Recollections of a Dream

The plane was in the air for eight hours but landed 14 hours after take off. From when I left home to the time I arrived, I traveled more than 5100 miles on the first airplane rides of my life. Through a combination of last-minute late-night packing and nerves, I barely slept before leaving for the airport. The mixture of dry air, pollens, and pollutants gave me an allergy attack. I swallowed some medicine; the side effect was falling asleep. When the plane landed, I woke up in a foreign country. My first hours in Europe were an anti-histamine induced fugue state. I, in every sense of the phrase, was in a whole new world. How did I end up here?

The first few days were a euphoric stupor. I was seeing and living more experiences than I could keep up with. I first visited a museum built around an excavated sunken ship in Stockholm. I wandered through castles and got closer to the homes of foreign presidents than I had ever been to the home of mine. I went underground at Wieliczka and licked a salt wall. I traversed the Hill of Witches. I mourned at Auschwitz. I visited the childhood home of Pope John Paul II. I sat where Franz Kafka wrote. I saw a day with 22 hours of sunlight and felt weather so cold I had to wear a coat in summer. I absorbed the local excitement of the World Cup. I rode subways and ate street food and saw paintings and statues and memorials that defied time, reminders that there were people and events before me that lead to where I was.

Before I went on this trip my world was flat and gray. Traveling abroad triggered a synesthesia that gave my world a depth of color and flavor that I once lacked the capacity to envision. The days blurred into each other like wet ink blurs words. I can tell you ending up there required earning and saving money, buying a camera, packing a suitcase, flying. But when I woke up from that transatlantic flight and looked around, I realized that I dreamed my way to where I was and effectively blurred the lines between my imagination and my real life.

When I think back on my first trip abroad, I don’t look at my photos or touch my souvenirs. I find a quiet place to sit and close my eyes and imagine I’m there. I can feel the cobblestones beneath my feet; I can smell the Baltic air, taste the wine, and hear the musicians performing in the street. I experience it all over again. I got to Europe because of a dream, and I return to Europe the same way until I am able to wake up there again.