Me, then, there, now

I was fresh out of college the first time I traveled abroad. It was sort of a cliche -- graduate college, go off and see the world before you get a job and face reality. Except I had just accepted a job before I went to Europe. The day before I left, more precisely. As soon as I'd come back from the trip, I would pack up to move across the country. It was a weird time for me, hopping around Europe and seeing amazing things while, at the same time, in the back of my head, wondering about all the things I'd need to do once I got home.

Above and below are pictures from that trip in March and April of 2005, during a few days spent in Prague. I'm looking out across the Vltava River from Old Town. That's the Charles Bridge in the background with its rows of dark, sooty-looking statues. In the second, you can see the Mala Strana neighborhood across the river, where the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral are perched on a hill.

I was also the happiest person in the world that day because I just had ice cream -- gelato at that. And I was in Prague.

Will and I were there at Easter time and we spent Easter morning buying chocolate at a grocery store and eating it on the bridge, watching the tourists and a procession of people dressed in biblical costumes, acting out a Passion play. There was a blind woman nearby, singing arias and operatic pieces with a music book, in braille, open and facing outward, pressed flat against her waist.

Now, it's strange because, when I pulled out the photo album again, I found myself remembering things other than that. Not so much images, but feelings and smells and textures. The cold chill and musty smell inside a cavernous Gothic church. Stumbling along cobblestone. The sounds in the distance of tourists crowded in the Old Town square, echoing and reverberating through a narrow alleyway, telling us we were almost there. You catch yourself in a moment, something reminds you of something else. It all just flickers quickly in your head and you try to place it before it disappears.

Months ago, when I decided I was going to do this, I felt myself split in half. The part of me that's here, planning and organizing and preparing and saying goodbyes, and the part of me that already glided off to Europe and is waiting for me.

When you are about to start a job in a new place, you play it all out in your head -- what your office will be like, where you'll sit, what your coworkers will be like (see the post below), what you'll do on your days off. I'm going through that right now, but rebuilding a place inside my head. I'm imagining what alleys I turn down if I'm coming from the Charles Bridge and want to get to the square. I'm remembering that to get to the castle hill, you pass St. Nicholas Cathedral and walk, almost clawing your way, up a steep road.

Or maybe this is just because of all the time I've spent on Google Earth recently, studying the streets and trying to remember where everything is. Whatever, my obsession with maps always comes in handy.