I’m fond of saying that I did not move away from New York, I broke up with it. And for several years afterward, when I would return, it knew I was there. There was a bitterness about it that exes can have – as if it were saying to me, “See, I’m getting along just fine without you. I don’t need you. Look at how I have barely noticed you’ve been gone.”

But this time, I found it had changed. It had left behind its wanton ways, and its rough edges had softened a bit. The city had turned to creature comforts; it had become more careful, more kind; it seemed almost to nurture its brood, somehow. As if it had settled down, enjoying the very lifestyle it has always eschewed. Something I read recently put into words this feeling:

[T]he streets the mayor and his friends have turned into faux piazzas… [are] an insult to those of us whose notion of New York City still includes dark corners and hard surfaces. These changes, applied with the superficiality of decals or appliqué, signify a new city, a lowercase city, where blocks are crowded with gelato and yogurt shops, traditional Neapolitan pizza restaurants and cupcake bakeries, where we can all pretend life is beautiful all the time.

There’s a farmers’ market in Port Authority. The traffic islands that guide drivers through the Broadway/5th Ave. crossover on 23rd Street look like the Tuilleries in Paris. My friend’s street in SoHo, once home to sweatshops and sketchy characters, now boasts a Vespa store, a surfboard shop and a Bloomingdale’s. On the corner of my old street in TriBeCa, which had the “bad deli” that smelled like dirty mop water and spilled cat food, now houses a Quiznos. You could conceivably sunbathe in Times Square.

I’m happy for New York, I really am. I feel like my ex-city has finally gotten its act together, and I’m glad it can be less grueling to live there. But there is a part of me that wishes it still was a city that had expectations of you. You had to be of a certain caliber in order to win its attention. It could put you through hell sometimes, but it could also give you the kind of life-changing experiences that legends are made of.

Living in Europe, I’m not often called upon to define, defend or describe that life. In Montpellier, everyone I know is living the same life. In Rome they’ve been witness to it literally since day one, and now I’m an established part of their lives.

The first time I came back to the States, the people I spoke to wanted to know all the details of my shiny new adventure. In subsequent visits, it still seemed like a novelty and there were questions about whether or not it was really going to “take.” But it’s been three years since the last time I was here, and seven years since I moved, seeing kith and kin has taken on a whole new vibe.

Like some sort of reverse canary in the coalmine, it’s almost as though now that I’ve made it work – really work, it’s my (not so) boring old daily life now – people are serious about wanting to know how they can do it, too.

But something else has been happening: It seems that, either directly or indirectly, I’ve been inspiring people. And in return, they’ve been inspiring me, too.

First, there was the short talk I gave at the monthly meeting at my parents’ American-Italian Club of South Jersey and Friends. (Named as such “because we take everybody,” my mother explains.) Having already spoken to them several years ago – and since they all know my parents, they’re more than aware of what I’ve been up to – I glossed over the particulars of my life and instead talked about how important it is to just… go.

Buy the airline tickets – even if they’re for a year from now – and make your dream trip happen. You don’t have to learn the entirety of the Italian language in order to visit your favorite cities. You don’t have to schlep your stuff on and off a tour bus in order to see the sights. You’re not going to find the Italy of your dreams by talking about going. A magical experience is not going to spring forth from a map. It’s only by going there and doing it that you’ll be able to have memories that last a lifetime.

People came up to me afterward and said how inspired they were to take their dream vacation to Italy. There was also a couple who had already planned their trip, and they had a few questions for me – and after speaking with them, I was inspired anew!

They got it. They totally, completely got it. And boy, had they done their homework: The very few questions they had for me made that obvious.

- The husband had learned the word for beer, but he wanted to know if there was a way to ask for beers on tap as opposed to bottled beer. (Yes. Birra alla spina is on tap; the word for bottle is bottiglia.)

- The wife wanted to know how to get from Venice’s Marco Polo airport to their hotel. She had read conflicting reports – was it a bus then a boat, or just a boat? (There are boats that go directly from the airport to Venice proper. But, as I tell everyone who is visiting a city for the first time, spend the money to get to your hotel directly. This is especially true for Venice, where it’s almost certain you’ll get lost, and that’s no fun when you’re carrying your luggage and jet lagged.)

- Another concern of theirs was walking in Capri. Was it really all up and down? (From my experience, yes. But, I told them to ask around for transportation up to the must-see scenic high points of the island.)

Rock on! They were awesome. And, I’m certain they’re going to have an amazing time because although they had done their homework and had planned as much as they could, after speaking with them I was satisfied that they also knew things would go wrong, or seem just too foreign for them to understand, and they would take it in stride as part of their adventure.

A girl named Jamie contacted me several months ago. She wanted to move to Rome – a city I think she had never been to before – and wanted advice. Now, I get emails like this often enough. But, once again, I was delighted to find another person who had done her homework, and I told her she was on the right track and should go for it. While I sincerely doubt my input had much to do with it, she’s now moved there – and absolutely loves it. Only a few weeks into her new adventure, she’s already giving advice on her blog! That’s the mindset of someone who knows she’s done the right thing. So, again: Rock on!

A fellow travel blogger has taken the first step toward her dream of moving to Italy – she’s quit her job to become a full-time travel planner for people going to Italy and Paris. While breaking this news to me she told me one of her major sources of inspiration was a line in my book, which was paraphrased from the following quote by Guillaume Apollinaire:

Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them, and they flew.

If that doesn’t inspire you, nothing will.

And just this morning, I was flattered to know that my book had inspired someone else, too: The girls at Looking Glass Lane. In what can only be described as a meta moment, I’m now going to quote them:

Relocating to another continent may or may not be what our heart is after, but I believe living life fearlessly is. It is fearlessness that allows to forge the unknown, create new dreams and new possibilities, and confidently reinvent ourselves and our destinies. It is fearlessness that begs us to climb the mountain of ‘impossible things.’

Yes! Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaking of yes, how often do you say that when contemplating your life’s dreams? It might be scary to do so, but start from a point of yes – and then work to make it so. It’s OK to be scared. In fact, if you’re not flat-out terrified at some point, you’re doing it wrong.

But how awesome will it be; how amazing will you feel when you’re at that place, that moment in time you’ve been dreaming of for so long? How inspiring will you be to others when you return from your newest adventure and recount your life-changing experiences?

If you’ve been waiting for a sign, this is it: Do it. Go. It’s worth it, and so are you. And if for some reason you need your inspiration to come from a place of no, consider this:

“What was once before you—an exciting, mysterious future—is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone’s everyone.”

Synecdoche, New York (via langer)

Is this point of view acceptable to you? (Hint: The answer is NO.)

I’ll admit it; I was nervous about coming back. Even though it’s where I grew up, and where my family and most of my friends live, it had come to seem so far away.

America. It had even come to sound wistful  when I said it aloud. The land of dreams. A place where, depending on whom you listened to, everything was falling apart; or a place where everything, after so long, finally was starting to come together.

I wanted to avoid at all costs the embarrassment of seeming like a foreigner, so I worked hard to remember all the things that were different about a place that had become a vacation destination for me: Air conditioning, ice cubes, big cars, big portions. I had done well, I thought; as my friend Katie whisked me toward my old skyline, I was able to help her navigate the highway/turnpike cluster from hell. We got back to her place, and I asked to use the loo. Twenty-four hours of traveling solo will do that to you.

I couldn’t find the flusher on the toilet.

I’m patting the tank. I’m pushing on tiles. I look above me for a string. Nothing. I figure I’d wash my hands, then give it another go before heading out to the living room and admitting defeat. And there, snuggled between the tank and the sink, was where the flusher had been from the time I was potty trained until I moved away: On the FREAKING SIDE OF THE TOILET. Obviously, I hadn’t thought of everything.

Luckily that has been my only mistake thus far, although there have been many things I’d forgotten about – window screens, ATMs everywhere, customer service, enormous refrigerators. And some new things, too, such as absolutely absurd pharmaceutical commercials. My favorite one is for Yaz that consists entirely of clarifications and side effects. Yet, the first two sentences she says contradict each other. Oh, and I think it’s shot in a nightclub. Classy.

I’ve also been struck by the technology here. From my mother’s computerized washer-dryer to GPS devices in cars to my first view of an iPhone app, there seems to be a nifty gadget for just about everything you want or need to do. Where I live antiquity is the rule, improvised modernity is the exception – and only the very rich have such things. The simple Mediterranean life might be the ideal for some, but would a hands-free can opener gadget be so bad?

I kid. But the things I’ve remembered, and experienced, since arriving for this visit have been nothing short of soul-satisfying: The long hugs from family and friends. Sleeping in salty ocean breezes. Sitting around the dining room table after dinner, “bazooing” as my mom’s family calls it, until it’s time to go to bed. Catching up, seeing old pictures, meeting new faces of little ones.

There’s more to come, as my visit is only half over – I just wanted to get down some thoughts before heading out to meet up with friends!

Ms. Adventures in Italy, patron saint of Italiaphile foodies everywhere, recently wrote a comprehensive ebook of 101 American Foods to Try for her Italian friends. You can read it online (don’t worry, it’s in English) or download it at her blog post about it. I recently used this list as inspiration for my own list of foods that I must eat when I’m back in the States for a month soon.  So, without further ado, feast your eyes and wear your eatin’ pants – here’s what I hope to have over the course of my trip.

I’ll be breaking mine down by meal times (although many of these meals will be the only thing I eat all day due to the insanity that is American portions):

Breakfast

1. An IHOP breakfast that, if I remember correctly, includes chicken fried steak, eggs and pancakes.

2. Jersey diner breakfast.

3. Cheerios.

4. Ess-A-Bagel with whitefish salad. There are many other bagel/topping combinations, but this one is the most important.

5. A fried egg sandwich made by my mother. No one makes them like her.

6. Rye toast with butter.

Lunch

1. Voltaco’s cheesesteak with fried onions.

2. Crab cakes.

3. Roast beef and cheese on pumpernickel with mayo and horseradish.

4. Thanksgiving sandwich. I’m aware it’s not the season, but I’m counting on 24/7/365 America to come through for me.

5. Honey-roasted, thick-cut ham sandwich, my mom’s potato salad, and my aunt’s macaroni salad. Bring out the Helmann’s, y’all.

6. Peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread.

7. Patty melt or Reuben.

Dinner

1. My mom’s gravy and meatballs.

2. My grandfather’s sauteed crabs with Benny’s Bread.

3. My father’s pasta with mixed seafood.

4. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach.

5. Anything from Smitty’s Clam Shack or similar bare-bones, serve-it-to-me-in-Styrofoam seafood joint.

6. Whatever Katie (New York foodie and best friend) has selected for me.

7. Serious barbecue (ribs or pulled pork).

Dessert

1. Breyer’s peach ice cream.

2. Chocolate peanut butter ice cream sundae with peanut butter sauce instead of hot fudge.

3. Pie. A piece of any kind of pie.

4. Entenmann’s and/or Tasty Kakes.

5. A really excellent cupcake. I’ve heard these have become a trend, and I’m intrigued.

Drinks

1. Cream soda.

2. Wine that is not from Italy or France.

3. Gin & tonic served to me with both ingredients in the same glass. With ice.

4. Black & White shake.

A week from today, I’m heading back to the States for the first time in three years on a month-long visit with friends and family.  This is the longest I’ve been away, and a significant percentage of the total seven years I’ve lived overseas.  And I am bracing myself for a whole new level of reverse culture shock.

Reverse culture shock may seem like something expats made up in order to remind people back home that they lead an impossibly exotic life, but I can assure you from my own experience that it’s very real, completely involuntary, and can be hugely embarrassing.

My most embarrassing reverse culture shock moment happened in a deli in Manhattan the day after I arrived in 2006. I bought something with what I now know was an old $20 bill, and received as part of my change what I now know was a new $10 bill.  After accusing the deli owner of being a crook and extracting the opinion of some poor guy trying to buy the paper, I learned that the Treasury Department had gotten all creative on me while I had been jingling euro coins in my pocket.

If you think about it, you’ve probably gone through reverse culture shock in your own life as well. Anytime you revisit a place you once knew well, you’re bringing with you the entirety of the experiences you’ve had since your last visit. The combination of nostalgic emotion, personal evolution and straight-up sense memory makes for a bit of a brain overload.

The best analogy I could make would be a New Yorker who heads back to the family abode at Christmas time. The typical New Yorker, no matter where they grew up, cannot get over chain restaurants, driving everywhere and the lack of good bagels. But how about you? Have you ever felt for a phantom light switch in your old room? Repeatedly bumped into a chair that’s been moved? Looked for something your mother sold in a yard sale 10 years ago?

Well, my own reverse culture shock is a bit like that – but constant, and overwhelming.  While I consider my life here far from exotic, I catch glimpses of what’s in store for me whenever someone from the States comes to visit:

Where are all the scooters?

Why are the eggs in the fridge?

Wow, these screens are really good at keeping out flies!

My clothes can be washed and dried in less than a day?

I have to wait a whole week for the next episode?

It’s 9AM, I can’t eat all this food.

Are you sure the store will be open? It’s lunchtime.

Dinner? The sun hasn’t even gone down yet!

All this carpeting sure soaks up the sound.

Ahhhhh, air conditioning.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea: I’m about to spend the next month being confused, surprised or excited by things I spent the first 30 years of my life taking for granted. To all of you I’ll meet in the States, I send out a preemptive apology.

This post has nothing to do with travel, but everything to do with blogging – and this here’s my blog, so what better place to talk about it? Mashable, a brilliant site that talks about many things that confuse me because I am an Internet dilettante, recently weighed in on the idea of sponsored tweets. It seems a company has figured out a way to make this work.

This company is willing to pay people to post, in effect, ads. Some things to keep in mind:

• The tweeter can write the ad in their own words.
• The tweet will have disclosure hashtags (Mom, that’s “#” plus a keyword) that clearly label it as an ad.
• Once contacted about posting, the tweeter has the choice to decline posting that ad.

I filled out the form on their site, because I was curious how much I’d earn if I were to tweet an ad. Turns out it’s a whopping $2.61, plus $0.15 every time someone clicks on the link I presumably include in the tweet. (I can adjust that rate as I wish.)

The Internet firestorm of drama and indignation sponsored tweets have ignited is almost laughable, but upon further reflection is probably valid. The great majority of people say they will unceremoniously “unfollow” people who post sponsored tweets, as they consider it to be spam. Others think it spells the end of Twitter as we know it, as it should be a place free of monetization – a true social media community that is about the exchange of ideas, not sales.

And, to a certain extent I agree. Click on any trending topic in Twitter; among the heartfelt posts about Michael Jackson’s death, the Iran elections and the desire to see the Jonas Brothers perform in Australia, there are spammy ads for Cialis and hot babes who want to talk to YOU. It’s annoying and just plain feels dirty.

I also agree with those who say that it tarnishes the reputation of those who post the sponsored tweets. It would seem to be the equivalent of a paying journalists to write favorable reviews. There are people on my Twitter feed who are serious travel journalists, whose presence implies the acceptance of their not unsubstantial employers. I do not think these people should post sponsored tweets, and given the respect they so clearly have for their profession I’d be surprised if they did.

But I have a few thoughts in support of sponsored tweets, which I’d like to share:

1. For every credentialed journalist on Twitter, there are hundreds of thousands of regular, everyday people who use Twitter for other purposes. While they wouldn’t get the big bucks per sponsored tweet – some users with large followings can get up to $150 per post – they might make some lunch money, and I think that’s OK.
2. Whether it’s their own blogs, websites that interest them or products and services they love, people promote things all the time on Twitter. It could be argued that everyone who waxes poetic about their new iPhones in 140 characters is promoting Apple. People who acknowledge how much Twitter has made their lives richer are promoting Twitter. Users ask their followers to “retweet,” Digg, StumbleUpon or otherwise promote blog posts all the time. I’ve written the headline to this post in a way that I hope will make people want to click on the link that accompanies it when I post it on Twitter – in effect promoting myself. I receive press releases all the time from companies that hope I’ll pick up the story. If I’m not enthused, I delete it. If I think it’s interesting and something my readers would enjoy, I run with it. Newspapers do this all the time. If a hotel I’ve always wanted to stay at contacted me and offered me $2.61 to say what I would have said for free anyway, especially since I have the right to refuse, what’s the harm? I’m doing it under my own name. I would never do it, for example, for the blogs I am paid to write for. In fact, I’ve spent the last three months debating whether or not to write a glowing review of Skype for one such blog, fearing it might tarnish the reputation of that blog’s brand – and Skype has no idea I even exist, let alone contacted me about writing it.
3. I can’t see taking the time to be offended by a sponsored tweet by someone on my list of 345 people I currently follow. Now, that 345 is a relatively small number, considering almost 1,800 people follow me. Many people I know have no trouble following hundreds more, but even with my 345 I could easily do nothing all day but read my Twitter feed. As it is, I and many others I’ve spoken to merely skim the feed for our favorites, and I’ve limited my Twitter time to only about 15-20 minutes per day.

That means I’m missing literally thousands of tweets per day, and passing over dozens every time I log on to check my feed. If someone were to post a sponsored tweet, I could easily miss it – and if I did see one, it would take a fraction of a second to skip over it if it did not interest me, just as I do with other tweets that do not interest me.

With the link and the hash tags, I can’t imagine my personalized input into a sponsored tweet would be more than a few words at most. The tweet would reach less than 1,800 people total, the majority of whom would never see it because of timing and the rest would simply ignore. And I write an average of 11.3 tweets per day, which means I’d be posting at least 10 other solid, original, thoughtful tweets my followers have come to enjoy.

I think it all comes down to context. I’ve chosen to follow the people I do because I have found them to be interesting, honest, sincere people who share my passion for travel. I’d like to believe they would say the same about me. If I saw one of my twits (ha!) had posted a sponsored tweet, it would not make me suddenly disrespect them or mistrust the other quality tweets they post throughout the day. I’ve seen many more egregious, spammy offenses on Twitter in the name of self-promotion, Lord knows.

These companies are not asking to take over your Twitter account. They’re not asking you to go on and on about their products or services. They’re asking to rent a small space for a fleeting moment in time, and could give a fig what you do with Twitter for the remaining 23.59 hours of your day. I don’t think that’s so bad.

What say you?

A ray of sun falling across my face wakes me. I lie in bed and listen to my father get up first. He puts the coffee on, which smells so good, and he tiptoes out of the house to get the newspapers from Wawa. Then my mom gets up and has coffee and the TV goes on quietly. She starts frying bacon, and that is added to the coffee smell.

Then Aunt Marie gets up and they work on the huge jigsaw puzzle and smoke cigarettes and there’s a little more clanking when they decide to undo the dishwasher. Then Uncle Mike wakes up and goes from his bed to the living room floor and reads paperback novels. Sometimes he tells funny jokes, and sometimes he grabs us as we go by and tickles our legs.

My dad comes back from his little trip with newspapers, which have their own lovely smell, and Benny’s Bread with its intoxicating sourdough smell, and maybe some pastries. Then my room starts to come alive with Jase and Trin surfacing from their sleep, and we lie there a little while longer and giggle and plan our day, and then we go out and attack the kitchen and the day has begun.

Then there are the night times, when everybody comes over for dessert or coffee. All us kids are spread out on the living room floor watching the Phillies with the old uncles who are dozing in the chairs, and Richie Ashburn’s voice is summer, and all the aunts are sitting around the table drinking coffee and eating Entenmann’s. We are all sunburned and smell like the beach and soap. Sometimes an aunt invites you onto the couch and scratches your back, and sometimes an uncle calls you over and opens his wallet and gives you money for A La Mode.

We gather ourselves in a noisy bunch and go over barefoot to get our ice cream. Inside it is cold and the floor numbs our feet, and we order our current favorites and talk about our old favorites and the time Trin got sick from eating a whole banana split and the time Francine wouldn’t give me any of her marshmallow topping. We all miss Marny and Pop-Pop so much, but no one says that.

I have set my Gmail Web Clips to give me interesting travel news from a wide variety of sources. One of these sources is MSNBC. Also, please note I’m currently living in France. So when I see a Web Clip that states, “60 crew have swine flu on cruise ship off France” and the source is MSNBC.com, you can be damn sure I clicked on it.

And what is the headline I see on the news page?

“Crew members test negative for swine flu”

Shame on you, MSNBC. And shame on the press at large for using consistently inflammatory language in reporting on this pandemic.

That is all.

What am I about to show you has absolutely nothing to do with travel. But it is about living your dream, and sometimes you get your inspiration from the strangest places. If even one person who sees this video and reads the story behind it is inspired to change the course of their life, take a risk and realize whatever their dream is, then it’s been worth it.

This isn’t a Make-A-Wish thing, or a Springsteen/Cox-inspired audience grab; it was totally random, a girl at the right place at the right time. It’s a long song, and you might not like the music; but watch the whole thing – and if you aren’t choked up by the site of a girl living her dream in real time, you need to get some help.

The story behind it is after the jump.

Per the New York Times, this is how it went down:

At one point during Monday night’s Green Day show at Madison Square Garden, Billie Joe Armstrong announced that he needed someone on stage who could play the guitar. And not just for a “three-chord song,” he added, “for one with four, five, maybe six chords” — “Jesus of Suburbia.” After rejecting a few wannabes he stopped and asked a girl in the mosh pit if she knew how to play, then looked unconvinced when she said she did. “What key is it in?” he asked. Seemingly satisfied with her answer (it’s somewhat complicated, but for the sake of brevity, let’s say the correct response is C sharp major) he pulled her up onto the stage. The girl — her name later was revealed to be Stephanie — was wearing jeans shorts, a torn Misfits t-shirt, and a head scarf over her pigtails. Mr. Armstrong handed her the guitar, conferred with her briefly, then let her sit on an amp to get started. And then she…ripped! A few bars in she was wandering the stage like a pro and when Mr. Armstrong introduced her at the end, the crowd was shouting “Ste-pha-nie! Ste-pha-nie!” in appreciation.

Stephanie was last seen heading down Tower A after the show, a pair of Tre Cool’s drumsticks in one hand, her cell phone in the other, a chant of “Ste-pha-nie!” breaking out from those who spotted her in the crowd.

You know what, Stephanie? Good for you. I hope every girl on earth who thinks she is not worthy of a dream sees this. I hope you had the time of your life. And I hope they throw a fricking pep rally for you at your school. And I hope you keep that moment with you for the rest of your days.

To dreams coming true!

OW

THE CUTE

MY EYES

IT’S BLINDING ME