The beautiful parts of Italy

I spent 3 days in Manarola, one of the villages of the famous Cinque Terre in Italy, which thankfully happened to be the least touristy too.  Some of the coastal trailers were closed due to landslides, but the back trails gave stunning views and were pretty rarely traveled.  All 5 towns are linked by railways, so most people opted for those instead of the hikes, which is their loss.  The region reminded me of some of the best places I’ve been to on this trip: the water was as blue as it was in Fiji; the cliffs as crazy as New Zealand; the small in-between towns felt one part Italian and one part Nepali village; and the food was slammin (and somehow cheaper than in Florence or Rome, for the most part). 

I couldn't remember the towns' names when I was there, so who knows what town this is.

I think this is Manarola

View from the top of a nearby "mountain."  Should be able to see 4/5 towns in this picture, and the 5th didn't make it in the picture, but is still visible from the mount.

I guess this is Manarola too

    After my 3 night stay, I spent about 8 hours to get to Bolzano/Bozen, Itatly, a large German speaking town in Northen Italy (the region of South Tyrol).  Bolzano is the Italian name, Bozen is the German.  After WWI, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (you wouldn’t think by going to Hungary that it was ever a world power, no offense) ceded the region to the Italians, who then tried to kill off the German influence after the fascists moved in.  Now it’s a cute, culturally unique town just west of the Dolomites. 

    Bolzano is pretty cool too.  It’s pretty much the only city in Italy where döner kebabs and bratwurst are readily available and where beer is actually good and cheap.  I went on an all day hike with a mid-30’s American Army guy posted at some town in Italy.  Like Cinque Terre, the views were amazing and so was the weather, which made it hard to not like Italy. 

The Dolomites.  

The Dolomites

Llllllllama

    While making dinner later that night, I got more frustrated than I had in the last 4 months – nothing was working the way it should, food was spilling everywhere, it was hot, the internet sucked, etc.  I felt like I was going crazy.  Once I settled down (aka, ate), it felt like the energy was sucked out of me.  The next day, I literally just sat inside watching Sportcenter top 10’s and playing Mega Miner on addictinggames.com.  I felt like a loser, but I hadn’t just done nothing in a very long time.  But at the end of the day, I was more tired and felt worse than I did the day before. 

    

    I made it to Innsbruck today and still just felt like crap, not physically, but just a feeling of ugh.  I would say that I’ve been “ready” to go home for over a month now – glad to be here, but going home wouldn’t be bad either.  Today was the first day I wish I was home – if I could’ve moved up my flight home, I might have.  It was the first time I saw my next and last 4 weeks as something to "get through" instead of joyfully anticipated.  

    I’m a bit burnt out, and I think part of it is the fact that I haven’t taken a real Sabbath day in a while.  I haven’t really thought about it until today – I don’t even know what it would look like.  I guess it would consist of renting a bike, going to coffee shops all day, not planning the next city or next week’s hostels, and watching a few eps of Fresh Prince of Bel Air.  Just like trying to observe the Sabbath at home, it's something that is counter-intuitively hard to do.  And I'm sure part of it is that I'm tired of traveling, Sabbath or not.

    I guess the next step is not to "find time" for a Sabbath day, but to make time and trust God in that.  And not with the expectation of fixing my bad attitude, but with the intention of obeying God and the expectation that that's all that matters.  Also, God did bigger things than changing an attitude in the seconds it took me to write this sentence, but I'd rather see Him and learn of Him in the next 4 weeks than be happy the whole time.

llama.