Ana Raspini is a traveler, besides being an English teacher, and a writer.

Minha foto
Brasileira, professora de Inglês, escritora, mas acima de tudo, viajante.
Lyrical Travel Journal

A personal, slightly lyrical, point of view on the places I have been to.

sexta-feira, 31 de julho de 2015

Post-Trip Depression - PTD

This always happens. I just can't help it.

Since 2007, when I had my first long trip, this always happens.

A few weeks after I come back from a trip the world stops making sense, small pleasures are not as indulgent anymore, and the bureaucracy of life goes from annoying to unbearable.

It took me a long time to get this feeling. I must have only recognized it the second or third time I felt it. So I started calling it Port-Trip Depression, or PTD for short.

I'll try to explain it to those of  you who have never felt it, or for those who have felt it but couldn't tell what it was all about. During the Port-Trip Depression phase, it all gets more difficult and less interesting. Small everyday bureaucracies such as waking up early, washing your hair, working, washing the dishes come surrounded by questions like "why?" or "what for?"...

But what makes me really sad is losing the right to self-indulgence. In a normal state of mind, of non-PTD, you work all week and by the end of it you allow yourself some wine or beer, some gourmet food, or some fried treat, or waking up late without remorse. And that self-indulgence is good for you, that's the outlet you needed to forget the week behind and face the week ahead of you.

However, in a PTD state of mind, those things do not give you pleasure anymore. The problem is that you realize the wine you're drinking is worse and more expensive than the ones you had in Portugal or in France; The beer you're having is worse and more expensive than the ones you had in Germany or in Belgium; The gourmet food you're having is worse and more expensive than the ones you had in Italy or in France; That fried delicacy is nothing compared to the ones you had in England, or in Uruguay, or in Holland...

Those are desperate weeks, because the life you're leading stops making sense and that makes you feel lost. The questions of "why?" or "what for?" start applying to everything in your life and not just to the bad things. And questioning every part of your life is quite painful.

Yet, the days go by and you learn to accept that you cannot be on vacation for the rest of your life and that the world will always be there to be explored. The depression becomes smaller and smaller alongside with the digestion of the trip. You chew, swallow and digest everything you learned with that trip and that makes you better, more mature and calmer.

Life bothers you like new shoes. Then you get used to it.

...

For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem


quinta-feira, 23 de julho de 2015

Travel as Union

On an article I read last week, Brazilian writer and traveler Amanda Noventa, from the blog Amanda Viaja, wrote about how a trip can be a type of therapy. She wrote about how a trip can mend the pieces of your broken heart, or clear the mists which were covering that answer you longed so much about your life. However, a certain sentence made me think: "A trip helps the lonely find new friends, it helps families reconnect, it helps friends reinforce their friendship, and it helps couples discover whether they really want to be together or not"...

That last park struck me: it helps couples discover if they really want to stay together... A lot has been said recently about traveling solo, especially for women, something I admire and support, even having a series about it here on the blog, where I interview friends about their solo adventures. I really want to have the solo experience one day, for I imagine it to be a tremendous discovery about oneself.

However, traveling with your spouse/life partner/boyfriend/girlfriend can also be a profound discovery. Moreover, it can be a serious test.

I have always thought that a partner must be chosen not based on his/her preferences, but based on his/her life goals. If your biggest goal in life is to purchase goods and have a stable life, don't get married to someone who does not have a clue about financial literacy and goes around buying ephemeral things. If your biggest goal in life is to have kids, don't get married to someone who doesn't want them. If sleeping is one the biggest pleasures of your life, don't get married to a hyperactive person who sleeps 4 hours a day and thinks sleeping is a waste of time.

It seems easy but it's not. I know.

Yet, besides finding someone with sleeping habits and life goals similar to yours, for someone who is a traveler it is extremely important to find a partner who is also a traveler. A traveler soul seeks another, right?

Nonetheless, when the trips have only started after the financial stability provided by the joined income and shared bills between the two, as in my case, there was no way I could know beforehand what kind of travelers we were going to be together.

I don't believe in soulmate or prince charming either, or in that falacy of love stories that were "meant to be". I know that life is hard, and that love is built every day, step by step, with a ton of effort and willingness to learn. I know that I've been describing what is actually life itself, and that is not news. What I want to say is that a trip is like life, but more intense.

On a long trip, everything is maximized: the joy, the delight, the pain, the problems, the learning process... There is no "routine" on a trip, and that is why traveling with your partner can be a tougher test than life itself can be.

Not only because of the habits of sleep, or bathing, or eating, but also because of the pace of walking, which is a different pace on the streets, on the subway, in a church or in a museum. The frequency you feel like photographing something, or showing something to the other, of stopping to observe something. The kilometers you walk easily, then with a lot of will power, and the moment to take a break. Getting lost and coming back to the last familiar place or keep walking to see where the street ends. Turning left on a touristic information plate or turning right because you saw a nice tower at the end of the street. Every step is a mutual decision on a trip, and it can be hard or easy.

The dynamics of everyday life are enhanced on a trip which makes the nuances of such dynamics very clear to both, either positively or negatively. If not everything is synchronized as a pocket watch between the two of you, the trip (like life) will teach you that if both adjust a little bit, the gear will work well. But the trip will also point out parts that will never fit.

Let a long trip to far away test your relationship. If it works, it's nearly indestructible. If it doesn't, travel to find a new love.

...

For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem




terça-feira, 21 de julho de 2015

Venice, the unreachable

Venice is hard to reach, for various reasons. Cars, buses or trains, none of them get there. Forget taxis or subways. Not even bicycles exist on the island, given that most of the bridges have steps, not ramps.

In the continent, paid parking lots are stuffed with cars. When you get out of the parking lot, you see a small bridge, connecting the continent to the island. It is a very modern bridge, made exclusively for pedestrians, as almost everything in Venice.

For us, walking the whole way was not an option, as our hotel was on the opposite side of the island and we were carrying bags. Besides walking, the only other option to get to the island is by boat: you either take a ridiculously expensive water taxi, or you take the famous Vaporetto.

Vaporetto is the cheapest way to get to Venice, however, once you get there, you learn that the words "cheap" and "Venice" never go together. A Vaporetto one-way ticket costs 7 euros per person. Not bad for a public transportation, right?

Venice was, by far, the most expensive city I have ever been to. It is expensive to book a hotel, very expensive to eat, and even expensive to walk to the supermarket to buy water. Once you get there, you understand why.

All types of products are transported by boat, and that includes things we don't usually pay attention to, like garbage removal, the dry cleaner's delivery of fresh sheets to our hotel, the delivery of the beer or the wine that is consumed by thousands of tourists every night. Everything depends on the boats. That is why the gondoliers are rich and envied, and boat models are showed off as Ferraris and Lamborghinis are in the rest of Italy.

But, oh damn it! How can a city with such difficult logistics and such inflated prices be so romantic? Would "unachievable" be a synonym for "romantic"? I hate this tacky idea of romance. Romance suggests that you are special, and that the other person also is, and that, for some reason, you are special together. Come on! We are over 7 billion people on this planet, why would I think I'm special? Romantics exhaust me...

But, oh damn it! Walking through Saint Marcus square on a hot summer night while a small orchestra at a café played one of the songs from The Phantom of the Opera was absurdly romantic! I was so touched by the scene of an old couple looking into each other's eyes with sweetness while they both whispered the chorus of "All I ask of you"...

Venice is as unreachable as it is romantic, and being a little tacky once in a while is good for the heart...

...

For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem











quinta-feira, 9 de julho de 2015

Top 5 Tuscany

We visited 11 towns and villages in Tuscany, Italy, this spring:
Siena
Florença
Monteriggioni
Montepulciano
Monticchiello – Pienza
Pienza
Montalcino
Sant'angelo in Colle – Montalcino
San Gimignano
Montefioralle – Greve in Chianti
Greve in Chianti

However, visiting so many towns in such short time was only possible because we rented a car, which is what I recommend because the weather tends to be hot most of the year. Even though it was very hot (nearly 40 degrees Celsius), we saw lots of people crossing Tuscany by bike.

As some friends ask me what towns they should visit in Tuscany, for there are hundreds of them, I tried to make a list of my favorite ones (and my friends' too).

I wanted to keep the list at 5 cities, but it is impossible to leave Siena out. So, I'll put Siena as the "base", which was what we did.

Siena - It was near Siena where we stayed at a hotel for two nights. The old town is medieval and beautiful and small enough to be seen in one day, or even half a day if you're in a hurry. I must confess that I had tears in my eyes when we got to the Piazza del Campo, that concave square where the Palio di Siena takes place. You must remember such event from the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun".




1. San Gimignano - I can't quite explain why this town had such an impact on me, after all it was (by far!) the most crowded city we visited. Buses full of U.S. American tourists stopped in front of the town and we couldn't hear Italian for blocks. However, the city was all decorated with flags and had a square with a fountain in the middle, which made it look like a medieval movie.


2. Montefioralle - This village belongs to the city of Greve in Chianti, and it was the place that had the biggest impact on my friends. We stopped there without even knowing what it was, we thought it was a castle. Turns out it is just a village, but at the time it seemed almost abandoned, because there was absolutely nobody on the streets. It was very interesting to walk for hours without seeing one tourist.


3. Monticchielo - Another charming tuscan village that gave us the gift of spending hours sighing and taking good photos. This village belongs to the city of Pienza. There was a restaurant at the entrance of the village that was crowded and the food smelled delicious. We didn't eat there, but it looked worth the try.



4. Montepulciano - This city is a bit bigger if compared to the other towns in Tuscany. Montepulciano was where we spent more time tasting wine and other delicacies. Local producers offer free tastings of almost everything you can imagine: wine, cheese, even bruschetta! I suggest you spend a little more time here, as it doesn't only offer you good photos, but also flavors and interesting conversations with the locals.



5. Monteriggioni - When you get to this village parking lot, you see an aerial photo of the city in a billboard. It is, literally, a mini village surrounded by a wall. I was so shocked by how small it was  that I counted all the buildings in the village, and was even more shocked when I realized they weren't many more than 10! Entering the city you see a small square with a fountain in the middle, and you feel taken straight to the set of a movie about the Middle Ages. Even quite small, there are 3 or 4 restaurants there.




Tuscany is amazing! It is one of the most beautiful places I've been to, and making this list nearly broke my heart. I almost regretted having decided to select half of the cities we visited, for all of them were charming and special in their own way. So, forget the sequence I put them, all these 6 towns are worth every kilometer and every drop of sweat to get there.

...

For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem

quinta-feira, 2 de julho de 2015

ROME

Italians are famous for their exaggeration, and Rome is the culmination of most of it.

Rome is an overdose of cars on the streets, of honking, of traffic swearing.

Rome is an overdose of handsome men. They are vain and impeccably well-dressed, and have neatly combed hair, much more so than their girlfriends or wives. Please, dear reader, notice that not all exaggeration is bad.

Rome is an overdose of smokers, and people wearing formal suits at the height of a 40-degree-Celsius spring.

Rome is an overdose of ruins, as countless as they are ancient; they are so banal that many of them don’t receive any kind of care, not even a protection fence. It is an overdose of History, of thousands of years, of mentions to a civilization that originated mine, and yours…

Rome is an overdose of faith, of churches, of crucifixes, of rules to enter those churches. You can’t wear shorts, or show cleavage.

Rome is an overdose of good food. A real overdose, given that the usual is to have 3 courses, and they are all plentiful. It is an overdose of flavors, of complex dishes, the ones that take hours to be prepared and need ability and attention. Observe, once again, that not all exaggeration is bad.

Rome is an overdose of red wine, consumed in room temperature, even if the temperature of the room is 40 degrees Celsius during that lunch, on a weekday.

Rome is an overdose of crowded buses, which do not arrive on time. It is an overdose of tourists.

Rome is an overdose of waiters and clerks who are arrogant, who do not like tourists. It is an overdose of people that do not speak English to the poor tourist who cannot understand Italian. It is an overdose of police officers and security guards who give the wrong direction… On purpose?

Rome is an overdose of good and bad things, even because it’s not fun to be dull or middle ground. Dull and bland are synonyms of bad food, and an Italian would never accept bad food.

Rome is an overdose, just like this text. Blame it on my last name.

...

For the Portuguese version, go to Diario Lirico de Viagem

The Colosseum

Castel Sant'Angelo 
Baths of Caracalla

Via Appia Antica

Pantheon

Inside Pantheon

Piazza Navona

Saint Peter Square