We ordered a second round of beers. Beer was cheaper than water and the train was like a sauna with no exit door. I stuck to Pilsner Urquell; I enjoyed its refreshing light taste accompanied with a mild hoppiness. In that moment, I further appreciated and understood why beer served for so long as a form of payment, nutrition and hydration. If it wasn't for beer, we would maybe never have had the pyramids.
I had not seen Esteban in almost a year. He worked as the photography editor for the magazine I managed. Last I heard, he worked for a company for a couple months then decided to move to the United Kingdom. Our communication since he left the magazine was minimal. I knew he had traveled throughout Europe quite a bit prior to coming to Nivena to meet me so I wanted to pick his mind. I was about to set forth on my own European expedition and I wanted stories -- recommendations -- words of wisdom.
"What has been your favorite moment in Europe?" I asked.
The gap of humid air between us fell silent. His eyes suddenly left contact with mine and began shifting along an internally stored path of numerous sights, sounds, smells. London, Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels. He traveled to so many places, seen so many things. I began to regret asking that question as the silence proceeded without a sign of answer. I then thought of my own traveling experiences. I knew that everything in a new place was special and wonderful in its own way. I could, for instance, never compare the praying temples of Kyoto with the beaches of Barcelona. Although my question was a dumb one, I needed a conversation starter. Thus, I took a sip of my beer and tried my efforts in mind reading.
"It's hard to say. But one of the most beautiful moments was when I was overlooking the Arno River one night in Florence. The lights from the city bounced off the water and onto the buildings. It was like watching the solid world melt into liquid; it was a spectacle of colors morphing into one another... it was ... yea, beautiful. Just beautiful. Florence is great. You really need to visit."
Esteban was a photographer. He saw things through the lenses of his eyes that he wanted to remember forever just as they were. This moment in Florence he tried to describe was obviously something he could not quite capture and share. I think that was why it was so enchanting for him. No matter how expensive a camera, how powerful a lens, how right the angle, he would not be able to quite capture the moment's profound tap on his soul.
I then grew a little jealous of him. He had seen so much while my starvation to understand new people, languages, and cultures had been eating away at my focus throughout my American routine. The people I met, news I read, feelings I experienced in my nearly 18 years of living in America seemed to all follow an incredibly predictable trend -- so much so that I sometimes wondered if I kept zooming out I would eventually see Americans as a series of pinballs falling through a grandiose maze of predetermined sine waves. I felt like I needed to know if the rest of the world was like this. It was my turn to travel and begin to understand the human constructs of this planet on a grander scale.
However, I still did not feel like I was prepared enough for my European expedition. The only languages I knew aside from English were Spanish and Russian, and in the upcoming weeks I was supposed to set foot into Czech, German, and French territory. I suddenly felt like I needed to get off the train, go back to the United States and purchase a stack of foreign language, history, and culture books. I never liked how most Americans infiltrated other countries in their baseball caps, cargo pants and sneakers, expecting everyone else to know English and just as much about the NFL while ridiculing foreigners within their borders for their well-fitting clothes, soccer and accents. I was seriously becoming all too conscious of my own American scent. How far is it permeating? I wondered as I sat on that bumpy, hot train ride.
As a result of my internal dialogue, Esteban's declared exhaustion and the stuffiness of the train, the trip from Nivena to Guarpe was a fairly quiet one. By the time we got into Guarpe, it was already nighttime. Deciding to reserve our energy for the next day, we had a couple beers at our hostel's bar, and then retired to bed. The vivid dreams I had that night felt so real that when I awoke the next morning I wondered if they were actually foretellings.
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