Pennsylvania

There & Back Again, Part 5 – The Last Stage

February 18, 2010December 1, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"No vacation goes unpunished." ~Karl Hakkarainen"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." ~Lin Yutang"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." ~G.K. Chesterton * * *When the guy across the aisle from us began discussing stabbings & which mixture of drugs enabled him to best endure such an incident, I knew that I had had enough of fucking Greyhound.We arrived at the Greyhound station in Denver after our brief stop in Amarillo. We had 2 hours to stand in a line in front of the door where the bus would arrive. Sucking down our mediocre & over-priced nachos, Olivier & I observed that while the bus station in Denver was larger & cleaner than what we'd grown accustomed to, being forced to watch Fox News on...

There & Back Again, Part 3 – Screw Me in St. Louis

January 27, 2010January 29, 2010 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

When Olivier & I arrived at the Greyhound station in Erie, PA, we were giddy. It was 3pm on Saturday, the day after Christmas. We'd had a big pile of Arby's earlier that day, so I had gotten my fix after craving their delicious, cheddary slop for the past 2 years. We were leaving behind the stress of a Festivus gone bad & were looking forward to a week at home in Colorado.We had our bus tickets, 200 lbs. of luggage & a box of chocolate donuts. We were ready to voyage across the country for the next day & a half. We would have to change buses several times, but still... it was only a day & a half.A day & a half. No sweat.The first thing that we figured out was that there was no dicking around when it was time to board the bus. If you're traveling with someone, it's next to impossible to find 2 seats...

There & Back Again, Part 2 – Prickly Lodgings

January 21, 2010November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit." -Kin Hubbard"Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper." -Friedrich Nietzsche . I truly believe that tragedy can bring out the best in people... & that the holidays can bring out the worst. Humans are fucked up like that. In spite of everyone's best intentions, sometimes holiday gatherings get tense or chaotic. No matter how hard you try, you may still end up feeling as though you've stepped out of reality & into one of those ridiculous Christmas movies where everything goes wrong.We arrived at our destination in rural PA a day late. We got to see a few relatives - some that I had not seen in several years & that Olivier had never met. We had a great time - in spite of my occasional fits of choking on mucous & bleeding from the...

There & Back Again, Part 1 – Paris to Pennsylvania

January 13, 2010February 18, 2019 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

It's all quite blurry now, but what I remember of it all is full of various landscapes, faces and suitcases. There was eating, drinking, merriment and... mucous. Fucking holiday travel. It's always a lot of planning and stress, but we had a plan. A simple plan. There was no way it could fail. We had a direct flight from Paris to Pittsburgh, PA. We would rent a car, then drive 3 hours to a tiny, rural town just outside the middle-of-freaking-nowhere. After 1 week, we would board a Greyhound bus to Colorado. Another week there and we would fly from Denver back to Paris. There were various parties, reunions and get-togethers planned in several different locations with dozens of people. Okay, so it wasn't really such a simple plan. Maybe we'd hit a snag here or there; 1 or 2 little things could go wrong. Or... everything could go wrong. Olivier and I woke up at 4:30am on December 20th. I stared at the wall with...

You Can Go Home Again… For a Price

December 17, 2009November 30, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

“There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.” -Bill Bryson "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." -Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again "America is my country and Paris is my hometown." -Gertrude Stein ◊ There is something that happens to someone when they live abroad. It doesn't matter where they live, or for how long; spending an extended period of time living in a country that is not your own will affect anyone who tries it. If you've...