I was thinking about things to write in my blog. You see, I
don’t like to just write about travel. I went here or there. The pictures tell
that story. So I’ll tell a different one.
Why am I out here?
I was really surprised when my host in Bucharest told me the memorial to the rebirth of the nation through the struggles of the people in the 1989 revolution against communism (Memorialul Renaşterii) looked like a potato on a stick. Okay.
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I listen to the conversations around me and I don’t understand
a word that is being said. In Greece, I knew the majority of the letters in the
alphabet from back when I was in college. In Bulgaria, my host took the time to
instruct me on what each Cyrillic character was. With that knowledge, I could sound out words
and there were remarkable similarities with English. Here in Romania, they have
mostly abandoned Cyrillic characters, but their language is even less familiar.
I am out of my comfort zone.
The Royal Palace and a horse's patootie. Of course, Romania is no longer a monarchy, either, so the palace is now the National Museum of Art of Romania.
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And I’m beginning to be a junkie for it. I quickly memorize
maps to where I want to go and simply take off. I look at key words on menus
and recognize “porc”. I learn how to order wine. A waitress asked me yesterday
if I spoke German and we finished our conversation in a second language for
both of us. Neither of us were fluent.
I’m almost ready to risk going to Turkey. But the State
Department says it is dangerous!
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How affected were you by the last shooting in America? Was
it yesterday? This afternoon? How did you respond? Horrified. Sad. Angry.
Frightened. Europeans think America is a very dangerous place. We think Greece
and Turkey are dangerous.
The world is not safe, no matter what country you are in. We
have delusions that we are supposed to be safe.
Wrong. We are not supposed to be safe. We are supposed to be
vigilant and experience new things. We are supposed to be places where we don’t
understand the language. Where getting a meal and a glass of wine requires
finding common ground.
If we did that, we wouldn’t be so scared all the time. We’d
be used to talking to people we don’t understand and wouldn’t be cursing them
for not speaking English. We might even learn a new language.
That’s one of the reasons I don't think Americans will ever colonize
space. We’re too scared. The way America is today, we couldn’t even win the West.
We're too fucking scared.
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The television will tell us what to be scared of and make it
into the boogey man. Daersch. Illegal aliens. Loss of Social Security.
Communism. Socialism. Naziism. 1%. Black. White. Police. Transsexuals. The National Debt. We’ll
vote for the person who promises to make us safe. But they’ll keep us scared.
Way too scared to think about going into space. That’s really scary!
A young boy attempted to teach me how to cross myself when I sat to take a picture of Ort Alba Church. This church escaped destruction under the communists.
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I’m going to think about other reasons we won't colonize
space. In fact, I’ve already thought of a few. I bet there’ll be more. And
after all, colonizing space is a lot safer to talk about than voting in this
year's election, right?
But the issues are the same.
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