Not literally.
Not metaphorically.
I'm actually just going back to the old country. Which in my case would be Spain, or Rome depending on whether I ascribed to the notion of the "old country" either by racial heritage or religious legacy. But the truth is that I'm going to the lower countries to visit a friend that I don't know in her natural habitat. And then I'm going to Sweden and spending a week in the family home of a sister I barely know.
And I'm being lenient on the barely.
But her daughter is a soccer player in college in the U.S. on a scholarship. I used to love seeing pictures of my niece, the only dark, soulful Mexican tan amongs a sea of platinum blondes and pale skins playing indoors. She was the shortest but she had hops. I've met her twice.
I remember a nephew in that I bought video games for him that were from time to time passed on via mail or personal courier. No idea what his face or personality might be like.
My sister poses as different challenge - a grown woman, with a husband she met online and has been happily married to for years - I wonder how she knew my dad. How I know my dad and whether or not we'll ever Venn Diagram our experiences and get a full picture.
But I'm finally excited for a trip outside my bi-national experience this past lustre.
I'm tired of speaking English and Spanish and look forward to once again have the doe-eyed, deer-in-headlights, glassy stare of the misunderstood not because they have some deeb psychological angst but because no matter how loud, and enunciated, Swedish is nothing like anything I've ever heard off. What should be even more exciting is Dutch. Tantalizingly close to German but just off enough where it's not enough. Like when you're standing on the deep end of the pool and you can feel the tip of your toe graze the bottom long enough to "be" there but not long enough to stand or give you a sense of balance.
And the winters are brutal in Europe but I'm hoping for one of those random sunny weekends where the continent grows alive as its denizens rush to the street in a desperate land grab of vitamin D.
Gregarious Pluto will be my guide but I'll also allow for a great deal of spontaneity in hopes of finding a strange street that no one has ever heard of before with delicious coffee or maybe hope to get picked up by a 1920s crank car that inspires me and teaches me a thing about Nostalgia. Or maybe I'll end up at Tesla (re: Electronic) party where the hero wears a masks and spins flash drives like it's his job and a mob of youngsters push through the crowds with video cameras held high in the air by extendable poles in an effort to make a mass concert available to the huddled masses (of the economically fragile ROE). But I can also hope for a bar concert that straddles the line between cabaret act and dark Dead Kennedy's vibe with a lead singer that comes in multiples, is French, possibly Bulgarian and who sings Sweet Emotion like she's Marilyn Manson but that can also croon Too Drunk To F*** like it's an sweet old Charles Trenet song.
And I expect Sweden to be covered in snow and the people to be friendly and kind and I expect myself to constantly debate for five days whether or not I'd ever actually wear wooden shoes. Maybe I'll get to see one of the communal living arrangements that make people so happy, kids well adjusted, and adults in their mid-forties feel self-fulfilled and like better parents?
Oh and I'm travelling in comfort - happily alone joined by friends, blood and in-law.
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