Europe

There’s a time in most adolescent lives when everything starts to change, when the things you did last week now seemed juvenile. We all become misfits for some brief, difficult years, lured by the different and the dangerous. We become obsessed with something with the zeal that only teenagers possess, purposefully ostracize ourselves from the adults in our lives. Some kids turn to music. Some kids turn to drugs and alcohol. My obsession became the world itself.

When I was a little girl, I used to love watching the Olympics. My favourite sports to watch in the winter games were figure skating, speed skating, ski jumping, hockey, and luge. It was a pretty big event in my household; for both the summer and winter games, my whole family would crowd around and watch the events on TV. One of my biggest regrets in life is not being in Canada when we won the gold medal for hockey in the Vancouver 2010 games.

I rarely get political on this blog; I’ve always maintained it’s not a place for that. I felt a need to write about what’s going on in Russia, though, because it absolutely breaks my heart.

In reading up on things to do in Porto, I kept stumbling across the same tips: port tasting, climb the Torre dos Clérigos, visit Livraria Lello (a bookstore), walk along the Ribeira. And, other than Portugal’s famous bacalhau (cod), one food kept popping up on Porto’s “must do” lists: Francesinha. Vegetarians and vegans, look away now.

Last autumn, I had the pleasure of returning to one of my favourite European cities, Berlin. There are many things to love about Berlin: its nightlife, its history, its fashion, and, perhaps one of my favourite reasons for visiting, its street art. I’ve written about how I’m huge fan of street art before, and I think that it can be a beautiful contribution to a city, adding art, politics, culture, and social perspective to otherwise bare walls.

I thought, initially, that 2013 wasn’t a very eventful year. I watched as other friends travelled the world, got married, had children, got promoted, got published. But upon reflection I realised that this year was really a transition, or, if we should use that German word, a slide into the life I’m creating for myself.

Wherever and however you are celebrating today (or even if you don’t celebrate it at all), I wish you the happiest of days. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!