Berlin. Temperatures that high are actually kind of an unpleasant anomaly, but, in general, it’s warm and sunny here, and we’ve been spending more time outside as a result. We’ve started jogging in the evenings after work. There’s a bike path that runs alongside the train tracks, and we can follow it to a nearby grocery store. On Friday night, it was warm and humid and just starting to rain when we finished our run and went into the grocery store. The air had that amazing wet asphalt/ozone scent. We picked up…
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This is a post about Paris and the things fire takes from us
I wrote most of this post last week, and our news cycle moves so fast that it almost doesn’t feel relevant to post it this week. It feels wrong to keep talking about Notre-Dame when more than 320 people were killed on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka. Tragedies, great and small ones, happen every day. Miracles, great and small ones, do too. I’m sharing this not because I think it’s the most important topic to talk about at the moment. But because I want it to be okay for us to pause and acknowledge the things we’re thinking about even if they aren’t the day’s most pressing issues. Paris was…
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One Year in Berlin
One year ago today, we landed in Berlin with 4 suitcases, 2 backpacks, 1 visa, and nowhere to live. Our first night in the city, we got dinner at a beer hall down the street from our hotel. We ordered half liters of beer, pretzels, a cheese plate, and Weißwurst (white sausage). I later learned that Weißwurst is a typical Bavarian breakfast food — no wonder the server gave me a weird look for ordering it at 8pm. What’s changed in the last year? Well, we don’t make as many faux pas when eating German food. As our friend, Ramona, puts it: going to a Bavarian restaurant on your first…
