Traveling leaves you with all of these short anecdotes that excitedly bounce around your head until you can finally hurl them out to your relief and your listener's displeasure. For long-term travelers, the condition is so bad that meals between hostellers inevitably degrade to a back-and-forth of short, cute stories heard by no one.
In addition to boring my family and friends with these stories, I will inflict the same pain on you.
Some short anecdotes.
I don't have a job.
While waiting for my laundry to finish in Milan, this Steve Jobs doppelgänger, Luigi, invited me to sit with him. After a lengthy conversation on Apple and the tech scene, he took me to the health club he ran. By the tennis courts, a 30-something year old man was walking his tiny white dog. Luigi tells me: "That man is always on the phone, walking his dog here. Never uses the facilities, just talks and walks his dog." They exchange some rapid Italian. Luigi translates for me.
"Go to work!", Luigi says.
"I don't have a job," the man replies without skipping a beat. He continues his phone conversation.
The Cinque Terra Zoo
While eating lunch with Ken and Katia in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, I noticed a snail creeping up my chair. Worrying that is was toxic, I stood up and reached to replace my chair with one at the table next door. I pulled the heavy chair from underneath the tablecloth, revealing a massive grey cat sitting on the seat.
He sleepily looked up at us, all doubled over in laughter, and continued his nap.
Amsterdam
I was offered drugs in a fairly normal fashion throughout Europe. I mean, being offered drugs is never a totally hum-drum experience, but there was nothing differing far from the typical "You got a lighter? ... Want some weed?".
Within minutes of Abhinav and my first walk through Amsterdam, however, a man shouted across the street "Yo, want some MDMA?". No pretense of selling herbs, no discreetness. He means business.
A cat from Mykonos
The wildlife on the island Mykonos is primarily cat. It's as if some cat of ancient lore swam the 140km from mainland Greece hoping to end up in lovely Tinos, but instead reached the party haven of Mykenos. Since then, all of her progeny have been prowling the coasts in search of a way to escape the drunken crowds. One particular great-grandson of this Mother Cat approached me while I was enjoying some grilled squid at a restaurant. He looked up at my plate, actually licking his lips. A softie for cats, I cut off a tentacle and dangled it before him. He looked from me to the tentacle, and suddenly a spat of terror came over the tiny creature. He scampered backwards, hair on end, nearly knocking over a nearby chair.
While I was trying to figure out what made him so suspect of my squid, the owner of the restaurant came out. "You've met my cat!", he said. "Well, not mine, but he follows me wherever I go." The owner whistled, as if to an attentive guard dog. The cat's head perked up, and he scrambled towards his perceived owner, obediently following him back into the kitchen.