Journey Deep began as an online journal, a way to chronicle two years of living and traveling in Russia and Poland. It continues to function as my personal blog, a space for me to reflect on place, culture and my experiences. It’s a forum for me to continue traveling, exploring and sharing the world around me, with the ultimate goal of gaining a deeper understanding of my surroundings, my relationships and myself.
Notes on Northern Virginia
I’d never been to Northern Virginia before I up and moved here. Other than the obligatory, pre-adolescent family trip to DC – which did cross the VA border just far enough to visit Arlington national cemetery – I really had no concept of what NoVA was. Or that the constituents in the northern third of Virginia conceptualized (more…)
Observing Community in Washington D.C.
I moved to D.C. with a car and a determined resolve not to drive it. At least, not to drive it very much. Having spent the last two years living abroad, completely dependent on public transportation, I’ve not only become accustomed to living without cars, I’ve actually come to prefer it. Traveling around a city by bus, subway and my own two feet has (more…)
Notes from the Martin Luther King monument
The family posed for an archetypal group shot by the monument: kids in the front, parents in the back, arms draped across shoulders, tooth-revealing smiles. As the stranger-turned-photographer handed the camera back, LCD screen up, the group crowded around it for a quick look before scattering. Only the youngest looking (more…)
Calling Cleveland Home: The Story of the Metroparks
(A series about home sweet home… for those visits home…)
A ubiquitous question I was often asked while living abroad was, what do you miss most about home? Aside from the usual suspect answers (family, friends, food), my initial response was always: the Cleveland Metroparks.
The first time I uttered that response, I was (more…)
How to travel to Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands in one day
With a full tank of gas, a good map and a few hours to spare, it’s possible to travel through multiple German, Swiss and Dutch towns in one afternoon. All you need to do is go to Ohio.
Appropriating names from other country’s towns and cities has defined American identity for centuries. More obvious ones like New York and New Jersey tend to be the first that (more…)
Notes on Polish Trains
When I first started teaching in Poland, my students often asked me what I thought about the country. I once answered that I really liked the train system. I thought it was great that there are train connections to nearly every city and town in Poland, and that I can live a car-free life.
They stared in response. “You like the (more…)
What I Learned from Living in Wroclaw
Thirteen months ago, I began my life in Wroclaw with a walk. Drawn to walking as a way of getting to know a new place through the slow absorption of details, I’d hoped that I would also begin stepping toward a deeper understanding of place. I knew that I’d have the opportunity to do a lot of traveling during those thirteen months in Europe – two weeks in Croatia, one week in Budapest, a few days (more…)
Stone, houses and history in southwest Poland
There’s something distinct about the 100+ year-old houses in the Lower Silesian region of southwest Poland. This certain distinctness isn’t immediate in the way these houses look, even though they do have similar characteristics – weathering gray stone facades whose rough edges warm and smooth with distance; even windows (more…)
4 Things To Do in Kiev
1) Drink coffee.
“Is coffee always this popular? Or is it just because it’s recently gotten cold enough to wear a winter coat?” I asked my boyfriend’s uncle and long-time Kiev-ite. I’d been in Kiev for a day, and had already stopped counting the number of coffee shops and instead started keeping track of the different ways to (more…)
Impressions of Kiev: Quirky Cats and Street Sculptures
I didn’t do any research on Kiev before traveling there. A last-minute decision to extend my stay in Poland with an outside-the-EU border hop necessitated a quickly packed suitcase and all energies focused on successfully getting a stamp at the border. (I did.)
Knowing very little about a city before going there isn’t (more…)
