Three months off..

If I could take three months off from this life I would spend it in Europe.

I know how cliche it sounds to say that I want to go to Europe but that is what I'd do. Spend three months riding trains around Europe enjoying the beautiful countryside and touring museums. I'd spend a week or two with my cousins in Macedonia because I haven't seen them in over a year and it will be atleast another year and a half before they are back stateside for awhile.

I want to look at the works of the masters. See Venice and the canals even though I have a complete fear of water. See the tulips in bloom in Holland because those have to be some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen.

I just want the chance to see where history happened. Where religions were divided. Where peoples were divided and cultures disappeared. To walk where history happened. For me there is only so much that reading about a place can do for me, what I need to do is witness it for myself, to feel that pain in the pit of my stomach that movies like Schindler's List and Captain Corelli's Mandolin give me while I'm there becoming a witness to the atrocities of war. I feel that going to these places makes it real for me, reminds me that there are so many worse things than the pities of my own life. I will never forget the feeling of seeing all those shoes at the National Holocaust Museum. To see the places where those shoes came from. I hate that all those people died but I would hate it even more if those people are lost to history as we sugarcoat what happened.

That to me is one of the saddest things that we can do to history, to whitewash what makes us feel uncomforatble and uneasy. We have to face what we have done and what we have taken part in so that we can pass these mistakes on to generations to come. The responsibility of the people is to know where they came from, even the horrors so that one day they will not be witnesses to the same atrocious acts of violence and ignorance. We must stop and take our fair share of the blame for what happened, and then we must move on. We have to stop dwelling in the past, for if we don't we will never move on and create a world where those things are less likely to happen.

Just spend a couple of months riding on a train around Europe would float my boat perfectly.

love ya!