Brock { Abroad }

I wake up with a headache to the sound of a jackhammer chopping up the street below me. There are seven cigarette butts in the ashtray on my bedside table. One is standing straight up. I cross the drab and empty room and enter the bathroom to release my full bladder. There is a streak in the bowl from my violent reaction to a whole round of camembert cheese I crammed into a baguette, my final meal in France and proof that I am incredibly intolerant of lactose. There are curly black hairs stuck to the still damp bathtub and my clothes are laid out on the dresser next to some brochures for the Guggenheim museum, an architectural gem I’ve been waiting to see for years. It was an off start to my first day ‘home’, to say the least. To say the most, I felt pretty damn lonely; and I couldn’t understand why. Read the rest of this entry »

My next movement, at approximately 11.30 p.m. was through more mountains- except I was now hurtling downwards into an actual city. “This is Bilbao?” I ask the guy sitting next to me who I’ve been talking to for most of the ride. He’s been telling me about his city when I prompt him, otherwise he’s been asking me a lot of questions about the United States. He finally arrives at the most common question I get from foreigners. “So, do you prefer Europe or America?”

“ Let me put it this way,” I tell him, “I’ve learned to say the grass is always greener on the other side in a lot of different languages.”  Read the rest of this entry »