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no more backpack Nine hour flight over the ocean and I am finally home. For the first time in weeks, I'll be able to sleep in my own bed tonight. Now what I need to do is relax and try to absorb all that I did over the past two weeks in Europe. Thinking is a struggle for me. My body still thinks that I am in Europe. ... The heat here in Milwaukee feels like a jungle after the pleasant weather that I had in Europe. ... By land, sea and air, I crossed through eight different countries and my mind is still trying to absorb all that I saw and did while I was away from home. Adjectives at the moment fail me so trying to describe any of it is next to impossible. Language in general is failing me. Just being somewhere where English is the language of choice feels odd. Not being able to read signs was something that I learned to accept over the past two weeks. Now all of that has changed. I saw so many palaces, cathedrals and famous streets that I'll need the nine rolls of film that I shot to help me sort through the memories. ... One of the final conversations that I had was with this Polish businessman on the flight from Warsaw to Chicago. According to him I went to the wrong place in Poland. Warsaw is not Poland. I should have gone to Krakow or Wroclaw. Even better would have been his hometown of Lublin. What I saw was a city that had been rebuilt after World War II. All of the history had been taken away. Then there were his stories about growing up when communism was still in place and how much things have changed since then. At most I would say that he was five or ten years older than myself so that made the stories that much more interesting to me. Here was someone that was my peer who had lived in a world that was completely unknown to me and I thanked him for sharing with me. Listening to him gave me a very real perspective on life or at the very least gave me one different than mine. Listening to him made Europe more personal and real to me. Listening to him made the flight back home to the United States that much more interesting and I wish that I had met and spoken with more people like him while I was in Europe. Then again I can't grab people off the street and ask them to tell me about their past.
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